Getting Out There

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Well, it’s been an exciting week!

  1. My wonderful agent, Sophie Gorell-Barnes, is sending Hospital High  out to publishers,
  2. I met with my new writing group and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I feared, and
  3. I’m recording with BBC Radio Four this afternoon…something about writers and their love of stationery.

It feels like a proper writer’s week… Of course, I’m most comfortable in my dressing gown, typing away in my room. But that’s no way to run a whole career. Fine for a hobby, but not for a life…

I used to teach a class for my second years about how to get published. For a year, it was made compulsory, and as I was walking up the stairs I overheard one boy say to another, ‘I don’t want to learn this sh*t. I just want to write.’

When we got into class, I announced that I had overheard this conversation. The class was shocked and silent, rather fearful of my reaction. I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t want to do this sh*t, either. I want to live in my room, write whatever I want and have money and food slid to me under the door. But that’s not going to happen for me and it’s not going to happen for you. So let’s get our pads and pencils out and learn how it really works.’

No matter what your creative endeavour, I urge you to get out and about a little this week. Go to a workshop or a fair. Talk to people about it a bit more. The rewards can be absolutely amazing, once you manage to get over the threshold of your room…

…even if it’s just to go over to someone else’s room!  (Thanks to Peter and his cat! For more about Peter’s wonderful nature and environmental writing, click on the photo.)

Sharing Work

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I had a bath before noon. That means it’s not a writing day – but I’m still working on my book… I’m going to my new writing group.

One of the great things about teaching is that you tend to grow your own friends. This group is, at its core, an extraordinarily good workshop class I taught a few years ago. Since I’m really having to stretch myself with this narrative voice, I’m eager to get ongoing feedback…the kind I can’t get from colleagues or my wonderful agent. So, I’m joining the group…taking advantage of the skills I helped them to learn.

Showing your work is always a bit frightening. What if you’ve fooled yourself, and it’s completely pants? So it’s good to work with people you trust. That trust is only built up over time…you can only tell if you can work with people once you’ve worked with them. The most important thing, I think, is finding people with whom you can communicate well. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing the same kind of thing, but it matters that you can understand each other and understand what each writer is trying to do.

You need to be fairly certain what you ARE trying to do, in the cut and thrust of workshopping. You have to be ready to learn whose advice is sound on what kinds of issues. You have to be prepared to continually evaluate what people say, and what you feel.

But the sense of camaraderie, the great relief of having someone to talk to about your daily work, the opportunity to have other people helping you with craft ideas…well, that’s such a great relief and benefit that I can’t wait to see them today.

I’d better go and dress.

Why Write?

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Why do we do it?

No, I’m serious, here. Why write full length fiction?

The drawbacks are immense… Unless you are very fortunate you will be underpaid and have to balance your writing life with another professional life, so you are working two jobs. Your entire life revolves around making things with words…so when you sleep/what you eat/what you drink etc., are all governed by your writing time. Your family must either be trained or escaped, and it puts a strain on all relationships…it takes very understanding friends to know that when you disappear for months on end, you still care for them but are only on a roll.  And then, at the end of all that, two words from a publisher or reviewer can make you feel it’s all been a waste of time and effort.

Life is a whole lot easier if you don’t write books.

Last week, I ran my ‘big ideas’ workshop for the redoubtable Alex and Jude’s Writing Events Bath. And as we talked about what a novel actually was, I felt the whole room’s desire to make one themselves. That desire hasn’t gone away in me, either. If anything, it’s gotten stronger with all the years and ups and downs.

Why write? Because you have to. Because you can’t stop. Because it’s the whole point of life.

 

 

Too Busy For Words

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Hi. How are you? Miss talking to you.

Book’s going okay. Shared it with my workshop group. Got some good feedback. Feel a lot more confident.

Still got 40K marking/second marking to do. House is filthy. Friend from Prague still with us, bless him. Going to Chicago soon and taking daughter. Got meetings almost every night this week and a todo list as long as my inseam.

Real busy. Crazy busy. Insanely, stupidly busy.

But I’m writing. Some days not showering (see side of hair, above). But writing.

I mean, we’re all here to do something, right? And that’s what I’m here to do. So I’m doing it. Hope you’re doing what you’re here to do, too.

Look, I gotta go. We must have a proper chat soon. I’ll ping you.

Big hug. Big kiss.

Mimi

 

 

 

 

Working Out

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Well, today I went to the coffee shop to write. It went well. I’ve always been able to ignore people, so that was okay, and I soon lost myself in my story. And I must not have been pulling too many funny faces, because nobody pointed or laughed.

My book has so many layers…it’s very complex. There’s the letter my heroine is writing to the bishop. There’s the traumatic memories that intrude on her concentration. There’s her own thoughts and purposeful recollections. And then there are the day to day interactions she has with her people, while she is working on this very important letter.

Fuelled by pots of tea and bananas, I’m negotiating how all of these will be signalled and formed so that the reader passes effortlessly from one to the other and can tell the difference between them all.

It’s terribly difficult to write – which is, of course, why I’m interested in writing it. And I don’t know if it was all the caffeine, or the fact that it seems to be working that made me rather dance out of the cafe in a feeling of heady excitement.

I bought an amazing dress right out of a second-hand shop’s window on the way home. It’s a bit short, but I decided I didn’t care. I’ll wear silver tights. I’ll dance in it all night. I’ll be able to write this book.

I will. I will.

Into the Wild

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A new year. Here, it’s a gale-force rain storm. I’d thought about writing in a local cafe today, but, after venturing forth to take my daughter’s huge homework project to school, ended up back on my bed.

As a family, our new year resolution is to get outside our comfort zone. Even our priest used those words in his New Year’s homily, urging us to become more saintly. Get out of your comfort zone. We seem to be hearing it everywhere.

There’s nothing comfortable about trying to write as well as you can. It doesn’t matter if I’m on my bed, on a  train, or in a car on the Palestine/Israel border (where I once wrote a very good poem)…I’m still taking risks.

A narrative is very revealing. It shows the limitations of your thoughts and your courage. It allows others to see the limitations of your character, of your very self.

And that’s only if you’ve done it WELL. If you’ve made a mess of it, it’s excruciatingly embarrassing.

Too, as Annie Dillard says, when you leave a manuscript alone for too long, it grows feral and wild. You have to ‘hack your way back into it.’

I have left my heroine like Sleeping Beauty; all alone in a tower over Christmas. Now, I’m going into the jungly brambles, to hack my way back to her. Yes, I’m working in bed. AGAIN. But it’s not exactly comfortable.

I wish you all the best fortune in the New Year. May it bring you happiness, wealth and lots and lots of discomfort.

On eating…

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It’s 15 minutes until 1 am. My husband and our guests are downstairs, still drinking homemade elderberry wine and eating chocolates. My daughter is sleeping in our room tonight, nine feet from where I type, and will be for the next seven nights. Tomorrow I’m catering for seven people and doing last minute Christmas things.

There’s not much opportunity to write.

There was a time when I wrote even on Christmas day. But that was before there was a little person waking up at dawn to see what Santa left; and before I graduated from Christmas lunch consumer to Christmas lunch provider.

I choose  to do all the things I do. I believe that to to make good art, you need to live as well as work. Otherwise, you start making sterile, ghastly things. As animals, we need to defecate, of course. But we need to eat, too. And just as you can’t poo without dining, you can’t make interesting, useful art without having full and interesting experiences outside your artistic practice.

So my word count may not be spectacular over the next few days…but somehow I think that a Christmas in a two up, two down terraced house with my 70 plus in-laws, our dear friend Rick (the industrial techno musician) over from Prague to sort out his visa, my wine-loving husband and my nine year old daughter will be terribly interesting. And I’m sure I’ll use what’s about to happen later.

Today I eat. Tomorrow I’ll make something out of it.

Working Hard

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Here I am, hard at work. I know it doesn’t look like work. My work very seldom does.

I lay in bed,  my computer propped up on my knees, and write. Today, I’m writing about my narrator remembering something; a horrible memory of a time when her small community was starving and suffering from dysentery. I’m all cosy in bed and thinking about what I’ll eat for breakfast at 10:30. She’s haunted by the memory of trying to feed a dead person. I’m getting up soon…I can’t write this book for too long at a stretch.

I’ve been up once. I’ve made a party plate for my daughter to take to school, helped her style her hair, said goodbye to my husband and waved my daughter off to school on the taxi she shares with six other children. I’m sure, as I’m waving goodbye in my dressing gown, everyone in the street thinks I’m a terribly lazy mum. But I was working before six a.m.

At some point today, I may read a book or watch a film. That’s my work, too. I need to keep up with the narratives other people build. I need to have some concept of the context in which I work.  So, lying in bed and typing is work. Lying on the sofa and reading a novel is work. Sitting in the cineplex, watching a matinee is work.  Sitting on a plastic bag, watching the river rise in the rain; that’s work, too.

Sometimes (in fact, surprisingly often)  I even get paid.

Losing Everything…Except the Plot

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I don’t know where my house keys are. I’ve lost the pin number for the card I need to pay my hairdresser. I messed up my own haircolour (see above) and also need the pin number so I can go to the chemist/pharmacy and buy more stuff to sort it out. It’d be nice to be able to lock the door when I do that…I went to the hairdresser with it unlocked.

I don’t even want to talk about work – I think I’m on top of everything, but I have a nasty feeling that’s a fairy tale I’m telling myself.

But the new book is going great.

I need to call Sophie to make sure she got Hospital High. I need to write this blog. I need to clean my kitchen and my bathroom and sort out a hundred other things. And Christmas is coming (aaaargh!) and I’m sure I’m late to post my lovely mommy’s presents again.

But the new book is going great.

And as usual, there’s a correlation between those things. I could be a much better mum, friend, teacher, co-worker, wife, housekeeper, etc, if I actually used the whole of my brain. But I don’t. Oh, yes, part of me is trying to do her best for everyone. But part of me is in another world entirely, with a whole other set of people. Part of me is working out just how I’m going to introduce various plot strands into the complicated structure and voice of this novel. Part of me is in a tower today, scratching a letter to the bishop on homemade paper with a rusty pen.

People who value my writing understand. And people who don’t   …well…    I say the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ an awful, awful lot…

Hurry Up and Wait

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Well, it’s gone! Huzzah!

I was right that it wouldn’t take long to finish Hospital High once I knew what I was writing about…I sent it off to Sophie just now.

Now, I’ll do what authors learn to do best – I’ll wait.

First I’ll wait for Sophie to have time to read it. Then I’ll wait for her to send it out. Then I’ll wait for editors to come back to Sophie.

I hope I don’t have to wait too long!

In the meantime, I have my new book. I can’t wait to get started on it again. And after that, my bear book. So it’s not like I’ll just be filing my nails and watching daytime television…

But right now, I’m going to treat myself to a giant cup of tea and a bus ride to the garage to pick up my car. It’s going to be wonderful driving WITH a clutch.

Hope Sophie can help me pay for the repairs. I wonder how long it will take her to read it? I wonder how long it will take to sell? I wonder if I’ll get a good deal for it? I wonder …

Hey, I said we learn to wait. I didn’t say I already knew how…