…And A Happy New Year

So.

2016 is nearly over (maybe we should bury it at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, though, just in case) and a new year beckons. It’s been an incredibly hard year for some of us; the world has changed, fast, from being a place which felt stable and safe-ish into a tilting, unknowable reality. A disconcerting reversal in world politics seems to be taking us back to a time when words like ‘law’, ‘order’ and ‘right’ develop new and twisted meanings, and the sort of doublespeak which would make Orwell break into a sweat is being used on a daily basis. Long-held associations are breaking. Peace, hard-won, and taken for granted by those who didn’t have to fight for it, is falling apart.

In short, I won’t be sad to see this year pass away.

So many of my heroes started 2016, but didn’t finish it. Each loss has laid me low. Add to that the rest of what this year has brought us – people drowning, in terror, as they attempt to flee the unbearable horror of their homelands; atrocities scarring the world; those in power sitting around and talking while people die – and it seems clear that humanity has become harder, less compassionate, more selfish, liable to gloat in its own privilege at those who suffer unimaginable oppression. Or, more accurately, this has been the case for some time, but 2016 brought it to light in all its ugliness. It’s been hard for those who suffer with mental health issues, and it’s a scary time for everyone – even, though they’d be the last to see or admit it, those who think they’re ‘right’, in the old and the terrifying new senses of the word.

But 2017 is about to dawn, and it’s a year when art and creativity and expression will be even more important than ever. It’s the year in which I will go from being a person to being a published person. It’s the year in which my voice, small and reedy as it is, will join the chorus calling for peace, the reining-in of those who seek their own goals at the expense of everyone else’s, and the protection of our natural world. It’s a year when those who write for children will find their jobs even more relevant.

So. It’s time for some resolutions.

My child is growing older now, and the mental molasses of early motherhood is behind me. Days are still long and hard; I don’t get a lot of time. But I resolve, in the coming year:

1. To blog at least once a week, about writerly things and books I have loved and news about the release of THE EYE OF THE NORTH and – let’s hope – positive things going on in the world;
2. To finish the book I’m currently working on, which I have plotted out but simply haven’t managed to haul beyond 23,000 words;
3. To catch up on the blogs of those I follow, because I feel terribly out of touch;
4. To stay positive and fight the good fight, in whatever form is necessary.

And, of course, to do my utmost to be the best person and citizen I can be.

I hope you’re all looking forward to the onset of a new year, and that 2017 will bring you all joy, peace and prosperity – and that you’ll feel equipped to share your good fortune with your fellow human beings. Let’s all be a light this year, shining in whatever way we can. Let’s read and write and sing and dance and be happy, and let’s stretch out a hand to the person beside us – or to people across the world – and bring them forward with us. Let’s fight selfishness and small-mindedness and the fear that goes with them by being open and generous and kind. Let’s share stories. Let’s celebrate our common humanity.

And let’s make like Captain von Trapp.

Image source: zebratigerfish.blogspot.com

The Coldness of the Mind

Last night, I had a dream in which the whole world was iced over. I looked out my front door and a creeping, crackling pattern, like grasping pale fingers, was coming right for me. It had spread its way across the green, where there were no children playing, and made me feel like an ant crawling across the face of an iceberg. I slammed the front door shut, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the grey-blue ice, hard as steel, wormed its way in around the hinges and through any gap it could find.

It wasn’t a pleasant dream.

I’ve been thinking about ice a lot lately (due, of course, to the setting of ‘Emmeline’), and that’s probably why my mind went to a cold, dark place when I was lost in dreams. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that ice – at least, the sort of ice we get here, the dark insidious kind, the kind which no footwear can outsmart – is one of my biggest fears. This winter, however, my little island has been battered by Atlantic storms instead of Arctic vortexes, which is equally dreadful; most of the south of Ireland is underwater at the moment.

Flooding on Wandesford Quay in Cork City. Photo by Darragh McSweeney.
Image sourced: rte.ie

So many people have lost everything – businesses, homes, property – and so many of them can’t purchase insurance, due to where they live being prone to flooding. Sometimes I don’t understand the world. Surely people who live in places like that need more help, rather than less?

Am I the crazy one? Wait – don’t answer that.

I have been out of sorts this week. My head is distracted, my thoughts are ragged, my energy levels are through the floor. ‘Emmeline’ is sitting beside me, not-so-neatly printed and annotated, from last week’s editing sessions; I have three or four small changes to make before I’ll be ready to leave it to percolate for a while. Then, once I’ve checked it again post-percolation, it will be ready to send out into the world. I hope to get to those final edits today, and then it’ll be on to the next thing.

Oh, and I may not have mentioned this before, but – last week on Twitter I noticed an author excitedly promoting their newly published book which not only had the same title as one I had been planning, but took as its central plot motif something which I had come up with in the middle of last year, and which I was quite excited about. This, surely, has to be something nobody’s ever thought of before, I told myself at the time. This is interesting and unusual and could turn out to be something great! Little did I know that the other author was probably doing their final edits on their book at that stage. So, that was another of those bittersweet moments where you realise you’re having good ideas, but just not quickly enough. Of course I’ll be interested to read this other book when it’s published, and I wish its author well. However, I really hope this ‘idea duplication’ thing stops happening to me, one of these years.

Anyway. My mind feels gripped with a cold hand this week. I hope it relaxes its hold soon, because I have a lot of work to get to. I have another idea I want to flesh out, and I want to revisit ‘Eldritch’ and try to do a rewrite, and I need to start picking up with my submissions to competitions and magazines, because I’ve completely let that slide over the past few months.

I think I need a calendar, and an action plan, and someone to tell me to pace myself… Or maybe just a holiday.

Dragon boat racing in Hong Kong – rowing to the beat of a drum sounds like just the ticket!
Image: dailymail.co.uk

Have a good Thursday, one and all.

Heavy Soul

It’s Monday.

Outside, it looks like this:

Image: myprettypinkpearl.blogspot.com

And I’m feeling a bit blech.

You know the feeling – sort of like everything is too much, that your limbs have suddenly decided to tie themselves to the earth, and your brain has become a rock, clashing about inside your skull? That. I’m just not feeling capable today.

I didn’t want to write about this topic, you know. I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to dredge my brain for anything else – anything a bit more positive – to write about, but eventually I had to conclude that there wasn’t anything else in my head.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I have lots of stuff in my head. A bit of worry; a sprinkling of stress; quite a lot of happiness (it’s just having a quiet day today); a little bit of excitement about an upcoming book festival at the end of June; nervousness that I don’t have any upcoming publications at the moment; curiosity about whether the pieces of flash fiction I wrote at the end of last week are any good and/or suitable for submission to a prestigious competition; resignation that whether they’re any good or not they’ll have to be submitted to said competition because I don’t have anything else I can submit; fear of opening my notebook to see my list of upcoming competition and submission deadlines; and the vertiginous sense of dread caused by the fact that I don’t really have anything to say.

I’ve just read Amanda Palmer’s most recent blog, where – funnily enough – she describes feeling somewhat similar to how I’m feeling now. She takes an extremely sensible approach to dealing with this sort of thing: describe what’s up, and then describe what’s down, and see which one outweighs the other.

Clever lady, Ms. Palmer.

So, here we go.

The Up and Down Game:

Down: My life feels a bit uninspired at the moment;

Up: I’m alive, and healthy, and well.

Down: I haven’t written anything I’m really proud of for a few days;

Up: I’m alive, and healthy, and well.

Down: I don’t think I’m going to make all my (self-imposed) deadlines;

Up: I’m alive, and healthy, and well.

Down: I’m a little bit scared;

Up: I’m alive, and healthy, and well – and not only that, but loved.

There. I feel better already.

Image: conroedentist.blogspot.com