In Response to Coffee and Conversation

Culture Monk Blog

One of my favourite blogs, Culture Monk now called Coffee and Conversation, is written by Kenneth Justice. He discusses many big themes, such as community, culture and religion, and I often find myself nodding in agreement (although as an agnostic I don’t necessarily agree with everything he writes).

Today he published a post called Adulthood no longer exists…. I had to read it, because it has occurred to me many times since becoming a grownup that there aren’t really any grownups and we’re all winging it. In fact there’s a quote to that effect going around Facebook at the moment (I’ll link when I find it).

I think you become most aware of it when you have children and you realise you have to start being the adult. I often look at my parents and my father-in-law and think they seem so grown-up, but I know that they don’t feel any different inside than they did when they were in their teens or twenties, just the same as me.

I also read the article because recently I’ve felt that my husband and I need to grow up a bit more, take a bit more responsibility, spend a bit less time playing computer games and more time cleaning the house and taking the children swimming. But then I read Kenneth’s article and, instead of confirming my view, it made me reconsider. Mostly it made me reconsider what we mean by Adulthood. Does there have to be a demarcation between child and adult? I look at my children and they’re amazing. They see the world with such fresh eyes, they are open to endless possibilities, they live in the now and rarely dwell on the past or grievances or things they don’t have. Why would we want to be different to that?

Also, as I read more of the article, which focussed on people playing games on their phones instead of interacting in coffee shops, I realised that such behaviour might be that of a teenager but it certainly isn’t that of a child. A child would be in there, introducing themselves to everyone and discussing what they had for breakfast. We train that out of them when we tell them to grow up and behave, to be wary of strangers, to stay out of other people’s business.

This was my comment on Kenneth’s blog: It focusses mainly on the gaming aspect (and by gaming I mean computer games, not gambling. I have a whole different view on that!) I’d like to discuss this further but I have a dog to walk and children to collect, so I’ve just pasted the comment here. I would love to know what you think!

For once I’m not sure I agree with you. I have had many similar discussions with my husband recently because a) he and I would rather be gaming in the evening than reading (and I’m a writer of fiction, there’s nothing wrong with my intellect and I love to read, whether it’s YA or Hemingway) and b) our six year old daughter would rather play computer games and watch youtube videos than read. Again, she’s a very bright child and I don’t see the games as diminishing her intellect. If anything, they are stretching her far more than the drivel her school send her home to read. She is discussing strategy and learning about the world.

Obviously I monitor closely the games she plays, and make sure they aren’t sapping the life out of her. But I despair of getting her to read through choice. I did nothing but read at her age and I explained that to her the other day (in a mother-guild panic because not reading is equated with going to hell in the middle-class world I live in), and she said, “but, Mummy, do I have to grow up to be like you?”

Those were her exact words and they floored me. No, of course she doesn’t. I hope she doesn’t, because she lives in a completely different world to the one I grew up in. I read to escape at her age. Enid Blyton and Sweet Valley High books, even Lord of the Rings and other weightier tomes (for an eight year old) were my friends and family. But do I look back and think that was healthy? Not really. I was escaping life. My daughter doesn’t read I believe because she doesn’t need to escape life. She loves life. She doesn’t need to be entertained – she is entertained, by her drawing, her brother, her toys, and by the ipad.

My children discuss their games together, they strategise and plan and compete and learn and help each other. Even on a ‘mindless’ game like Minion Rush I see them getting so much from it. And me, too. I’ve never felt so alive – since becoming a work from home mum – as when I started playing strategy games. I am using my brain like never before. I have something to discuss with my husband: we talk far more than we used to when I was buried in my books all the time. We have few points of contact in our choices of books and films but we found a common point in games.

I don’t disagree that culture is becoming fragmented, that people are spending more time in their virtual worlds and less time making human contact. I worry that empathy is disappearing (and then I read some posts on Humans of New York and my faith is restored.) I quite often only speak to people at the school gate, and not even then if I’m tired.

But I certainly wasn’t having deeply intellectual conversations before becoming a SAHM or before playing games on my ipad. My friends and I talked about clothes and handbags and restaurants and movies and a bunch of other things I couldn’t always relate to. Even my husband and I don’t talk politics because we don’t have the same beliefs. I’ve found my own tribe online. Facebook is my coffee shop where I hang out with friends and discuss the political views I subscribe to. My blog is where I chat and swap parenting stories and work things out.

Maybe culture isn’t failing, maybe it’s just shifting. Maybe we’re no longer restricted by trying to find common ground with the people we happen to exist alongside geographically, maybe we can reach out to a whole world and find people who are like us, wherever they exist (or even whether they are real, I guess).

Anyway, something for me to think on when I have my coffee! 🙂 Great and thought-provoking article.

Deliciously Ella: Or How I Accidentally Jumped on a Bandwagon

The new cookbook

I don’t do healthy eating. I try, but I’m a lazy cook and a chocoholic, and I was brought up in an age when crispy pancakes and deep fried chips were a perfectly acceptable meal to give a child.

My sister is the foodie in the family. Her children eat humus through choice and would take veg over chocolate any day. She makes healthy muffins and stews and slow-cooked curries. She bakes her own bread. And she works all day in an office.

I want to be like that, I do. But I find it hard to lead by example. Even though I’ve started baking a bit more, I make white bread and scones, banana loaf and chocolate cake. Watching the half-a-bag of white sugar and half-a-slab of butter go into the bowl ready to make cookies doesn’t prevent me from eating them all, although I do try and limit how many I give to the children.

Since my first child was born (six years ago already – how did that happen?!) I’ve tried to move away from white bread and crisps to a healthier diet, but with limited success.

I do make my own bolognaise sauce from scratch (most of the time), especially as it’s the only thing both my fussy children will eat. I buy fruit and vegetables, and the children sometimes even eat them. I scour labels for sugar content, and try to make sure the children have a break from their sugary breakfast cereal at least one day a week by making them eat Weetabix. They mostly only drink water and milk (although fruit juice is allowed.)

Despite my half-hearted efforts I realise, some days, that my son has only eaten wheat: for breakfast, lunch and dinner (cereal, toast and pasta), with a bit of cheese and a bottle of milk thrown in for good measure. Thank goodness he isn’t dairy or gluten intolerant. My daughter does better, as she loves berries, but it’s tough keeping up with that habit in the winter without taking out a second mortgage.

Recently I realised, even by my poor standards, things have taken a nose-dive. The children are having chocolate biscuits and crisps for their snacks instead of rice cakes and muesli bars (the low sugar type, not the ones that claim to be healthy and yet have 40% sugar content). The problem is they’re getting more vocal, and fussier, and – with hubby out of work last year when I was watching the food budget more – I realised crap food is so much cheaper.

But it’s February and I’m still shattered. The doctors don’t know why I’m tired all the time. I know Christmas and then my daughter’s birthday month always take their toll, but I’m in the middle of a stinking cold, and my children are on their second each of 2015. Something has to give.

Then I heard an interview, by accident, on Radio 2 a couple of weeks ago, with a woman called Ella who suffered from an illness that left her sleeping sixteen hours a day and unable to walk. She cured herself by switching to a whole-food, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free diet.

Ella’s Blog

Normally I try and ignore such interviews.

When it came out a few years ago that sugar was the new smoking, the new thing we all have to quit, I hid under the covers. I can’t vaguely imagine giving up sugar. I might just be able to give up refined sugar, although breakfast would be hard as I’m a cornflakes girl, but giving up fruit? Bananas and fruit smoothies are the only healthy things I enjoy. I might as well give up breathing. Giving up smoking when I found out I was pregnant was a doddle in comparison. (Besides, I did that for someone else, not for me.)

But the more I listened to Ella talk, the more I liked what I was hearing. Still being able to eat pizza and chocolate brownies? Surely too good to be true? Was there a way I could feel better and still stuff my face with chocolate cake on that fourth week of the month when my hormones demand their human sacrifice? Better still, was there a way I could sneak vegetables into my now-much-too-savvy children’s diet?

After the interview was over, I ordered the cook book. Me and thousands of others apparently. That was when I realised I had inadvertently jumped on a bandwagon. Apparently Ella is the daughter of Mrs Sainsbury and a former Cabinet Minister and her blog has had 17 million hits. Ho hum. I never have been that much up on the zeitgeist.

When the book finally arrived last week it was more like a study book than a cook book. Not that I would know – I only have a couple of cook books and I don’t think either of them have ever been used. My few recipes come from the Co-op free magazine or online. But when I opened random pages in Ella’s book, I didn’t find easy-to-make healthy recipes, I discovered essays on the wonders of quinoa and chickpeas. So I stuck it on the shelf next to Jamie Oliver and the Woman’s Own tome and ignored it.

Fast forward a week, past my daughter’s craft party (which went really well, thankfully), past three days of feeling so awful it took all my energy to take the children to school, and I had a change of heart. I needed something to make me feel better and coffee and chocolate just weren’t doing it.

Baby steps towards a healthier diet…

I started out searching for smoothie deals online. I keep seeing them in Groupon emails – you know, for the bargain price of £59.99 (reduced from £249.99) you can have a dozen tiny bottles of fruit juice, guaranteed to make you feel better.

I didn’t have sixty quid for three days’ worth of juice. So I went to the supermarket and bought some instead, including lettuce and beetroot juice.

And then I started having porridge for lunch. And that reminded me of where I came in to Ella’s interview on Radio 2. How she was such a sugar-monster that she had to hide fruit in her porridge when she first started out on her quest for healthy eating. It sounded familiar.

And it made me pick up the book. And read the first chapter. And write a shopping list of things I’ve never heard of, like buckwheat flour and tahini. That’s as far as I’ve got, well apart from making my porridge today with coconut oil and honey instead of sugar and treacle. I won’t be going dairy or gluten free any time soon, but if I can manage one meal a week (a month!) from Ella’s book, it will be a good start.

I think that’s what is different with Deliciously Ella. She was a self-confessed sugar-monster student, and she managed to make the change. If she can then so can I. Maybe not all at once, but bit by bit. She isn’t preaching, she isn’t being holier-than-thou (or she certainly doesn’t come across that way in the book’s introduction) and that’s very encouraging.

When I started out self-publishing, there were those who said ‘you can do it’ and those who said, ‘you must have an editor and a proofreader and spend thousands or you’re ruining it for all of us.’ Thankfully I listened more to the former (although the latter left scars) and I followed my own path.

Hopefully I can apply the same logic to eating. It doesn’t matter if it’s one thing, one meal, one ingredient. It’s better than nothing. And if it allows me to get through the school holidays without being asleep all the time, then it will be worth the effort.

I’ll keep you posted!

Five Hundred Followers

Thank you!

I have reached a big milestone for me this week: five hundred followers.

I am always amazed when people want to subscribe to my random and sporadic blog and I am always so very very grateful.

A while ago I said I would run a giveaway when I reached this point. Unfortunately January is a crazy month for me, so for now I’m giving my books away instead!

Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes isn’t eligible for a giveaway, but the price will be reduced through a countdown deal from 30th January through to 6th February.

Class Act and Dragon Wraiths will both be free from 29th January to 31st January. (Links Below)

Chase away those January Blues and curl up with a romance or fly with dragons on me this weekend!

Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes Link

Class Act Book Link

Dragon Wraiths Link

Life (Before and After Kids)

This is the first time I’ve tried to do a cartoon to describe my life. Actually it was a lot of fun!

With a broken tooth, a broken dish and a burnt arm all within ten minutes last night (mostly all tiredness-related) and the doctor telling me it isn’t the drugs making me tired, it’s just being a parent (and by the way, was it affecting my bond with my kids and my ability to be a good mum?) life felt a tad hard yesterday. I couldn’t understand why a broken dish had me sobbing, when a decade or so ago I travelled round New Zealand by myself, literally conquering mountains single handed.

Then I thought this:

cartoonb4 CartoonAfter

Grow Up and Get Back to Work

Back to work (crochet away!)

I’ve really struggled to get back into writing this January. After six weeks of Christmas planning and the children being home for the holidays, my brain is foggier than the dull winter skies outside.

I have started several blog posts in my head in the last week or two, but none have made it further than that. They’ve had titles like “Christmas Chaos and Crochet Stole My Voice” and “Farmville Is Evil”. But that’s same ol same ol.

I’ve written before about how my addiction to knitting and Farmville has derailed my writing, how having the children home from school causes me to sleep non-stop (I was asleep at 4pm on Christmas Day) and how hard it is to get the balance between Writer and Mummy. It’s time to stop making excuses and get back to work.

Another post that floated in the unwritten ether of my mind at 3am, as is often the case, was a review of 2014, and how I found inner peace.

Happy children

It’s a bit late for end-of-year reviews and, anyway, my new year starts in September, not January. But it is true nonetheless. I might still struggle with depression and the more negative aspects of being HSP. I might have struggled with having hubbie home for four months while he found a new job (he did, hurrah). I might have realised that being self published, self employed, is harder than even my pessimistic view of the world could have predicted. But still, peace was found.

Somewhere between Sertraline, Mindfulness and Good Enough Parenting, somewhere between my children telling me they love me All The Time and being able to be at home with my husband for four months and still look forward to retirement, somewhere between five-star reviews and knitted toys, I found me.

I’m reading a children’s book called Winterling by Sarah Prineas at the moment, and the main protagonist finally finds a place where she fits, where she feels she belongs. This year, especially this Christmas holiday, between making bread from scratch, hosting Christmas play dates for nine and five children, learning to crochet, and being there for my children, I realised I have found where I belong.

Parenting doesn’t come naturally to me. My family and I thought I’d be a terrible parent. Turns out we were all wrong. For all my doubt and shoutiness and crying and constant need to hide, I am a great parent. My children are kind and happy, healthy and full of love.

Writing didn’t come naturally to me. My parents and my tutors at university said my writing was dull. But hard work beats genius every time, and six years in to my writing journey some people (not all!) love my stories. I began to doubt my writing after Class Act and Alfie and the Magic Arch but I need to realise I’m still learning, and not give up.

Huggable creativity

My writer’s blues, my lost voice, came from doubt and impatience. Knitting and Farmville are far more instant. I can make a toy in a few days, I can make cakes on my farm in minutes.

Writing is invisible and definitely the long climb to creativity. It’s intangible. At the end of each day I can’t measure my progress with a ruler, or gets oohs of delight from my friends. Just like parenting (my children thank me for working on their Farms, they never thank me for clean clothes or floors), you have to accept the results are a long way off and keep slogging anyway.

I reread a post from this time last year, and discovered I felt exactly the same. Lost, melancholy, restless. It’s January, dark, rainy, and exhaustion is rife after Christmas. Time to take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other.

So today my laptop is charged, my crochet bagged (except for the photo!), the farms switched off. Today I will return to Lucy and Edan, Andrew and Graham, and I will find their story. I will write until they find their happy ending and, in doing do, I will find mine.

Terminal.

I know I’ve been quiet on the blog recently. I have lost my writing voice in Christmas chaos. But I’m still reading blogs every day. Sometimes I read something that makes me take a sharp gulp of breath in recognition. This was one of those.

Ubiquitous. Quotidian.

Terminal, a poem for Patricia

I am thinking of the night you called, two years ago, sobbing and hysterical with fear, suddenly overwhelmed by the fact of your terminal diagnosis. And as we spoke on the phone, I could feel you were stunned by the silence of your one-person home and how like a graveyard it must have felt. How your mind began flying like a moth trapped inside a tomb. And ever arrogant, I aspired to do one brave thing and tell you how things would go with some conjured sense of certainty. How much braver I would have been to admit right then that I sometimes have nights like this myself. Me, a person with no terminal diagnosis living in a house full of people, still able to pretend the years all belong to me and that I feel them stretch endlessly out ahead.

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How Critcal Reviews Are Making Me a Better Writer

Knitted Christmas Baubles

When I released Class Act back in the summer I think I knew it was rushed. As a self-published author, the only way I see that you can make success (rather than it coming through luck or good fortune) is by writing more books. So I took an old manuscript, gave it a few months’ polish, paid for a light edit, and released it, happy that my Beta Reader loved it.

It bombed.

Okay, one or two people have enjoyed it, but the critics have been harsh and eloquent. And fair. Much as I would have preferred not to have the debate about my book in public, through Goodreads (and thank you to the critics for not writing their reviews on Amazon), it has been like having extra Beta Readers who don’t know me and are therefore not afraid to tell it as they see it.

Some of the criticisms I can answer – they’re a matter of personal taste – but others are completely valid. For example there is a general view that Rebecca is a cow, or at least unlikeable. I have been trying to work out why that is the case, when Helen (Baby Blues) garners sympathy. While walking the dog last night the answer came to me: I didn’t live with Rebecca long enough for her to become fully herself rather than a version of me.

Finished Rainbow Fairy

All my characters start out from an element of my life and my experience. With Helen it was having postnatal depression, with Claire (Two-Hundred Steps Home) it was disillusionment with the corporate world and finding myself through travelling. Rebecca started out from a few instances in my childhood when I felt belittled by people who acted like they had privilege (someone saying to me at school ‘you’re my grandmother’s secretary’s daughter’ as if that made me scum).

The difference is I lived with Claire and Helen for a long time. Baby Blues took two or three years from start to finish, Claire racked up 280,000 words. They became people in their own right. Rebecca, not so much. I wasn’t even happy with the name Rebecca, changing it several times before deciding it was as good as any. Alex I loved, Alex was real, but Rebecca remained a character.

So I have learned not to rush Finding Lucy. It isn’t just the characters who need to find her – I do too. I think that’s why I find the male protagonists easier to relate to (and therefore probably they’re more likeable to the readers) – they might start out with a trait or two from people I know, but they quickly become three-dimensional in my mind. Despite it being six years since I started drafting Finding Lucy, I still don’t have her clear as a real person in my head.

The other, more specific, piece of feedback I’m following is the review that complained about Class Act opening with Rebecca’s father dying.

“I found that when our heroine, Rebecca, is introduced, the scene is not the best way to warm up to a character. Yes, her father had just died, so she is entitled to be upset. But perhaps this is not the best way to introduce a main character, one who is completely vulnerable and who is constantly sobbing in the scene, it unfortunately had me rolling my eyes and wanting to skip ahead. Not a great start for the character. Sorry. “

Don’t apologise! This is great feedback. Finding Lucy also opens with a death. It’s where the story starts. But I see now that it’s hard to feel sympathy for a character you don’t know. So I’ve had a shuffle and now it comes a few chapters in. I’m also working hard on making Lucy more likeable. It’s hard. I’ve decided to think about Pixie Lott. Watching her on Strictly Come Dancing this year I realised she is one of the few people I can look at and say they’re genuinely adorable.

Christmas Cookies for teachers

The problem with writing for me is balancing the character’s flaws which make for conflict with the traits that make people love them. It’s not hard to see why – I’ve never managed it with myself. I’ll always feel like a bad mother, a bad person, no matter the evidence to the contrary. To quote Pretty Woman, “The bad stuff is easier to believe”.

I haven’t managed much writing this month – Farmville, knitting and Christmas have derailed me completely. But I have invited the characters from Finding Lucy to live in my head. Edan and Andrew are there, making themselves at home and squabbling over the remote. Lucy is still dithering at the door. “Are you sure you want me?” she says. Yes, come in! Let me get to know you. This novel could be my best yet, if only I take the time for it to mature.

In the meantime, have a great Christmas/Hanukah/Festive Season and here’s to a creative 2015.

Cold? Itchy? Sick? It is WINTER! A cure for all that ails you…cheap.

A must read this winter! (Off to put a pan of water on the stove…)

2me4art

Sounds a bit arrogant, does it not? I happen to be one of those people that think too much. (Thank God for sleep, but…”to sleep-perchance to dream- there’s the rub. for in that sleep of death what dreams may come…”)

Winter is tough on our bodies & wallets. Heat, whether it’s from a gas or electric fireplace or stove…is drying. When i’m cold, i turn up the heat, then, my hair turns to hay, my skin turns to something akin to an alligator w/ a terrible case of poison ivy, my nasal passages burn while my nose runs…AND heating my house costs buckets of cash. Last year, the man in command, kept the thermostat at 65 degrees while the kids were at school– to save money. Yes, dress in many layers (scarves, hats too) helps, (drink tea, coffee, cocoa, eat soups & stews) but i cannot paint with gloves on…

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How Knitting is Like Writing

Can you tell what it is yet?

Two days in to assembling my 38-piece fairy doll puzzle, and I am beginning to see how creative endeavours are all the same. What looks like the hard part is often the easy bit, and coming up with a finished product that shines takes a lot of painstaking detail that is lost on the person who recieves the final product.

I thought following a pattern and knitting my 38 pieces of doll was the hard part. It turns out that, like childbirth, that was the easy bit. The impossible part is putting it all together so that it resembles the pattern or – failing that – at least looks a bit like a doll.

I’m learning that not all DK wool is created equal, so some of my pieces are bigger than others. I’m discovering that fluffy wool doesn’t sew all that well, and that pillow stuffing isn’t a patch on the proper stuff. Most of all, I am learning that it’s worth the effort to polish and take time to make the end product as good as it can be. Not something I’m always good at in writing.

So many people say, “I’d love to write a book,” – almost as many people as have said to me recently, “I wish I could knit.” The answer is the same for both – anyone can. I only started knitting in August but, through passion, practice and a willing audience cheering me on, I’m now creating something I can be proud of. The same goes for writing.

I started my first novel six years ago and now I’m writing my fifth. And in that time I’ve learned that it isn’t the rush rush bit of making the raw materials that makes you a writer, it’s being prepared to take time putting it all together. Slowly, carefully, with consideration and a willingness to pull bits apart. Actually I haven’t got there with my knitting! I should have redone the hair piece and the wings, but it takes me so long to knit something I haven’t the willpower to pull it down again. But with my writing I do – that’s what five years has taught me.

Next time I watch my very talented mum pulling down a piece of knitting that would have taken me a week, because she didn’t like it, or the wool was wrong, or there was a mistake, I won’t wince. I will just think – there is someone who is such a master of their craft, they know what it takes to create a masterpiece. In the mean time, I’m still practicing, learning. And, more importantly, having fun.

Writing Comps, Knitting and Farmville Frenzy

An impossible puzzle

So another fortnight whizzes by and suddenly we’re in December. Thankfully, Christmas gift buying is under control and hubbie has a job for the new year (hurrah!)

For the last two weeks I’ve been caught up in competition entries, knitting projects and (in the last twenty-fours hours) farming. I think Farmville 2 could be the downfall of my writing career. This is the reason I don’t play computer games like the rest of my family – because I don’t know when to quit. I was farming until 2am this morning and my ‘just ten minutes’ at lunchtime stretched into two hours.

If you haven’t come across the Farmville app, it’s a little make-believe world where you grow and sell fruit and veg, and care for farm animals, to make money to buy more fields, livestock and work buildings. The children each have their own farm on the two ipads loosely known as mine but when they’re asleep or at school I can ‘just keep things moving’ (i.e. Take over for a few hours.) it’s beyond addictive. Even now the game is calling to me.

My son’s (my!) farm

The other distraction has been knitting. I’m making toys for the children for Christmas, including reading and following my first ever knitting pattern – this lovely Deramores fairy doll my friend showed me on Facebook. The pattern might be straightforward (if time consuming, with 38 pieces to knit) but the instructions on how to assemble it are clear as mud to me! It might just remain on the ironing board!

I have five or six concurrent projects, including making up my own (so far unsuccessful) Elsa doll – it’s no wonder my brain is full. Like anything I do, I run at it full pelt, knowing it will fizzle out and I’ll be left with crates of wool and bits of half-knitted toys (like my loft full of paintings). So far writing is the only creative endeavour that had endured. Hopefully that’s a good sign.

Christingles and Poorly kids

Needless to say, I didn’t get shortlisted for the ITV Be a Bestseller writing competiton. Not to worry, I’ve kept the dream alive by entering the Janklow and Nesbit / Mumsnet novel writing competition, so fingers crossed for January. At least the competitions are forcing me to tidy up my early chapters and think about my synopsis, even though Finding Lucy is only half finished.

And that’s it, aside from horrid colds that have swept the family, one member at a time, and the Christmas Fair (which required two decorated pringle pots, a chocolate donation, a bottle donation, raffle tickets to be sold, event tickets to be bought, and a Christingle charity candle to be filled with coins.) Unfortunately my daughter was too poorly for us to go to the Christingle service so I made the children one each so they didn’t miss out.

The tree is decorated, the chocolate advent calendars opened, the floor is covered in tinsel. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I hope all is calm and bright with you this festive season!