Adversity: Friend & Foe

It took the combination of a relationship gone bad and the dreaded 40th birthday sneering at me on the horizon to do the trick; I began writing the novel I'd been thinking about for years. That first draft took ten weeks of writing longhand in bed at night. I had a demanding full-time job, a teenage son whom I was raising single-handedly, no computer, and a mess of anguish where my heart used to be. But I did it. I wrote that novel - or maybe it wrote itself.

The more imperfect the circumstances, it seems, the more some of us in creative fields get done. I did more writing on a dinosaur of a second-hand PC some years ago than I did on its successor, the cute new flat-screen set-up I bought when T-Rex died. When the new machine revealed itself to be a dud and the visuals deteriorated, my output increased. Red and green lines dissected the screen; I frowned and typed all the harder.

Two years ago I received the gift of a brand new laptop. It was sleek, fast, hi-res, webcam complete, wi-fi ready, Bluetooth this and dual core that... I proceeded to spend most of my life with my sexy new friend. Our connection was intense - but I didn't do much writing.

Last week thieves broke into our house and helped themselves to my treasured laptop, among other things. It stings.

Victimhood is not new to me, and it sucks. I see red. I want to break things, kill with my own hands the sorry excuses for human beings who perpetrate the trespass, the violence, who turn perfectly good, sane, law-abiding people into victims, with all the baggage that word carries.

When I find myself daydreaming about blowing away two-legged vermin as they come in the door, when I seethe with rage, outrage or pain, when I feel adversities stacking up against me - something happens. A door opens in my head, ideas accrete seemingly out of the blue, and I'm writing as if my life depended on it. Maybe it does.

—Liane Spicer