So...I’ve just come back from a week in Austria ski-ing, although I do use the verb ‘ski’ in a loose sort of sense.

I did a lot of thinking when I was away. Wondering what masochistic part of my psyche makes me think it’s perfectly normal behaviour to travel in a cable car up steep snow covered mountains, in order to leap from a slope on parallel planks when I get there? And that blue red and black coding stuff? The only conclusion I can come to there, is that the people responsible for labelling slopes are all colour blind. That snowy place I found myself in tears on day three was no way ‘blue’. It was tinged with red angles. Lots of them.

In short, learning a physical sport in ones forties is not for the fainthearted.

Nor though is choosing to write – at any age. This itch that I have to scratch has both given me enormous pleasure and deeply depressed me. Before I left for Austria I was down in the dumps with the whole process. And more importantly, I had a sense that a lot of my fellow writers, both published and unpublished, all felt the same, which almost gave credence to my mood. If I’m honest, I felt a week ski-ing was exactly what I didn’t need. I had enough mountains to climb in my writing life...

However, a week spent in the astounding beauty of the Alps, a week overcoming many obstacles has made me feel hopeful again because:

• I did get in the cable car and travel up to 2000 metres suspended by a piece of wire and I did it twelve times.
• I did get up and ski down the mountain after I cried when I thought I couldn’t.
• I did get on and off chair lifts and, dare I say it, actually enjoyed the view?
• And on the last day, I skied down a mountain and included the dreaded ‘slide’ movement.

I’m also slightly tentative because I know hope can be dashed, but I want to keep going. I want to keep trying to perfect this craft to the best of my ability. I want to write another novel and hope that it will be published. But above all, I want to overcome my writing fears. To do this, I’m going to try and get back to writing for writing’s sake and, breathing in an out slowly, remember to enjoy the view.