Diary - news, views, events
15 December 2011
Confessions of a Telly Adict
I have been watching far too much tv lately. Actually, I have discovered Eggheads – the only quiz I have ever enjoyed, probably because I can answer quite a good few of the questions. Eggheads begins at 6pm. Now, I do have a rule never to turn the tv on before 8pm at the earliest, but sometimes, when husband Husband is away – as he is often lately – and there is only me in the house and it’s dark and cold outside, sometimes I just need a few voices to keep me company. But once the telly is on, it’s very hard to turn it off – there’s that hypnotic affect – and often the thought of silence in an empty house is too much, even if I do have a good book to read.
I have always loved tv, beginning with Pogles’ Wood (note that correctly placed apostrophe – yes the BBC is right-on in all things punctuation) and ending in The Slap, (last episode tonight on BBC4 10pm – marvellous). In between there was 1960’s Batman, Blue Peter (1968 – 1973 approx – the ‘Get down, Shep!’ Years), Top of the Pops, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch and my favourite Harry O (in which there was an actor called Anthony Zerbe I had a terrific crush on). I started watching Coronation Street in 1975 and stopped, bored to death, twenty years later – I haven’t watched a soap since – went cold turkey (hence my 8pm rule). I watch a lot of stuff like How Clean is Your House/Bowel and Phil & Kirsty Look at Houses for Sale, because I like houses (and Phil). There should be more serials about apocalypse and zombies, in my opinion – The Walking Dead, for example was great but lost on Chanel 5.
Loving tv always feels a bit shameful, I suppose, not least because, despite coming from a large family and having never lived alone, it’s something I have always done alone – at least 95% of my viewing has been solitary (husband Husband does not watch tv, except on Saturdays when he falls asleep after Strictly Come Dancing). Also, if you write you have to read and read a very great deal – and tv eats into reading time. When I give talks I am asked which authors I like, not what I watch on tv, and also Did you read a lot when you were a child? Yes, I say, thinking guiltily about Pogles Wood. Yes, I read War of the Worlds when I was ten and all of George Orwell by the time I was fourteen, much of Philip Roth, too. Mostly though I read Enid Blyton (Mallory Towers a favourite). Even more mostly I watched tv, but I don’t often admit to that – shameful, isn’t it? I should get out more.
But watching television does teach you about story-telling. In the days when Coronation Street was watchable, I learnt about cliff-hangers and keeping the audience interested. Most of my general knowledge comes from Radio 4, but much from the tv – I do believe that all writers need a good, broad general knowledge (even if it’s fairly shallow – you can always wing it/look up more in-depth details on the web…then read a book…). However…I have a kindle now and read even more than I used to. I do prefer to read, when it comes right down to it, and if it wasn’t for the silence…If I was forced to give up tv, books or radio, the tv would go first, no question – I would miss my radio far more, but even that would be second to reading. Most telly is awful nowadays (that maybe my age, the fact that I have seen it all before), any yet, when it’s good it’s very good…Perhaps I should just try to reinforce the 8 o’clock rule…
And here is the theme to the Magic Roundabout, because it used to make me hide behind the settee when I was five, so scary and strange it was…
07 December 2011
Step Inside Love
Last night I saw a clip on tv of Cilla Black singing Step Inside, Love. That comma after inside makes the line an invitation to someone at your door whose name you’d forgotten, or that you’re just very familiar with (or not, depending). Without the comma I suppose we’re taking about an invitation to step into a feeling, to inhabit love. All right, I spend too much time watching tv and allowing my mind to wander around these things…and wasn’t it a lovely, sparkly dress Cilla was wearing…and I never used to like her voice but now I do…is this a symptom of aging….? Would I have learnt to love Blind Date if it was still on? Should I have another cup of tea? Or go to bed, even…I wonder where son Husband is. Because he’s quite late home from work…at the pub? Car breakdown…? Go to bed, Marion, for goodness sake…But then think of all the things you have to do before you’re in lovely bed – coax the dog off the sofa, (difficult…) tuck him up in his basket and give him a kiss (could take a moment). Faff around putting tea cups in the dishwasher…Putting the last of the just-finished-reading Sunday paper in the recycling…brushing my teeth…Then there’s the actual lying in bed thinking not about song lyrics – as if – but making up that story where Mark from Say You Love Me (my third novel…read it…) falls in love with an absolutely gorgeous man who is a Swine and hurts him…but he comes out of it all right, living as he does in his lovely Hampstead house with his critically acclaimed novels selling by the container ship load. Mark is me, of course, and always was (except I had a very much happier childhood, and am a woman…And no man has ever been that much of a swine to me, but more from luck than good management). Being Mark sends me to sleep, sometimes. Other times I am Paul – who goes down a very different track than he does in my novels about him – he stays in Stockton, (Thorp), for one thing, and doesn’t leave his family…He would hate me if I messed up his life like this in print.
I have always gone to sleep making up stories. Those stories never get to the page, or even to the keyboard, mainly because it’s always the same story about Paul or Mark. They step inside love and have a very lovely time, then a horrid time, and then they get over it/die. I used to say, if asked, that I wrote about sex and death – which was very glib of me, but what can one say when put on the spot like that? Occasionally I’d say historical romances – but that seemed wrong although there is a big nugget of truth there, as big as the sex and death line. Truly I write about love; true love, mistaken love, confusing-love-with-lust love, I’m-going-mad-for-it-over-here love. What else is there, after all? Murder. Murder would probably sell more books. Vampires ditto. How about a novel about a murderous, madly in love vampire…? I’m going to write it. Tomorrow. I have to go and boil spaghetti just now.
Here’s Cilla, anyway and the song was written by Paul McCartney - I never knew that, being much too young...
02 December 2011
Green Eyed Monsters
I have just heard today that a former student of mine is about to have her first novel published. I am very pleased for her, of course – the first time I read her work I knew that she had something special (I also thought that there wasn’t very much I could teach her). I remember telling husband Husband that I had a new student and she was a better writer than me (pull a sad, defeated face here.) Having students that are more talented than me is quite disconcerting and makes me wonder what I am doing with my life: I should have stayed in the bank – became the very best bank clerk I could have been – had a proper, earning-some-decent-money career. But here I am, messing about with the slight talent I have. I am happy for my former student, I truly am – there is room in the published world for all of us, after all. I have no idea why I feel jealous – I too am a published novelist, after all. But I do feel jealous – isn’t that strange and unnecessary and horrible? What’s it all about?
I do know of course – it’s about feeling I have to be the best writer in the world and no one should come near me for sheer brilliance, and if they do, well, I might as well give up. Also I suspect that my ex student must have been luckier than me because more talented, got a better deal, better in every way so that she will go further and further and I will stay back. There: as I said: horrible. It’s the same feeling I get when I read published writers I admire. It’s also about, I think, spending too much time alone in my study making up stories. I really should get out more, get some perspective. Except I was never very good at getting out – I truly was a very poor bank clerk; I have never enjoyed working with other people and I hated school because of the other kids – being wary of them, on the whole, if not down right scared. If school had just been me and the teachers I would have loved it.
Oh well. Least said, soonest mended: say nowt’s a canny chap, as my granddad used to say. I am aware of saying too much in these blogs; laying it all on the line in a very unedifying way. So why I am doing it then – who knows…It’s a kind of untangling, I think, getting things straight in my head, and I have a firm belief that no one reads this anyway (there are layers of disingenuousness here, I know.) The reason I have never kept a diary in the past is because I’ve always thought my diary voice comes across a bit whinny, whereas when I am writing proper I have a much cooler voice, drier, I think, because I am not being me: I am being someone who isn’t guyed down by me. I wonder if that makes sense.
So in an effort not to whine – reasons to be cheerful: the first 5 chapters of All the Beauty of the Sun came back from my editor with some very nice comments and not as many punctuation/grammar mistakes as I expected. Also, she saw the same flaws in it I had worried about and should have rectified sooner but wanted to find out first if they really were flaws. So, flaws they are, of course, and I have put them right – or I think I have. I shall have to wait until I hear from her again. Also had a very nice email from a reader who read The Good Father and went right out and bought all my other novels as well as Six Little Deaths for her kindle. Hooray. What else? Have been writing and have fallen in love with a new set of characters, which is always a very good sign that I will finish their story so am tentatively hopeful. It will soon be Christmas and I like Christmas, on the whole. Count your blessings, name them one by one.
And here’s a great, up beat song. Those policemen - don't they look young!
27 November 2011
Rake's Progress or Dancing Whilst Gardening
I have just finished reading The Dome by Stephen King and a right, rip-roaring read it was too, reminding me of the days when I was thirteen and couldn’t wait for the next James Herbert novel to come on sale at the newsagents up our road. The Rats was the scariest book I had ever read, and to this day the only one that has kept me awake, too terrified to go to sleep. Anyways, Mr King kept me enthralled – my mind on the story rather than my present unlikely predicament of having a long-cherished hope just within reach but perilously unlikely to be fulfilled. 75% against? Maybe. I waver between very optimistic and totally without hope. I must be philosophical; I must count my blessings, and I do. Except counting blessings doesn’t help, and only makes me feel I should be satisfied, why can’t I be satisfied?
When not reading horror stories I rake leaves like a mad woman whilst listening to pop on the radio. Yesterday Tony Blackburn’s Pick of the Pops featured the hits of November1981, when I was twenty and behaving very badly. The songs transported me back to the dance floor of Bentley’s night club and the passenger seat of a two-tone MG BGT – Under pressure, pushing down on you, pressing down on me…and Your favourite shirt is on the bed…If you were twenty in 1981 you’ll know the tunes. I had forgotten Julio Iglesias singing When they Begin the Beguine but I had a good sing along to Julio as I raked, a bit of a dance to Soft Cell’s Bedsit Land. There I was, beneath Bentley’s glitter ball, and the rake was my mike cum dance partner. The lawn was a bit soft for dancing but that rake can certainly throw a few shapes. (And yes, I’ve got the moves like Jagger).
Another distraction apart from reading very well-written trash (you know what I mean…) and singing and dancing whilst gardening is, of course….Writing! Yesterday I wrote just short of two thousand words, which is me on an average writing day, a little less than best, but not too bad day – I could have gone on, but husband Husband came home and there was lunch to be had (it’s not often we have lunch together) and leaves to be raked. I am only playing about at writing, of course – this is one novel and there is another I am also playing about with. I fully expect both to die a death…or not. I just have to keep on pretending I’m a writer. Capital W. Inverted commas? Maybe, except such punctuation is a bit disingenuous – I’ve had four novels published and another about to be published, another finished and edited to death (only by me, but still) and presently languishing in My Documents in a Word file called Now the Day is Over Complete.doc. So I am a writer! I have been paid for writing. There is a part of me still trying to get my head around this. To be published was once my most cherished dream, something wanted more than anything else in the whole wide billion world. Now my dreams are about something else, more materialist, perhaps very much more shallow, or not. Perhaps feeling comfortable about where you live – feeling a belonging – is more important than anything else except love. From experience I know I must be careful what I wish for.
Anyways. I shall download another Stephen King on the Kindle to see me through these nail-biting, wishful thinking days. Do a bit of writing; the trees are bare now after last night’s gales, rake is retired. Here’s Julio – a very lovely song and lovely songs are counted a blessing in the credit column of life.
11 November 2011
Oh Superman
So, here I am again, things having stalled; I find myself in that place it seems I’d been running as fast as I could to reach, and now, having reached it, there is nothing to do but wait for something to happen. I could go and rake leaves from the lawn. I could mark students’ work; I could vacuum the fag ash from my son’s room and the dog hairs from everywhere else. I could – and this would be very much the wrong thing to do – read All the Beauty of the Sun again. Again! And fiddle about with a few commas? Oh come now. I’ll probably go blind if I read it again.
Anne Enright, prize winning novelist, wrote that if you think you are a good writer you most definitely are not. At the moment I must be the greatest writer who ever lived because All the Beauty seems as leaden, and at the same time over-wrought and purple and generally too heated, as anything I have ever written. So – if I think I’m a bad writer, does it follow that I’m a good writer – so therefore I must consider myself a good writer – meaning that I’m truly a bad writer. If you follow me. I think I’m losing the plot, literally and figuratively. Ms Enright: does anyone think they are a good writer? But if all writers think they are rubbish nothing would ever be published, and if something was published – oh, that old thing – knocked it out on a wet Tuesday afternoon – there would be lots of blushes and feet shuffling and a good deal of throat clearing and moving swiftly on, as husband Husband says when I’ve embarrassed myself.
Anyway, here I am with nothing much to do although in a few minutes the washing machine will have finished its cycle and I’ll leap on the wet shirts and pants and arrange them around the house to dry. And there are lots of leaves on the lawn and many weeds in the flower beds and I do have to go and see my mother and take her some lunch. After lunch (and The Archers) I could worry away at an embryonic novel I’ve started – but that’s just what I would be doing: worrying at something that needs not worry but a great deal of concentration and effort. Or I could twitter and try to drum up a few more followers that aren’t trying to sell me something (but I’ll be trying to sell them something – round and round we go…). There’s always the dog hair…
The sun is trying to come out. The sky is an odd, half-hearted grey and perhaps it’s only the yellow leaves remaining on the trees that make it seem sunny, a kind of impersonation of sun. I used to tell students not to write about weather; later I’d tell them to write about it only if weather was relevant. All the Beauty of the Sun has quite a lot of weather; it’s set in May – lots of weather during an English May: rain and sudden sunshine; wind and more rain; rainbows. Gosh, I bet you can’t wait to read it. Adulterous sex and weather, madness and guilt – purple as a bruise. I am such a good writer! Ha!
Of course, what I most want to do is phone our estate agent but I know I’ll only be pumped full of false hope, or, worse, have all my present small hopes quashed. It’s this – this hanging about looking mournfully at the phone (and even checking that it still has a dialling signal) that is making me so unable to concentrate on anything at all.
The estate agent has just this minute rang: all hopes well and truly dashed. But the washing machine will have spun its last by now, so off I go…Onwards and upwards. Are we down-hearted? No! My lovely girl is coming round and I have bought iced buns. Hurrah. Now here is a suitably weird song that I’ve been meaning to Velcro onto a blog post for weeks now. It’s long, it’s slightly boring – just like my day, in fact. Also quite brilliant, a contradiction.
06 November 2011
Not Going to the Seychelles
It’s been a funny old few days here in the Husband household. We are attempting to sell our house – I know! In this financial climate – madness! And yet, and yet…We have seen a house I love (and husband Husband thinks is potentially interesting), and it’s in a place I have always wanted to live and is, better still, a project – i.e. I shall have to get out those ladders again and spend a lot of time waiting around for builders, plumbers, etc. So, the sale sign is up; we have had viewers; I think I have actually lost weight with all the vacuuming and gardening I have been doing; I have even cleaned the garage – clearing out a couple of years’ worth of spiders’ webs and being generally ruthless with stuff, i.e. throwing stuff in the bin/getting son Husband to take stuff to the tip. Anyways, happy days, I love a good clear out – it’s very liberating, so even if we don’t find a buyer, well…at least the place looks tidy and not so much stuff falls out of cupboards when I open them. And I cleaned out the pond; son said it looked ‘a bit bare,’ a bare pond…hmmm…it’s free of six foot reeds, anyway.
Next my publisher rings to tell me that, in anticipation of my new novel (All the Beauty of the Sun) being published next year, The Boy I Love is to be re-released along with Paper Moon – both with new covers. Hurrah.
Most importantly, though, in my heart of hearts and all that, All the Beauty of the Sun is about to be edited by a new (to me) editor and this has been humming around the back of my mind over these busy-with-less-important-stuff few days. I feel anxious, frankly – of course I just want her to say it’s wonderful and leave it at that, but I know I shall have to confront all my worst excesses and lousy, eccentric punctuation. I might have to do a big old re-write. Oh dear. It’ll only be what I deserve.
Other news, husband Husband has jetted off to the Seychelles for a fortnight. Once a year, come November time, he does this; it’s work – his suitcase is very heavy with files and light on the sun cream. Last year I went with him; this year I am staying at home cleaning and worrying about semi-colons. Ha! Well, I wouldn’t want to have missed the final episode of Downton – and I’ve got to keep voting for Russell on Strictly…And, honestly, once you’ve seen one golden beach you’ve seen them all. Honestly. Not much to do on the Seychelles, especially when the Husband is off auditing travel agents…
So, I shall be on my own for a little while and should be doing some writing. But I won’t. Let’s wait to hear what the new editor has to say about the last lot first, shall we? That’s for the best, I think.
Apropos of nothing, as usual, here is a song that I was singing as I slashed back those reeds – the clouds were nicely reflected on the pond’s surface which put me in mind of…
20 October 2011
50 Not Out
It’s been a little bit of a while since my last blog: I have been away on holiday (to Corfu Town – very nice) and then busy with my new set of students at the Open University and then…Well and then I was a bit disorganised and sad and down hearted and this may be hormones (menopause, let’s be frank – too frank…?) I was fifty yesterday and now I am fifty and one day as husband Husband reminded me this morning. I don’t think I mind that much – I haven’t yet had a panicky wobble about this milestone as I did the day after my fortieth birthday (I was young and silly then). I do think that it was just the hormomes – aren’t I too old for hormones – making me feel a bit useless these past few weeks. Feeling like this is a nuisance, nothing more, I have to keep reminding myself of this whenever I feel like my life is in the worst possible state and that I’ve made too many wrong turns and really I should have been a better person and then I wouldn’t be in this mess. I have to remind myself that none of this is true: things are ok, and often better than ok. Count your blessings, Marion, after all because you’re actually a lucky old bird, really, and that’s the truth.
So, I am now fifty and yesterday was my birthday and I was asked to appear on the live recording (is that an oxymoron…?) of The Verb at the Arc in Stockton, to talk about my experience of the Public Lending Right – i.e. receiving money from libraries in the UK every time one of my novels is borrowed. (Approx 6p per borrowing.) Researching, I discovered that my novels have been borrowed from UK libraries 5687 times between July 2005 and March 2010 according to the most up-to-date data available. The Good Father has performed best – especially in Essex and Northern Ireland. I could spend some time analysing all the statistics the PLR send me – and perhaps I should – at least I’ll know which librarians to pester when All the Beauty of the Sun is published. Southend and Belfast here I come…
In other news my lovely girl Kay and I had had a road trip to Halifax where I was appearing at the main library to talk about…well, me and my writing, I suppose, although the brief was vague – a brief brief. I prattled on, anyway, and then a member of the audience asked whether I was actually going to read from the book…(eyebrows raised, slightly impatient/exasperated look: isn’t that what authors do, after all – read?) So, slightly flustered, I read – but I’m never that comfortable reading – perhaps because I find it hard to concentrate when being read to at events such as these and feel that my audience will probably have the same problem…I suppose I shouldn’t judge others by my own woeful standards. Anyway, after my talk/reading one of my novels was sold at full price! Hurray. (I know this isn’t a great sales figure but it pleased me because I felt this was a genuine sale, and not just a purchase made from the pity of someone’s kind heart). Anyway again, Halifax was lovely in the sunshine and we drove there and some way back listening to Michael Jackson’s greatest hits, of which there are many – here’s my favourite, reminding me of my very first excursions to night clubs when I was far from fifty and actually under age…
20 September 2011
Story Songs
Without You by Nilsson came on Magic 1170 yesterday. Usually I listen to Radio 4, but sometimes that gets a bit earnest, or there are breathless people out walking in the countryside talking about birds and my boredom becomes existential. I re-tune to Magic, or Absolute 80s, or even – if there are adverts playing there – to Gold, which is a little too gold for my taste: all too-often played Diana Ross and not enough quirk. I’d listen to Radio 2 but for Steve Wright and the talking, talking, talking and his spirit-sapping jingles. Steve Wright reminds me of working in the bank, because upstairs in the machine room, out of ear-shot of manager and customers, we two machinist girls could listen to Pop all day long. The machine room had those fly-paper-like blinds. Fly-paper blinds and Steve Wright do not very happy memories make, although we had our moments, processing cheques and trying to guess the mystery year from a hit by The Human League. (1980; the year was always 1980 – Geno by Dexy’s always a dead give away.)
Anyway, I’m chopping an onion (I’ve been imagining writing a cookery book: it would be called Take One Onion…Oh, and a Tin of Tomatoes, and if there’s any Garlic…) and Without You comes on and I stop and turn up the volume. No I can’t forget this evening, or your face as you were leaving…
I think I was around ten years old when I first heard Without You. I shared an attic bedroom with my sisters Helen and Rita, ten and four years older than me. I would pretend to be asleep; they would play Without You on a little record player and talk about a love affair that had ended unhappily. And this was an unhappy song, and so poignant and lovely; my heart would break for this man with his heart-broken voice singing for the girl who walked out on him, a girl who always smiled but in her eyes her sorrow showed. Sorrow; it’s a word that should be used more often; Nilsson must have understood the power of certain words, their resonance, and how they break into us and make us feel all the pity and the shame of it. I was ten and I was in love with Nilsson – although I had never seen him, he was too reclusive, not a Bowie or an Elton John. On Top of the Pops Pan’s People danced one of their soppy dances to Without You but nothing could stop this song being a hit. I believe it’s one of the greatest love songs in the world; lately I heard that John Lennon thought so too.
I like songs with a story. Dexy’s Geno is another one – On a night when flowers didn’t suit my shoes, after a week of flunking and bunking school…The lowest head in the crowd that night…polishing steps, keeping out of the fights…Or how about You keep saying you’ve got something for me – something you call love but confess – These Boots Were Made for Walkin’, and Nancy Sinatra is dancing in those knee-high boots and tiny shorts, a kind of sexy-skipping dance that is very young and very 1960’s and very long-blonde-haired-all-American-Girl. I was about five or six then and I knew that despite the up-beat tune Boots had a very worldly edge: I just got me a brand new box of matches and what he knows you aint had time to learn…No, of course I didn’t know what that meant, my brothers and I still loved playing with matches, knowing how naughty it was. But Nancy was so pretty and the song was naughty, too, I knew that, at least. And then there’s Dolly Parton singing Jolene, Jolene, Jolene Jo-leeen…I’m beggin’ of you please don’t take my man; and Glen Campbell being a Lineman for the County…and Ruby painting on her lips and how she rolled and curled her tinted hair – Ruby are you contemplating going out somewhere…? I have a weakness for Country & Western songs – those Please don’t take him just because you can lyrics, when the singer’s heart is on her sleeve – not just her heart, her very, very soul, her whole life and hopes and dreams. These are high stakes: If I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground…Ruby…For god’s sake…turn around…Now I’ve given myself goosebumps so if you see me walking down the street, and I start to cry each time we meet…
When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s the radio was always on in our house, Family Favourites and the Sunday night chart show followed by Sing Something Simple – its theme tune cueing the dread of Monday morning school. We had a piano and my brother bought the sheet music for songs such as Words: it’s only words, and words are all I have…Songs were my first most influential exposure to words and how they can be made to fit together in clever and surprising, touching and amusing – entertaining – ways, the ordinary poetry of deep, common feeling. My mother would sing around the house, the songs from her childhood, often very sad songs, Oh my poor Nelly Grey, they have taken her away…a song about death that would very nearly make me cry, or I’ll be Seeing You, in all those old familiar places…Very sad songs because they had to do with the war: Goodnight, Sweetheart, which was my favourite of my mother’s songs, along with There’s no Business like Show Business! which is big and loud but still touching and about striving and hope, smiling when you are down: bravery – and what is more admirable than that? I always try to fit a song or two into my novels and short stories: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay for one. Advice? Have a character remember a song and be moved, it’s a good way into their hearts.
I could go on and on quoting, and this evening when I am chopping that onion again (my cooking life is the same onion over and over) I will no doubt think of a song I like even more – Hey Jude, don’t be afraid…No, enough, there are so many songs that tell stories; singing all the lyrics would try your patience because I’ve missed out your favourite, the one that made you sad when you were ten, or made you fall for that boy with that look about him…
I would put in a link to Without You but it’s been blocked on Youtube for copyright reasons, so here’s Nancy instead. Her shorts are wonderful. Sexy pretty or pretty sexy? - you decide.
24 August 2011
Describing a Chair without Using Adjectives
Spot the Adjectives
Contrary to my family’s belief I do leave the house occasionally – when food stocks are perilously low, mainly. More occasionally still I go out to teach creative writing classes or speak at a club, society or readers’ group (i.e. anyone who’ll have me). If I’m not teaching an Open University day school*, I always take a pile of my books to sell. Tricky business, selling one’s own books. At the start of a class/talk I keep them tucked away in their Tesco carrier bag and tell myself that if it all goes very badly then in the bag they shall remain: no further embarrassment – books and I shall simply slink away. But, if things go well (and mostly they do) books are brought out, perhaps even during the coffee break. Even then there is a risk to be run: books are sometimes picked up, turned over, leafed through and put down again, sometimes with an apologetic look in my direction, more often with no look at all. As I’m selling them at a very, very modest sum (£2) this makes it all even more embarrassing. But hey, £2 is £2 – and no, I wouldn’t spend that amount on anything just to make someone feel marginally less uncomfortable, either. Wouldn’t I? Hmmm….Anyways, some situations must be braved if books and I are to get anywhere at all. Books must be brought out – this is the law. If asked I shall sign them too in my scrawl made scrawllier by my grateful, smiley awkwardness; names (perhaps even my own) may be misspelt. Money will change hands and although I used to work as a cashier in a bank there is often confusion and I will go home feeling that I may have mistakenly robbed or been robbed in my state of said awkwardness. Not to worry – the point is books are no longer in my cupboard but Out in the World. They may even be read.
I have been to many such events in libraries and village halls. I have been asked to judge the flower arrangements at WI meetings after I have given my talk (and brought out books). And no, the judge doesn’t take the winning sweet pea and roses bouquet home, but sometimes she gets a piece of homemade cake. I feel bad about imagining I would actually be given the flowers; it seems now (and actually at the time) like a mad kind of vainglory – after all, I was only part of the proceedings, the speaker after all other business.
For those groups who want it, I do set a couple of writing exercises and here’s one: describing a chair without using any adjectives. It’s hard; I’m a Tartar. Have a go. Here’s my effort. (Tartan is a noun as well as an adjective in my dictionary…dictionaries and thesauruses help greatly in this exercise, of course.) A free copy of one of my books (signed, if desired) is reserved for the reader who spots the most adjectives.
Also, as ever, there is a lovely song attached and it's my best and favourite song from when I was five - click on the link; and, superflously, a picture of The Boy I Love - best seller at events...
(* I am only the straight up and down tutor when I deliver Open University classes – I never muddy the OU’s pristine waters by attempting to flog books. It’s probably against the law).
Describing a Chair without Using Any Adjectives
The chair beneath the window in my study is upholstered in sage velour, the cloth scored with a cream diamond pattern. I can rest my head on its winged, buttoned back and there is a twelve-inch plastic lever on its side to recline the chair. The chair is padded with foam: fire-retardant – I removed the label that confirmed the chair’s safety credentials but the label’s plastic tag remains to be worried at arm’s length, out of sight. My dog’s hairs don’t show – the pattern disguises them – but the chair smells of dog, I suspect; he sleeps, scratches, watches and waits on this chair for hours as I work. The chair has four castors that wheel as they should when words fail me and all I can do is vacuum.
Despite the camouflaged hair, the chair looks as if it came from the factory on Tuesday: no stains, no wear or tear, no sagging or creaking, but I know it’s had owners that sold it on: I suspect a death in a family, a wanting to be rid. My mother tells me that she used to dare her brothers to sink their teeth into plush and I imagine biting the arm of this chair – would my own teeth be set on edge? Is this something to be avoided? Would the chair taste of sage, or of dog, or of something that gives me away? Toast crumbs, marmite, tomato seeds. I don’t eat biscuits, but the chair suggests them: dunked ginger snaps and tartan slippers and coming in from the garden, aching, wanting a sit down – a semi-lie-down, pulling on the lever, feet up, sighing, relieved. TV Times and a cup of tea, not coffee but two-sugars-builders’-tea and custard creams, a Mr Kipling iced fancy.
I don’t feel shame over this chair, except when my sister-in-law visits. I love her, like her, and her kitchen might be featured on the pages of Home Interiors Magazine; I envy her taste and flair; my chair has neither. But my chair supports and comforts and there are no aches or pains, no distracting shifting when I recline to read. I’ve sacrificed style for ease. I think I shall have it re-upholstered. I shall seek my sister-in-law’s advice.
15 August 2011
Zombies
I have been reading quite a few zombie novels lately. This is very enjoyable, but rather like eating a ‘share’ bag of Walker’s Sweet Chilli crisps all in one go, stuffing them in quick whilst agape at bad auditions for the X Factor. You know it’s wrong, that you should be sitting at the table – probably with family and friends – eating salad and making intelligent conversation, (or at least reading something off the Booker long list with no licking the lovely chilli crumbs off your sticky fingers). But some of these zombie books are a right good read, you turn the pages pretty fast, you need to know what happens next, you hope the author has written a sequel. Zombies are only £2.49 on the kindle; you think what the hell, and down load another, (or a least the free opening sample. Even £2.49 is too much if it’s so bad I find myself wearing my writing tutor’s hat rather than my mad-for-it zombie’s.) No, if the zombies are coming thick and fast, and the hero is getting away with it, I’ve packed up all my cares and woe: I’m entertained.
I once told a poet friend that I write to entertain. He told me that there’s more to writing than just hoping to keep the reader distracted like a three-year-old parked in front of Sesame Street. He was right; there are other considerations, such as stirring the reader’s empathy, making her pause for reflection, making her consider the truth of what you’ve written. But to do this your writing has to be truthful, and to go after the truth you need to dig deep into your imagination. This digging is very hard work and slow and painful and the tedium is only occasionally lightened by hard-won inspiration. And then there’s all the business of putting the best words in the best order, and those little imaginative tricks you use to hook the reader’s interest, to lift the writing from the ordinary and add a little flare. You draw on everything you have ever heard of, ever seen, ever experienced, and throw it all in; and then you delete it all out again and end up with an idea you’re truly interested in. You consider this idea, you turn it this way and that, take it apart, line up its components on the rug and try to make something else of them. And you fail; you despair and stare out the window and think how black the sky is suddenly, and how you shouldn’t have hung out the washing, that you’d been much too optimistic. Meanwhile, that idea you had is there at the back of your mind and to the side, darting down to the depths again like the newts in the pond.
The above paragraph is quite a few words too long. I wonder if you notice. I wonder if I couldn’t go back and cull a few words to bring it below the optimum 250 – if my paragraphs are much longer I’ll try your patience, you’ll get jittery, wanting a change of pace, mood, subject; I’ll cease to entertain. This is what worries me most – becoming a bore. So I cull a few words, tighten the syntax, perhaps make two sentences one, cutting out an and here and there. This is the arsing about of editing, rearranging the commas whilst the paragraph sinks. But that’s not to say it doesn’t help – you may even discover a lifeboat buried beneath the dodgy phrasing. You begin to learn that sentences don’t have to be unruly but can be graceful if every word knows its place and pulls its weight. And sometimes you can’t move on until the previous sentence is as good as you can make it, and there’s the rub, because you are always coming up against the boundaries of your talent: you really don’t know where to put that comma, and placing that comma is the most important and pressing thing in your life. As for all that other stuff – the flare? – well…oh dear, actually that’s very much more important than that bloody comma and you’re not very good at all, are you? Hopeless in fact. Perhaps we should just go and get the washing in. But then…come back, try again; and again, and again.
So, I started with zombies and ended with self-loathing and I’m beginning to wonder what this blog has been about, because although I do teach creative writing I’m never entirely sure whether it can be taught, perhaps only self-taught. It’s true I have picked up some very good advice from writers, but the best advice was hard to pin down and was: see what rises to the surface. Write a lot and write some more; loathe that writing and throw it away. Write some more and loathe it less – has an idea risen? Is that idea any good? Write it down; worry it. Go and get that washing in. Keep thinking all the time.
And now here is another song - because I like it and it reminds me of being fifteen and because not even Magic 1170 plays enough David Soul, but mainly Not Giving Up is the all-things-considered theme of this blog.
02 August 2011
Save as...
I started a new novel back in March this year. I didn’t give it title, or even much thought, just started to write to see where it might go, because sometimes my beginnings of novels go all the way to the very end. More often they go for a couple of chapters or four and then something happens – (what though? I forget…) and they sit in My Documents titled something like new March, or even ‘So,’ Guy said, ‘at last one of us has made Dad proud,’ which is an opening line – something to get me started, having no idea who Guy really is or even if he wants to make his father proud. Saving a document without naming it, so the opening line is Word’s default title, is very lazy but it may also be a way of not taking a particular project seriously – I am, after all, just playing about; I am not really writing another novel. Besides if I got organised and opened proper files it would all turn to dust. Actually, it all turns to dust anyway, mostly, and being organised would certainly help me to find bits of stuff more easily and then I would be a Better Person.
Anyways, new March has been on my mind lately and I returned to it, read it through, moved a few commas about and tidied up a couple of sentences. After five months I still don’t know what to make of it or whether it has any legs. The only way to discover whether it has legs is to carry on where I left off at the end of chapter two. But perhaps I’ve left it too long and it can’t be helped – it is, perhaps, legless, abandoned like a meandering drunk because I realised I had no clue as to where the two of us might go together; I should plan more, and be a better person. Get more done.
(Another Word Doc. is saved as Detective Inspector Graham Carter thought how everyone should die like this, tucked up in their own bed. I was toying with writing a thriller. My husband would be very pleased. He likes books about murdering).
Speaking of the husband, (Husband husband as my brother calls him), he is working from home today and so I have to pretend to be busy so I don’t have to make him lunch. Have a banana, I say. He got our son to make him a corned beef sandwich. Husband husband is content.
In other news from the Husband house, Six Little Deaths has actually sold some copies in the US – hurrah. So, because I am reasonably proud of this here is the cover Husband husband and I designed, just to show if off again.
Also, a song for anyone who wished they’d run away from home at 17, thereby being excused corned beef duties forever. Click on the song's title below - it'll take you back...
28 July 2011
Six Little Deaths (Again...)
So, Six Little Deaths is now up and selling again on Kindle, although I had to ‘unpublish’ it twice – perfectionist that I am…(actually I’m just a panicky old bird who doesn’t take enough time to get it right and hopes for the best.) Anyway, there it is; I shall try and refrain from checking my sales figures every five minutes.
In other news, I have updated my facebook page with favourite music, books and films and in doing so found a very lovely picture of James Cagney (see below - handsome, eh?). This updating had me thinking about all my favourite music, films, etc, and what my taste says about me – that I’m broad and shallow, probably, and also that I like handsome men, preferably in uniform (ever seen Montgomery Clift in The Young Lions?) There seems to be a penchant for musicals, which I hadn’t realised…No accounting for taste.
Below is a link to the song that’s been going round my head all week one that used to make me feel nicely sad when I was nine. I shall go and do something useful, now.
26 July 2011
Writing Classes
There was a very interesting programme on Radio 4 this morning in which Andrea Levey talks about attending creative writing classes. As I have both attended and taught such classes I was very intrigued and it had me remembering the first class I attended way back in the early 90s', run by the lovely Bob Beagrie. Tuesday mornings, 10am til noon, and I'd be so nervous, wondering if I'd pluck up the courage to read my stuff, even thinking of it now makes me nervous. One day I came out of the class to find my car had been stolen; another day Bob told me that my short stories had been accepted for publication by Mudfog, a small press in Teesside. Such are the ups and downs of a writer's life. If you have an idea you'd like to write, go to a class, write a great deal; pluck up the courage to read; make sure your car is locked.
Anyways, yesterday was one of the ups in this writing life - my collection of short stories Six Little Deaths was published on Kindle. Six stories for 98p (too much? Not enough? Who knows. Below is a copy of the cover; inside is a nice quote from the wonderful Patrick Gale).
22 July 2011
Picture of Patch
I should be writing the next novel (started, abandoned) or editing new novel (scared to read it again) but instead have vacuumed the whole house and mopped the kitchen floor and hung out washing; also have decided to try to get to grips with scanning documents and very much to my surprise I have had a small success! Hurrah. So here is a picture of Patch, taken by my husband John about 4 years ago when he wasn’t quite as grey as he is now (Patch, I mean, not John, although it does apply to him, too) although he still has the same glint in his eye (ditto). Patch is the reason I have to vacuum the house as (fairly) often as I do. When I am writing good and proper clumps of his white hair build up in corners and drift across the floors like tumbleweed and then I am ashamed, as a good housewife ought to be.
Anyways, on Radio 4 yesterday someone was talking about Virginia Woolf as people on Radio 4 are wont to do, and I think the gist of it was that Woolf implied women who want to write need to close the door on housework and not worry about the dust – there are not enough hours in the day and it helps if you have a bit of money behind you and that you have a Room of One’s Own. I am paraphrasing now and because I was wiping peanut butter off the floor I may not have got that entirely correct as the rage against the peanut butter dropper was clanging about my head. The rage didn’t last long and then the news came on or I might have just changed the station to Magic 1170 in despair. Woolf said nothing about peanut butter and messy 23 year old sons, I’m sure.
Tomorrow I shall write. Ha! I’ve heard that before.
19 July 2011
It's Daft What I Do
I have rather neglected my website over the last few years since it was created. I am not very computer literate and am largely self (and husband) taught. But the site’s been re-designed so that it’s easy for even me to use, so here I am, blogging. I may buy a camera and start uploading (downloading?) photos, too. There may be snaps of my dog (my dog snaps – yes he does – he nearly took my son’s foot off. Patch is the Jack Russell who puts the terror in terrier, but as I always cry above all the screams and manic barking, he’s fine with me).
So here I am and it’s been a staggering six years since The Boy I Love was published. Not that I’ve wasted my time – of course not. I acquired a literary agent. A literary agent with a nice London office who has been known to take me out for lunch. In London. All very nice and quite flattering to my ego. I also moved house, twice, to houses that made me laugh with despair on first viewing and required me to spend most of the last six years up a pair of stepladders that are now covered in various shades of paint (gloss and emulsion) and lumps of filler (wood and plaster). I have spent a great deal of time in B&Q in paint splattered clothes walking down the wrong aisles. This may be a good summing up of my life so far.
What else? Ah yes, the novel writing. There was The Boy I Love, which went rather well, considering. Considering I was told never to write it because a novel about gay men by a straight, middle aged bank clerk/housewife from Teesside would never be published, let alone sell. Yet there were rather nice reviews from The Gay Times and The Guardian so I do feel a tiny bit vindicated, although…although…yes, ok, perhaps if I’d written novels about women doing contemporary womanly things, because, after all, I am a woman and not a gay man, nor even a gay man trapped in a woman’s body…After all, write what you know and all that. But what do I know? (Use your imagination, Marion –– make it up!) So, The Boy I Love went out into the world, taking me along with it. Lots of reading group visits, lots of talks to various clubs and associations, lots of sitting around bookshops with big piles of The Boy, lots of meetings with very lovely librarians. There were even radio interviews, journalists came to my house! I was featured in Good Housekeeping! (Me and my husband, granted, oh, and Denis Healey…It’s a long story…) I won a few awards. I never once regretted giving up working in the bank. I wrote Paper Moon; we moved house and in between climbing said stepladders, wrote Say You Love Me. My daughter left home and came home again; I wrote The Good Father with paint in my hair and builders in and out the place wondering what I did all day. (I always blush when I admit what I do to any man who necessarily is around my house long enough to wonder. Blushing comes with having red hair and a pretentious-sounding occupation. Occupation? Hobby? It’s not really a job, not a career, it’s daft what I do, to quote my inner child). We moved house again, got the ladders out again. My son left home. I wrote another novel All the Beauty of the Sun (out February 2012). My son came home again. My daughter left home and bought her own home. I wrote another novel The Memories of Ghosts – still being edited – and helped my husband dig a pond.
I am aware that this blog is probably far too long, but as it’s an introductory blog, as it were, I hope you will excuse me if you have read this far, (but you have, so you will, perhaps). I don’t know if I will be able to keep up this blogging. I have never kept diaries (or even notebooks). I have never taken a photograph in my life (well, maybe a few of my first born, which made her look like a blur of white light and yellow baby-gro, an alien in the throes of being transported from a 1968 episode of Star Trek). So, it may all come to nought. But I shall keep you posted, twittering and face-booking. And just to make it interesting we’ll have a shilling on the side…(No, that’s Benny Hill’s Ernie, Fastest Milkman in the West…Such lines come to me from time to time). Just to make it interesting I am posting a new short story here on my website, On the Stairs, a ghost story, as that’s what my just finished novel is about, ghosts (The Memories of Ghosts – it’s what it says on the tin, as that nice Irish lad kind of said on The Apprentice.)
As an added extra, there is also a link below to the theme tune of The Likely Lads, for no other reason than it’s my favourite ever theme tune and reminds me of being ten and eating ice cream on winter Tuesday evenings. Also a proposed cover for the new novel, All the Beauty of the Sun - what'd ya think...?
