'Her Course She Steers Across the Torrid Zone' - Writing Far From Home

Something close to two months since The Flood, I am still beset by insurance company people, many of whom are being nice.

The trouble is, they are being (mostly) nice because it is their job to do so. So they knock off at 5pm and don't come back until 9, at least according to the footer in their emails; the actual window in which they respond to things appears to be somewhere between 10:30 and 10:46, after which you go back on the queue until tomorrow.

I get it - I am, right now, dealing with a claim and the aftermath of flooding 24/7 and I wouldn't wish it on anyone all that many people except possibly loss adjusters. But it is a bit of an ongoing background nightmare.

And a side effect of that is that I am struggling, a little bit, to write. 

That isn't completely true - I have started three or four things, but they haven't really made it past the first page, and the thing is, I like to have an idea that catches: I like ideas that instantly flow, and which get me, personally, excited to write them. Otherwise, sometimes, writing can feel a little bit like work.

And I suspect ideas like "Pamela" have already been done, and "Untitled Femdom, but also the aftermath of the Miner's Strike" is a little bit too much like work (and anyway, I doubt Ewan McGregor would go for it).

So - I am writing. But not quite to the standard that I like. 

On the other hand, I'm also not quite writing in the conditions that I like either - which is to say, always "at home" coupled, variously, with "in the bath", "under the duvet," "panting slightly," or "solidly tipsy after finishing my wine" (delete/combine as appropriate).

Instead I'm trying to write any one of "on public transport", "on my break at work", and "in an allegedly 'spacious' Airbnb the size of a fairy's shoebox".

My best writing, essentially, explores what happens when tight structure and discipline and control run into needy, desperate, pent-up pleading for release from that control - either physically, psychologically, or both. 

To be honest - almost crudely honest - that's something I can usually engineer for myself... Hence the fact I mostly write at home, an environment I (thought I could) tightly control, positioned somewhere comfortable, and probably panting.

Right now, I'm mostly in environments I can't control at all; I'm shifting accommodation every week or so at the whim of the insurers, hotels, and Airbnb hosts, and if I have to learn where the mugs are hidden in yet another bloody kitchen I shall scream.

Possibly my next novel should be about a vengeful woman who sneaks into hosts' bedrooms and night and edges them all silly until they can all be persuaded to store the spoons to the right of the knives in the cutlery drawer, not between the knives and forks...

Well, no, probably not. Even my cruellest dommes tend to show some affection for their subs.

But until then, I shall continue wandering from place to place, like a sort of literary Flying Dutchman (Dutch-Domme??), never quite able to get any of my ideas into harbour. At least until I get the keys to my own home back. 

It's horrifying how destabilising it can be to wake up on Monday and not know where you'll be sitting down to try and write on Friday evening. Or to close another strange door in the morning and hope the handles on your wheelie suitcase don't give out. 

And it is - just a little - hard to take pleasure in writing about adorable submissives giving up their keys and control when you feel you've none of your own. 

Not impossible. But even knowing I'll eventually make it back to harbour... it is hard.