How many of us, when we have children, think that they will be what we make them? The terrifying feeling of responsibility that goes with a newborn prevents you at first from seeing that right from the moment they land, they are their own people. I was always slightly worried that if I had a boy, I would inevitably end up standing on the side of a football pitch, (I haven't) but I hadn't considered what things I would get to learn about as they grew up. It's like feeding on demand - I do activities on demand.
When people ask how my daughter came to be learning the bassoon - I find myself shrugging and saying, 'Well, I'm not really sure ...' The simple answer is, because it was offered and she wanted to. From the moment she handled one and heard it play, it was her instrument. So I dipped a cautious toe into the world of the Music Mom (Soccer Moms have nothing on some of them for drive and sharp elbowed determination) where saying you play nothing and know less is not an option.
Yesterday I found myself in Trafalgar Square at Maslenitsa - the Russian festival for the end of winter and the beginning of Lent. The Russian alphabet remains a beautiful and elegant mystery to me, but not to my son, who asked for Russian lessons several months ago and was greeted with smiles and encouragement when he tried out his new language on the stall-holders in Trafalgar Square.
Sure, I offer them my own interests - not always successfully, though my son has learned not to say that Joni Mitchell screeches - but I follow where they lead and I end up in some fascinating places.
Monday, 27 February 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Rewrites Again
So the email wasn't of acceptance. It was - another rewrite! 'Can you put back in some of what you took out?' I can but I'm struggling to do so within the word limit they want from me.
I'm touched that they are taking the trouble - much easier for a busy fiction ed. simply to reject and move down the pile - and I can rewrite and rework for ever. But will we ever get to a point where we're all happy?
Today's job is to go back and look at the rewrite (two) which I completed before half term got in the way and see if it's going to work. (I'm sure there are other writers who can work during school holidays - but I'm not one of them.)
Wish me luck.
I'm touched that they are taking the trouble - much easier for a busy fiction ed. simply to reject and move down the pile - and I can rewrite and rework for ever. But will we ever get to a point where we're all happy?
Today's job is to go back and look at the rewrite (two) which I completed before half term got in the way and see if it's going to work. (I'm sure there are other writers who can work during school holidays - but I'm not one of them.)
Wish me luck.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
What Where When How
Over at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure today - http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/ -
Sue Purkiss showed us pictures of her notebooks. They are beautiful things, with bright colours and designs. I wanted to stroke them!
My first thought was how dull I felt by comparison. Here on my desk are mine: plain black, Moleskin, the sort that wrap round with an elastic. The elastic is the most important part! I do occasionally put loose sheets in but clearly, as I posted over there, it is more my wild thoughts that need containing and controlling.
Now like most writers, I have a passionate relationship with stationery. Even now, working almost entirely on computer, I look at notebooks, yearn over the feel of a page, study the width of the lines, and the flexibility of the cover, never mind the design that prompted me to pick it up in the first place ... so there must be a reason I choose plain black.
I can only think it's because of the absolute simplicity of it. It says nothing which allows me to say anything. If I had a red leather cover or a woven silk Japanese design, it would set my mood before I even opened the pages.
All my ideas go into these plain black books. Yet my YA novel plans are in a vivid turquoise blue - slim, bendy and no band. I knew it was a departure but the colour overcame me and plannng this book felt like an adventure, a reckless attempt at something new rather than a steady noting of ideas for viable, sellable magazine fiction.
And of course I always used to write in ink. Until my constantly leaking ink pens let me down and I toured the supermarket one day with a blue nose. Black gel pens just about give me that same smooth flow across the page, but it's never quite as satisfying as ink.
How you write, where you write, with what, on what - it shouldn't matter so much but it clearly does.
Sue Purkiss showed us pictures of her notebooks. They are beautiful things, with bright colours and designs. I wanted to stroke them!
My first thought was how dull I felt by comparison. Here on my desk are mine: plain black, Moleskin, the sort that wrap round with an elastic. The elastic is the most important part! I do occasionally put loose sheets in but clearly, as I posted over there, it is more my wild thoughts that need containing and controlling.
Now like most writers, I have a passionate relationship with stationery. Even now, working almost entirely on computer, I look at notebooks, yearn over the feel of a page, study the width of the lines, and the flexibility of the cover, never mind the design that prompted me to pick it up in the first place ... so there must be a reason I choose plain black.
I can only think it's because of the absolute simplicity of it. It says nothing which allows me to say anything. If I had a red leather cover or a woven silk Japanese design, it would set my mood before I even opened the pages.
All my ideas go into these plain black books. Yet my YA novel plans are in a vivid turquoise blue - slim, bendy and no band. I knew it was a departure but the colour overcame me and plannng this book felt like an adventure, a reckless attempt at something new rather than a steady noting of ideas for viable, sellable magazine fiction.
And of course I always used to write in ink. Until my constantly leaking ink pens let me down and I toured the supermarket one day with a blue nose. Black gel pens just about give me that same smooth flow across the page, but it's never quite as satisfying as ink.
How you write, where you write, with what, on what - it shouldn't matter so much but it clearly does.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Rewrites
How long should you give to a rewrite? In financial terms, as little as possible. Short stories never pay well and unless you can turn them over pretty fast, you're not going to get much out of it.
But when you get an email back from a fiction ed. saying, 'we love it but can you cut it, edit it, change the pace ...' - well, what's a perfectionist writer to do? You're halfway to a sale!
Two things - one, you are proving yourself to that editor, and getting yourself more work. Two, you are working on your craft and that's never wasted. Oh, and let's add three - when you're tired, it's easier to edit than to create from scratch!
So I always edit, no matter how long it takes. Finally sent off the rewrite yesterday and I thought it was notably better than my first go. My hero moved from the second page to make his initial appearance in paragraph three; and my emotional storyline was simplified.
My recent way of simplifying is to see the plot in scenes, as if it were a drama. You may have linking paragraphs, but if you try to squeeze too many scenes into a short story, it becomes confusing and bitty, too much of 'and then ... and then ...' So this story was reduced to three meetings between hero and heroine before the happy ending, even though the timeline covered several months and told us what happened for a year before.
Now to wait for the email of ... acceptance?
But when you get an email back from a fiction ed. saying, 'we love it but can you cut it, edit it, change the pace ...' - well, what's a perfectionist writer to do? You're halfway to a sale!
Two things - one, you are proving yourself to that editor, and getting yourself more work. Two, you are working on your craft and that's never wasted. Oh, and let's add three - when you're tired, it's easier to edit than to create from scratch!
So I always edit, no matter how long it takes. Finally sent off the rewrite yesterday and I thought it was notably better than my first go. My hero moved from the second page to make his initial appearance in paragraph three; and my emotional storyline was simplified.
My recent way of simplifying is to see the plot in scenes, as if it were a drama. You may have linking paragraphs, but if you try to squeeze too many scenes into a short story, it becomes confusing and bitty, too much of 'and then ... and then ...' So this story was reduced to three meetings between hero and heroine before the happy ending, even though the timeline covered several months and told us what happened for a year before.
Now to wait for the email of ... acceptance?
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Sundays are Blue
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.
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.
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.
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