If Mondays are red (thank you again Nicola Morgan), then Sundays too easily turn blue. They should be a bright and glowing golden yellow, but often they fade into a steely grey blue, a pale blue touched with winter frost. A blue where the ominous shadow of Monday has crept in. A blue that says - today is Sunday, it is meant to be a special day, bright like yellow curtains with sun behind them, ane yet it isn't. All those traditional rhymes tell you how special Sundays are - 'the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay'. Sundays in the religious past may have been a distinct grey colour - grey like an HB pencil. Or, in another tradition, rich with purple and crimson.
But Sundays are touched with tension and expectation and they change colour easily. You need to work hard to keep them yellow. By early evening on an autumn Sunday, the yellow should have turned to a warm amber, the contented colour of a warm fire, tinged with the chestnut brown of polished wood. But when Sunday looks too much like any other day, and the shadow of the week appears, Sunday is a fragmented mosaic made up of sharp shards of blue, grey and frosted white.
Sunday 27 November 2011
Saturday 26 November 2011
Writing Journeys - with apologies to Penelope
Nicola Morgan has a fabulous post over on her blog - http://www.helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/ - about her own personal journey to publication. Twenty one years and lots of low points. What is inspiring about Nicola is that she didn't climb the ladder and then kick it away for those below her - she turns round to try and show those still on the ladder where to put their feet and how to keep going. Too many people operate out of their own insecurities - as I tell my fourteen year old all too often - and very few writers got published easily.
Now after too much TV, I do struggle with the word journey - usually it relates to a few weeks of dancing, skating or eating insects. But let's blot that out and try it here unblemished because a writer's journey can be a long one.
How long have I been writing? My diaries go back to when I was seven, and I have my school Story Book from the same year. I wrote plays and stories and the beginnings of various, heavily derivative books. I lay in bed at night and made up alternative worlds for myself (three sisters in bunk beds joined me regularly to make up the desired foursome that appeared in so many books and for a while I was a twin).
When I was fourteen I wrote my first novel. It was a historical romance and I researched it as thoroughly as I could within the small confines of the borough's library system. It was 80,000 words. I used a thesaurus extensively. I don't think a character ever 'said' - they exclaimed, laughed, sighed, suggested ... I kept lists of the alternatives! There were lots of adverbs too and probably stacks of adjectives. The weather came into it a lot and the dresses were always beautiful. Still, it was there - my first book. I wrote a second a year or so later.
That gave me my first genuine experience of characters coming alive off the page and heading off to do their own thing. In this case, rather dramatically and contrarily, one died. I really wasn't expecting it. She left court - Penelope, her name was, I remember - and went home for a visit. Then she died of the 'sweating sickness' - it ran through Tudor England a few times. Penelope was young and funny; I was fond of her; my heroine's brother was going to marry her - how could she die? All I knew was that she had; and apparently I couldn't change it.
I wrote two more novels in my twenties - both unpublished, both aimed at Mills & Boon. Finally, somewhere around the time I turned 30, I started writing short stories for women's magazines: I have huge affection for The People's Friend, who were the first to publish me, always friendly and supportive. I've since written for a couple more magazines.
The current WIP is a novel for young teens. I always did want to write children's books, after all. The thought that cheers me is when I read of how many authors have a couple of books unpublished in a drawer - I remember the almost forgotten four that I've written. If they are part of my own writing journey, then I'm a long way down the line towards publication!
There is no better way to learn than to write and I loved writing my books. I can write to a brief but I've never been cynical about anything I've written. I've been a magpie all my life - picking up writing tips and experiences of life to use. It all makes up the sum of who I am as a writer. When the characters start to speak for themselves and the story unreels before you as if you already knew it, that's the most exciting feeling in the world; when your writing just flies of its own accord from some deep subconscious place. So everything I've written has been a good part of the journey.
Still - I'm sorry you had to die, Penelope!
Now after too much TV, I do struggle with the word journey - usually it relates to a few weeks of dancing, skating or eating insects. But let's blot that out and try it here unblemished because a writer's journey can be a long one.
How long have I been writing? My diaries go back to when I was seven, and I have my school Story Book from the same year. I wrote plays and stories and the beginnings of various, heavily derivative books. I lay in bed at night and made up alternative worlds for myself (three sisters in bunk beds joined me regularly to make up the desired foursome that appeared in so many books and for a while I was a twin).
When I was fourteen I wrote my first novel. It was a historical romance and I researched it as thoroughly as I could within the small confines of the borough's library system. It was 80,000 words. I used a thesaurus extensively. I don't think a character ever 'said' - they exclaimed, laughed, sighed, suggested ... I kept lists of the alternatives! There were lots of adverbs too and probably stacks of adjectives. The weather came into it a lot and the dresses were always beautiful. Still, it was there - my first book. I wrote a second a year or so later.
That gave me my first genuine experience of characters coming alive off the page and heading off to do their own thing. In this case, rather dramatically and contrarily, one died. I really wasn't expecting it. She left court - Penelope, her name was, I remember - and went home for a visit. Then she died of the 'sweating sickness' - it ran through Tudor England a few times. Penelope was young and funny; I was fond of her; my heroine's brother was going to marry her - how could she die? All I knew was that she had; and apparently I couldn't change it.
I wrote two more novels in my twenties - both unpublished, both aimed at Mills & Boon. Finally, somewhere around the time I turned 30, I started writing short stories for women's magazines: I have huge affection for The People's Friend, who were the first to publish me, always friendly and supportive. I've since written for a couple more magazines.
The current WIP is a novel for young teens. I always did want to write children's books, after all. The thought that cheers me is when I read of how many authors have a couple of books unpublished in a drawer - I remember the almost forgotten four that I've written. If they are part of my own writing journey, then I'm a long way down the line towards publication!
There is no better way to learn than to write and I loved writing my books. I can write to a brief but I've never been cynical about anything I've written. I've been a magpie all my life - picking up writing tips and experiences of life to use. It all makes up the sum of who I am as a writer. When the characters start to speak for themselves and the story unreels before you as if you already knew it, that's the most exciting feeling in the world; when your writing just flies of its own accord from some deep subconscious place. So everything I've written has been a good part of the journey.
Still - I'm sorry you had to die, Penelope!
Tuesday 15 November 2011
Shadows and Silence
In Cambridge last week for a day and saw the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam - Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence.
Four Vermeers and many of his contemporaries. It was all about contrasts: shadows and sunlight, inside and outside, public and private, about the internal and external lives of women, portrayed through their everyday domestic activities. It was the shadows against the sunlight and the silence of the women that stayed with me.
Of course in the shop outside, there were several representations of the painting that is not even there - the Girl with the Pearl Earring. The highlight of this exhibition was the Lacemaker, which came from the Louvre and had a fantastic frame. My daughter, by that time, having spent an intense hour in the museum, had seen enough and was struck by the frame rather than the painting. You might also like to know that the lighting of it is such that you can make wonderful shadow puppets on the wall!
I love the way that artists can say visually what we as writers expend so many words upon. My WIP is all about secrets and silence, inside and out, public and private, the layers that exist in life and how we deal with them.
The exhibition is free, as is entrance to the museum, and it runs until January 15th. Closed Mondays.
Four Vermeers and many of his contemporaries. It was all about contrasts: shadows and sunlight, inside and outside, public and private, about the internal and external lives of women, portrayed through their everyday domestic activities. It was the shadows against the sunlight and the silence of the women that stayed with me.
Of course in the shop outside, there were several representations of the painting that is not even there - the Girl with the Pearl Earring. The highlight of this exhibition was the Lacemaker, which came from the Louvre and had a fantastic frame. My daughter, by that time, having spent an intense hour in the museum, had seen enough and was struck by the frame rather than the painting. You might also like to know that the lighting of it is such that you can make wonderful shadow puppets on the wall!
I love the way that artists can say visually what we as writers expend so many words upon. My WIP is all about secrets and silence, inside and out, public and private, the layers that exist in life and how we deal with them.
The exhibition is free, as is entrance to the museum, and it runs until January 15th. Closed Mondays.
Wednesday 19 October 2011
Face Blindness
When you read a book, can you see the characters in your mind? Do you know what Jennifer Aldridge looks like and if Kylie changes her hair will you still pick her out in a crowd? For me - no, no and no.
If you have prosopagnosia you are face-blind. Those who have it really intensely may not recognise their own family or friends; they need clues and signals to identify them. But it seems there are a lot of us out there who have it less dramatically and it can take decades to identify and it colours your life in so many ways.
Attaching a label to a puzzle helps in many ways. It makes sense of your confusion and nowadays it gives you a search tag and a route to find others who deal with the world as you do. I'm not the only one! I'm not weird; I'm wired differently.
I'm not the only one who spends conversations distracted by the need to work hard memorising a face, looking for an unchanging identifying feature. One woman I read on a website told how she can memorise shoes and identify her colleagues even from their style of shoes. For others it's jewellery. Me, I get thrown badly when people change their hair, and children who grow are way beyond my skill to keep up.
I first knew I had a problem when I was working. I would go into offices, meet a bunch of new people and never know who I was supposed to nod and smile at when I passed them in a corridor. I once went to a training session and on my return from lunch shared a lift with another woman; she chatted away so I responded in kind. Of course, she walked along the same corridor, into the same room, and sat down ... next to me. She hadn't been opposite me so I hadn't been able to study her face closely and I had no idea I had been sitting by her for three hours that morning.
My defence mechanism is a happy puppy approach - smile at everyone. Living in a small village you're meant to do that anyway. It can cause problems in a big city. I'm expert at maintaining conversations when I have no idea who I am talking to and even my children are learning to cover for me.
Social situations are scary. You see a Royal Wedding Street Party; I see a bewildering group of half-familiar faces and - worse yet - they will all expect me to remember them later in the street. I stayed indoors and let my husband do the socialising for our household.
Most embarrassing moment? When going round a small museum. A volunteer guide upstairs was unable to answer a question and suggested I ask the woman at the door. I did so - but it was the same woman, as she had moved positions by the time I got there. My son, who can picture faces he has seen only for seconds and identify them years later, was awestruck with horrified laughter. I was utterly embarrassed. People take it personally - that you are saying they are not valuable enough for you to remember; that you are rude and self-obsessed.
Now armed with my label, sometimes, with new acquaintances that I feel I can trust, I apologise in advance. 'Please say hello if I don't recognise you next time ...'
My label also explained another huge puzzle for me. Why, as an avid reader and writer, could I never picture faces? At school we would study descriptive passages and they were a blank to me. I can dissect a character and its motives but why could I never see a face in my mind? Why could I never describe a face other than by cliches and specifics - dark eyes, dimples, blonde hair? My characters have no image in my mind; I cannot see them.
I have thought of putting up a photograph of someone suitable, clipped from a magazine, but that might confuse my imagination. And I would still be unable to describe them, even staring at that frozen face; the longer I stare, the more the features puzzle me.
When I went on holiday alone once, long ago, for three weeks, I took a photo of my husband with me, saying I would need it to recognise him at the airport on my return. I wasn't entirely joking. My children ask me to shut my eyes and picture faces - a teacher, a neighbour, themselves. I see frozen images from photographs if I'm lucky.
But I can hear a voice - is this why I love radio? - and I can remember the feel of my children, the smell of them, the sense of them. I can understand them and love them. They are the faces I know best, blurred though they may be.
But today my character, here on my screen, is getting to know another character, who is important to him. He's going to see her, he's going to react to her. I am struggling to see her through his eyes and show her to my reader. I am learning how she moves, how she talks, how she feels. But I cannot see her face. No labels help me there.
If you have prosopagnosia you are face-blind. Those who have it really intensely may not recognise their own family or friends; they need clues and signals to identify them. But it seems there are a lot of us out there who have it less dramatically and it can take decades to identify and it colours your life in so many ways.
Attaching a label to a puzzle helps in many ways. It makes sense of your confusion and nowadays it gives you a search tag and a route to find others who deal with the world as you do. I'm not the only one! I'm not weird; I'm wired differently.
I'm not the only one who spends conversations distracted by the need to work hard memorising a face, looking for an unchanging identifying feature. One woman I read on a website told how she can memorise shoes and identify her colleagues even from their style of shoes. For others it's jewellery. Me, I get thrown badly when people change their hair, and children who grow are way beyond my skill to keep up.
I first knew I had a problem when I was working. I would go into offices, meet a bunch of new people and never know who I was supposed to nod and smile at when I passed them in a corridor. I once went to a training session and on my return from lunch shared a lift with another woman; she chatted away so I responded in kind. Of course, she walked along the same corridor, into the same room, and sat down ... next to me. She hadn't been opposite me so I hadn't been able to study her face closely and I had no idea I had been sitting by her for three hours that morning.
My defence mechanism is a happy puppy approach - smile at everyone. Living in a small village you're meant to do that anyway. It can cause problems in a big city. I'm expert at maintaining conversations when I have no idea who I am talking to and even my children are learning to cover for me.
Social situations are scary. You see a Royal Wedding Street Party; I see a bewildering group of half-familiar faces and - worse yet - they will all expect me to remember them later in the street. I stayed indoors and let my husband do the socialising for our household.
Most embarrassing moment? When going round a small museum. A volunteer guide upstairs was unable to answer a question and suggested I ask the woman at the door. I did so - but it was the same woman, as she had moved positions by the time I got there. My son, who can picture faces he has seen only for seconds and identify them years later, was awestruck with horrified laughter. I was utterly embarrassed. People take it personally - that you are saying they are not valuable enough for you to remember; that you are rude and self-obsessed.
Now armed with my label, sometimes, with new acquaintances that I feel I can trust, I apologise in advance. 'Please say hello if I don't recognise you next time ...'
My label also explained another huge puzzle for me. Why, as an avid reader and writer, could I never picture faces? At school we would study descriptive passages and they were a blank to me. I can dissect a character and its motives but why could I never see a face in my mind? Why could I never describe a face other than by cliches and specifics - dark eyes, dimples, blonde hair? My characters have no image in my mind; I cannot see them.
I have thought of putting up a photograph of someone suitable, clipped from a magazine, but that might confuse my imagination. And I would still be unable to describe them, even staring at that frozen face; the longer I stare, the more the features puzzle me.
When I went on holiday alone once, long ago, for three weeks, I took a photo of my husband with me, saying I would need it to recognise him at the airport on my return. I wasn't entirely joking. My children ask me to shut my eyes and picture faces - a teacher, a neighbour, themselves. I see frozen images from photographs if I'm lucky.
But I can hear a voice - is this why I love radio? - and I can remember the feel of my children, the smell of them, the sense of them. I can understand them and love them. They are the faces I know best, blurred though they may be.
But today my character, here on my screen, is getting to know another character, who is important to him. He's going to see her, he's going to react to her. I am struggling to see her through his eyes and show her to my reader. I am learning how she moves, how she talks, how she feels. But I cannot see her face. No labels help me there.
Monday 10 October 2011
Homework
When my son was younger and doing homework, it was a physical struggle as much as a mental one for him. He would twist and turn in his chair, pull away from the work on the desk or computer in front of him. The less he understood, the more his body wriggled and contorted. As he resisted it, spinning in confusion, he physically expressed his incomprehension and frustration. There are days I feel like that and this is one of them. I go back and forth to my WIP, I flip between screens, I get up and wander about the house, I eat chocolate. (And that's without the cleaning you've heard about before - today I did the bathroom!) My willow is almost horizontal today in the wind and there are occasional crashes from the patio and down the side of the house, which I try not to think about. I want to go out and blow away like a leaf in the sunshine and wind, not sit here and fight with words. Failing that, I will go and get another piece of chocolate cake.
But, hey, I sold two stories last week - can't be all bad.
But, hey, I sold two stories last week - can't be all bad.
Wednesday 21 September 2011
Rejection Bubbles
When the email drops into your box from the fiction ed's secretary, you know it's rejection before you even open it. At least they have answered and given you a brief reason; I appreciate their time. But they still said no, and darn it, it was a good story.
When you look for other homes for the good story, you realise how few there are - how many magazines are no longer running fiction. This means we are all chasing the same shrunken market and you have to raise your game more and more to get the sales. You have to write your absolute best each time, each word; you have to have the sheer energy of conviction and resolution, of pleasure and drive. You cannot do this half-heartedly, or anxiously, or full of self-doubt. It isn't just self-belief, either, but a connection with the world around you that drives good writing, interest and joy in the people and events that occur daily. It is the quirky and fresh view.
But today I was tired and there have been too many rejections lately. So today I tidied. If in doubt, I always tidy. There are times when it isn't procrastination but necessary displacement and a use for frustrated energy. Tomorrow I can go back to writing when the rejection becomes another in the pile and I can pick myself up. At least I'll have a very tidy chest of drawers when I start to write again and maybe something will have bubbled up in the space I left in my mind today.
When you look for other homes for the good story, you realise how few there are - how many magazines are no longer running fiction. This means we are all chasing the same shrunken market and you have to raise your game more and more to get the sales. You have to write your absolute best each time, each word; you have to have the sheer energy of conviction and resolution, of pleasure and drive. You cannot do this half-heartedly, or anxiously, or full of self-doubt. It isn't just self-belief, either, but a connection with the world around you that drives good writing, interest and joy in the people and events that occur daily. It is the quirky and fresh view.
But today I was tired and there have been too many rejections lately. So today I tidied. If in doubt, I always tidy. There are times when it isn't procrastination but necessary displacement and a use for frustrated energy. Tomorrow I can go back to writing when the rejection becomes another in the pile and I can pick myself up. At least I'll have a very tidy chest of drawers when I start to write again and maybe something will have bubbled up in the space I left in my mind today.
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Three things
Three things I missed yesterday:
- a phone call; a parcel; a chat with a neigbour
Three things I saw yesterday:
- heaped up clouds full of sun; a moon by daylight; a dress with a geometric print
Three things I felt yesterday:
- contentment; laughter; pain
Three things I did yesterday:
- clean; cover books in sticky back plastic; write.
- a phone call; a parcel; a chat with a neigbour
Three things I saw yesterday:
- heaped up clouds full of sun; a moon by daylight; a dress with a geometric print
Three things I felt yesterday:
- contentment; laughter; pain
Three things I did yesterday:
- clean; cover books in sticky back plastic; write.
Tuesday 13 September 2011
Standing on the Edge of the Pool
So do you walk in slowly, letting the water lap up slowly round you, shivering as it slops higher than you expected? Why is your waist colder than your legs? Or do you go for it, diving into the water and coming up cold, engulfed by salt, hair in your eyes, laughing and gasping and abandoned to physical sensation?
Do you clean your kitchen windows, reorganise your cupboard to fit in the new frying pans, repot the spider plants, look at the clock? Or do you sit at your computer and open the pages that can engulf you in their ideas?
Do you clean your kitchen windows, reorganise your cupboard to fit in the new frying pans, repot the spider plants, look at the clock? Or do you sit at your computer and open the pages that can engulf you in their ideas?
Friday 9 September 2011
Muse in the Long Grass
The muse is out there. It's been in the long grass all summer, snoozing while the weeds grew up around it and the red ants tunnelled past it.
The muse is such a delicate, fussy little creature. Maybe it needs a good talking to, rather than all this gentle handling. It seems there are many things it doesn't like: children's games, sewing, noise, clutter, sunshine, sand, washing up, dust, letters from the bank, pale faces, unmade beds, potato blight, wrapping paper.
It needs to toughen up. It's September now. New school year and the muse needs a timetable.
The muse is such a delicate, fussy little creature. Maybe it needs a good talking to, rather than all this gentle handling. It seems there are many things it doesn't like: children's games, sewing, noise, clutter, sunshine, sand, washing up, dust, letters from the bank, pale faces, unmade beds, potato blight, wrapping paper.
It needs to toughen up. It's September now. New school year and the muse needs a timetable.
Monday 25 July 2011
I will sing you a song
'I will sing you a song no one sang to me; may it keep you good company ...'
Today's blog comes from a song - Everything Possible - by a folk singer called Roy Bailey (the album is What you Do With What You've Got, as you rush to Google it) and I have thought about why that line caught at me, snagged my thoughts as I listened. The song is a lullaby, sung to a child to tell them that they can be anything they want, grow up to live any way they wish, and that you will always love them whatever choices they make. It is witty and warm-hearted and very much a real-life alternative to the songs Written to Inspire - the sort which all too often are played in school assemblies and at which my daughter pulls faces when she's made to sing them.
That line 'I will sing you a song no one sang to me ...' In it, I see a parent full of dreams for their child, but equally full of their own uncertainties, aware of their shaky foundations but determined that their child will have self-assurance. So often I meet women - like me - who admit that they can't drive on motorways, can't speak in public, are scared of heights or planes or water or spiders or large black beetles, who hate leaving answerphone messages and reversing down country lanes. I know them all and some of those fears are mine. We all have children and we all want our children to be more than we are, to go forward with the self-assurance we lack. We give our children terrific messages that we can't seem to take on ourselves.
Some of us want to be writers. Some of us have children who want to be writers. One of the reasons I take my own children to see authors speak in public is to prove to them that everything IS possible. Look, authors are people. They sign books, they make jokes, they talk, they sometimes fluff their words. They don't drop into the world fully-formed; they are all different. They come to writing by different routes but it is a real job held by real people and it is as possible as being a nurse or a computer technician.
When I was a child, authors were a few words on the back of a Puffin paperback. Once I wrote to one, Monica Edwards, and got an answer - I was utterly amazed. I can no longer find that precious letter but I can still remember the beautiful handwriting. I named my son after a children's book, such was the power of the words I read as a child. I always wrote but had no idea how to start turning myself into a writer.
Now my children have websites, blogs, author tours and signings. As I continue to make reality of my own childhood dreams, I make sure my children know it's possible for them too. It's a job, it's a business like any other. If you work, you can get better at it; if you try hard and learn, you have more chance of success.
I am singing them the song no one sang to me; may it keep us all good company.
Today's blog comes from a song - Everything Possible - by a folk singer called Roy Bailey (the album is What you Do With What You've Got, as you rush to Google it) and I have thought about why that line caught at me, snagged my thoughts as I listened. The song is a lullaby, sung to a child to tell them that they can be anything they want, grow up to live any way they wish, and that you will always love them whatever choices they make. It is witty and warm-hearted and very much a real-life alternative to the songs Written to Inspire - the sort which all too often are played in school assemblies and at which my daughter pulls faces when she's made to sing them.
That line 'I will sing you a song no one sang to me ...' In it, I see a parent full of dreams for their child, but equally full of their own uncertainties, aware of their shaky foundations but determined that their child will have self-assurance. So often I meet women - like me - who admit that they can't drive on motorways, can't speak in public, are scared of heights or planes or water or spiders or large black beetles, who hate leaving answerphone messages and reversing down country lanes. I know them all and some of those fears are mine. We all have children and we all want our children to be more than we are, to go forward with the self-assurance we lack. We give our children terrific messages that we can't seem to take on ourselves.
Some of us want to be writers. Some of us have children who want to be writers. One of the reasons I take my own children to see authors speak in public is to prove to them that everything IS possible. Look, authors are people. They sign books, they make jokes, they talk, they sometimes fluff their words. They don't drop into the world fully-formed; they are all different. They come to writing by different routes but it is a real job held by real people and it is as possible as being a nurse or a computer technician.
When I was a child, authors were a few words on the back of a Puffin paperback. Once I wrote to one, Monica Edwards, and got an answer - I was utterly amazed. I can no longer find that precious letter but I can still remember the beautiful handwriting. I named my son after a children's book, such was the power of the words I read as a child. I always wrote but had no idea how to start turning myself into a writer.
Now my children have websites, blogs, author tours and signings. As I continue to make reality of my own childhood dreams, I make sure my children know it's possible for them too. It's a job, it's a business like any other. If you work, you can get better at it; if you try hard and learn, you have more chance of success.
I am singing them the song no one sang to me; may it keep us all good company.
Sunday 17 July 2011
Poke! Or how I didn't learn to love Facebook.
Poke is the name of a very silly game that my daughter and I played when she was small. She would hide under the soap bubbles in the bath and stick little bits of her up - a tiny finger or toe - and I had to spot them and poke them before they vanished back underneath. She would play this for hours so we had to institute rules - scores of 10, for example - or we'd be there till the water was cold and her skin, so soft that you could hardly feel it when you stroked it, was all crinkly.
Now poke is apparently something you do on Facebook. I found this yesterday and asked my son what it meant. He is on Facebook every day - of course he won't allow me to be his Facebook friend which is a relief, though I wouldn't tell him that. I don't think I could cope with my inbox being cluttered with the ceaseless white noise chatter. Though I do find it very useful to peer over his shoulder and pick up some teen-speak and teen-thoughts for my WIP.
So poke represents facebook to me - it is apparently something you do for no reason. You poke someone to say hi, I'm here. I can poke my son, even though we're not 'friends'.
I am not a Facebook person. I have myself a page, because I felt that I have to understand this - to stay in my children's world, to stay in the world of 2011. I have tried but I don't seem to enter its world.
For my son, the aim is to have as many friends as possible - he and his friends count their score, try to surpass each other, sign up almost anyone who offers, just to up their score. For me and several of my contemporaries, our scores are in single figures!
It's all about what you understand by privacy or by friendship. Even among my close friends, I will talk to one about some issue and another about something different. They are interested in different things which is they are varied and individual people. For me to put out a message which could apply to all my close friends, plus to all the people I vaguely know, or my children's friends' parents - I would have to come down to the lowest common denominator to find something to say that would be interesting to all and offensive to no one and I don't want to do that. For me, changing the conversation is what makes each friendship personal and special. Facebook friendship is a different thing altogether - all friends, of all levels, the ones you share your soul with and the ones you chat to at the school gates, are all levelled out together.
And privacy - now again, I discovered that my son's privacy settings mean that if one of his friends comments on a post on his wall, their friends can see both the comment and the original post. So complete strangers and people that he doesn't even like can see his comments. Nothing he puts out there is private.
When I learned this, I realised that teenagers now have a completely different concept of privacy. He finds it odd that I should think that strange. Their life with social networking is lived so publicly. Looking over my son's shoulder has told me some surprising things about other teenagers I know only slightly. One posted a list of 'things you don't know about me' - some really quite personal things, of the type I would have shared at her age with my closest friends only, or my diary. All teenagers are in the stage where they value their peer group, they want to belong, they turn outwards from their nuclear family to their contemporaries - that's normal. But now they must surely live their lives as a reflection of everyone else's views, when their thoughts are out there, their activities held up for open approval or comment.
I am fascinated by how they handle their lives with this new element. I envy them the way they can keep in touch - I think of university friends I have lost touch with and how we could have stayed in contact. But then again, how do you lose the people you no longer want to know?! Watching my son handle his social networking life is teaching me a whole new world. It intrigues me but I don't think I can really go there.
Now poke is apparently something you do on Facebook. I found this yesterday and asked my son what it meant. He is on Facebook every day - of course he won't allow me to be his Facebook friend which is a relief, though I wouldn't tell him that. I don't think I could cope with my inbox being cluttered with the ceaseless white noise chatter. Though I do find it very useful to peer over his shoulder and pick up some teen-speak and teen-thoughts for my WIP.
So poke represents facebook to me - it is apparently something you do for no reason. You poke someone to say hi, I'm here. I can poke my son, even though we're not 'friends'.
I am not a Facebook person. I have myself a page, because I felt that I have to understand this - to stay in my children's world, to stay in the world of 2011. I have tried but I don't seem to enter its world.
For my son, the aim is to have as many friends as possible - he and his friends count their score, try to surpass each other, sign up almost anyone who offers, just to up their score. For me and several of my contemporaries, our scores are in single figures!
It's all about what you understand by privacy or by friendship. Even among my close friends, I will talk to one about some issue and another about something different. They are interested in different things which is they are varied and individual people. For me to put out a message which could apply to all my close friends, plus to all the people I vaguely know, or my children's friends' parents - I would have to come down to the lowest common denominator to find something to say that would be interesting to all and offensive to no one and I don't want to do that. For me, changing the conversation is what makes each friendship personal and special. Facebook friendship is a different thing altogether - all friends, of all levels, the ones you share your soul with and the ones you chat to at the school gates, are all levelled out together.
And privacy - now again, I discovered that my son's privacy settings mean that if one of his friends comments on a post on his wall, their friends can see both the comment and the original post. So complete strangers and people that he doesn't even like can see his comments. Nothing he puts out there is private.
When I learned this, I realised that teenagers now have a completely different concept of privacy. He finds it odd that I should think that strange. Their life with social networking is lived so publicly. Looking over my son's shoulder has told me some surprising things about other teenagers I know only slightly. One posted a list of 'things you don't know about me' - some really quite personal things, of the type I would have shared at her age with my closest friends only, or my diary. All teenagers are in the stage where they value their peer group, they want to belong, they turn outwards from their nuclear family to their contemporaries - that's normal. But now they must surely live their lives as a reflection of everyone else's views, when their thoughts are out there, their activities held up for open approval or comment.
I am fascinated by how they handle their lives with this new element. I envy them the way they can keep in touch - I think of university friends I have lost touch with and how we could have stayed in contact. But then again, how do you lose the people you no longer want to know?! Watching my son handle his social networking life is teaching me a whole new world. It intrigues me but I don't think I can really go there.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
We like it but ...
'We like your story but ...'
The 'but' is actually the good bit. If the editor goes on to say, 'we're not sure about ... could you edit ... if you make these changes ...' you've got a potential sale on your hands. More than that, you have the chance to prove you're a professional, writing for a market you understand, and not just a wild creative soul locked in a garret of idealism somewhere. As womag writers, you write to a brief and although you play with those boundaries, you have to recognise them. There is no shame in writing by rules as long as you empathise with them and allow your story to live and breathe within them.
So editing a story is a terrific opportunity and one of the magazines I work for is very good at nurturing its authors with such suggestions and I have always responded successfully. Last time, however, I had a problem.
The story contained an element of divorce - near-divorce. For some magazines, that's still an issue and has to be handled very carefully. Off-stage, past tense, no-blame divorce can be managed, but reconciliation is always a better option. My couple were on course for that reconciliation but the editor wasn't certain that their readers would like the course I had taken and suggested some adaptations.
I went back to my computer. I worked on it, I adapted it, I juggled it. It didn't work. To make the changes necessary the central premise and the implicit humour of the story had to change too much. It would become a different story. I knew as I tried that the story and I were fighting each other; and the story had to win.
I emailed back to the editor, explaining my clear sensation that the story wasn't convincing me and wouldn't convince their readers either. I apologised if I had wasted her time in the discussion we had had about the changes. I hit 'send' and was certain I would never work for them again! How would a fiction editor like an author rejecting their suggestions and telling them, in effect, that they knew better? Would this suggest I couldn't write well enough?
But five days later I had a reply - the editor thanked me, understood my reasoning entirely and suggested that I should try the story elsewhere because she still felt it was a good one, even though not right for them as it stood.
And that's why I work for this particular magazine!
The 'but' is actually the good bit. If the editor goes on to say, 'we're not sure about ... could you edit ... if you make these changes ...' you've got a potential sale on your hands. More than that, you have the chance to prove you're a professional, writing for a market you understand, and not just a wild creative soul locked in a garret of idealism somewhere. As womag writers, you write to a brief and although you play with those boundaries, you have to recognise them. There is no shame in writing by rules as long as you empathise with them and allow your story to live and breathe within them.
So editing a story is a terrific opportunity and one of the magazines I work for is very good at nurturing its authors with such suggestions and I have always responded successfully. Last time, however, I had a problem.
The story contained an element of divorce - near-divorce. For some magazines, that's still an issue and has to be handled very carefully. Off-stage, past tense, no-blame divorce can be managed, but reconciliation is always a better option. My couple were on course for that reconciliation but the editor wasn't certain that their readers would like the course I had taken and suggested some adaptations.
I went back to my computer. I worked on it, I adapted it, I juggled it. It didn't work. To make the changes necessary the central premise and the implicit humour of the story had to change too much. It would become a different story. I knew as I tried that the story and I were fighting each other; and the story had to win.
I emailed back to the editor, explaining my clear sensation that the story wasn't convincing me and wouldn't convince their readers either. I apologised if I had wasted her time in the discussion we had had about the changes. I hit 'send' and was certain I would never work for them again! How would a fiction editor like an author rejecting their suggestions and telling them, in effect, that they knew better? Would this suggest I couldn't write well enough?
But five days later I had a reply - the editor thanked me, understood my reasoning entirely and suggested that I should try the story elsewhere because she still felt it was a good one, even though not right for them as it stood.
And that's why I work for this particular magazine!
Sunday 3 July 2011
Escape to M&S
My latest trick to allow myself to write is to leave the house.
Never had a problem with this one before. People have always said to me, as they do to any home-worker - 'how do you do it without getting distracted?' - and I didn't know how to answer. I loved my writing and genuinely wanted to do it. But that was in the far off days Before Children.
It's not just time. Writers are experts at procrastination, but after deep discussion with a friend of mine over the Per Una rails in M&S in York recently, I came to the conclusion it's all about the roles you play in your life - and this is the reason I could write at home easily before I had children and I can't now.
My friend needed to shop. She had a holiday coming up and nothing suitable to wear; her wardrobe at the moment is made up of work clothes and riding clothes, her twin daily lives.
There is nothing more fun than shopping for a friend - even better if you choose one of a different colouring and size. There is no temptation to join them with your own credit card and you can have huge fun picking out clothes for your reluctant shopper and indulging the experimental side you'd like for yourself. We left M&S with three or four new outfits for her - tops, trousers, a cardigan ... bright colours and patterns!
She told me how she had tried to shop in her own M&S at home. She would rush in after a day at work, still in teacher mode, look vaguely, pick up, put down, and give up. Go and buy some new school socks for her son and some food for supper and go home to parent mode, probably thinking about the horses on the way. But in York, far away from both our homes, on a weekend away, we were ourselves for once, as we'd been when we met there, thirty years ago as students.
So back to the beginning. Pre-children, I was always in work mode because that was all of who I was then. Now, when I'm at home, I am in work mode but only for those things that sell. So I can write my womag fiction, because that's acceptable in my role of parent and part-time worker who Contributes to the House. But fiction that is taking a wild stab in the dark, an optimistic, long-term attempt at success - that doesn't fit my role. I see myself as a short story writer, but not yet as a children's author.
So I leave the house, my desk, my washing machine (critical, that one) and all other things that tie me down to my small view of myself and I head out. At the moment, I go to a National Trust carpark which has a glorious open view and a cafe. There is space and light and huge skies and gazing out over half of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, I can work much more freely. Maybe one day, I can bring that home and work here again when I've convinced myself of who I am.
Writers don't need creativity in their souls - they need ruthlessness and single-mindedness and conviction that they are worth it, enough to push aside the washing and the dishes and write.
Never had a problem with this one before. People have always said to me, as they do to any home-worker - 'how do you do it without getting distracted?' - and I didn't know how to answer. I loved my writing and genuinely wanted to do it. But that was in the far off days Before Children.
It's not just time. Writers are experts at procrastination, but after deep discussion with a friend of mine over the Per Una rails in M&S in York recently, I came to the conclusion it's all about the roles you play in your life - and this is the reason I could write at home easily before I had children and I can't now.
My friend needed to shop. She had a holiday coming up and nothing suitable to wear; her wardrobe at the moment is made up of work clothes and riding clothes, her twin daily lives.
There is nothing more fun than shopping for a friend - even better if you choose one of a different colouring and size. There is no temptation to join them with your own credit card and you can have huge fun picking out clothes for your reluctant shopper and indulging the experimental side you'd like for yourself. We left M&S with three or four new outfits for her - tops, trousers, a cardigan ... bright colours and patterns!
She told me how she had tried to shop in her own M&S at home. She would rush in after a day at work, still in teacher mode, look vaguely, pick up, put down, and give up. Go and buy some new school socks for her son and some food for supper and go home to parent mode, probably thinking about the horses on the way. But in York, far away from both our homes, on a weekend away, we were ourselves for once, as we'd been when we met there, thirty years ago as students.
So back to the beginning. Pre-children, I was always in work mode because that was all of who I was then. Now, when I'm at home, I am in work mode but only for those things that sell. So I can write my womag fiction, because that's acceptable in my role of parent and part-time worker who Contributes to the House. But fiction that is taking a wild stab in the dark, an optimistic, long-term attempt at success - that doesn't fit my role. I see myself as a short story writer, but not yet as a children's author.
So I leave the house, my desk, my washing machine (critical, that one) and all other things that tie me down to my small view of myself and I head out. At the moment, I go to a National Trust carpark which has a glorious open view and a cafe. There is space and light and huge skies and gazing out over half of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, I can work much more freely. Maybe one day, I can bring that home and work here again when I've convinced myself of who I am.
Writers don't need creativity in their souls - they need ruthlessness and single-mindedness and conviction that they are worth it, enough to push aside the washing and the dishes and write.
Monday 27 June 2011
Inadvertently Linked
So I'm not a technically-skilled person. There is some technology I love and some I use heavily - but plenty that I don't understand. So I genuinely didn't realise - until I had it pointed out to me today - that when I post on other blogs, my name comes up with a link to my own blog ... !
For those who've clicked through, sorry to disappoint!
Over the last year, I've been either a/ too busy writing to blog or b/ too stressed NOT writing to blog. A fair mixture of both. I can't write when I'm not happy but I'm never happy when I'm not writing.
There's been a blank over the past few months. A few things happened to jolt my world a little, throw it all into a different light. It takes time, the wisdom goes, to adjust to great changes. Like grieving, you go through stages of disbelief and anger to acceptance. I never seem to do the anger stage and I'm not sure I do the disbelief too often either. Believing the worst always seems easy enough! But managing it ... well, that just takes time.
So when the work kept coming back, and the comments were kind but negative, I knew they were right. Not to waste their time or mine, I stopped working on the womag fiction. I turned instead to something longer that needed a slow burn, as that seemed to be where my mind was, needing time and a slower pace. I bought a new notebook and begin to fill it with the thoughts surrounding my book. That's the one that normally gets pushed to one side because after all, if your time is limited, and you only have two hours to work that day, then it makes more sense to write the immediate - ie the one that will pay. And the thing, also, that builds a reputation with a fiction editor for a constant flow of reliable stories. So the book until then had always been pushed into the corners that were left after that.
Now it's been out of its corner, stretching and looking pleased with itself (must deal with this anthropomorphosising - I blame my daughter who can have feelings for even a rejected piece of cereal) and it's coming together. And in the meantime, the ability to write has begun to return. I've sent off three pieces of work in the past fortnight - awaiting responses - but I believe they're good. They're certainly viable!
So now I know - when I post on another (fabulous, up to speed, professional, crabbit) blog, my own small shadow follows behind me! It was Nicola Morgan (Help! I Need a Publisher!) who so kindly took the time to point this out to me ... and I realise now how things link up. If it's a world wide web, I'm the spider who was sitting in the dark corner. So I'll hope to start building my own little web and you'll have to forgive me while I work it all out.
You'll have noticed, for example, that I can't do links yet!
And don't get me started on Facebook. That's another whole post.
For those who've clicked through, sorry to disappoint!
Over the last year, I've been either a/ too busy writing to blog or b/ too stressed NOT writing to blog. A fair mixture of both. I can't write when I'm not happy but I'm never happy when I'm not writing.
There's been a blank over the past few months. A few things happened to jolt my world a little, throw it all into a different light. It takes time, the wisdom goes, to adjust to great changes. Like grieving, you go through stages of disbelief and anger to acceptance. I never seem to do the anger stage and I'm not sure I do the disbelief too often either. Believing the worst always seems easy enough! But managing it ... well, that just takes time.
So when the work kept coming back, and the comments were kind but negative, I knew they were right. Not to waste their time or mine, I stopped working on the womag fiction. I turned instead to something longer that needed a slow burn, as that seemed to be where my mind was, needing time and a slower pace. I bought a new notebook and begin to fill it with the thoughts surrounding my book. That's the one that normally gets pushed to one side because after all, if your time is limited, and you only have two hours to work that day, then it makes more sense to write the immediate - ie the one that will pay. And the thing, also, that builds a reputation with a fiction editor for a constant flow of reliable stories. So the book until then had always been pushed into the corners that were left after that.
Now it's been out of its corner, stretching and looking pleased with itself (must deal with this anthropomorphosising - I blame my daughter who can have feelings for even a rejected piece of cereal) and it's coming together. And in the meantime, the ability to write has begun to return. I've sent off three pieces of work in the past fortnight - awaiting responses - but I believe they're good. They're certainly viable!
So now I know - when I post on another (fabulous, up to speed, professional, crabbit) blog, my own small shadow follows behind me! It was Nicola Morgan (Help! I Need a Publisher!) who so kindly took the time to point this out to me ... and I realise now how things link up. If it's a world wide web, I'm the spider who was sitting in the dark corner. So I'll hope to start building my own little web and you'll have to forgive me while I work it all out.
You'll have noticed, for example, that I can't do links yet!
And don't get me started on Facebook. That's another whole post.
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