Varifocals has turned the spectacles on a writing competition wanting 500 words from survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA for convenience). It seems wrong. Why? Writing about one's own experience is normal and writing is a powerful therapeutic tool. But for a competition? It may leave the writer feeling very vulnerable, especially if she / he has no back up. It may help to celebrate survival of one of the most cruel experiences a child may undergo. Indeed, there was a piece in Saturday's Guardian from a CSA survivor. She sounded alright (mostly). But others may not be so free of their experiences and perhaps 500 words for a competition, which involves money, may not help the fragile. Presumably it would be judged on the quality of writing.

I think it calls into question what we write about. There are more questions than answers here. We write from experience; maybe alter that for fictional purposes. We write from the imagination - but that's ours too. Bereavement, dying and death are normal, part of the human condition if you like (forgive the cliche), and plenty of novels, blogs and short stories revolve around death. But CSA is not normal: it breaks down the usual healthy barriers we need in childhood. A simile I've read is that it is like a watch that has the cogs broken away from the mechanism. So how do we write about it? It's abnormal and abhorrent, but writers use the abnormal and abhorrent in literature. I'm not suggesting that it is never written about, that it's swept under a carpet of silence as it once was - not at all. There's more protection and help for children and adult survivors than there ever was (despite what the papers may claim)and the openness helps the victims and the punishment of the perpetrators. I think making CSA as part of a competition is perhaps problematic, maybe not. What does everyone else think?

There's also the question of whether one should always write about what one knows. Eric Ambler wrote a novel about Turkey without ever being there - he had a photograph. Chaucer made up stories gleaned completely from other texts. How do we make things up? How do we get the research right? I get really annoyed if I read a book that has detail wrong (at least, the detail I know about -I must miss plenty I don't know about). One popular novel has larks singing from a tree in a town (never, they inhabit open fields), another put eggs into a freezer for storage (try it!).

On a more cheerful note my inspiration for the week came from hearing a snippet on Radio Four, I didn't catch who the speaker was. She said something like 'If your boat doesn't come in, swim out to meet it.' Something to apply to writing, to keep going, to keep swimming out.

That's it, the cats might want lunch now.