You Would be a Fool Not to Read This....

Today is Fool’s Day. I feel a little bit of a fool at the moment – in the sense that I am stuck in a daft non-achieving fug. Being bogged down by things, by life, is a hazard that everyone faces. I am no different. My daughter’s very serious problems at school – with her motivation, with her concentration - are so very real, so very solid, that they have temporarily eclipsed the wobbly phantom worlds that I usually enjoy creating. I have stopped entering competitions, stopped caring about writing. It feels so very different to how I felt at the beginning of the year, when everything was about possibility. I have even stopped reading, which feels scandalously wrong. My mind is like a fly that doesn’t want to settle – fluttering everywhere. Nervous. Purposeless. (I won’t say attracted to poo but it certainly seems to be seeking out rubbish to distract me,)

I think my brain needs cleaning. It should be taken out gently and a toothbrush run over that knobbly grey stuff. Like polishing heavily chased silver, getting into all the grooves.

There are lots of things that will save the day though – in the end:

1. Beautiful, wonderful, witty, wise and warm friends.
2. My sense of humour – an appreciation of the absurd.
3. Writing. It will get me back in the end.

So goodbye to Fool’s Day. Here’s remembering my favourite character the Fool giving the audience my favourite quote in my favourite Shakespeare play, King Lear:

‘Jesters do oft prove prophets.’

When the Dark Side Just Won't Do......

I like the sound of March. It has one syllable and means movement. Moving forward in fact. A proactive month. The word February is so miserable in the mouth.

On March 1st I feel Welsh. I can smell the rain, feel the slide of my shoes on the wet leaves as I climb up The Devil's Pulpit. There I can look out over Tintern Abbey, where legend has it that the Devil tempted the novice monks

More importantly though - March 4th sees the launch of the 100 Stories for Haiti book.

http://www.100storiesforhaiti.org/

I have felt like a giant to be involved with this book but also very interested to see a very dynamic and positive writer roll the whole idea along with such passion and single-mindedness. Greg McQueen is a very shiny bloke indeed. But it was an interesting process, being asked initially for submissions that encapsulated HOPE. I looked at my back catalogue. My writer friends looked at their back catalogue. What did we find? Lashings of death, distress and dirt. Dyfunctionality oozed out of us. No happy endings. Not the type of work that would have been suitable for this sunny, optimistic book. Ill-fitting for a country with more real horror than anyone could imagine.

So we all had to write something new and I was not the only one who struggled not to take a story into darker waters. I was so unsure of it when I finished, because it didn’t feel like ‘me.’ It reminds me of a very scary (very important) agent I spoke to a few years ago. I had then won a short story competition in a woman’s magazine, with another story that I gave a happy ending, because resolution seems to suit those type of magazines.

You can’t have someone raped and dumped in a cellar in a woman’s mag.

‘I liked this because it was mature,’ the agent said. ‘I am sick of people always giving me dyfunctionality because they think it is literary. It gets boring.’

I listened and `I thought ‘oh dear’ – because darker is more satisfying and to me, more resonant. The dark side – when we actually live in the light in our real lives – is more interesting. Of course if we were serial killers by day, we might well enjoy writing about kissing bunny wabbits and crossing old people gently across busy roads. You see even now I am imagining a scenario with an old person being dragged screaming into traffic. That is the way my brain works in fantasy. In real life, I am gentle. Kind, even. I transfer indoor ladybirds to rose bushes and feel guilty returning late library books.

As writers, we by nature have split personalities. Never even just the two. We inhabit other skins, sins and souls. But I learnt something in writing the Haiti story. I am not a jolly writer. In real life, as I always say, happy endings are desirable. I hope this book contributes in a small way to that shattered country. It is my way of showing love, showing concern. If I can write a happy story to help a sad country, then I am a lucky person.

Also congratulations to the very fine Tom Vowler http://oldenoughnovel.blogspot.com/ and the beautiful Susannah Rickards, for their SCOTT PRIZE win.

So March on, March. Head up, chest out.

Another month turned to history. Ten competitions entered and therein always lies the writer’s vulnerability: if you send your work into the world, there will always be the possibility of rejection. Of course, all writers could lie in bed looking wistfully from a window, wondering if the world is missing their genius. Or they could lick a few stamps/press a Paypal button and send out something they have crafted for judgement.

It takes time to become thick-skinned/professional about the inevitable rejection. It could be worse; actors have their whole selves rejected until their face fits. Imagine some cynical smoking man looking past you as if you are a scab on his dog’s behind – saying ‘Next.’ I once had an actor boyfriend and he whined so much about the rejection process that I took a dare and auditioned for a theatre school on the same day that he did. Bristol OId Vic, to be exact. I chose a scene from Taming of the Shrew and a song from My Fair Lady. There he was, my judge: a tired, bored grey-hued man in a stuffy room. I sang terribly, in a Cockney accent that would have shamed Dick Van Dyke. The Shakespearian speech was worse, as my grey man’s lack of interest completely deflated my confidence. I wasn’t surprised to get a rejection letter. My boyfriend got in and I went on to witness this process being repeated for him throughout. So writers, it is all comparative. We at least are hidden away when we are rejected – it doesn’t happen in a public arena.

What helps though, is sharing. Whether it be to share success – as with Tania (Hershman) who recently won a prize with her play – which makes me feel sunny and proud. I have been even prouder when I have had input into stories which have then gone on to be published or been placed in competitions. I have learnt a huge amount from critiqueing – literary forensics really help a writer to writer better, more dynamically themselves. Or to compare with writerly friends our near misses/abject failures. I like to see entering competitions as one of those intellect-grooming puzzles for children – the ones with the shapes and colours that you have to correlate. I am always trying to bludgeon a blue square into the red triangle slot. But I am learning. Having fun too, especially in an elaborately constructed fantasy life of winning all the competitions in my head.

Have decided for this year to take a particular author or poet and read every single poem/book/story they have produced, as well as all the literary criticism I can stomach. My first will be Seamus Heaney, whose poem Digging is one of my most loved and begins thus:


Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun


I can read that a hundred times and still find it beautiful.

Today is the day?

It’s delicious to put footprints where there are none, stain something a bit too pristine. Not to mention putting all the mistakes and bad things in a bag and drowning them. That to me is how the New Year always feels. Christmas is usually a dull time, where chocolate becomes heroin and television subdues me. I am not religious. Was once. Wanted to become a nun in fact. Loved the glamour and guilt of the Catholic Church. It felt noble and thrilling. At the same time, because my career aspirations were twofold, I told a local paper that I wanted to become a ‘romantic novelist.’ I had just won a poetry competition and the answer filled a gap in the conversation between the journalist and myself. It was a joke. I was ironic even pre teenage. But it was shaming to see it in print and compared to that, the compulsion to take Holy Orders seems a lot more respectable.

Yet the writer bit persists – even if the romantic feeling for writing and religion has been tempered with a fiercer and more realistic ambition. I really want it now, that success, the nodding of clever heads when they read my work.

Today, on January 1st, I reworked an old story and sent it off to Mslexia. Noted it down on my calendar and vowed to forget it. This year I was shortlisted for the last Mslexia competition but this year, I want a prize. If I say it, will it happen? Are you listening universe?

Today has been a positive day. My daughter with her grandmother doing their annual New Year’s Day walk, with dogs, children, determined old ladies. My other half cutting, shaping and laying a beautiful oak floor in our strangely shaped library to be. It was a task, but I saw him with a pencil behind his ear, a tape measure strapped to his belt. He looked happy, creative. We are one step closer to our reading room, which will have no television but a glut of books, a sofa and a desk. A curl up room.

All positive. All forward. I vow that every day I will do something connected with writing. At least start a story, work on an old one, or submit to a publication or competition. No more arsing around. No more Mrs Nice Writer, redecorating her ivory tower with a vase full of peonies. The time has gone to be fey and like the old Doctor Who, I want to be regenerated. Someone more positive would be great. Someone with more energy and less angst would be helpful.

Oh and if it is possible to look like Natassja Kinski circa 1982……..oh well, I will stick to the writing.

Although my writing persona will have changed, I will still be the same human creature. Still as in love with my other half, willing my child to do well, loving my friends and animals with great passion and respect. I will continue to enjoy others’ success, because that has always given me a whoop in my step, a sense of pride. The only difference is that I want to be a great writer.

A really great writer.