The Flea

All Things New

2011-09-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

Now is the time not to be tiny but to bite, exactly like a flea. It is time to concentrate on getting ahead, truly settling into more success and greater confidence. But it will all be about writing, as other areas of my life are not so good.

As disaster struck - I learned that I had come 2nd in the Sentinel Literary Competition with CHILDREN OF THE RUBBLE

On the worst day imaginable, I had a call to say that I am a finalist in the Brit Writers' Award with A SMALL HISTORY OF JOHN.

Strange- whether it be fate or karma, I do not know.

I am writing with fury - both volume and mood.

Julia Bohanna will get there.

Solitude

2011-02-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.

Alexander Pope

...now what was I saying?

2011-01-24T13:17:00.001-08:00

Yes, a long time since I have posted here...poor blog is dusty from neglect. But it is always good to begin with a New Year, new hope - all that malarkey.

Entering competitions again but trying to make a more focused plan for the old writing. Otherwise a writing 'career' can feel like a balloon being held by a moody toddler...all over the place and prone to either floating away or being maliciously popped.

So: (In absolutely no particular order)

1. Journalism - plan to do a bit more of this to earn some money. Have been offered job writing art and book pages for Wolfprint - a magazine for which I already assistant edit.

2. Fillers/letters - all earning but not much time required. Have done well with these in the past.

3. Proof-reading - am doing some now and I love it.

4. Fiction - work on weakness that a wonderful mentor has highlighted. Sharpen. Hone. Find the right competitions/publications.

That’s it – a simple plan.

Get the fuck on with it!

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

2010-04-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

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......

2010-03-01T00:05:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-02-01T10:28:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Novel-Writing for Beginners....

2009-11-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

I have had something of a religious conversion to novel-writing. Having never attempted it before because I have primarily been interested in the craft of the short story, it is a fascinating process.

Of course NaNoWriMo is not traditionally how you write a novel. The aim is to move fast, move ahead, conquer that daily word count. But I have discovered that it has helped me enormously. I am a relatively slow writer, keen on crafting each sentence, discovering the absolutely right word, the rhythm and cadences of sentences. Sometimes I stop and stumble back over something: fiddling, fiddling oh so much fiddling. I like the indulgence of a good metaphor, the odd fanciful simile. Luxuries that further slow me down

So why is NaNoWriMo good for me in particular?

1. For once I have silenced that nagging perfectionist line editor that follows me like poo on a sheep’s behind.

2. I am concentrating solely on narrative, solving problems of plot as I go, not spending weeks as if I am planning to rebuild the pyramids.

3. More than ever, the story is breathing after I turn off the computer. Remarkably so.

4. I have conquered my fear of dialogue and it flows. It is carried in my head from character to character.

5. There is no looking back. So no novel turning to a pillar of salt.

6. I have produced now 28,445 words. Perhaps not the most exquisitely carved Michelangelo but a piece that can be chipped away afterwards to take away the roughness. In the worst instance, I can do what any ruthless business person does when they take over a large company: I can boil it down and slice away lots of the components, create several short stories. I already have one in mind from a minor character I have just ‘found.’

7. Did I say that I had produced 28, 445 words. For me, in fourteen days? A miracle. Usually I would have 2,000 words of the same story.

8. I am looking forward to the edit, always my favourite part of the whole process.

9. I am calmer, more purposeful. This feels like a job now. I go to work and actually manufacture something.

10. Characters have become friends - some enemies - but it is so much fun to string-puppet their lives. I can say pretentiously that I am a novelist. But whatever happens, I have gone on the journey……

Honeymoon period on NaNoWriMo

2009-11-05T05:18:00.000-08:00

Five days into NaNoWriMo - over 8,000 words as of yesterday - stretching my fingers for today’s efforts. Like a nervous athlete. But there is alchemy afoot here: a chore has become an organic experience. I am sitting in my office and it seems that my characters are living in the walls with me. I can pretentiously call the exercise a novel…at best it is stream of consciousness, a meander around a story not yet realised or credible. But it lives. Fantastically so. The house lies in sluttish abandon, I have fobbed off my child to another parent….all I want to do is write.

Of course I am not expecting this to last. It’s the new lover syndrome, before the odorous socks and picking of the teeth gets noticed. But for now, I’m enjoying the ride.

Also, my Jack the Ripper story has been selected for inclusion in The Whitechapel Society’s anthology. A few sweeties on the path help the journey. I will be giving Ripper anthologies and Vanessa Gebbie’s book Short Circuit for Christmas. Everyone should be writing and if I sound like a junkie pedalling the stuff - words that is - then I am unashamed of the fact.

Pssst, you out there want to buy an endless supply of your own imaginary worlds?

AT LAST! Writing! I am human once more!

2009-10-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Today I chained myself to a chair and set myself a challenge. A competition that closed today. 3,000 words.

Did it.

Sent it off to The Whitechapel Society Short Story Competition.

How could there be anything better than killing people at home? On the page only, of course.......

Happy.

2009-09-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

Ashamed not to have blogged since July. In fact, I have not really written anything significant since then. I have been in quicksand in literary terms, barely holding on to branches that friends have thrown from time to time. It is strange not to write: distressing, frustrating, alien. Life of course continues and the world is still both evil and wonderful around me.

I also had a rat in my house, under the floorboards, building a nest. To me it really symobolised my lack of action; that another creature had moved into my life and was happily 'getting on with things.' Absurdly, I first thought the scratching behind the wall was mice and researched some gentle mice deterrents. They hate bay leaves apparently and so I picked a dozen, stuffed them into the hole in the air brick into which they had burrowed. I felt a tug and deftly, rather gently, an invisible paw tugged them away from me. So it was a rat, not a mouse. Rats love bay leaves. They are such clever creatures that they use them for natural flea control in their nests.

So I had an intelligent life form living beneath my house that was sharper than me. Or was at least at that time. We baited a live trap and the creature took the food and escaped before the door slid down. Genius. At night a huge owl took position on our roof and hunted it. It still survived and every evening I would hear this hard hard scratching.

I am not afraid of rodents. I have respect for their intelligence, particularly rats. If man died out, rats and cockroaches would remain. Fact. But I could not share my house with one, for all sorts of reasons, mainly that he was chewing through floorboards, then possibly wires. not hygenic either, if he got into the house.

Finally, a bacon bait did the trick and the rat sat there shrieking as I approached. It looked like a frightened wild animal, acclimatised to fear by man's hatred and need to destroy it. But we covered it, took some food and released it in a wood five miles from home. Perhaps it has a chance to survive. It had a large belly.....a very large belly.....so possibly pregnant. Just trying to cope with the usual preoccupations: finding a home, procreating, keeping safe.

Then I saw Lost Land of the Volcano, where a giant and friendly rat was discovered. In fact, all the animals were trusting, loving. They had no experience of man's neurotic need to change, kill or wipe out other species...including his own.

There is a twitch forming, a need to write. An absolute need, like a drug hit.

I wonder how my little rat is doing. I have a rat exterminator coming tomorrow. We booked him as an emergency measure, in case we had to poison them. But now I just want his advice where to block up holes etc. I must resist the urge to tease him though. When his mother gave birth to him, she gave him a fine aristocratic French christian name to go with his equally fine aristocratic surname. I don't think that she dreamed of him as an exterminator, or boasted to her friends that her son worked with poisons for a living. She was proud of him, proud of her son ROLAND.

Mustn't tease......

LARDING IT OVER OTHERS (For Anti-Plagiarism Day)

2009-07-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

They castrate the books of other men in order that with the fat of their works they may lard their own lean volumes - Jovius

I am not very good at most things: opening jars, riding bicycles, changing lightbulbs. There is a faulty mechanism in the ‘practical’ section of my brain. But I DO words and I even have been known to form them into pleasing and resonant sentences. Stories have always been my friends. At seven, I would write twelve pages when asked for one, escaping into wondrous or terrible worlds. Then when I learnt to shape them properly, those stories got published, even won prizes. My writing made me happy, more than my practical incompetence made me miserable.

So my words are precious. The ideas behind them, which are kept secret until I can form them into something coherent, more so. Because they are original to me, caused by synapses crackling in my mind that make strange connections. Creating peculiar and I hope, interesting characters. I am also often entrusted with other writers’ ideas and their stories in the raw. I can admire, or criticize, or be envious of their skill. But I have never been tempted to take from them. Ever. If someone produces something brilliant, that is their baby. You wouldn’t steal someone else’s child. Would you?

It has taken me a while to realise that not everyone thinks I should be the sole owner of my ideas. In fact, that no-one actually owns their ideas. Is there anything worse than the creep who cribs your answers at an exam? The one who can’t be bothered to revise themselves. The lazy, unethical ones who feel that cheating is OK. When it is down on the paper, it’s theirs – however it got there. The plagiarist who steals ideas, plots or words is this type of cheat.

It is true that ideas cannot be copyrighted. But if a writer steals from others because they have nothing of their own, this is lowest point at which they can sink. If they do it frequently and compulsively, it is an admission of madness, illness or desperation. It doesn’t matter what they do with this stolen property, whether they dress it up and make it beautiful. It’s still linked to someone else and it will never truly be theirs. It carries another writer’s unique scent.

In their hands though, it will always smell rotten.

So instead, let's celebrate the freshness of an original idea, the uniqueness that makes us the writers we are....

2009-07-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

Plenty of stimulating aspects in my writing ‘career’ at the moment, not least that I am actually using the word career. In fact, I am feeling as if there is a path of sorts emerging that might lead somewhere, rather than just wandering in a forest, looking for the occasional gingerbread house on which to nibble.

The BBC want to workshop the writers from the Penguin anthology The Map of Me – perhaps to transform the book into a radio play or somesuch. This should be informative, interesting, hopefully productive.

I am still excited about a short film being made of a flash I wrote during a timed session at The Fiction Workhouse. An hour’s work from twenty prompts – sweat forming – now all scripted and ready to be cast. A lovely young film director has taken it on and is also shouldering the stressful job of finding finance for it.

I am due to go on a weekend writing retreat in August with some other much respected writers. Chuffed to fluffy pillows.

I entered the Bridport. Not with a shrug or defeatist forgetfulness but a real: ‘Stands a chance of something, doesn’t it?’ – entering a reworked story that was shortlisted for this year’s Asham Award. The confidence given by being shortlisted makes writers walk taller and trust their talents more. It’s not false pride; it’s proper pride in a job well done.

I went to a swanky party recently. I don’t generally do swanky, as I am more and more a country girl in green wellies, listening happily to a tiny wren’s enormous song in the garden. But I enjoyed, despite myself, dressing up and standing in a room with J K Rowling and Tim Burton. Talking to another very down to earth film director, David Yates (The Way we Live Now, State of Play) about his passion and respect for the talent swimming everywhere in the British Film Industry: set directors, designers, prop makers. Not schmoozing, just watching the madness, the vanity and the people who buzz around the famous, trying to ‘catch’ some of their success. Failing to see that they have to get up off their arses and work hard.

Last of all, I nursed a chicken back to life after a serious illness. A vet called it miraculous and I felt great that I could do something else other than write stories. Something practical and caring. Something that qualifies as miraculous. I have also further developed a lovely friendship with a feisty elderly lady of 86. We have political discussions and she rings me to tell me how much she values my friendship. She’s a tall woman, quite intimidating, very brusque. Takes no prisoners. Writes letters to complain and tells doctors’ receptionists that they are ‘frightfully inefficient.’ I think that she’s fabulous.

Mind Your Language

2009-06-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Today has been a strange day. A mixed bag. A very respected colleague and friend of mine has decided, for very good reasons, that it is time to give time to her own writing and close her feathered wings to the many writers who have taken shelter under them previously. In the past couple of years, I have been supported, chastised, encouraged and generally made into a better writer by this powerhouse of a woman. She is blunt, original, unafraid of grinding toes into grit, egos to reality – if it gets the job done. It’s all about the writing: the nuance of story, the solidity of character, poetry on a page even in prose.

Her initials give her school report on her achievements to the writing community: VG. Very Good. Bloody hell: Fucking brilliant. You should save a swear or two for when it matters and when it comes to writing, the very passion and despair of arranging those swirly shapes on a piece of unprepossessingly paper – needs a touch of awed profanity.
Not going to miss you because the end result will be in those words – more of them – with your mind fully on the job rather than being altruistically splintered in all directions.

So strange day. Also feel that I need some more time – more quality of time. Had a whimsy to join a private club and damn the elitism. Just got an urge. But I don’t know anyone personally at The Groucho Club, so that dream squealed away like a lost balloon. Still, I do like their rules. If there have to be rules, they should be eccentric and witty. Words and the cleverness of language again – like music it’s all in the arrangement:

Club Rules
Upon arrival at the Club, Members shall approach the Reception Desk to SIGN and PRINT their names in the Signing-In Book, this Ancient Ceremony being a necessary preliminary to entry into all Club Rooms.The use within the Club of Mobile, Cellular, Portable or Microwave-controlled Telecommunication Instruments is an anathema, a curse, a horror, a dread and a deep unpleasantness and shall be prohibited in all locations save the Reception Area. Please be alert to the acknowledged misery of Ring Tones and silence all such mechanisms before entry into Club Rooms.The ingestion into the bloodstream of powders, pastilles, potions, herbs, compounds, pills, tablets, capsules, tonics, cordials, tinctures, inhalations or mixtures that have been scheduled by Her Majesty's Government to be Illegal Substances of whatever Class is firmly prohibited by Club Rules, whether they be internalised orally, rectally, intravenously, intranasally or by any means whatsoever. So let it be known. A member may invite into the club up to four (4) GUESTS at any one time, for whose behaviour and respect of these Rules the Member is responsible. Be it understood that a Guest will not be allowed into the bar unaccompanied by a Member. The wearing of String Vests is fully unacceptable and wholly proscribed by Club Rules. There is enough distress in the world already.To step out into Dean Street owing money to the Club leaves a stain on a Member's character that cannot be pleasing to them. For this reason all bills and moneys owing to the Club shall be settled in full before a member shall leave the Club.Upon settlement of aforesaid bills and levies, all Members are reminded that Soho is a neighbourhood containing many residents. Show dignity, consideration and kindness by leaving quietly and with as little brouhaha as may be contrived.A Club is a Club. A place of sociability in which to relax and be affable and friendly. Respect the views of your fellow members and ensure that your Guests do the same. Let amiability and charm be your watchwords.

Simon Carroll

2009-06-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

When I was sixteen, I was part of a gang. Some were friends from school, others we had met in town or thereabouts – the way kids do. We hung around; some of us dressed up and called ourselves punk or adopted some other tribal tag. There were coffee shops we were thrown out of; my father hated boys hanging around the house who drank all his coffee and sat late at night at the kitchen table eating cereal. A boy nicknamed Wacko used to eat dog food from the tin.

One of the gang, who everyone trusted and confided in, was a big built boy called Caz, or Simon Carroll. He always wore a long tweed coat and with his strong Herefordian accent, would put both his thumbs up and say: ‘Right Ju?’ Always with a big smile. The biggest. He was into rollups and cider, dancing and drawing. Particularly good at the latter, he once showed me a picture of skulls he had drawn for an art lesson. The light and shading, the infinite delicacy of everything he had drawn and shaded on the page, was remarkable. It was no surprise when he went to Art College and I would still see him around when I was at the nearby Sixth Form. He’d be in a pair of Doc Martens, looking a bit like a dangerous skinhead. Except he wasn’t. There was a gentleness to him, this boy who took six sugars in his tea and lumbered around when the rest of us were all flitting around as exhibitionists, obsessed with our hair or our bondage trousers. He played in a band and a friend sent me a clipping a couple of years later, profiling his band as the worst in Hereford. That was Caz – everything for a lark. But he also fell in love a lot, often unrequited. We all went for the haircuts, the attitude – when right under our noses there was a sensitive, loving boy who had sixteen already looked like a man. I think he fell in love with me once and of course, I was blind too.

Caz lost one of his lovely brothers to cancer. I left Hereford, where we had grown up and had wild, teenage times. Then I found that humble boy had become a potter of note. Very avant-garde, profiled in magazines and exhibited in the Tate, St Ives. I looked him up, admired his very individualistic work and even saw a film of him beach painting with Rolf Harris. He was the true essence of a free spirit – where so many people try to be he was effortlessly so. I know that he struggled with an addiction to alcohol, the roots had been there in our adolescence. But everyone smokes and drinks, takes the risks that define a hormonal teenager. We were reaching that time in our lives where some of were reconnecting, enjoying a shared past.

Some time ago I sent him an email. He replied through a mate’s Friends Reunited account. It was a cheery note and I could hear his voice so clearly in it. I replied and told him how proud and pleased I was with his success. If anyone should have had recognition in life, it was Caz. People always smiled with recognition when you mentioned his name. A little bit mad. An enormous heart.

But I didn’t get another response and I put it down to eccentricity, his creativity…better to let him work. I thought about going to Cornwall to visit and another idea, a Hereford reunion of the old gang, was discussed by a friend. We could walk down by the river and shout our names under the bridge with the echo, or see how long one cup of tea could last. Of course we would be older, some of us with families – but you always carry a part of that time with you.

You should seize the day. Tonight I was called by a friend to tell me that he had only just heard that Cazzy had died.

But I refuse to be maudlin, or look back with any regret. I will remember those tweedy hugs, wrapped in fag smoke by strong arms. Him walking down the stairs in my house with that huge daft grin.

Simon Carroll, the talented potter. Caz. An artist but more importantly, someone I will always think of with such fondness.

All right Ju?

I’m all right, mate.

http://www.ceramics-aberystwyth.com/simon-carroll-interview.php

2009-05-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

This morning I was walking around the ruins of Carthage, in Tunis. I saw the tombs of the babies sacrificed by the ancient people - their first born sons - so that the gods would be pleased and bless their households. Ashes in little stone boxes.....

I then went into Sidi.....where vendors told me that every deal was the best deal, that I was their friend. Every woman had 'beautiful' eyes...a lovely smile. Drank the sweetest teeth-jarring mint tea on a balcony overlooking the uniform blue and white houses...still thinking about those children, babies....all dusty in their premature coffins.....

Remember the Human

2009-05-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

I attended a seminar recently run by the UK Wolf Conservation Trust (www.ukwolf.org) Two professors and a doctor….a lot of information and one particularly interesting speaker (Dr Alistair Bath) who talked about the wisdom of not ignoring the human element in animal conservation. So many decent, passionate and acutely intelligent conservationists only think of the animal. For example, Alistair talked about a farmer in a Slavic country who had thirty sheep. One night a wolf jumped his fence and killed twenty one of them. His grief was not purely based on economics – he cried and said that losing his animals was as bad as losing his children. These are people who have a bond with their creatures, with nature – they live and sleep with them. A shepherd’s average age is 77. Animals are their life and they are in tune with the changing of the seasons, they know if a creature is ill or afraid. Solutions have to think of the wolf but also the people who are intertwined with it.

I also had a chat with author Michelle Paver (www.Michellepaver.com), who is a director at the Trust. She is a quiet and deeply observant woman. As we chatted she put her hand through the bars to stroke one of the wolves, who clearly knew her well and rubbed herself against the bars in joy. Of course this is not recommended for just anyone and although she has a relationship with the wolves she was still told: ‘Michelle, do be careful with your hands.’ Quick as a flash she said: ‘I have another hand that I can write with…’ Wolves are her passion, as her series of children’s books demonstrates. We both stood there for a while, watching Torak, who runs that particular pack. He paced around, being photographed but ultimately keeping his lupine dignity, guarding his sisters. I truly liked Michelle….she is a real writer, lacking in cynicism and ego. She just gets on with the job.

I am also in the process of working with a young film-maker in turning one of my stories into a screenplay for a short film. Now I have to tell him all about my characters, those light shadowy creatures in a quickly written flash. It’s fun….

The Searchers

2009-04-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I fell apart at the seams - like a rag doll in the care of a wicked child – while watching John Ford’s The Searchers. My father died in 2005 and The Searchers was one of his favourite films. We had a difficult relationship with huge communication problems. But we both loved westerns and war films. We would settle in front of them in comfortable silence, knowing that we were both lost in the narrative, the action, that actorly magic. The Searchers is a very emotionally manipulative film, as well as being an ambitious attempt at explaining racism and the bonds that tie, or sometimes break us. It was based on novel that was based on true events, of a young girl taken by Commanche Indians. John Wayne gave one of the best performances of his life; he was always my father’s hero. In fact, my father, who often said very little and was inwardly strong – truly emulated him. Through The Searchers, we always experienced a surge of feeling and heartbreak that we never ever showed one another face-to-face. So that film will always be a floodgate. I cannot watch but I cannot turn away and oddly, through celluloid I mourn him. But I also bear in mind the power of genetics and my father had once told me that as a young man, he had loved to make up stories. So maybe that's where my need comes for writing.

Today I will be....

2009-03-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

Birthdays should be all about whimsy and be defiantly egocentric. After all, it is one day – one day only – to celebrate your slippery entry into the world. So in the spirit of all things whimsical and willful, I like to imagine having a different life on every birthday, no matter how absurd or mercurial. For this one, I would like to be a mudlarker. Originally a job – considered one of the worst jobs – for the very poor….mudlarking is really all about scavenging in the chocolate mud that skirts the dimpled brown water of the Thames. For treasure of course but then treasure is a subjective term – there are many wonderful objects that the Thames regularly belches out onto the pebbled shores: fragments of pottery, clay pipes, horses’ teeth. You now have to have a licence and report all finds to a recognized museum but now, the Mudlarking Society has numerous enthusiasts who don wellies and gloves to lose themselves in the looking. What joy, for time to slip away and to find history to casually secreted…..

'Sometimes they would throw a sixpence into the river, where the water was about two feet deep, to make us wet ourselves through in groping for it. Indeed, they were very generous when they wished to be amused; and every kind of offer was made to them which we thought suited to their tastes, or likely to extract money from their pockets.'

"Dip my head in the mud for sixpence, sir!" one of us would cry out; and then he would be outbid by another."Roll myself all over and over in the mud, face and all, sir - only give me sixpence!"

Next year, a different incarnation.

I have found my inner child.....

2009-02-02T05:03:00.000-08:00

.....while crafting a snowman in the garden. Dishes piled in the sink, other monotonous jobs pushed from my mind. Packing snow with very cold fingers..three rather snow-phobic chickens at my ankles looking for grass and the odd frozen worm. They puzzled as this big white thing developing before them, especially Desdemona who has a particularly fear of all things white, including one of the other chickens, who she pecks regularly to keep her in place or perhaps to persuade herself that this girl is not a ghost, a phantom, a threat.

I shaped some boots for my man, because they never seem to have them. Usually snowmen erupt from the ground like fingers in a glove. I made these boots smooth, oh so very smooth. Handcrafted. Italian. The snow has to the packed so very tight, because I want him to be the last thing to melt when all the rest has dissolved to slush. Up up up he goes, spindly at first and then fatter. Bits of stone, grass and slate, speckling him so that he is not a plain creature, like an overweight aunt in Austen.

The snow is still falling and I have to catch some on my tongue, where it dissolves like sugar.

I have no idea of time as I work - it is like the best writing session, the ones where the flow is everything and the pleasure of watching something grow is organic, not laboured.

At the end I have a man. Controlled and created by me. Vulnerable to my destruction. The chickens stand back and cluck in some alarm, then run back into their enclosed pen where the man won't see them. But there he sits: comic, ridiculous in his awkward beauty.

If only a novel was a series of snowmen; each one a chapter - but with more complexity of course. For now though, I'll go with simplicity. The glow you get from building a snowman is like no other - it bridges the gap between the happy past and more difficult present.

Pure joy.

Blackbird

2008-11-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I heard screams and flapping from the garden – an animal in pain – so I rushed out. In a haze of brown downy feathers and dead leaves from the tree where the attack took place, I had a vague sense of a large bird flying away. It was possibly a red kite. A small male blackbird fell at my feet and lay there panting, his displaced milk chocolate coloured feathers followed down and curled up around his body. Their beaks are so bright. I could see no blood and thought it best not to pick him up, as he was already traumatised. I just stood over him and talked softly, until gradually he stopped the panting, ran out through the iron gate, up onto the fence and away.

It made me think though, about the percentage of victim and bully/predator/confident being in all of us, how it differs with life experience, moods and attitude. I have met a lot of supremely confident red kites – soaring through life being admired by all. There have been sparrow hawks too, who bide their time but get what they want eventually…but only the odd gentle blackbird. Ummm…. Maybe we are all blackbirds inside, just hoping that no-one will spot the deception and hurt us.

I wasn’t a victim exactly but neither did I feel entirely in control on the Henry Kelly Radio Show on Radio Berkshire yesterday. Radio is an odd medium and presenters are a little like drug addicts: they become extremely twitchy if there is dead air…they need a fix of the human voice to feed that habit. Nodding my head is not the way to convey ‘yes’ and so I ended up saying ‘Absolutely’ and sounded as if I should have a hockey stick and small pony. It was primarily to publicise the book The Map of Me but also to try and come up with intelligent comments about the experience of being mixed race. But suddenly I felt very exposed, having to take about me. No hiding behind characters and their fictional motivations……I felt naked. Not in a good way. My mother-in-law listened and told me I sound articulated. Now that is a new one.

Brief interviews with The Map of Me authors:
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141038926,00.html

It has been a good week in all though, with a few writerly things such as the radio broadcast and then a few other treats to boost confidence:

I have been shortlisted for The Asham Award this week. I have been shortlisted before, so my excitement is a little tamer this time. It’s still good. Now I send on my story for judging…results of the final twelve in February. It’s a big competition in terms of stature this one and there were 799 entries. To be published alongside Margaret Atwood – that’s something to fantasise about over Christmas.

I wrote six flashes for a wonderfully intense writing session on The Workhouse this week. The quality of all the writing (108 stories in total) was superb and reminded me why it's so life-affirming to hang out there so much. I’m proud to be in that company and am still learning what makes writing literary, resonant, publishable.

I am now visiting a lovely old lady of 86, who was a nurse during World War II and is feisty and fascinating. I love her company, her refusal to be taken for a fool and the stories she has to tell. She also has enormous compassion and insight. She also told me I was very pretty but admittedly her eyesight is very poor.

In early December I get to go to the book launch party at Penguin. I am very interested in meeting the other writers; their stories were impressive, elegiac, emotional.

So I will subdue my inner blackbird for now – that fluttering sense of potential failure and rejection that all writers carry in their hearts – to pursue this funny life of scribbling and making things up, being greedy enough to live several lives in a day.

Grasshopper?

2008-10-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Can I fall any lower? I have been stood up by a Buddhist monk. Finally I found The Priory, which was a humble detached house with only a small statue of Buddha outside to signal its purpose. For some ridiculous reason I was expecting something exotic…with gold leaf…which flies in the face of Buddhist humility. Then I rang the bell, while staring at a grasshopper that sat with its feet splayed on the window. I had been trying not to think grasshopper, as it is a cruel cliché from the old Kung Fu films, where the monk with the opaque eyes calls the seeker of truth ‘Grasshopper.’ Tried not to giggle and rang the bell again. Again. Rapped the door. It was hot and I was getting cross. Goddammit, where was this man who was to help me with my anger? Bloody hell, has he forgotten? Why can’t he hear me!

I went home very angry and it then only dawned on me the irony of being furious that a man who was to help me meditate and control my anger, had made me angrier. I also put a note through his door and my other half was frightened about what I might have said. He knows that I have a feisty soul, flashes of my mother’s shrewish temper. How could he think that I would be rude, whatever the provocation, to a gentle monk?

It transpires (by email) that the monk was in the back garden and had not heard me (what was he doing – nude sunbathing, painting his gnomes?) Oh well, universe – life was buggered up again.

Onward. Mary Stott prize to enter. Book review and interview for Wolfprint. 5,000 words left for my 10,000 novel pledge. Bought a new copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ yearbook. After all, my other one is 2006 – editors have moved/died/gone insane. I once picked up an American equivalent and sat laughing at the extent of specialist magazines. Lesbian Biker Chicks on Acid who Knit – that sort of thing. Ours, with its Horse and Hound and Dogs Today, is so much more tame.

It’s a shame really.

The Future's Bright - But Is It Orange?

2008-10-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I have a date with a Buddhist monk. Shaved heads and acid orange. Yum. Well perhaps not strictly a date – more a search for spiritual solace. Not religion though – I don’t want the whole package. I did consider a Catholic priest – as Catholicism is my default setting and I did go to school with nuns – but no. Meeting up with a priest of that persuasion is like having dinner with a second hand car salesman. Eventually, they try and flog you something. Buddhism simply contains beliefs that largely correspond with my own but more importantly, they give guidelines to coping. Especially with anger. At present I have lots of that emotion; I am overflowing with it. Anger at loss. Anger at not achieving enough. Anger at exhaustion. You get the picture.

So back to the monk. I used to meditate, which had a wonderful calming effect on my impatient, twitchy personality. I want to learn that again, to learn how to centre myself again. As a child I was a very gentle daffy sort, who liked nothing better than counting stones in the garden, or adoring animals to the point of worship. That back please, or at least a little pocket of it that can be held at the core, to counteract all the crap of modern life.

So that is step 1 for returning normal service – essential for everyone around me who is endlessly patient and loving, namely my family. It’s selfish to be so indulgent (Buddha, he say NO to selfishness - apparently)

Step 2 is to help others – to life coach a writer friend who is suffering literary angst of the most critical kind. I have set aside a day to bring her back to a good place. How easy it is to give advice, whatever mess you are in yourself. Also, I have joined a Good Neighbour Club that visits lonely people. I love older people (after all, we are all old people in training) and also their stories. I was dithering about it but I was then invited to a party for all the Good Neighbour Volunteers to meet. Free cake! Tea! They knew how to entice this greedy slattern. But what are a few hours a week? It’s injustice that anyone is lonely in a society with billions of people, all talking to themselves (allegedly into their phones) or clutching fucking Blackberries (I like a good crumble myself.) When I was cat-hunting (no spears, honestly) I found aching loneliness in people, that desperate need to make contact. Every day for example, an old lady with an ancient dog crosses the road to my house and reads my Lost Cat notice. Every day. Then she wipes away a tear, pats her dog and stumbles on. Then I wipe away a tear at her wiping away a tear and awash I am with sentimentality. I can barely hold down my Special Brew. (I’m kidding – I have not succumbed to the demons of drink. I did have a packet of……..crisps though yesterday. I half expected Jamie Oliver to helicopter in with a megaphone, to hear that over-sized tongue announce my betrayal to good food in that cheeky mockney voice.)

Where was I….step 3…bloody hell…I have pledged to two writers friends that I will write 10,000 words of a novel by November 7th. I am also writing fillers, articles etc so quickly that my fingers leave steam on the keyboard. Zipped one off to The Guardian yesterday and now am about to write one for The Sunday Times. I have had a few already in the latter some time ago and they pay £200 for what is to me about half an hours work. Ker-ching. I also entered The Asham Award and for once, I was truly proud of my story. Not that I pretend brilliance or perfection – but that I absolutely felt in the skin of my characters. So much so that I had sensory delusions. It was set in India and I could smell it, feel the heat. Wonderful – like being actor.

Step 4 – to return to the bosom of The Workhouse to post a story and get back into a wonderful community. Also to critique…an important skill.

So there it is. Hope in the darkness.

A Trilogy of Inspiration

2008-09-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

I have had three days brain-deep in all things literary. A distraction that came when sadness was weighting me down, for many reasons. I was safe in the company of writers at Litcamp: the fragrant Vanessa Gebbie, the truly lovely Alison, incomparable Sara (of Asalted), gorgeous Kerry……. Litcamp made me feel like a professional, a contender. I was cheered by an ‘excellent’ verdict from Steve of Willesden blog infamy on a short story of mine. My god, I needed that. I needed it all….even the daft and the delusional at the event who made me giggle. Including someone who thought that if their mother told them their book was fab, that was all they need to continue. Ahem.

My head full of books and the infinite possibilities of language, I also attended two days of the Reading Crime Festival – a first for Reading and initiated and run by the borough librarians. It began with a writers’ workshop with Cath Stanicliffe, where my daughter (aged 11) rather surprised a roomful of adults by conjuring up her own method of murder: stuffing snow down someone’s throat. I may have to sleep with one eye open from now on. Bless her gothic soul. The day continued: literary discussions, writers explaining their craft, a talk on the role for coroner….all very juicy. There was very much an old tale repeatedly told by the male (usually bearded) writers: ‘I had a good lunch with an agent/publisher and then later had several films made of my books………’ To the aspiring crime writers there it sounded wonderful, easy. It took Frances Fyfield to be honest and admit that it was ‘Easier in my day…it is hard for people to get published now…it is a different business.’ A friend of mine, after a particularly turgid reading from one of the crime writers, was tempted to ask him if he thought that he would get published nowadays. I stopped her…it was a little too blunt, even if true. Fyfield at least could see beyond her own accomplished world and realise the current market.

There is also a great friendship between some crime writers. Bored, Fyfield rang up Val McDermid one morning to ask her what she was doing. (I love that image) ‘I’m bleaching spoons,’ she was told. Increasingly Fyfield’s honesty was so fresh….she hates the actual discipline of writing and will often resort to mundane displacement activities. Hurrah! Someone else! Someone widely published!

Speaking of the spoon-bleacher, Val McDermid was a delight, in every way. In smiling Scottish brogue, she held a huge room of people like a professional actress. Passion shone from her. Writing was everything. ‘Ah, I saw they called this the ‘Big Author Event,’ she laughed. ‘Why do they not say FAT and be done with it!’ I asked a question at the end about whether the growth of crime fiction may in fact be due to our perceptions of a lawless society. Quick, articulate. clever – she explained how a crime book is a contained and controlled entity, a moral universe. The real criminals out there, she said, were far worse than even our imaginations could muster. Things are not solved, people are not saved. From someone who writes the graphic scenes in the ‘Wire in the Blood’ series, that was a terrifying thought. Afterwards, I dutifully bought her new book and shuffled up for a signing. I gave my full name and she looked at me curiously, with some recognition at the name. The moment seemed right and so I thanked her for choosing my story in Mslexia some time ago, when she judged the submissions. I specified which one. ‘That was a lovely story,’ she smiled. ‘Very moving.’

Very moving. Very moving. I wrote it on my mirror in eyeliner when I got back and in the morning, thought how batty that was of me. Vowed that if I ever become successful I will try and endorse writers still climbing: it means so much.

On the Sunday evening at the final event, Mark Billingham and John Harvey rolled through the doors from the pub. Much banter and silliness, much use of the words ‘Fuck’ and ‘Bollocks’ between the two daft beggars. Mark Billingham read from his new novel and proved that a writer who can read well, tell stories…will be a successful one because he can also do the circuit, entertain. He later slagged off John Banville (‘I hate these up themselves authors…he told me that its perfectly possible to read a book with a dictionary by the side….what!!!!!!!!!!”) Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Archer were also for the chop. The Crime Writers’ Association has black tie award events at £90 a ticket, full of old buffers. ‘But did you know,’ he said, ‘that the Australian equivalent is called the Ned Kelly Awards and they have a stripper.’ It was that kind of blokey nonsense. John Harvey, who was much more drunk and was intellectually freefalling, talked about the Paralympics for no reason, then decided that the first few pages of his new novel wasn’t good enough and ripped it up. Went to read something else and then discovered that he had actually ripped that up instead. All fun and games. The death of the short story…how there was no market....blah blah…came up and John Harvey even admitted that he had to approach a small press to take a recent novella, despite the fact that he has published many books and has a ‘name.’ Billingham praised the short story and everyone bemoaned the fact that they are not supposed to sell.

So many treats at that festival…including a plant forensic scientist who looked as if he were being played by an actor. Tweed and dusty moustache, guffawed in all the wrong places as if he did not mix with people much, lived with his microscope. He once had to collate evidence from a rape case (that was one where he laughed, inappropriately) and the police gave him a dress from the victim. ‘Now if there were evidence to collect, it would not be on a dress.’

He then came up with a great book title for his memoirs:

The Answer Lies in The Knickers.

Going to Ground

2008-09-04T03:01:00.001-07:00

I have been in a dark place recently (although not in a cupboard – that would be weird) – for various and serious reasons. I have wanted to skulk, be invisible, be sad. No writing except one bullet fired short story for a local competition in this time, but a lot of thinking. A skip full of brain matter amount of thinking. Already in this dark place, I woke up one morning to discover that one of my cats had disappeared. A neutered tom – a house cat of thirteen years, whose only outdoor pleasure has been to potter in the garden, rest in the warm soil and sleep. I would look at him and feel peace. Now he was gone. No sign. No clues. A frantic campaign of search followed which included exploring the grounds of the local school, discovering a vast allotment full of kindly old men growing beautiful fruit and vegetables. Then as time passed and I became more desperate, I have knocked on doors and even accosted strangers in the street. Tried to spot ‘cat’ people – the old ladies in dressing gowns (one who told me that if anyone had hurt my cat she would break their legs and go to prison for it – which had me crying on her doorstep). Then I approached ‘dog’ people – because at least they had animals, would understand. Discovered the huge and wonderful world that he might have found beyond his doorstep, with crunchy mice, delicate birds and perhaps even an indulgent saucer of food donated by one of those ladies who talk to themselves.

I have been awake every night – my animals are precious to me, very bonded into my psyche. Moriarty – so named after Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis – is so very unlike his name. He is soft in heart, goes limp and heavy when I pick him up and lets me put my face into his fur. That fur has been cried into, ruffled when I’m happy – all those stupid sentimental moments that we all try to hide from our adult counterparts. We are supposed to be grown-ups after all, not children. But with an animal we can indulge the child, the primal, the id if you like – it all depends on whether you embrace Freud or Jung.

What has got my molecules all stirred up, made me feel insecure and lost – is the not knowing that so many people talk about. Losing something, someone – and never knowing their fate. Whether they are in pain or dead – it haunts to an unhealthy degree. Then I did some more deeper searching – navel-gazing if you like, discovered that I have never liked losing anything, losing control of myself or anything around me. But in writing – now here is where I found a strange truth – I can control everything. I am the puppet-master, the leader of lives. I can hold in my hand the fate of my characters – but also know that the encapsulated world is real on the page, but cannot hurt me as much as life can do. I can step out from the page and breathe afterwards. I may feel for the characters I create and similarly, I feel real grief for those I read about in fiction. But I perversely enjoy that feeling – which is why I am fond of the Russians, who can make melancholy sweet and satisfying. It makes me feel alive to feel deeply to care, as I do for my family, friends, animals.

One lost cat. My friend, my writer’s muse. Grief that cannot be understood by everyone but hurts more than anything. It has made me think very very hard. I love unhappy or open-ended endings in books – that palpitating resonance. Here, I need a happy resolution – to believe that the universe is a good one. I have thought about God too – a little – but I am not ready to negotiate with St Anthony for Moriarty’s safe return. Still atheist/agnostic – not sure, but realising that it must give a lot of comfort to some to ‘hand over’ worries.

Last night I was sitting on a bench in the local school with torch, cat food, even a recording of my cat’s sister so that he might hear and respond – my last night because it is a boarding school and I was not allowed to wander around at night when the girls were back – looking at the bats, seeing a fox leaping after prey as if a small trampoline was hiding in the bushes. I was calm.

I hope to be writing soon and also contacting friends and colleagues that I have badly neglected. I do want to stay in the darkness though a little longer, until I feel able to face the scrutiny of light.

Suffering Sophocles

2008-08-11T04:47:00.000-07:00

It will be boring, friends said. Why on earth are you spending two days doing that when you could be shopping, sleeping, swimming? But the recent workshop on Antigone’s Sophocles (with Brecht and Jean Anouilh thrown in as supporting artistes) was a true revelation. .

Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus – not a great start because he was a motherf..….well, you know that story. So already from a doomed family, her two brothers then murder one another, Oedipus dies and his brother, Creon, becomes king. One of Antigone’s brothers Polynices has rebelled against the state and is to be left outside for the dogs and vultures to pick over his bones. But Antigone decides to bury him and so the wheels of fate roll on when she is condemned to death. There will be more deaths that follow.

No relevance to today? Family versus state? Idealism? Dying for a cause? Conscience? All those themes, written in 441 B.C, wrapped tight in the most rhythmic, beautifully phrased prose:

‘My plans, my mad fanatic heart, my son, cut off so young…’

Suddenly, I saw the roots of King Lear and many other great works of literature. It was back to the source of things….

So, I have made enquiries about doing a part-time Classics degree. Not more Creative Writing – the route I thought I would take. Perhaps I am very impractical about this and I will end my days as a crusty, dusty and far from lusty would-be academic with whiskers and a snuff habit. I feel intoxicated by the Ancient Greeks – this was a time when skilful language was everything: it was valued, honed and considered an asset. Well, I want to be more skilful, understand the cadences of every sentence, the power of one adverb over another, to move people. (Brecht to be recommended too, for his poetry. Anouilh I found too sentimental.)

It is all in the lap of the Gods whether I get (and can afford – there is always that little sting) a place at the University. I may fall to earth pretty fast but hey, an academic friend of mine said it well:

‘I've found my own classical studies incredibly enriching. Not only have I experienced that amazing sense of connectedness with our vast cultural heritage (something that the educated person once took as given but which has been sadly lost in recent decades) but I've felt like a traveller into other minds. I feel I've rubbed shoulders with people recognisable as coming from the same species as ourselves but very different in other ways. The realisation that thought is words and that words do not correspond across all languages is humbling, liberating, and utterly vital for a writer. I love Ancient Greek because I feel that it is the evolving language of a people developing both their philosophies and the ways of expressing them in tandem. I also feel that I didn't really understand Byron and Shakespeare until I understood their exposure to the Classical tradition.’

So backwards to go forwards, really.

Affirmative Captain

2008-08-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

I have been impulsive lately. Spontaneous. Jumping in before the evil analysis paralysis dampens the fun.

YES to the possibility of kicking off a discussion group at a Lit Fest in September. (That’s to network but also to enjoy a day with other writers, agents and publishers. The talented VANESSA GEBBIE will be there, reading her work.)

YES to reading a short story in Brighton. (That’s for my confidence and scares me back into thumb-sucking and nappies)

YES to a classical Greek workshop next week, discussing Sophocles’ The Three Theban Plays, Bertolt Brecht’s Antigone. (That’s purely for my intellect, that should be fed at all times)

Best of all I have said YES to that insistent voice that has asked me for years to turn what I consider to be in a strong idea, into a NOVEL. (That’s for my future.)

Saying YES feels like a ride, a scary one. But even when the news tells is that we will die in poverty or be engulfed in a tsunami/fire/nuclear holocaust – saying yes is just moving forward, ignoring the detractors. It also gives me news to tell people.

I will keep doing it. As long as it is to do with my beloved writing, my family or my friends.

Within reason.

In Awe of Poets

2008-07-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

I am not a poet. Even though I have my first poem up on the excellent http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/ I know this because I find the whole thing so laboured: the economy of words, that slippery sense of rhythm, the rubix cube line breaks. I actually panic when I'm writing it and that is never something I feel with prose. It is not a natural talent or a pleasure, really. But I will keep reading, greatly admiring, analysing and if, for true suffering that will make me a better person, writing a few pieces. Simply because every short story writer should look at it for the vivid sense of the visual, sensual and evocative use of language. You can do so many tricks, test out meanings and dance through magical realism.

Poets, I salute you.

Check out Ink, Sweat and Tears. It is a very fresh and passionate site, that dispenses with that pipe-smoking, pompous, beard-twiddling nonsense (and that is just the women.)

The Joy and Luck Club. For a Limited Time Only.

2008-07-16T03:56:00.000-07:00

The sad thing about good moods is that they are ephemeral, like dragonflies. Beautiful nevertheless – to be admired and held fragile in our hands while we deserve them. Today is one of those days, because I feel like a WRITER. This morning I received my proofed manuscript from Penguin for my entry in the THE MAP OF ME anthology. I learnt a great deal, namely not to rush competition entries and slip up on a few grammatical areas. Whoops. However, it is amazing what an excellent proofreader can do – I was extremely impressed. I also learnt that there is a launch party in December and I look forward to meeting the other writers and sharing their own accounts of having a mixed heritage.

I have questions still formulating for writer David Clement Davies. Plus another book review commission from a top notch wildlife magazine, for a really fascinating (but intimidatingly academic) book on the evolution on dogs. Canis Familaris to some of us. Using the Internet as the wonderful long literary arm it is, I emailed the author of the book in Los Angeles with some questions. I remember last year trying to complete a devilish art quiz and being stumped by a question on Rembrandt. Internet again – the most eminent Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz – emailed him and had a correspondence, plus a detailed answer to the question. I was absurdly excited by that – because it was so quick and intimate. He was also a jolly and inspirational man – dedicated and passionate about his subject.

So all writing, all singing, all dancing – it feels professional. As if one day, it might actually be a job, rather than a loss- making ‘hobby.’ I also benefit greatly from time spent with my talented colleagues on Vanessa Gebbie’s Fiction Workhouse. I HAVE to write a story every month a least, one that will stand up to my colleagues’ scrutiny. No soft soap, flannel or any other bathroom-related nonsense.

Just writing.

Tomorrow I may be looking at a looped rope dangling from the ceiling and thinking, that looks comfy.

For today, there is a Mary Poppins robin.

A Measurement of Hardness*

2008-07-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

This week I had been catching up on those overdue critiques for some writing colleagues, enjoying my zombie flash challenge and the diversity of others' zombie stories, doing some academic reading for a two day workshop I am attending in August…reading, writing….writing, then reading etc. Drowning happily in words and not waving at all.

Except….I then began to feel irritated too – by some writerly spats that were going on – writers are adept at using their erudition as a powerful weapon, to really wound one another. But it has affected me more than I would like to admit…it’s difficult to keep the focus, the mood for words when they are used in that destructive way. It takes some of the pleasure away when I encounter hardness in people. I would like to be harder, a tortoise when it suits, but I still flip over onto my belly and get kicked accidentally, even if none of it is directed at me personally. I’m soft but also a bloody tortoise – I hate conflict, confrontation, fiery attacks. I want to be invisible. So I decided that the writers I love most – Chekhov, Turgenev, the sublime Helen Dunmore, even Hardy with his sentimental fatalism – they are writers with true empathy, kindness, understanding of the human condition. Those are the (famous) writers I aspire to most.

So I shook the irritation aside and tried to be more positive. Was rewarded. As Assistant Editor of Wolf Print, I have been asked to interview David Clement Davies (www.davidclementdavies.com), a fantasy writer who has penned adult and children’s books – some about wolves such as ‘The Sight’ and ‘Fell’ – the former I am already now reading. I must create some imaginative, intelligent questions to send by email that will avoid the huge clichés (Where do you get your ideas? – that always deserves a facetious raspberry, a tongue in irons) but be insightful and useful to profile this shy (handsome – did I mention handsome) and talented writer.

Then doubly rewarded. Also have been asked to write a book review for a prestigious magazine. I will not mention the name of it yet, because it has yet to be confirmed.

Another few steps. Even the earlier unpleasantness should be a toughening up process. None of us can be wilters. Not The Flea. I just have to work harder, be with people who I admire and respect (I am lucky with my friends – very lucky.)

To die may be an awfully big adventure but hey, there’s lots of mileage in living too. All you need is a filter to spit out the negative.

Don’t tell anyone, but I am still soft.

*The MOH scale is used for stones. It was developed in the 1800's and shows the strengths and weaknesses of the stone.

Measurement of Hardness Scale
1. Talc
2. Gypsum
3. Calcite
4. Fluorite
5. Apatite
6. Feldspar
7. Quartz
8. Topaz
9. Corundum
10. Diamond

Ink, Sweat and Tears

2008-07-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

It could epitomise The Writer's Life: Ink, Sweat and Tears. But no, this is a funky web magazine and I have had my first poetry acceptance here, for a poem called Renovation. The editor Charles Christian is open, friendly and energetic, exactly the sort of editors more writers deserve to encounter. He sent me a personal acceptance with his comments - if only more editors took the time to do this. Even a rejection with a small comment lifts the spirits. Writers would have work flying out there if they felt a bit more loved and appreciated. It's hard to work in a vacuum. The website is here:.

www. ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com

I am also shaping up a story for the Mere Literary Festival that closes on July 7th - by the seat of my pants yet again. More fun and less stressful is the zombie-themed writing challenge I am about to pick up, with some colleagues from The Fiction Workhouse. Zombies are fascinating, their history deeply entangled with magic, superstition and cinematic portrayals. I cannot decide yet to be funny, gross or tragic.

There's a lot that can be done with some rotting flesh and a joy of language.

The Man Booker and its Newest Contender

2008-06-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

A man called Simon Holliday has submitted a bus timetable for the Man Booker Prize. Timetable in question is the First Bus Number 1 service in Bristol. And why? 'I have been using this service since August last year, ' says Mr Holliday. '....and I can personally attest to this timetable's suitability as a work of fiction, since it bears absolutely no relation to the times and frequencies of the buses' journeys. I conservatively estimate that since August I have wasted about 50 hours of my life that I won't get back, waiting for buses that never turned up.'
(As originally reported in Andrew Taylor's 'Grub Street', a regular column in The Society of Authors' magazine, The Author)

Now that is a bit of nonsense in a rather slow week, when writing has not motivated me enough...I've been lazy/tired, so I must put on a rather large boot and kick myself into action. Short stories to write!

Still, there is time and a need for dreaming too...an ethereal buffer zone that drops plots and characters into place from some sort of ether in which they exist. The great thing about writing is that I am a firm believer in directional daydreaming. This is the only job (don't try it if you a long distance lorry driver) where that is allowed..no, actually essential. I am also rereading Helen Dunmore's The Siege, a tragic, evocative and deeply poetic novel about the Siege of Leningrad.

So I am dreaming for a while. Please do not disturb.

Envy is for Wimps

2008-06-27T10:27:00.001-07:00

One of my colleagues on The Fiction Workhouse has been shortlisted for The Kelpies Prize, for his children's book. Vanessa Gebbie talks about it in more detail on her website. I was so excited for this rather wonderful and generous writer - as well as very sure that he will win. The winner will be announced at The Edinburgh Book Festival on August 25th.

This made me think about envy - especially as a friend of mine recently asked: 'Don't you get jealous of other writers who do well?'

The answer is 'no' and I am not a liar. I am also not a saint. But publishing is a competitive business and every writer has to be at the top of their game. Mediocre does not win prizes. Most of all though, to see writers I know do well is encouraging and exciting - because they up the game for us all. If they can do it, we can do it too. Too many writers complain about rejection without analysing the whys, lots of us moan about other competitions when we don't even bother to enter. Simple logic: you cannot win a lottery if you do not buy a ticket.

Writing has never been so popular, for many reasons - some of them the wrong ones. There will always be better writers, just as some people will always be younger, more beautiful, richer. To get all twisted about it, just makes a person bitter. I improve every day and I want to do so.

I am not a saint, as I said. But I do have a generous spirit that really loves it when hard work and talent receives its just awards. The only time I get angry is when sloppy writing gets rewarded.

So good luck, D. I'm chuffed that I know this man.

Getting it Out There

2008-06-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

An orgy of submitting to competitions and magazines can make a writer feel alive. It almost feels like being drunk. Over time this can be deflated at regular intervals by the inevitable failures. Some might be accompanied by a helpful note from an empathetic editor. Those don't feel so much like rejections, especially if they request to see more work. But the curt ones are a bugger, especially one I had recently that said: 'We will not be taking your work.' It was a standard reply but considering that this was a magazine meant to value the richness of language, they should have thought about that as a grumpy and poorly worded response.

Still, I send with optimism. Past successes at least give me confidence.

So even though emails can be dreaded - if they are rejections - I never stop loving email as a superb writer's companion. In the last few weeks I have contacted The Society of Authors to nitpick over some aspects of a contract and another legal department of a newspaper to check if I could reuse (i.e submit for publication) a previously published story that won a prize in their competition. The Society of Authors, as always, gave very good advice. The newspaper lawyers were churlish enough to say: "Well we can't stop you republishing the story." That was big of them.

Yesterday I wrote with a baby wren on my windowsill, exhausted by the new skills of flight. He was one of eight - two nests in total - who came out and chattered in the trees. It's a simple thing to watch but when the intensity of writing becomes a little tiring, just like learning to fly, it revitalises me.

So onward, to hone up a story for yet another competition.

To be hopeful, always.

A Portfolio Career

2008-06-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I was longlisted for The Asham Award and attended one of their development courses. It ran at Sussex University over two days and included a group session with an agent (Rupert Heath) and a one-to-one detailed analysis of each writer's career. I looked at my CV and apologised for the scattered nature of the things I had achieved. I work for a Conservation Trust, I write, I push out some bread and butter journalism. I have even had my own antique shop, run a pathology practice's secretarial team, been a political activist and worked in guiding.

'Ah,' said my tutor. 'That is what's called a portfolio career.'

What a lovely spin on my scrappy past. It sounds so much more professional.

In that light, I was proud to see the cover of the Penguin anthology The Map of Me that will appear in November. This will be a very special inclusion for me because Asian Invisible is really the first time I have tackled, in writing, my mixed heritage. Then, with my conservation head on, I am very chuffed with the new copy of Wolf Print, the official magazine of The UK Wolf Conservation Trust (http://www.ukwolf.org/) I have recently been appointed Assistant Editor for the magazine and spent many hours recently reducing a forty page report on lynx and wolves in Croatia into a two page document. Note to self - do not take forty loose pages into a windy garden. Alas, the lynx had to go, but the results were still informative and technical enough to please the academics, open enough to please that great demographic: the public. I have also been impressed with the writing, photography and sculpture workshops being organised for children at The Trust. I am passionate - make that obsessed - about wolves. I have seen them have an incredibly calming influence on even the most difficult children. It must be those marble eyes. Michelle Paver is running the writing workshop - quite an incentive for children to attend.

Back to short stories, flashes and the portfolio career. At least I am never bored.

The Outlaw John Maybury

2008-06-24T01:32:00.000-07:00

I love films about writers. On sunday I saw The Edge of Love, a film about a small part of Dylan Thomas's life, and felt an ache for Wales. After the screening, there was a satellite link up to The Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, where the director John Maybury was to host a live question and answer session. He arrived flustered and muttered about being in a 'car chase' to get there on time. He looked like Tom Hank's more subversive brother, with a gap-toothed smile that unlike the clean and sober Hanks, gave him a hint of the rascal.

Inevitably, Dylan Thomas' s drinking came up and Maybury admitted that he liked to drink, actually he liked 'a little bit of everything.' 'I have no morals,' he grinned, then went on to be deliciously indiscreet about his co-stars, Hollywood and his own wildness.

'Did you imagine twenty five years ago that you would be making this type of film?' a member of the audience asked.

'I was in a coma twenty five years ago. So no.'

I was warming to this man and smiling at his unpredictability and honesty. He was not playing a game of darlings - he thought of himself as an artist, a writer first - then a director. Cillian Murphy, his lead in The Edge of Love, was more beautiful than Keira Knightley, he said.

Silent films were his passion. But there was no market for that. Instead, he used an intense style of filmmaking where the eyes held the story, or a turn of the lip. There were not many takes and best of all, he would whisper to his actors, not shout.

'It has a subversive effect though. One actor will wonder why isn't he whispering to ME?'

He kept on smiling that smile and sipping his wine - you could see that he was still punk at heart, unafraid to say what he meant.

As for Dylan Thomas? Carol Ann Duffy was a better poet, was Maybury's judgement. But he liked to make films about dysfunctional artists, because he could relate to the life they led, a certain type of work that it produced. Especially the Dylans. His parents had been alcoholics and although they tried they still fucked....he stopped and put his hand over his mouth like a schoolboy swearing.

The interview finished, Maybury asked if the satellite had gone down.

'We're in Bath, right? Never liked that namby-pamby Pride and Prejudice town, ' he laughed. 'Those people in Bath are really up themselves.'

Of course it was a joke. A good one. This was a fascinating man - full of demons and devilment. Apparently he may be due to do a remake of Wuthering Heights.

Now that should be interesting.

The Flea

2008-06-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

The compulsion to write can be an irritant, especially when you are simply trying to live a life. Who wants the cravings to creep up when they are trying to sleep, to talk or to love other people? Words hum in the air around me sometimes until I catch them - or that's how it feels. It can make me selfish, lonely, angry, confused, egocentric, alone. But it's a unique addiction because despite the fact that it makes me strip away at everything to the bone, be curiouser and curiouser about people and their motivations.........

It's the best.