Attended the Get Writing 2012 conference in Hatfield last Saturday. Came away really quite desperate to get down to work, but was still struggling with finding a way in to the book I've been wanting to write. I spoke to so many people with works in progress or books they wanted to pitch to agents and I felt like an absolute fraud having nothing to show for my months of tinkering.
Spent Thursday - a day I had put aside for writing - looking at a blank screen and getting more and more depressed. The only things I have produced since I packed in the OU course because I just wanted to 'get on with it' are two very short stories. Well received by my Writers' Workshop colleagues, but still ...
I did a bit of writing around the subject yesterday during my very short lunch break. I thought if I could identify who my main character was, what she wanted, what she needed and who was in conflict with those wants and needs, then I might be able to move a bit. Until this point, I knew the elements of the story, but couldn't decide the best point of view or, whose story to tell, how to tell it, when to set it and what genre it would be. It had been everything from historical fiction to thriller!
I'm pleased to report that the sideways approach seems to have worked. I've now got 600 words down, which may not sound like much, but believe me, after the tumbleweed that's been blowing through my brain recently, they feel like the most miraculous 600 words in the English language!
There's still part of me that's convinced I'm not up to the challenge and won't have the staying power, imagination or talent to conjure up another 80,000 - 100,000 words that will be able to hold a reader's attention and therefore worthy of publishing, but if I don't give it a go, then I'll never know. And I know I'll regret that.
And if I'm not writing, then I'm not a writer.
Saturday 18 February 2012
Sunday 12 February 2012
I'm Starting a New Religion
For this post to have its full impact and, quite frankly, make any sense, I suggest you read Localised Armageddon first.
Hallelujah! I've had a visit from Vic the plumber. How does one go about getting someone canonized? Vic swept in, stemmed the flood in the garden, got water to flow round the boiler, tightened the screws on the front door as he was passing because he happened to have a cross-head screw-driver in his hands and then rode off into the ... err, fog in his white van, uttering into his mobile phone the most reassuring words in the world ...
'Get the ladder out, I'll be round in ten minutes.'
All hail St Vic, saviour of the cold and clueless!!
Hallelujah! I've had a visit from Vic the plumber. How does one go about getting someone canonized? Vic swept in, stemmed the flood in the garden, got water to flow round the boiler, tightened the screws on the front door as he was passing because he happened to have a cross-head screw-driver in his hands and then rode off into the ... err, fog in his white van, uttering into his mobile phone the most reassuring words in the world ...
'Get the ladder out, I'll be round in ten minutes.'
All hail St Vic, saviour of the cold and clueless!!
Localised Armageddon
Usually I love Sundays. Lazy mornings in bed reading, drinking tea and eating big, fat bacon sarnies. I don't love this Sunday. In fact I'm feeling a decided antipathy towards it.
I was woken by the Edward Bear monster (for those of you not in the know, that's one of my cats) at 6.45. He decided it was time for cuddles and I really needed to be awake for said process. I was not best pleased. I then became aware of a strange, intermittent vibrating noise emanating from Natasha's bedroom. STOP! That's where the boiler is located, and you're thinking about my daughter, so please mind where you allow your thoughts to wander.
On investigation (which involved creeping into Natasha's bedroom, a hazardous venture as the floor was littered with all sorts of detritus - a visiting uni student doesn't unpack, she disgorges - turning on the light inside the airing cupboard so I could look at the offending article,whilst trying not to wake the slumbering teen in the bed) there was a blue flashing light on the front of the boiler and a worrying sound of a bubbling cauldron coming from within.
'This can't be good,' I thought. 'I'm sure it's not meant to make that noise.'
What's even more annoying is that the blooming thing's less than a year old.
After various re-settings of the boiler, running of hot water taps (now only gushing water that has come straight from a glacier) and frantic pattings of radiators (are they cooling down, they are, they're cooling down ... bugger, bugger, bugger ...) I rang British Gas, who installed the bloody thing in March of last year.
'Do you have any other forms of heating, Madam?'
'No.'
'I'll put you down as a priority then. An engineer will be out to you on Tuesday. Would you like morning or afternoon?'
'Tuesday!'
'Sorry, Madam, but we're a bit busy what with the weather an all. You are a priority. Would you like us to give you a call if we have a cancellation?'
So, after a perfunctory wash and brush up, boiling 3 kettles of water to wash the dishes, greeting Jo back from the boyfriend's, who tells us that she has a crack in her engine so can't drive her car back to Wales tonight, but it's okay because the boyfriend's Dad's a mechanic and is going to fix the car while Jo's back at uni and she's going onto her friend's car insurance so she can drive them both back tomorrow morning (the friend only has a provisional licence), restraining myself when Natasha finally crawls out of bed and grumbles,
'You could have made me a cup of tea too!'
clearing up cat vomit from my bedroom carpet - thanks Gus, just add to the beauty of my day, why don't you - I bundle Natasha into the car to take her to the station in Stevenage so she can get her train back to Sunderland.
She makes the train by seconds. Thank the Lord for that!
On the way home I go via B&Q and buy a plug-in radiator. At least that's £9 off in the sale. I phone Jo to let her know where I am and that I'll be back in a few minutes and she's all sympathy and offers to make me a cup of tea.
I go into the kitchen at home to unload the washing machine and I can hear another noise. It sounds like a freight train under the house. What the ....?
In the garden a water pipe has burst and I have Niagra Falls gushing down the wall. I didn't sit down and cry. I wanted to, but Joanna was standing watching me and I could tell her fight or flight reflex was fully armed. Which way would I go?
After phoning the plumber (great a Sunday emergency call out, I haven't spent enough money today!) and getting him to come down to isolate the pipe and just switch the damn thing off I have retired to my room. I'd crawl back into bed, but I've got to wait for the plumber and then go round to my brother's for a shower.
And it's only one o'clock.
I don't want to be a grown up any more.
I was woken by the Edward Bear monster (for those of you not in the know, that's one of my cats) at 6.45. He decided it was time for cuddles and I really needed to be awake for said process. I was not best pleased. I then became aware of a strange, intermittent vibrating noise emanating from Natasha's bedroom. STOP! That's where the boiler is located, and you're thinking about my daughter, so please mind where you allow your thoughts to wander.
On investigation (which involved creeping into Natasha's bedroom, a hazardous venture as the floor was littered with all sorts of detritus - a visiting uni student doesn't unpack, she disgorges - turning on the light inside the airing cupboard so I could look at the offending article,whilst trying not to wake the slumbering teen in the bed) there was a blue flashing light on the front of the boiler and a worrying sound of a bubbling cauldron coming from within.
'This can't be good,' I thought. 'I'm sure it's not meant to make that noise.'
What's even more annoying is that the blooming thing's less than a year old.
After various re-settings of the boiler, running of hot water taps (now only gushing water that has come straight from a glacier) and frantic pattings of radiators (are they cooling down, they are, they're cooling down ... bugger, bugger, bugger ...) I rang British Gas, who installed the bloody thing in March of last year.
'Do you have any other forms of heating, Madam?'
'No.'
'I'll put you down as a priority then. An engineer will be out to you on Tuesday. Would you like morning or afternoon?'
'Tuesday!'
'Sorry, Madam, but we're a bit busy what with the weather an all. You are a priority. Would you like us to give you a call if we have a cancellation?'
So, after a perfunctory wash and brush up, boiling 3 kettles of water to wash the dishes, greeting Jo back from the boyfriend's, who tells us that she has a crack in her engine so can't drive her car back to Wales tonight, but it's okay because the boyfriend's Dad's a mechanic and is going to fix the car while Jo's back at uni and she's going onto her friend's car insurance so she can drive them both back tomorrow morning (the friend only has a provisional licence), restraining myself when Natasha finally crawls out of bed and grumbles,
'You could have made me a cup of tea too!'
clearing up cat vomit from my bedroom carpet - thanks Gus, just add to the beauty of my day, why don't you - I bundle Natasha into the car to take her to the station in Stevenage so she can get her train back to Sunderland.
She makes the train by seconds. Thank the Lord for that!
On the way home I go via B&Q and buy a plug-in radiator. At least that's £9 off in the sale. I phone Jo to let her know where I am and that I'll be back in a few minutes and she's all sympathy and offers to make me a cup of tea.
I go into the kitchen at home to unload the washing machine and I can hear another noise. It sounds like a freight train under the house. What the ....?
In the garden a water pipe has burst and I have Niagra Falls gushing down the wall. I didn't sit down and cry. I wanted to, but Joanna was standing watching me and I could tell her fight or flight reflex was fully armed. Which way would I go?
After phoning the plumber (great a Sunday emergency call out, I haven't spent enough money today!) and getting him to come down to isolate the pipe and just switch the damn thing off I have retired to my room. I'd crawl back into bed, but I've got to wait for the plumber and then go round to my brother's for a shower.
And it's only one o'clock.
I don't want to be a grown up any more.
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