Trying to Sleep

I was writing a review of the fantastically fascinating, engaging and entertaining (I liked this book) Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker and realised that as I typed, I had that sludgy, slightly nauseous feeling of discomfort, commonly known as: someone is trying to tell me something.

I’m pushing it on that old sleep thing again. 

Again.

Maybe a sequel to Tea & Chemo should be the trials and tribulations of getting enough sleep? Although I fear the book would be very short and very repetitive, here's the blurb: she wants to sleep, she knows she should sleep but she finds it so very difficult to go to bed. And repeat.

The bottom line is, I want it all, but I just can’t squeeze it all in. And the truth is that when I skimp on the sleep, I can.

When I examine my work, it’s the wealth of correspondence which weighs me down. I am always in debt and never, ever get to the bottom of my RSVPs before the next deluge soaks my day.

I remember the headline a year ago about paying employees for correspondence outside of office hours because researchers had discovered that people were spending their travel time to and from work, and more time once they’d got through their own front door, catching up on emails.

No sh** Sherlock.

How many of us have a love/hate relationship with our phone? True, it makes me smile when a message comes in. It's useful always having my camera with me and iPlayer and books on Audible streamed into my hearing aids have accompanied me on many a hot-foot to an appointment. But what started out for all of us as a great use of time as the train transported us to our destination - flying through emails, reports, links and 'pre-reading' for tomorrow's meeting just a few short hours away -  has only lengthened our working day. And I don’t like that part one single bit.

Worse, when in the news yesterday we hear that a group of MPs are urging the government to look into the effect of hands-free phoning on our driving, there’s an instant backlash of people saying they can’t manage their job without using the phone in the car. The fact is, we can’t work from the next life, either, and more’s the sobering point, work would seem much less of a priority if we were coping with having killed or injured somebody because we lost concentration at the wheel. 

Nonetheless, the truth is that in the world we live in, some jobs wouldn’t be viable without people being able to communicate from behind the wheel. End of. We have built a society which relies on people working at work, before work, after work and travelling to and from work. And unless this is forced to unilaterally shift, I can’t see that this state of affairs is going to change for the better any time soon, as we continue careering forward in this ever increasingly techno future.

The problem is the speed of it all, isn’t it. I remember the good old days of freelance copywriting, when I had to tootle off to the post office three days before my deadline, with a floppy disk and a hard copy of the writing in question, all packed up ready to trundle off to the destination of my assignment. For the following week, while I awaited its delivery and the typed letter in return, I could Do Something Else.

These days, ticking off the to-do list doesn’t shorten it, does it? Because once we respond, the reply comes back, and quickly, generally, because we’re all caught in the same trap: get it done before it builds up! And so the circle continues. If we are to break the circle, it is going to have to be a conscious decision to snap it.

And what if we did snap it?

I have a plan. A real plan. And it starts in September. It’s not just a plan for me but one for everybody. We have to sign up emotionally and physically, but it’s free.

Join me?

More information in my next post 😊

Meanwhile, here’s that review. If you routinely go to bed after midnight and wake only a few small hours later, you need to read this book. 

Punctual People

I have a severe affliction of OneMoreJob-itis, GreenLight-itis (or Travel Utopia) and AllThoseFiveMinuteJobsAddUp-itis.

Or dare I say, I had?

Today I had a hospital appointment booked for 9am. Anybody who knows where I live and the location of my local hospital six point eight miles away, will know that if you cross your fingers, have a good wind behind you, an impressive grasp of alternative car parking spaces and leave home at around 4am, you'd be unlucky not to make it in time.

I decided to go on the train.

I toyed with the idea of catching the 8.22 as per my normal way of being. The train would arrive at 8.36 (no, punctual people, of course it wouldn’t be delayed), the one point one mile walk would take twenty minutes, thus leaving me with a couple of minutes to check in at the well-staffed, all systems working like clock-work desk for Out Patients.

But today I decided that I would step away from living on the edge and just for once, I'd take the earlier train. Even with delays, I'd still have time to walk over the slightly further but very much drier path rather than run/walk in heels (hey! I'm five foot two on my tip-toes, people tread on me if I don’t wear heels), with my cross over bag tossing like a caber on my back, over the shorter (as the crow flies) muddy fields.

Besides, if I got there early I could have a coffee and do some writing. And that, dear readers, is how I come to be writing this blog post now.

I confess I did run onto the train from the station for my out-bound journey, which is only three minutes from my house, (well actually, it's forty seconds, providing the road you're trying to cross has been blocked off or it's FA Cup Saturday) but once the train had arrived perfectly on time and I'd begun my walk, I experienced something new.

I walked fairly briskly, I'm not sure 'sedate' is really in my psyche, but without even a whisper of needing to do my run/walk. I stepped without adrenalin pumping into my feet or angst puncturing my every thought that I might be late. I walked over crunching frost and noticed the blue of the sky. I enjoyed the cold air on my face with my hands nestled deep in my favourite gloves, without concern I might be sweating.

I arrived at the hospital half an hour in advance of my appointment, bought myself a take-out coffee - no queue – decided I'd have time to get my blood test done – no queue – which I'd originally planned to do after the 9am appointment and probably would have forgotten until I was on that return train home. I checked-in, took my seat and my pen and paper from my bag and am now waiting for my appointment. Let me say that again: I am waiting for my appointment.

Punctual people, I get it now.

Fifteen Minutes

I haven’t written a word of fiction for six months. I’m not proud of it, not pleased about it, but there it is.

I’ve had the fairly pressing matter of my Tea and Chemo deadline to meet. 50,000 words of non-fiction are now with the publisher ready for its edit(s) and subsequent re-write(s) for publication in November - she says calmly, during a rare moment without checking her phone for the email from her editor together with its massacre of red pen, a hurricane of sighing and enough eyebrow raising to bring on a face-lift.

I’ve also been teaching, adding copious words of feedback to other people’s fiction and generally not sitting around waiting for the muse to strike. I’ve even read a tidy pile of novels, but no stories have left my own pen. I can’t remember any other period in the last fifteen years when I could say that I haven’t written any fiction for over a month, let alone six long ones.

This makes me sad. It also makes me feel a bit of a fraud: Try to write every day, I say to my classes. Exercise that writing muscle! Oil your writing brain with regular attention! It’s like the warm up before the event; means you’re ready to run a marathon as soon as you’ve tied your laces. Like anything, the more you write, the better you get. It’s like playing the piano, painting the skirting board, even doing the ironing – you weren’t born being able to do it.

Practise what you preach, my gremlins whisper.

As I watched my writing class put down their pens after their fifteen minute writing exercise today, something occurred to me. I already knew it, but seeing it played out so graphically in front of me was inspiring. I thought it might be useful to share this with you if you’re struggling to write, read, paint, phone a friend, apply for a job, complete course work, practise your serve or your music scales...

I noticed that when it comes to some things in life, fifteen minutes is quite a long time.

I’d explained the exercise to the six participants in the group. Pens and paper at the ready, I set the timer and off they scribbled. Meanwhile, I put on the kettle, gathered up the mugs from around the table, washed them up and set about making three coffees (one as it comes, one strong, one black), three teas (builders) and asked the abstainer once again if she was sure she wouldn’t partake in a beverage. Refusing a cuppa? Call herself a writer! I checked that my hand-outs were accessible for the next part of the session. They were. That took a good seventeen seconds. I handed out the drinks, rattled the biscuit box to remind participants of their whereabouts, answered a question or two on the exercise, returned the remaining clean mug of the abstainer to the cupboard, looked at the clock and told the frantic scribblers that they had two minutes left. Did I have time to use the facilities? Probably not.

My phone quacks very loudly when time is up which does tend to stop my scribes in their tracks, thus I can confidently say that fifteen minutes they were given to write and fifteen minutes they took.

How did they get on? Very well indeed. Even with a few moments at the beginning to gather their thoughts on how to approach the task, all had written more than a page of fiction. Some had written almost two. I have excessively large, illegible writing and even with my script, two pages means almost 500 words.

500 words!

There are only twice that amount in some short stories. There are only 40 times that amount in a short novella and only 160 times that in a short-ish novel. 160 lots of 15 minutes? That’s a novel in forty tiny hours.

It’s not true of course. Good novels, even first drafts of good novels, are certainly not written in forty hours, nor are the skills learned to paint a masterpiece or scales learned in one single working week. Chance would be a fine thing. We need to plan and think and practise and revise and totally change our mind and start again. But you see my point.

In fifteen minutes a day you could put on the kettle, wash a few cups, have a short conversation and make a few drinks. If you were a particularly succinct interlocutor, as was your opposite number, then you might slip in a brief visit to the toilet, too. But only that.

Or you could write two pages.

I’m not saying my washing up, tea making, snippets of conversation or even using the lavatory aren’t important to the very essence of being a happy, upstanding human being, but if we want it, really want it, there’s room in our life for both.

But, you cry, you fancy taking fifteen minutes out of your day to write a story like digging a hole and filling it in again? For writing read, two sessions of Seven A Day exercises, way too many press ups than are humanly possible, sketch a picture, do Sudoku, peel some veg, learn how to change a plug, how to use the sewing machine, read a couple of chapters, knit a few rows, mow the lawn, learn ten new words in a foreign language…

But here’s the deal: you have to be focused. Fifteen minutes is only productive if you devote it fully and unconditionally to the job in hand. Otherwise you won’t write two pages. Or sketch a picture. Or book your holiday. Otherwise you’ll just add your forgettable half-hearted attempts back onto your to-do list.

This was my last class for the summer. I have other work to do but teaching is my biggest commitment. I started my Fifteen Minute Fiction regime this afternoon. I wrote some of a short story which came to me when I was ironing months ago. It’s currently two pages of nonsense but hey, if I carry on tomorrow and the next day and the next, who knows what it will become?

So here’s my Fifteen Minute Regime: I have to write at least fifteen minutes of fiction every day. Even at the weekend. Even in a foreign country. That’s the only rule. My hope is that this daily fifteen minutes of fiction will be so engrained by the time the madness of the new term is here, that dropping it from my day would be as ludicrous as shunning the time it takes to make a cup of tea.

And that’s never going to happen.

So, will you join me? 

A Little Less Squished

I have mentioned the inimitable A Squash and a Squeeze by Julia Donaldson here before; such is the impact this favourite rhyming book of my then toddler has had on my life. I'm not sure how much of the moral my youngest took in at the time – that everything in life is relative and happiness lies in appreciating what you have –but she certainly went to sleep with a smile after numerous renditions of, 'Glory me! It was tiny for two and it's titchy for three'.

Little did I know that I'd still be quoting, A Squash and a Squeeze long after the screams of, 'Take in my hen? What a curious plan,' had turned to the killing fields of the Hunger Games.

Roll over Dickens and Tolstoy.

In A Squash and a Squeeze, the wise old man asks the farmer's wife to trust in his philosophy. Her poky house is getting her down and she doesn't have room to 'swing a cat', let alone her farm animals of assorted sizes, which the wise man asks her to add one by one into her already straining abode. It's only when he directs her to remove them, that she realises quite what she had before.

2014 has been a bit of a squash and a squeeze for me and none more so than the summer holidays, rammed with radiotherapy appointments at the expense of work and being with (and transporting) my teenage children. Where the old lady filled her house one by one with extra animals varying in size from a hen to a cow, my 2014 was filled with treatments for cancer. But as in the book, it's all relative; I am one of the lucky ones.

That doesn't mean I haven't lamented the lack of time.

Throw in chemo! the oncologist said.

I can't I cried. I teach, I edit, I write

I work for my husband (badly), have a small business

(which suddenly seems humongously large)

and short stories and a novel I'm trying to type.

And I want to ride my bike.

I can't take on chemo, my life is a squash and a squeeze.

But in the chemo went.

Take out a week every three to recuperate

And add in Herceptin every three weeks for a year

And radiotherapy.

Oh! don't shed a tear, after 15 sessions you'll be out of here.

And then add in Tamoxifen for the next four years and one

It's only a pill, with any luck, it won't make you ill.

And then I blinked and it was September. The big cow had stopped dancing on the dining room table. I locked the door soundly behind it. Goodbye chemo, farewell, I hope. Radiotherapy has been winched out of the top window. In the kitchen there are still a few hens pecking at my feet; a reminder that this cancer journey still rolls on but you know, I can manage perfectly well even with a constant tickle at my toes.

So sympathetic, professional and advanced has been my treatment that although I breathe in the less cluttered air with relish, there is a part of me which hasn’t disliked the squash and a squeeze of the last nine months. I've found it interesting, supportive, friendly and hopeful. I'd have gladly done without it but without the brilliance of the medical profession and the incredible love and support of those around me, the path life has forced me down would have been much less bearable.

And let's face it, I might not have been walking it at all.

My cancer journey isn't over. I can't imagine it ever really coming to an end, although an all–clear after five years is a milestone I wish on every wishbone to meet. Nine months after diagnosis, however, emotionally and practically, I'm feeling a little less squished. 

NOTNaNoWriMo

Many brave souls I know are currently involved in the hugely impressive NaNoWriMo – national novel writing month. These diligent writers commit to scribbling 50,000 words of a novel in one tiny month. Not only that, it’s November, national present buying month if my bank account is anything to be believed, where cosy fires and Christmas to-do lists flutter their procrastination-inducing eyelashes and before you know it, you’re wondering where you stashed the Advent Calendar and mild panic sets in that you may, in fact, have forgotten to buy one.

The brilliance of Nano is in its time frame. There is nothing like a deadline to get those fingers typing, those characters inventing a story for you while you sit, almost as a by-stander, and watch your tale appear on screen. At the last count, Nano writers had written over two billion words and we’re only three quarters of the way through the month! www.nanowrimo.org/

Another year and I could be tempted. This November, however, I needed the opposite of NaNoWriMo. 

I had a wonderfully indulgent autumn of total immersion in my novel, following interest from an agent with whom I’d dearly love to be associated. (Yes please! All wafts of fairy dust always gratefully received.) The rest of my novel and an alternative ending, or three, submitted, I finally raised my head from the keyboard and could hardly bare to look at the carnage that the total immersion had left in its wake. The light fittings belonged to a disused stately home, spiders weaving works of art which almost stretched the length of a room; a battered cupboard sat hopelessly in the middle of the study despairing that anybody would ever bother to take it to a better place and it would take three bags to cart off the reams of post I’d saved for unnecessary filing.

Thus, I embarked on my own NOTNaNoWri month whereby I banned myself from any writing of book two until Advent descends. I am still writing short stories, book reviews and teaching but the rest of the time I’m … tidying up. 

It isn’t without some trepidation that I set about my NOTNaNoWriMo. There’s a loud voice in my head which normally prevents excessive expenditure of time on such frivolous past-times as domesticity, by instilling fear. It’s the fear that if I do not keep writing my current novel, I will simply forget. I will forget what I’m writing, I will forget where it’s going and I will forget how to write. 

This isn’t helped by the anti-dorphins, those pesky little destructors which have the opposite effect of the endorphin rush I get from story writing and which need to be firmly quashed by constant busy-ness.

Look! Nothing on the floor.

But it’s going well so far. Three times last week I went shopping. From a mere spot on the post-total-immersion to-do list, my Christmas presents are almost all bought. I’ve had coffee with friends, been out to supper, met with my Mum and my sister, the latter lives five hours away, and even indulged in a full week of illness. Then, I scrubbed the entire house from top to bottom – pictured room above, clearly excepted. This is in preparation for the journey to the Floor Of The Office. 

It may be that I’m blogging now because I’m left with the study project and no decent plan of where to start. But start I will. Today. I have ten days left of NOTNaNoWriMo and, as mentioned earlier, there’s nothing like a deadline for complete strangulation of inertia. If I can make it through to the carpet, I’ve been promised a new desk. I’ll let you know how I get on. 

And to the thousands of NaNoWriMo writers, I wish you the very best of luck - not that you’ll be reading this, of course, as you type feverishly at your desks, in total writing immersion. But I hope we can meet for a cyber mince pie or two together in December?