Catch!

So, this week was supposed to be brilliant because I’m on leave from the day job, the summer has finally, after six years of getting here, arrived, I was ready to start my next book, dreams of sitting out under an umbrella with iced coffee to hand and fingers flying over the keyboard. And what happened? The sun vanished and it rained – don’t even get me started on the forecast for next week - I had to go to the dentist with a problem and I came down with a virus that has meant more time lying on the sofa waiting for painkillers to kick in than sitting at my desk at the screen face, watching my word count rise. Frustrated.com.

Our American cousins have a fabulous saying for this – this is life throwing you a curveball. A curveball doesn’t sound so bad, does it? But its dictionary definition is downright nasty – something that is unexpected or designed to trick or deceive. For me this week it’s only been a little curveball but one that has totally wrecked my plans and made me feel utterly miserable and quite cheesed off. Exactly the same thing happened to me at Christmas when I stopped work for a few days. It seems to be a common thing that we run on high stress as the norm so when the stress temporarily disappears, our bodies nosedive into recovery mode and things we may have been fighting at a low level for some time have the space to rear up front and centre. Hello, virus.

So by now you’ll be expecting one of those platitudes about when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, but right now, I’d be much more inclined to chuck the pitcher. What I have realised though, tossing and turning for half the night, is that me being angry and uptight in full diva mode, really isn’t helping me feel any better. I had other plans for my holiday but at least I can sleep on the sofa without the pressure of having to be anywhere else and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about scenes while trying not to watch the clock tick round to morning. I’m just finishing reading a book I really haven’t enjoyed that much so now I get to read one I will, without feeling guilty about not doing something else. I’m going to try giving myself a break and boosting up my immune system with lovely things like reflexology and massage ;)

But I’m still annoyed about the weather forecast . . .

A strange gift

I had to go to a funeral last week – one of my writing friends, Colin Webb, had sadly passed away. It was a glorious day, all at odds with how it should be on such a sad occasion, which made me think of a clever story he’d had published about a funeral at midnight in atrocious weather. So many people came to pay their respects that the service was late starting while as many chairs as could be were found and still the mourners spilled out into the gardens.

And during the service and afterwards chatting with friends, I realised that a funeral can actually be a gift. Colin’s service was entitled a service of thanksgiving and, sad as it was to reflect that he’s no longer with us on this plane, we could all be thankful that he had touched our lives. And, of course, there’s that reminder, knocking us a bit more insistently on the shoulder that day, that yesterday has gone, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, but today, that’s a gift, which is why it’s called the present. During my kids’ childhoods, I used to stop sometimes and just watch them, thinking I needed to imprint that time in my mind as it wouldn’t come again and, if I didn’t do so, it would be lost.

Colin’s funeral also got me thinking how often I can get distracted with ‘busy’ work which, in the great scheme of things, if I were looking back at my life, I wouldn’t want to have spent so much time on. It seems my ‘to-do’ list would be much better entitled ‘things I’m glad to do’. Yes, the mundane has to fit in there somewhere but ‘things I’m glad to do’ feels so much more inspiring it might even make washing the car seem like something fun . . .

I'm still here!

So, what have I been up to since my last blog entry? Clearly not writing my blog!

I single-mindedly finished my edits on the book I’ve been working on for the last year and sent it off to my agent – cartwheels, fireworks, huge sigh of satisfaction :)

I gave myself a couple of weeks off in the evenings and it was quite a revelation to me (as it always is at this point) that people go out and do things in the weekday evenings! Taking youngest son to his boating, hubby and I went for a leisurely coffee, instead of me sitting editing, writing, or planning in the car, wonderful stuff. I’ve also done a lot of reading, and have read some excellent books which you can see on my ‘what I’ve read’ list.

After about three days my muse had enough of watching TV and generally relaxing and began waving story ideas at me, trying to seduce me back to my desk . . . And that’s where I am right now, except for desk read table in the garden, under an umbrella, enjoying this fantastically un-British like weather, busy plotting. I now have an outline for the sequel to The Only, which I’ll be fleshing out during the next week, and then I’m aiming to start writing in about seven days. And I’m really excited about what’s coming Maya’s way. Good things or bad things? That’ll be for you to decide.

A breath of fresh air

You may have noticed it’s been forever a while since my last blog post. In my defence I have been working really hard to get my edits done and when I'm getting close to a goal, I get a little single-minded and tunnel-visioned. The closer I get to the finish line, when all I want to do then is reach the goal, every minute I’m not working towards it, is a minute I’m stressing that I should be.

 

And yet, with a little distance, and headspace, you can often achieve more because it sharpens your perception of what you need to do and how you can do it. It also gives your right brain, that wonderful left-field creative touchy-feely side of you, time to do its stuff. Even knowing this, I sometimes have to be dragged kicking and screaming away from my desk . . . Which my husband did manage to do in April and we had a fabulous week being out and about in the cold, wet, snow, sunshine and warmth that are Spring in the UK.  We walked about 25 miles over four days, not a lot of distance but we did some good steep climbs in the Peak District and the Cotswolds.

 

Climbing over a stile in the sunshine during our staycation, I had a cracking idea for a new book and for the next hour we had to keep stopping so I could note story ideas for it down on my phone. Even now in the May gloom (!) the idea is making me smile and I can’t wait to start drafting it into a fully-fledged outline. Just need to finish whipping the current work in progress into shape first, so if you need me, I’ll be at my desk every second of every minute I can be until I’ve typed those glorious words ‘The End’. 

Doing an Anthony Trollope

This morning I told my husband that today I would be ‘doing an Anthony Trollope’ and, even though he’s used to unfathomable things being produced by my brain, he looked at me as if I’d lost the plot. But it sums up exactly what today is for me.

Last night I finished the first revision of my next book, one day ahead of my schedule, yes, I was pleased! Now I need to go through it again (it’s lucky revision is my favourite part of the novel-writing process) looking at world-building - I am hell on wheels for having my characters talking to each other in a vacuum - and all the other things I forget in the white hot burst of creation when the words flow so fast I get RSI trying to capture them before they’re lost.

So how does this tie in with Anthony Trollope? Well, yes, I’d like to be as productive as him, he was one of the most prolific novelists of the Victorian era. I wouldn’t mind someone of Tolstoi’s calibre saying nice things about me, Tolstoi reportedly said he wished he had the same amount of talent that Trollope had in just his little finger.  To have the words you put on the page still being read over a hundred years after your death wouldn’t be too shabby either.

Trollope worked for the Post Office for most of his working life and is credited with having introduced the pillar box. Every morning before work he would settle down to write as many of us writers do, squeezing the most out of every spare second.  But on one instance, when he finished his current work in progress fifteen minutes before he was due to go to work, instead of throwing down his pen and celebrating, Trollope pulled a clean sheet of paper in front of him started Chapter One of the next book. You’ve got to love that persistence.

So tonight, instead of taking a night off to celebrate being on holiday or that I have finished revision pass #1, I am pulling my clean new manuscript in front of me and beginning revision #2.

‘Doing an Anthony Trollope’, isn’t that great? I think we should adopt it into our everyday vocabulary, what do you think?

Hang on a minute

I’m going to scare you a bit – it’s Easter next week. Well, okay, it is early this year but even so, we’re a quarter of the way through 2013 already. Just three months ago we were all talking about our New Year resolutions, how are yours panning out so far? Is it time that’s holding them up? I don’t have time to go the gym this week, I don’t have time to write today, I’ll have to call that friend tomorrow.

There’s a lot of talk on the internet about time speeding up, I am sure it happens in our house every night when I close my eyes and the clock ticks off hours at the speed of minutes . . . Maybe it’s because there are so many things to occupy us now that it feels like there’s less to go round. If you ask people how they are, it seems the first thing everyone says is ‘busy’!

One of my writing friends celebrated a milestone birthday this week, hitting the big 30. I remember my own 30^th as being the start of my first life falling apart, not something to celebrate at the time although now I do. But thinking back to that time, I can’t believe how long ago it feels and how fast I seem to have got from that point to today.

So if we have more than ever before to do, and less time to do it in, well, maths isn’t my strong point but something doesn’t add up somewhere. But it seems defeating the time monster can be as simple as deciding today you will do that one thing you've been meaning to for just five minutes.

Baby steps are the way I’m trying to beat it while I’m fighting it to get my edits done. As many minutes as I can snatch here and there every day, 20 minutes before work, 30 during lunch, some while I juggle cooking. Yesterday I reached half way through (pause for celebration, cup of tea and dark chocolate, bubbles come when I reach ‘the end’).

‘A year from now you will wish you had started.’ Karen Lamb says and in 365 days, think what you could have achieved.

This video will change your life

While hubby was messing around with the Apple TV, he stumbled across a page of videos one of which was boldly titled ‘This video will change your life’. He called me in to watch it, interrupting my editing, as he said it was important. And he was right.

As Alan Watts says, too often we get caught up in the minutiae of living which usually means doing something we don’t enjoy doing to live longer to  carry on doing more of the thing we don’t enjoy doing. And yet there aren’t not many career talks that begin the way this video does, and how different would our lives be if they did!

Juggling writing with a day job and a family is hard, even though it’s something I love, sometimes it’s really, really hard. On the nights when I don’t manage to sit down to write until 9:30pm, my head is telling me, ‘are you mad, it’s time to unwind not start again, go to bed with a book, watch TV, have a bath’ but my heart is telling me, ‘write, sit down, fingers on keys and write’. When I’m tired and fed up sometimes the last thing I want to do is sit in that chair, staring at a blank screen searching for inspiration but that’s exactly the time I need to get into my story, walk amongst my characters and bring more of it to life.  The sense of achievement and fulfilment when I’ve made myself do just that on those tough days is worth every bit of the struggle.

The video’s here, it’s 3 minutes long, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siu6JYqOZ0g enjoy and ask yourself the question, what would you do?