Today’s Post is Brought to you…

…by Old Age, Increasing Decrepitude and the Depths of Despair.

Why, you may ask, and the answer is simple. Today – lo! – is my birthday.

Image: mashable.com

However, instead of dwelling on the relentless march of time, and the fact that I now have knees that crack in weird ways and hairs in strange places and the tendency to prefer a nice evening in by the fire watching ‘Antiques Roadshow’ to a night down the pub, I am going to list five things about myself that I didn’t know this time last year, and which – on the whole – are positive, self-affirming and causes for hopefulness in the face of my rapidly advancing age.

Ready? Okay. Here we go.

1. I make the best cup of tea out of anyone I know.

This has only come to light in recent months because I now make a lot more tea, from actual scratch, than I used to. In my previous life, I used to stand in line in a cafeteria and press a shiny little button, and my cup would magically overflow with tepid, tasteless brown liquid pretending to be tea (or coffee, and sometimes a barely potable mixture of the two.) Now that I no longer do that, I have learned that I make a darn fine cup of tea, whether it’s with loose leaves or teabags, and that it’s not a skill to make light of. Having the ability to make a good cuppa will take you places, I always say. Having said that, it hasn’t taken me anywhere yet, but I live in hope.

2. I have an almost unlimited ability to amuse myself.

As a child who read from an early age, I have never (to my knowledge) been truly, properly bored. The idea that a person could possibly have nothing to do while there are books to read or stories to write has always been alien to me. However, over the last year I have truly realised that if one is satisfied to live inside one’s own head, one can never properly be unhappy, and that my favourite place to be is – as you might have expected – inside my own head. Over the past year I’ve often been stressed, and I’ve often been frustrated, and at least fourteen times a week I’ve been convinced I’m an idiot who’s taken one step too far into the wide blue yonder, but I have never once been bored.

3. ‘Twenty thousand words’ sounds a lot longer than it really is.

So, this time last year I was deep in the throes of ‘Tider: Mark I’, which is now languishing in a box file, never to see the light of day again. Since then I have written ‘Tider: Mark II’, ‘Eldritch’ and am currently well over halfway finished with ‘Emmeline…’, and I have learned that no words are wasted, all ideas are good for something and that the idea of writing thousands of words is more daunting than actually writing them. Honestly. I would never have believed I’d be well on my way to knocking out three novels in one year unless I’d just put aside the little doubting voice that whispered ‘Poppycock! It can’t be done!’ and decided to go for it anyway.

It can be done. Words add up pretty quickly. Twenty thousand words is not a lot of words – it just sounds like it is.

4. Asking for, and receiving, criticism and feedback is not as bad as I thought.

All the publications I now have to my credit have happened in the last year. My work is now out there in the world, forevermore, eternally.

*Mweee! Mweeemweeemweee!* (translation: I’m Freaking Out!)
Image: threadbombing.com

This time last year, the very idea of anyone casting their eyes over my work would’ve brought me out in hives. Now, a year later, I’ve been privileged enough to have received feedback from all over the world, from other writers and from several agents, and I’ve realised that receiving feedback on my work is not the world-ending, mind-bending thing I thought it was. Of course, I’ve had to overcome one of my greatest fears and actually put some of my work out there, on the chopping block (so to speak), in order to reach this happy situation; once upon a time, I would’ve believed submitting my work was beyond my capabilities. It isn’t. I’ve done it, and I fully intend to do it again, quite possibly repeatedly, and I’m going to keep doing it until I get tired of it – which, I suspect, will be ‘never.’

5. It’s possible to be rejected, and not die.

I’ve been rejected a lot over the last year. Take it from me when I tell you that I have entered literally millions* of competitions in which I have not been successful, and I have submitted work for publication which has come back with a polite ‘No thank you, but best of luck with your future career, &c.’, or which has received no reply at all. The important thing is: I have lived to tell the tale. It has taken me a long time to realise that every rejection is a learning experience, and I have learned a lot about my own resilience over the last year.

Being rejected isn’t nice – but it’s not fatal, either.

To be honest, I had hoped I’d be further down the road to success by now, but – realistically – I am happy with my progress. Writing is a game of patience, determination and constant focus, which I now know I can bring to the table. I have also learned, over the past year, that deciding to chase the shiny, ephemeral bubble which is my dream of a writing life was the right thing to do, despite the near-hourly jitter attacks it gives me. The most important thing I’ve learned this year, however, is that I have the best friends and family in the world, who have cheered me on every step of the way, and without whom I could do none of it.

Image: stelzlfamily.com

So, it’s happy birthday to me. I hope I’ll keep learning, and keep writing, over the year to come – and, with any luck, I’ll have even more to report this time next year.

(But I don’t want to think about this time next year, because by then I’ll be another year older, and that’s too depressing to think about. )

Have a great day, and always remember – as long as you’re learning, you’re living.

Image: cakedvintage.com

*Okay, so not literally millions. I’ve also learned I can be guilty of gross hyperbole, for which I apologise.

A Big Weekend

Monday mornings usually come all wrapped up in a sense of depression and anti-climax, don’t they? This Monday morning is no different, except in terms of how much worse than normal these anti-climactic feelings are.

Image: blog.assistancemagnifique.com

But don’t be concerned. Everything is all right – just about.

All this emotion is a result of (another) surprise party, which was held at the weekend to mark my younger brother’s 30th birthday. It was a wonderful night, attended by friends and family from all over the country and even further afield – one very determined partygoer came all the way from Tobago! – but the best part was that my brother had no idea it was going to happen. It was a huge effort to keep it secret, but everyone managed to pull together and the whole thing worked like a dream. My brother’s fiancée is a miracle-worker. Most of the hard work and organisation fell to her, and she did a marvellous job. It was such a great party that it’s hard to cope with the fact that it’s all over, and there’s nothing to look forward to any more – but we’ll just have to soldier on.

One of the best parts of the night was seeing my brother’s friends again, all the people I remember from his life as he grew up. I hadn’t seen some of them for years, and it was great to see them all again, all of them making their own way in the world and succeeding in their own fields. I was struck once more by how nice my brother’s friends are, and how friendly and supportive (not to mention kind and generous) a bunch of people they are. My brother was amazed by the amount of people who made the effort to attend, and he couldn’t believe so many people actually wanted to be there for him as he marked this milestone in his life. Of course, nobody who loves him was surprised. My brother is a beautiful person, and he is loved far more than he realises, I suspect.

Some of my own friends also attended the party, and I also had a welcome chance to catch up with several others during the day. My husband and I couldn’t turn up at my parents’ house, of course, in case my brother would get a hint that something out of the ordinary was happening, so we had to take refuge in the home of one of my best friends until it was time to get ready for the party. My friend very generously accommodated us (and even cooked us dinner!) and gave us so much tea that we left her house in a faint caffeine haze, which was fantastic. My brother isn’t the only one with wonderful and brilliant friends.

I have often had reason to be thankful for the loving and selfless support given by my friends – there have been things I’ve faced in my life which would have overwhelmed me if not for the solid and dependable bunch of friends I’m lucky enough to have behind me. I’ve had most of them since I was a teenager, so we’re really starting to clock up the years now. My bridesmaid at my wedding was a friend who has been a central part of my life for over twenty-five years! Of course, it’s not all about the support they give me; I hope that I’ve given back as much love and help as I’ve received, and I hope they’d consider me as good a friend as I consider them. (They still want to hang out with me, so I hope that’s a good sign.)

There’s nothing in life that can’t be overcome if you have the steady hand of a friend to hold, and there are few joys which can compare to making and keeping good and loving friends. I have an abundance of blessings when it comes to my friends, and I’m hugely grateful for all of my friendships. So, to all those I’m lucky enough to know as a friend – thank you!

Image: kipper.8m.com

 

 

Start Your Engines!

So, it’s Monday. It’s grey and windy outside. My husband went back to work today after having some holiday time at home, and I miss him. I’m feeling a bit blech and I don’t really know why.

Oh, yeah – now I remember why. It’s my birthday today. Let the grimacing commence!

I feel old (even though I’m not, really) and completely unmotivated to do any work, as I’m sure most people are on their birthdays – at least, I hope so! I don’t want to be the conspicuously odd-one-out lazybones over here. But I will get myself down to it as soon as this blog post is done. Writing a blog is great on so many levels, but I appreciate it most as a kick-start into the day; once I’ve written my post, I have no excuse not to keep writing. This is what I tell myself, at least!

I do feel like today’s writing is going to be an uphill struggle, though. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my characters, and I’m still having ideas as to how to strengthen and improve the story so as to make it richer, more layered, more enjoyable to read and more interesting, but there’s always that little voice whispering to me, its words pervasive: this isn’t very good, now is it? Who do you think is going to read this, hmm? Well, maybe you can count on your family buying a copy, but they’re not actually going to read it. Come on now, let’s be realistic – given the amount of writers out there, why do you think your work is going to make any sort of impression? And so on, and so on.

I know how Homer feels right now!

I’m not writing in order to be rich, or famous, or to have people harass me for my autograph over the frozen food aisle in the supermarket, or anything like that. If that’s what I wanted, I’d go on one of those sick-making ‘reality’ TV shows that are popping up like warts all over what passes for popular culture these days. I’m writing because it’s been an urge, a compulsion, in my heart ever since I can remember, and despite how hard it is (and it really, truly is hard work) I know I will feel this urge for the rest of my life, and life handed me an opportunity to pursue it for a while, and here I am. So, really, the little inner voice shouldn’t even bother me, and motivation shouldn’t be an issue.

But it is.

I’ve finished draft 2, and today I’m going to start work on draft 3. This means I will, hopefully, have managed to work through one more draft than I’d planned to by the time this book needs to be finished. I had planned to finish draft 2 by the end of November, but I managed it a little bit more quickly than I’d expected. I’m hoping this is because my editing/rewriting skills improved as I went on, and not because I wasn’t doing my job properly as I got closer to the end! I do feel the book is stronger now than it was before, but there are still some scenes I’m not entirely happy with, and which I feel a professional editor, were I to employ one, would tell me to get rid of. But that’s the beauty of drafts – nobody ever needs to see draft 1, draft 2 or even draft 3. Nobody but me ever needs to read the silly, clunky, unrealistic, ridiculous scenes that are currently littering this book, and which (with any luck) by the beginning of January will have been excised. Fingers crossed, with any luck this story of mine will – one day – be published, and all people will read is the polished, practically perfect finished product. In fact, I hope all this effort will culminate in a good piece of work, even if it never comes to publication.

Another problem is that my WiP is very long – longer than guidelines suggest books of its genre should be when you’re trying to find an agent or a publisher. I know this isn’t good, so that’s going to be priority 1 for this next drafting exercise. I think, however, I’m sort of programmed to add, rather than remove, words – I don’t think I’m a good editor of my own work. I’m much better when editing someone else’s writing, probably because there’s no emotional connection there. I’m also not sure I can make the story any shorter – if I cut scenes out, I have a feeling I’ll realise that I’ve lost a vital plot point and they’ll have to be reinstated. Or, I’ll have to rewrite the scenes to include the vital plot point, and I’ll end up creating an even more ridiculous scenario that takes even more words to describe! *Sigh*

Well, I guess there’s nothing for it but to just get started. The kettle’s boiling, and the coffee’s on the way. My lovely husband bought me two brilliant albums for my birthday present – Neil Young’s ‘Psychedelic Pill’ and Jack White’s ‘Blunderbuss’ – so I have some inspirational company as I kick off draft 3.

Wish me luck!

And So, it Begins Again!

Forsooth, it is Monday, and I’m back at my desk again. Did I miss much?

I was away for the last few days, visiting my parents, and we had a very busy weekend. The excitement kicked off on Friday night with ‘the party of the century’ (allegedly) – a surprise birthday party for my mother, which my father, brother and I have spent the last few months organising. I’m extremely happy to say that it all went off without a hitch, the guest of honour didn’t suspect anything until we all started yelling ‘surprise!’ at her, and a wonderful night was had by all. The surprise was increased by the fact that my mother’s birthday is not actually in October; it’s in March, but a combination of other family events at that time meant that we couldn’t have a party for her back then. I have to admit that the planning of this party was extremely stressful – because, of course, we all wanted it to work perfectly – but every second of the stress and worry was more than worth it. It was wonderful to give my mother such a beautiful and happy evening, surrounded by her family and friends. We had music, we had food aplenty, and we had cake (some of which was baked by me!) My mother is a wonderful woman, of whom I’m extremely proud and who I love very much, and it made me (and the rest of the family) extremely glad to see so many people make the effort to come out to help her celebrate on a freezing cold October night. So, thank you to everyone who helped us to make the night special.

The day after mam’s party, my husband and I called up to visit my parents, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t sure I wanted to look out our back windows, out over the grassy fields that stretch to the horizon behind my parents’ house. This is because those beautiful grassy fields, in which my brother and I and all our childhood friends spent all our days playing, are no more. My parents have been keeping me up to date on the changes over the last few weeks, describing for me how the land-moving machines rumbled in to rip the fields up, and trying to give me an idea of the scale of destruction, but until I saw it for myself, I couldn’t have imagined it. It drew tears, I’m not ashamed to admit it. When I was a child, these fields not only soothed the eye, but they were also a wonderland of playing opportunities – we climbed trees, slopped around in the mud, ran through the tall grass, swung out of the gates, and just rambled for hours ‘up hill and down dale’, aimlessly having fun as only children can.

It wasn’t only my brother and me who used to play there – my father did, and all his siblings did, and my grandfather before them. There was a feature of the landscape known locally as ‘The Bog Well’ which was marked on maps going back hundreds of years, familiar to all of us living in the area – now it’s been destroyed. It’s making me so angry to know that all these memories are now going to be entombed beneath a supermarket, and it makes me twice as angry to think my parents, who are used to living with the comfort of fields stretching out behind them, will now have to live with a huge loading bay right behind their house. But what can be done? Nothing. The fields were sold, permission to build was sought and granted, and that’s that. Progress trundles on.

My father, husband and I walked down to a neighbour’s garden to get a closer look at some of the deep excavation. The machines had cut down about fifteen feet – perhaps more – into the ground, making the garden where we were standing feel like it was teetering on the edge of a cliff. It was like looking down into the deep end of a gargantuan swimming pool.  ‘You know how deep they’ve cut down?’ asked my husband. I, thinking he was talking in terms of feet and inches, said ‘no’.  ‘About five thousand years,’ he replied, looking with disgust at the history that has been lost. That really struck pain into my heart.

The rest of the weekend was great, though – we got to spend time with my family, and that’s always good fun. Today is a Bank Holiday here, so we’ve got an extra day of relaxation before the world kicks in again. After the weekend we had, with the extremes of emotion we went through, we need the extra day, that’s for sure. I hope you’ve all had a good weekend and that you’re all happy, healthy and well. Happy Monday!

Notes for Tuesday

It’s no longer Monday – I feel like celebrating, but I have nothing with which to celebrate, nor indeed anyone with whom to celebrate. So, I’ll have to content myself with writing here instead, as a sort of mini-party for one. *streamers*

Yeah, so this is a pretty boring party. Let’s get on with the blog.

Part One: My Attempt at a Picture Book

Last year, my friend had a little boy. He’s (of course) the handsomest and most charming little boy in the world, and I promised her a special present for his birth. Of course, he’s now almost 2 years old and I still haven’t got around to making this present for him, because it’s a book – to be more precise, a picture book. Because this little boy’s birthday is coming up in the next few months I’ve really put a kick on with regard to getting this book done.  I have the story written (finally) – I had one written which I really liked, but then my friend told me that certain aspects of the story as I’d written it would be meaningless to my target audience, i.e. her son, so I had to go back to the drawing board. Yesterday, I wrote the story again. It felt good to write an entire book in a day, even if it is less than 300 words in total! The words are one thing – now I have to illustrate it, too. I used to be good at drawing in school; I illustrated all my own notebooks with little characters to help me remember important points in all my harder subjects, for instance. I’ve always drawn – I’ve been drawing for longer than I’ve been writing.

But heck. Drawing is one thing. Illustration is hard. I’ve finally got basic face-shapes and characters, and I’m sketching out expressions, and so on, but what I can’t do is make the pictures in my head match up with what’s coming out of my pen. And I hate that. It’s been a few years since I drew anything properly, so it’s probably no wonder I’m a bit rusty. But I will persevere!

Part Two: My Amazement at the Internet

So, there are a lot of writers and authors out there. I don’t think I really appreciated how many until I started this crazy dream-following thing back in August. They all Tweet, many of them blog, most of them have professional Facebook pages… it’s all rather overwhelming. I can’t help wishing that all this stuff had been available when I was a teen, dreaming big dreams of one day being an author, poet or artist; I think I’d have found it a lot easier to share my work if I’d felt I could do it semi-anonymously through a blog or Twitter feed. As it happened for me, most of what I created back then languished in boxes and old biscuit tins under my bed, and has probably long ago reverted to dust.

But I digress.

What I mean is – I’m glad I’m the age I am, where I can appreciate exactly how much the Internet has done for people who like to create. I’m not sure a person who has always known about the World Wide Web can really get a perspective on it, because it’s so all-encompassing. I’m glad that I knew what the world was like before we could just refer to Google if we needed an answer to some burning question. My brother and I had a set of encyclopedias, which our parents spent a huge sum of money on – we made great use of them, and they’re still in our parents’ living room, resplendent in their gold binding, but to a modern child, they’re an impossibility. We might as well have a Stegosaurus in our house as a set of books which don’t respond to tapping or swiping, and which don’t have any clickable links.

What’s a Google? Can I eat it?

I’m glad I’m old enough to appreciate what I have, and not so old that I can’t be bothered to learn how to use any of this newfangled stuff.  More reasons to celebrate!

Have a lovely Tuesday. I hope you find some reasons to celebrate, too.

 

 

 

Photo credit: http://www.fineartamerica.com Confused Dinosaur fine art print by Jesse Pickett