Origins

Between the lines of Dance with Me are two major themes, bereavement and achievement.

 

Firstly Dance with Me was my own way of dealing with bereavement. I have come to realise, lately, that I deal with most of my stressful situations through writing. Somehow, I find that writing eases the pain. I wonder if I have perhaps offloaded some of the pain I feel onto my characters. I have shed a tear or two in writing this story, but telling myself this is fiction has allowed me to blub while in the zone, and then pull myself together – because it is not me feeling this pain, it's my characters. Well, I think that's healthy even if it is a bit like writing in to an agony aunt on the pretext of 'I've got this friend who...'

 

Dance with Me was also a response to a personal need to explore my own life choices.

 

In coming to terms with the loss of my mother and my aunt and discovering the hereditary nature of their killer disease, as well as becoming a mother myself, I lost any kind of feeling of ambition, other than an overwhelming desire to stay alive long enough to see my two daughters to secondary school. So two interlinked issues I wanted to explore were ambition and achievement and how these fit into a post-feminist society.

 

Just because I can, does that mean I have to? How do I know I can, if I don't? Why do I think I can't because I haven't? Does any of this matter?