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

Portfolio Career

27th March 2019 · 1 Comment

If I were to characterise my occupation right now, I’d say I was striving to make a ‘portfolio career’ work. By that I mean I do a bit of everything. I write, I clean the house. I write, I have coffee with my friends. I write, I manage the smallness and the greatness of family, both up close and extended. This is the part that sucks time like nothing else. My writing is invariably interrupted, and so as payback, it interrupts me, forming paragraphs as I try to drift off to sleep, or as I am doing a yoga class. I tell myself there will be time to properly focus, at some point in the future, when things ‘calm down’. I think of my Masters degree, and of the high hopes I had for after graduation, and as I type this, graduation was nearly two years ago. Insert shocked emoji face. Owing to my deliberate efforts not to beat myself up, I skip over this, as after all, who said the measure of success was world domination? Slow and steady? The eco book was a start…

There used to be a need to write a round-up of the week here, as a breezy, chatty bulletin. As if providing a public service. Blog being short for ‘web log’; the diarist in me would count the days between posts. Feed the appetite of your readers. But times have changed, and now we have insta stories for that. I shy away, as the need for privacy wraps around me. A highly curated front feels false, and I note that my contemporaries either post all the time, or not at all.

I am working on a project that is taking me through a creative process ranging from excitement, to fear, and back again. I muse whether it is good enough, whether I am good enough. My daughter earnestly looks back at me, and says ‘you must do your best’, and I feel like I have might have taught her well. There’s the slightest hint of spring and when I run in the mornings, the chill is gone, in favour of a tepid breeze, and there are green buds on trees. This makes me happy. I point this out to my son as we drive, and he looks up from his phone.

Meanwhile, I receive a terse, unsolicited email from a reader. The intimation being that I am narrow-minded. It strikes me that writing any sort of social commentary now is fraught with the accusation of not having a wide enough point of reference. Should I caveat every possible opinion, and state every possible viewpoint? Quite dull to do so. A bit like taking broad-spectrum antibiotics. You smother the good bugs and the bad bugs too. And maybe you never needed the meds in the first place. I can’t extrapolate the metaphor any further.

I buy a leopard print dress online, because, y’know, that’s what (narrow-minded) women like me do.

My daughter’s friends, the teenage girls, come round and sit at my table. I serve them vegetables (always) and they battle through plates of butternut squash, broccoli and avocado with a lime and tahini dressing. They silently wonder where the fish fingers have gone? We talk about society, and life, university, and whether they should cut their lustrous long hair short. I find myself cautioning against doing so, as all haircutting is, generally speaking – not wanting to derail the objectors here – a way to combat boredom. I’d apply the same logic to getting tattoos, which I become obsessed with, periodically. We discuss stress, and exams, and whether the line up at Glastonbury is going to be any good. I imagine myself this June, jumping, my middle-aged hands in the air, wellies sticking in the Somerset mud, screaming ‘Mr Brightside’ like it’s 2003.

When I speak to other women my age, they talk a lot about what they want and how they can’t have it, and I wonder if this is just the stage we are at? Experience tells me nothing comes easy, and right now, there isn’t time to get important stuff done. Everything feels like an effort, and I can think of a million reasons not to try. But there’s an ambition and a tenacity and we all soldier on with the perpetual list of things that need doing (‘I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier’). There’s a steeliness to this ambition, and I see as I get older, the less I need to say it out loud. Is this the midlife wisdom that they speak of? When you know, you know. It’s an inner knowledge; a confidence I suppose, that we are all playing a long game and if not now, then later. I write, I wait.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Millennials and Me

27th February 2019 · Leave a Comment

The hiatus from writing builds up, until I find myself awake in the small hours, furtively typing misspelled notes on my phone, afraid I’ll lose the gist before daylight. Notes which turn out to be jumbled expressions of my half-asleep brain. Not much use for anything, and yet I still dodge writing in the daytime. Last night, I decided I needed a writing shed. In our garden there is a disused shed; I say disused, I mean it’s full of the kind of family detritus that assembles when your children peddle through the stages of toddler to child to teen. Redundant pieces of sports equipment, boogie boards, bike helmets (out-grown), the polystyrene edges nibbled by mice, unused barbecue briquettes from long lost summers. There are pieces of furniture which we’d felt we couldn’t part with, so instead relegated them to the shed and now, years later, they’ve moulded, veneers lifting away with damp. There are vestiges of the failed beauty business I once embarked on. A broken kite.

So this shed, I think, could be the answer. I could renovate it, Scandi-style, and sit out there with the dog and write. What an idea! I look on Pinterest for ‘writer’s shed’ (by this time it is 2.08am; the brain is awake) and note Roald Dahl had one. By 2.10am I am my own version of Virginia Woolf in a room of one’s own. A whimsical notion of old fashioned type writers and battered note books. The romantic, cinematic version of what it is to write a book.

There is some normality to restore now, after a couple of months of upheaval. I revert to where I left off, but have lost my rhythm. The writer’s shed idea is undoubtably a ploy. Like the part in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ where Liz Gilbert tries to meditate but instead her thoughts turn to what her meditation room might look like should she design one. I listen to podcasts to distract myself and realise I have fallen into a groove of listening to clever, millennial journalists who have, in their cleverness, nailed the podcast medium with alacrity. For example, the eloquence and self-awareness with which Dolly Alderton articulated herself on Emma Gannon‘s ‘Control, Alt, Delete’ was so impressive, it was, quite frankly, disarming. I was not like that at thirty years old. Far from. There’s an openness that is so refreshing. And don’t get me started on the impossibly good commentary of Pandora Sykes. Elizabeth Day is another. Her podcast asks the profound question: how to fail?

I ask myself, were I to answer that question: what would my failures have been?

I flunked my A-levels. I thought I had put this one to bed, but actually it remains the single defining moment of my education and led me down a path that I might not otherwise have taken. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it was sub-par and I wish I’d done better. I wish I’d worked more. The fact was that at 17 years of age, the last thing I wanted to do was revise history. Entirely not interested. I suspect I relied on the possibility that I might be a genius and snag ‘A’ grades regardless, simply from my intellect. Turns out that doesn’t happen (at least not for me) and the only way to get those grades is solid hard work.

I landed a job when I graduated university, in the marketing department of a large publishing house. This was a gift of a job and was exactly what I should have excelled at. I had a three month contract and fully expected to be extended to permanency. But then, when the three months came to an end, they let me go. On reflection, years later, when I was adept at hiring gradates myself, in an other career, I realised I’d been too sure of myself, and it had concerned my superiors. I could not comprehend it at the time, but after I saw that I had breezed in, newly qualified with my degree, and thought I have arrived. Turns out that professional arrival is not about turning up; it’s about time, energy, humility and graft. But most of all, time.

The difference for me and my generation was that there was no constant analysis of these failings. These failings were the natural stepping stones to building a career, to maturing as an adult. There were no ready-made reassurances that I would survive and thrive again, there were no life-affirming quotes on Instagram. I did not, as it happened, look inward to assess whether I was suffering from depression or burnout. I did not cross-reference whether I was exhibiting anxiety symptoms, and I did not reach for a self-help book on managing said anxiety. Life just went on, and not much happened other than I eventually worked it out and continued on my way. Of course the preoccupation we now all have with our own psychological landscape is good; we check our emotional pulse on a daily basis. But I can’t help questioning whether this self-regard might be detrimental. I spend a lot of time level-setting things with my teenage children, helping them to see that the world will keep spinning even in they fail that test or fall out with that friend. It will all be OK. Even during the darkest days, evidence bears out that in time, it will be all OK.

My most potent sense of failure was in early motherhood – when my days were punctuated by the small successes (she sleeps!) and the small failures (she cries!). These moments would linger like a haze as I learned to come to terms with the complete lack of control I had for my own life, and that of this new human we had created.

So whilst the millennial fixation with self-care, self-analysis and self-knowledge makes for great podcasts, articles, essay and novels, the pressure must be immense. Like so many comparisons of past and present, was my being unaware an explanation for my experience? I am a member of Generation X. I came of age in the late 1980’s, was at university in the early 1990’s. I am the slacker generation. I didn’t know to douse myself in self-regard, so instead forged into adulthood feeling untethered. This led to years of stumbling with the lights out. I couldn’t have been less self-aware. But the result is that now, when self-awareness has arrived at the door, it is a revelation. This is why women in their forties these days exude an aura of zero fucks given. We’ve worked it out and I sense that will only continue. Millennials speak of having it all and I am struck by the consideration they give to life choices – but are almost paralysed by choice. Whether to get married and have a family. Or not get married. Their liberal sensibilities untested as life lays ahead of them, rather than behind. ‘Quarterlife’ and the early milestones of a passing decade denotes the transition of youth, but crucially, not the loss of it. They talk of having babies, but they haven’t decided yet. Career jostles with fertility. Can we have it all?

I have yet to read millennial-favourite Sally Rooney‘s second novel ‘Normal People’. My mum did and remarked ‘…there’s a lot of not much happening; they get together, they break up. It’s not really my thing.’ Her generation need substance in their fiction; the minutaea is not enough. After all, they grew up post-war. They really knew about people losing their shit.

What would I have been like as a millennial? I am a full generation ahead of them; I am pre-internet for crissake. I have written before about the gulf between my generation and my daughter’s here, and this preoccupation endures. The canyon of life experience between thirty and forty five – the milestone I will reach next month – is vast. Motherhood a raging river. Career a river bank. Marriage a raft. It is these things that I muse over now, in readiness for my mid-forties.

Photo by Arno Smit 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.