Back To Work… I Hope

Partners in Fun

It’s 6.50am on Wednesday morning. Not just any Wednesday, but my first day without children in seventeen days. In two hours, after the chaos of the school run, dropping reluctant (and probably tearful) children at school and nursery, I can finally get back to my work in progress. And my mind is blank.

I’ve been reading like mad these last two weeks, to keep my writer’s brain active, in between trips to the park, scraping up sand and dishing out snacks. But still I can barely remember how to write, the ideas are all gone and I haven’t a clue what my WIP is about.

It doesn’t help that I have to give a progress report to my Doctor at 10am on how the medication is working. I think I can say ‘fine’, given that we’ve survived the holidays still smiling (more or less!)

Actually, the kids have been amazing. Thanks to two weeks of incredible weather (for England, especially in April), they’ve played together almost non stop, with few arguments. It has made me so proud to watch and listen to them co-operating and scheming. Maybe the long vacation won’t be so awful (provided it doesn’t rain all summer…)

And on a positive note, I re-read the first chapter of Class Act and was quietly impressed, if I’m allowed to say that of my own novel. I’m going to select an editor this week, which is exciting. There are only four and a half weeks until half term, when we’re away visiting rellies in Italy, so I need to crack on and find some inspiration from somewhere. Pass the coffee!

Wisdom from Wooliam: My Messy Beautiful

I love this post, especially the opening quote – is resonates with the things I’ve been blogging about recently (for me)

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Judge Taylor in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

—————————————-

Ace marched proudly from the preschool classroom, clutching the telltale yellow fabric bag. “I got Wooliam,” he announced, triumphantly displaying the bag and its occupant. “It’s my turn again!”

Wooliam is a stuffed lamb whom Ace and his classmates take turns hosting. This endearing little creature participates in the family’s activities and chronicles them in a journal entry. Naturally, the chosen four-year-old is thrilled over the opportunity to oversee him.

I must admit, though, that “thrilled” is not an apt description of my own reaction. While I applaud the spirit of this tradition and appreciate Wooliam’s importance to Ace, hosting duties can be . . . well, a wee bit burdensome. Not because Wooliam is a troublemaker (he’s not, although he has managed to get…

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Wishing You a Good Friday

Meeting the Easter Bunny

At last, Easter is here! Two weeks into the school vacation I feel like the bank holiday is the finish line and I’ve more or less survived. We still have five days before the children go back to school/nursery, but at least there are some family members around to share the small-child entertainment that has left me exhausted.

We have been blessed, though, this holiday, with gorgeous sunny days every day. The kids have been able to run free with me just providing conflict mediation, hugs, plasters, food, drinks, craft supplies, cautions, rules, reward stickers and the occasional trip out for variety. Yesterday we went to play on the new indoor equipment at our favourite Farm, followed by a visit to the Easter Bunny. It was a great day.

One thing I’ve noticed this holiday is that the children have remembered how to play together. With my daughter starting school last September, they seemed to separate, with the age difference much more noticeable. My daughter had less time for her brother, and they squabbled more than cooperated. It’s been wonderful (and terrifying) to see them back to conspiring against me. For example when they decided to empty the sandpit into the paddling pool and across the decking, then fill the sandpit with water from the hose, breaking about five family rules in the process. I didn’t care, I just prayed they wouldn’t draw my attention to it, leaving me no choice but to tell them off.

When my daughter did finally come in saying, “Look, Mummy!” all proud of the carnage, I actually said, “You’ve broken about five rules, which are they?” and after she’d sheepishly acknowledged them, I said, “no matter, I’ll pretend I didn’t see, so long as you tidy up.” Which of course they didn’t, but it took less time to sweep wet sand than it would have done telling them off and finding them something else to do!

Sand Carnage

Rules and consistency are all well and good, but sometimes you have to be flexible. It was also another classic case of different parenting priorities as, when I posted my dilemma to Facebook, expecting people to laugh (because of course I wouldn’t stop them playing nicely just because of a bit of mess) I had a range of responses leaving me feeling somewhere between a dragon for having rules in the first place and a lazy parent for choosing to ignore them!

Anyway, this was just a short note to say hello, I’m still alive, and wish you all a happy Easter weekend. The forecast here is actually for rain, making me feel bad for all the working people who have been looking forward to their four days of freedom. But hopefully they’ll stay in and read a book, as I have Dragon Wraiths on a freebie promotion all weekend. If by chance you haven’t read it, do go grab a copy! (I’m trying out a new GeoRiot link, which is meant to take you to the Amazon site for your country, so do tell me if it works/doesn’t work. And thank you to Sally Jenkins for the idea.)

TTFN.

Pressing the Parenting Buttons

Partners in Fun

Last week I took the children to Skegness to stay in a three-bed static caravan with my good friend and her two children (aged two and six). Despite starting the first day in pouring rain, with my daughter suffering her first tummy bug (north and south!) to boot, we had a fantastic week. The sun shone, the children played together brilliantly, the staff were friendly and, as it wasn’t yet in season, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

What interested me most was how much I learned about parenting from co-habiting with anther family for a few days. It made me understand why we can often be so judgemental about other people’s parenting techniques. It’s all about personality, or touch-points, or whatever you want to call it.

For example, my kids are flash-in-the-pan tantrum throwers. They shout and sob, sometimes for ages but usually for less than five minutes. They don’t have to get their way, but they do have to feel they’ve got their point across. I’m (mostly) okay with it because I’m exactly the same. A quick shout, some tears, and it’s over. As long as they’re using their words and I know what’s wrong, I can cope.

My friend, though, hates histrionics. Her kids are sulkers and she confessed that she is too. She’s happy that they’ll come out in their own time and at least they aren’t being noisy. She doesn’t mind if dinner gets eaten, as long as they don’t make a huge fuss. I hate sulking, though, because I take all the blame on me. If I don’t know why someone’s unhappy I get frustrated, want to fix it, or assume it’s all my fault.

Playing pirates

So it was hard for us to share a space and parent in our own way. I’m sure I upset her when I snapped at her kid for covering my daughter’s best top in mud during one of his sulks, and she inadvertently made my daughter sad for saying she was making a fuss over a hurt ankle, when she’s used to getting sympathy.

No one is right and mostly we worked really well together. We had some great conversations late into the night. I loved holidaying with another adult who cooked and did dishes (unlike travelling with hubbie! Lol) Best of all, the children learned to cooperate and share a space together. They went to bed (albeit at 9pm) without a fuss. They remembered their manners and made new friends. And I learned to try and remember that what bugs me doesn’t necessarily bother someone else and vice versa. I’m not the world’s most tolerant person, but I’m trying!

Best of all, I learned to assess my parenting more objectively. Sulking is okay; sometimes kids need time to process and calm down. I also discovered that other parents aren’t judging you as often as you judge yourself. At one point I thought my friend was judging the fact that I let my son eat only rice for tea because I had no fight left to get veg in him. Afterwards she said she didn’t even notice!

Parenting: I make it harder than it needs to be! 🙂

Why I Might Be a Paranoid Android

Marvin the Paranoid Android

I’ve come to realise that my depression might be because I’m like Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A lot of my problems stem from having a super computer in my head that’s always on, always analysing. If it can’t analyse sales figures and response rates to predict market trends and consumer behaviour, or compare tender applications to choose suppliers, or negotiate partner meetings to produce joint marketing targets, then it will analyse being an author, wife and mother.

It will calculate how many portions of fruit and veg the children have eaten, or it will treat the husband like a business partner, detailing his reactions and responses as if there is a need to feed back to the Board. It will check book sales figures several times a day, as if month end charts make it necessary to keep up with the numbers, despite being able to tally up the amount of books downloaded on one hand (two on a good month).

Round and round the thoughts go with nothing to work on, like cattle chewing a field back to mud until it may never grow again. Writing gives an outlet for my creativity and, when I’m editing, it answers some of my need to analyse. But, oh my, I think I’ll never be happy unless I get a job and wear my brain out with productive thinking. Except I don’t want to get a management job again, because I wasn’t exactly happy when I had one.

In the meantime I’m walking the dog and simultaneously analysing the episode of NCIS I watched last night, tallying how much good food the kids have eaten this week (not much, although we did have a fantastic time in Skegness. More on that later), wondering if my SSRIs are finally settling, reminding myself to email the editors I contacted last week, making a mental note to text my friend about a playdate, and remembering I have to get my niece a gift for her fourth birthday next week. Oh, and writing this blog post in my phone. No wonder I’m restless and exhausted at the same time.

Maybe I’ll be better when the children’s homework is more taxing. A few quadratic equations to see if I recall any of my A Level maths. Perhaps I should buy some year 4 workbooks and get practising: judging by the curriculum evening we went to at our daughter’s school that tried to explain their new way to teach maths, I might need them!

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Busy busy…

This is just a quick note to explain my silence on the blog recently and to say that normal service will hopefully resume in a week or two.

This week I’ve been concentrating on drafting my children’s book (working title George and the Arch, but that will change!) I’m around a third through, at 22,000 words, and have realised that writing a first draft uses ALL my energy and inspiration.

My daughter’s school teacher pointed out that there are only 11 full weeks of school left before the summer vacation, which means I have that much time to get George ready for the Chicken House competition AND get Class Act ready to publish (I haven’t even sourced an editor yet). Argh!

The reason for my silence over the next two weeks (more specifically the next four days) is that the children are on their Easter Holidays. In four hours the children and I will drive to Skegness to stay in a static caravan for the week with my good friend and her two children. I’m terrified. Please God don’t let it rain!

I’m looking forward to it too, but the idea of four days in a small box with four kids aged 2-6 does fill me with fear! Ear plugs and wine at the ready! 😉 I don’t even know if there will be internet…

So, enjoy the peace and quiet and I’ll hopefully have some new things to write about when I get back! Wish me luck.

A Mothering Sunday

Homemade climbing complex

This Mothering Sunday I have mothered. The day started with cuddles at 5.30/6.30am (the clocks went forward), followed by gifts, breakfast and a lie-in. Lovely. When I got up, I discovered the children had watched a movie and were starting on their second, breakfast half-eaten and the house a state.

I started my usual morning routine of making beds, carrying laundry downstairs, putting the washing machine on, emptying and re-filling the dishwasher, letting the dog out, clearing the breakfast things away and making a second cup of tea. Then I helped the children plant seeds and baked pain au chocolat for everyone. Eventually the kids went out to play, and I realised that – with the clocks changing – it was too late to go out for lunch.

I had only one request for Mother’s Day – that we could go out for a roast lunch so I could eat a meal I hadn’t had to cook. When it was decided that we weren’t going to go I was pretty cross and stomped round the kitchen preparing a roast lunch, to make up for the one I missed.

I even made a kebab on request for my daughter (that she didn’t eat) and carrots for my son (which he didn’t eat.) By the end of lunch my mood hadn’t really improved. In an effort to buy some time to read my book, I opened and raked over the sandpit, before clearing away the dishes.

Homemade is best

Somewhere admidst it all, I realised I was enjoying providing for my family, making yummy meals and watching the kids cause carnage in the garden. I gave in to domesticity and made an apple crumble for after dinner (hubbie’s favourite, because he needs cheering up.) I did all the ironing. Finally I snuck upstairs to read my book for an hour, until a screaming child took me back downstairs.

While I was preparing lunch I felt irritated that I was having to cook, rather than being taken out, and I wished for a family who pampered me on Mother’s Day, who bought chocolates and flowers and booked a table for lunch. But then I realised this is our first day at home for weeks, because of all the birthday parties, and it was lovely. Hubbie pottered round the garden, building a makeshift climbing frame for the kids and sorting out the accumulated junk. The kids ran and dug in the sand and played with water. Unwatched and unfettered (mostly) as I want them to be.

And do you know what? I’ve enjoyed my domestic day much more than I would have enjoyed a day alone to read (too guilty! Besides I can do that tomorrow) or a day out (too stressful, noisy, busy, expensive.) Homemade apple crumble was just as nice as chocolates and the last flowers my daughter bought me ‘just because’ are still (dead) in the vase.

Mothers of small children don’t really get a day off. But I got a day to do my thing, up to a point (cooking curry for dinner while watching Homes Under the Hammer without being pestered by children IS a day off!)

So, thank you family. Today I have felt useful and nurturing, like a mother. I feel loved.

In Celebration of Pantsing

Keeping children entertained: full time job

Sorry I’ve been quiet this week. On top of drafting a new novel, which has been draining my energy, I had my daughter at home on Wednesday, because the teachers were on strike. Goodness knows how I’m going to write or blog in the school holidays: I think I might have to try and plan to have manuscripts with editors so I can take the time off without guilt and frustration.

On the plus side, I am really enjoying getting stuck into a new novel, especially one where I have no idea what’s going to happen next. With a Romance, there’s a certain inevitability to the plot, no matter how much you try and avoid cliches and tropes. Eventually boy meets girl, they have some problems, but they get together in the end.

With this Middle Grade fiction book I started only with a character and a rough idea that it would be a fantasy book, along the lines of The Divide – one of my favourite MG books in recent years. (The first book in the trilogy is currently free on kindle. Bargain!) The trick will be to avoid plagiarising Elizabeth Kay’s book and coming up with my own, original, story, while still learning from what I read.

The best bit about Pantsing (writing by the seat of your pants) is that you avoid the info-dump. The most tedious part of editing a first draft of a Romance novel for me is that I always info-dump in the first couple of chapters, so have to go back and rewrite whole sections. In fact, for both Baby Blues and Class Act, I ended up adding a bunch of chapters at the beginning of the manuscript, to turn the info-dump into action.

But when you know nothing more about a character than his name and the fact that he lives in a farmhouse with his mum and two older siblings, it’s much easier to drop in backstory as required and as it occurs to you. Then the second draft becomes about continuity.

I’ve just watched a top tips video by Barry Cunningham, the man who published Harry Potter, on how to write children’s stories. His first four tips (the fifth covered submissions) could be summarised as:

1. Put yourself back in the age group you are writing for: remember the excitement of that age [Ah crap, I can hardly remember being a child]
2. Include lots of details: The setting. What are they eating? What do they look like? Kids love detail [Oh dear, I’m not one for reading or writing lots of detail]
3. Planning: make sure you know when to introduce and remove characters, when your climaxes are, in order to keep the reader engaged [This is a blog post on Pantsing. Enough said]
4. Remember the importance of humour, especially in dialogue [My book is shaping up a bit dark and depressing. I’m screwed]

Oh well. Plenty of stuff to work on in the second draft! For now I’m enjoying finding out what happens next.

Fading Scars

Dad, me and sis at the beach

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of the unexpected death of my father, and for the first time the day drifted by in mundane normality. I couldn’t have imagined, back then, that the pain of his passing would ever be anything but raw and unbearable. Despite having a complicated and often turbulent relationship with my dad, and despite not having lived with him for more than a few weeks at a time since I was nine, his death left a huge hole in my life. The last years saw us come to an understanding and we had a friendship, a shared view of the world, that I’ve never found with anyone else.

The tragedy of my father’s death is that it came before any of his grandchildren were born. I believe that spending time with his two granddaughters and two grandsons would have completed my father’s journey. Despite my in many ways awful childhood, Dad was much better with small people in later life. He would have been an amazing grandfather, taking the children fishing and to cricket matches and for walks along the canal.

What hurts most, now I’ve become a parent, is that I now understand my father and my childhood and utterly forgive him for all his flaws. He wasn’t a great Dad at times and I’m certain he was a terrible husband. But he didn’t have the best upbringing himself, with two volatile parents, and a dominating, controlling mother.

Dad as I remember him

Like me, he had little patience and a quick temper. Like me, I imagine he found it hard to be home with the children, trying to fix cars and mind the kids, while Mum worked a 9-5 job. But he didn’t have the support network that I have. There were no Dads Groups in the 1970s, no blogs and online forums. I’ve never hit my children, but I’ve come close. And I’m pretty certain I’ve repeated every terrible thing I heard as a child. The difference is I can cry and apologise and explain. I can’t imagine Dad doing the same.

My hope and fear is that my dad was reborn in my son. He reminds me of Dad in so many ways. It gives me hope for the future, that Dad’s memory and legacy are not lost. But fear that, just as happened 8 years ago, my son may also be taken from me, suddenly, without warning, with no chance to say goodbye. If I’m an over-protective, worrying, clingy parent, it is for that reason. All the love I couldn’t show my dad, that I didn’t know I had until it was too late, is lavished on a cheeky, naughty, charming little boy. And maybe, somewhere, Dad is watching. I hope so.

The Art of Negotiation and Solving International Conflict

Ace Negotiator

The hardest part of parenting, particularly parenting three and five year olds, is the constant negotiation.

It starts at 6am and doesn’t finish until at least 8pm.

“Mummy, can I go downstairs?”

“Is your sun up?”

“Well, there’s one star left.”

“Then you need to go and read quietly.”

“But it’s sunny outside.”

“Go back to bed, it’s six am.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Then you should have eaten your tea.”

…

And so it goes on right through to

“Can I have three stories tonight?”

“No, you can have two like normal.”

“But these are short stories.”

“It’s past bedtime already.”

“But I’m not tired.”

…

I swear if you sent mothers in to sort out the crisis in Ukraine it would go something like this:

“Russia, Ukraine, if you can’t play nicely, go to your rooms. I’m putting Crimea on a shelf until you stop squabbling.”

Failing that, I could send my son to handle negotiations. I’ve not seen him beaten in an argument yet: he can come up with a way round any problem.

“Mummy, when are we going to go on a bus?”

“One day. We went a few weeks ago.”

“Why can’t we go today?”

“We’re going swimming today.”

“We could catch the bus to the swimming pool.”

“We could, but we might not get back in time to get your sister from school.”

“But we could leave swimming early.”

“We could, but the bus is expensive.”

“You have money.”

…

And on… If he were in the negotiations I’m sure Putin would end up saying,