Writing

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.

On Endings and Beginnings

18th July 2018 · Leave a Comment

And so, the term ended, and with it, my son’s tenure at his school of the last six years. The school that has been instrumental in shaping my view of ‘the school mother’. They (we) are a breed, a type, a demographically-defined group. As the culmination of the academic year neared, a dizzying run down of leaving events took place; plays, trips, excursions, a sentimentally-charged Prize Giving service, speeches, parties and farewells. I recall this phase with my daughter’s schooling, but back then, with the first born child, there was a deeper seam of childhood nostalgia to mine, and the future that lay ahead was unknown. Little could I have imagined that, like everything in parenthood, the future would bring new challenges and new excitements, and the past would fade into the background, rightly so. With a second child, I know what to expect, and am reassured that this rite of passage from junior to senior is necessary, and correct.

I have been a school mother to young children for over twelve years, dropping off and picking up from the school with the daily regularity of the tide. I commented to another mother, that come the time children attend a senior school, it is possible to drop them at the bus in one’s pyjamas, as there is no need to exit the car. There is no lingering at school, there is no mother’s gossip, there is no influence, meetings with teachers are rare, email communication, if any, is king. She looked horrified. The transition from one domain to the next is a brutal one to navigate. No longer defined by one’s children. The shock!

All of this plays on my mind, because it is this midlife transition that interests me the most and which, despite my best endeavours to diversify my writing, I come back to. I met with my publisher friend last week and described my enduring preoccupation with midlife mothers and she nodded sagely, and said; ‘yes, I see what you mean.’

Meanwhile, whilst not defined by my children, I remain enamoured, and exasperated with them. The love, which spills over as they mature, is constant. But now, my teenage son, who has been swimming in a small and safe pond, pushes against the every boundary. Thirteen and nearly taller than me; and I am tall. Puberty for the male gender is a long and drawn out affair, full of daily updates; voice drop, height (7 inches in 9 months), shoulders, biceps, a testosterone peak. It’s an uncanny process where the sweet, soft, gentle boy of old has gone, and instead there is a lean, young man in his place. I recall it differently with my daughter, as an understated and short-lived process from girl to woman. Childhood draining away in a trickle, rather than a torrent.

My novel meanwhile, remains in an editing file on my laptop and my feelings about it shift over time. I used to consider it a shiny new gem, whereas now it feels older; in my darker moments I consider it hackneyed, even. This is the writer’s fear, I know. The problem with spending years writing your first book is that time doesn’t wait for you, and the world shifts on to its next encounter, and your writing remains frozen in time. I note that maybe this is why writers favour historical fiction rather than the present day? The present day doesn’t stay present for long, and all too soon, references become clichéd. I learnt on my MA to avoid clichés at all costs, so this troubles me.

In parenting, and perhaps in writing, there are few project closures, no ‘lessons learned’ meetings. Instead there’s a subtle creep, almost imperceptible, and that alone marks a milestone. It’s usually when I look backwards, promoted by a photo or a memory, do I realise what’s passed. This feels like a new era, and one that comes with good feelings. Here’s to endings and beginnings…

Telling The Truth

31st May 2018 · Leave a Comment

Come sit next to me. I’ll tell you a story. When I was doing my Masters, there was a submission deadline each month of 3,000 words, plus an analysis document in which I was required to dissect my writing process. Those 3,000 words would emerge, reluctantly, from my head, and in amongst the other demands of life, there was a need to simply get them out. I never felt – and even now, continue to feel – that I had the time to devote to it. Maybe that is how writing is; always a furtive pursuit, one that I am indulging myself in. Although writing a novel, whilst immensely challenging, never felt as banal or dull as writing a project plan in my previous career, or any email I ever penned, no matter how long and involved. There was a flippancy in how it seemed to others, the fact that I’d taken two years out of life to study and write.

So, those deadlines would roll around, and I would have to draw on my own experiences to find the words. I might have known what I wanted to write about, or the scene I needed to give life to, but other than that, I made it up as I went along. I realised I was not a planner! This fact returned to me recently, when running a workshop on creative writing in which I’d added the instruction in capitals: FIND YOUR PLOT BEFORE YOU START! I didn’t, and I paid for it. In fact I wonder if I still pay, and that is why the headway in finalising my novel and submitting it to an agent is slow.

So, I would write about my own experience. I set my novel locally, as it was easier to muster up details when all I needed to do was walk by the water and notice the tides, the sheen, the flora edging the shore. But on a personal level, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t I draw on my own life to write. It’s a strange alchemy that takes place, surprising me as a much as it might anyone else who reads it. I took events and memories (I have an elephantine memory for detail) and would expand them, like a glassblower gently inflating the delicate, amorphous structure of a balloon of glass. Writing, to me, feels like a when you look at the horizon on a hot day and see that shimmer of heat. The words are in the heat! It’s just a case of capturing them; of not looking away.

I’ve thought a lot about whether the novel was indeed fiction, or whether it was just a version of my life, and I’ve felt guilt about my sources of inspiration. People’s lives – some close to me, some not – fed my imagination. On any given day, innocent school mums would say things to me, and I would store these nuggets up and use them later, as inspiration or even as direct quotes. My children would give me a glance, or make an utterance, that I would then repeat. In fact I’ve read that many children of writers, when they grow up and read their parent’s work, object when they see their childhood antics reflected back. Writers are magpies in that sense. This became a weighty responsibility for me, and has made me consider whether I am more suited to writing non-fiction, like this blog. For the simple reason: it’s the truth, within reason, and I own it. When writing fiction, I found it was possible to write deplorable things and then disown them as being ‘made up.’ When one has to present the truth, whilst it may be tempered, whilst I may be an unreliable narrator to my own life, at least we all know where we stand.

Therefore, and in conclusion: am I too young to write my memoir?!

Take only what you need from it

17th May 2018 · 1 Comment

Did I miss something? Has life moved on? Almost certainly. Have blogs become passé? As the future asserts itself and millennials take centre-stage (I am still reeling from this fact: I have a seventeen year old daughter, as of last week, wtaf?), technology delivers new methods to us, and we absorb them like thirsty sponges. But I got to thinking: does this little old blog seem out of date? In defence, there is still a certain purity to it, to the medium of blogging per se, that I can’t let go of, in fact I don’t want to. There have been a number of discussional pieces written by my contemporaries in recent months, as the shifting sand of blogging is sieved through. Change has become the norm, Instagram has morphed into the cool have-it-all twenty-something, Facebook the awkward older relative in the room, who doesn’t get the ‘in’ joke. Pinterest the quirky, young aunt who is still – at a push – down with the kids.

I remain, and always will be an advocate of good old fashioned blogging. Whatever blogs are, or have become, the creative impulse runs strong in them, and I observe those of us who define new ways to exist within this framework. To me: my blog = my voice. In Joan Didion’s essay ‘Why I Write’, back in 1976, she described how the act of writing is one of ‘imposing oneself on other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.’ Isn’t this precisely why I keep returning here to write? It’s a space to inhabit but crucially, I can freely express my view. To muse about the universe. To have a voice. And I don’t need a gatekeeper (read: publisher) to say I can, or not. Blogging is the ultimate freedom of expression. However what interests – and irks – me is how blogs have become formulaic, how they all look and feel the same, are sponsored by the same brands, proferring the same sentiments.

I accept this blog as such a fundamental part of my life. There were times in the past when I would have disguised it as a strange ‘hobby’; the posting of my thoughts to the internet. It was a shifty secret, whereas now it’s become a tool for my career, but remains a deeply personal space. The professionalisation of blogs is what we have to thank, the extent to which the medium became accepted as a legitimate business method. The proliferation of Instagram as a microblogging platform has contributed to this; in the same way as ‘to google’ has became a verb, so now has ‘to ‘gram’. Long live the new vernacular. But that professional front has taken something away from the heart of the blogging community.

The sticking point is that blogs are only interesting if they are about humans; not just the veneered surface, but the inner world. Without doubt the biggest reader response comes from sharing a truth, a vulnerability, an honesty and all done with integrity. The more vanilla and banale the post, the less people want to read it, which is why, on the whole, business blogs don’t succeed so resolutely. The best blogs, in any world, are those where the writer lays it bare and so I wonder if success in this medium now relies on a curious juxtaposition of professional presentation and personal transparency. This has long been a preoccupation of mine, as in the early days I might have been described as a ‘mummy blogger’ in that I wrote about motherhood and the lives of my children. As we navigate the technical landscape of privacy, I now have a sense of unease about what I shared about them without their knowledge or consent. I now protect their privacy and rarely mention their endeavours. The blog had to grow up.

When filing out forms which request my occupation, I say ‘writer’ and feel a frisson of excitement at that fact. And this week, as a writer, I led a workshop with Hero Stores on Creative Writing. It felt like a prophecy come true, as over a year back I attended a workshop there, and thought, simultaneously: ‘I love this!’ but moreover: ‘I can do this!’ and approached the company to see if they wanted to collaborate. What ensued was one of those rare, serendipitous and perfectly balanced days when it everything I fretted about didn’t happen (is fretting ever necessary?), and everything I wanted to, did happen. A spent the day with a group of clever, interested, vibrant women (my favourite kind) and as well as teaching them, they taught me.

My hope is that blogging continues, within its new parameters and offers those of us who write and read a place to go; a room of one’s own.

Deconstructing ‘The Breakfast Club’

7th April 2018 · Leave a Comment

I devoured Molly Ringwald’s beautifully argued essay in The New Yorker, ‘What About The Breakfast Club?’, relating to her role in the 1980’s film. That film formed a pivotal moment in my adolescence and only last week, I found myself recommending it to a teenager I know, as a film that all people absolutely must see. Part of the cinematic canon, so to speak. Such was its impact on my teenage years, that Molly Ringwald (who, for years, to the consciousness of most, had lapsed from the limelight) remains an idol and someone whom I emulated, to the extent that my peers and I performed the confessional scene from the film in our drama exam, and fought over who would play ‘Claire’. In the end, my local contemporary Julie Huggins snagged that accolade, owing to her strawberry-blonde hair, which resembled Ringwald’s ‘Cherry’. I can still recite great swathes of the dialogue from the film and considered director John Hughes, also responsible for ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ”Sixteen Candles,’ a genius, with near-perfect recall of the teenage angst that afflicted us.

Cue line from the film: ‘When you grow up, your heart dies.’ So cautionary was this sentiment to my young heart and mind, that it seared in memory. I was not going to become that kind of adult, that kind of parent. Nit-picking but distant; demanding of academic and sporting excellence, preparing packed lunches of ‘PBJ with the crusts cut off’. Yet when asked what her parents do to her, Ally Sheedy’s character replies: ‘They ignore me.’ encapsulating the awful truth; that parents of teens, when the gulf widens between us and our offspring, retreat, somewhat wounded, into our own pointless middle age. Don’t you forget about me.

Ringwald illuminates how various scenes in the film seem inappropriate, when positioned against the #MeToo movement, of how toe-curlingly awkward it is to watch this film with your own kids. I can attest to this, having watched it with mine, I found myself forming an inadvertent furrowed brow: I don’t recall it being quite this risqué I definitely did, aged 13 and circa 1986, when it would have hit VHS video to be watched and re-watched at home, gloss over the sexual overtones, the drug use and the swearing. I felt little empathy with the adult characters; Mr Vernon and his ‘Barry Manilow suit’ and Carl the janitor’s creepy, voyeristic tendencies. When holding a mirror up to my adolescence and to the culture I absorbed, I see Ringwald is right. So much of it was tinged with what would now be considered inappropriate. There’s a systematic unravelling of everything I grew up to think of as ‘normal’.

I’ve written before about generational feminism; the extent to which my 16 year old daughter and I may hold the same feminist doctrines, but how the lens from which we look will differ, according to our societal and cultural references. What is her equivalent to ‘The Breakfast Club’? Who is the John Hughes/Molly Ringwald of her generation? How will she reflect, when she is 44, on the films which shaped her consciousness? In this seismic moment of gender politics, will girls not still be drawn to the references that best reflect their own experience? ‘The Breakfast Club’, with its setting in a Chicago high school, did not so closely resemble the life I led as a teen, not least because I attended an all-girl’s school in rural Sussex. We wore bottle green school uniforms, and read about what happened in other people’s lives. But the heady prospect of girls and boys in co-education presented itself through American cinema; prom nights and the backseat of Daddy’s car. In reality, although Brits have adopted the prom night protocol, evidenced by reams of proud, sparkling photos on Facebook each June, we do not do it with the American panache that was captured in the Hughes’ films. It was teenage world for the taking.

As my generation’s cultural lynch pins are removed and examined, there’s a sense that ground shifts again and I turn inward wondering why growing up with misogyny did not affect me more negatively, or become a preoccupation until I was older. I realise it had seeped into me and was the standard, and even as I look back I conclude; well, at least I knew where I stood. My expectations were met. We survived in a man’s world and that was fine, it made us wily. I don’t even recall, as I was at University in the mid-1990’s, that my friends and I ever questioned this status quo or railed against it. It is this that makes me shame-faced now, and I suspect was part of the impetus provoking Ringwald to pen her retrospective essay. Does not knowing any different make it OK? As she says, with a resigned tone, ‘Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art…’ Although the films of my youth may now seem tawdry and misguided, they were to me the steady hand over the slippery path of teenage hood.

The craft

28th March 2018 · Leave a Comment

In my old career, I would mop up the aftermath of corporate stress. The very worst cases would land on my desk – or in my inbox, moreover – where I would consider and ‘solution’ them for the company, finding a route through the messy undergrowth that had led to corporate litigation between employee and workplace. When there was nowhere else to go but the law. The employee would say ‘I’ve consulted my lawyer’ and we would say ‘Good!’, knowing that then it would be slightly less David and Goliath; we the corporate monolith, they the small pebble. I would search the technicalities, absorb myself in the risk assessment, brief the executives and we’d stagger towards some sort of outcome. At that time, I felt distant from the complainants, it wasn’t until I left the job that I allowed myself to really think about how their lives had been, and what had compelled them to litigate against their employer. There was a strong current of blame that pushed them along; it had to be someone’s fault, someone had to be to blame, and I recall writing policy documents about how causation is not definable.

It seems a long way off now, I am out the other side. But there is a large part of me that misses that work, the completeness of it. The shade you feel under a corporate umbrella, which I suspect can only be found when the company is as large and well-known as the one I worked for. Now there is no umbrella, and instead I feel the blinding glare of reality all of the time. When you forge a (new) career you have to evaluate daily. No boss, no objectives, no appraisal. No executives, no corporate perks, no training. In writing, it’s challenging even to keep colleagues. In fact nothing of my previous life features other than the pill of experience that I swill down when I am writing; when the words come from somewhere I once went, or heard someone say, or from that attempt to express the unsaid.

I met with my MA colleagues at our college, to retrace our steps I suppose, and when speaking to the under-graduates, we all realised our time there has passed. Going back felt furtive and confusing, and we all came away wondering what strange territory we are in now, as writers. If I’d have applied a corporate plan, then my book would be finished, published, marketed and on the best seller list by now. Double digit growth. But of course, in creative endeavours it doesn’t work that way! And as I try to forge forward, it is the mental barriers I create for myself that stop progress, rather than anything external. When studying to be a writer, the concept remains an elusive nymph of a thing that you can sense in your future. I could be a professional writer. It hovers and wavers there in your mind’s eye like heat waves on the horizon. The reality is so different!

We devise ways to make ourselves work. I look at my laptop reproachfully. I schedule ‘writing time’ and feel pangs of envy when I see new books published. I assume every other writer is penning droplets of brilliance, whereas my work comes out leaden, lopsided, lumpy.

What a curious thing being an academic or a creative. So used was I to the definable objectives of the corporate world, everything thought through and cascaded, everyone working to a common goal, and the goal was financially motivated. For many that emphasis would be deplorable, but to me, back then, it made sense. There was an honesty to having blatantly expressed objectives. Maybe what I find frustrating about writing is that it’s so unclear, there is no measure of success. One person might like your work, a million others might not. Or vice versa. The enormity of this principle troubles me and I go back to the mantra that I must write to please myself. Write what I want to read. Write – in the words of Hemingway – hard and clear about what hurts.

In any craft there is the privilege of the practice. How lucky to be able to write! How fortuitous to be released from corporate toil. A chance to regain my cosmic karma after I stopped messing about with litigation defences. We didn’t do it.

I console/distract myself from these unanswerable questions with learning to cross-stitch and coveting expensive shoes. Happy days.

Painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi, ‘Interior with Woman by the Piano’ 1901.

Steady selfish

20th March 2018 · Leave a Comment

My parents divorced when I was a child, leaving me fearful of abandonment. This, compounded by my father’s profession – an airline pilot – meant that in my young mind, I worried about plane crashes too. Meanwhile, my brother, who is seven years older than me, navigated the treacherous waters of being teenage with a single mother. Despite my Mum’s best efforts, our home was not always calm. I would climb into her bed some nights, listening to her breathe and she would allow me to sleep there, safe in the knowledge that she was not going anywhere. As I write this, I sense the faint fingerprint remaining from my childhood. Divorce can be misunderstood by those who haven’t experienced it. It’s not that I didn’t understand my Dad had to go, and it’s not even that his leaving impacted us so much in the day to day; after all, pilots are away a lot. But the bedrock on which I relied was no longer sound. It remained, some semblance of its former self, but it was jagged and uneven, and there were gaps where steadfastness used to be. I wonder now if I have fabricated this perception because I have reflected on my own childhood and cross-referenced it with that of my own children? Isn’t that what being middle-aged is all about? Looking back and looking forward; stranded midway.

My children walk on steady bedrock. That is because my husband and I provide it for them, and I particularly, as I don’t ‘work’ for a living, devote myself to ensuring bedrock stability. That sounds as if we lack selfishness. I note in the media the recent preoccupation with ‘self care’ – and how we should all practice it. I wonder: is self care just selfishness, its thinly disguised cousin? I resolve to put myself first more. The happiness of everyone depends on it. But self care can feel like a little-used habit from the past. I remind myself I spent 25 years with just myself, no children to think of, how hard can it be?

I watched a documentary about Joan Didion on Netflix which was fascinating but also tragic, and I was struck by a comment she made about her ill-fated daughter, who died in her late thirties. She said her daughter found her remote. When I watched the cinematic footage of Joan in earlier years, writing prolifically, immersed in her craft, surrounded by other creatives, it’s clear that the life she strove for did not feature bedrock stability. It featured something else entirely; the pursuit of her own needs, her own compulsion to write. And as such it makes me wonder, as most people my age do, what’s it all about? I don’t write for a day or two because I do mother stuff, kid’s stuff, house stuff. The ‘pursuit of my own needs’ comes low down on the the ‘to do’ list.

When my own sixteen year old daughter sleeps in my bed, as she did so for a brief spell recently, it was for comfort, but also to draw strength. There was something in her own life that required bravery and clarity and she took that from me, her mother life-force. I didn’t see this until after it had ceased happening, and all that was left of those nights she slept next to me was the memory. This time round though, I listened to her breathing and recognised the same in-breath and out-breath of her babyhood, the same snuffles, the same sleeping sighs as she made her dream-led twists and turns. So elemental yet also incongruous, as when your child emerges in to young adulthood, you loose that sense of oneness with them. Their scent, their skin, that extension of yourself. She is me. I am her.

It’s curious but it is from these everyday inconsequential human nuances that I notice my writing gets richer. To me at least. It is there that I find words. I put off the pursuit of what I desire and aspire to because what happens in between is every day life. So these moments have to be lived and enjoyed and even, at times, endured, as from them comes the goodness.

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Please yourself

10th March 2018 · Leave a Comment

3.07am or thereabouts, I wake, then can’t get back to sleep, and my mind cranks itself up a notch. This is a sign. Of late, I’ve been a writer who doesn’t write. It’s a temporary thing to start with; a few missed days, then a week, then a fretful month, and I start to chastise myself that I should be doing better. It’s not that I won’t write, it’s that I can’t write. So regular is this on-again/off-again style of mine, that I wonder if this is just how it goes with me.

We went skiing. Well, I spent half the week skiing, then caught a cold that led me to be hotel-bound. Aren’t hotels peculiar places in the day time? They live a half-life, waiting for guests to return in the evening and, particularly in ski resorts, there’s an unspoken rule that everyone must be out and up the mountain. If you’re not, then why are you there? I binge-watched ‘Stranger Things‘ and ached for my childhood of the 80’s, complete with white ankle boots and Chopper bikes.

I lectured undergraduates on writing and blogging and then following that, proceeded to not write, nor blog! It was like talking about it distilled it. They say those who can’t do, teach? The blog waits in the wings for me, ready when I need it. We enter year eight of blogging and I recall the heady days of daily posts and collaboration between the blog community, which now, has resolutely moved over to Instagram. I spend too much time on Instagram; it is a time-suck, especially stories.

I decide to shift the novel from first person to third person and the enormity of this rears up in front of me like a roadblock. I am trying to skirt round it. I study my own indecision and conclude that I have the luxury of time, and it’s working against me. I can’t help thinking if I still had a demanding job, I might have just penned this damn novel at night. Would it have been keener to get out? I scan job websites.

I fret about single use plastic and wonder how we – and by this I mean my generation – can have gone for so many years not considering the impact of using plastic in everything. The insanity of it; did we really think it would just go away? Turns out biodegradable means in a 100 years, by which time our children’s children will be surrounded by mountains of the stuff. I imagine the oceans thick and oily with pollution. It makes me shudder and I buy beeswax food covers and a water bottle with a fairly pretentious chunk of Japanese charcoal in it (to filter, of course) and feel marginally better.

The weather barrels on with rain and murk, small suggestions of Spring which don’t quite materialise, but the promise is there. Daffodils, birdsong, morning light. One day it will be summer again.

I buy an Anthony Burrill poster. My teeth ache. I listen to an Oprah Winfrey ‘Super Soul Sunday‘ book on Audible and it causes my head to spin as they discuss giving oneself up to the universe. I consider my universe. My friend suggests to me that I need to get outside of my own head. I order an embroidery cross-stitch kit and await its arrival with interest. I drive my kids around. I start using retinol on my skin. I walk the dog; there’s so much water in the earth that I can literally hear it seeping, because of the thaw of the recent, random snowfall.

Ultimately, going back to the universe, I decide what it boils down to is this: please yourself. If you can master that, you’re halfway there! That, and get good sleep! This is how life goes, the layering of stuff and thoughts and work and rest. I read this back and think, with a shamed face: first world problems. Resolve to do better/try harder/finish the novel/stop thinking so much.

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Quiet Ambition

2nd February 2018 · Leave a Comment

When I told her I wasn’t ambitious, my best and wise friend Dawn said I was lying. She said I had wild ambition but harboured it in a quiet, almost covert way. ‘You don’t shout about it’ she said, ‘but it’s definitely there.’ Like many moments in our twenty-five year friendship, she summed things up in a sentence, and I stopped talking, mute in the knowledge she was right. There is something grubby about ambition in women, a facet of our society discussed with abandon of late. Commonly, my generation don’t allow ourselves to say we want something as blatantly as we should. Whether this is habit or lack of confidence or conditioning I don’t know, but the result has produced a guarded conflict in me between naked ambition and the kind of gentle, motherly humility I hope to exhibit.

The trajectory of my younger life had this tone:

I want that. Can I do that? No. God, no. Oh, actually maybe, yes. OK yes. *Completes education*.

Now I want that. Can I do that? No. God no. Oh, actually maybe, yes. OK yes. Yes! *Goes after the challenge of a corporate career, like a woman possessed*.

When I left my first profession a little over three years ago, I badgered my friends about what I should do next. Many advised me to do nothing, which was in itself the greatest challenge. To not work, I concluded, was bad for me. My brain whirred, the covert ambition did not go away, but spiralled inanely in the background like an inflated balloon that has been let go, the air escaping. What ensued was a year of miserable inner dialogues and lengthy, circular conversations with others, where I tried to figure out my new place in the world. I was unhappy. After all that. It seemed like a cruel trick; wasn’t I meant to be content? I had given up work!

My early retirement lasted until I signed up for a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and started on an academic path. In an underestimation of what it would mean to be a student again, I launched in with my usual tenacity, getting it done whilst the rest of my life continued around me, raising our children, wiping surfaces, driving, cleaning, walking the dog. Only on a couple of occasions did I take myself off to write my assignments, but on the whole, the impact of my second education was minimal to those around me. Intently, I absorbed and relished being back amongst academics, talking books, words, metaphors and conceits. I’ve written before about the merits of doing a Masters and I would say it was the best decision I made at the time. It enabled that pesky ambition to take a back seat, until it came time for my finals, and there it was again. I so wanted to ace the test, to be the best, as I had before. But this time, the nebulous nature of what I was studying made that near-on impossible. I did well, for sure, but compared to my professional life, where an established meritocracy applied (work hard; get paid), this was fundamentally different. A Masters education is about a critical analysis of oneself. Of one’s own motivations and capabilities. It’s about how effectively you can apply all that knowledge.

I returned to my college last week to lecture the undergraduate students on the relationship between writing and blogging. It was a twist of fate, as this activity of blogging has formed part of my identity for over eight years. I sat across the table from the students, the opposite side to where I had been only a year ago, and thought how life can reformulate itself. For all the words that have been written about blogging, there remains a taint of frippery to it, as a medium it lacks seriousness and is often considered as supplemental to other, more immediately gratifying online places like Instagram. Micro-Blogging has overtaken all. Micro-influencing is de rigueur. For the serious writer, this presents a challenge; we like quality and quantity. The craft of writing is an art, it can’t be done as an Instagram post. A blog remains the only medium through which the power of words can be explored. Where consciousness can flow, as it would in a personal diary, but then is published for the internet to read. Such a curious phenomenon.

Writing a blog has been about taking control and doing something. About channeling my thoughts and writing, writing, writing, even when I thought there was little to say. It’s been an enabler in so many ways and I heard myself, during my lecture, sounding almost evangelical about the benefits. There are downsides of course, as I have alluded to, it is a medium which solicits judgement (the ‘comment here’ mentality), and one must become comfortable with brutal honesty and openness. Blogs steeped in privacy are generally hard to accept. But there are limits; I write less about my family, as my children are older and it’s not their decision to feature here. I respect that and turn instead to commentary about other elements of my life and of course, the book, the words, the struggle to move forward when you have quiet ambition and you’ve entered your second profession.

Shhhhhh…

The Education of Adults

17th January 2018 · Leave a Comment

It’s a curious thing, being nearly 44 years old. The shenanigans of middle age continue to bring new and exciting dimensions to life. I find myself noting the behaviour of my elders and wondering, as I’ve alluded to before; why the grump? Why the know-it-all? Why the backward-looking attitude? I heard a British social commentator say – in reference to the demographic of Americans who voted for Trump – that they were looking to restore the past. Rather than looking forward, the impetus was to go back, to make it like it was. They rue the day when the future encroached. But, as all humans (and most animals) know, there is no stopping the future, it’s going to come whether we like it or not. I notice too the passing of time – another Christmas, another new year’s eve, another cold and gloomy January. Time tick-tocks, and I see I am straddled between two places; what was and what will be. There may be an esoteric truth to this which can only be understood by the over-40’s. Am I the only one whom until my mid-thirties, had no thoughts on this topic? Sentimentality and nostalgia were not my constant companions then, as they are now.

I also notice the behaviour of the young, my children, their friends, the cohorts of youth, where everything is ahead of them and not behind. My children look back on their younger childhood and regard it fondly. I can isolate each event in memory and recall the effort involved in making it lovely. This activity is grossly exaggerated now I ‘don’t work’. I use that term reluctantly, as I feel like I work every damn minute of the day, until I fall into bed exhausted, but it assists me in making my point. Motherhood can be distilled into a series of efforts, some minuscule and some Herculean, all of them combining, we hope, to make up the whole: to raise a happy child. In amongst it, there are efforts that are misguided or just plain wrong. The times when not enough effort is made, or there’s too much and it overflows in an ugly spill.

I then look to my peers, the beleaguered 40-somethings! I regard my friends with insatiable interest; how are they doing it? Do they feel the same as I do? Is this what we signed up for? Why are we so guarded? Decisions of others are dissected and turned over in my hands, trying to see the angle.

I conclude it’s all a whopping, great big overthink.

Meanwhile, I am lecturing next week at the college where I did my MA. I am returning to spend time with the under-graduates to talk about writing and blogging. I’ve written a blog for eight years this month. Eight years!! Blogging has become almost unrecognisable to itself in that time, so much has changed.

I get asked, pretty much on a daily basis, ‘how’s the book?’ as if it’s a living, breathing thing, like ‘how’s the garden?’ or ‘how’s your mum?’. I pause, and reply that it’s going slowly. For all the momentum of an educational qualification and a publisher’s meeting, the fact remains that work still needs to be done to refine the book. What I produced was a first draft, and what I need it to be is a final draft. There can be fifty iterations between those two points. I notice this statement makes me feel like a fraud. Writers write; they might write every day, but the end result may not change that much. It feels like that now. I persevere. And fret about how hard the perseverance feels. Did I mention that writing, much like motherhood can be distilled into a series of efforts, some minuscule and some Herculean, all of them, we hope, combining to make up the whole: to create a book. The irony of my choice of pursuits is not lost on me.

January always was the pensive month, for all the talk about Blue Monday (to me; a perennial favourite of the 1980’s by New Order), the weather, the post-Christmas slump, the crazy, short-lived bursts of healthy eating and exercise regime, it remains a sullen, after-party sort of month. A time to endure whilst we wait for something better. Roll on the future.