I Am A Writer

Just thought I need a little reminder seeing as I haven't actually written anything for the last three weeks. Time was that many three weeks would pass without me writing anything of significance, but for the last two years writing has become increasingly part of who I am. And the last three weeks have left me feeling - empty.. When I eavesdrop on my fellow writers on the SAF blog I feel like a ghost haunting a much loved place that I long to go back to. Ok bit over melodramatic that, but I am seriously missing the whole writing thing. Grrrrr.

Still only 3 weeks max to go. Meanwhile my novel, sits in a bag at my feet. I daren't look at it in case it is looking back with big beseeching eyes "Edit me! Edit Me!".

Actually I did write something today. I had just spent half an hour speed researching Carry On Films/Anatomy of the Human Body/Algebraic Formulae/British Generals and popped downstairs for a cuppa, when a voice started up in my head. It was one of my characters mid-monologue. She continued as I brewed up and searched fruitlessly (or more truthfully biscuitlessly) for a mid-afternoon snack. I got back to my desk and started to scribble. Ten minutes later I had two sides of A4 which I fed into the novel bag in the hope that it will keep my grumbling manuscript happy for a while.

Meanwhile (part 2) - Hubby is reading the novel. Other than myself and my mentor no-one else has read more than a brief snippet and hubby is the first to read it from beginning to end, as a novel, with no prior knowledge of what is going on. Ongoing reviews include: "Exciting!", "A real page turner" and "I couldn't put it down (apart from when I got to my train station)" and best of all (if said in a bit of a surprised voice) "It's like a real novel!!!"

My first reader. And I married him!

Life is good

Thank you for all your kind words on my printing nightmare and apologies for the scantiness of my blogging, both here and in my comments on everyone elses blogs. I am truly swamped with work at the moment having taken on about a years work to be done in two months. The end is in sight but only at the end of a long tunnel of many houred days.

Anyway enough wingeing; life is good. I had a fantastic meeting with my writing mentor last week. She has now read the latest draft of my novel in full. My head will explode with boastfulness if I repeat all the lovely things she said about it but basically the keywords were 'very publishable' and 'I love it'. The latter coming from a many times published and highly respected author / intelligent well-read woman makes me very happy indeed. The former (for all the same reasons) makes me very excited. In fact we were both very excited over our coffees last week . She is keen for me to get my first chapters out to an agent asap, but there is still some tinkering to be done with the rest. I don't want to risk being asked for a full manuscript and then feeling that it's not quite ready and not having any spare time to get it ready.

It may all have to wait until the end of Feb / beginning of March when I can give it my best. Just wish I wasn't so impatient. Meanwhile my mentor has helped me draft my covering letter and given me loads of help with my synopsis about which I was formerly clueless. What a star. Can highly recommend her and the mentoring scheme that she runs - if anyone wants more details let me know and I will send links etc.

Hurrah I've run and blogged this morning. Now I'd better do some work

Note to Self

Next time you plan to print off your entire novel (revised 2nd draft) with the intention of getting it in the post by 4pm (for guaranteed next day delivery to eagerly awaiting mentor who was quite possibly expecting it to arrive today) REMEMBER your printer takes 1 hour to print 150 pages. If you only have forty minutes to print 400 pages - IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Happy New Year!

In case anyone was wondering I haven't disappeared in a tide of festivity.

There has been lots of the old wine swilling and cake and pie troughing of course (and carol singing, barefoot dancing, paper chain making, walks in frosty woods etc) But there has also been a shed load of work with an impending deadline of February and my novel edits. I have been writing from 6-8 every morning and then working at the computer til 5 or 6. So sadly I have not been feeling up to blogging (my eyes scream at me 'No more screen, please, no more screen.')

I've popped back in today because I've had a day off from both writing and working (Long walk among frost-dipped trees, pint in tinsel dripping pub and New Years Day tea with friends) and suddenly realised that I would actually quite like to spend half an hour or so at the computer.


Lots of other people have summarised/reviewed their writing year and it's been fab reading about everyone's efforts and successes and determination.

Personally I have had my best writing year ever - having finished the first draft of my first novel, submitted 14 stories to women's magazines and had a story shortlisted for the Fish Prize. My only (!) resolutions for 2009 are to get the final draft of the novel finished and sent out to an agent, to get back on my womag story writing horse and to survive my current work contract (only 2 months to go!).

Last year I made two resolutions. The first was to write a novel. It's the same resolution I have made every year for ever and I'm chuffed as chuffed that I actually acheived it.

My second one was not to buy any new clothes. Lots of reasons for this one, including - having too many clothes already, being skint, and guilt about the exploitation of labour generally involved in clothing manufacture and its environmental impact. And I did it. A whole year without buying new clothes. Emphasis on the 'new' as I was allowed as many secondhand clothes as I liked, because only the the first reason counted against it (and I made up for that by bagging up lots of clothes I no longer wear and taking them along with me to the charity shops.) I didn't go quite as mad in the charity shops as I thought I would though, although there were a few bargains (and a couple of non-bargain but fabulous vintage dresses) that I couldn't resist.

So now its 2009, am I going to go on a shopping blitz? Probably not, I've sort of gone off the idea. It was really liberating not even being tempted by the outfits on display in shop windows and I've enjoyed rediscovering items that I had shoved to the back of the wardrobe and forgotten about.

Also the combination of work and writing is going to keep me at my desk and away from the shops the next couple of months. Maybe after that a shiny new pair of boots wouldn't be too bad an idea.

Happy New Year everyone, hope it brings good things to you all.

Being there

Really odd today.

I went for a walk through my novel.

By that I mean I visited the actual place where it is set - the North York Moors around Farndale and Rosedale. It’s been a long time since I had a good wander around up there, although it was a major part of my growing up. I have been writing it into my novel this year purely from memory and from similar (but not really) scenery in my now local South Pennines.

As we drove across the moors this morning I began to have second thoughts. Was this really such a good idea? Would my fiction crumble to dust when confronted with the reality? Would my plot become a geographical impossibility? Would I have to relocate it to Devon?

When we arrived I was overwhelmed, partly by how much I had accurately remembered (including the location of roads and markers) but also by how much I had forgotten. The place in heavy fog is even more atmospheric than I recalled and is completely fitting for the magical realism elements of my novel. I spent a long time in the freezing fog scribbling in my notebook and touching the real things - such as the waymark stones - that have been fiction for me for twelve months. In the shifting mist and silence (broken only by the maniacal cackling of the grouse) I lost track of what was real and what was fiction and I just knew that I had chosen the right location.

One of the central elements of my story (yes this super secretive writer is actually going to give something away here!) is the waymark stone known as Fat Betty.



I have this picture of it pinned above my desk and I have strong memories of visiting it as a teenager but actually being there was fantastic. I even got hubby to re-enact one of the scenes there - with partial success. (Interestingly the stone is about half as tall as I remembered it - chest height on a man not head height (maybe my boyfriends were smaller then :o)).

So definitely a successful reconnaissance and we rounded it off with lunch in one of my favourite pubs- The Red Lion at Blakey Ridge. It doesn’t feature properly in the novel, but its car park does and amazingly it was just as I’ve described it (amazingly as my memories are based around teenage trips up there on Friday nights with a designated driver while the rest of us drank cider.)

Very glad I took the plunge and did some proper research. Can’t wait to get on with the edit tomorrow.

Yee-hah!

I’ve been bitten by a bug - of the drama variety. As part of Children in Need parents were invited to attended my daughter’s Friday drama class tonight. The improvisation was about cowboys and of course we all were encouraged to come in costume. As usual we left it until the last minute but managed to scrabble together something vaguely appropriate. As I looked at myself in the mirror in my jeans tucked into boots + checked shirt + tassly neckerchief/scarf combo I had a major flashback and realised that this was how I dressed for most of the ‘80s.

When we arrived at the drama class it was like a sixth form disco circa 1986. Lots of mums revisiting their wardrobes and quite liking what they found (majority of dads had made their excuses, hubby had an optician’s appointment for exactly the same time as the class. Funnily enough)

As we got started (yes we had to join in the class not just sit on the side) I found myself wishing I’d had an early evening drinky. I felt horribly self conscious as we were asked to play out being a pilot in a plane that suddenly experienced engine problems (this was a warm up before the cowboy stuff got going). It wasn’t the zooming around I couldn’t cope with, I’m OK at a bit of mime, it was the dialogue that was supposed to accompany it. “No screaming,”we were told, as we hit emergency buttons and wrestled with joy sticks, “I want to hear big fat sentences” While the children articulated the fear, panic and capability of pilots in a mid air crisis, the parents jostled around mumbling ‘oh dear, oh dear.” What made it even more embarrassing was the mum and dad who had turned up without a costume between them but with a video camera. Mortifying. Desperately hoping they haven’t heard of YouTube.

But, as the session progressed I really got into it, and well, ended up getting a bit carried away. If there was an award for overacting I think I would have won it for my fainting fit at the point in the saloon bar scene (yes we’re onto the cowboy bit now) when a cowhand was gored by a bull (or ‘bored by a gull’ as one of the parent-actors enunciated)

I did however get three stickers (Creative Work, Good Movement and Beautiful Voice if you’re interested) and ooh how I wore then with pride (still wearing them actually)

It was a really good fun event and raised lots of money (especially from sticky bun sale and raffle (prize - a free term of classes (worth gazillions).)

So now I’m dreaming of greasepaint and bright lights and have been googling the local am dram group. Hubby has been muttering darkly that if I take up acting “something will have to go” and I don’t think he means the cat. Still, having giving up knitting for the sake of me health I’m sure I can squeeze in a bit of board treading. I will be there next week with my stickers and my red sparkly cowboy hat - how can they not let me in?

Knitwit

I have been taught how to knit lots of times - by my mum, my Gran and a couple of years ago even did a course on knitting with wire and plastic bags at Art College. I've never really taken to it though. I have a problem with wool. The thought of wet wool -yeesh, it just makes my teeth go all fizzy. (And knitting with wire was really tough)

But when a couple of friends said they wished they had more time for knitting I suggested we start a knitting club. So now ten or so of us meet every Monday morning in a café with squishy sofas and - we knit. Actually the knitting bit isn’t compulsory, some people just turn up for a chat. But four weeks in I have made the obligatory scarf (thin wool on ginormously fat needles so it's sort of lacy (and you can’t see the unintentional holes)) and a bag.


(My bag being modelled by someone who is not me)

Very chuffed with myself and manage to grit teeth whenever thought of damp wool enters my head. Hurrah I am a born again knitter, there will be cardigans and hats and scary clowns…

Except, last week, I was suddenly struck down by agonising pain in my back and cramps in my arm. The doctor prescribed super strength pain killers and sent me to see a physio.

“Done anything different in the last few weeks?” physio asked.
“No,” I said thinking hard. “Same old, same old.”
Just as I was leaving she commented on my bag.
“I made it myself,” I said proudly.
“Recently?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said still proud, “Just finished it, and you know what, I’ve never knitted before.”

Her diagnosis was swift and decisive - ‘tis the knitting what’s done it. After 30+ years of avoiding wool based craft activities my month of ribbing and gartering has done for me. I may never knit again!

Will have to start new club - paper maché anyone?