Chapter 2: I call it Magic.

I just came back from a conversation organised by Blackwell’s between Philip Pullman and Kathrine Rundall at the Sheldonian theatre. I am going to keep this short; the only reason I am bothering to write this in the first place is that I told myself I would post on this blog every Thursday night, and I hate having to get annoyed at myself for not living up to my expectations. What I would like to be doing instead (apart from having a late dinner, to be honest) is working on my novel, or starting a short story, or reading Katherine Rundell’s Rooftoppers, which I have started while standing in the queue to get my books signed. (I have already fallen in love with Mr Maxim and Miss Eliot, who in my mind’s eye look like, respectively, Mr Banks from Mary Poppins and Emma Thompson.) The talk has been one of those rather wonderful moments in life when you feel like you’ve actually got it, you can handle it, you can have the cake and eat it too. (Is that what you say in English? In Italian we would say “a drunken wife and a barrel full of wine”, which in my opinion is much more to the point. I mean, of course one would eat the cake, what else could they possibly do with it?) What I am trying to say is that their words made me feel like I can make it, like I can be a writer if I work hard enough - and if there is something I know for sure I am good at is working hard. I found something Rundall said particularly inspiring, because even before she was half-way through the sentence I knew what she was going to say; she said that writing is the closest you can get to magic. It is something I have thought to myself countless times, and knowing a successful children author (aka the person I dream to be since I was twelve years old) thinks exactly the same thing made my heart jump in my chest, like an acrobat - or like a rooftopper.

It was a magical experience, a bit like walking into the set of A discovery of witches last week. I guess I do believe in signs, but most of all I believe in the power of moments and people to change the course of one’s life, if one lets them. I think I only ever felt so confident about the concrete possibility of being a writer (like writers are real people, besides being the stuff of legend) almost three years ago now, at the book launch of The Girl of Ink and Stars, when I had the chance to talk to Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I remember writing profusely on the topic in my diary at the time, so maybe I will write a post about it in the future with all the details that I can’t recall at the moment. What I do recall is how it felt, and it felt like tonight, it felt like magic.

Now, I realise this is the second post in a row that sounds like something the narrating voice from Jane the Virgin would say. But, hey, I love Jane the Virgin, and it is the second Thursday in a row that extraordinarily fateful and meaningful and magical events prevent me from writing about boring things like, you know, the rest of my life.

I must say, I friggin’ hope it stays this way.

Sincerely yours truly,

Raff x

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