Writing

In between

9th March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Writing is such a strange and introverted pursuit, you might be surprised at how much I think about what I produce before I produce it. It’s like the wordy equivalent of massaging kale before putting it in a complex salad, which let’s face it, is quite pretentious in design. Who wants kale in a salad? Suffice to say there is mulling over and considering what I might write about, and then when the instinct takes me, it spills out. All this whilst I am meant to be finishing a book which feels to me like a polemic. I never intended to write a polemic, and am dubious about that.

I was advised early on, when I started writing seriously, that spending anything more than a year on a first book was a mistake. Get it done and then move on. Any writer will plunder their own experience (those who say they don’t are lying) and so spending years sloshing around in the waters of your own life will not be years well spent. Better to take only what you need from it and get out. I remind myself of this often, and yet continue to paddle, such is the root of my intrigue about my own circumstances and past.

However, as things stand my circumstances have a unique set of nuances that only apply to me, and so sharing that can feel jarring and indelicate. I think a lot about processing thoughts and feelings and work hard to distill any view I have down to something palatable for others. What I have learned is that even when you think something is processed, distilled, considered, measured, it probably isn’t. Not until time has passed and taken off the edges, like a riverbed pebble made smooth by friction. There is always an analogy in nature which will illuminate my point. Nature and the seasons, and the weather.

Each morning at daybreak I scan the sky for clouds, check the forecast for rain, adjust my choice of coat according to the temperature. I intimately know the growth status of the wisteria outside my bedroom window, of which I have written many times. Local friends whose houses are on the water – a bearing which is the epitome of privilege in Sussex life – know the weather, and they know the tides. Both are relevant when the paint on your back door risks peeling from salt spray. I like to keep the tides a surprise; I like to arrive at the waterside and be struck with the beauty of a high tide, to feel it is a sign, a circumstance relevant to my mood. High tide means full up, maximum, a swollen version of itself, compared to the lacklustre opposite of low tide. Who wants low tide? Same as kale in salad.

Each time I write, I comment on the season, this interminable winter which wears on and on and on. No need to wash the car (it’s still winter), no need to wear silk (it’s still winter), no need to plan for anything other than the cold and mud (it’s still winter). But I know it will end, one day. It is – and I am – seasonally, in between.

There is no rushing loss, there is no way to get through it, to understand its impact other than to live it. I read about bereavement and grief, and compare and contrast. I feel the clutch of panic in my chest when it revisits, months after the initial truth became clear. It’s nearly been a year. How long will this take? If there was a guide, that is what I would ask.Of course there is progress, and things which were unimaginable then are commonplace now, but still, but still…

It’s still winter.

They say (and I pay attention to these platitudes, as discussed), that change comes in the alteration of small habits. It’s not the big things, but the small. This provides comfort as I find myself in a daily routine which I would not have recognised as my own had someone given me to glimpse a year ago. Within the chrysalis of change, there are new routines, new people, a new normal. It was suggested to me that I should not become too attached to new habits, as they too will change, and my reliance upon them could become a hindrance. Isn’t that how I got myself into this mess in the first place? Too reliant on a status quo? I now spend my time observing others who think their status quo will stay, and I catch myself feeling a sickening sympathy for them which I try hard to banish. Who am I? It’s not as if I have the monopoly on the topic.

In the mornings, in the coffee shop I visit, I find myself eavesdropping on a couple whom I can only assume are an ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ sponsor and charge. They discuss temptation and being able to see it clearly; triggers and sensibilities. When they are talking one confesses to the other that she misplaced her thread, that her mind wandered, and whilst I am sitting with my back to them, I imagine her eyes rolling back and her companion noticing that she has lost her way. I wonder whether I do that when I am being told what to do by friends, family and well-wishers who want to talk about my progress. Never before has the question ‘how are you?’ been accompanied with such weightiness. The AA couple get back on track and drain their coffees, that froth at the bottom which is nauseatingly chill, but they drink anyway. I don’t feel too bad for listening in, as I am fairly certain that in my own endeavours to describe my predicament, coffee shop strangers have gleaned salacious detail about me. Tit for tat.

But the small habits are the glue. The coffees, the cooking; chopping and seasoning, the pensive nightly baths, the lyrics, the turn of the tides. Some days melancholy, but to be honest many are not, and the sense that when dwelling in this in between space, there is respite. I am learning not to trust the respite, it doesn’t mean it’s over, it just means that my mind can only do so much thinking, and then there must be time spent swaddled in unreality. This is the same as the summer’s day, when early on in this, my friend told me I needed to be sure to wear a scarf, so that my amygdala, at the back of my neck was comforted. I had to google what my amygdala was, and what it did (it processes emotion). And she was right.

The in between won’t last forever.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Patreon

21st January 2020 · Leave a Comment

There are many preoccupations which, in the quiet hours, bother those who publish their work on the web. These range from influencer guilt (did I properly declare my allegiance to that brand?), to over-exposure (pondering if my kids’ teacher might be reading my innermost thoughts, or that person I don’t know very well, but met for coffee?), to downright white-knuckled fear (am I the only one on earth who thinks this way?). Over the years I have got used to it, and to the way in which people know my business without my having told them face to face. My mum is a particular lurker on Instagram and this blog, and will often be ahead of the ‘what is Louise thinking?’ curve, because she has read along.

A panacea to this is the write more privately for a separate group of readers, and that is why a couple of months ago I set up Patreon page. I saw other writers using this medium and was intrigued. It ensures a readership who are invested and once I launched, I learned they were readers who’ve supported me as I’ve written over time. The two currencies of following and commenting are important to writers, as we really don’t have any idea how our words are being received. Mainstream publishers have lessened their feedback mechanisms and take fewer unsolicited submissions of work, so to understand the gatekeepers of ‘what people want to read’, there isn’t much direction.

Patreon is not everyone’s cup of tea though; some have baulked at the subscription method; you have to pay a couple of pounds to read. Some might be irritated by the ‘selling’ of my work, as most of us expect to consume the thoughts of others for free and have done so for years. Why pay? For those readers who have decided to become my patrons, it’s already formed a lovely community whom I trust, and have in mind when I write. Some writers don’t envisage an audience, I always have, despite myself, and am almost surprised when I learn that readers aren’t always the demographic I expect.

It’s been illuminating to write for a smaller audience, there’s a candour I can’t display here, and I can cover a broader spectrum of topics because I need less self-censorship. It also makes me write more often, because there is an unspoken contract with the subscribers that I will bring the words and the thoughts.

I have realised, fairly recently, that I am ridiculously honest in what I write and what I say to people. I don’t often edit out, but I do skirt round bigger issues if I think they are contentious. Years of writing here has taught me the narrow path to tread between sharing and preaching. Or over-sharing. As such it becomes a vanilla environment and that is no good. If you want to become a subscriber, go to my Patreon (or search ‘Lou Bradford writes’ if you go to the main Patreon page) and join.

Photo by Pauline Loroy on Unsplash

Truth, and a Patreon Page

29th November 2019 · Leave a Comment

I have been writing on the web since 2010. Now, after nearly ten years, I wanted a shift, or a pivot, if you will. There’s been a whole lot of shift in my world, and it’s time to write more openly about it. This is, in part, why I have decided to set up a Patreon page and publish some of my work there. (Patreon, for those who aren’t familiar is a patronage model which aims to ensure creatives such as writers get paid something, even a little thing for their toil. It works on a subscription basis.)

This blog, which has had some iterations and phases over the years, has been a source of stability and solace to me. Despite various changes in my life, I kept writing it year after year, quietly – covertly even – as I went through my late thirties and into my early forties. I’ve made some amazing friends through it, and the output was a solid portfolio of work which got me accepted to a Masters degree. After I graduated, I went on to lecture on blogging, and how writers can develop an online portfolio. So I came to feel it was serendipitous that I pressed ‘publish’ one gloomy winter’s night all those years ago.

I have long acknowledged my inclination to share my innermost thoughts to a mass audience. Isn’t that what all writers do? Overshare? Although, if I am honest, lately I haven’t really shared my innermost thoughts. They have been a sanctioned, public version. There are complicated reasons for this, to do with events in my life, and the privacy of my family, who may not want to see themselves reflected on screen. The net of it is I have held myself back, and I am – in the interests of openness – so over that. Plus, I have never monetised my work before, so after some consideration, I figured it was time I did. In a friendly, crowd-funding sort of manner. So here we are.

Everything has come into focus in a fresh and raw way, personally, professionally and intellectually, and now there’s scope to explore this new landscape. I would like to do that with like-minded people, those who are invested in my work. When I write the blog, readers often contact me and say they love my words, the way I write, that it’s like talking to a friend, or being told something in confidence. They express frustration that I don’t post more often, and they comment that I write to a press quality; why am I not published in magazines?! Maybe it’s just how it goes; I am an online dweller and always have been, so it has consistently made sense to me to publish here, instead of in print form. But most of all, my readers tell me there’s a desire for more words, for more to be said, for more truth.

So that is what I intend to do. I will post on this blog in the same way as I always did, but I will also write long-form essays, opinion pieces, candid thoughts, musings, what is in my head on my Patreon page. To join you will be asked if you wish to pay a small subscription – about the cost of a cup of tea, or half a day’s parking, or a sandwich – to read my words. No biggie if you chose not to, but for those who want to support, it’s really easy and I promise you’ll get juicier, more fulsome version of the blog! In return, I am hoping you will be happy to pledge to read it.

My page can be found here, or if you search ‘Lou Bradford Writes’ on Patreon. I hope you’ll want to come along.

Open like a f**king flower

14th November 2019 · Leave a Comment

I am working on a new writing project which has the word ‘fuck’ in its title. This, it transpires, might be problematic, because although societally speaking, we are open to the use of the word when written, it’s still not part of appropriate conversation in some quarters. I know this because if my children say it, I admonish them. And when I described the project to my Mum, I winced a bit when I said it. Although to type it, whilst mildly anarchic, I find a pleasing completeness to the word. As a word, it does what no other word will do. So there you go. Fuck. Let’s just say it out loud; Fuck. See? Deserves a capital letter.

Meanwhile on the London writing course, which is now punctuating my week like a well-placed semicolon, we discussed the ethics of truth and whether my memory of an event is the same as anyone else’s. This is what I love about learning; it opens the mind and makes the brain ache a bit, in a good way. I walked back across Waterloo Bridge, which has become my new favourite bridge because the Thames is always in tumult beneath it, churning, and on the one side Parliament and the London Eye, and on the other the towering city. Two young women were talking, I was eavesdropping as I walked slightly behind them, then we fell into a unified stride. One said;

‘If we’d have known a year ago what today would look like, we’d be, like, what the fuck. What the actual fuck is this shit?’

The other agreed in earnest.

And I thought yes, my sentiments exactly.

The world opens up after change, when the future is not clear, and when it is your turn for hardship. I feel like hardship waits on everyone’s doorstep, mostly unseen, but then it knocks on the door and barges its way in, and there is no way to avoid it. It makes its way around the houses.

There is good and bad. The good is exponential and I cling to it because it will, in the end bear fruit. There are books and thoughts, and early morning yomps across the South Downs with an old friend who also has hardship knocking at her door. There are opportune meetings with people you haven’t thought about in thirty years. There’s the kindness of others, and a ‘man who can’ who unblocked my kitchen drain. Turns out I had a fat berg. I felt this was symbolic. Blocked drains the postscript to the decomposing rat. It’s glamorous in the country. There’s knowing that this too shall pass. There’s the leafy, apple strewn lawn of my house, at sunrise, and the knowledge that the seasons come and go. There’s family. And dogs. And roast chicken and cauliflower cheese and other beige foods which nurture and sustain.

I hear myself say that you have to be open to the cosmic universe, and what I mean is, you never know. You think you do, but actually all sorts of stuff happens and you don’t know how you’ll react. I think the answer is to be open. Not closed. To be open-hearted and to try to wait it out. I never did find out what the conversation on Waterloo Bridge was about, they crossed the road and I carried on and they were swallowed into the masses. Let’s hope they find contentment again.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

A Love Letter to the Planet

13th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I got the opportunity to take a commission from a publisher, to write a non-fiction book about the environment. It was apt and timely, as I’d chartered further and further into the territory of eco-awareness, plastic-free shopping, and plant-based eating, and I found myself immersed in all things ecological for this project. I’d dabbled in ‘green’ living, and lamented plastic use, but I found it difficult to change my practices to create a new everyday reality. Conceptually, I knew what to do – reduce, reuse, recycle – but I was weighed down with the enormity of it all. Making changes seemed to require a disproportionate effort, which in turn led to my feeling ineffective and guilty, so I’d end up doing nothing instead.

I’d developed an interest in those who were able to make the changes, and followed Instagram accounts of delicious vegan food and minimal living. I would covet the lifestyle, but still struggled to emulate it. Somehow my home did not resemble the serene, less-is-more surroundings of those I saw online. But what I realised – consistent with so many things in modern life – is that what it looks like is not what counts! I found that instigating a few simple changes made a big difference to my resolve. I started composting, just by siphoning off waste that would biodegrade. I bought reusable cloths instead of kitchen roll. I got rid of aluminium foil and cling film, and started using beeswax covers. I became more interested in vintage clothes, and in the fabrics my clothes were made of. Cotton, linen and wool were in; polyester and viscose were out. But even then, there were myths to debunk. Cotton has a huge impact in chemical and water use. I started watching documentaries which enlightened me to this fact. Suddenly, things like Christmas wrapping paper and heavily packaged gift packs became undesirable. I bulk-bought food staples and decanted in to Mason jars. I became quite the larder enthusiast!The more I focused on habits, the more committed I became.

I am not saying it’s easy; sometimes it feels like there’s a conspiracy underway to ensure that every item I want to buy is swathed in plastic, but I guess the point is, I started trying, and it made me feel better. And as for how much meat we eat, it’s significantly less. My children are now used to bean chillis and lentil bologanise. I am at the point where I feel as if eating meat every day will become as non-sensical and socially unacceptable as smoking in restaurants or on aeroplanes once was.

In my research for this book, I found that minimal living goes hand in hand with thoughtful practices, and it’s good if there is a general impetus to slow the pace of daily habits, so that our care for the environment increases. After writing this book, my choices became more deliberate, as I simply grew more aware. So many of my decisions were made without thought; where my clothes originated from, how my food was packaged, how many miles an item had to travel to be delivered at my door. I didn’t consider how so many components of the modern, Westernised world have an unseen environmental impact. I wrote without manifesto – albeit this is a potent political issue – but as a lesson to myself, really. It was also a lesson in being open to writing projects that offer scope and breadth, rather than specialising in one thing, or accepting just one way of reaching the goal of being published.

I wanted to pare everything down, make it manageable, and real. The book is light and concise; part advice, part awareness, and in it, I cycle through a large array of every day considerations, many of which are presented in easy and practical ways.

The book is called ‘Save The World: There is No Planet B‘ (great title, hey!?) and is published by Summersdale Publishing. The book is published tomorrow, on Valentines Day, and is available to order/buy on Amazon here!

Finally, ‘The Independent’ have reviewed it here:

‘“The Plastic Problem”, as Louise Bradford dubs it, is just one chapter in a title that covers all the major issues our planet is currently facing. From water conservation to shopping more ethically, there are practical bullet point suggestions for ultimately living a more minimal life, and limiting your impact on the world as a result. In it she argues that we can’t wait for big corporations to clean up their acts. Instead, we all have a duty to do our bit to save the planet. If that sounds a little preachy, rest assured the book is clear that any effort is better than none, and that we can only do our best.’

Image via unsplash

Are you human?

8th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

When you haven’t logged on for a while, the software wants to check: are you human?

Tick the box. Yes. Not an interloper, but the same old me. However slightly changed, as I haven’t written a single word for months, nor visited this place. The thing with writing a blog is that you have to be willing to share; that forms the basic premise. Some things happened in December and I was no longer willing to share, in so much as I went inwards, as humans do, I suppose, when they perceive threat. The threat I encountered was ordinary and everyday, but at the same time profound. I was scared and worried, and that made me vulnerable. My little life precarious; the people in it somehow at risk. It’s not right to explain here, but suffice to say some shit went down, of the personal variety, and it challenged everything I knew to be true, for a while. Christmas was ugly, but with a glittery, fake-smile wrapping to it, and new year passed in much the same way. January brought some respite, in its dark days and blustery corners, and then I welcomed February from far away, from the other side of the world, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. If you think that sounds like a cryptic explantation of the last couple of months, you’d be right.

There’s a curious contract I have made with myself when it comes to writing. And here on this blog, it’s a contract with my invisible, unknown audience. I write, you read. I share, you absorb. There’s usually a healthy tension to it – or at least there always has been for me – I share what I am comfortable with sharing, and I protect certain truths fiercely, so as not to expose my family or my friends. But as I think back to the nine years I have written this blog, of the myriad insights I have shared, I find it odd that I am compelled to do this. Taking time away from it was like enforcing a separation between two childhood friends; I only lasted so long, and I knew I’d come back.

Meanwhile, amongst my contemporaries, the debate rages on about whether Instagram has replaced blogging, or whether ‘stories’ have replaced curated photos. The term ‘influencer’ is now tinged with a toxicity, and I see fellow bloggers grapple with dull but necessary explanations of whether they have been #gifted or whether it’s an #ad. Yawn. It feels like when I used to work for the corporate, and we would get audited, and everyone had to have detailed process flows on their desks about self-explanatory things like how to switch on your computer. Are you human? The need for safeguards, for privacy, for honesty, for integrity, has rightly come to the forefront. Someone decided that there’s been an abuse, that we might have been duped, so we must now all be brutally honest about every little thing so as not to mislead anyone who happens to read what we write or post. It’s exhausting and complex, and I am not sure where it will lead. It takes away the shine, and rubs the face of things so hard, that it scours the sheen of what blogging and instagram are all about. There’s always the interplay between the truth and the veneer. It’s the construct we all create every time we have any interaction with anyone else. No one is ever quite what they seem, and that is part of how humans function. But it does pose the wider question; if everything everyone shares is vanilla and overstated, then what?

I said I’ve been away, after the tumult of the last couple of months, my husband and I booked a last minute trip to the Maldives. Place of honeymooners, rose-petal-scattered-pillows, and stilted water bungalow accommodation. White sand coral islands, which rear up out of the ocean like something in a cartoon. Impossibly – implausibly – beautiful. An Instagrammable dream. We had never, ever seen anything like it. The water so clear and perfectly, pristinely turquoise that I spent the entire week photographing it, swimming in it, wading in it, marvelling at it like the true Piscean I am. The perfect salt-water salve to everything that life had thrown at us. The privilege of being able to see a place like that weighed heavy though, and I was reluctant to share, because, well, because it just seemed self–indulgent. A self-consciousness has coloured my instincts to share online, and each word and image seems weighty.

But this self-consciousness serves little purpose, as we are bound to consume the experience of others, isn’t that what writing is all about?

Incidentally, I read ‘The Woman in The Window’ whilst I was away. A tetchy thriller that lacked plausibility. The kind of book publishers love. Cinematic from the first page; they’ll make a film of it starring a Hollywood actress who is willing to look dowdy. Lugged the hardback of Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’ all the way there and back again, so far untouched. Listened to the podcast ‘Love Stories’ with Dolly Alderton; the one with Emma Freud, when she describes her relationship with Richard Curtis (writer of screenplays to my twenties). It made me choke back tears and can I say: it’s hard to cry and run on a treadmill at the same time, whilst on a coral island in the Indian Ocean.

So I face the next item on the agenda now. I have a deadline for a submission competition at the end of March, giving me some time to write the essay that’s been building in my head for months.

Live. Write. Live. Write. When you know, you know.

Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark*

22nd November 2018 · Leave a Comment

I have the creative process on my mind. So often I obsess about it, of how the alchemy of words takes place, as if by knowing what others do, the magic might be captured. This preoccupation applies when I have writer’s block, or feel a weight of guilt associated with not writing. Not writing is how I would characterise the last few months, until the plug was pulled and I accepted a commission with a publisher to work on a small project. Having a deadline, and an editor, and the prospect of payment suddenly made my muse show itself.

I heard the writer Olivia Sudjic interviewed on the ‘High Low‘ podcast, and so read her new essay book ‘Exposure‘, a short, snapshot memoir of her experience of anxiety following the publication of her debut novel. The essay is a stand-alone piece – a pocket-sized powerhouse of writing and social commentary – and anyone who is writing a book, or who wants to, should read it.

Sudjic, amongst other insights, offers a critique of modern publishing and of the actions required of authors, especially debut ones. At one point, she acknowledges the population of unpublished writers, as if to say: don’t be put off. I thought back to when I did my Masters, and to conversations we had about publishing, and how the industry seemed impenetrable and mysterious. ‘Exposure’ makes for a study of old and new, antiquated and progressive, of books and of the internet. Sudjic writes with searing accuracy about how the internet age has shaped our psychologies. Of how utterly watched we are. And how crazy this makes us feel. An Orwellian fog descends.

Yet, book publishing relies on deeply ingrained, old-school truths. Sudjic’s essay could be a guiding light for the unpublished writer and, had it been published at the time, could be have been a source text for my MA. Her dissection of the publishing industry, and the ratifying role it plays, makes for stark reading. Publishers remain the gatekeepers of what thou shalt read and of how books are created, promoted and consumed. To self publish (and therefore to control your own work) is to forsake the establishment. The stereotype goes that self publishing leads to poor book sales, on shitty paper, funnelled through the monolithic presence of Amazon.

Getting a book published is almost as bad, it seems, as not getting a book published.

Peninsula Press, who brought us Sudjic’s ‘Exposure’ is a kickstarter-funded publisher, and in them I wonder if there is a fresh industry model? To have published this essay in small book format strikes me as a subversion of the status quo, and one which will enable dissenting voices to be heard. Sudjic wrote her essay to give space to the anxiety she felt about writing her much-anticipated second novel. Those of us plugging away in the no man’s land of the unpublished long to be propelled forwards into the public domain. Sudjic alarmingly describes the panic of this propulsion and the stomach-churning sense that by signing with a publisher, a writer is signing a Faustian pact to participate in absolutely whatever comes. The stress-laden aftermath of debut publishing; a social media onslaught, public panels and readings, and the dissemination of your innermost thoughts for mass consumption is something of dreams and of nightmares. The need to promote one’s book is a necessary evil, but a pay-off with a hefty price. Writers are grateful for the chance to be published, but, it appears, we must swallow it down whole.

Sudjic dissects why women write, as she challenges the way women’s creative work is described as self-indulgent and inward-facing. The sentiment can be applied to almost any creative endeavour a woman might participate in. Why write this blog? Why write anything at all? She describes writers who are stunned into silence after they’ve been published, especially those who’ve shared too much. No one likes an over-sharer. Blogging is a form of self publishing but it poses no threat. I’ve heard blogging described as silly, insignificant fodder. It’s made so by the comparative enormity of the internet, and the fact that, let’s face it, hardly anyone reads this.

At the end of my Masters, I wanted to get back to my blog, to the kind of writing what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. To be amongst the women who curated Instagram squares in cool, Scandi monochrome hues, and who wrote about fashion or lifestyle. After the pressure of academia, I wanted the dime store quality of a blog post that was neither fiction, nor essay, nor article. A stand alone set of thoughts sent out into the world. One which exists only as part of the internet, a beacon for those who want to seek it out. But there is also a wariness to the decision to write here, one which I often reference. I fear there being an old blueprint lurking, one which would, if I were to be published, be plundered as fair game. Everything I have ever written here a reflection of the ‘self’ which I might, through a book deal, agree was open for criticism to any reader.

As with all commentary of this type, I am left thinking, well, we must play the game. We might not have designed the game, but we must play it! What’s the alternative? To be silent? To not write? To not create? No, thank you.

*Lyric by Lorde, ‘Writer in the Dark’.

Quit your job. You’ll be fine.*

10th October 2018 · Leave a Comment

I have a cold. This means a self-imposed quarantine of long, quiet days, spent waiting for recovery. The kind of sick day that used to be alluring, when I was working, or before I had children. Now, it means solitude, until the collection of my children after school, then the normalcy of weekday life reverts in the evening hours, but with congestion, a headache, aches and sniffles.

I am left with my thoughts. When unwell, it’s hard to imagine being well again, which sounds ridiculous but is true. My body under viral attack, I trace back to when I last felt this way as if I can identify the rogue bug and eradicate the possibility of repeat. It was last winter; skiing, a dormant French hotel room. My efforts to stay healthy border on obsessive, I have little patience for this. My life is predicated on my being well; the cogs don’t turn unless the engine is running. My children look at me reproachfully when there’s no bread in the house.

I watch too much Netflix – end to end ‘Killing Eve’, that pink dress! – and documentaries about the environment. I feel so fretful about the environment I have to check myself. I am being brainwashed by the scaremongers. But the more knowledge I have, the worse it gets. It seems, in this instance, that the scare mongers might be right. I’ll tell you what. When global temperatures rise by 2 degrees, and the ice caps melt, and the planet is too hot to even go outside, I’ll see you on that last piece of remaining, un-flooded land, and we can watch the plastic containers float by, and wonder whether it was worth it. It’s a dog’s dinner, or, as my friend messaged me last week: ‘we are fucked’.

In a flurry of luck, in my sickened state, I got Glastonbury tickets on Sunday. I’m almost ashamed to admit this because they are so desirable, and so hard to come by, especially this year, that I remain incredulous. Early morning; multiple devices, an incentivised teenage son sitting next to me, rapid refresh, mouse clicking, abject frustration as the connection drops, we get booted out. The registration page, the payment page, the confirmation page, all flash up in a striptease, pressing forward, click, click, click. A bizarre technological dance which abruptly ends with ‘BOOKING COMPLETE’ and I feel adrenalin like I’ve scaled a mountain. Surfed a wave. Done something other than sat in my pyjamas. I wonder if I want them so much simply because they’re hard to get? Then I remember how much I love Glastonbury and how utterly freeing it is to stand in a field and experience music so loud it makes your organs vibrate, and to do it with hundreds of thousands of other humans.

I start listening to the audiobook of Deborah Levy’s ‘Things I Don’t Want to Know’ and find it cripplingly, awe-inspiringly good. It’s the kind of book I want to write. This has a dual effect. Half inspiring, half terrifying. Deborah’s written it already. Deborah can write the innards of my mind, as if un-spinning a knot of wool. I’m only a smidgen in, and I know I will love it already. And hate that its been done. This is how it goes with writing. No longer do I have thoughts and allow them to pass through. Now my thoughts have become a thing I must capture, I must write down, I must turn into something that is work. Quit your job. You’ll be fine.

I observe the shit show of American politics playing out on the news and feel the bile of conflict. Everything feels off. Theres’s conflict with the process, conflict with society, conflict with the commentary. I read a lot, and liberalism seems to pervade my newsfeed as I realise I have concocted a partisan following in support of feminism and an egalitarian sensibility. I read a lot of women writers who suggest in their language that all men who are accused of sexual misbehaviour are guilty, because, well, because…men. This troubles me, and I wonder whether any of those women have teenage sons who are about to navigate the treacherous water of gender politics in coming years.

I watch old family videos, trying to locate one of my daughter, aged one, laughing, giggling uncontrollably, the baby girl she was. The DVD is no longer compatible with our machine, and I wonder how I can regather those images. Later DVDs obligingly play, leaving me questioning why the one from 2002 is considered defunct? What happened in 2002? In 2003 I look young, and brown-haired, and really, really slim, despite doing zero exercise at that time.

I feel viral, weighed down, and shuffle around my house wearing a weird, old, dowdy Alpaca cardigan that reaches my knees. The postman comes. I discard the junk mail envisaging land fill; rotting catalogues for things I never wanted. I make mushrooms on toast (I went shopping) as a comfort food, like my mum used to make me, sautéed in butter, with garlic, and scattered with chopped parsley.

I message my writing group and they put me straight; ‘just write’ they say. We console each other. The virus is making me jaded. I turn to the blog because it’s the least demanding way to write. Type. Preview. Publish! Oh so easy! So here it is.

*Craig Ward typographer.

Retrospection

28th September 2018 · Leave a Comment

I had such high hopes for September. The summer holidays over, and a stretch of uninterrupted time weaving ahead of me, a lovely long road, with all the possibility of the words I would write, and the things I’d get sorted. Getting sorted is a key preoccupation, getting ahead of every little thing. If I am ahead, then there will be time to write. If there is time to write, maybe I will make some headway with the book. During my Masters degree, when I had submission deadlines, I would take myself off to work and of course it all got done, because it had to. One of the hardest parts of post-academic life is that the deadline is one I have set myself, and it is my self-discipline which dictates the word count. All the best intentions…

My daughter and I are doing university tours. We visit on open days, speak to undergrads and talk about course structures and her suite of worries are entirely different to my suite of worries. The prospect of packing her off to university seems far-off and implausible, but of course, I know it will come. The excitement is counter-balanced with a sense of…not regret…but a bittersweet awareness that her childhood is drawing to a close. Conversely, as my son enters his teens (like a marauding rhino), I recognise the same feelings I used to have about her. The parental readjustment required to at once allow growth, but to also provide boundaries. The conversation on boundaries revisits with alarming regularity, and I find myself thinking: didn’t I explain this last week?

Last week my son was injured playing rugby. All my years of being poker-faced on the sideline came to an unceremonious end as I stood, striken and peering through the rain, waiting to see if he was going to get up from the mangled pile he had been at the bottom of. It’s a curious thing to see your child injured and to see others administer to him, and after some time, when he did get up and was clapped off by the opposition – keen to get on with the game – I felt grateful he was OK. Later, sitting in ‘Accident and Emergency’ in hospital waiting for X-ray results, the feeling persisted. Acute worry, and the love, and the incredulity of how danger and threat can come for you, unannounced. And always in the knowledge that there are other families, other mothers, whose children are more injured or more sick, and a swathe of gratefulness floods over me again, rendering me quiet and vacant. A few days later and we see a surgeon, after the swelling subsided. He’s fractured his cheek bone in three places, and I find myself wondering whether it was my fault that he was raised to love a game that is so fraught with injury. We are a rugby family and I married a rugby player, and I’ve never known any different. To us; the merits of the game far outweigh the risk.

There’s a reluctant medicalisation. Ironically, I had been reading ‘This is Going to Hurt‘ by Adam Kay, the memoir of a junior doctor, which describes the ailing NHS and what it’s like to work within it. I sit opposite medics, on the receiving end, and wonder how long they’ve been on their shift. I have an urge to be kind and polite to them, as we sit and read posters on the wall that say: ‘physical abuse against our staff will not be tolerated’ and I wonder who on earth resorts to physically abusing staff, those whose job it is to help? We observe the other punters and how everyone tries, surreptitiously, to deduce everyone else’s symptoms. It’s not always obvious.

It struck me as we waited (another waiting room, another part of the hospital) that it’s these sorts of events that inform my writing. Writing itself doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but instead is – for me at least – an after-affect of life. It was Anaïs Nin who noted: ‘we write to taste life twice.’ My children, and my observation of them has always been a source; there’s an event, a feeling, the witnessing of a moment. Then there’s my musing afterwards.

Meanwhile, there are breezy, brisk Autumn days. Crane flies cling to the outside of the windows, their spooky legs stretched wide, in contorted squats. Everything seems to be drawing inwards, homewards, ready for the winter months. Maybe I am a winter writer? Maybe the introspection of cold and darkness is what is needed? Or maybe, life just gets in the way of my words? Maybe I make too many excuses? Whichever way, I am good only for dog walks and quietness this week.

A Book in a Book

13th September 2018 · Leave a Comment

I reluctantly enjoy this time of year, despite the fact it heralds a slide into the interminable British winter. The short days and short tempers of my compatriots don’t stop it feeling like a fresh start; out with summer, in with autumn. There are still hints at lushness; green grass, ripe blackberries, crops ready to be harvested. I walk with the dog around my familiar fields, and note the soft crust of the mud, which in a few short months will be frozen. Or worse; dank, sodden and rain-soaked. It was at this time of year that I started my Masters degree three years ago, and I sat amongst other wannabe writers, wearing writerly clothes and clutching writerly notebooks, in which we intended to pen our masterpieces. I felt I blagged my way onto the course, my evidential body of work was this blog, and a stilted short story about a school girl called Cressida, who wanted to rebel against her parents. My tutor, during a Skype application interview, asked me what I did when I got really stuck with my writing. I floundered over my answer to that question, she might have seen through me, she might have known I was a novice, and ‘my writing’ consisted of blog posts that were haphazard at times, and focused too much on clothes shopping rather than searing life commentary. I’d never been really stuck with my writing, because I only ever wrote when I felt like it, about frippery. I knew more about brand development and search engine optimisation than about how to unstick a stuck paragraph.

So when I got the place, we sat, day one, in our studio and went round the table in a sweat-inducing introductory session where we were asked to outline the plot for our novels. There was some invisible peddling, resulting in various iterations of ‘I might focus on…’ and ‘I’ve always wanted to write about…’ and such like. I said I was going to write about a school setting, mothers specifically, in the privileged environment of private education. Prep school. They nodded. Moving on. I had no more a clue of what my plot was then, than I did after a year of the degree! A plot stubbornly alluded me, and any measures I took to secure it, despite intensive workshopping with my peers, left me with a flimsy structure, a plot with the strength of a wet biscuit. I knew it. My tutor knew it. But my writing was good. Thank God, my writing was good. I chased ghosts of plots, and developed questionable preoccupations with themes; women, teenagers, competitive mothers, wealth, marriage, disillusionment, until I felt I could cobble a novel together. And so I did. I wove in concepts like a houseboat location, and set the novel by the water so that when I took daily walks by the shore, I could note tree types and tidal nuances, and that felt like book research. I asked my teenage daughter’s unsuspecting new boyfriend, on his first visit to our house, how he might behave if he were attacked by a swan, all in the name of reasearch. I contacted a swan sanctuary, and became an expert of the monogamy of the birds. And although this lent depth to my work, it did not give me a plot.

I remember it fondly now, with a wry smile, and see that the Masters was the ultimate learning exercise; of course it was. The academics twinned with the realisation that although I’d written a book, there were issues with it. I spent a lot of time then (and now) pondering whether I was good enough. Why couldn’t I find a plot? Who knew plots were so damn elusive? I came to the conclusion I needed a brain the size of a planet to manage one; I had enough trouble keeping track of my real life, let alone the fictional one I might create. Thankfully, I graduated, the first draft of my novel nestled safely and mutely in a folder entitled ‘book’ on my laptop, and thought; ‘well that was that’ all the while weathering the probes of friends and enemies alike. ‘Have you finished your book yet?’ To a writer, that’s the equivalent of a mother asking at a coffee morning why your toddler isn’t walking yet.

My writer friends and I used to talk about when we would become writers. Would it be when we finished a draft? When someone else read it? When we got an agent? When we got published? When a box full of pre-sale proofs arrived? When we saw our book on the shelf in a bookshop, or on Amazon in the best seller list? When we won a literary prize? Oh, the mind boggles. When we overheard two people discussing our book? When our book was the subject of a book club evening? When we started the second book (you’re surely a keeper at this wretched pursuit if you can do it twice)? All of the above? None of the above? The ribbon unspools. I guess the point is there is no defined or accepted time. You learn how to do it, then you reflect, then you write a bit more, then you stop. Then you start. Now, I see that it was all part of the process. Or at least part of my process. There are a million writers following a million different paths, like any creative in any profession, there are highs and lows; you move forward, you move back. It’s a game of snakes and ladders with more snakes than ladders, for sure. But that’s OK. There is time. It’s the season of fresh starts, and mine will be finding the book in the book.