I started writing to save my life. At the age of 47 I wrote my way out of severe depression following a mental breakdown. I’d had to give up teaching and I couldn’t face my empty future, so I wrote a sort of alternative autobiography which turned out to be my first novel.

I never planned to be a novelist. I didn’t even plan my first book. I was a sick woman. On bad days, compiling a shopping list was a challenge. Nevertheless I wrote and as I wrote, I noticed something. The pain stopped. All kinds of pain. Writing, it seemed, was morphine for the soul. (And, in my case, just as addictive.)

So I kept writing. I was a successful author editing my sixth novel when once again my world fell apart, followed shortly by my body. I hurtled from breast cancer diagnosis to mastectomy in less than three weeks, then chemo-induced nerve damage left me semi-disabled.

For a year cancer treatment was the biggest thing in my life, then fear – of more chemo, worse disability and death – became the biggest thing in my life. Until I started writing again. So I kept writing.

When I was bald, sick and unable to walk, what really mattered to me was books: reading them and writing them. Fear remains my constant companion – fear of more sickness, mental or physical – but it appears nothing is going to stop me telling stories.

So I just feel the fear and write it anyway.

www.lindagillard.co.uk

 

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