Mimi Thebo

See you in the sky

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I’m happy. I’m happy because the Vice Chancellor has just come in to see my Creative Enterprise students’ work. I’m happy because I’ve spent all week in this room, talking to my students in their viva voce exams.

It’s inspiring.

It’s inspiring to hear all their new ideas. It’s inspiring to hear them talk about their ethos and morality and their own sense of aesthetic. And it’s simply lovely seeing young people succeed at something they put their hearts and souls into. When I get out of this room every afternoon, I feel like I could fly.

So, I thought I’d share them here, and let you be inspired, too.

Here’s Kara Rennie’s amazing blog about costume design: www.onscreenfashion.com

Here’s Nina Camacho’s inspiring upcycling blog: www.sohouseproud.com 

Here’s Tom Gill’s sports journalism: www.beyondthedugout.co.uk

and Eve Beddow’s work to raise awareness and funds for Lupus UK: http://kalauk.org/  

and Claire Holmes’ amazing event: www.playgroupfestival.com

I wish I could show you more…you’re missing out on some wonderful people and amazing projects. And what it does for me is amazing, too. I just want to run out of here and make things; make whole worlds, write and write and write. There are points, during the year, when I wonder why I do this work. And then I get to this week, and I know. My spirits soar and I just take off into the sky.

Some of these students were nothing special. Some of them made marks in the 50s and 60s and tootled along the university system. And then they get just a little encouragement to try something of their own and they…well they fly! I’m giving out a 90 this year. I’m giving out two other marks above 85%. And for a university culture that calls a 70% an A, that’s pretty darn mega.

What does that mean for you? Two things, I think. Listen to the young people around you, firstly, and try and hear what they are doing. Sometimes, with a little tiny bit of help, they can do so much more. And also, notice what happens when you get some support yourself.

I’ll see you up in the air.

It’s Never Too Late

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I usually write this much earlier in the day and with cleaner hands.

It’s ten minutes to eleven (pm) and I’ve just finished doing a few things to the front garden by the light of the street lamp and the picture window. Foyle ‘helped’, the rest of the family are asleep.

One of the things I did was replant the big ornamental pot. I put in a small fuchsia bush, two night-scented stocks and some thrift (there was a great sale today at a local nursery). I had to wrestle out an old dwarf conifer and some heather. They’re wrapped up in some plastic to be sorted out tomorrow.

You might think it’s a bit late for gardening. Well, I don’t have much time these days, and I felt like it needed doing. I wasn’t sleepy yet (I am now), so I thought I might as well go ahead and sort it out.

I got a few funny looks from the teenagers who usually have the streets to themselves at this time…but it’s good for them to be disturbed occasionally.

Lots of people want to start doing something new, but they think it’s too late. We get them all the time on the MA in Creative Writing…and it can really mess up their writing if they think they must be published before they turn 35, or 50 or 70. We tell them it’s utter nonsense. It’s much more important to do the best you can, when you can, than to do it rushed or not to do it at all.

A friend of mine was considering doing a law degree in her late 30s. ‘But  there’s no point,’ she said, ‘I’ll be nearly 50 by the time I can practice!’ My husband asked her, ‘And how old will you be if you don’t do it?’

And that’s the thing to think about, isn’t it? I’d still have been awake until eleven if I’d sat on my bum and watched telly with a glass of wine. Instead, I’ve been sipping on a glass every time I pass the kitchen counter, as i’ve been in and out of the house and up and down the path.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at the old conifer and heather and think about if I can still use them somewhere. And that happens, too, in a life change…you might put something aside for awhile and then come back to it again. My husband worked hard to become a teacher, and then went back to the wine trade, where he’s very happy and successful. A few of our MA students every year decide that they don’t want to be writers after all. I think that’s a very good use of the tuition money and a year of their lives; they don’t have to think they’re in the wrong job anymore. They don’t have to wonder if they’re squandering their talent.

I suppose what I’m trying to say in this post is that life is short, and that we should go ahead and try things. We might get a few funny looks, now and again, but there’s really no substitute for exuberant experience. Ask yourself Andy’s question if you feel too old to follow your heart: How old will you feel if you don’t????

How We Talk About Ourselves

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I just saw a post from one of my home-town buddies. She was an amazing songwriter in the 80s and 90s and someone had written a retrospective of her career, because she was the judge of a songwriting competition. She posted the retrospective on facebook…and then ended up talking at length about how and why she’d lost the same competition, 25 years ago.

I mean, here was this great write up but she just couldn’t be positive about it. That’s what my husband says I do – ‘you talk yourself down’ he says. Maybe that’s just the Midwestern girl in me. Garrison Keillor once said that the proper way for a Midwestern man to announce to his friends that he just bought a fishing boat is to sigh and say, ‘Well, I guess I’d better start looking for a trailer.’

The whole issue of writerly promotion is fraught with difficulty and peril. My colleagues and I have been emailing about it all day. Truman Capote said, ‘A boy must peddle his books,’ but I’m not sure we all want to, or in fact can, peddle. I can sell anything to anybody, but I get terribly embarrassed talking about my own work. And because I’m embarrassed, I’m not all that great at it, I don’t think.

And the whole Publishing industry is in such flux… I’m not sure anybody knows anything right now. I don’t know if pretending you’re the greatest thing is all that useful to people worrying about their jobs.

I think I’ll stick to writing the stuff, and see where that gets me. Oh, and if you’re at a literary function, you’ll find me by the onion dip, if you want to talk. I’ll be looking all confident and happy, but don’t let that fool you…

Robbing Time

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I’m working all May on marking. It’s Thursday, my movie day, and I haven’t even showered yet (it’s nearly noon) because I’ve been marking flat out since seven am. I’m marking, sending reminders for students to put their work up on the virtual learning environment, making little voice recordings of feedback, and coaching staff and students on upcoming assessments. I’m also dealing with the inevitable student complaints and trying to make sure that I’ve been fair, they’ve been fair and that nobody in my care will miss graduating because I didn’t work hard enough and quick enough.

If I work all of May and get my marking done, I’ll be able to write all of June and July. That’s right. I’ll spend every day with my heroine, as she remembers all the events of her past and makes the decisions for her people’s future. And that means, I’ll finish my current book and Sophie will have yet another project to send out to editors for me.

I’m robbing myself of time now, so that I can have more in the future. I’m investing time now, so that I can draw it out again then.

And isn’t that what writing is, really, anyway? Don’t we spend our lives, scribbling away, so that our voices and ideas live on? My books go places I’ve never been, meet people I’ve never met. When I’m dead, they might still be read. Some dusty shelf will be cleared and someone will pick it up and open the page and…I’ll be getting back some of the time I invested in its pages…

Knowing Your Breed

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I’ve just been for a walk with Foyle, our 3 month old Labrador Puppy. It was our first walk to the other side of the river, where we met a lovely West Highland Terrier named Sam. He and Foyle were playing happily and Sam’s owner and I were chatting when another pair of Westies arrived and were let off the lead to join the game. Then another arrived and its owner smiled and undid the lead on its leash. There was my golden lab puppy, suddenly surrounded by a sea of white West Highland Terriers. One of the Westies hated puppies, and though Foyle laid down and showed his tummy, it kept lunging at him until he cowered at my legs. I actually had to lift Foyle away from his tiny little teeth.

As we walked away, waving to the nice doggies with the nice owners (and inwardly cursing the nasty one), Foyle saw two labradors on the other side of the river and heaved a tremendous sigh. He’d spent Monday with his mother, grandmother and two siblings and he clearly missed hanging out with his own breed.

Knowing your own breed is important for writers, too. It’s important to know who you are and how that relates to your writing. Not so much because it helps your writing process, but because it helps you, as a writer, to establish yourself, to talk about your work intelligently and to communicate the worth of what you are writing to other people.

Even after seven books, I’m still not good at this. I’m still not sure I’ve found my breed…and I’m not the only one. I was talking to a mate the other day – another successful writer. She was saying that she doesn’t frame the discourse of her work properly; that she thinks she misses out on things because she doesn’t talk about her work in a way that allows other people to see who she is and where she fits.

I want to know, like Foyle, when I’ve been bitten because I’m playing with the wrong bunch. I want to know what I’m going to look like, when I grow up. I want to know my breed.

Forget Everything

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It’s a good friend’s birthday on Wednesday. Another good friend has promised to text me Tuesday, to remind me.

She knows what it’s like this time of year for me. I’m going to be marking hundreds of thousands of words. I’m writing a chapter for an academic text, still writing my new book, and organising a symposium on narrative voice in historical and fantasy fiction. And have a puppy and a ten year old and my wine-obsessed husband and elderly house, etc… I really won’t be human again, until July.

And I’ll forget lots and lots of stuff.

But that’s okay. As a writer, you learn that forgetting is an important part of how your mind works. You can try and write down every idea that comes to you and then mine your notebooks for ideas…but really, what happens is that you remember the best one and go searching for it in the welter of stupid ideas you have completely forgotten (‘children’s book about angry armadillo’, ‘the time the crow stole my underwear’, ‘what happened when Rocky took mushrooms’). The good ideas don’t go away. They knock on the door of your memory, slide under it into your consciousness, wait until you are driving or otherwise occupied and come and nestle in your frontal cortex.

A new colleague told me about a puppy who got stuck coming in through a catflap. He arrived in the living room, wearing the entire door panel like a skirt. She said she wished she’d taken a photo, as if it was a personally failing on her part that she hadn’t immediately reached for a camera. But as she described the moment, I could tell that she had kept that memory safe; she’d polished it and taken it out and looked at it several times. The dog has been dead two years, but the puppy is still with her.

We remember the important things. I’ll remember how much I love Sue; the way she laughs, the way her eyes crinkle up when she’s about to do something naughty…even if I do mess up and forget to buy a card for Wednesday. And I’ll remember the important ideas for my work. Even if I do forget to brush my teeth before a lecture…

Improving Your Writing and Howling at the Sky

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I’m in my office, here, and catching up a few student emails before I teach. I’ve got thirteen minutes to tell you something important.

If you want to take your writing to the next level – if you want to get better at it, it’s going to hurt.

See, growth hurts. My daughter told me this morning she is getting growing pains in her gorgeous long legs. At the time were watching Pokemon and one of the little monsters had evolved. It was frustrating for the poor monster because he couldn’t fight the way he always had. He was getting very upset indeed, banging into trees and howling at the sky.

My MA student hasn’t charged into any trees, but I’ll bet she’s done her share of howling. It hurts to give up on a certain way of writing, even though you know it’s limiting. Sometimes your way of writing will have got you such a long way that it’s painful to admit that it needs to change if you are to go any farther. You have to put down the old ways of doing things and just trust that you’ll be able to find a new way that’s better. For a moment, you are standing there naked, without any technique at all…or at least that’s how it feels.

The Pokemon was okay. By the time my daughter’s school taxi arrived, he’d learned how to use his new form and fight a whole new way. My MA student is going to be fine, too. In a few years, she’ll be publishing books and winning prizes and I’ll tell you her name. And my daughter won’t be growing forever. Her bones and nerves will settle down.

But I’ll be growing forever, and so will you, if you want to be the best writer you can. And sometimes, I promise you, you will howl at the sky…

It Doesn’t Look Like Work

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It doesn’t.

And sometimes, it’s not. I have times when I really should be writing, but instead am, say, on Pottermore (SkyNettle11176, Gryffindor, 14 1/2 inch Holly with Phoenix feather reasonably supple).

My husband knows when I’m slacking, and so does my agent and writing group. They’re also the only people who know when I’m working so hard my eyes are bleeding.  The rest of the time…writing is something that people know I do, but they don’t know (or care) when. Only my close friends really understand why I’m such a crap mate. I don’t have time to remember birthdays properly. I hardly have time to remember my shoes. When I’m on a roll, I’m leaving parties just as everyone else arrives. I’m saying goodbye and thanks for dinners when I’m still swallowing my dessert.

For something that doesn’t look like work, and sometimes isn’t, it sure takes up an awful lot of time and thought.

I think, really, that I’m working all the time. But I don’t think, really, that anyone is going to believe me…

The Wild Inside

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Here I am, playing with the puppy after my writing time. He’s learning that if he hangs out with me while I write, we’ll play after I’m done. He may look little…but he’s got very sharp teeth. As he lay on his back today, biting at his nylabone as I teased it in and out the reach of those teeth, I had a thought. I thought of all the people who had done the same thing, over the years, with their puppies. And then I thought back, to what it must have been like when dogs were new things, and it was a bit of a chance to try and domesticate them.

I imagined a young man, teasing a bone in and out of his wolfish puppy’s mouth and looking, as I did, at those strong jaws and long canines. I thought of how valuable a dog would be to him, as a hunting aid and as protection. But what a gamble it must have been…with wolf packs waiting to welcome the dog back, it was a huge investment of time and trouble for what could turn into either a waste or a danger.

And I thought, too, of how soppy my Labrador will probably grow to be. He’s not going to do much hunting – we’re vegetarians. Will he even be able to recognise when we need protection? It’s a delicate balance, wanting a wolf-like creature, but not wanting them too wolf-like…just wolf-like enough.

Inside me, too, is a hungry wild thing. It is intensely ambitious. It burns in my stomach and beats on my heart. It wants to explode stories into being, it wants to hurl them at the stars. It’s not easy, sometimes, to do the crafting of the work, to make it fetch and carry the reader through, to make it polite and follow the rules.

I don’t want it to be wild, and go off into the woods and be useless. But I don’t want to civilise it too much, either. When no one is looking, I sharpen its teeth.

It Comes Back

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Where does the writing go, when it leaves us? It does leave us, that’s for certain. Some days, weeks, months, years even, we can’t write a word. We sit and wish for it, and nothing happens; and if we force it, dreadful things drip out of the printer…things we wouldn’t let a dog see, let alone our agents or editors or writing friends.

Perhaps there’s only so much writing that can be done at once on the planet, and we have to share it around. Or maybe we need those fallow times, those yearning years, in order to do the work when it comes back to us.

It does come back.

I’m writing this at Easter, on Good Friday, that great dark Christian feast of the slain man-god. Today is all about being reviled and rejected. Today is about being found wanting, and no-one coming to help you, and being spindled and thrown away.

But it’s also about faith.

I have no idea why we have to go through the dark days of want and worry. But I do know one thing…the writing will come back. Believe in it and in yourself; and watch, and wait.

 Here’s Some Easter Inspiration – Click here to listen

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