Ghostly hopes

We had anticipated a much tighter timeframe but life and work got in the way, for both of us. And as it takes time to make a perfect, healthy baby, it takes time and meticulous planning, writing, editing and rerererereading to produce as perfect a book proposal and as perfect a first chapter as possible.

It is now done and on Monday the first email to the first agent on my list was sent.

It is with trepidation, emotion and anticipation that we are now waiting for a response. Will it ever arrive? Will it be positive?

We will soon send an email to a second agent, and then we’ll tackle the submissions by post, which are quite tricky as agents’ requirements vary enormously. And you don’t want to upset an agent from the word go. You want to do it all perfectly so that they don’t have a reason to reject your submission before they’ve even read ‘Dear So and so’.

It has taken a while to get to this point, but it is better to take your time and be precise and as perfect as you can, than rush and forget something or do things wrong.

Please please please don’t tell me there was a typo or an inconsistency…

A Writer in Paris

This time last year, I was in Paris on a special trip. A special trip for me.















I mean, just for me.

I left on the Friday morning while my darling husband looked after our daughter and I came back on the Sunday evening.

Two whole days in Paris J

Just before I left, I had bought a little gem, pictured here. A Writer's Paris ­– A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul by Eric Maisel. A wonderful, perfectly produced book all about Paris and what a writer can do – must do – when coming to write in Paris, whether for a month, three months or a year (or anything in between), on a budget or not (though mostly it’s all about surviving on a shoe string in the City of Light, because ­– ahem – it’s a well-known fact that writers are broke half the time. Because writing takes time, usually time when you can’t work simultaneously, so one constantly struggles between time for writing and time for earning a bit of money). It has pictures and drawings, lovely use of attractive fonts, and the cover and glacé paper… wow! They make you feel like you’re holding a very expensive and very precious book. Which I guess it is.

Three years before that, I had read Eric Maisel’s A Writer's San Francisco (whose looks were unfortunately not quite as appealing – don’t you just hate that, not being able to get two similar books in the same collection?!) and compulsively turned its pages in the streets and cafés of SF. This time, I would do the same in the city where I was born, getting inspiration from reading Eric’s beautiful writing and from his ideas. Writing ideas generously offered by writers always get my creative juices flowing. (Eric’s even spurred me to write this post!)

I was born to write. Whether I’ll ever get published (other than electronically I mean, as will soon happen with my short stories, nearly ready for the iPad J) is neither here nor there. It’s increasingly clear to me that I absolutely don’t care what will eventually happen to my writing. As long as I keep writing (here and privately on my computer or in my numerous notebooks), I’ll be happy.

A Writer's Paris ­– A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul. So much promise.

And it delivered.

I wrote and wrote and wrote:

on the train

in a little café ironically named “Comme à la maison” (if I was going to end up at home, why go to Paris at all?! Or was that a hint – I was at home!? But I knew that anyway. I LOVE Paris. I do feel at home in Paris. But I also feel at home in Oxfordshire, thankfully!)

in my hotel room at the Hotel Acte V, in the 5^th arrondissement

It was an idyllic weekend in an idyllic city for a budding writer. It even snowed!

Thank you, Eric. Next time, I’ll do exactly as you say and spend at least a month in Paris and go to all the places you mention and I’ll even try to write a novella in four weeks!

Ghostwriting

So I said below that I was finally getting somewhere with my lifelong passion – writing. I told you briefly about the children’s stories that I have written and that will soon be published electronically.

Now I would like to tell you about my ‘other writing life’.

I’m a ghost.

It’s something I had not considered ever possible until Saturday 15 January. It all happened through a friend, yet again.

Never underestimate the power of friendships.

A friend of that friend is an extremely busy bee but has a story to tell. A very important one. However, that friend has no time to put it all down and edit it and polish it and send it to editors and agents.

‘Would you like to help my friend write it?’ my friend asked.
‘Are you kidding?! Yes, of course! This is my dream job!’
‘Oh really? I was so sure you’d say no, because I thought you wanted to write your own stuff.’

Never underestimate the power of being clear when talking to your friends about your writing.

Within 24 hours, a new friendship developed between the busy bee and yours truly, a now budding ghostwriter.

Based on our first interview and on some material that the person has provided (including a 20,000-word document already written, which is, as it turns out, a far cry from what the book will be), I have now come up with a structure for the book, a synopsis, selling points and a chapter breakdown, which I’ve put together in a book proposal. We’re now in the process of writing Chapter 1. When this is finished, we will send it, along with the proposal, to a number of agents and keep our fingers and toes crossed over the next few months.

Again, watch this space… My name may not appear on the book cover (at best, it will be preceded by that very short, but full-of-meaning word: ‘with’), but yes, if we ever get a publishing contract, it will be me who will do the lion’s share of the writing (and all of the polishing!) before it gets to be seen by the publisher’s editor. And I can’t wait!

Children’s stories

My love affair with writing ebbs and flows. Sometimes, I hate writing, sometimes I love it. Sometimes I resent the amount of time it takes to just come up with one paragraph, sometimes words pour out of me and I can’t stop writing for five hours. Sometimes I think That’s it, I’m not writing ever again!, and sometimes I think I know, let’s do it this way!… The fact remains that, after 25 years, I’m still writing.

And at the tender age of 34 (Did she say ‘tender’?!), it looks like I’m finally going to get somewhere with this lifelong passion of mine.

Let’s start with children’s stories. Back in October, the son of a friend of my mum’s contacted me as he had heard, through our mums, that I had written a novel and a few stories for children. He was very much interested as his latest venture was to publish this kind of stories on the iPad and iPhone, with a few twists which of course I won’t mention here as it would spoil the surprise! We’re still building the website* for this, and a developer is working on the app, but soon, my stories will be available on these fabulous pieces of technology (first I need to edit them, though…!)

Watch this space…

* On that website, there will be a link to my blogs. It's high time I came out of my shell. Ahem (aka 'I'm terrified').

Back in business!

It's a scary thought, but for the past few weeks I have been musing about my blog. How I've been missing it. How, wow, now, it looks like I really may have the time to write a post every now and again!

It's not a scary thought at all, of course. It's a blindingly wonderful thought!

Just yesterday, I had an idea for a post. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but it doesn't matter. The fact is: I'm thinking about my blog, I'm thinking about what I want to write, and best of all, I'm thinking that I can do it! I can write again! I thought this would never happen!

So just in brief: yes, motherhood really is the hardest job on earth, no manual, no preparation, no anticipation possible, but YES YES YES it really is worth it! I'm only now convinced of it, it took so long (my daughter is now nearly 21 months old), I know, but hey, I got there in the end! My daughter is so funny, now that she can say quite a few words, in both French and English, and so loving, and so sweet, and so cuddly, and now that she sleeps well consistently, it's a whole new experience. You can't compare it with the sleep-deprived nights and hazy days. No wonder some of my friends have been relishing motherhood since their babies were tiny - because they were sleeping well (both mummies and babies). Now I can too!

So thumbs up to having a baby!

Exhausted and priorities

I have hypothyroidism. A.k.a. ‘an underactive thyroid’. It developed during our six-week stay in the US and now, despite the fact that I’m on thyroxine, I’m not better. In fact, I was worse until yesterday. I had to go back home early on Wednesday, couldn’t go to work on Thursday and couldn’t even work from home.

I know it’s a blessing in disguise. I know that this is happening for a very good reason. To make me think, perhaps. To make me take a pause in my life and reflect on it. Or just to let me see that if I do too much, or even just try to do too much, then my body will let me know. It’s keeping me in check. So I must stop striving to do so many things all the time, in my life in general, but also daily. That’s the general message. Loud and clear.

Ironically, on Thursday and Friday, during my self-imposed rest, all I could think about was writing. Writing writing writing. I was exhausted, I couldn’t function, I could barely get out of bed let alone walk, but all the while, one thought persisted in my head: W-R-I-T-I-N-G. I even got a new idea. It’s based on the same idea I’ve had for ages, but now the concept has evolved and I’m going to build a completely wild story. A real departure from what I’ve done so far, with that idea and with all the others.

It might take me 30 years, but I will write that story. I keep going back to this idea – there must be something in it...

So, in brief, despite my most definite commitment, back in October, to stop writing and stop thinking about potential stories, and to simply be happy, every day (it was clear that thinking about writing but not writing was making me miserable), this hypothyroidism is awakening my sense of priority again and so, despite this October decision, I now realise that I really must write, simply because it is still my passion. It is still the thing I go back to, no matter what happens in my life. It’s inexplicable. It is unfathomable. Tomorrow, I might decide, again, that I’m really not cut out to be a writer, that I REALLY must quit trying, but today (and often recently), as so many times in the past 20 years, I feel the irresistible quality of my desire to write.

The other day, I realised with great clarity that what I need to do is change my approach. That’s all I need to do. I can carry on thinking about writing, I can carry on writing, but what I need to do is incorporate it into my daily life, as I do with everything else – brushing my teeth, taking a shower, doing a bit of gardening (weather permitting), working, doing a few yoga poses, going for a 30-minute walk or bike ride. The way I do all these things every day (or most days for some of them), I need to do just that with my writing: a few sentences at a time. Because even if it’s just a few sentences, it’s still a lot more than I’ve been doing in the past few months. Years. And that’s what I want to achieve – build a story over time, not forcing myself to write it all in one go, in one year, day in, day out, three hours a day, as I’ve been trying (well, dreaming of trying to do!). If I do it this way, making this HUGE decision one day For The Rest Of My Life, there is too much pressure to do it, finish it, polish it and do it perfectly, and so I despair too quickly (because of course nothing is perfect straight away – or ever?). Whereas (I think, I hope) if I just write a few sentences each day, on my PDA or my computer, with no pressure at all, as things come to my mind, just scribbling, the way a visual artist might doodle in her notebook, then I won’t have enough to despise and despair about. These will only be a few words.

I think that, overall, this will practically require me to ignore the fact that I’m writing. I’ll have to see it as typing up words rather than as coming up with a story. I will have to stop myself from thinking about it as writing.

Of course, this doesn’t preclude me from becoming all horrified and in total desolation and hopelessness when I come to edit the damn story (the hardest bit, I know that already), but I will try not to think about this part of the process until it actually needs to be done (simply because I may never even get there!).

At least, maybe this story will still interest me in a year’s time, in 10 years’ time, even. Maybe with this one, I can stay the distance.

New table and benches

At the beginning of June, we bought this lovely table and matching benches. Because of the horrible weather, we were only able to put them up a whole month later!

And because it practically hasn’t stopped raining since then, we have only been able to sit at it three times!

But when the sun is out, especially in the morning and in the evening, oh, what blissful minutes and/or hours I spend there, reading my book, writing my novel, dreaming, looking at the red kites above and stroking the cat!

Too old

I’m getting old. For the first time ever, I’ve seen the year of my birth (1976) next to an author’s name on the jacket of a book. Normally, they’re either much younger (22, 25) or they’re just a year or two older (for example, Zadie Smith, 1975).

That’s it, I’m old now. It is now officially too late to be labelled a ‘young writer’.

I still remember my grandmother telling me that I really should try to have a novel completed in my early twenties as it’s so uncommon and it would just be so good for marketing purposes, and just so good for my own CV (and pride). I tried, I tried, God knows I tried, but the only novel I finished was a children’s novel, and I was already 26. And it was no way near being ready for an agent or a publisher to even glance at it. And it still isn’t.

On Thursday last week, I went to WH Smith in Oxford and spent part of the money that was on the gift card I got for my 30th birthday last month from my in-laws. I went for something completely different: a novel written by a guy, Jon McGregor, called So Many Ways to Begin. I fancied a man’s point of view this time. He writes very well and is very good at creating atmosphere, with sounds, smells and the small things that his characters do. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was apparently very well received and he won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. I’ll let you discover So Many Ways to Begin (I haven’t read his first novel), but the other thing about Jon McGregor is that he now lives in... Nottingham! Where I spent my first four years ‘chez les Rosbifs’! There must be a hidden link. Maybe one day I’ll find out what that is.

My point is this: whenever I see or read a book written by somebody who’s around my age, I get all competitive and think ‘I can do it too! In fact, I AM going to do it!’ Either that or I get very depressed and think ‘I started this story/novel a year ago and look, I’ve only written ten pages’ (or two, or just a few ideas). But still, somehow, it gives me renewed impetus to carry on writing.

I got this feeling the other day when I read Petite Anglaise’s post (on 21 November – see link on right-hand side) about her (potential) new den in Paris that will help her carry on writing her memoir about her life in my birth place. It gave me the kick in the bum that I needed – I was all inspired again. ‘Stop wasting time, just do it now! Today, tomorrow, and every single day after that! Just WRITE!!!’ So Petite, if you read this one day, thank you and good luck with your memoir. I can’t wait to read it as I’m sure it will be as good as your blog, if not better.

One of the things that I have to come to terms with is the fact that no matter how much I love reading novels and thinking up ideas for my own and starting what will be ‘great novels’ in my wildest dreams, I probably will never be a novelist. No matter how much I would love to say ‘I’m a novelist’ some time in the near future, it probably won’t happen (I have to write ‘probably’ – never say never, as they say). I may be able to say ‘I’m a writer’. But if one can only be considered a writer if they are published, then even that is less than certain. (Julia Cameron, for one, disagrees totally with this idea, but even if I told Petite in one of my comments that ‘Of COURSE you are a writer’ even if her memoir hasn’t been published yet [but it will, she has a contract!], somehow I can’t apply the same principle to my own situation – I WRITE, but I’m not a WRITER.) ‘I’m a writer.’ That would be good enough for me, I suppose, but there is something even more mysterious about ‘being a novelist’.

I read today in my writing magazine (Mslexia – a wonderful magazine for female writers of all ages) a very good piece of advice: think of your novel in little scenes, and just write those scenes as they come to you. Don’t think about ‘the whole novel that I have to write’ – only think about these snippets of dialogues and those little ‘happenings’. This advice might help me with my current novel (three pages!). (Yes, I’m still going to try, and probably all my life! Just because I love novels too much and because I love coming up with ideas, sentences, character profiles, similes, non-cliché images. I have been writing stories since I was 8 years old after all – you can’t stop me now I’m 30! I will just carry on till I die, whether I get published or not.)

Still, on Saturday morning, I got up at 6.45 (I was wide awake) and I wrote for five hours non-stop. I think this might have happened once in my life – but only once: when I was writing the final chapter of my children’s novel. I was inspired and it just had to be finished that day, I had decided. I think I wrote for seven hours, in fact. But these five hours on Saturday were not devoted to my novel, as I would have liked them to be. They were spent revising many pages of the self-help book that I’ve been writing for nearly two years, adding more pages to it, and reviewing the proposal that I started putting together a few months ago. It felt good – really good.

But it wasn’t a novel, and I am 30 and getting too old to be a ‘young, fresh talent’.

Doing too much

(This was actually written on 7th April 2006. I was going to edit it before posting it, but then never found the time or energy – until today.)

Are there not enough things to do in life? Is it not enough to have to get up, go to work (or stay at home but work nonetheless, as the case may be), come back, cook, do the washing-up, clean the house, tend to the garden and the cat, pay the mortgage, update the monthly budget, email one’s friends, speak to the said friends over the phone every now and again too? Why do I, on top of all this, also put pressure on myself to go to the gym, write this article, write that short story, finish my distance writing course, edit my photographs, write my blog, of course – and not only that, write two blogs (there is one in French somewhere in the ether as well!) – write a novel in French, make nice photo albums with my pictures, and now, also, finally, walk my 10,000 steps a day?! (13,000 today!)

Some of these things are laudable – actually, all of them are, it’s just that combined together, they tend to make me become crazy and feel like a zombie, unable to function properly, walking like a disarticulated skeleton. This is what happened to me two weeks ago, after running for 20mn on the treadmill (as well as doing my whole exercise routine) three days in a row (well, two days in a row and then another day after a 24-hour ‘rest’!), when I hadn’t run since I was 18, for the baccalauréat! I was proud of myself on Day 3, but not so much on Days 4 to 7! So I gave myself a two-week break and tonight I went back to the gym for the first time. I still ran on the treadmill, but just for 8mn, and altogether I was in the torture chamber for 50mn – much more reasonable. I listened to my body very attentively and slowed down as soon as there were signs of a slight weakening. I’m feeling quite good as a result, as opposed to a thousand-year-old mummy.

This is one of the reasons why I haven’t written much in here. After the huge and quick descent to hell (exhaustion) 10 days ago, I decided I really, really, really had to slow down and stop doing so much. It was a big wake-up call. I had had it before, but after a while I had forgotten about it. This time, I am going to make sure I don’t forget.

The other reason for not writing much here lately is because I took part in a travel writing competition and 1) I was busy writing three articles that I wanted to enter, and 2) I was horrified to see my name in big letters across my screen when I checked the competition website (they posted all the articles that were entered, and the results will be announced by 30 April). It was quite a harrowing experience. Most people would be impressed and quite chuffed – I was mortified and very scared, especially when I told my boss and her colleague, along with a few colleagues and friends, about it and they looked at the website. I suddenly thought: ‘What if they think it’s crap? What if they think I probably won’t win? What if they think it’s not interesting? What if they think “Why does she even bother?”’. I just wanted to hide and never show my face ever again.

This taught me a great lesson and made me realise one huge thing. It had entered my mind before, but I had dismissed it, having not looked at it properly, I think. This time, I have, and it all became very obvious and very right: the only reason why I want to be published is because I want some recognition, I want to be acknowledged, I want to be valued. Those murky waters I have mentioned before, that is what they are – a lack of recognition from my parents and family, and therefore a huge lack of confidence, self-esteem and self-worth deep within me. Two weeks ago, I realised: and would being published achieve what I badly need? No, of course not! But most importantly, I became aware that I was chasing a dream, and maybe not that I would never reach it for real, but that the whole pursuit was preventing me from enjoying the present, the very thing I am also trying to get pleasure from and live fully... It suddenly became very clear to me that this carrot (publication) was dangling in front of me, a stone’s throw away, and was likely to be out of reach for a very long time, and that I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice all my life to catch and eat that elusive carrot. 1) It might never happen, 2) even if it does, the price to pay to get there is far too high to even contemplate any more.

And so I decided to stop writing – the ‘for the sake of trying to get published’ kind of writing. From then on, I was only going to write for my own pleasure, with absolutely no pressure. Writing is a business, and as such it needs to be taken seriously if one ever wants to get published. Well, I’m not one of these people any more. The others can take it as seriously as they like, they can spend hours slaving over words and sentences and pages and rewrites, they can worry about the advance they’re going to get (or not), the kind of contract they will be able to obtain from their agent or publisher, about writer’s block, about fame – but I’m not going to take part in this dangerous game, I don’t want to any more.

Since I made this big decision, I have been feeling such relief, it’s amazing! I can read my writing magazine and think ‘Ah ah, I don’t need to do that!’ or ‘Ah ah, it doesn’t concern me!’ and rejoice in the knowledge that never again will I put pressure on myself to finish a piece of writing and to send it to a competition in time. I don’t care any more. That is not what life is about for me any more. That life is too stressful, and I give myself enough stress every day about little things. From now on, I am going to write only when I feel like writing, and write only what I feel like writing, not following the rules, not caring about characterisation, plot and dialects – I am just going to write what I know how to write, for my own pure pleasure, and sod the rest of them!

So you might read me here a bit more often again...!

To all writers

I think I have a problem. Almost certainly most writers out there will think it’s a nice problem to have, but at the moment I still consider it a dilemma.

I have too many ideas! I want to write in too many different genres, I want to write too many stories at once (does that count as three problems?). Then again, I can’t read less than three books at the same time, so no wonder I can’t write less than three novels/short stories/articles at the same time! (Of course, I don’t mean literally at the same time – I mean having three or more books on the go. For example, at the moment, I am reading five books: The Electric Michelangelo, The Shadow of the Wind, Agatha Christie’s autobiography, Desert Solitaire and Status Anxiety. I guess I like variety.)

Why is it that I automatically assume that anything I do, however I do it, is a weakness rather than a strength? It took a lot of cogitation but I have finally come to understand that having several ideas for several genres is an advantage. I have realised that while one short story matures at the back of my brain, my novel can be written; while an article is put to rest for a few weeks, I can edit a few pages of my children’s novel. The brain doesn’t stop thinking about all these projects just because you have stopped working on them. Au contraire – it does all the background work, and when you come back to that article/story/novel, you can see it with fresh eyes and have new ideas to add to it. You also have the distance that you need to read it critically and edit it. And all the while, the ‘resting’ time, the ‘distancing’ time was used efficiently to work on another piece of writing! Fantastic!

Yes... except that if I’m not careful, there still is one slight problem – I panic. I suffer from ‘Too many books to write’ syndrome. And usually, I want to read the kind of books that I want to write, so I also suffer from ‘Too many books to read’ syndrome. Not a good place to be.

That’s when meditation comes into play, I suppose. One thing at a time, one book at a time, one idea at a time. Go with the flow, go with the inspiration. Even if I’m going to write in three different genres that day, I still need to focus on whatever I’m doing, the moment I’m doing it. Even if I spend only 15 minutes on my latest short story and then switch to a page of my novel, let these 15 minutes count and make them productive. As long as I write, I’m OK, I’m making progress. And maybe one day, my projects will all be finished at roughly the same time and I’ll have this massive pile of manuscripts to send off!

If only...