Frank, My Writing Buddy

Frank is quite a large huntsman spider, and is, straight off the bat, a controversial fucker; despite his namesake, he does not actually go about hunting men.

He has taken up residence in the office of my house (or as my parents would have me say, their house, or even further than that, as the bank would make me say, the bank’s house). I named him Frank because I had been on a binge of House of Cards and Frank seemed appropriate. Not because Kevin Spacey looks like a spider, not at all, it’s just that Frank is an excellent name for a sneaky creature such as a huntsman spider, as it is for a similarly sneaky, cold-hearted politician.

Before Frank, I would come up into the office to write every morning at around 6am — my solitude punctuated only by my Mum coming in to grab her yoga mat that she stores up here, or my Dad muttering curses under his breath as he searches for a long lost document that always miraculously turns up in the last place he left it.

After Frank, writing has become a less solitary endeavour.

Apart from scaring away the parents, Frank inititally started off helping me with story direction and character formation. Yesterday, he began to criticise the mistakes in my spelling and grammar. Today, he just watched me work, seeing whether or not what he had taught me the previous day has sunk in.

I don’t know what Frank will do tomorrow. For such a large spider, he is not venomous, so I’m glad he has taken up another occupation. I’m looking forward to the rest of my time with Frank, until he leaves me, or his body crumples under the desperate pressure of a rolled up newspaper.

All I know is, I hope I finish my book before he facilitates the former, or succumbs, tragically, to the latter.