Sarah's writing journal

Changing your regular daily newspaper is a stressful thing, not just in the disloyal feelings it arouses but just the general inconvenience. Why, oh why, does the Independent put the tv guide in the middle and not the back where the Guardian has them? I keep looking on the back page and know now the football scores off by heart. When I was writing for the Scotsman in Edinburgh and it underwent a major and exciting change, I remember the editor saying he'd got more letters complaining how he'd shifted the deaths announcements column to a different position than almost anything else.

I could forgive the Independent anything, however, (even their trying-too-hard front pages) for Tracey Emin's column. She's a model for reflective thinking - and just when I was feeling I'd had enough of bleed your heart soul-searching from almost anyone else, she seduces me back. A paragraph she wrote today is one of the best and most elegant summings up of the creative mind/body/heart I've read. It made me nod along and laugh out loud.

I've been very unhappy recently. And the unhappiness has manifested itself in anger. So I am constantly questioning why, and I will not accept the surface of the situation. I'm unhappy with the boundaries and the lack of space that I have created for myself. It's somehow spun out of my control. The only place where I seem to find happiness is when I'm asleep. And the first moment when I wake up and just for a second I forget who I am. Or in this morning's case, not knowing where I am. Just existing, being, without the weight of the Self. It probably has something to do with being an artist. Everything I am is inside of me. And there's lots of it. Far too much of it. And sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. That's why it's good for me to have stimulating conversation. Particularly with hetrosexual men.

And my writing prompt is going to be to try to write how I really feel.