2013 365 Challenge Aftermath

Life Since Claire

Last night I realised it’s been nearly a month since I finished my 2013 365 Challenge (although I’m still blogging daily). Twenty-four days since I had to hold a story in my head every day; to remember who was in scene, all the strands of plot that needed completion, all the characters and their stories and flaws and mannerisms.

Four weeks since I had to format a word document for Smashwords, search for the perfect cover image or wonder what the weather was like on a random day last summer. To worry if I was taking Claire through a development arc as well as a physical journey.

I felt a bit sad, especially as I no longer get any downloads on Smashwords – checking my stats always picked up a gloomy day. I wondered if some of my sense of being adrift is due to not having that thread of continuity with me all the time. like leaving work or finishing a university course, or breaking up with a partner.

Then, in my new spirit of Happiness, I thought I would list all the great things about finishing Two-Hundred Steps Home.

Finally being able to read all the novels I’ve wanted to read for ages, rather than just reading Tripadvisor reviews and the YHA website
Catching up on blogs and actually leaving comments. Okay I’m still behind on my aim of three comments a day, but I probably managed fewer than three a month last year
Eating lunch while watching Bargain Hunt instead of researching tourist attractions or driving routes with Google Streetview
Going to bed before midnight
Getting stuck into crafting a novel, including all the pain of fixing continuity errors and plot holes, and being able to work on any chapter rather than having to stick to a strict linear timeline
Writing poor prose, just to write something, and knowing I can change it!
Walking the dog without tapping out dialogue into my phone: feeling the wind on my face and not falling into rabbit holes
Sitting down after dinner and the kids-to-bed routine without that lead weight in my stomach and the dread words “I have to write my post”
Spending time after the school run; getting my head straight, listening to the radio, drinking tea, and not feeling guilty that I’m not writing
Going out. I actually went to the cinema this evening for the first time in years, and afterwards talked about something other than my blog and Claire
Spending time with new characters and getting to know them

My work rate has dropped off as a result – I’ve only written around 12,000 words this month instead of the usual 20,000-25,000 (uncrafted words, too, whereas I proofread every Claire installment) – but I barely feel like I’ve done any writing and still the words pile up. I wrote 600 words on my iPad while waiting for an appointment yesterday. Before the challenge, I would have seen anything less than 5,000 words in a day a failure, but I could go days without writing anything. I have now learned that daily 600-word scenes quickly add up to a significant amount.

I learned so much from the challenge, although I’ll probably save that for another post. But, in some ways, I’m having to learn to live without it. It’s good to realise there are loads of positives. Mostly I feel there is time to breathe.

Now, time for another cup of tea.

Super Sweet Blogging Award

super-sweet-blogging-award Just when I was dredging my exhausted brain for a blog idea for today, I remembered that – hurrah! – the lovely M T McGuire nominated me for the Super Sweet Blogging Award. Thank you! And it’s about cake. And cookies. I just need a cup of tea and I’m sorted. (As if by magic my lovely hubbie has produced said cuppa. Right, let’s go!)

First of all, I’d like to thank M T McGuire for nominating me. Her blog, M T McGuire Authorholic, has a lovely range of articles from publishing information to anecdotes from her son McMini. Do go visit.

Here are the rules for accepting this award:

Thank the Super Sweet Blogger that nominated you. (tick)
Answer 5 Super Sweet questions. (see below)
Include the Super Sweet Blogging Award in your blog post. (done)
Nominate a bakers’s dozen (13) other deserving bloggers. (see below)
Notify your Super Sweet nominees on their blog. (pending!)

The 5 Super Sweet Questions:
More hurrahs! I have such a sweet tooth. How can I not love questions about sweet treats!

Cookies, yum yum

Cookies or Cake?
Cookies, definitely. Double chocolate with chunks of white chocolate in them. Although I am partial to cake – chocolate or carrot cake, or a bit of lemon drizzle cake with a nice cup of tea.

Chocolate or Vanilla?
Chocolate, hands down.

Favorite Sweet Treat?
Anything chocolate pretty much, the darker the better, although I do get cravings for Crunchies (chocolate-covered honeycomb for the non-Brits) and Double Deckers (teeth-breaking nougat and biscuit covered in chocolate. I actually lost a tooth to one, but still love them!)

When Do You Crave Sweet Things The Most?
All the time, but especially around ‘that time of the month’

Sweet Nick Name?
Hubbie calls me Honey but I’m anything but sweet most of the time

Here are my nominees: these are all bloggers who not only have fantastic blogs which I read as often as I can, but have also supported me through the last year, in my writing, in my parenting, in life. So, ladies, I’d like to buy you all a nice slab of your favourite cake. Calorie-free, of course.

My Bakers’ Dozen

There are others, but the rules say 13… Do pop by and say hello.

Making a Change: It Starts Here

My Reason For Change

As a writer I know the power of words. Words can move, heal, hurt, destroy. Change the world. Think about Martin Luther King Jr’s speech “I have been to the mountain top”. Or the words in the bible. As a writer I should know to mind my words but, like any person of a certain profession, I don’t always follow my own beliefs.

A while ago I read a poem called powerful words on Chris McMullen’s blog and I said something in the comments about the words I use to my children being the wrong ones and how damaging that was and how I can’t take them back.

It’s something I’ve been worrying about more and more lately. Then, today, I read this article on Facebook called Ten Ways to Guide Children Without Punishment and I felt like I’d been whipped. It starts with these words,

“The reason a child will act unkindly or cause damage is always innocent. Sometimes she is playful and free spirited, and other times, when aggressive or angry she is unhappy or confused. The more disturbing the behaviour, the more the child is in pain and in need of your love and understanding”

Oh my it’s so true. I get most angry with my son when he’s at his happiest because that’s when he’s at his most destructive/deaf/irritating. Lately I’ve started hearing some of the terrible things I say to my children when I’m in a rage: things that were probably said to me, that I believe about myself deep down, that I’m teaching them to believe, and so the cycle continues.

“You’re lazy,” “You’re mean”, “You’re being selfish”, “You’re unkind”, “You’re trying to hurt me”.

These things are not true of children, certainly not two wonderful children under five. I excuse myself (or else I couldn’t live with myself a moment longer) by saying I’m exhausted, they don’t remember it, that I’m teaching them not to be bullies, and a load of other rubbish that just isn’t true.

My amazing kids!

To complete the trio of articles that have a) made me feel like ending my own life I hate myself so much and b) have forced me to see the need for change, is this one I found on Twitter called Why We Told Our Kids to Stop Saying “Sorry”. It discuss why the author has stopped her children apologising. She said to her child, after his umpteenth sorry, that, “Your sorries don’t mean anything when your behavior shows me that you aren’t sorry at all.”

I say sorry. All The Time. I’m sorry for living, I’m sorry for being a monster, I’m sorry it’s raining. Either it’s something I can’t control or it’s something I could change if I tried hard enough. Sorry doesn’t cut it. There’s a meme on Facebook about comparing a crumpled piece of paper to a bullied child: you can smooth the paper but the creases never go. You can say sorry but you can’t unsay the hurtful words.

As I write this I feel sick to my stomach. I feel like I have hurt my children beyond repair, beyond redemption. But the more I beat myself up about being a monster, saying the hurtful things I heard in my childhood, the more I give myself permission to continue because, hey, I’m a monster already.

I am not a monster. And, no matter how exhausted, overwhelmed, unhappy I am with being a parent, it is not my children’s fault. So, today, I have to make a commitment to stop. In my post yesterday I mentioned the book Happiness as a Second Language. The author, Valerie Alexander, stopped by to encourage me to read the book some more. So last night I did. I read all the way to Chapter Nine, although I need to read it again to take it in properly. The two chapters that really resonated were Chapter Eight – Adjectives and Chapter Nine – The Negative Form. Because these are the two I know I need to learn. Adjectives: the describing words I use on myself and my children, and learning not to be a negative person.

Because another thing I’ve learned from childhood is that sympathy = attention, that being broken means people try to fix you, help you, love you. That being happy means people resent you, ignore you, take you for granted. So I’ve learned to be miserable, so people ask “what’s wrong?” Except of course they stop asking after a while, or get bored of hearing the same ol same ol. So you up the ante. You think of taking your own life because then “That will show them I’m really miserable.” No, that just shows that you were too pathetic to help yourself.

Chatting to my sports massage friend yesterday she says it frustrates her when people refuse to help themselves get better. That’s me. I’ve had an injured knee for eighteen months but will I do the exercises to get better? No. I make excuses that they hurt, or I’m tired, or I don’t believe they’re working. Instead of growing up and just getting on with it. The only person that suffers from that is me (and my dog and my family.)

I want to learn how to be happy

So I don’t want to be a negative person anymore. I don’t want to steal other people’s happiness to make myself feel better. An “Indirect Negator” in Valerie’s words, someone “whose own unhappiness is so palpable that it risks becoming contagious.” Equally I don’t want to be around people like that (and I know a few).

The next thing I am going to do is choose five adjectives I want to describe me: five things I want people to think when they think about me, and live those values. This is an exercise I think I can do because I obsess about what people think about me all the time. That probably needs fixing too, but at least I can use it to my advantage.

Being a wordy sort of person I came up with alliterative adjectives so they’re easier to remember. There are many traits I’d like to be: successful, funny, strong, gracious, social, but I have to be realistic about what is in my control and what fits with my personality. So the five I have chosen are:

Calm
Confident
Caring
Compassionate
Clever

Calm: Since becoming a parent I am never calm. I rush around saying “we’re late” or I’m yelling or sniping at the kids, or I’m trying to do one hundred things at once. Yet, way back when, I used to work for a man who said “You’re always calm.” I said, “I’m a swan, I’m paddling furiously underneath.” But what mattered was that, on the exterior, I was calm. As a parent that’s the important bit. Honesty is great, but I am too honest about my feelings with the kids. They will feel calmer and happier if Mummy is calm. So, back to being a swan. This great article on Aha! Parenting will help.

Confident: My lack of self-confidence is something I wear like a badge. I second and third guess myself on everything. I dither, I ask for opinions. I change my mind, or let my mind be changed. I cry. I negotiate with the kids. I let other people’s parenting affect how I feel about mine. And yet the one thing I want for my children is self-confidence. To the point where I want to put them in a private school to learn it, because I know they can’t learn it from me. And yet the private school I visited was not right for my children.

I did use to have the courage of my convictions, when I worked for a living. I knew my stuff and I would argue my case (not always calmly!) and stand my ground. Against clients, against directors. No wonder I never got promoted. Now, though, as a writer and a parent, all I read are articles telling me how I’m doing it wrong, how I should do it better, and I believe every contradictory word. (Read this post by Ava Neyer for an hilarious summary of how contradictory parenting advice can be). So, I’ll start with the mask and hopefully confidence will come.

Learning Kindness from my Kids

Caring: This would have been a given, once. I considered myself an empathetic person, someone who cared about others. I seem to have lost that at the vital moment. Now I’ve become a monster. I say to the kids all the time “I don’t care” when they’re whinging about something. Arrgghh. Enough said. I will care. I will listen. I will kiss the grazed knees and listen to the fights and try not to get involved but still be present and caring.

Compassionate: Similar to above, but more about seeing other people’s points of view. I can be very judgemental and it has only got worse since becoming a parent. Part of my defence mechanism against feeling like a terrible parent is seeking out instances of other people’s terrible parenting to make myself feel better. I have probably made other people feel bad in the process. I want to learn to be more compassionate to other people (especially my family).

Clever: This used to be the one thing I knew I was, back when it was easy, when it was about exams and studying and stuff. The longer I’ve lived the more I’ve realised I know nothing. But the brain is still in there, beneath the lack of sleep and the low self-esteem and the self-doubt. I know stuff about writing, but through modesty, humility or fear, I can’t present myself as an authority here on the blog or to others. Yet I probably know more than I realise. Ditto for marketing, history, literature and some other stuff. I don’t want to bore the pants off people but remembering I have a brain and using it sometimes might help the other stuff.

Anyway, sorry for the long, self-indulgent post. When I finished writing it at 6am this morning I nearly hit delete. But then, for me, much of the beauty of the blogsphere is learning from others, seeing others experiencing pain and surviving it. Regular followers know my demons. By declaring to you all that I’m going to do this, I have made it a real thing. I will try and some days I will fail. But by trying to live the values of Calmness, Confidence, Caring, Compassion and being Clever, I hope to make a difference before it’s too late.

Defeating the Grump?

Painting fun

I’m in a grump. I don’t know why. The sun is shining outside, I’m home with my boy, my daughter is going to a friend’s house for tea. Life is okay.

I’m a bit stressed about my daughter’s party in a couple of weeks, but that’s mostly being planned by the other mummy (although maybe that’s why I’m stressed!) I’m tired of being poorly and random bits of my body not working (my knee seized this morning and I trapped a nerve in my back on Sunday) but generally I have good health.

I have a lovely husband, two gorgeous children, I enjoy writing my books (well, okay, that’s not really true when I’m revising, as I am now, but – you know – I don’t hate it).

I have enough money to buy the weekly food and pay for the odd cup of coffee. We found the resources to buy my daughter a new bed (although I hate not earning for a living and am currently looking for a part time job). I get three days a week without the children to theoretically do my writing, although mostly I do housework. I survived my 2013 365 Challenge and wrote 285,000 words of which I’m quite proud. I even sell a book every now and then.

But, for all my blessings – and I do count them every day – I feel meh. Sad. I sigh a lot. Shout at the kids. Cry, even, when small things overwhelm me. I don’t feel depressed, just melancholy. And I don’t know how to fight it. In the old days I would have gone for a run, but since I injured my knee 18 months ago I struggle to walk the dog without feeling the after effects. Cleaning the house helps for a while, but it gets messy again so quickly it adds to the feelings of futility and adriftness.

Telling me about his painting

I read to escape, but then I pick up a book like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and it magnifies my sorrow. Last night I dreamed about a remote hotel where all the staff had Asperger’s Syndrome; they’d been hired because they couldn’t lie and they didn’t like being with people so didn’t mind being by themselves for long periods of time. I have no idea if that’s true, by the way, I’m just basing it on the character in the book I’m reading. My dreams are all either high-drama chase sequences or depressing stories of loss and unhappiness.

I’m not what you’d call a happy person. I grew up with a man they nicknamed Morbid Mick. I try and see the positive in things but my default is to see what might go wrong and feel guilty about everything that does. For example, I cooked a lovely lasagne at the weekend for my father-in-law, with mince I took from the freezer. When I went to the fridge today I realised there was mince in there that now hovered on its sellby date. I cooked it anyway, but it smells a bit odd. I’ve been beating myself up all day for my stupidity. All Day. I mean, really?

I follow the blog of Valerie Alexander, author of Happiness as a Second Language. I have the book, too, although I’ve only read the first chapter. When I did I felt happy, and so stopped reading. I don’t have much staying power for self-help stuff. There always seems to be so much else that demands my attention instead (which has brought to mind that I haven’t phoned the doctors or the vets and there is a load of washing in the dryer and potatoes to peel for dinner and the dog needs walking and son asked to play playdough quarter of an hour ago…)

My brain is my biggest enemy. I over-think everything so generally I’m happier when I don’t think about things. But what to do when you’re stuck in a grump? Maybe it’s just the January blues, or the fact we can’t really afford to go on holiday because our daughter is now in school. Or that a holiday isn’t a holiday anyway anymore. I feel so sorry for myself it’s pathetic, especially as I don’t even know what could change for me to feel better. I feel like Shrek in Forever After, when he imagines life without wife and kids and finds out it’s not as great as he remembers it to be.

Ah well. It’ll all be alright tomorrow. No one died. What do you to get out of the grump?

Essential Empathy

Sherlock Series 1 Finale

Sat with hubbie watching Sherlock this evening, for only the second time (the finale to series 1 it seems and yes, I know; we’re always behind the times!), and I’m not enjoying it as much as the first episode I watched (which I think was series 3).

In this episode, Sherlock is tracking down someone who has set him puzzles to solve in a set time or he will blow up random strangers strapped to explosives. (Sorry, loglines have never been my forte!)

Sherlock has no empathy for the lives of the strangers, barely even registering them as people. It is difficult to watch. He explains to Watson that sympathising with the suffering of the victims wouldn’t help him solve the cases. I find his lack of emotion disturbing and, for me, it makes his character hard to relate to. The clever language and problem solving still make it compelling viewing, but empathy is essential to me. It’s interesting that, under ‘strengths’ in my character crib sheets, my female protagonists generally list empathy first.

Sherlock reminds me of Psych, another problem-solving drama, where the lead has exceptional powers of observation (which he explains away as being due to psychic powers). Psych, however, is much more lighthearted and the lead character, for all his occasional idiocy, has a big heart.

My latest read

Maybe I am noticing it more because I have started reading The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The story is written from the perspective of a fifteen year old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. It offers a unique insight into the mind of someone who understands “very little about human beings.”

Thinking about the characters in books and films that I love the most, they are all people with huge hearts (often despite hard exteriors): Gibbs in NCIS, for example, or Daniel in SG-1. People who understand people and not just so they can manipulate them.

Maybe Sherlock has a journey to go on. Perhaps I liked the series 3 episode better because he showed some heart. Certainly the hardest thing in fiction is portraying growth in a character and still being able to make them sympathetic characters before they start on their journey. Many a chick lit book has started with a protagonist I wanted to slap.

It’s a great excuse to keep watching Sherlock: to see if he grows, to see if he finds some empathy. To learn to write better fiction. And of course because you can’t beat clever TV.

Not Cool, Maggie…

Amazing book, disappointing ending

Speechless, I am utterly speechless. After a week of living on my nerves, pouring adrenalin into my reading of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys, of dealing with the dreams and the nightmares and stealing moments to read when I should be parenting or sleeping, I snuck upstairs to read the last chapter this afternoon and WTF?

I have no words.

The damn book just stops. It’s like there are four chapters missing. No explanation, no nothing. Even the tagline “If you kiss your true love, he will die” isn’t remotely or vaguely explained. What a crock of poo.

I’ve never been so distressed at the end of the book. It took me so long to get into the story, to get around the complicated viewpoints, the multiple lead protagonists, the magic and the history and the different cultures. The writing is deep and opaque and quotable and the characters so real I feel like they’re following me around. I couldn’t guess the ending and that excited me. I didn’t know how it was going to resolve itself, how the tagline would be answered, but I knew it would be good.

And then it just ended. Nothing. The last time I felt remotely this bad was at the end of The Knife of Never Letting Go, although at least there was some resolution before it went straight into the next drama. At least I knew there was a sequel, when I read Patrick Ness’s book. With The Raven Boys there is nothing on my copy to indicate that it is part of a series, so my expectation was for a resolution.

The sequel

As my ire cools, I have managed to discover that there is a sequel. The Dream Thieves was thankfully released in September last year, so I can try and get hold of a copy this week. Except I probably won’t. Because, here’s the thing, if the first book in a series doesn’t have some sort of cathartic resolution, I don’t have the energy to read the sequel straightaway.

I will probably never read The Ask and the Answer – the sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go. I was too exhausted from the first book to read the second one immediately, and knowing that the story follows on continuously I would have to re-read the first book before reading the second to remind myself of the story. And I don’t have the energy to do that.

It may be the same with The Raven Boys. Except I liked Blue and Adam and Gansey, Ronan and Noah far too much to abandon them. I’m not even bothered about resolving the tagline anymore, I just want to hang out with them some more. Only the next book is about my least favourite character, Ronan, and as a result I’m not drawn in as I would have been if it had been someone else.

So, Maggie, you might be forgiven, because your writing is just awesome. I feel like I can learn so much from you about characterisation, setting, story, plot, mood and use of language. But maybe not how to write a satisfying ending.

Because ending a story without resolving the tagline? Not cool.

Kairos Time Not Carpe Diem

Friends at the scooter park

Back when parenting was impossibly hard (like yesterday! Haha) I read an article about not subscribing to the need to Carpe Diem when it comes to raising small children. So often as a new parent (or not even a new parent) people who have done their parenting, whose kids have left home, who look back with nostalgia, say unhelpful things like “treasure every minute, it goes so fast.”

Of course that’s true and, as I watch my babies grow older and less cute, I see the truth in that. But with every “adorable age” comes a bucket load of trouble and it’s tough to see the diamonds at the coal face. Being told to love every minute just subscribes to the Perfect Parenting myth and puts unnecessary pressure on an already difficult task. As Glennon Melton writes in her post Don’t Carpe Diem:

It bugs me. This CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life – while I’m raising young kids. Being told, in a million different ways to CARPE DIEM makes me worry that if I’m not in a constant state of intense gratitude and ecstasy, I’m doing something wrong.

Braving her own Mt Everest

She compares raising children to climbing Mount Everest: “Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments … Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.”

In my favourite bit of the articles she then says, “if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers — “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!” — those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.”

Instead of treasuring every painful moment, every tantrum and time out, Glennon Melton introduces the concept of Kairos time, God’s time: Moments of perfection to treasure amidst the chaos, as opposed to Chronos time, “the hard, slow passing time we parents often live in.”

Kairos time is moment when you really see the children, love them with an immensity that is overwhelming. Even if the specific moments aren’t remembered after the event, just getting to the end of a day and knowing it had one or two moments of Kairos time in it is enough. It’s a beautiful article and it’s worth reading and rereading.

Kids carpe diem

And this afternoon I had one of those moments. Sitting on a bench, watching the children scoot round the park as the late afternoon sun trickled through the trees and sparkled off the puddles, I had a moment of peace. Of being proud of my beautiful babies, of myself.

Of course, being me, I ruined It by suggesting that my daughter let her brother have a turn in front. Thus ensued half an hour of sulking and tears, and Mummy getting cross. My son went and made some big girl friends who helped him where his sister had before.

But I fought hard to keep my Kairos moment and not let the sulking spoil it. Because these moments are rare. In the article, Melton compares parenting to writing a novel – we enjoy having parented, much as a famous author once admitted to enjoying having written. That’s true for me usually too. But some days the words flow effortlessly and shine and sparkle, and some days the children do the same. Those are moments worth hanging on to.

Finding Sense in Stories

Horrible headlines

Sat here on a Saturday morning, trying to think of something to write for my blog post, my mind was blank. After a night of The Raven Boys type dreams (always the danger of reading a powerful book at bedtime) I couldn’t pull together a story. I started flicking through my Reader, catching up on my favourite bloggers, like Miss Fanny P, looking for inspiration.

And then I came across a post that stopped me like a punch to the stomach. On Wednesday this week, over the border in Scotland, a three year old boy went missing from his first-floor flat, some time between bedtime and morning. The kind of story that twists inside you as a parent and makes you rush to hug your child.

I’ve been following the story with latent hope, as the people of Edinburgh poured out in their hundred to search for the missing boy. As is usual in such circumstances, we discussed whether our children could leave the house by themselves (they could) and whether there was more to the story than a boy running away from home (it seems there possibly was).

So, when I saw in my Reader this post by a resident of Scotland, whose children were involved in the search for the missing boy, I felt physically sick. We all want a story to have a happy ending. As an author (an author who lives for the HEA) I can’t bear a story that doesn’t end as I think it should. One that involves the death of a small child is the worst there is.

The Facebook appeal

It’s not the only story that has wrenched at me this week. There’s the case of a child who died within hours of their first day at nursery, or Jordon, the autistic boy who locked his mother in the house and disappeared on 9th January.

The latter story, like the story of the missing three-year old boy in Edinburgh, was one I discovered first on Facebook. I always share missing people or pets messages because Social Media ought to be good for something. In the case of Jordon, the story had a happy ending, with the boy being found alive and well. But during my internet search to see if he was okay, I discovered another dozen stories of missing children found dead.

They haunt me, these stories. Not just as a parent, imagining something happening to one of my children (which I can’t imagine, or I’d never let them leave the house again). I think of the families blown apart. The scars that won’t heal. The blame, the recriminations, the guilt. Of all the people touched, all the people searching with hope in their hearts. The policeman holding back tears as he breaks the terrible news. The assumptions that will be made, as the authorities search for the truth.

Mostly I think about the mother (who is often the first one questioned). I no longer judge mothers. No matter what we see from the outside, we have no idea and we must not judge. I am sure there are evil people in the world, but there are just as many desperate, overwhelmed, frightened people and we cannot know the truth of their lives.

As a writer, I live these stories with full emotion. It isn’t just a news story, it’s life in all its messy detail. There aren’t heroes and villains, winners and losers. Just the complicated horrible terrible beauty and tragedy of life. And it’s why I write love stories, women’s fiction, journeys of self discovery. The world needs hope and Happily Ever After. It needs to make sense of life and wrap up the loose ends, to have themes and symbolism and resolution.

Because life doesn’t. Life has sadness and questions and fear. It has grieving families and worried parents. We’ll all hug our little ones just a bit tighter today, and maybe we’ll look for escape in a book. I know I will.

Research and The Raven Boys

What Alex’s London flat might look like

I miss Claire. There, I’ve said it. I miss writing an installment of her journey each day, with a reasonable idea of where she was in the world, at least, and where her story was going. I miss guaranteed word count.

I’m in redrafting hell at present, trying to rescue two characters I love from a badly plotted and planned novel awash with backstory. The problem with loading a first draft with backstory is that changing one thing has a rippling effect across the entire manuscript, especially if you’re trying to rewrite two lines of throwaway history into a whole chapter or even two.

My lead man Alex has a friend called Philip who is essential to the story. Starting In Media Res I didn’t have to worry too much about their relationship before; where they first met, how they met, considering they’re so different. Now, though, we first see them catching up down the pub, setting up the rest of the story’s action, and I have to understand all these things. How do people from different backgrounds meet? How do their different careers and incomes affect their friendship? What’s the age difference? I managed 700 words of stilted dialogue today and gave up in disgust.

I’m also trying not to be overly influenced by the book I’m reading – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – as her novel contains a character that could be, or at least have known, Alex as a public school boy. Maggie Stiefvater’s character is so convincing I’m finding parts of him creeping into my prose: except Raven Boys is set in America, whereas Alex would have gone to an English boarding school (which I know very little about, another fact that wasn’t especially important before.)

As each of these random strands of research crop up, I keep losing the flow of writing because I need to research the role of a stage hand or investigate pubs in North London or apartments in Chelsea. I might even have to watch an episode of Made in Chelsea – *shudder* – to try and understand Alex’s present girlfriend Paige more, as again she has moved from a paragraph of explanation to a speaking part.

I swear this is the last time I rescue an old manuscript by moving the timeline back a few months. Next time it starts where it starts and that’s that!

Bridport and Baby Blues

My Goodreads Giveaway

I wrote a long rambling post for the blog today about parenting, love and life, following on from a spectacularly low point on the school run this morning, that started with yelling in the traffic jam and ended up with daughter and I both in tears. But, if I’m tired of thinking about my failings as a parent then I’m sure you’re tired of reading about them. So I’m going to talk writing instead.

I finally listed a Giveaway on Goodreads this week to win a paper copy of Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes. It’s open to all the countries I can ship to easily from Amazon, so if you fancy reading it, or just like a chance at a freebie, do pop over to Goodreads and sign up, and tell your friends! 🙂

Continuing on a writing theme, I spotted a couple of my Baby Blues bookmarks in a stand at the library today in what turned out to be a rack of leaflets on the Bridport Prize. For those who don’t know, the Bridport Prize is one of the most well-known short story (plus flash fiction and poetry) competitions in the UK, with a first prize of £5000. I think about entering every year, but I haven’t written anything shorter than 100,000 words in years. If you have, and fancy your chances, the closing date is 31st May 2014. (I can’t put any more details at present because the website doesn’t seem to be working, but this is the link).

Brittle Star Competition

Next to the Bridport flyer was another writing competition with a March 2014 closing date, again for short stories and poetry. This is the Brittle Star inaugural poetry and short fiction competition closing on 12th March 2014. The prizes are much more modest (£250 per genre) but all winners will be published in Brittle Star and invited to a launch and prize giving event in London (a great chance for networking!)

Incidentally, if you want to keep up to date with UK writing competitions, I recommend visiting (and following) the Sally Jenkins – Writer blog. Sally Jenkins’ frequently lists details of writing competitions both big and small as well as lots of hints and tips and great resources. I learned about the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition from her and, if I hadn’t, I might never have finished Dragon Wraiths. I’m very grateful!