Scanxiety

I had a scan coming up. I couldn't settle. I had acute scanxiety and thus it was a good job that 1. I'm not trying to hold down a job where I need to focus for a time span longer than four seconds and 2. I have a deadline for the first draft of my next novel in six small months. It's only a deadline to myself but it's a deadline I'm determined not to miss, nonetheless. A writing deadline is the best therapy. Writing is the singular thing in life where I totally focus and my mind doesn't wander. I don't half-heartedly plan the weekend whilst abstractedly pushing the mouse around the mouse mat, or fold clothes whilst stirring a sauce, the phone wedged under my chin. I am your archetypal multi-tasker (even though I truly believe that single tasking reaps way more satisfying results once you call time on the day's to-do's) except when I write.

No, when I write, I vacate my study in favour of the location of my characters and it's just me and them with varying degrees of excitement (they're behaving themselves, writing their own story and I'm enjoying it) or despair (they know what they want to do but just can't quite make it stick). My characters' world is not foolproof, but it is the closest I get from scanxiety.

I tell myself it's ridiculous. Having a scan doesn’t actually change anything in itself. There's nothing to say the cancer has grown, or moved, or is causing problems. I'm not in pain, in fact, my biggest ailments are through the side effects of the medicines striving to keep the cancer small, not from anything the cancer itself is doing.

As far as I knew.

And I guess that's the nub of scanxiety. It's amazingly easy to keep distracted, to enjoy life, make the most of not having so much work to do, say yes to coffees and not feel *too* guilty about going on holiday what seems like once a month at the moment. It's amazingly easy to feel that everything's fine, at least in this new world I've entered. Except, of course, when there's a scan in the near distance and you know it might rock your world, just when you were getting used to the new place. However much you rationalise that it's as likely that the cancer has shrunk with the change of treatments than grown, there's always the chance that the pictures, the meetings the experts have, the summaries your oncologist makes, might make it official that you've stepped a little further towards the place you don’t want to go.

And so, I could only hope, keep busy, and keep increasing the wordcount.

And now? The scan has been and gone and so has the follow up appointment with the oncologist. I didn’t post originally because I didn't want to pass on my stress but now that I've had the most fantastic news, I want to shout it from the roof tops: there is no change, not a glimmer, not a speck, no microscopic growth. We've had a tear, a drop of prosecco, a poignant lunch and now I'm back to the scribbling.

We live to enjoy another day. Life is good and I hope it's the same for you.  

The One-in-a-Million Boy

Come join us!  

Because I should be writing (my September deadline for the first draft of my next novel is steaming towards us), editing (a wonderful 50,000 word project) and preparing for this talk on Friday... 

...not to mention more sock drawer tidying (although I have now progressed onto the vegetable-cum-non-wine-alcoholic-beverages cupboard, thanks to hubbie who has even crafted us a new shelf) my blog hasn't managed to clamber up my priority list this week. But that's OK, because I really want to shout out about this book. It's a life-affirming read, amusing in a dark humour kind of way and terribly sad in places. I read it last summer and still remember it clearly. Just wish I could have met the son and given him a hug. Although, he was 11, so he probably wouldn't have much wanted that... 

This is quite unlike any book I've read recently. It isn't so much that the story is unusual - it's been compared to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and I can see the similarities - but it's more the angle from which the story is told. The motivation for 104 year old Lithuanian born, Ona Vitkus, to pack up her bags in search of an entry from 'yours truly' to sit proudly in the Guinness Book of Records, is an 11 year old boy. A record promises a certificate, respect and immortality, after all, and who wouldn’t want that?

Alas, we never meet the boy during his lifetime because he has unexpectedly died whilst riding his bike.

His death is ever present, however, in the hearts and behaviours of the three particular characters he has left behind. The strain on his divorced parents: his mother, Belle, attempting to exist while mourning and father, Quinn, attempting to deal with his guilt, is palpable from the start and I was under no illusions that unconventional beginning aside, this was going to be an emotional ride.  

Before his death the boy, who isn't named (and my only gripe with the novel would be that I spent the first half thinking that I must have missed his name) had been visiting Ona on a Saturday morning to do odd jobs for her. Although dragged there initially by his scout leader, the boy carried out the tasks impeccably. Granted, we suspect that this level of perfection may have originally been more about his obsessive attention to detail, something which we glean has lost him a few friends over the years, than a love to help. As we progress through the chapters told from feisty Ona and droll, but guilt-stricken Quinn's perspective however, we learn that the boy was a very likeable soul and his affection for the slightly cantankerous old lady, was genuine. When not only Quinn but also the wife from whom he's been divorced (not once but twice) decide to accompany Ona on this quest for a World Record you know you're in for a bumpy ride.

Quinn is a fairly successful jobbing musician, never short of work, certainly. We learn through Ona's conversation with Quinn as he fulfils the odd-job slot left vacant by his deceased son, that his son felt him to be a very good musician. But Quinn's dedication to his trade is a thorn in his side after his son's death. As far as Quinn is concerned, he wasn't there for him. And of course, living with this once it cannot be rectified is heart-wrenching. Equally as difficult is realising that so distant were the pair, that Quinn doesn't always feel grief for his son. Finding himself learning about his own offspring through time spent with Ona is also difficult to palate. Quinn is confused and flawed and I warmed to him immediately. Just thinking about him and his journey of self-discovery brings a lump to my throat. But it's not all tugs and heart-strings, Quinn's resigned, off-the-wall mode of communication frequently made me laugh out loud.

Ex-wife, Belle is also hurting, prone to sharp retorts and cutting put-downs which upset Quinn more than she may realise, but she has her own issues. After all, she is in a position none of us could bear to be in. Although less likeable at the beginning, she is an equally well-drawn character.

And then there's the writing. This is a book where I was torn between reading on because it's one of those paradoxical stories which is slow moving in essence but also a page turner, and flitting back to re-read a passage of such skilful, evocative writing. It's a traditional style of narrative: pithy comment told through intricate observation of people and behaviours. But using Ona's amusing and often irritated recorded answers to the boy's questions - the easiest way, he'd decided, to chronicle Ona's life-story - not to mention the lists of Guinness Book of Records stats and facts speckling the plot as a constant reminder of the boy's presence, it's an original style of writing, too.

On the surface the story is Ona's. It's about her escape from the shackles of her age after the realisation has been thrust upon her that she has been waiting to die since she was ninety - and yet she's still here. But it's as much a story about the deceased boy and his troubled parents and what they can all learn from each other. And let's not forget the amusing spectacle of the motley crew as they engage in their quest to see Ona in the record books. It's a good romp and a very thoughtful one.

This story gave me goose bumps, brought sobs and smiles and was one of those reminders that whilst humans can be so complex, they are generally rather lovely underneath.

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood, published by Headline Review. RRP £7.99 (paperback).

Eating My Words

I'll be honest, I've always scoffed a little about NaNoWriMo, or NaNo.  It isn't the concept, I think that's wonderful, but, well: November. November is my problem with it. November is the month this marathon of daily writing of a mere 1,660 words towards the first 50,000 word draft of your next novel, takes place. November. You mean the November which is the eleventh month of the year, the one before the twelfth, when the clocks have gone back and the fire is crackling, Apprentice is hotting up and the hot pot has left a satisfying lump in your stomach, making it pretty impossible to trudge back up the stairs to the pc on your desk where you've been all day?

Not to work, obviously, for this is November, but to online shop.

I've joked - half joked - forgive me, that the month of November for NaNo was ordained by a bloke or rather, the person who doesn't play Father Christmas and all his little helpers rolled into one and doesn’t organise the turkey and the trimmings, the one who does know where to find the decorations and is prepared to seek out the missing box of favourites, insisting on repairing the children's hand-made primary school baubles from the previous decade so they'll live to fight another year because, well, it's tradition isn't it? Nor is this the one who buys the cards. The cards! Write every day in November, you say? My NaNo might be better spent writing a few cards every night. That way, for the first time in my history, I might finish the whole damn lot before the eve of Christmas Eve.  

But that isn't going to happen this year because this year, when I was diligently researching NaNo for a class, something clicked.

I have spent a glorious few months immersed in everything – almost everything – writing. I've been meeting readers, signing books, doing talks and answering questions. I've been clicking my hourly updated Amazon rating more than once an hour, preparing my classes, teaching my classes, editing and mentoring.

And each time I'm asked about my fiction writing routine, I talk of the routine I used to have.

Because this year, well, I haven't really had a writing routine. I've written blog posts and book reviews and articles. I've even written the odd scene of my new novel: The Tree House, but only that. I certainly haven't had anything remotely resembling a regular commitment. And it hurts. It pains me that I'm living and breathing this novel in my head and yet my word count is so low, even if I can easily justify why. It makes me cringe when I hear myself spout to my classes: Prioritise your writing! You won't remember the bathrooms you've cleaned in a year's time, but you will remember the stories. Now we're being absolutely honest, I'll admit that the bathrooms aren't at their most sparkly either, but you get my point. And it make me sad because like running and singing and having a good laugh, nothing quite releases my endorphins like writing a thousand words.

NaNo's global word count, 9 days in

So, as the scoffing subsided, as I looked more deeply into why NaNo is so successful for so many people and as I heard myself say to somebody else, What's the worst that can happen? You don’t write 50,000 words but you write 30,000 or 20,000, it's still a whole heap more than you might have written - I found myself directing the question at me.

What's the worst that could happen? 

You know, 5,000 words would be an achievement for me at the moment.

So I did it. I registered. I have a password. I can log my word count and watch the global NaNo total word count increase, as well as the millions of words clocking up in Yorkshire alone. It is, even from this reformed cynic, quite impressive and hugely compulsive.

I won't It's unlikely I'll reach 50,000 words, not now that sleep has prioritised its time-consuming self in my life, darn it, just when I needed a few of those early hours in my pocket. I didn’t even write any words on the 1^st November, nor the four days thereafter. Not until Saturday night did I tap a single key of fiction. We were home from the fireworks. Hubbie was filling pieces of rotten greenhouse with wood hardener and I was catching up on emails (Saturday night? I'm wild, I know). The daughters were somewhere more exciting and I thought: This is NaNo. This is what it's all about. This is why we need NaNo in November. If we can write 50,000 words in this month, how easy will it be to continue the habit in December, complete with its extra little holiday? And how about January with its lack of distractions when people are staying in to tighten their belts or abstain from alcohol? If we have half, or even a quarter, of a first draft of a novel written before the first door of the Advent calendar is opened, just where will that novel be by Easter?

I didn't walk up the stairs, I ran. Two at a time.

They weren't all new words. Some I'd scribbled in a notebook months ago and they needed typing and prettying up. But all in all, by midnight, I had 6,740 words on screen which hadn't been there before.

6,740! NaNo, I take it all back. November is a glorious month to put writing your own material back up your priority list. Because the only way to write a novel is to squeeze it in, however hard that can sometimes be. I know that, I just forgot for a while.

So, please forgive me the lack of sparkling taps or Christmas cards any time before New Year's Eve. Let's have a toast in December instead to the maddest of ideas, sometimes turning out to be the best.

Stray's Book Shop, Newark

Meanwhile, back to Glass Houses and Tea & Chemo and I will be signing both in Stray's fabulous Book Shop and Coffee Bar in Newark this Saturday, 12 November, from 10.30am. Please come and say hello if you're remotely close. I hear there's live jazz to follow and can vouch for marvellous cakes and scrummy scones. More information here.

Bakewell Book Shop, Matlock

I'm also taking part in an Author's Evening from 7pm on Monday 14th November at the Bakewell Book Shop which, you may recall, I fell in love with a couple of months ago. I'll be joining fellow writers, Charles Heathcote, Rod Shiers and Gareth Ashton for short talks and general book chat and signing. I hear there are hot drinks, wine and cakes, of course. Tickets are £3.50, more information here.  

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? 

Number One Career

The big news on Twitter last week was that being a writer was voted the most desirable profession. I was reminded of my youngest daughter years ago, not averse to the odd scribble herself, when she was asked whether she'd like to be a writer like her Mum.

No way, she said, you have to sit in the study all day, even at weekends.

Forget the home-cooked seven-a-day delicacies, the 3am home-baked birthday cakes, hugging my children before and after school, taking them - and half the team - to sports matches, stirring the vat of hot chocolate to the delight of parents stuck at work knowing I'd be on hand to take in their equally delighted freezing toe-d children when snow closed the school early.

No, 21^st century Rapunzel, that's what I was.

Writing is about hours and hours spent alone, no or little pay (for a while or forever) and rejection.

And I love it.

I love it for the flexibility writing gives me with my family life, even if my children may need to become parents themselves before they really appreciate it.

I love starting with a blank page and even before the bottom of my first cup of tea, seeing words on the screen which didn’t exist before I put them there. I decided on the plot and created the fictitious people required to bring that plot to life and that, well that blows my mind.

And I love it for weeks like this.

I love it because my stories are the only workplace where I am totally absorbed and my mind doesn't wander, the to–do list is forgotten and worries shunted to the back of my mind. I love it because it allows me to teach and nothing is more rewarding than watching light bulbs igniting in fellow happy scribblers.

And I really love it for weeks like this.

But I can't tell you exactly why. I will. Just as soon as we've agreed on a title, something on the lines of making lemonade when life gives you lemons, or it not being all bad, or silver linings.

Clearly there's still some work to do on that ...

A Plotting Pantser's Writing Process

I'm very happy to have been tagged in a blog hop, haven't done one of these for a while, and this one is called my Writing Process. 

Thankfully it isn't focusing on how I get the words on the page which amounts to little more than managing to sit down in front of the pc or one of my notebooks (you know how I love my notebooks) with the intention of writing or editing a story. Of course there are a few obstacles on route to my desk. I have a need to see the bottom of the ironing basket and to have hung out the washing because I-did-say-I-needed-my-netball-kit-tonight. And I can't really settle until I've cleaned the kitchen because it doesn't clean itself, I said, it doesn't… oh never mind. Once through my study door, I then have to negotiate the tricky writing buffer which is THE emails, in their belief that I need to hire a car every day since my holiday three years ago and have the time, inclination and finances to create three personalised photo albums and a bonus calendar on a daily basis. Then they kindly alert me to the revelation that I may have had an accident at work ten years ago which could pay me £6,000 - unlikely as I haven't worked in an office for over fifteen years and don't see a great deal of mileage in suing myself. I suppose I could have had a dreadfully debilitating accident whilst teaching but suspect that if such an event had come to pass, the mortification of humiliating myself in front of a class full of writers who would then weave the indignity into a prize-winning story would have stayed with me and thankfully, save for the odd tongue twister moment, I have no recollection of that.

The blog hop batten was passed to me by the lovely, gracious, witty and generally uber talented Lesley Richardson, copywriter extraordinaire, who is so close to getting her novel published I can almost hear the champagne fizzing from her hometown in Ireland. You can see some of Lesley's writing here. We swap 'near miss' publishing stories on a regular basis as well as tales of hair woes (the eternal frizz combat) and hair highs (life-changing frizz-taming products) which only fellow curly haired people will really understand. Yes, I know I can't really count myself in the curly haired camp at the moment, jumped, as I have, to the 'other side', but in my head, I'll always be a curly haired girl, I just haven't got the panache to be anything else.

So, now I need to answer four questions and then I get to pass the baton on myself.

What are you working on?

I was writing a third novel, The Deadline, which is a story of a girl born to a Nazi officer and growing up in Britain but instead, find myself involved with two previously written novels at the moment.  

The first is, Misguidance, a story I wrote fifteen years ago and was embarrassed to allow back into my consciousness, such was the utter drivel I remembered the 100,000 words to be. However, happening upon it whilst dusting off the rusting filing cabinet in the inner bowels of my pc to make room for my teenagers' photography habit, what I found surprised me. As expected the style was awful – contrived, first person narration for a story which quite clearly needed some third person distance. But I did, and here's the surprising bit, enjoy the story. More than enjoy it, I couldn't stop reading.

So, after submitting my second novel, Glass Houses, following one of its re-writes, I marched off into Misguidance, moving it from first to third person and bringing it up to date – my twenty year old had to stop using the land line - oh and I ditched three characters and created another three and made it a dual narrative and well, I may as well have started again.

I was 30,000 words in when I had some great feedback from an agent on Glass Houses. It was feedback on which I knew I had to act or I would never forgive myself. And so Misguidance went back into the drawer – a little happier than when it had first come out.

And so the cycle continues; at the moment I'm back on Glass Houses following suggestions from two agents who've both seen the full manuscript and given very similar feedback – both the good stuff and the could do better, Jackie Buxton…

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

Both novels are works of general fiction with strong female characters leading the plot. Where I hope they differ from books in their genre is in the choice of hero – I like to choose unlikely ones. In Glass Houses, Tori, the main character, has committed what people consider to be a heinous crime. Her 'mistake' allegedly caused an accident which killed three people and killed many more. It would be easy to despise Tori, indeed, she doesn't always help herself, but I'd like the reader to think that there for the grace of god go you or I.

Similarly in Misguidance, its main character, Evelyn, appears to have caused misery and destruction where ever she's lived, so much so that there is one solitary well-wisher at her funeral. But when her guilt-ridden neighbour looks further into Evelyn's past she sees a pattern and manages to persuade the motley crew which make up Evelyn's past to view Evelyn, and themselves, a little differently.

I suppose I want you to like the bad guy.

Why do you write what you do?

I wish I knew! I seem to feel compelled to write about personal disasters and yet I am quite a happy little soul really. I revel in hearing stories where people triumph out of adversity and personally plump for books where characters achieve happiness against the odds. Perhaps my writing is fuelled by that.

I'm also constantly amused and bemused by the eccentricity of the human species. We all say that people make mistakes, for example, that none of us is perfect and yet, friends, family members, colleagues, neighbours, you name it, can fall out for years, forever even, as the result of an impetuous comment, a single irrational action or some badly timed honesty. In other words: a mistake. It's so easy to shatter what we've worked towards and once broken, it can't be re-built to look the same as it did before. This fragility in what we hold dear is a concept which fascinates me and has certainly leaked into both my novel plots so far.

How does your Writing process work?

Scrivener - highly recommended

In the line which runs between the writing process of (flying by the seat of their) pantsers and the plotters of the writing world, I am squarely in the middle. There's nothing I enjoy more than sitting down at the pc or with my notebook and bashing out the next 10,000 words of the plot which I didn't know existed until my characters pulled them from my brain and poured them thorough my fingers onto the page. However I have to do some work before I can get to that stage. Usually when I'm not at my desk, and most often when I'm running, driving or even cleaning (much as I despise it), I'll bash out an idea in my head. But if I can't clearly see the reason for writing the story, at least one of the characters who will make my story happen and how the story's going to end, then I won't even put pen to paper. Like a plotter, I have to have this scaffolding before I can start. After that my writing process is the anteater's tongue; a sort of tether rolled out to its full extent on page one and then quickly rolled in pulling the story with it along a clear trajectory to the ending. How the characters choose to dance on the tongue, well that's up to them.

Other than that? I use lots of cups of tea, way too many print outs to be good for the environment, the wonderful Scrivener software so that I have all my ideas and chapters on the computer rather than covering the floors of a study, bedroom and landing. I also use different locations. In different places I spot howlers and see beyond blocks which had made my writing stall. I suppose some may see this as an excuse to visit an array of different coffee shops. I couldn’t possibly comment.

So, what have you allowed to fester in a drawer for years, writing or otherwise, and been pleasantly surprised when it's reappeared? Please share!

Now for my own two tags in the Writing Process Blog Hop.

First up is Annalisa Crawford  whose wonderful blog I'd describe as 'soulful humour' - although at the moment it's all just very exciting over there as she has a new book out, a collection of short stories called, Our Beautiful Child. And thank you, Annalisa, for always finding time to leave a comment on my blog, bless you :)

My second choice is Jane Alexander who writes thought-provoking, often quirky, tales of her observations and findings as she travels around England and further afield in the search for better health (physically and spiritually). Catch Jane's blog here.

Pebbles

Sometimes someone chucks a pebble onto the path we're walking and we trip before staggering slowly back to our feet.

Every time a sizeable pebble has been thrown in my direction I've sought solace in writing, either in my own in the form of a diary or in that of others -which has been more tricky. Whenever I've wanted to find real life stories of people who've faced similar pebbles and, most crucially, are walking upright again, I haven't really found them.

When my boyfriend died when he was only 17, I searched for that book but I never found it. Years later I vowed I'd write a version of my story in the hope it might comfort people in their darkest moments that there IS life after the death of a loved one – even at 16 when the world is still so gloriously black and white. But I never wrote it.

When my daughter had a stroke, only 15 small months of age, I devoured websites, support groups, non-fiction and even fiction to find an inspirational story of a baby with half a body paralysed who'd then gone on to lead a happy, fulfilled life. And even though I know the world is packed with such success stories now, my 13 year old daughter being one of them, I couldn't find the story I craved back then.

So, now I learn that I have breast cancer and the path of the next few months – and years – will be well speckled with pebbles on the route to what I pray is a full recovery.

But this time, I've decided that I am going to write it down.

I'm going to blog about the journey. But I want my posts to have purpose, not just to be cathartic for me, but with the aim of calming a few nerves for those in a similar position but who are perhaps a little further back on the road. So I will only post when I feel I have something positive to say, something I've felt or learnt which might help someone in a similar position. It won't be for everyone, already I fear my humour is lurching a little into the macabre, but if I can pass on the message that having cancer is not all bad, then I'll call that a success.

You know, it's really hard to feel down when so many people are showering you with love and caring. Love really is what makes the world go round, or should be anyway. 

Have a great week!

Working With Other People

Today, I’m Celebrating The Small Things, very softly and quietly in fact, creeping in the side door, hoping if I can just sneak onto a pew at the back with the merest of small waves only to interested parties, the rest of the congregation won’t notice that it’s Saturday and I’m a day late.

But I just had to share the love, the love of working with other people. This is not an everyday occurrence when you’ve made the dubious career choice of writing cocooned in the empty study of an even emptier house while the rest of the world is either out playing or thinks you’re actually out playing.

Ok, I realise that the rest of the world isn’t playing, rather working, albeit in grinning teams of people all patting each other on the back – oh, there I go again – but it was better for my story to paint a desolate picture.

I love to write slightly more than I dislike not being with other people so any chance to work with others I snatch up. That’s probably why I love teaching and my editing work so much.

Recently I found out that I’d had my short story, A Life with Additives accepted for publication in the anthology, Stories for Homes which intends to raise money for Shelter, the charity for the homeless. This is a charity which is close to my heart as my parents worked tirelessly for Shelter when I was growing up. So I was double delighted.

The anthology is the brain child of Sally Swingewood and Debi Alper who also came up with the inspired strategy of pairing short story contributors together to help edit each other’s stories. It was a pleasure working with my writing team mate. Thus far, he's managed to stay away from all forms of social media (what IS his secret?) so to protect his privacy, we’ll call him Bob. His story is hysterical. I can’t divulge more at the moment but suffice it to say, after stifling giggles in my favourite writing place, a well-known coffee shop in Harrogate with my extra hot cappuccino on hand, one paragraph had me laughing out loud (my children would tell me I can’t use LOL and I tend to agree) like the archetypal deranged writer in the corner.

Aside from the joys of working in a team, the process reminded me how much I relish feedback. No, really, I do. Of course it would be wonderful if your partner came back with a gasp and a scratch of their head as to how they could possibly help you to make this ground-breaking story of exquisite excellent-ness any better and by the way, had you thought of entering it for the Bridport Prize? But that isn’t going to happen. No two people will ever see the same in a piece of writing. No two people would ever write a story in exactly the same way. And that’s a good thing. That fresh eye showing exactly how the words have bounced off the page on first viewing - let’s not forget that readers of books don’t actually have the time nor inclination to pore over our missives in the same way we do - always throws up howlers and confusions. I’m so happy that I’ve received feedback on my personal howlers and confusions, if a little embarrassed on occasion.

So, I’m celebrating lots of things this *Friday*:

- that my story is to be published
- that the anthology will raise money for a vital charity
- that I was assigned to Bob and his brilliant story and for him pointing out before any readers got to it that the repetition of the musical flute and the fluted of the bowl looked like the main character had a mixing bowl hanging from her lips
- that I’ve had the joy of working with real people this week
- that, although I must work this weekend, the sun is shining so I'm off to do some in the garden.

I hope you're celebrating large and small - please, come share the love...

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?