I am writing a book. God, who isn't? My bus driver is writing a book, a romance he says and given the surly way he sneers at the flamenco schemes of my wardrobe, it's not a colourful one.

I have renovated an entire room towards this end, painting walls, hanging art, buying bookshelves and filling them with books, (the reading of which delayed the project for years) all to create a writerly den. Some paintings being nudes from my time as an artist's model, a den of iniquity. I had long pictured myself in a flowered frock, sitting at my desk, summer sun pouring in the French doors, the cats frolicking in the garden, typing away, sheets of manuscript piling up. 

Enter reality, like the arse-end of a bush rat dragged in by the cat. Arriving back home from Israel last year to discover the recession had got there ahead of me, suddenly, events planners were as tacky as a mistress demanding a Mercedes upgrade. My former luncheon and launches booze budget of $40,000 disgusting, as parsimony took oysters off the menu around the country. Unemployed, it was time to write my book.

Inspiration had come thus: in a foreign country for 6 months and a voracious reader, the economist's colleagues had been warned what might happen should I run out of reading material (think junkie needing a fix - but it wouldn't be a chemist I'd rob). Books poured in by the boxful, thrillers, chick lit and one lonely copy of Rebecca. It occurred to me 1. What a fabulous book it was 2. How like my own experience as the new girlfriend (creepy old house filled with relics of the past, the miasmic ghost of the departed wife, the swirling rumours about her) and 3. How cool it would be to write a modern interpretation, combined with the better plot elements of the thriller and chick lit genre, which, after 6 months I was thoroughly rehearsed in. Frankenstein's monster was born.

Writing like stink for 6 months I got to 26,000 words without a single line of dialogue. Dialogue scared me somehow despite the fact that I am only silent when unconscious. 'I'm almost finished!' I emailed my friend and mentor Roy Colbert, having Googled something about novels having 50,000 words. 'Actually, these days it's more like 80,000 or 120,000,' he replied. Verbose cretins, I thought, ruining it for the rest of us. 

I refused to show it to anybody. Especially not the economist for all that he made cow's eyes at me, because he has a terrible tendency to correct my punctuation (at that point my fledgling couldn't bear it) and also because I had used vitriolic letters written to him by his ex wife, murderously pointing out his many faults and foibles - found in the cellar while looking for a ream of paper I had half-inched from my high-paying job - as inspiration for one of the characters. I applied for a CNZ grant and was declined at the same time as the bank refused to top up my overdraft.

Winter arrived. Art harlot that I am, I fell in love with a painting by Sam Foley which I just had to have. I dreamt of it, the vision of a verdant bower. The house seemed to be sliding into the neighbour's garden. Men came round to quote for a retaining wall. At home every day, shuttling from the dining room to the kitchen to the bathroom, I became hyper-aware of all the cracks and dents that needed fixing, the many costly projects that should be undertaken, the art that we should be buying. The Siamese cat had begun to talk to me. He wasn't saying, 'kill him and we can be together,' but it wasn't far away.

'Get a f**kin' job,' said the economist. The book was clearly going nowhere. Before committing to the utter horror and stupidity that is selling television advertising during a recession, I sent an early draft of the first 3 chapters out into the world. A suicide mission, a pigeon in a flak-storm. Against all logic and expectations, a letter came back. Parts were good, said the Book Fairy. The narrative voice was a little annoying (sometimes I float out of my body at dinner parties and cringe at the babble of nonsense I talk, so this didn't surprise me) and I should be careful the book wasn't too raunchy - raunchy? Maybe I am just filthy-minded. Best of all, they would be interested in reading the completed manuscript. Oh, so would I.