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...

The Staples in Life

The first known stapler was
handmade for King Louis XV

I’m worried about the future of staplers. I admit, I haven’t given mine a great deal of attention over the past few years and should have shown greater appreciation for its capability and reliability. Quietly it binds clumps of unruly papers together with little complaint and, despite a bent staple in need of extraction with the help of some long scissors occasionally or the odd stapled finger through particularly ambitious attempts at multi-tasking – but we can hardly blame the machine for that - it never goes wrong.

I fear the humble piece of paper will disappear from our lives and what then the use for a stapler? I’m typing this on my pc. I could have done it on an iPad, a tablet or even a phone. What I haven’t done is written it out on a piece of paper first and this from someone who likes nothing more than the feeling of pen making marks on a blank page. If even notebook hoarders like me are using paper less, surely its days are numbered?

And then there’s the pen. Unsurprisingly, as the owner of multiple parker pens, (each refill capable of writing 600 metres of characters, apparently, or 500 of mine, my writing being particularly large and ever more illegible) I don’t want to see them go. Where are they currently made? I have visions of a hive of industry of Charlie and his Chocolate Factory proportions bubbling and fizzing away to bring us this simple contraption. And I wonder if these factories will be turned into flats.

Will print presses go the same way? Will the printed book cave under electronic pressure and the paper versions be confined to the shelves of nostalgic old relics like me, secretly leafing through the remains of the towering To Be Read pile under the dead of night, the guilt of the trees slain for their production weighing heavy?

If the printed book goes? What then of book shelves? Granted they take up a huge amount of space, particularly for those of us who feel the need to keep a book which will never be revisited, just-in-case-someone-wants-to-borrow-it (I never read a book twice, I have too many in my TBR pile for that), but used books to me are another person’s ornaments. They’re not entirely necessary but the sight of them all lined up, the colour they add to the room, the enjoyment I associate with reading, makes me smile. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes a house a home but without the spines of books representing the worlds I’ve frequented and those where I’ve yet to go, mine would feel like something was missing.

If I took the stapler, paper, notebooks, pens and books from my study, it would look like this: 

Yes, I know it wouldn’t need dusting but I don’t do too much of that anyway. Yes I know other things would replace the missing items and I dare say I’d become ridiculously attached to those, too.

But I don’t want to.

I want a world which doesn’t need to be re-charged, which can’t be accessed with such ease that it becomes acceptable to make notes whilst supposedly also in conversation. I want a world where my children talk to their friends on the bus rather than watch YouTube clips on their iPads, where they listen to the teacher in a lesson rather than message their friends in another class. I want a world where you can eat supper and have a drink with friends and nobody feels the need to check that somebody more interesting isn’t texting them or worse, that they’re missing something at work. I want a world where people go on holiday rather than, ‘will be contactable via email’ so that they and their family life returns fully refreshed.

I’m still clinging on to most of that so, for now, I’m Celebrating the Small Things. I’m celebrating the fact that the stapler is still regularly brought out of my drawer.

Clumsy Oaf Award ... would be more apt

Three cups of tea, a handful of mixed almonds, a banana and a 5am start and I *think* I may have my grateful response to the lovely, Amanda Saint’s Liebster Award. It’s taken me a short while to ponder the important things in life – milk, white or dark chocolate, she asks, is it acceptable to answer, ‘all’? - and wince at old memories but I’ve had fun. Thanks so much Amanda!

Amanda isn’t just a great fiction and copywriter but she also runs writers’ retreats, principally in the South of England. And… I think we’ve managed to persuade her to venture up to the Yorkshire Dales in 2014 – I’ll keep you posted. You can find out more about Amanda and her work here Amanda Saint  

The Liebster award asks for the answer to eleven questions, a list of eleven random facts and eleven bloggers whom I’d fervently recommend.

So, let’s go:

What do you do to relax when you suffer from insomnia?
Well, insomnia isn’t really something I know. Give me a flat surface and permission to shut my eyes and sleep will generally follow within a nanosecond or two. However, if it takes any longer than that, I deduce that I’m simply not tired enough, get up, run a bath and read a book. It’s as if someone’s given me a spare hour in the day so I have no problem with it. I do realise that this might be a bit galling for the insomniacs I know and love out there and you have my utter sympathy. Falling asleep is one of life’s simple pleasures and I cannot begin to imagine how awful it must be not to be able to sleep on demand.

What’s the worst holiday you ever had?
Hmm, I’ve had a few which could have been better in parts – usually weather and canvas related - but none that I’d like to erase from memory. The worst couple of days on holiday, however? That’s simple.  May I refer you to Plant Pots and Holiday Nightmares and the screaming two year old on a campsite with an undiagnosed dislocated elbow. Can you imagine? Not a soul got any sleep that night.

Oh, and that screaming toddler was ours.

I spent the night worrying about the reason for the screaming and worrying about being lynched by sleep-deprived holiday-makers and the next day worrying about unhappy campers realising that we were the parents of the child at the root of the sleep carnage induced the night before.

Where’s your favourite place to write?
This is simple. It’s ‘in my feet’ and I’d like to refer you to A writing Place  where I, hopefully, explain it better.

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Tofino in Canada. But I’d pick up the whole of Canada, and its wonderful people, and plop it right next to Britain because leaving friends and family is the only thing which stops me moving there tomorrow. That and a visa.

White , dark or milk chocolate?
Milk.

What’s your favourite thing to have on toast?
Bananas and honey.

Which book do you wish you’d written and why?
Brave New World because the world and its obsession with technology with total disregard for human jobs (personal impact on a family aside for a moment, does anyone every think about the fact that machines can’t pay taxes?) upsets me on a daily basis. But whenever I think I should write a book about where we’re headed, I remember Mr Huxley’s beaten me to it. Meanwhile, I’m fighting my own crusade: I will not use automatic tills in shops. Nobody’s noticed, of course, but it makes me feel better.

Film adaptations of novels – love them or hate them?
Good question! I don’t rush to see a film of a book I’ve loved. In fact, I’m more likely to want to watch the adaptation of a book I haven’t enjoyed too much to see if I can find in the film version, what I missed in print. If the film is based on a favourite book of mine, I can watch but it’s with a bit of a squinty eye. Sebastian Faulks’ Bird Song is right up there in my top 10 reads, for example, but, and massive apologies to Eddie Redmayne whom I adore in other films, particularly Les Mis, was one TV adaptation I couldn’t bear. I found it turgid and one dimensional. However, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay is my favourite book of all time and also one of my favourite films.

Do you think Al Pacino is overrated as an actor?
Overrated? Give the man a knighthood!

Coffee or tea?
Tea. Unless I’m out with friends and then it’s an extra-hot cappuccino, please.

Would you ever do a sky dive?
No! I like sport where either one foot or a wheel is touching the ground at any time. I think I’m far too accident prone to consider anything else.

11 random facts? Some you may already know…

1. I have an inability to watch TV, drink wine or eat chocolate on my own.
2. I like rain (sorry!) - you can get all your jobs done and write a novel, without distraction.
3. I was reprimanded for dropping a burger from the grill in a well-known fast food eatery where I was working because I went to put it in the bin.
4. My hair only went curly when I was 14.
5. My Eustachian tubes are too narrow.
6. I have three sisters, a half-sister, half-brother, three step-sisters, six nephews, five nieces and one step-niece and two daughters who yes, get a lot of birthday presents.
7. When I was ten I broke my arm twice in five minutes.
8. I had the most horrendous hallucinations waking up from a general anaesthetic that had me clinging on to the arm of the anaesthetist until the poor man could finally convince me that they weren’t real.
9. I told him (the anaesthetist) I loved him but then I always fall in love with the anaesthetist when I have a GA – with varying degrees of embarrassment.
10. I have a massive phobia of swimming in the sea. The trouble is, I only tend to remember this when I’ve already swum out a little way…



Utter Clumsy Carnage

11. I am a clumsy oaf. This month I have managed to prang my car (for which I am deeply embarrassed), drop a weight on the glass hob and smash it (for which I am deeply sorry) and spill an entire cup of tea on our beige carpet (for which I am cross as I’m sick of scrubbing at it with ‘spot’ cleaner – try ‘flood’ cleaner and I might have more success). Even chanting the no crying over spilt milk mantra does wear a little thin when the amount of milk you’ve spilt could fill a small tanker.

If you look closely, you can see two people. Neither of these is me.

Now to find 11 original questions of my own. I apologise, this is more difficult than it looks…

1. Cheese or chocolate?
2. If you had to go on Britain’s Got Talent, what would you do? (Apart from run away …)
3. What’s your best childhood memory?
4. Favourite song lyric?
5. If you could ask one question of your great-grandmother, what would it be?
6. Have you ever lived abroad?
7. What’s your dream job?
8. What job couldn’t they pay you enough money to do?
9. If you were prime minster, what would be your first priority?
10. Twitter or Facebook?
11. What would your perfect day look like?

My list of eleven. Difficult as ever but I’ve decided to go for five blogs I’ve discovered over the past few months and some old favourites. Please do go and take a look, they’re worth it!

• MJ Joachim 
• Get On With It - Karen, you’ve just answered something similar so I understand if you’d rather not respond this time (but would love to see your answers if you could squeeze this in…)
• AJ Goode
• Journey Girl - Cate
• Rowena Dunn 
• Excuse Me While I Note That Down
• Standing Naked at a Bus Stop
• Sarsm's Blog
• Alison Percival - Alison, you’ve been a bit quiet of late, come back!
• Between The Sheets
• Gap Years - The Book

Liebster Award Rules:

• Thank the blogger who presented you with the Liebster Award, and link back to his or her blog. 
• Answer the 11 questions from the nominator; list 11 random facts about yourself, and create 11 questions for your nominees. 
• Present the Liebster Award to 11 bloggers, who have blogs with 200 followers or less, whom you feel deserve to be noticed.
• Leave a comment on the blogs letting the owners know they have been chosen. (No tag backs.)
• Upload the Liebster Award image to your blog. 

Instructions Enclosed

I’ve been away, only upstairs in my study but nonetheless, cocooned in another world, immersed in words - some my own, most those of others - on the Writers' Workshop Self-editing Course. It was sent by those writing gods in the sky via a well-placed tweet, neatly packaged up with my name all over it.

I *may* have mentioned my excitement about the fantastic feedback I had from an agent who read my latest manuscript and thus motivated me to freeze work on my second novel, Misguidance, in favour of an editing frenzy of Glass Houses. We need more of Etta, the agent told me. So, me, my notebook and a good dose of Scrivener set to work writing more scenes and extending existing ones.

What I didn’t tell you, was that I was doing it wrong. Not all of it, I’d like to point out, but Etta, my lead supporting role, poor love, she was wrong.

We don’t just want more of Etta, my insightful course tutors and writing buddies told me, we want more: more love, more heart-string-tugging, more despair. We need to be thrown deep inside, allowed to delve around, pull out her heart and examine what makes it beat. We want her on display, we need to see her, really see her.

It’s obvious now. But sometimes you have to be slapped around the face with the full force of the 380 sheets of A4 manuscript before you really see it. 

But while my brain was being washing-machined with questions, ideas and more questions, something had to give - and that was life. Together with the bills which weren’t paid and the sheets which weren’t changed, my books lay forlorn, untouched, forgotten. Instructions for a Heatwave lay open at page 58 like the sails on the Mary Celeste which is staggering for a book that, like every other of the wonderful, Maggie O’Farrell’s, in any other time of my life, would be adjudged un-put-down-able. And my towering TBR pile stood stock still, save for the odd tremor caused by the vibrations as my head beat itself against the desk on its way to my great light bulb of a moment that we’ll just call, ‘More Etta’.

Six weeks on and I have been flung out of the end of the course and told to get re-writing. Normal life is starting to seep back in. At the last count I was on page 101 of Instructions for a Heatwave and I have moved my tutor, Debi Alper’s Trading Tatiana to the top of my TBR pile; it’s the least you can do when an author changes your editing life. And as a reminder of how reading for me is one of the best and most simple of life’s many pleasures, my reviews of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows as well as The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue are available to read in Chase Magazine, page 16.

I particularly adored these books, the first a recommendation and the second, because, like many others, I was blown away by Room. It came as a surprise to me that The Sealed Letter bears little resemblance to Room, save for the distinctive author’s voice. Personally? I think it’s even better. 

And finally, while I was away I wasn't completely forgotten by the lovely and talented, Amanda Saint who nominated me for her 'Liebster' award. I was truly touched and will dedicate my next post to a response. As my commitment to Celebrating the Small Things has also been a little neglected of late, it seems fitting to dedicate my Liebster award to the Small Things – even if getting any award is slightly bigger in my world than that :)

Let Them Eat Cake!

I’ve been to a few parties lately, I’m delighted to say. There was my friend’s 50^th where I came away feeling relieved that actually, even at around half a century, we danced for hours and looked more young than old - only to be flattened by my children who’d been waitressing there, had ample chance to view all invited guests and felt compelled to comment on just how ancient we all were.

I also went to a friend’s 30^th a few months ago, although to be honest, I can’t claim to be invited to too many of those these days. But, despite wearing a bag over my head and the highest heels to mask the frumpy inadequacy of having fourteen more years to my tally than most of the invitees, I had a fantastic time with the wonderful guests and came away thinking they were no different to me. Thankfully, my daughters were not in the vicinity to pass comment.

I’m going to a 21^st this week - anybody know where I can find a pair of 24 inch heels? – and this got me thinking about a post I wrote a couple of years ago when my blog was quite new. A whopping eight people read it. (Any new bloggers out there? Stick with it, it does get better!) So I figured I could get away with re-posting it. Mum? I’m sorry, you’ve read this before...

I don’t know why people get upset about being 40. There’s a whole industry devoted to telling us we should, but I say, it's time to have your cake and eat plenty of it.

Hear me out on this.

My teenage memory of my father’s 40^th was that he spent the entire previous year moaning about it which really rather overshadowed the whole event. I thought it was a bit of a shame, not to mention slightly tedious to live with, after all, he didn’t seem any different to me when the calendar flicked to July 4^th of THAT year.

About three years ago I started celebrating 40^th birthdays with a vengeance. It started with my older sister’s where we got to dance with Kevin Adams – swoon - the choreographer from Fame Academy during a pamper weekend with our other sisters. I left the three day weekend topped up with love and joie de vivre. Every few months thereafter another party popped up. Champagne flowed and friends buzzed with the excitement, and the planning, of the special day – a lot like a wedding really – a whole group of people keen to party with you because they like you.

I don’t think it gets much better than that.

And then came mine. It was a surprise, not the birthday you understand, but the party really was. I know, it was ridiculously naive not to suspect. Everybody knows I love a surprise – and magic - and that’s what I got. I will remember that party for ever. My 40^th year was a bumper year of celebrations. Three fortieths in one week was the record, like Four Weddings and a Funeral all over again.

And there’s the rub.

I’m sad to say that I have been to funerals too, three for people who didn’t make it to 45. I think the least I can do is be grateful for being one of those fortunate enough to reach another milestone.

And nobody could claim they didn’t know. There’s no cackling imp on your shoulder one morning, hissing the words to Happy Birthday before announcing that, although you thought you were 20 with no dependents, no money and no cares, the harsh reality is that you’re double that. 

I didn’t feel any different when I tipped over into the forties, save for feeling a little more special for a few days because all my lovely friends and family had made such a special effort for me, but my hair didn’t suddenly sport a grey hue (well and truly sprouting now though, isn’t it? – Ed), nor did, alas, my spots disappear back to my teenager years where they really should have stayed in the first place. My dodgy hip didn’t sort itself out as a good will gesture but nor did it get worse overnight. The things I ‘hadn’t done’ at 40 I also hadn’t done at 39 and the things I have on my to-do list – getting Glass Houses published, please - well I’m a whole lot closer to them happening in my forties than I was two years ago.

So you see, I think it’s all a big con, an inspired ploy by the greeting cards industry. And I propose a counter move. I shall set up my own niche market: the Formidable Forty-Ones because surely 41 has the potential to be much more depressing? When do you ever hear anybody ask more than a day in advance, ‘What are you doing for your 41^st?’ or, ‘Are you planning a surprise party for [insert beloved’s name]’s 41st? Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’ Do you ever see anybody collecting photos in a clandestine manner for an embarrassing 41^st slide show? Or having them enlarged to A2 and giggling with excitement at the result with the bemused printer? 

No. And this needs to be rectified. My best selling card will be, ‘No surprises, no big presents, no bubbly...’ and as the chintzy music plays on opening, the words, ‘but we still love you all the same,’ will spring out. Corny? Oh yes. But if you can’t be slushy on your friend’s 41^st, when can you be?

Happy Day to all of you! And may you always feel younger than you are. (Unless you’re eight, of course, and then it’s the other way around – Ed.)

Don't Spill your Soup.

I've been too focussed on the ‘Etta problem’, aka trying to make the reader love my unassuming, guilt-ridden, loyal, stubborn, big-hearted, unswervingly ethical, joint main character, just as much as I do, and hiding eggs for the Easter egg hunt (what do you mean, aren’t they teenagers? Well, hubbie’s 42 and he’s never let a pesky little thing like age get in the way of a chocolate scramble) to think about posting. Even though, dear blog, I have missed thee over the past two weeks.

However, I am desperate to tell you about two books which really surprised me in how much I enjoyed them. The first, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, would certainly have passed me by had it not been for the furore I stumbled across over at that large internet book and kitchen sink seller. A reviewer had let out an enormous stinking, howler of a spoiler. The cover has far too many silver stars and sprinkles of glitter for my usual higher echelons of cerebral taste - ok, I'm just not drawn to books with stars on - but the review war had my interest piqued.

Before reading Me Before You, I admit I thought the heated discussion was all a little unnecessary. If somebody was going to get so upset by a spoiler then I wondered if they might prefer to stay away from the high-risk strategy of reading reviews. However, after being absolutely engrossed in and emotionally battered by this tale of a quadriplegic contemplating euthanasia, I was bound to admit that the spoiler really did have the potential to ruin reading and wasn’t one which would be easily forgotten.

Have I hidden the spoiler well enough? I truly hope so!

The second book is The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend. Now, I admit to turning my back on Ms Townsend after devouring Adrian Mole’s teenage hood, his Cappuccino Years and even the hard-backed version of The Wilderness Years after happening upon The Queen and I from many years previously. 

The farce, her usual parallels and satire and her wonderful ability to get away with being delightfully un-politically correct whilst being sub-consciously thoughtful all at the same time are all on top form in the Queen and I. However, this novel was my first taste of feeling used and cheated as a reader. I cannot tell you what happens at the end of the book to cause me to throw it across the room and vow never to spend my precious pennies on a Townsend classic again, for fear of issuing a spoiler of Me Before You proportions. (Happily I hadn’t read her books in order and had snuck in all the Adrian Moles to date before my vow so that I wasn’t forced to renege on my principals on sight of a new launch.) Suffice it to say, never have I remembered the ending of a book so precisely and with so much grinding of teeth.

However, something about the title compelled me to pick up The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year and after laughing out loud at the blurb in the middle of a quiet book store, I decided to give a Townsend novel ‘one more go’. Let’s just say, this book isn’t to be taken too seriously but it makes me smile just thinking about the spilled soup which served as the catalyst to one lady’s decision to turn her back on the world.

I’ve reviewed both of these books over in Chase Magazine, the supplement to the Rotherham Advertiser which you can view here Page 36/37.

Next month I’m reviewing Emma Donoghue’s, The Sealed Letter which has propelled me down a path of literary fiction, so absorbed was I in the plight of the fickle Helen and her hard-done-by husband, and The Beginner’s Goodbye by Anne Tyler of which I’m only half way through, and totally engrossed so no spoilers please!

What are you reading at the moment? Please share!

Happy To Judge

At five o’clock this morning I slunk out of bed, gathered up my phone, three empty mugs and a pile of washing and made my way to the only place to go when the small hand is still registering ‘5’: the kettle.

Sometimes I put the washing on while the water boils, occasionally I pair odd socks but today, I read my emails. Skimming past the daily list of price reductions at local hostelries and hairdressers (engaging willpower of pandemic proportions as March is tightening-my-belt month), the daily call from a national blind making company (I’m not sure how many windows they think I have) and the weekly reminder from the French catalogue, of which, beautiful as the little girls’ dresses truly are, I can’t quite imagine my teenage children in white lace and purple velvet, I noticed that BBC Radio Two had been in touch.

I’d been hoping for this email.

‘Congratulations,’ it said, ‘you have been selected as one of our volunteer judges for 500 words 2013’ – which means that I will be scoring a batch of short stories in the first round of judging in Chris Evan’s massively popular children’s writing competition. Excited? I have floated down from the ceiling for a moment to explain why:

1. I was moved to real tears by the poignancy and brilliance of last year’s winning entries so decided way back in May 2012 that I would find a way to be involved this year.

2. There’s something about children, anybody’s children, doing something well that just makes me want to cry. I’m not sure I can explain why that’s a good thing but it’s certainly right up there with the list of happenings in my life which make me feel alive.

3. Because I would feel an irrational sense of pride if I happened to be the judge who put forward one of the eventual winning entries.

4. Because I might read the story of the next Francesca Simon (I think my daughter possibly was the biggest Horrid Henry fan), Anthony Horowitz, Malorie Blackman…

5. Because I am ever so slightly in love with Chris Evans (I’ve always been a sucker for a GSOH and a PMA). And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be one of the lucky winners of the golden tickets awarded at random to 25 of the volunteer judges who get to attend the live broadcast of Chris’ show at the Hay Festival on 31^st May. I have a one in eighty chance of being a winner which, put like that, sounds like an odds-on cert, she says, finger hovering over the link for a favoured shopping website with the force-for-good clearing its throat loudly from its place on her shoulder, to remind her that it's belt-tightening-month. It’s ok, I have no time for shopping, I have three stories a day to read until the deadline of 22 March. 

Do you know any of the entrants? I wish every one of them the very best of luck. Whatever the results, I hope they’ll keep writing because winning entry or not, there are few things in life quite as fulfilling as writing stories.

I'm Celebrating The Small Things - click on the link to join us!

Small Job, Big Task

As part of sparkly VikLit’s happy bloghop, Celebrate The Small Things, I’ve been challenged to talk about the small things which make us happy. And I happen to have some big news about a small project which took on unprecedented proportions but is today, finally, finished.* It’s my beautiful, re-painted, re-furbished and inflated (it really wasn’t this big before) study. And its wonderful calm and cleanliness is making me supremely happy. Work, you say? Bring it on!

*Ok, it isn’t completely finished, (I only started on the project five months ago and did you ever hear about Rome?) as my notice boards still need to be hung up. Essential as they are, they will make the study seem a little more cluttered again so today I’m going to call it finished and show you a picture before we all start to unpick the good work.

  

Shameful! Click to see how it got quite so bad.

‘Sorting Out The Study’ had been on our to-do list since we moved into this house eight years ago and finally, we had a date: December 2012. Meanwhile, in November, I would, ‘clear it out’. I took the job very seriously, sifting through the junk, every photo and every piece of paper in my determination to keep only the absolutely essential. The five months the task took I blame on the ‘photo box’, reams of my teenager’s pre-school artwork, my slightly baffling need to keep copies of every freelance project ever worked and several notes to boot and, ah yes, the diaries I wrote between the age of 13 and 23. But all that work! It would be such a shame if nobody read them from cover to cover, wouldn’t it?

New desk beginnings.

There was a gremlin in our plans. With the hugely expensive debacle of the boiler in December, as detailed in A Damp and a Freeze A Damp and a Freeze, I’d put the new study on the *back-burner* for a while. However, my very lovely and equally handy husband, who likes few things more than an excuse to browse an internet auction site which begins with ‘E’ and ends in ‘bay’, secretly sourced some end-of-line wood officially assigned to kitchen work surfaces and set about building a desk and shelving. He paid £400 for the wood. The nice man at the wood merchant’s, who agreed to saw the pieces down to size for a few pennies in the ‘beer pot’, assured hubbie, with much in-taking of breath and nose-tapping, that we would normally have paid five times as much.

Nearly there.

With some careful planning of how to re-use parts of the old desk and re-arrange some of the existing cupboards, and with the purchase of one pot of paint and two packs of dye for the curtains, the entire job came to less than £500. Wasn’t that the budget for Changing Rooms? And not a staple in sight.

Et voila! Note to self: tidy pc cables.

Every day’s a school day, as my French friend frequently quotes and this is what I’ve learnt, or perhaps been reminded of, over the past five months of the Study Job.

Even if the tax man says, ‘Keep This’ with a demonic point of his stubby cigar of a finger, it doesn’t mean you have to keep a record of every pencil ever bought since 1998. Ditto electricity statements, last year’s totally defunct house insurance and the MOT certificate for the car you sold three years ago.

It’s so much easier to discard children’s artwork if it can be left alone for ten years after its production (NB. Factor browsing and cooing time into its disposal).

Photos which do not make it to the photo album do not need to be destroyed and thus should not heap guilt onto the shoulders of the principal house keeper on every sight of the bulging box. Ok, boxes. Indeed, the small house required to store them should be off-set against the great waves of reminiscent joy on their re-discovery. However, easy access is not required, and frankly not conducive to the industrious purpose of a study, so a dusty corner of the loft might be a more suitable place for their housing (loft conversions may be possible).

A4 plastic wallets were of far superior quality in the good old days, as were cardboard index dividers. Gosh, things were made to last in the much maligned nineties!

Notice boards benefit from a clear out, rather than an additional box of pins.

It’s ok not to be able to get rid of cherished favourite novels but they don’t need to be on sight for you to know they’re there. Double rows of books are perfectly acceptable.

Just because something doesn’t have a specific purpose, doesn’t mean it does not have a place in a room where many hours are spent. Although, for the greater good, it is reasonable to fabricate a use to help the husband’s understanding – the door hanging heart, for example, would it double up as a stencil?

I have a lot of notebooks. I’ve spoken of my love of notebooks here before. It will be a sad day for me if I-pads, smartphones, tablets etc. etc. usurp the art of hand-writing. I know I should embrace the times but I’ve always been something of a luddite, way before I reached three score years and something. Besides, they do look pretty, don’t they?

I hope you’ve had a happy week and may all your projects be fun ones which unexpectedly take half of the allocated time!

A Damp and a Freeze

A Squash and a Squeeze by the wonderful writer/ artist duo of Julia Donaldson and Azel Scheffler, was, much to my delight, my youngest daughter’s favourite book a lifetime ago. Only young, I think the fable of its message passed her by, she simply loved the sing-song rhyme, joining in with, ‘Wise old man won’t you help me please, my house is a squash and a squeeze,’ with gusto. However, I’ve been referring to the brilliant simplicity of this tale ever since.

Move over Aesop.

A tired old lady seeks the help of the local vicar when her house on the farm just feels too small. It’s a fair gripe, the house is poky. Instead of instructing the Hand Of God, however, the vicar commands the lady to fill her house, one by one, with her animals. How on earth will that help? the woman cries but, nonetheless, trusts in the vicar’s wisdom.

Once she’s filled her house with every one of her animals then summarily removed them all, the house no longer feels a Squash and a Squeeze but positively roomy. Clever vicar.

A few weeks ago, my boiler broke. I returned after a night out to find the floor around it flooded but, once ascertained that this was indeed boiling water and not oil and I would thus not need to evacuate the sleeping household, I simply switched off the boiler and hoped that my Carlsberg of a boiler engineer would be able to fix it quickly and cheaply the next day.

Oh dear.

The new one - not so different from the old.

The boiler had died. Over the next three weeks the floor had to be replaced as the leak had caused it to rot and my washing machine was threatening to slip through into the foundations below. Meanwhile, I had to amass quotes with constant sharp-intaking of breath. Phew! Oil (gas hasn't made it to our village yet) boilers are expensive.

During the wait for the new boiler, I:

- learnt that there is an optimum temperature under which clothes, particularly children’s school skirts, will not dry

- rekindled my love for our wood burning stove, the kettle and the oil-filled radiator.

- fell in love with the immersion heater

- realised that the immersion heater does not heat more than enough water for half a shower and was reminded that being stranded with a head-full of shampoo and the deluge of cold water to wash it away, is tantamount to torture

- realised that tumble driers still shrink clothes however desperate the washer woman’s plight.

- used over a pound of sugar in the oil engineer’s tea. Honestly – three spoons in every cup and skinny as a pole with, as far as I could tell, great teeth.

- learnt that even fingerless gloves are not conducive to typing

- adored the winter quilt

Now, I don’t believe that a boiler breaking down when you are fortunate enough to have a rainy day fund to tap into (do you see what I did there?), is anywhere near a crisis. Yes, our health is the most important pre-requisite to happiness and four walls also help a lot. But I have to say, when the temperature plummeted and my fingers became so cold I had to plunge them into a bowl of water direct from the boiled kettle (I know, I know), my eldest daughter was going to bed in pyjamas, gloves and slippers and my youngest announced that she hadn’t had a shower for four days because she kept missing the one-shower-a-night slot, the passage from old boiler to new did become a little trying.

The Carlsberg engineer fitted the new boiler in only two of the allotted three days. The house warmed up like a Ready Brek advert and, once my family were showered and cleansed and packed off to warm beds, I had a bath; a full, steaming, bubbly bath. Never has hot water felt so luxurious nor bubbles so soft. How much do I now appreciate constant hot water and warm toes? The instant gratification of pink skin again, was almost worth the time without.

This was my Squash and a Squeeze moment. Or should I say, my Damp and a Freeze?

Have you had a Squash and a Squeeze moment recently? Please share!

You just gotta love it when...

I’m particularly glad I survived my previous post’s date stone attack as I’m having a very good week.

So, I’ve been asked to teach two day courses in creative writing at the school of adult education where I take an evening class. I love teaching and secretly hoped the evening class would lead to something like this.

This week, I’ve really launched into ‘Scrivener’ which is a piece of writing software personally designed for me, it would appear, to get the piles of half print, half-scribbled paper often extending out of the study and into the hall, off the floor and on to my virtual carpet on screen. Seriously, if you are a writer who is doing any planning or re-structuring, this software is heaven-sent. I have my stubby little fingers stuffed into so many delicious pies at the moment that I’ve had to be strict and commit myself to only two hours’ work per day on the novel this month. Scrivener means that even in this limited time frame, Glass Houses is still moving on a-pace. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php 

Regular readers might be interested to know that my experiment into Larkism is firmly embedded in my daily routine now and my two hours of writing take place between 5 and 7am. It’s such a great feeling, often a relief, to have two hours of writing behind me before the rest of the family stirs.

And I had my biggest every month of page views of my blog in January – 1,800. Thank you!

I have one piece of vaguely bad news but even that is a good thing in disguise. I didn’t get the contract I wanted with the agent who was looking at my full manuscript. However, she was kind enough to send me detailed notes of suggestions on what I needed to do to make the story sing – it seems the plot and even the writing are on track but some of the characters are a bit of a tease – I hook the reader in and then leave them hanging. The agent phrased the problem in such a way that I had an instant light-bulb moment – hence the re-structuring which I’m really enjoying. It’s an exciting process because I know that whatever the fate of Glass Houses, this novel is certainly going to be a better read after the re-write.

And the other reason I’m particularly happy with life at my desk is because I’ve picked up a Versatile Blogger award from the multi-talented Karin Bachmann. Karin blogs about all things writing, being a tutor as well as a short story and novel writer, and I’m enjoying the behind the scenes posts she’s writing about her latest project,  Mord in Switzerland. This is an anthology of crime stories written with a handful of other writers with whom she appears to regularly meet for lunch. (Please can I have a job like that?) You can read Karin’s blog here: http://stories47277.blogspot.ch/2013/01/the-versatile-blogger-award.html

Now, you know what’s coming next. I have to write seven things about myself. As I had to dredge up old memories for the first time I was lucky enough to receive an award of this type and as I was really scraping the barrel for a similar award a little later, I thought I would do something slightly different this time. Because I’m feeling particularly upbeat at the moment, I thought I’d simply list seven things that I love. My disclaimer at this point, is that family and friends are a given, so I’m not going to wax lyrical about people you don’t know – wonderful as they all are.

In no particular order:

Running in the snow. There’s something so peaceful, almost ethereal, about being alone with the whiteness and the crunching under foot. I like to pull my hat down over my ears, feel the icy wind against my face and start to warm from inside out. I know it’s not for everyone but for me, this is when I feel most alive.

My first cup of tea of the day. Particularly if it’s brought to me by my lovely husband (ooops, broken my no family rule). The second cup isn’t bad either. By the eighth, I’m starting to get a bit of a fuzzy head.

Putting on my glasses. I know, this is such a dull one but not being able to read anymore without them has taken me quite by surprise and the instant transformation of the hieroglyphics on the page, washing label or side of a tin, to name but three, deserves my appreciation.

Cafes. With friends (there goes the rule again), chatting or with my hard-backed notebook, writing. Oh and hard-backed notebooks, I love those, too.

Learning Slovakian. I’d forgotten quite how much I enjoy learning languages – even though I sometimes curse the homework, even though I sometimes still throw my books across the room, even though I sometimes think I’ll never manage it.

Really cold dry white wine in a large glass. Or really warm, heavy red wine in a really large glass – and Lindt Lindor chocolates.

Singing. I’m not pretending to have any great ability but I belong to a small group and we have the most wonderfully talented and generous hearted teacher who brings out the best in us. When everyone’s singing and the harmonies are working, it’s simply, so uplifting.

Now it’s my turn to propose fifteen bloggers whom I think are particularly deserving of this award. I’ve chosen a couple of old favourites but also some recently discovered gems. Please do go along and see what they’re up to:

http://www.standingnakedatabusstop.com by Lesley Richardson

http://theperfectplot.blogspot.co.uk by Jill Paterson

http://excusemewhileinotethatdown.blogspot.co.uk by Linda C

http://alisonpercival.wordpress.com by Alison Percival

http://sarsm.wordpress.com by Sarah

http://strictlywriting.blogspot.co.uk by a group of nine bloggers whose posts always make me smile.

http://www.janerusbridge.co.uk by Jane Rusbridge

http://www.heatherwebb.net by Heather Webb

http://saintlywriter.blogspot.co.uk by Amanda Saint

OK, I’ve only listed nine but if you add in the nine at Strictlywriting, then I’m actually way over my quota ;)

These are the rules of the Versatile Blogger Award:

• Display the award certificate on your website
• Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented your award
• Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers (Versatile Blogger)
• Drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post
• Post 7 interesting things about yourself

I look forward to reading your posts!