Beleaguered Squirrel

Boobs

2012-01-10T21:36:00.002Z

Thanks to Captain Black for alerting me that my old internet domain has been taken over by malicious hackers. Apparently if you visit the boobish place, you may end up doanloading a nasty virus. So please don't!

The domain expired and I didn't renew it, as we're poor and it was an unnecessary thing to be spending money on, so I'm afraid it is beyond my control.

Apologies to anyone who has been similarly stung.

Hello

2012-01-07T09:06:00.002Z

Hello.

Dunno why I'm here really, just that I was reminded that I haven't been here for a while. It's weird though, I feel very little drive to write these days. I keep thinking vaguely that maybe I could write some blog posts, but then I dash off a brief tweet and that seems to be enough. I have faint ideas about writing novels too, but they never last. The fact is I'm now working full time, and I only ever wrote novels when I was working a 4 day week or less, so that I had whole days free for writing. And for most of the time, I only had one child.

Writing is something I will do again, but not yet.

For the moment, I'm just enjoying not being a teacher. I have more spare time than when I was a teacher, but not a lot in the grand scheme of things. It still feels like an incredible luxury that I have time at the end of every day that is for ME, but it's at the end of a full-time-working-mum day, and I mostly want to spend it either watching telly or reading books. I'm reading more books than I have read for years - approximately one a week, and this is compared to - at times - one a year.

It dawned on me recently that I have never before been a full-time-working-5-days-a-week mother of two: I have only ever been a full-time-working-4-days-a-week mother of one.

That's rubbish, of course: when I was a teacher, I was a full-time-working-5-days-a-week mother of two, and how. But that was just some altered dimension when I only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night and I was sleep-walking through this strange unending torture because I believed there was no escape. So, now I find myself with a full-on busy life with few breaks, but it feels like a warm bath compared to my life before. What I feel is an amazing contentment.

I have a history of pushing forward to some invisible future where everything will be all right, and of course it never arrives. I have always had thoughts along the lines of "If only I can get this thing sorted, then everything will be all right."

Towards the end of my teaching career, I started looking for other jobs and thinking, "If only I could have the kind of job where you go to the office in the morning, you do difficult but predictable stuff all day, you think hard and organise stuff but you don't have to make anybody else do stuff, and then you come home and forget all about it until the following day... then everything would be all right."

And here I am, and everything IS all right. I really rather love my new job, and that's a bit of a surprise. I stopped being a software engineer a few years ago and had no desire to return after being made redundant and having a baby and being a full time writer and generally having a couple of years away from it all. I'd run out of software-engineering steam, and I realise now that the company I was working for had become a really bad match for me. But now I'm doing it properly, which means I'm being a geek and cramming as much new knowledge I can fit into my head, and loving every minute. There's a fantastic culture at my new workplace, where you're encouraged to ask questions and nobody minds taking time out to come and explain things to you in detail.

So there's that, and the mothering, and not a lot of time or energy for anything else. And a rather sumptuous pleasure in not even attempting to do anything else, but instead watching telly and reading (mostly mass-market crime fiction) books and doing a bit of desultory home improvement. Oh yes, and swotting for exams. My new employers insist that everyone should be studying towards some geeky exam or other, and I can't even pass my probation until I've passed an exam (Microsoft Certificated Database Administrator, SQL Server 70-433, in case you're interested).

When I was a teacher, one of the things I really hated was the way you had "homework" to do every night. You were always working, preparing for the next day, the next week...and never feeling prepared. I remembered how, towards the end of my degree, I looked forward to never having homework to do again, and wondered how the hell I had managed to find myself in a career full of such bloody unending homework. But this is different, because this is for me, and I can study at my own pace, and to be honest I've always rather enjoyed sitting exams. I'm such a gleeful swot, it's brill.

But how funny it is that my life feels so chilled and luxurious, when in fact I work really hard and have so little time. People have said to me on several occasions that even though I didn't become a teacher, the time won't have been wasted. I will have learnt a lot.

I'm not sure I'll ever rid myself of the feeling that in fact all I ever did was FAIL to learn the skills I was supposed to be learning, but I have gained various things. An appreciation for a life I once failed to appreciate. A lack of fear. A willingness to admit when I'm confused about something, and ask for help.

Oh yes, and I have my choir. It was desperation, the need for something, anything that was creative, enjoyable and for ME... that drove me to finally get round to joining a gospel choir, and I love it.

Of course I don't technically need to be anonymous any more, but I've rather got used to it. I can't see myself blogging so very publicly again, but I might resurrect some of Boob Pencil's archives. In the meantime, here are a few posts I unearthed.

This contains links to a whole series of posts relating to Julia Darling, an amazing writer friend who died of breast cancer a few years ago.

And this is a series of posts I wrote about breaking into my old primary school, when it was half-demolished.

Dunno when I'll be back, but rest assured I'm fine.

Yeah

2011-10-08T01:14:00.000+01:00

HA!

Yes.

I escaped.

Well done me.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

2011-10-07T15:25:00.001+01:00

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am more relieved than a relieved bag of 100% proof relief with a side serving of relief and several giant injections of RELIEF.

Forward March

2011-10-06T23:38:00.003+01:00

Oh golly gosh I am very 'zausted.

This is just a quick one while I have a rest from the relentless tide of progress.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning. Doing what I used to do four years ago, before I had the cracked idea of changing career. Twice. [sigh]

Aaaaaaaaanyway. I used to work in IT, which is fine and grand and all that, but you're supposed to Know Stuff About Stuff. So I have been cramming my brain to bursting with Stuff About Stuff for the last two weeks. I have already been made to sit three very difficult and technical tests, and I will be given another one tomorrow morning. This is a bit scary, especially as it feels like a bit of a blag (but that's only cos I don't believe in myself. I do actually know lots of Stuff About Stuff).

I have an interview on Monday morning, too.

I'm trying to think of tomorrow as the dummy run, and then it doesn't matter if I fall arse over tit. I find it hard to believe they will give me a job, but I guess anything's possible.

We also have some foreign visitors coming to lodge with us again for a few weeks, and I have got meself a private client in my New-But-Hopefully-Soon-To-Die-A-Death career, so hopefully that will stave off impending starvation and make up for all the days' wages I'm missing cos of job interviews and time spent preparing for them.

So, you know. Busy and tired and still pretty stressed, but definitely moving forward, and glimpsing a potential exit from the gloop of not-right-ness I've been stuck in all this while.

Status Update

2011-09-25T13:54:00.002+01:00

I'm back to doing agency work again, but have (almost) made a decision: I'm giving up on the new career.

For now what I'm doing is low-paid and untaxing, but is a toy version of what my career really entails, is very low paid and is temporary. As a family we are the poorest we've ever been, but the thought of getting a proper job in my supposed career fills me with dread.

Because of all the crap that happened in my previous job, it will be another year before I'm fully qualified. Another year of being judged, graded and scrutinised, and (now) being terrified that the same thing will happen again: I'll think I'm doing all right and then be informed at some late stage, most emphatically, that I'm not. Things in my career are getting considerably worse under the Tories and I just don't think it's worth it. So I'm (probably) getting out.

I've been looking into going back into IT, which is what I did four years ago. Before the miscarriage, before being made redundant, before losing my literary agent and failing to get published and failing to make a living as a writer and failing to get anywhere with this new career and (successfully, hurrah) having another baby.

I stopped doing IT because I was made redundant, and then because I was having a baby, and then because I wanted to be a writer, and then because I didn't believe I would be able to get a job easily in IT because of the recession and because my skills are out of date. But it turns out my skills aren't as out of date as I thought, and anyway brushing them back up again won't be as hard as I thought. I think. I haven't actually got a job yet, so I may be wrong. But the recruiters seem to think I'm onto a winner. So we'll see. Failing that I think I'd rather some random tedious office job, for now at least, than return to the new career. So, unless my confidence magically returns or I discover I really am not qualified to do anything else, I'm probably giving up.

I hate giving up.

But what's the point of carrying on, if the reality is so utterly fucking miserable?

And how ironic, if I can indeed just walk back into a job in IT, when I thought it would be so hard?

It helps that I am no longer distracted by novel-writing, by small babies or the attempts to make them.

Plus ca change, and all that.

Life is hard still, and full of angst and worries and woe... but I am finally looking forward to a future that I can believe could be enjoyable, instead of one that I believed might maybe ought to be all right at some distant point in the future... but maybe not.

Onwards and upwards. Innit.

Happy?

2011-09-05T11:37:00.004+01:00

Well, first, the boring stuff: After getting increasingly antsy and worried about not having work, I just landed a month of low-paid but easy and mostly-stress-free agency work. So that's good.

On a slightly more meta level...

I've been thinking about happiness. Because every now and then, I manage to get my head out of oh-fuck-shit-everything's-going-wrong mode, and start thinking things like, "Well, look at me. Here I am with beautiful children, out in the sunshine, and with no horrible job to make me miserable. This is quite nice. I can enjoy this."

And that's when the anti-happiness tzar starts shouting from the back of my cranium. "What?" he says. "Are you MAD? How dare you have fun? You're unemployed and completely crap! IT'S NOT ALLOWED."

The tzar is an embodiment of guilt and self loathing. I'm crap and don't deserve to be happy. But there's also something a bit more insidious: I'm playing a role. I tell people how crap things are and I want their sympathy, therefore I can't be happy cos that wouldn't fit the role. But... maybe I don't actually need their sympathy? Maybe things aren't so bad after all? Maybe this life, which on the face of it looks like a mess, is actually quite pleasant and stress free and not so bad after all?

But then I start worrying about money and the future and the fact that people have told me I'm crap at what I'm trying to do, and the stress returns and I can't believe I ever said I was happy...

Part of this is a typical me thing: I think in black and white. Intelectually I know the world isn't that simple. Not only do I know it, I appreciate its beauty. As a novelist I love the fact that you can have characters who are contradictory, who are both good and bad, cos that's real life, man. But despite all of that... somehow the basic me, the one who just reacts to stuff and doesn't think about it, wants everything to have a nice neat box to live in. And gets continually confused about whether I'm living in the Happy box or the Unhappy one. (both. I'm living in both. Why is that so hard to grasp? It's normal. I'M BOTH.)

But anyway, trotting quickly past the confusion of what box I'm living in, there is another issue: Why on earth am I even trying to be happy? Isn't that just the most bourgeois self-indulgent thing you ever heard? Happiness? Pah! Most people don't even have the option.

Why do I think such a thing is even attainable? Why should I deserve it? What's so special about me? Why do I keep chasing after it, even though it's so obviously hard to find? Why don't I just accept that life is hard and that's the way it's meant to be?

A few people have said to me things like, "No job is worth this. You shouldn't have to go through this kind of shit. If it's making you this unhappy, just get out."

And I sort of did. I got out of one particularly nasty job, but I'm still flailing my fists at the door of the same career, hoping they'll let me back in, with no guarantee that I won't end up in the same old shit. Part of me thinks, well done me for escaping one bit of crap and still holding out to minimise any more... but part of me thinks, who am I trying to fool? What makes me any different? Why should I get an easy ride? - and how presumptuous of me to even aim for one.

I spout a lot of hippy shit to myself, some of it mangled through a second-hand Buddhist sieve, but it generally goes along the lines of keep calm, be nice to yourself, chill out, stop worrying, cuddle your kids... and poor and calm is better than rich and stressed. But let's face it, that kind of crap is the preserve of the middle classes - those people who have nice houses and spare time and can afford to talk like that. OK, yes, I have no job and no money and neither does my partner. But we're not poor like really poor people are poor. We have a big house and a small mortgage. We have qualifications and skills and connections and Nice Families and the gift of the gab and a million advantages that the truly poor people just don't have.

The irony is that the middle-class-ness both opens the door to the pursuit of happiness as well as slamming it firmly in my face with a guilt-clad chattering glove.

So, you know. Happy? Me? Well I might be, if I would only let myself.

hiatus

2011-08-17T12:07:00.002+01:00

People are strting to worry about me again, which I suppose may be justified, but I'm not convinced that blogging is really helping at the moment.

I'm in a slump, these things happen. But slumps never last and life is ever changing. This will all be in the past and forgotten about soon enough. I have so many different abilities, sooner or later I'll find some way of believing in myself again. Don't worry.

Stupid Things That Make You Blue

2011-08-15T16:46:00.003+01:00

Stupid things.

My 9-yr-old spotted a leaflet in Tesco: Some kind of competition for the best mum in the country. "You should enter that," he said. "You'd win." "Why would I win?" "Because you're the best mum." He couldn't explain why. A friend who was with us told him he should take the form home and fill it in for homework, but the form said the entrant had to be 18+, so I told him to get his dad to help.

The form is still sitting on the side, and I can't say what I want to, which is this: "Mothering is the only thing I have any pride in at the moment. There's no question of me winning, I know that. They're looking for inspirational stories of magical mums. But that's not the point. Between you, you and your dad could come up with some concrete praise, and it would do me no end of good, just being able to read it."

The only person who fills forms in round here is me, and if it can only be done as the result of my nagging, it won't work. So it sits there, unfilled-in and depressing. Another small dig at the failure that is me.

I bought new clothes. I hadn't done this for over a year. Because I had no money, and there's no point if you'll look just as bad in the new as the old.

Because I never have any time or confidence, because I look rubbish in clothes shop mirrors, because nothing ever fits me, because I always buy the wrong things, I do clothes shopping in a mad fool rush. I run into the shop, grab an armful of things which don't quite fit or suit, run out again. Go home. Try them on in front of the mirror. Despair.

But this time, a combination of Primark and the local market-for-the-downtrodden created one magical outfit which, I thought, was rather stunning. So I wore it, and nobody said a word. Even my 3-yr-old, who is normally very observant and says "I like that top Mummy" whenever I wear anything new (I know, it's fantastic, I'm hoping he'll be gay) stayed schtum. My conclusion: They're awful clothes, and everybody is being kind. I have terrible taste and the clothes I like are the ones everyone else hates. Another outfit from the recent outing only created the remark, "It's very you," said as though it was an insult. Of course it's very me. I am me. Fat, and old, and with terrible taste in clothes.

I'll have a piece of cake then. Sugar cheers me up.

I read a novel about a woman with a boring husband and a grown-up daughter, traipsing around in twinsets and pearls, a housewife, preoccupied with all her "middle-aged" occupations, everything about her being described as old. She was two years older than me.

I went for lunch with a friend, who told me about some new converted mill in town, with a nice courtyard and a performance space and loads of other lovely things. I had no idea what she was talking about and knew I was never likely to see it. I have no idea what's happening in the world, in my city, in the various arty circles I once moved in. I don't do stuff like that. We tried to make conversation but I had nothing to say. Beyond bemoaning my jobless futureless state or eulogising about my children, I have nothing to contribute.

I keep having conversations with friends, about how things are. I list the reasons I'm crap, my life is crap. Then I try to balance it, by thinking of redeeming qualities. "But at least I'm A, or I can B," I say. But I keep getting silence for a response, or on a couple of occasions, they challenged my interpretation. These friends are in no better situations than me. Most people I know are struggling with some deep malaise or other. I don't know whether it's our age, the times we live in, neither, or both - but I'm not unique. Maybe they don't think they need to validate my pronouncements, or are distracted with their own worries, or maybe I forget to notice the nice things they say (and I do, because they certainly sometimes do), or maybe I'm sometimes just wrong.

I am obsessed with time. Is there time to vacuum? When will I fit in the washing? Can I clean out this cupboard? When will I read that book? How will I find the time to pack for the holidays, wash the bedding, fill in those forms, renew the insurance, tidy my study, prepare myself so that I'm ready for some unpredictable future which probably won't happen anyway? And how can there be so little time, when I don't even have a job? (Answer: motherhood. But my children are my saving grace, so I can't use them as an excuse).

There's not enough time to live even this unremarkable life.

I've been acccused of being solipsistic. I can't deny it - it's always been true. It's obvious, especially when my first complaint is that nobody has praised my clothes or entered me into a Best Mother competition. It's all about me, even when that me is a reduced little creature who does nothing and hates herself. I don't understand how people aren't solipsistic. Surely, in your own heads, you're all thinking about yourselves, your lives, how you're going to get through? Is it just that other people don't admit to it? Of course I think about other people. All the time, particularly the ones whose forms I fill in, whose clothes I clean, whose lives I try to make easy, who I try not to burden with my self-obsessive whines. I care about them, I worry about them, I want them to be happy. But yes, I think about me too. And I know, have always known, that I do it more than others. I can't deny it, but I don't think I can change either, and it's just another reason that I'm not quite right, am less than the person I'd like to be.

I thought I was doing OK. I was chilling out, pottering about, fixing and sorting and enjoying my children. I probably am OK. And then people ask how I am, and I feel as though the answer should be "bloody awful", because objectively things aren't great. No job, no real clue of who I am or who I want to be or what the hell I'm going to do with my life. Yes, I'm still trying to succeed in my chosen career. I'm not convinced I'll ever get there, or that I even want to. But I don't know what else to do.

So, there are two little mes in my head. One of them is saying "Oh God, what a mess," and the other is saying "How nice, not having to go to work." The first says, "I can't cope," and the second says, "Look how well I'm coping!"

The truth is, I am. I haven't fallen apart. Not yet. But today I melted a bit. I say to myself, "why aren't I falling apart?" and suddenly I am. Damn those self-fulfilling prophecies. But I'm like one of those little wooden toys held together with elastic. You push the button underneath, they crumble and fall. But if you release the pressure? They bounce back into life.

Just take that damn thumb off my button.

riotous

2011-08-10T23:53:00.002+01:00

Everything fine here. Nasty in the centre of Manchester but nothing where we live. I was coincidentally in the main shopping street at the moment the riots started, and had my 3-yr-old in a pushchair, but it was pretty simple really. I heard the banging from further down the street as they started battering their way into a shop, but all I saw were people running (well, trotting) in my direction and saying "Get out", so I turned round and got out. Was a little freaked but went home, summoned hubby home and quickly realised we were going to be fine.

PS: Rather than attempt any political comment myself, I recommend you read this, which I think is pitch perfect. Explain, but don't excuse.

As for the rest of my life... I still have no job. I'm spending a lot of time with my kids, and they are great, which is helping to keep me sane and prop up my flagging ego. But there is an underlying current of "I'm a waste of space", and a rather disturbing dread of actually getting another job in the career I'm supposedly still trying to establish myself in. I'm writing more about that elsewhere - email me if you don't have the link.

Oh

2011-07-19T13:28:00.003+01:00

Just had the job interview from hell. Fucked it up in about as many ways as it's possible to fuck something up. Walked in there already knowing I wasn't properly prepared and didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Still have no job. Everything they told me at the last place seems confirmed. I'm crap at this.

Here I am, 42, no job, no career, no skills, been a while since I was any good at anything.

I used to have such grandiose arrogant dreams. I really thought I was something. Why did I think that? What was it based on?

I have lovely children. I might not conform to some people's ideals of what a mother should be, but they are gorgeous and happy and I can take some credit for that.

This is what happens. The "job for life" is a dwindling concept. Many of us arrive on this pebbled-and-cold East England beach with no idea of how we got here or where we're going next.

Most of us don't achieve our dreams.

Consoling? Or depressing.

I finished reading a book yesterday. With hindsight it was not the best book to be reading. I was avoiding the failure of not having the ability to prepare well for today's interview. The book was gripping, and well-written, and I wanted to know the fate of characters that had wormed their way into my thoughts. The ending was bleak, pessimistic, and very sad. I cried a lot, and suddenly I wasn't just crying about a young boy's suicide. I was crying because I'd fucked up.

The book was written by a friend of mine. She had her first book published at the same time as me. She got the deal I narrowly missed, or so I used to think. Her publisher gave me an encouraging "We like you, but..." rejection just as they signed her up. Our books were similar. We were similar. But she's better than me. I don't have what it takes, in talent or commitment.

I'm just not good enough.

But most of us aren't.

Here we are, not halfway through but already over the hill and slumping down the other side, muttering and sighing and nursing our aches and pains, blaming everyone/everything else for the sheer bloody fact that hope, dreams, energy, creativity... none of it lasts. And it dies with a horrible speed.

Ignore me. I have these lurches. I'll be chipper and perky and annoying again tomorrow. What can you do except look forward? Even if it's not as shiny as it once was, it's still there in front of you. Pulling you along, because time has no sympathy and no interest in your moans.

achey-smiley

2011-07-09T15:48:00.002+01:00

I was wondering the other day, whatever happened to my creativity?

I'm not writing anything and I'm mostly not that bothered. I don't feel the urge to write, and when I do... well, it's hardly jaw-dropping.

Life, I guess. Not true for everyone, I know, but I don't think having kids has helped.

Still. I've been asked to sing a song of my choosing at choir on Monday. I utterly failed to write anything new (not that they were expecting me to, but it would have been nice), but did manage to write some nice harmonies and new words for something I wrote ages ago. Quite looking forward to that actually - hearing the whole choir sing sumfink wot I rote. What was I saying? Oh yes, I'm not very creative at the mo. Oh.

Anyway. This blog has no bite and no edge. I apologise for that, but any kind of solution seems beyond my reach. I've gone soft in my old age.

I ran ten kilometres this morning. My legs ache. It made me cry, all those women with their messages to dead, dying and not-dying loved ones taped to their backs. But they were all cheerful and wearing pink, so it was fine.

I might write more about it later. First I have to vacuum floors. The Chinese teenagers go home tomorrow. We'll miss them. We like them. We have a new batch arriving on Thursday. I've become a housewife. But I still can't cook. They don't think much of our food (they pretend they do, but they obviously don't) and I can't really blame them.

still here!

2011-07-05T16:23:00.002+01:00

Hello,

Thankyou to the kind person who enquired how I was - I am fine! Just busy. We have Chinese teenagers staying with us at the moment - we are playing host family to Chinese pupils over here for a summer camp - and I have some short term agency work which is keeping me busy (especially as I have to cycle nine miles to get there every day). Still no permanent job, which is a worry as the agency work will end in a couple of weeks and there's no prospect of any more. But there you go. Oh, and my computer has broken (and I can't afford a new one), so I'm not on the internet so much. Apart from that I'm quite enjoying the summer, and looking forward to more summer niceness.

This weekend I'll be running the 10k Race For Life. Sadly my training programme fell by the wayside when I got this agency work, but I'm cycle 18 miles most weekdays, so I figure that must be helping. I'm a teensy bit worried about my poor knees, but I daresay they'll cope (Note to self: do knee exercises).

And then on Sunday it is Birthday Barbecue time, for me and the littl'un, so that should be fun.

Summertime, and the living is easy...

The Unbearable Impossibleness of Smiling

2011-06-08T10:34:00.002+01:00

Gah. Happiness is an elusive old chap, what?

By rights I ought to be happy. For months - no, years - I've been bemoaning my lack of spare time and wishing I could just find time for this and that and the other. Tidying, sorting, organising, relaxing, spending time with loved ones. Now I can do all that and more, but am I happy? Am I bollocks.

Of course there is the small matter of having no job or income in the midst of a global recession and having been told I was rubbish at what I was trying to do with my life... but I'm managing fine financially for the time being, and I'm pretty confident I'll get a job soon, and the job application process has actually done wonders for mny career-based confidence, as I've had three interviews from four applications and two of them went really well and I very-nearly got jobs out of them, and they were for good employers. Which is why the number of applications is so low - I'm being very picky about what I apply for, on the basis that I don't want to end up back in the same hole I've just clawed my way out of.

The Things That Make Me Happy, however, are frustratingly complex. I need exercise, I need human company, I need positive feedback, I need to feel productive, and I need time to relax (but not too much of it).

My worst problem is decision-making. Not only can I not decide what to do from one minute to the next, I can't stick with those decisions once they're made. "Tomorrow I will read a book," I say gaily, only to find mnyself durfing the net. "Tomorrow I will sort out my finances," I quip. And then I read a book. I plan to get exercise and sort my finances out instead. They are all good things to be doing (well, maybe not the surfing the net bit), but I can't allow myself to feel good about doing them.

I either feel depressed because I haven't been productive or anxious because I might be called upon to do temping work in an alien environment or - and this is the most ridiculous of all - guilty because I'm finally managing to enjoy myself and I'm supposed to be jobless and miserable!

Pah.

Oh well. Today I will mostly be... faffing. fretting. fidgeting. failing?

No! No failing!

Oh. All right then.

Sponsorship, innit

2011-06-08T10:31:00.001+01:00

Gah, I am hopeless at this. I don't like asking people for sponsorship.

I'm running a 10k Race for Life event in Heaton Park (Manchester) in July, and haven't actually asked anyone to sponsor me yet. If I'm honest I'm doign it because the events themselves are really enjoyable / moving and I needed a way to make sure I kept doing exercise (without spending money on it) while unemployed.

[geeky numbers bit]
I've been running several times round the local park, once or twice a week. So far I'm up to 8 times round, which I calculate is about 4 miles, or 6.4km. I reckon if I go 13 times round, that will be 6.5 miles, which is just over 10k. So I have 5 weeks to up the ante by one lap each week. This week I have to go round 9 times. That's this afternoon's project.

The exercise is just about keeping me sane. And it would make me feel slightly less of a numpty if I do actually raise some money for charity as well as keeping myself sane. So, um. There you go. It's a good cause! Cancer charities, innit.

Email me if you want to sponsor me, and I'll give you the guff. Or just go to Race for Life and search on my real name.

Application Fatigue

2011-05-13T17:35:00.002+01:00

Benefits of applying for jobs:

1) You focus so hard on selling yourself that you start to convince even yourself of all your amazing qualities.
2) You spend so much time reading employers' bigged-up descriptions of the roles they offer that you are reminded of all teh things that attracted you to this career in the first place.
3) Your glorified descriptions of your own talents and strengths also serve as a reminder of all the reasons you wwere attracted to, and are suited to, this career.
4) you are reminded of how exciting it was to first enter into this career, and how excited and inspired you were in your first weeks in your last job. You have hope that you can feel that way again.

Disadvantages of applying for jobs:

1) When you are 41 years old, it takes FOREVER to list every single detail of your life for the last twenty years. Why do they insist on knowing so MUCH about you?
2) Every form is in a sligtly different format, so copy-and-paste won't do and you get really really bored of filling forms in.
3) Every application has to be tailored to the specific employer and workplace, then edited for space. This is stressful and time-consuming.
4) The formatting. Oh, the formatting.

I was so pleased with myself when I first started filling application forms in electronically. Finally, I could just copy and paste all those tedious names, addresses, dates and other details. I wouldn't have to spend hours writing cramped details in pen. But I'm pretty sure I spend longer filling the bloody things in on the computer than I would with pen and paper. No two application forms are alike. They have all been designed in Word using tables which won't stretch properly to fit what you want. The fonts are never right. You have to keep jiggling and juggling and rearranging and watching out for bits of bold, italic and other stuff which sneaks in when you're not looking. You have to keep repaginating so that info doesn't weirdly cross page boundaries. I have spent ALL DAY today on one sodding form! It's ridiculous!

[mucho sighing]

Still, I have now successfully completed and printed one job application. I'd hoped to get more done, but it's the job I want most of all out of the four I'm planning to apply for.

They're interviewing on Thursday next week! The closing date is Monday. I'm going to have to deliver it by hand. Wish me luck. [eek]

Who I am

2011-05-12T11:50:00.000+01:00

I am crying.

The thing which set me off was John le Mesurier's famous death announcement in the Times, which said simply, "John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on November 15th. He sadly misses his family and friends.". I got to this via a documentary about John le Mesurier's life, which I arrived at via a chain which started with the biograpahical drama "Hattie", about Ms Jacques. I recommend it, followed by a clip from Hattie's This is Your Life episode in 1963, then a programme about John le Mesurier, interspersed with Tony Hancock's Wikipedia page.

The three of them, along with Joan le Mesurier and Hattie's lover John Schofield, were amazing people, all connected via marriages and affairs, and their stories are fascinating. John le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques were people you wish could have been your auntie and uncle. Since I was a child I've been fond of John le Mesurier, who reminded me of my grandfather. They were a year apart in age, physically similar, and both had the same deep but understated humour, immense dignity and composure.

So, his death made me cry. Because it's sad. Because he reminds me of my also-conked-out grandfather... but for unrelated reasons too. I'm a compulsive armchair psychologist and can never take emotions at face value. I assume underlying reasons for all my outbursts, and today my own life is making me cry. It wasn't even subconscious - the catalyst was John le M, but the thoughts were about me.

I left work four weeks ago. I had a couple of weeks' grace while I hung around with my son on his easter hols, but since then I've been bumbling about, alternating between being productive and worrying about not getting enough done, until last night it dawned on me that I've been so effective in sorting my finances that I don't actually have to Get Stuff Done 24 hours a day. I could sit back and chill for a bit. I've earned it, and given an acceptance of poverty as my baseline, I can afford it. But that leaves room for the guilt, and the self-doubt...

For the last eighteen months I've been working my arse off to become qualified in my new career. 6 hours' sleep a night was luxury, and 3 hours wasn't unusual. Success or failure was in the hands of others, and I had to submit myself to assessments every few weeks - sometimes more frequent - in which I was (more recently) routinely judged to be lacking.

The bigger picture of my life over the last few years ran like this:

I had a job, well-paid, in a stable career. I wasn't brilliant at it, because I wasn't motivated to give my all to it, but I was pretty good and found it relatively easy, and above all it was a stable, reliable life. Even better, I could afford to drop to four days a week and use the extra time to write a novel. Then I had a baby. Pregnancy was horrific and I took a year off from the career as well as the novel-writing just to cope with the physical demands of pregnancy and childbirth. But when my first son was still very young, I returned to work and returned to novel-writing, and not long after that, my first novel was published. So far, so good.

The novel didn't do brilliantly, but it was a small publisher and I was happy with it. But now I had a baby as well as a job and a writing career, and I was trying to write my second novel, and then my son started school and I fiddled with my job to start work stupid-early every morning just so that I could pick my son up from school, and the strain started to tell. But I was coping.

Then I decided I wanted another child. I had a miscarriage. I lost my job. I tried to be a full time writer, but quickly got pregnant again and ill again. My second novel was published, but only in a foreign language. My second son was born. I failed to earn any money from writing. It was all just a bit too difficult. So I retrained in a new career, and that's when the eighteen months of pressure and not enough sleep started.

And now here I am, in a sudden lull. Pleased to have escaped from my most recent job, but still not fully qualified. I've registered with an agency that will get me the odd bit of work in my new career. But it'll take a few weeks to sort out the paperwork. I don't know how long. They might have work for me next week. I need something to balance the books and pay the bills, and up to now I'd assumed I'd have to drop everything and run as soon as they find anything. Actually I can afford not to work every day, although probably not at first. The work itself will be demanding and unpredictable, but short term. I struggle to believe I can do it.

Ain't that a bitch? When the official judgement is that you're crap, but you know it was probably a biased judgement and based partly on external and unfair factors that are nothing to do with you. Independent witnesses reassure you that you are not as bad as they say, and your own knowledge confirms this. But what if those independent witnesses are just being kind? What if you are kidding yourself? Every time you tell people the details of your tale, they go "Awww" and "Grrr" and "Haven't you been treated badly?" and they tell you of other similar tales they have heard. Other people from the same workplace had similar treatment, and the sheer numbers are enough to suggest that something isn't right and you've had a raw deal. But...

In the back of your mind is always the knowledge that these sympathetic listeners have only heard your side of the story. That no matter what they say, at least some of them must be wondering. Maybe it was all perfectly reasonable and I am just a bit crap. It's embarrassing, humiliating, has made me question myself.

I'm 41, I have two children and a secure home, shouldn't I be at a point in my life where I have a stable career and some knowledge of the things I am good at? Shouldn't I know who I am? Isn't a bit late in life to be trying new things and, yet again, failing?

But I do know who I am. I am kind, and clever, and talented. I am, at least some of the time, capable and organised. I am a good mother. Sometimes I'm a little bit funny. I can sing.

The biggest thing I have to master is balance. Balance between hyperactivity and lethargy. Balance between productivity and leisure. Balance between preserving my mental health and securing some sort of income. Balance between accepting that I need, and have earnt, a rest... but that I'm happier when I'm active.

This all boils down to those small decisions and motivations, from one minute to the next. What should I do now? What can I persuade myself to do now? Am I surfing the net because I'm looking after myself and have earnt a rest, or because I'm avoiding doing some other thing which I not only need to do but would actually prefer to do, if only I could find the confidence and motivation?

Then there are the bigger questions. Have I really earnt a rest, or am I just terminally lazy and self-indulgent? What makes me think I deserve to have such an easy ride? Whoever said that happiness is even possible for anything other than brief fleeting moments? Isn't it just selfish and unrealistic to think that life should be comfortable, easy or enjoyable?

And there's the adrenalin hangover. I've become so used to being manically busy, I can't get used to not being. There's all this stuff that needs doing, and right now, otherwise I'll run out of time! I have to blast through the house and clear all those surfaces covered in piles of pushed-to-one-side crap! I have to do the gardening! I have to do my tax return! I have to apply for jobs, and organise all my career-related resources, and do reading and research and planning to make sure that when I return to my career I am Really Good At It and finally get qualified without any further failure! I have to get some exercise! I have to make time for family and friends! I have to be creative! I have to get out of the house! I have to avoid spending any money!

I enjoyed crying this morning. I am a crier, an inveterate spouter of tears, and a connoisseur. There are as many varieties of lachrymosity as there are of rain. After one of my recent job-related assessments, I locked myself in a toilet and sobbed. I couldn't stop. I had to do it silently because people were coming and going in the next cubicle, and I didn't want the humiliation of drenching my colleagues yet again in my hyper-emotional state. I can be very emotional and yet hardly make a squeak. My shoulders heaved and I couldn't breathe. I went through half a toilet roll. In the end I waited for a quiet moment and removed myself to a locked and darkened room in another corner of the workplace, because there were only two toilet cubicles and queues kept forming. I carried on sobbing for a while. It wasn't nice.

But this morning they were soft warm comforting tears. I practised the Buddhist loving kindness thing. I observed my emotional state, accepted it, let it happen. It needed to happen.

I don't know when the agency work might come in, or what kind of work it will be. I don't know what I should do, what I will be able to do, what I will want to do, from one day to the next. I've emerged from an immensely stressful period. Things are insecure. But I have ability, and I have time. I can say no to work. I can sort the garden out, sort the house out, sort myself out, and it doesn't have to be in a rush.

Maybe even, one day, I might know what the hell I am doing with my life. But really, does anyone?

I suspect not.

Small Things

2011-05-10T15:36:00.002+01:00

Today I am feeling ever-so proud of myself because I have been through my finances with a fine-tooth comb and reduced every expense I could think of. This has meant an awful lot of faffing with broadband providers, gas and electric suppliers, mobile phone contracts etc. I have shopped around on ALL my monthly outgoings and saved myself a shocking amount of money. A veritable mountain of faffery - which is why I haven't got round to it before - but it feels good.

More generally, the heebie-jeebies are pecking me on my shoulder. Today I have kept them at bay with the above-mentioned faffery. I know all too well that if I don't get cracking first thing on my to-do list, I will just get more and more despondent - and less likely to get anything done - as the day wears on. I learnt this many years ago, but I still struggle to act on it. Still, today I did. So go-go me.

There are two big items on the list, though, which I have today avoided by focusing on the previously-referred-to faffishness. I can refrain from hitting myself with the big stick I use when I'm not being pecked by heebie-jeebies, because the faffing was Useful and Necessary, and is one in the eye for the heebie-jeebies, who are currently feeding in about equal parts on Financial Panic and Professional Insecurity.

But the other two big items will have to be tackled if I'm going to take away the Oh Shit I'm Rubbish At My Job fodder that those heebies so love to quaff. They are:
(1) Apply for jobs
and
(2) Prepare to be Good at any jobs which get chucked in my direction.

Sadly they are both the kind of tasks that, although they will help to alleviate professional insecurity, require me to have a certain amount of security if I'm going to tackle them in the first place.

For months I have whinged that what I really needed was some spare time, so that I could sit down and rationalise all the useful information and resources which I've acquired and ought to help me be better at my job, if only I could remember what I had and lay my hand on the relevant bits at a moment's notice. Now that I have that time, I'm too scared to use it effectively.

It's the same fear that prevents me from writing fiction when I lay time aside for that. What if I can't do it? The fear of failure stops me from doing it in the first place. What if my job applications are rubbish? What if my brain is too woolly and useless to be able to find the right resources, make sense of them or be able to put them in any kind of sensible order?

If only I did these jobs, I would feel better. I know that. So therefore I should do them. And I will! I'll just check out that car insurance comparison site...

Reasons to be Cheerful

2011-05-03T12:40:00.003+01:00

Ha! I am having a nice time (she said triumphantly).

Good God, but ain't life a funny thing. I spent a good few months of my life losing an awful lot of sleep over the potential disaster that was Losing My Job, and now it's happened and it's the best thing to have befallen my sorry arse for a goodly length of time.

1) The sun is shining.

2) Yesterday I went to my grandparents' house to rescue some items before it is sold, and now my own home is full of things I have known since I was teeny-tiny, and I find them immensely comforting. Silly small things like a broken bear, a flour tin and some small cracked pink dessert bowls. And lovely bigger things like a wooden highchair I once sat in myself. I'd assumed this last would be purely decorative/sentimental, as my littlest stopped bothering with such things a year ago. But as soon as he spotted it, he wanted to eat his breakfast in it (he is still only two, although nearly three), and luckily he fits in it nicely. We ate breakfast together in the garden. Hurrah.

3) I am Getting Jobs Done, and they are all jobs I Enjoy Getting Done. Today I am mostly Dong My Accounts, which is something I have always found greatly satisfying. Yay.

Eek

2011-04-28T10:44:00.000+01:00

I just put a mobile through the washing machine. Didn't discover it until I was hanging the washing out to dry. Contains loads of my partner's important work stuff. Argh.

All New Again

2011-04-27T00:09:00.004+01:00

I left my job the other week. I am currently jobless and don't much care - I am taking time off while my son is on school holiday, despite the fact that my partner is also on a reduced income and I have no idea what I'm doing next.

It was getting so corrosive there. I'm going to continue in the New Career for the time-being, and am hoping it was the workplace rather than the job itself, but there is a possibility that I'll end up having to give it up altogether. The sense of relief is immense, and the optimism is returning. I'm enjoying just living from day to day and spending time with my children, not to mention getting some sleep and reading some books.

I was pushed as much as I jumped; I wasn't really welcome to stay. I have a million* possible reasons for why I didn't get on there, and of course "I'm bloody incompetent" is one of them. But I'll never know for sure and I'd rather look forward than dwell on it. The irony is that I've already been invited to talk to people entering into this career about my experiences. I think I might become an Expert in How To Be Inexpert. That would be a laugh.

If anyone has any work, let me know.

*Oh all right then, 999,876.

Corners and Turning

2011-03-28T22:21:00.002+01:00

Five weeks after a Major Shock Event At Work which was the cause of my current crisis of confidence, I think I may finally be coming out the other side. I guess there's room for several more dips and wobbles, but today at any rate I had a Good Day at Work for the first time in a long time.

Thanks to friends, who have convinced me that maybe I'm not a waste of space after all.

Also the following Survival Thoughts:

1. I'm doing this for me. Not them. There is no point spending my whole life worrying about whether they're going to stamp FAIL on my forehead. Their opinions are arbitrary and capricious, and don't deserve to have such a big influence on my life. I will get what I can, learn what I can, use this to become bigger and better. If that means I stay here, doing this, at the end of it all, all well and good. If not, then sobeit. I just have to focus on me, and on the people I can help along the way.

2. Just the fact that I'm still there, means I'm winning. They tried to force me to quit. They failed.

3. Small achievable goals. I had two small goals for today. I achieved them both. Rah me.

4. The sun is shining! And music heals.

Amazing?

2011-03-12T00:02:00.003Z

"Love, you are one of the most amazing people I have ever met"

This was from one of my lovely commenters, and is especially appreciated because it was from someone who has only met me once or twice. Although... my thou-art-worthless head could say that's WHY she thinks I'm amazing... because she doesn't actually know me properly...

But anyway. I just re-read my "RAH" post and was surprised to find myself describing myself as amazing. Because I don't mostly believe that these days.

It's not just the new career. It's been several years now since I really succeeded at anything. I used to think of myself as a person who could do anything she set her hand to, but that has been disproved several times over now, and in several different spheres.

One of the worst things about my current predicament is that for a while my colleagues were saying, "You're too hard on yourself."

They've stopped saying that. Because people in positions of power and authority, who know what they are talking about, are being just as hard on me as I ever was, and are confirming my own most private and worst suspicions about myself. And I know that other people are thinking, "Oh yeah, come to think of it..." And the more I am criticised, the worse I perform, and the more I worry about being perceived by all as the "drain on resources" I have been described as, and the more I agree with it myself...

The other day there were interviews at my place of work. Such is the nature of the job that some of us got to observe some parts of the selection process. I watched those interviewees and thought back to my own interview. I put on such a good show. Afterwards I said to a small number of colleagues, "I was very confident that I had got this job. I know my interview went well. They were very keen for me to start work here. It must have been such a disappointment when I turned out to be so rubbish." One of the people at the table blushed and hid behind her hair. The image stays with me. And it was my own stupid fault and God, I hate it when people say loudly in public things like "I'm such a waste of space," which puts the listeners in the horrible position of having to either deny or avoid, and is such a needy thing to say.

But anyway.

I joined a gospel choir a couple of weeks ago. It's lovely. It's something I can do, and do well. And it's not about ego and nobody gets the limelight. We just sing together, all concentrating hard on not standing out, on being part of a whole that makes something beautiful. And they're such a great cast of characters. They just accepted me instantly, without asking questions or expecting anything obvious of me other than that I join in and sing, and learn my harmony with the minimum of fuss - which is something I happen to be rather good at. So, there you go: Something I haven't failed at. And which is uplifting and gorgeous.

I'm an atheist. Not everybody in the choir is a Christian. I don't know the proportions - nobody asks or seems to care, although it's clear there are a fair few believers. Personally I'm quite happy to piggyback on the benefits of religion. Spirituality, for me, is about celebrating all the wonderful things we humans are capable of, and - thank God - (haha) that includes music.

So, anyway. Am I amazing? Not so much, not right now. But I tried to do something really difficult, under difficult circumstances. So I'm brave. And I'm still doing it, despite a horrible amount of pressure and some unnecessary unpleasantness. And I'm still trying, and I'm still smiling, some of the time, including at my tormentors (every chance I get, I smile at them. I am bigger than them) (I'm not, I'm smaller, so much smaller, but my smile can be big). And I can sing.

Hallelujah.

RAH

2011-03-07T22:12:00.002Z

My biggest coping strategy at the moment is to Think Positive.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it does mean that I need to counter that last blog post. I'm still an amazing person who can do, does do and has done great things. There are objective reasons why I'm not doing as well as people would like me to, but I can rectify this and I WILL get better. If I have to I can leave. Other doors always open. I've been immensely strong so far.

And nobody has the right to invade my thoughts and my confidence to the extent that just one person has. They have not treated me well, and it won't help for me to internalise everything and think of myself as a waste of space. I am NOT.

So there.

Oy vey

2011-03-07T21:51:00.002Z

I know, I haven't been here a while. What can I say?

My life is pretty shit right now. It's as shit as it's been for quite a while, and to be honest it's a while since it's been good. I think. I don't know. I function on a different level these days. Everything is so day-to-day difficult that I am getting better at finding small moments of pleasure in the midst of it all. Appreciating music and trees and cuddles with small people that sprang from my loins and shit like that.

I saw a woodpecker today. A real one. It was a bit boring to look at if I'm brutally honest, didn't seem to have any colours or anything, and a bit smallish and nondescriptish, but it was silhouetted against the sky so what do I know. I really know very little about woodpeckers. I didn't know you got them in inner-city Manchester. I suppose I couldn't even swear it was one, but it was pecking loudly and fastly at some wood with a long pecky beak, so I think it probably was.

Last week was worse than this week. Last week I was in a semi-permanent state of anxiety and nearly gave up altogether several times. No, not suicide. Just abandoning this stupid career I've somehow found myself in. But it's not that easy. I have three dependants, and no other obvious sources of income.

People are telling me that I'm no good at it, that I'm never going to be any good at it, that I'm a waste of space and a drain on resources. But other people say that's not true. I think it might be. But I hate giving up, and anyway I don't know what else to do. But if I don't improve soon they're going to sack me anyway.

It's a hard enough career, without having to do it without the support of your employers.

Gah.

Oh well. Woodpeckers, eh?

Don't do it!

2011-01-29T01:10:00.002Z

Don't do it.

Don't be a writer.

It's not original. Everyone's at it.

It's not fulfilling. Most of what you do will be rubbish.

It's not satisfying. You'll never get published, and even if you do you won't sell, and even if you do, you'll get marketed wrongly, and even if you're not you'll have to prostitute your very soul to make people like you, and even if you don't you'll never know what the future holds or whether they'll still like you ten minutes later.

Don't do it.

But if you do do it, break all the rules. ALL OF THEM.

This ever-so-slightly-drunken rant was inspired by Tania from TaniaWrites, who in turn was inspired by Anis Shivani, who writes about it all very eloquently here.

I've said what I'm about to say a few times now, but I think that as writers we are often too caught up with Successful, Popular, Famous.

Hmm. Not just writers...

But anyway. Why do we care how many people read our books? 100 people is a LOT of people, but not in the world of publishing. If you did something good and that many people praised you for it, or paid attention to it, wouldn't you be pleased? If you were responsible for some really amazing project at work, and you got that kind of acclaim, wouldn't you be happy?

You can't make a living like that. But should you want to? Why does creative endeavour have to be a profitable enterprise? Why does it have to fill your days? Happen quickly? Why NOT take ten years to write every novel? Why not write in a different genre every time? Take risks, make mistakes, observe no deadlines, FAIL every now and then?

Huh?

Yeah.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

2011-01-03T00:02:00.002Z

I go back to work the day after tomorrow, after a break for Christmas, etc. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm mostly terrified. This year may easily be the hardest of my life*. Many difficult things are on the horizon.

Oh well. Never mind all that. I finally got round to reading @karlpmole (aka Bete de Jour, aka Karl Webster)'s Christmas story just now, and loved it. Heartwarming. Festive. Here.

*I won't be alone though. I'm not sure if that's helpful or just even more depressing. That global economy thing ain't pretty.

still here (more or less)

2010-12-23T00:05:00.003Z

You know what? In many ways I've had a pretty shit year.

It hasn't ended well. I have a new job in a new career and I've fucked it up. My future is in jeopardy, and people are not queueing up to tell me how great I am. It's tempting to look back at the last few years and list all the ways I've failed.

I'm a forty-one-year-old woman with an eight-year-old and a two-year-old and it's fucking hard. I've had to make hard decisions. About what, who, when to prioritise.

There was a time when I was sitting in a training session. I was invited to think about how I could make someone close to me happy.

I thought of one of my very-best-most-loved persons, who I had nursed through an anxiety attack only the night before, and who had felt so much worse when I told them how amazing they were. "Don't", they moaned. "It doesn't help."

"What can I do to make this person happy?" I asked myself. And the answer came, "Nothing."

So I thought about my son. "What can I do to make him happy?"

I considered the conversation we'd had. "I wish you still worked at home," he said after I failed yet again to pick him up early and save him from the parent-stealing tedium of after-school club. What could I do to make him happy? I could give up my new job, the thing that had me sitting here discussing what I could do to make people-important-to-me happy.

Not long after that I found myself in an office, crying, as someone senior to me listed all the ways in which I was falling short of expectation.

But I'm still here.

Not that anyone will read this, as I haven't been here for ages.

For the first time in years I have shaken with the wide jaws of anxiety open before me. Threatening all that they brought before.

But I'm still here.

This is a bloody stupid job. It destroys its practitioners, yet they come back for more, those endless streams of unthanked fodder.

But I'm still here.

And I'll still be here when I'm there. And I'll get there because I'm stubborn. And bloody-minded. And bloody bloody stupidly-fucking bloody stupid.

Anyway. It's Christmas, and a birthday, and bloody Christmas, and merry bloody stupid fucking Christmas bloody birthday to you all.

xxx

George Takei Socks it to 'em

2010-11-07T21:50:00.000Z

Lovely video!

George Takei (the doctor from Star Trek, who was also on I'm a Celebrity recently) challenges anti-gay Arkansas School Board member. Good for him.

Ha

2010-10-27T13:34:00.001+01:00

I received this from a commenter...

"I know you'd like to put a line under it, so I wondered if this could help.
xxx"

Out of Print

2010-10-23T15:46:00.004+01:00

A few days ago I mentioned I was thinking about cancelling the possibility of a second print run and quitting while I was ahead. Then, spurred on by friendly commenters, I decided to have a go at getting 54 orders before mid-November, which would have allowed a second print run in time for Christmas. But then I realised that would mean spending the next four weeks being slightly obsessive about how many books I was selling and then possibly having to call a halt anyway, but on the tails of failure instead of success.

The thing is...

(a) My life has moved on. I'm immersed in my new job and have no time or energy spare for anything else. So...

(b) I can't promote the book, which means I can't do the job of selling it properly, and it's no fun doing something half-cocked. And anyway,

(c) The original aim was to use some spare time I had over the summer to make a limited number of books available to family and friends, and then wrap it all up neatly and say goodbye to writing for a while. It was a good aim. It made sense.

When I do things, I like to do them properly. I don't like things lingering in the background and being faintly irksome. I want to give them my all.

I'm really pleased with the book and the way it turned out, and I'm delighted that I sold 100 copies in such a short space of time. It's understandable that those sales should be petering out now, because I'm putting no work into selling or publicising the book. Trying to self-publish fiction is notoriously difficult. The average number of sales is around the 100 mark, and that's for people who spend a lot more time and energy on pushing their books.

I've just about got enough spare books to cater for the people who placed orders recently, so they will get their books and that will be that.

It's good to end on a positive note, as well as a relief. Those of you who have books can feel very smug: You own a rare article. Treasure it. Love it. Stroke it. Whisper sweet nothings to it. And stop feeling guilty because you haven't got round to reading it, or posting a review online, or whatever. There's no need any more. Hooray! Thank heavens for happy endings.

And now I can have a rest.

Autumn

2010-10-20T22:35:00.002+01:00

Sheesh! Bit of a nip in the air now, eh? I am now fully entitled to get all smug on yo arses about how I am still cycling to work every day and will continue to do so throughout the winter. That's an hour of solid exercise every day, come rain, shine or snow. Last winter I cycled to work in a blizzard. That's how hard I am. In your face, cake-and-chocolate-induced lardiness! Of course I will just eat more chocolate and cake to compensate but shhh, we'll pretend we didn't notice.

I have a beautiful cycle path to get to and from work every day, and the best bit about it is the crunchy autumn leaves. I am developing pin-point precision in squashing every crunchy leaf in my path, and the pleasure of this never diminishes. Soon the crunch of leaf will be replaced by the crunch of ice-covered puddles, which is equally satisfying.

I'm knackered and my kids keep getting ill and life is BLOODY HARD, but it's the right kind of hard. It's satisfying-hard, challenging-hard, never-boring-hard. Smug-hard. EXHAUSTING-hard.

I wrote a poem the other day. It woz kwite gud. I think. But I won't show it to you, so you can never prove me wrong. HA.

Right. I have work to do. Toodles.

Slow

2010-10-03T16:11:00.006+01:00

I never look at the picture part of postcards - I always turn over straight away to read the writingy bit, cos I always think that's more interesting.

The postcard on my doormat was writing-side-up anyway, so I picked it up and perused it.

But the other thing that happens with me and post is that I never read it properly at first. This is partly because my first sight of any post tends to happen with a bike in my arms. I cycle to work, but I keep my bike inside the house, and we have steps leading up to the front door, so I carry my bike over the threshold, simultaneously looking down at the post, and then I have to do a million boring small things like remove cycle clips, helmet, fluorescent vest, and any other waterproofs, hats, gloves, scarves etc that might be cluttering my person.

Often it's just a pit stop, and all I'm doing is swapping work-laden pannier bags for a child seat on the back of the bike before I dash back out again to pick up the kids. Sometimes I have a little golden window of time before that next part of my day, and usually that's spent flitting about the house trying to decide which is most important out of
(a) kettle on (cup of tea),
(b) computer on (check email, find out whether my book has become an internet sensation overnight)
(c) dinner on (it's easier to cook without a 2-yr-old wrapped around your shins)
(d) klobber off
(e) wet laundry out of machine
(f) telly on
...which generally ends up with teabags, fluourescent vests, wet pants and computer keyboards being combined in all the wrong ways.

Aaanyway. That was all an attempt to explain why it took me so long to work out what the hell was the postcard on my doormat, and who it was from. The first thing I looked at was the handwriting. I didn't recognise it. So I looked for a signature. There wasn't one. It was covered in close writing, but there was no name at all. I looked again. There must be a name, surely? No. So I scanned the content. It was something to do with the angle of a chair. Wtf? I looked for a name again, more slowly this time. Nope. Nothing there.

Finally I turned it over and found this:

Aha! Snailr! Of course!

All the time I had been pondering this, I had also been removing cycle clips, putting the kettle on, turning the computer on, etc. I still had tea to cook, kids to pick up, yadda yadda, and I didn't want to read the content in a rush. I wanted to savour it, because this was An Exciting Event. In the end my partner read it before I did. Not knowing who it was from and not having heard of the Snailr project, he pronounced himself Amused But Thoroughly Confused. I'd been through the confusion part already, so I settled on amused. It was a very nice postcard. I'm glad I got it. The writingy part looked like this:

(I couldn't resist the product placement. Forgive me. I wrote that book. You can buy it / find out more about it here. Lucy Pepper designed the cover, and Francis Blake illustrated it. Isn't it beautiful?)

...and this is what the postcard said:

"As I write this the Eastern European grandfather in front of us has been trying to recline his chair to his satisfaction for the last 18 minutes. Continuously.
It is like this angle [see first chair pic on postcard above]
he wants it like this angle [second pic]
it keeps doing this angle [third pic]
Yes. It is basically the same angle three times over. As far as I can tell, he wants to recline it 15 degrees and keeps getting it at 30 degrees by mistake. So he tries again. Ratches clank and scrape as he goes up, down, up, down, his yellow thumbnail hanging over the back. 'Is not stay.' He turns and says to us. Then tries it another 40 times."

It also has a number 3 on it, which I presume means it was the third card sent.

Snailr is Anna Pickard's latest project. It's a brilliant idea. She went on a 2-week train trip around the US of A and documented it by sending postcards. A kind of one-destination-only hard-copy Twittery thing. Ish. Sort of. It's explained better here. Anna is lovely and clever and good with words and I felt very special for having my very own unique Anna Pickard artefact. Thankyou Anna.

Lovely stuff

2010-09-18T00:01:00.004+01:00

People have been steadily receiving books all this week, and I've been getting various bits of feedback, some of which have appeared in some form or other on Twitter, but these were too long:

"Picked up Dance Your Way earlier. Read for a few minutes, entranced, then thought of something Alice can use for her plaudits :

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK while making lunch. You will burn the scampi.

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK while eating dinner. It goes cold.

I feel as if everything's gone quiet. We're all reading the book!" - Sarah Kachel

and from the designer (Lucy Pepper):

"they DO look and FEEL lovely... well done YOU, mostly.
and I LOVE the acknowledgement. not many people appreciate my bra talent."

Majestic Man

2010-09-08T00:32:00.007+01:00

The new job is in full swing, and I am exhausted. My grandfather was buried at the weekend in a truly beautiful and historic location, in view of both mountains and sea. It is sad. I miss him. My mother drew a picture of him (reproduced below), not long ago. I have a copy of this picture, and it is beautiful, but at the moment I have placed it carefully face down on a table. It is just too sad.

I am having occasional tearful moments of "Oh, no, it can't be true." He was 100 years old, so it is not only true but no great surprise. Nobody gets to live forever but he really did his damnedest and there is nothing to regret. But he is gone, and I miss him.

The books haven't arrived yet, which is ever-so-slightly annoying, particularly as I can't easily ring from work to discover their whereabouts. But they were apparently dispatched yesterday via next-day wotsit, so they can't be far away.

Here is what I said at the funeral. I don't normally read from a script when doing public speaking, because it never works as well as ad-libbing from notes, but I was in no fit state to do anything else. It was written in a rush, on the morning of the funeral, with my nephews running in and out of the room shouting and playing cars around my feet, but sometimes the best things are written under such circumstances:

"I went into the chemist a few weeks ago and got talking to Sandra, the lady behind the counter. I mentioned Brenda and Bill, and she knew straightaway who I meant. Bill in particular was the one they saw the most, and they used to call him Sir Fenton.

'Oh no,' he would say. 'You must call me Bill.'

This tiny tale encapsulates for me the essence of Bill. The title, 'Sir Fenton', would have been earnt by his immense dignity. As a very small child, I was ever-so-slightly scared of him, but I quickly learnt what lay beneath that majestic exterior. I expect we can all imagine the expression on his face when he said, 'You must call me Bill.' The twinkle in his eyes and the subtle smile. Right to the end he maintained that dignity. He bore his illness calmly and with little complaint, he chose his words carefully and he always knew what he meant.

When I saw him last, only a few weeks ago, he was very weak and for a while we sat in silence. But then he showed his immense love by asking after my two sons - his great-grandchildren - and smiling as he heard of their exploits. And then he said a very firm goodbye. Few words, clear intention, dignity and love to the last. He has been a quiet solid presence for all of my life. Presence was something he had in abundance, and his absence creates a very large hole. I'll miss him."

My grandfather:

I really want to write a longer piece, like I did for my other grandfather, but it may have to wait.

Loop the Loop

2010-08-31T23:28:00.003+01:00

I coped all right when my first grandad died, a few weeks ago. But the cumulative effect means that I am managing a little less well now that my other grandfather has gone. He was 100 years old and died peacefully on Saturday afternoon. I'll write properly about him soon, I hope.

Life's a little difficult right now. There's the new job, the bereavements, the ongoing infirmity of our ageing dog (featured here, looking remarkably well), some other stresses and strains, my knee is infected (I fell over and cut myself on a mountain rock) and then there's parenthood.

I love my kids, enormously. They are beautiful and clever and gentle and sweet. But one of them is a toddler and the other is an 8-yr-old and it is hard to keep them both happy at the same time. And I am a woman of extremes, so when I am with them they get so much of me that I can't cope with giving any of me to anything else. Which is not a practical or realistic way to exist. And I can't bear to hear them cry. Toddlers cry quite a lot.

So, the summer has been a bit of a strain. I have spent more time with my two boys than I normally do, and I have become very tired. I am 41 years old. I am a naturally energetic person, but children are tiring and my bones are old. Ish. OK, I am less than half the age that my grandfather reached, so it is silly to talk of being old. I still feel it.

So, I've been fretting and stewing and miserabling and struggling to relax, or to make the most of things I should have found enjoyable.

This afternoon my two sons and I visited the Manchester Museum. But first we went to the doctor, who pronounced my knee infected and sent me with an "urgent" note to a clinic that couldn't fit me in. We then got on a bus, which was a bit of a faff. One of the main corridors in the museum - which we had to pass several times to reach the lift - contained several prominently-displayed corpses (Egyptian mummies). These were pronounced "scary" and resulted in an increasingly-heavy two-yr-old demanding to be carried every time we walked past. Both children enjoyed the stuffed animals, the live frogs, the colourful insects and the dinosaurs. By the end of it all, I was knackered.

And then we walked outside. There is an installation in the courtyard called the "Reflective Room".

My 8-yr-old had bought a polystyrene aeroplane for 50p in the museum gift shop. His brother had one too. They were happy for well over an hour, launching their planes from various different locations and performing a series of impressive stunts. I just sat in the installation and marvelled at the sky, which was blue, and the roofs, which were red. It was a very comfy installation.

I ambled back into the cafe for a coffee, accompanied by an excited 2-yr-old. We went back out into the sun. We bought more planes. Another family appeared, and we donated one of our aircraft, which made their children very happy.

It was one of those spontaneous outbreaks of peace. My 8-yr-old suggested that maybe his dad would look after him and his brother one weekend and I could come back, to sit there and read a book. He's considerate like that.

We had to go in the end. The museum had closed long ago and the little one needed a nap, but we were all content.

It's hard to exist and let things be. When you do, it's magical.

Him Indoors

2010-08-27T12:38:00.002+01:00

By the way I should have said, it was that other half of mine that wrote, directed, edited and generally masterminded the Beast of Birker Fell, not to mention conceived it as a way of entertaining bored youngsters on a rainy day. He also did the whole thing in about ten minutes flat (all right so I exaggerate, but only a bit). He very clever.

What I Did on my Holidays

2010-08-25T22:57:00.005+01:00

This is good too!

It is on YouTube!

And I AM IN IT.

OMg OMG OMG, will i be FAMOUS?

The Beast of Birker Fell

(by the way: You have to watch the very last second of the credits, because the monster's final facial expression is classic.)

tHE sHELL wITH fEET!

2010-08-25T22:55:00.002+01:00

This is really really good. Everybody watch it NOW.

A film about a shell with feet

Because I said so.

Come in Number Six, Your Time is up

2010-08-25T00:38:00.003+01:00

Megan has been writing here about feminine maintenance and her own slap-dash attitude to it, and that reminded me of similar musings I was having today on a bus.

When I was a teenager, there was a brief period when I did at least try to read and understand the articles in Jackie magazine. Like Megan, I became aware that everybody is supposed to have a particular face shape, but could never work out what mine was, or what I was supposed to do about it. I managed to get to grips with eyeshadow and eyeliner, but lipstick and foundation and hair always went a bit wrong. I made a few vague attempts to master them, but mostly failed. I suppose these skills are supposed to come from mothers and sisters, but my mother was brought up in the countryside and educated by nuns and was far more interested in books anyway, and my sister made a point of looking the other way whenever I came near.

I didn't care much anyway. I liked myself for who I was, I had long ago accepted that I didn't fit in and was already starting to relish it. It wasn't long before I decided I was a lesbian, shaved my hair off and gave up on make up altogether.

But I had this vague idea that anyone could be beautiful, and one day I would get around to it too. I had a good figure, good skin and glossy hair. My chin, nose and ears were all too big, but a clever haircut and some cunning make up, a bit of attitude, a bit of style... were all I needed. And one day I would find them. Maybe I would go into a department store and get one of those make up girls to teach me about make up. Except that they all applied their own with a spade and looked universally dreadful. Or maybe I would find a book to teach me, or get a girlfriend who would take me under her wing. Maybe there would be a wedding day. Women always look beautiful on their wedding days. I'm not sure how, but maybe I would have a wedding and learn some lessons. Except I couldn't / can't be bothered with all that, and neither can my non-husband.

It was never a priority, I never got round to it, and now it's too late. The things that are wrong with me are permanent. Saggy, wrinkly, greying, fat, drawn, tired, haggard...

Yesterday the checkout man had a conversation with my 2-yr-old son about his nan. He meant me. It's not the first time it's happened.

OK, so hair can be dyed and weight can be lost... but the same problem exists as always did. I don't care enough. Hair dye only works if you reapply every time the roots come back, and I'm never going to be that on-the-ball. The idea of wasting my precious time on tedious beauty routines irks me. I don't even moisturise. Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, eyeliner and mascara are the only items in my spongebag.

I can't think of an easy way to end this post other than with a faint shrug, so I will move onto the reason for my presence on a bus, which was a trip to the dental hygienist. Who are these people? Who would voluntarily do that to people all day long?

I can be very obedient when instructed by people with medical degrees, and I was there because the dentist told me to be. But WHY? I was stabbed and poked and prodded and made to bleed, and it was all thoroughly unpleasant. It HURT. And I felt thoroughly battered about, and for what? My teeth weren't decaying, they just had a bit of scale on them, and it was all sitting there quite happily. It wasn't causing holes. Indeed you could say it was providing an extra layer of protection. And surely it can't be good for your tooth enamel to be scraped like that with a sharp thing? Isn't it a bit like cleaning a non-stick pan by scraping at it with a fork? Here I was paying good money, giving up good time, to be attacked with painful pointy implements, and I hadn't even asked why. And nobody had attempted to explain it to me.

And what is all this dental hygienist business, anyway? Last time I got scraped and polished it was done by the dentist herself, and it was bloody ages ago.

"See you in three months," said the hygienist.

"You'll be bloody lucky," I muttered under my breath, and ran away very fast.

They do feel quite nice now though, my teeth. I'll give her that.

Flowers and Smiles and Puppy Dogs

2010-08-23T17:30:00.004+01:00

I've been doing an awful lot of moaning of late. I spent most of the latter half of my holiday whingeing and sighing about how hard it is being the 41-yr-old mother of a 2-yr-old and how impossible it makes it to relax or have any fun or enjoy one's holidays... but then I gave myself a metaphorical slap and reminded myself of how adorable he is, how short-lived this phase of his life is, and how motherhood is hard for everyone.

My life does swing at the moment between moments of wonder (his skin as he wraps himself around me, his smile, his squidginess, the speed with which he learns) and of hell (tying to cook or pack or clean or shop while he trails after me, grizzling and wailing "Mummeeee"), but I try too hard to fight what has to be. It is the way it is, and this too shall pass.

Likewise with the book. There are tons of positive things about this book, not least all the lovely things peple have done and said and the gorgeousness of the cover, and the fact that I am in control. It's also done what I wanted it to do, which is revive my faith in myself as a writer, stop me from defining myself as "Failed Writer", and give me a little creative boost before the mayhem and potential drudge of the new job.

Publicity is a pain. Trying to sell oneself and one's work is a pain. But it doesn't have to be. All I have to do is stop whingeing, decide what I'm happy and comfortable doing, and sod the rest. I am answerable to nobody but myself.

Publicity Fatigue

2010-08-23T16:21:00.006+01:00

This post is a continuation, after my guest post here on Strictly Writing.

It's the "look at me" thing again, and how it relates to being a writer.

I used to rather enjoy saying "Look at me," but it has become less enjoyable since I've been trying to get published. The main thrust of my guest blog was that I like it less because I'm not successful at it. I said "Look at me," and nobody did.

It's not just that though. This brilliant piece here is by Liane Spicer, and is about how readers can help writers. But she has inadvertently highlighted the other reason I don't enjoy look-at-me so much any more. The main way readers can help writers is by spreading the word about their work, and there are a gazillion ways of doing this. These days they mostly involve online tools such as Facebook, Twitter and book recommendation / review sites like Amazon. But none of that will work unless the writer or their publisher has opened up those avenues in the first place. Sadly the main effect Liane's article had on me was to have me fretting about how my book isn't listed on Amazon. It's technically possible, as I do have an ISBN. But I'm not planning on holding books in stock, which would make it hard for the Amazon thing to work. And I can't afford the kind of cut Amazon would demand on sales. And anyway I'm probably too small an outfit, and and and...

The main reason is that I find it all so exhausting. Each little bit of online tomfoolery takes up even more time and adds even more soul-destroyingness to the number of places you have to check for feedback, and then sigh at when there is nothing there.

There is a distinct "Oh, sod it" element to the way I'm publishing this book. There's a part of me that wants to make it deliberately hard for people to get hold of it. And then I can cite that as the reason, when sales are inevitably low. I can also throw my hands up when people say, "But haven't you tried..." and I can reply, "No, I haven't, because this is a necessarily small enterprise and can never be anything else."

And although I keep being pulled in the direction of Sales Maximisation, Publicity Saturation and all that jazz... even though I secretly dream of my book suddenly Going Large... there's a large part of me that thinks, "Sod it. Only a handful of people will ever know my book exists, and it's worth it for the peace."

Still. Ahem. [cough] The only way my book will ever sell is as a result of word of mouth. So, er. You know. The power is in your hands. If you've ordered a copy... if you enjoy it when it arrives... if you happen to hang out in any of those online places and you have a moment to spare... feel free to do my publicity for me. But if, like me, you get a pain in your left ankle at the very thought of it, then hide the book under your pillow and keep it as a very special secret, which is for you and nobody else. I really won't mind.

...and I also promise to stop moaning and whingeing, starting here.

s-Press

2010-08-23T11:28:00.001+01:00

Daily s-Press - a rather nice daily online mag re indie publishing - has a feature on my book today: http://bit.ly/cZWdRk

Meanwhile I am at home with the kids, who are playing cardboard boxes but getting bored cos it's raining... have at least managed to unpack after fortnight away though. Alton Towers this Wednesday! Woohoo! I mean it. I rather like it. I just turn into an 8-yr-old again.

Update

2010-08-18T12:37:00.002+01:00

I'm still on holiday, but have been sorting bookish things out while I'm here...

There's a guest post by me on Strictly Writing here:
http://strictlywriting.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-do-we-write-guest-post-by-alice.html

The order has been sent to the printer and the books should arrive on my doorstep in about 3 weeks' time, at which point I'll send them straight back out to those who have bought them. Currently 79 copies have been sold, and I'm keeping ten for myself, so another 11 are available for sale. I can't guarantee another print run but there may be one around Christmas time.

Right, I'm off to admire the view!

Never Mind the Goats

2010-08-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

A letter to my grandmother from a fellow writer, found folded between the pages of a short story in a 1974 political magazine:

“Dear Mrs T,
Thankyou for your card and note at Christmas - I was sorry not to have seen you during the year after all; perhaps we’ll be better organised in 1974!
This was what I was writing when I spoke to you, and you very rightly said start now, don’t stop, so I thought you might like to see it. I’ve often thought of you writing with girls dispatched to school and goats milked, and admired it - and admire it even more now! To say nothing of R*’s industry and stickability.
I hope all’s well with all of you. Please remember me very warmly to Mr T,
and with love -
M.”

* R is my mother, Mrs T’s daughter, who herself is a published writer.

Girls dispatched to school and goats milked. And then some. An amazing woman. I saw her this week and she was concerned about the woman sitting next to her in the old people’s home, who didn’t know who she was when asked. “Come on now, do your best,” she said. My grandma didn’t know who the woman was. She didn’t know who the four great-grandchildren playing at her feet were either, but she loved having them there.

PS Since writing this I have visited her again. “I know you, don’t I? … Good, because you look nice.” She also asked whether I was a writer, and was very pleased to find that I was.

Fast

2010-08-12T17:38:00.000+01:00

[NB - this was written on Mon 9th August, while on holiday]

FAST

I was thinking just now about the whole publishing ting - unsurprisingly it’s not out of my thoughts much these days - and I realised, it’s less than a week since my book was launched. And I’m already moving on - seeing it in the past. Which technically it is - the launch date anyway - but the publication of my book is still - or ought to be - an ongoing process.

This tells you something about me. I’m always in a mad rush, trying to squish a million things into one small space, whether it be clutter in a cupboard or life in a weekend.

That makes me sound like the kind of person who might abseil down a tower block, drink 20 pints in a weekend or travel the world at the drop of a hat. I don’t do big stuff like that. I do smallish stuff, and I never travel far, and I always make sure I have a safety net. But I do it BIG. Or maybe I just do it fast. Or slightly mad. But also slightly sane.

The thing about me is that I have ideas. I’’ve written before about my crazy-bonkers ideas and how most of them never get anywhere. But occasionally I’ll take something forward. There’s some critical point, which is never easy to identify at the time or even afterwards, but at this point it stops being a crazy dream and starts being The Thing That I Am Currently Obsessed With And Will Move Tower Blocks To Achieve.

At first I thought this self publication thing was an unworkable idea, the kind of thing you dream of but never do. But it wasn’t until it became the kind of thing you dream of that it became likely. For a while I toyed with the idea of sticking it on Lulu. No offence, Lulu, your books are great for what they are and they serve a purpose and all that, but… their covers bend and curl. I’ll never get past that.

As long as the self-publication dream was a matter of cheap expediency, it was never attractive enough to bother with. But as soon as I thought a little bigger, the nugget became buried in some crucial part of my brain. What if I put a bit of time, money and effort into it? What if I made something I could truly be proud of? The answer came, Sod Off. Don’t be daft. You haven’t got the money or the time. Or the energy. Or the confidence. But the idea stayed hanging in some dreamy bit of consciousness and refused to go away.

As recently as six weeks ago I thought it was just another crazy scheme and would never become reality, or if it did it would be a bit shit.But then the illustrator painted the beautiful picture, and the designer wove it into something wonderful, and I managed to do a final edit that I was happy with, and then…

The thing is, I’m stuck. I’m trapped in a bubble of time. I have been for ages. It hasn’t happened yet, this bubble. It’s over there somewhere. In the future. And I’m stuck there. And I can’t escape. My whole life has been about getting somewhere else. Making plans. Preparing. And I never arrive. So now my book has been launched - only days ago - and I’m already elsewhere. Done that. Time to move on.

And then I realise… oh. I’m actually still here. And it’s quite a nice place to be.

Maybe I’ll stick around.

Taking Stock

2010-08-06T14:12:00.005+01:00

I think the book launch is going well. I've sold 61 books, and have decided to go to print when I have 90 orders (I'll keep 10 books back for personal use / emergencies). I'm really really hoping that Magical Ninety will be reached this weekend... which brings me to the point of this post.

At several points during this self-publishing process I've got confused about why I was doing it. There have been a few (unpleasant) moments when I've got my knickers in a twist because I worried that I was Doing The Wrong Thing. Usually in respect to some attempt at publicising the book, but sometimes regarding its content. All of those worries could be summarised as either What will the publishing industry think? or What will potential buyers think?.

I do care what other people think, of course I do. But why should I care what the industry thinks? I've already accepted I'm not going to get a conventional publishing deal, and that's no longer my aim. If it was, this would be the wrong way to go about it.

I really want people to buy my book, and enjoy it when they read it. But does that mean I want to start jumping through all those publicity hoops, doing anything I can to get sales at all costs? No. That's one of the things I was trying to get away from. And there are practical issues here: I have a young child, who needs a lot of my time. And soon I'm starting a new job.

I switched careers a year ago and have spent the last twelve months retraining to do something astonishingly demanding and stressful. When I start the new job I'll scarcely have breath to call my own, let alone time or energy. I knew I'd have some spare time this summer, and I decided to use it to publish this book. But I also knew that the legwork would have to fit into a small window, and then I'd have to abandon it to its fate.

So, I can't set up a situation that means I'll still be faffing about with websites, online orders, stuffing books in envelopes or general publicity when the summer ends. And that's why I'm thinking about what I'll do when sales reach 100. I'm contemplating stopping there.

I'm going on holiday for two weeks this Sunday. I'll be in a remote location with minimal internet access, and I'll be on my own with the kids (my partner has to stay behind for work). When I return I'll be manically preparing for the new job. I knew this holiday was coming, and squeezed the book launch in the gap. If I can reach 90 orders this weekend then I can fire off the print run, close down the website and go on holiday with nothing much to worry about.

But... but... but...

What if I could reach 285 sales? If I sold that many, I'd break even. That would be nice. It's unlikely, let's be realistic. But why on earth have I put so much work into spreading the word if I'm going to stop when I've only just begun? And what if some kind of miracle happened and Some Proper Publisher noticed what I was doing and decided to publish me after all?

Argh. That would be a hard one. I'd be a bit dismayed, to be honest. Like I say, I'll very soon have no spare time. They would want me to Do Things which I might not want to do. But maybe I'd be so excited I wouldn't care? Or maybe we could schedule all the Doing Stuff for some future breathing space? But I've already turned my back on all that. I've already published the book myself, and I've made a Damn Nice Article. I think I'd be tempted to say "No, sorry, I can't be arsed." Still. I say that. It's easy to say when I know it won't happen. If it DID happen... oh well. It won't, so that's that.

What I'll probably do is just tinker with things a bit: When the Magical Ninety is reached, I'll change the site so that instead of paying for books, people are making a £2 deposit. If 100 people make a deposit, I'll bill them for the full amount and fire off another print run. And so on, ad infinitum. That would require minimal maintenance, apart from the envelope-stuffing, but I could rope in some help for that. I think I'll do that.

There's an extra tinge of poignancy to this whole adventure. A year ago I had written myself off as a Failed Writer and didn't expect to have anything to do with writing or books for many years to come. Now I'm popping my head back around the door... but it's only to say goodbye again. It took me four years to get my first book into a publication-ready state, and six years for the second. Even if I had spare time to write - which I won't, not for a long time - it would take me an age to get another book out there. I've finally acknowledged that the third book I wrote, the one still in first-draft stage, is never going to be worth continuing with. I'm sure I will write another book. I'll never stop being a writer. But it will be a long time coming. Five to ten years, I reckon. Which is another reason why I'm no kind of proposition for a Proper Publisher. I don't have enough to offer.

I'm really proud of this book, but if you want to read something written by me, you'd better move fast - because after this summer, you'll be waiting a long time.

Go Gadget Go

2010-08-05T04:05:00.002+01:00

Yay hurray huzzah, I finally got the website finished. And I should get, ooh, at least three hours' sleep.

So, you can now buy copies of Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex, by Alice Turing, which according to Spiral Skies Jen is "Wonderfully odd and utterly compulsive" from my lovely website which is ever-so home-made but I'm proud of it, so there.

Yay!

What on earth will happen next? I have not the faintest clue. What an adventure.

Night night.

Final final cover.

2010-08-03T23:24:00.000+01:00

Here it is!

Is utterly lovely.

A Case of the Jitters

2010-08-03T23:09:00.003+01:00

Oh help. It's all getting a bit too close and scary now. Can't get brain to work at all. Keep jumping from one thing to another, getting totally sidetracked by Twitter and really not focusing on the things that NEED to be done.

Oh well. Is all forward movement, if nothing else.

I have now heard back from every single reviewer, and they ALL liked the book. How ace is that?

Latest quotes:

"It's loaded with sharp dialogue, some gorgeous imagery, and is punctuated with a down to earth wit which has you laughing and smiling. This is easily one of the more original stories I've read all year."
- Gordon McLean

"Wonderfully odd and utterly compulsive - some of the snazziest similes I've read all year."
- Jen Maltby

Well, all right then. I say "all". There is one reviewer I haven't heard from. And she is, just a teeny bit, scary. She is Jane Smith, from How Publishing Really Works. She is an actual bona fide editor. And she has another blog devoted purely to reviews of self-published novels. And she holds no punches. The thing is, she specifically says "I'm going to count all the errors I find in spelling, punctuation and grammar and when I reach fifteen I'm going to stop reading." ... and she critiques covers as much as contents ... and yet I sent her a proof copy to review! Am I insane? Yes. I am.

Oh well. Let's be honest: This whole project has a touch of the insanes about it.

Edit: Oh, hang on, there was another reviewer I hadn't heard from! I had lost track, but she just contacted me to say she's enjoying it. So that's OK.

Right. I must go and flap elsewhere. Anon.

nice

2010-08-03T14:20:00.002+01:00

Still. Could be worse. Small Person is now in bed, if not asleep. The pdfs are very-nearly-almost ready for the printers. I've managed to set up Twitter, Facebook etc. The only thing not done is the website, and if it really has to it can consist of nothing more than a jpeg of the cover and a PayPal button. It will still work.

I snuck a link to the cover in that last post, but here is a more ostentatious one. This is a not-quite final version - it has been tweaked slightly since then - but it's near enough. The blank white box is for the barcode, and the blurbs at either end are for the foldover flaps (it'll be a dust jacket, on a hardback). Isn't it LOVELY?

Time and again

2010-08-03T14:00:00.003+01:00

I had it all worked out. It was going to be hard, but I would manage it. Somehow I would use this precious week to launch my book, build a website (for hosting said launch), do some long-overdue DIY and prepare for starting a high-pressure job in a new workplace.

Ha.

HAH!

What kind of damn fool am I? Haven't I learnt anything?

Lucy Pepper (velly clever lady) calls it Mumphy's Law. That thing which says that whatever you are planning to do, being a mum means that something else will come along and prevent you.

My son has been sent home from nursery because they suspect he might have hand, foot and mouth disease. He might not, but until I can get him to a doctor (tonight, 5pm) they won't have him back. So that's at least one day lost. Even though he's full of beans, happy as Larry, fit as a fiddle and on top of the world, he does have weird sore bits on his hands, feet and bum. So they might be right, in which case that's my whole week disappeared up its own arse.

Meanwhile the house is a horrific tip, which I could have coped with if I was hiding away in my study, but is a really unpleasant place to be forced to chase a toddler around (potty in hand, why oh WHY did I decide to potty-train him this week?). And yes, I could squeeze some housework in here, some typing-with-toddler-turning-study-into-warzone-in-background there, but I was already running on empty. I just can't hack it. I have gone SLUMP instead.

Sometimes parenthood sucks.

Right Then!

2010-08-02T14:24:00.002+01:00

Ooh, it's all getting closer and closer... only three days to go. Or four. Depending on how you count it. But ANYWAY. I can hardly believe I'm nearly there, there's still so much to do. Today I have been mostly fiddling about with computer images. I could do that for HOURS. There's something immensely satisfying about it. Maybe I should be a web designer*.

I have also been slowly spreading the word about Thursday. Which is all very well, but there are so MANY places I can do this. Some poor sods will have been told via so many different avenues, they will be sick of the damn thing already.

BUT. Just in case you don't hang out on Twitter or Facebook or any of the myriad other places... My book will be launched on Thursday on this website here. Yes. The one that doesn't exist yet (well, it does a bit, but there's not much there). Oh, shut up. It'll happen. Even if it means I don't sleep between now and then. The cover is near as dammit finished (and BEAUTIFUL). I have heard from 11 out of 12 reviewers, ALL of whom loved the book (yay!) and have written some amazing reviews, most of which will be revealed on Thursday. The internals are nearly done, including a lovely title page, a stupidly-long acknowledgements section, a dedication to Mum, tons of glowing quotes, the logo for my newly-created publishing company Chutzpah Publishing (ha!), AND four more line-drawing illustrations from the ever-lovely Francis.

So, anyway. Here is some small print:

1. Copies will only be available from the website DanceYourWay.co.uk (from 5th Aug).

2. They will look something like this:

3. They will come from a limited print run. First come first served.

4. They will be gorgeous hardbacks. A lot of effort has gone into their design.

5. They will cost a tenner plus postage.

6. Payment will have to be in advance, because I'm skint. But I'm also trustworthy: Copies will be dispatched approximately three weeks after payment, depending on take-up rate.

7. Feel free to spread the word by all available means. If you have a blog / website and would like to host a stop on a virtual book tour, let me know. I'm not actually sure how that works though. Suggestions welcome.

Eeeeeeeeeek.

*Mooted career change number 3,472 over the course of several years.

Ooooh

2010-08-01T00:52:00.005+01:00

Oh My God, OMG, eeeek etc...

Actually, I'm a bit drunk. I should state that now. But anyway. The website is being launched in five days' time! Not that I've created it yet or anything, but you know. Soon come.

I sent the book to 13 reviewers, and have heard back from 10 of them. I think. Maybe nine. No, ten. And they all love it!

Oh, it's no good. I'm too drunk. Suffice to say it is all on course and I am working like a bastard and not getting much sleep and it will all be very close but somehow it. Will. Happen. So there.

We have been Officially Getting Drunk, me and The Man and me, and dreaming and wishing and enthusing about all which may happen (not much, but Not Much can be surprisingly exciting).

Also, on an entirely unrelated note, my 2-yr-old is the best 2-yr-old ever and today he and I have had much excitement as I randomly decided that he was going to stop using nappies and learn how to use a potty. Which meant I let him run around naked all day and had to watch him. Properly. If you are the parent of a toddler you probably think you keep an eye on what they're up to most of the time. Maybe you really do. Or maybe you're like me and you just watch out for Things Which Will Keep Them Quiet while you cook, clean, read books, surf the net, go to the loo, watch the telly or self-publish your novel. But when you take their nappy off, that's when you find out whether you're really paying attention or not. This afternoon I was faffing about with book image files and he was being very quiet and happy in the corner of my study (throwing CDs around and puling all the books off the shelves, since you ask) when I heard a noise that didn't quite seem right. I looked over and found him, behind a bookcase, with his potty. He had done a wee on his potty. Yay! Success. He had then washed his hands in it. And stood in it. And generally bathed in it.

Oh. Not so successful. I carried him at arm's length down two flights of stairs and threw him in the shower. Which he loved. For the next hour we pretended there wasn't a hosepipe ban (showers aren't hosepipes anyway, right?) and he sat in the shower stall playing with the shower head while I smiled benignly from the bathroom doorway. The next wee he did in the potty (one of several during the day) he shouted "Dirty! Shower?" and looked at me ever-so hopefully. He also objected to nappy + babygro at bedtime in a way which made me wonder if I have just created a naturalist. Plus a very large rod for my own back.

But it was fun. And anyway. Here are some more quotes, two of which come from extensive reviews which are positively glowing:

“It's clever without being pompous or patronising; funny without being puerile; thought-provoking without being hard work. I enjoyed it enormously.”
- Queenie (from Qwerty Queen)

"Charming and delightful - while still packing a punch! This novel is quirky and clever and big-hearted in all the right ways."
- Kathleen Bryson

“This novel is deliciously different. It is ambitious in its storytelling and poignantly beautiful in its writing.”
- Helen M Hunt (Bookersatz)

In fact, if you don't tell anyone you can follow this link here and click on the heads at the bottom of the screen to see all the reviews and quotes so far. Oh yes, and if you follow that link you might notice... oh. I started writing that sentence and then got distracted and now I can't remember what the hell it was I thought you might notice. So if you follow it and notice someting, post it here and let's compare notes.

edit: Oh! I've remembered what I thought it was you might notice. It has to do with a Jewish word meaning CHEEKY FUCKER. Tee hee. And on that note I have been summoned for Elsewhere Shenanigans. Night night.

2010-07-26T23:30:00.011+01:00

Last night I spent a large chunk of the evening with a bunch of books from my shelves, all with alternative covers wrapped around them.

Blimey! What a responsibility! It's like trying to name a baby.

I won't tell you which one I prefer, not yet (although you may be able to work it out from stuff elsewhere on the net).

Interestingly other people don't seem to be swaying me at this point. I took the covers into my partner's workplace this morning and listened to many different opinions, all different, but none of them changed what I'd already decided.

Actually they're all brilliant, which means it doesn't matter so much. All the same I have picked one, and I love it. Now I am faffing about with all the other MILLIONS of jobs that need doing. It feels like it will never end, but it is all most satisfying.

Gathering Apace

2010-07-26T09:39:00.002+01:00

[Warning: If you are one of my reviewers, this post contains short quotes from others, so if you haven't done yours yet and you don't want to be affected by others' thoughts, look away now.]

And then, in the midst of funeral arrangements and saying goodbye... there is this new thing. Which seems to occupy some schizophrenically-divided chamber in my head, so do forgive me if I now switch from sadness to excitement, because... Ooh ooh ooh, it's all getting very exciting - and scary - now!

I am such a maddo, fancy thinking I could publish a book in such a short space of time... BUT it seems I am somehow going to manage this. The publicity will consist entirely of Stuff Posted On The Internet, I am not even going to attempt to get it in bookshops or enter it into competitions or get the attention of broadsheets or any of that malarkey, but the cover will be a thing of UTTER GORGEOUSNESS (watch this space for very-soon developments) (fingers crossed) and I am so touched at how many people are helping me to do this.

On which note... my reviewers/quoters have already started sending stuff in and it is all brilliantly wonderful (scroll down for brief highlights).

I haven't a clue how many books I'll sell. People don't spend money lightly, especially in these budget-conscious times. But I'm pretty confident (eek, please let that not be misplaced) that I'll manage the 100 copies I need to go ahead with a print run, and I might even get the 172 sales I'd need to break even. How lovely would that be? Very lovely indeed.

The website launch date is next Thursday, the 5th August, so I have less than a fortnight now to pull everything together. It's pretty daunting, but I'll get there. I'll be sending a mass email out today or tomorrow to let everyone know what's happening and hopefully start building a buzz.

Eeek!

The boring (but exciting!) details: Next Thurs, 5th August, I will be launching my new website, and start taking orders for the book. If everything goes according to plan, the first batch of books will be despatched 2-3 weeks after that. Ways you can help:
- Publicise it to anyone you can
- Host a stop on a virtual book tour (details to follow)
- Buy a copy!

Here are some brief tasters from the reviews / quotes I've had so far:

“A book full of surprises — of titillation, of twists and turns, of fun, revelations and dreams.” - Sue Guiney

“This book is magic. Fresh and entertaining, with genuinely compelling characters and sparkling dialogue.” - Debi Alper

“Original, funny and wonderfully odd.” - Sarah Salway

“An energetic riot of a book, packed with mind-bending mentalism, New Age nonsense and cross-gender bed-hopping. ... Witty, with snappy dialogue and some beautifully-crafted lines.” - Kat Arney

“Turing shows the painful practical limitations of a world of joy. It’s funny, bitter-sweet and disturbing in equal parts. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a novel that’s both entertaining and a feast for the mind.” - Brian Clegg

“If you like an intelligent read that is both thoughtful and entertaining; if you like a book that is well written; if you like something a little out of the ordinary; then I suggest you buy this book.” - Graeme K Talboys

"A fascinating concept, eloquently explored” - Emily Dubberley

“It looks really good. Interesting. Fun.” - Karl Webster, aka Bete de Jour

Yay!!

A Great Man

2010-07-25T22:02:00.003+01:00

In the midst of Book Mania, life goes on. Although in some cases, it doesn't.

My grandfather died just over a week ago. He was 95 years old. He was amazing.

He was a pioneer in many ways. He was a staunch cradle catholic, but a radical one. He was a member of a group of radical Catholics who made a point of discussing and questioning their beliefs, and not always toeing the papal line. He had six children, and was always a hands-on dad. He shared housework and childcare equally with my grandmother, and never even considered there was another way of living life. His mother was a formidable woman, immensely intelligent and a feminist before her time. My favourite story about my father's childhood was always the one about how Grandad would line all six of them up on the kitchen table and clean hands, faces and knees in a production-line row.

He had various jobs, but eventually he trained as a teacher. He worked in the primary school at which Queenie's grandfather was the headmaster. Queenie and I discovered this by accident, when her father spotted my (surprisingly unusual) surname on the spine of my first novel, which she was proudly showing him ("my friend wrote this!"). Queenie's father, when he heard the news, described my grandfather thus: "A super good top bloke, albeit a bit eccentric ... he improved lots of children's lives." Grandad broke new ground by being the first teacher in a special unit designed to cater for children whose behavioural difficulties meant they couldn't survive in mainstream schooling. At the time this was a very new concept. But he never rated himself as a teacher and was always modest.

My grandmother - his wife - died when she was 80, 17 years ago. Towards the end of her life she became increasingly infirm, but Grandad did everything he could to keep her at home, and despite several stays in hospital she died at home. He looked after her like he had always looked after people. He was devoted to her. Grandma really was a little eccentric, and could be occasionally awkward, but I never saw him be anything other than patient and affectionate with her.

It was hard to believe he had been alive so long - he always seemed so young. I have video footage of him running around and chasing after my eldest son when he was a toddler, about six years ago. And I remember another day, a year or so after that, when he spontaneously started kicking a ball around a field with my son.

Towards the end he developed Alzheimers, but it wasn't obvious. He still had a lot to say about things that interested him, and he always played with children that crossed his path.

When I was little, I remember how he had a repertoire of tricks and games designed to entertain children. He could make a funny noise by squeezing his hands together. He had some clever magic trick involving string. He could make it seem like his hands and knees were topologically impossible by crossing his hands back and forth across his knees (blimey, that's hard to describe. If you've seen it done, you'll know what I mean). And he used to recite a strange little rhyme while moving his finger around in a slow spiral which ended up with a tickle and a poke to the midriff. I never forgot the words, and I always loved it. I've written it down below, and it looks almost indecent written down. It really ought to have been scary, but it never was. It was just wonderfully weird. I think that must have been because Grandad could never have been scary.

Eerie, eyrie, iggery um
Filthsome foulthsome dicksome John
Squeemy squirmy squangulum man
Squingulum squangulum
BUCK!

He had a very distinctive voice. I can close my eyes and hear it now. The closest I can think of is Patrick Moore, although Grandad was never posh. His voice was warm, and twinkly, and hugsome. I might miss his voice more than anything.

I just spent a few days at my parents' house, and understandably they are in turmoil. But shining through despite everything. I was worried that me and my two sons might just create more work for them, particularly as my oldest was quite ill and my youngest is at an age (just turned two) when he doesn't know the meaning of the word "quiet" and demands high levels of attention at all times. But they both found comfort in the company of their grandsons. There's nothing quite like being commanded by a bossy toddler to squish into a small shed and stand on chairs whilst nursing a teddy that is apparently a baby... to take your mind off your woes.

My mother's father, my other grandfather, had his 100th birthday party a few months ago. He is currently very ill in hospital. But he is still very much himself and within a day had learnt all the nurses' names. I'm thinking of him. He too is amazing.

Grandad's funeral is this Wednesday. I haven't cried properly yet. Apparently the priest is famous for being welcoming to children, which is just as well: Grandad died with nine great grandchildren, four of whom were born this spring, so it's lovely that he held out this long. I envisage myself standing in floods of tears while my youngest runs riot at my feet. Which I think Grandad would thoroughly approve of.

I Won!

2010-07-16T00:11:00.000+01:00

I won a caption competition.

How cool is that??

You Need Glasses

2010-07-14T20:59:00.002+01:00

This one's great too.

And this one!

by Lucy Pepper.

Clever Peeps

2010-07-14T16:55:00.002+01:00

I've just been watching videos made by that clever Lucy Pepper woman. This is my favourite:

But if you follow this link you'll find Dead Sad Song and Girl on a Train, which are also good.

She is also a whizz at book cover design. Just so's you know.

You talking to me?

2010-07-13T21:22:00.002+01:00

"Now then, I'll just empty that wet load of washing and carry it upstairs, then I can bring another dirty load down again."

"But I'll have to empty the wet stuff out before I can use the basket again."

"And I can't hang it up, because the drier is in Son Number Two's bedroom and he isn't asleep yet."

"How about I fetch the dirty stuff down first, empty it out, and then fill the basket with wet stuff?"

"Ooh, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that?"

"You did."

"Oh yeah."

Review Copy done!

2010-07-09T18:48:00.006+01:00

YAY!!!!!!!

I finished the edit. Not only that but my brilliant wonderful LOVELY designer, Lucy Pepper, has knocked up a quick cover for the review copies. Which actually means all those lucky reviewers will be getting something a lot smarter than was originally planned. It is all way too tedious and complicated to go into detail, but suffice to say what was going to be A4 comb-bound is now an actual Lulu paperback. Reviewers will receive them next week.

Above is just the cover of the review copies. The final thing is still being worked on. The (rather gorgeous) illustration was done by my old friend Francis Blake.

Spine:

Pretty Pretty!

2010-07-08T15:56:00.002+01:00

Ooh, I have the actual watercolour-on-paper version of the cover illustration. I also have all the sketches and notes which led to the final thing. It's beeyootiful. I'm gonna hang it on my wall.

Oof. Only three hours sleep last night. Suspect same tonight. Up late editing. Youngest has been ill. And I suddenly realised today that it's all very well calculating the costs of binding the review copies, but I also need to print the damn things. Hmm, money versus time. Argh.

Sorry, I have nothing else to write about. All very dull. Must go drink coffee.

Forward Movement

2010-07-02T22:49:00.005+01:00

OK, yeah, it was pretty predictable that I would fall behind schedule... but I am making progress. The edit will be finished SOON. Honest. Although it might be finished quicker if I didn't keep getting distracted by faffing about with cover designs.

This is ridiculous because I am NOT A DESIGNER and the only tools I have at my disposal are Microsoft Paint and, er, Microsoft Paint. But my excuse du jour today was that I will have finished review copies to print next week (as long as I stop faffing) and they will need a cover. And the finished design-done-by-an-actual-designer probably won't be ready by then.

So. Now I feel the need to share.

MASSIVE CAVEAT: I AM NOT A DESIGNER.

Edit: Sorry, but I realised it was utterly pointless of me to post it here like that. It was just me playing around with images, and was hopeless as an actual design for a book cover. I liked the way it looked, because I liked the colours and stuff, but it would never pass muster as a book cover so there was no way anyone could truly say "Wow, that's amazing" without having to lie through their teeth. So I've removed it. It was done by me, using Microsoft Paint, whereas the actual thing will be done by professional deigners using professional software, so will / should look completely different.

In other news, I am starting a New Job in my New Career soon, and had my first day there yesterday, and have spent all day today doing that cringey thing when you remember something you did or said and go "Ouch, no, I didn't really, did I?" followed by a wince and then fingers in the ears and shouting "Lalala, I'm not listening" to myself when I try and replay nasty memory recordings to myself. I'm looking forward to being an established member of staff and not having to the newbie-making-an-impression thing any more. Still, the good news is that I hunted the Big Boss down and made him sit down with me and negotiate a better starting salary, and he didn't throw me out on my ear. He did make me put it in writing though.

"Dear Big Boss,

I am ace. Obviously this means I need a shedload more money than those other sad plebs. Gimme gimme gimme.

Snogs,
Beleaguered Squirrel.
xxx"

That should work, no?

Awwwwwwwwwww

2010-06-17T22:48:00.007+01:00

I don't know what you think of soap operas and frankly I don't much care, because I just watched an episode of Emmerdale that moved me in the nicest possible way.

There's been an ongoing storyline for months: Teenage hooligan goes increasingly off the rails and finally has to admit he's gay. He's a laddish lad full of anger and aggression - beating people up, getting into trouble with the police, generally being a pain. And for a while he was full of self-directed homophobia, refusing to accept any common ground with all those nancying bloody queer folk, and assuming that any acknowledgement of his sexuality would mean his whole life imploding and nobody speaking to him ever again. And then he tried to kill himself, and he nearly went to prison, and ohmyGod his Self Destruct button was like some giant carbuncle on the end of his nose just waiting to pop.

Aaaanyway. Some of it has been a bit extreme, as is the way with dramatified wotsits, but sadly homophobia is alive and well and there really are teenage boys out there killing themselves, being beaten up, generally wallowing in mires of confusion and angst, and all because of homophobia.

I've heard people defend the use of "gay" as an insult, on the basis that they don't mean it like that. They are being ironic and cool and all their gay mates understand that it's only a joke.

I have a friend whose son, when he was five, had a best friend who was a boy. They were inseparable and started to say that they wanted to marry each other when they grew up. They were already using "gay" as an insult, because it's standard playground language. But at that point he had no idea what gay actually meant. Then one day he asked his mum. She explained it to him, and he made the connection. So if he and his mate married, that would mean they were gay? That awful thing that nobody wanted to be? He was horrified. He was angst-ridden about it for ages. He kept picking over it and trying to find some alternative explanation. Of course at that age nobody could say whether he would turn out gay or not, and it really shouldn't have mattered. But it did.

Whenever somebody uses the word gay as an insult, there is a teenager somewhere listening in and hating themselves.

I was in a local secondary school the other day and I saw a poster on the wall: "Zero tolerance for racism and homophobia." I was SO impressed. I saw a documentary on the holocaust recently and there was a section on teaching the topic to teenagers in history lessons. The pupils were asked which groups were persecuted by the Nazis. They came up with all of them: Jewish people, old people, disabled people, socialists, etc... but they missed out gays and their teacher didn't correct them. Indeed he had a pre-prepared list with everyone listed... except gay people. I was shocked. But homosexuality is STILL something that isn't much talked about in schools. The Tories have a lot to answer for. I haven't forgotten all their crimes from first time round. Grrrr.

Anyway. I'm getting distracted. What I wanted to say was that there have been several great bits about the way Emmerdale has handled this. One of them is the way his family (the Dingles), who are all butch and gruff and traded a lot of homophobic banter before they knew he was gay, have all rallied round and done their best to help him accept himself. And tonight, he finally kissed another boy. And it made me go awwwww. They were tentative and awkward and kept misunderstanding each other and were worried that maybe the other one didn't fancy them after all and it was all scary and nerve-wracking and it took me straight back to being a teenage girl in love with other girls, and all the terror and confusion that went with that, but then.... aaaaah. They kissed. And then they did that mad grinny thing you do when you've finally got to kiss the person you've fancied for ages and it's LOVELY and you can't stop smiling.

[happy sigh]

Awww.

Cover Girl

2010-06-16T12:09:00.002+01:00

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

We have a final image for the cover. And I love it! I particularly love the covers. And I love the plan for the cover. It's going to be really clean and simple, just one big bold colourful energetic picture, the title, the author's name (I've decided on Alice Turing) and on the back nothing at all except a small vignette at the bottom. Matt finish. Yay! The lettering will be drawn by the illustrator, rather than trying to find the right font. It gives it a more organic feel.

I'm really excited about it. This cover is going to be sooooooooo much better than my other books so far.

It's still under wraps for now, but once we have a final cover design, I'll post something up. Meeting with the designer tomorrow, all going well.

Anal Info

2010-06-14T22:45:00.002+01:00

Have I blogged about this before? I'm not sure. Well anyway.

In the last few years it seems to have become a blog etiquette thingy that bloggers must answer each comment individually, and make direct reference to the things that were said.

I guess a lot of commenters don't read the other comments and don't care how the blogger responds to them, but I'm kind of anal, as well as nosy, so I tend to read the whole lot. And then get really annoyed, because the blogger's response will typically look like this:

"Mr Smartypants, you know what? I think you're right.

HedgehogInABlender, I thought so too, but then I read Tolstoy and all was revealed.

ABCToG, I expect so. Apart from the plums.

Pantygirdle, hahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!"

...and so on. Sometimes there will have been double-figures-worth of comments before this happens, and although I may be anal and nosy, I'm not quite so intrigued that I can be bothered scrolling up and down to cross-reference every comment to its response. Even responses to my own comments often leave me a little stumped cos I can't remember what I said in the first place.

In fact it's surprisingly easy to either quote a line from the original comment or otherwise make your response make sense so that everyone will understand what the hell you're on about and not just the person you're aiming it at.

I'm not singling anyone out here. You all do it, you bastards. Well, most of you.

So anyway: STOP IT.

Thankyou. That is all.

Squashed Flat!

2010-06-14T22:27:00.003+01:00

My littlest got his finger slammed shut in a door last week.

Flat as a pancake it was, and it kind of popped at one end.

Oh that's weird, I did it again. "One end?" said my mum. "Surely you mean the end?" and I suppose I do, but fingers have two ends, don't they? It's just that one is attached to the rest of the hand and is unlikely to pop when slammed shut in a door.

Anyway. He was weirdly unfazed by it all, as was I. "It's only a finger, don't worry," I said to his big brother who was busy having hysterics, although it turned out he didn't find out until the next day that his little bro hadn't fallen down the stairs. I think it was the blood that did it, as it did rather get spread over everything and made things look worse than they were. Anyway, the unfazedness of Son Number Two was probably connected to my own tranquility, which was really just a steadfast refusal to think too much about the squashed-flat-ness and focus instead on its amazing bounce-back-to-life-ness which occurred only minutes later and made me think I had imagined the squish. But I knew the bones of young people are bouncy and hard to break (they weren't broken).

He's now very pleased with the succession of multicoloured socks which have been put over the bandage to stop it falling off. When his nan asked about it on the phone, he chuntered out one of those long toddler sentences that make no sense to anyone but the toddler, and waved his hand enthusiastically at the earpiece so she could see.

Some friend of my mum - in the middle of the night, when half asleep - once put her baby down on the floor, then pulled down a hinged spare bed from the wall, sat on the bed, bent down and picked her baby up... only she couldn't, because the baby had become myseriously glued to the floor. She tugged at it for a while before she realised that she was sitting on the bed, whose leg was placed firmly on the leg of the baby (who had already been crying anyway, and the mum didn't understand the increase in intensity). Anyway. The baby's leg looked proper-squished, for a few minutes, but then it pinged back into shape and the baby was fine. And is now an unmaimed adult.

Not that I'm recommending anyone drop weights on young children or find other creative ways of squishing their bones...

Eek. This post will go horribly wrong unless I stop digging. Seriously. Son Number Two got lots of cuddles and we were all very perturbed and are now terribly anal about propping the front door open and watching out for the tiniest gusts of wind (it blew shut, you see).

I found myself wincing and closing one eye when someone blogged about cats in distress this week, and felt slightly sick when I returned to find nothing new had been posted to distract me from the cats. Have I just committed the same sin? Hmm. Possibly I have. No babies were harmed in the making of... well actually... oh dear.

It Never Ends

2010-06-14T22:19:00.002+01:00

Oh, woe is me. I am some kind of major fool masochist. So there I was, nearing the end of the hardest nine months of my life courtesy of my new career, and what do I do? Pile a load of new pressure on myself, that's what. Why did I decide to publish a book on my own exactly now?

Because I wanted to. Oh.

Well, anyway. The bloody thing still isn't edited, and there are various tedious hold-ups and setbacks...

Oh well, actually the "setbacks" consisted of me being slightly paranoid, which has just been unconfirmed by email.

My main problem is that what I really need right now is the freedom to say "When the kids are in bed I will kick back, watch telly, drink beer and sleep as much as I damn well please" for the first time in a long time... except I can't cos I have to finish this edit.

Oh well. I brought it on myself. And now I'd better get back to it.

I'll just rabbit a little more first.

Of course there are the usual self-hating woes, but I do have a recurring habit of focusing on one small flaw and deciding the whole edifice is a pile of shit. Which really isn't true, and anyway all the flaws are fixable. Which of course means more editing... but it's worth it. It has to be good.

Coming soon: Blog posts about stuff other than books. Maybe.

In a name

2010-06-08T22:59:00.002+01:00

I have no name!

I did have one, but it's a bit broke cos of negative associations. Then I had another one but it turns out to also belong to some Scottish liberal democrat.

I need a pseudonym that sounds like a real person, but is a bit distinctive, a bit sassy, a bit clever... argh. I really don't mind if it's actually quite ordinary, I just have to feel like it could be me.

It's horribly difficult. All suggestions welcome.

Va Va Voom*

2010-06-04T09:44:00.004+01:00

I can't get started today. This might be because I am suffering from up-late droopiness. Or because said up-lateness was caused by me crafting an email for potential reviewers, telling them how delightful it would be to receive a proof copy of my book. Or because I'm a workshy eejit who never starts work as soon as she reaches her desk.

Anyway, I'm all keyed up. I sent extracts out with that late-night email, so people could get a hint of what an amazing book mine is [cough]. So this marks the first time in a long while that I've pushed that child onto a stage and asked her to perform.

I've been flitting between periods of gloom this week. I've come to the end of an intense period in my new career. I'm suffering the comedown from that, as well as some doubts about whether my life isn't just one long catalogue of Bad Decisions. And I've been editing the book, which - particularly as I haven't read it myself for over a year - means the usual rollercoaster of "It's brilliant!" "It's terrible!" from one moment to the next. It does mean I have a fresh perspective on which extracts will showcase it most effectively. But one of the people I approached last night has already responded, and one of the actually-very-helpful things she said was that a random set of unconnected extracts don't give her a proper idea of the book. She would need to see, just as an agent or publisher would, the first three chapters. She makes a good point. I only thought of the extracts as teasers, to give an idea of my writing style and convince people to request a review copy and see the whole thing properly, but what she said still applies.

The "she" in question is Nicola Morgan, who writes the "Help! I Need a Publisher!" blog, and is an all-round good egg. She wrote a blog post about me and my plight a while back. She responded incredibly quickly to yesterday's email, and in a lot of detail. Sadly she can't write a review, but I understand why.

Anyway. Two people have already said yes, but now instead of getting on and editing the damn thing, I'm watching my inbox. Gah.

I'm only halfway through the edit, and of course the schedule has slipped. The design meeting was cancelled because the illustration wasn't ready yet, and there's no way I'll be getting the review copy off to Lulu this week as planned. I thought I would do a quick edit - just tighten the prose. But in the process I've noticed a couple of weak areas that would benefit from some focused work. And I really really want this book to be good, and it's great to have the perspective of returning to it after a long break, and I want to make the most of it. So I've added a fortnight to the schedule, and I think that works.

Sorry, this post is getting boring now: Feel free to wander off.

The big areas of work are (a) editing the manuscript, (b) getting the cover finished, and (c) setting up a campaign (website, emails, Facebook group etc) to persuade people to buy the book in advance. Maybe I'm going overboard. Maybe I have enough friends and family who would buy copies with minimum encouragement. But what if I don't? Huh? How awful would it be if I had to refund everyone's money because there wasn't enough to fund the print run? And anyway... this is the bit I like. "Look at me!" I shout with glee.

But isn't this what I was trying to get away from? The jostling for attention, followed by disappointment when the only response is a pooch on the pavement licking my hand? Um... no. No, I don't think so. My expectations are low, and they have an end point. Instead of the moving-goalpost aim of more and more people buying my book, all I need is a discrete number. Then the book will be printed, dispatched and that will be that. I'll carry right on with my life. In the corner of my study will be one proud copy of one beautiful book. There won't be boxes and boxes of the damn thing staring at me reproachfully every time I open the cupboard door. Just one. And I will love it.

*When I started this post, I mistyped the title as "Va Va Vom". I need to file that one away for a dynamic post about sick.**

**Sorry.

Wing Dust

2010-06-03T00:55:00.003+01:00

I've been editing all day. Goalposts are moving and the book cover won't be ready for another couple of weeks yet. The review copy, which I was hoping would go to press this week, might take a little longer too.

The good news is I like this book, and I'd enjoy reading it if I hadn't written it. No matter how many times I edit it, it always wants more work, so it needs pinning to history like a butterfly in a museum case; taking beyond my reach to preserve the dust on its wings.

I'm more excited about the reality of this book than I ever was by my other published works. Being in proper control of its physical being makes a huge difference. The others, when they arrived, were anticlimaxes. I already knew I didn't like the covers very much, so holding them in my hand was no big deal.

This one has to be different.

Bullet Holes

2010-06-03T00:35:00.003+01:00

I can't stop thinking about the Cumbrian shootings.

These things are always shocking, but this happened in an area of the country I know very well. I know some of the characters affected, albeit vaguely. But I've met them. I've been there. Members of my family are there now (but not directly affected).

I've always been fascinated by the extreme. I've read and written fictions about people hiding out in remote countryside locations from menacing figures with weapons. The basis for these wild imaginings has always been Eskdale, just because I know it so well. But I find it almost impossible to believe that something real, as preposterous as the scenarios played out in my head, has actually happened there.

I want to know what was in his head, what he was thinking, how he felt, how someone can do something like that. WHY. And not just because I'm shocked and horrified, which obviously I am. But because I'm intrigued. How does it happen? What is the process? Was he always a little mad, or did it happen suddenly? We'll never really know.

I've tried writing fiction in which people do extreme things, and it doesn't work. Maybe because I've never done anything like that myself, never could. My emotions are extreme but my actions never have been. I can't imagine myself into such a situation, not convincingly, neither as victim nor perpetrator.

It's hard to believe it's true. They moved Coronation St on location for the day, right?

I can't think of a suitable way to end this post. It's tempting to post platitudes such as "my heart goes out..." or "condolences..." just in case anyone seriously affected by today's events happens to stumble by. But it would be hollow and insincere, a passing nod to propriety. This is all fiction to me. I can't seem to make it real.

Cool Reception

2010-06-01T11:52:00.000+01:00

Yesterday my son got given a helicopter ride as a birthday present from his doting nan. Said ride happened at a Country Show at a stately home in Yorkshire, a weirdly posh-but-not-posh event. By chance he ended up getting the helicopter ride with the children of the people who owned the helicopter. I suppose this means they were rich, but they didn’t look it to my untutored wouldn’t-know-a-designer-label-if-it-bit-her-on-the-arse eye. They were wearing jumpers and jeans. Anyway. After the ride, the father of these other children asked my son what he thought of it. “It was cool,” said my son. “We don’t use words like that,” said the man. So I laughed heartily. I assumed he was joking.

His face said he wasn’t. I struggled to take any of it seriously and had to exit quickly.

People are weird.

Stuff Going On

2010-06-01T10:04:00.003+01:00

I've just come to the end of a particularly intense project in my new career, not much sleep etc, and now I have a week off. Which means I get to catch up with the rest of my life, not least a humungous quantity of housework, but crucially I get to be ALONE. Oh, it's like plunging into a warm pool under a sunlit sky. I get to be in my own home for a long period of time with no urgent deadlines and nothing stressful to do in the morning and all small people safely dispatched unto the care of others' hands.

So now I can focus on my book. This means spending most of my spare time editing a final draft, to be Lulued into review copies. But also...

For the past month the illustrator has been cogitating over the cover, and this weekend he came up with a couple of tentative draft images. This bit is HARD. Thank God he's a professional illustrator with decades of experience and knows what he's doing, cos I sure as hell don't. I can say what I don't like, but what I'm crap at is imagining a preferable alternative. The drafts have energy and humour, and I'm worried our tinkerings might stamp that out, but I think between us we'll get there. His wise voice is reminding me that it doesn't have to be literal. That what we are trying to do is capture the spirit of the book, and make people want to read it. And that if there is sex in the title, there probably has to be sex on the cover.

Yesterday we swapped pictures and thoughts, and this afternoon we'll be doing more of the same. It'll be ongoing all week. I have a meeting with the designers on Thursday, but we've agreed that we're not aiming to have a finished illustration by then, as that might put us in too much of a rush. This isn't to be hurried. We hope to have it nailed by next week though.

What's lovely about all this is that the illustrator is doing this for love, not money. We are old friends and he really cares that we produce something lovely. Of course I feel guilty about not being able to pay him much, but I just have to try not to think of it like that.

In the past I've done things like this and been terrified of offering an opinion or making any demands on people who clearly know more than me and who are anyway doing me a favour, but I've learnt it's pointless to think that way. This is my book, and my opinion matters. But I also have to trust in others' creative ability. Eek. The meeting with the designers will be interesting, too - particularly as we might not have a finished image to work with, but it's only an initial meeting.

So I'll be seeing Francis (the illustrator) on Friday, when I go and stay with him in London, and hopefully we'll have a tentative design to look at by then, as well.

My other reason for being in London is Stan, aka Bete de Jour, aka Karl's party. I found him fascinating even before I read his book and decided he wasn't real. Now he's admitted he isn't real. Or at least, I think he has. I probably found out who he was by accident a few months ago, so I think I already know. But anything could happen on Friday. Including bugger all. We have a back-up plan, Francis and I, just in case. I love London. I'll be there less than 24 hours (motherhood, motherhood, motherhood) but I'll make the most of it. Time for me has been scant for the last nine months, so this is a rare treat.

I thought about posting the draft book cover images here, but won't yet. We wouldn't tell people what names we were considering for the babies in my belly, either. It's the same thing. Unfinished creations are uniquely vulnerable to criticism, and sometimes even two opinions are confusing enough, never mind any more.

Rotting Flesh

2010-05-28T21:23:00.002+01:00

Now that we've had some daylight I've been able to investigate the stink-in-the-flowerbed situation further. I did have a theory at one point that I was about to discover something dead... and it seems now that I was right. It wasn't a stinky toadstool.

IT WAS A DEAD BODY.

Sunlight revealed maggots, slimy gloopy stuff, and a bone.

And that half-a-potato thing? It was half a bloody potato! The whole thing is next to our compost heap, which might explain that. The bone, we think, was buried by our dog in the first place. It was probably Sunday Dinner pickings, stolen and then carted off. The potato may even have come from the same source, because after all why would we put half a potato into the compost? We don't put foody leftovers in there, just veg that have gone off / sprouted. And peelings. And tea leaves.

It must have had a lot of meat still on though, to have gone so foul. But there was no hair or skin or fur or anything, and only one bone, which was too large to have come from the kind of small creature that might die naturally in our garden.

So. Dead lamb. Or maybe chicken. Or pig. But still no explanation for any previous stinks. I feel slightly dissatisfied. This ain't over yet.

Caninus Mutinus

2010-05-27T23:44:00.002+01:00

Aha!

I reckon it's a dog stinkhorn. Mutinus caninus (what a great name).

Look! Half a potato! Apparently these are called the "eggs":

I haven't yet seen these things (I suspect the dog obliterated them), but aren't they utterly, magnificantly phallic?

"It has some disgusting mushroom fruit that looks like a dog d*ck with the tip dipped in sh*t."

Although I've never actually seen one of these dog-dick thingies. Anyway this one will be bagged and binned tomorrow. Apparently they don't normally sprout dicks until July, so it might still have been at the egg stage. Gawd knows.

Mysterious Stinky Thing in my Flower Bed

2010-05-27T23:02:00.003+01:00

So, every year at about this time we have had Bad Drain smells in our garden. This has been going on for over ten years. I always spend a few days sniffing at drains and being mystified when our drains appear to in fact be fine.

A few times I've decided the stink was coming from the earth in our flower beds, but could never narrow it down to a specific location. I've wondered a few times if it was actually a Bad Drain smell that was heavier than air, sinking down to ground level and then drifting about aimlessly, hence hard to locate.

I've had this lingering paranoia that we have a broken sewer gradually seeping shit into our earth, but had no idea how to ascertain whether this was true or not, or what to do about it if it was, so shoved it to the back of my mind.

ANYWAY. Tonight I went in the garden and was hit by how strong it was. And also found the dog had got through the makeshift fence and into the bit she's not allowed in, where she had happily dug a new hole in a flowerbed. Got the dog back inside, and suddenly the stink was all over the house. Took me a while to realise that it was only in whatever room the dog was in. And her feet stank of it. So I checked out the newly-dug hole... yup, it stank of The Stink. Oh no, I thought. I was right. We have earth full of sewage. So I took the torch out, and found... really weird stuff in the earth, where the dog had dug a hole.

There was a load of crumbly whitish-coloured stuff, a bit like soggy chalk or crumbly cheese. It stank of The Stink. There was also a thing that looked rather like a potato chopped in half. You know the patterns you get in the cross-section of a potato, kind of radiating out from the centre? Kind of like that, and shrivelled at the edges, like a dried-out half-potato. But also slightly spongy, and grey. I didn't investigate very far, cos it was dark, and it stinks. Although you have to get your nose quite close to it to smell it. But sadly I got some of the crumbly stuff on my fingers and the smell won't wash off. But again I have to put my nose close to smell it. But anyway. There was a significant quantity of the weird crumbly stuff, like, more than a handful, and it looked like it might extend deeper. The half-potato thing looked like it might also be crumbly and like the other stuff if I was to break it apart.

So, could it be some kind of stinky fungus? Maybe it's been there for years and comes into some kind of Pong Season at this time of year? Any Smelly Fungus experts out there?

[update: see here]

Same But Different

2010-05-07T23:16:00.005+01:00

I've lived in this house for 21 years, since 19 short years old.

It's changed several times and in various ways, with me twice moving out then returning. I arrived at the start to an upstairs flat in the wake of minor disasters. Myself due to crutches and metal in my leg, the flat due to recently-disappeared amenities. When I needed the loo I went downstairs to our neighbour's flat, itself full of rubble from our collapsed bathroom floor.

It's no longer two flats - we converted it back to a house. What used to be my single-student-staying-up-all-night kitchen is now my baby son's bedroom. The sitting room, where I laughed and played and danced and slumped, is now my bedroom.

My memory is atrocious. People tell stories of memorable adventures and I look at them blankly. But I remember one morning, or possibly a series of several transposed events, 5am or so. I'd been up all night and was sitting in an old-fashioned wicker chair, my feet on the living room windowsill, listening to Enigma and watching the sun rise. It was still a flat, and this was my sitting room. The carpet was somebody else's used shag pile, which had sounded attractive in the Loot advert but was a pain to bring home and fit. And far from being the foot-sinking luxury it claimed to be it was dusty, dirty, crumb-filled and had dead insects collected about its roots. It got sticky.

There was a bed in the corner, the spare bed, used as a sofa. I covered it with an old curtain - rosebud pattern, the centre of each bud a hole. In some previously-hanging state, the sun had sought those flower-centres out - something to do with the nature of the dye, I surmised - and rotted them away.

The whole flat was like that. Faded beauty, make do and mend.

And now it is a house with a family, and no single party girls in sight. And tonight, as I aimed for the curtains on my way to bed, I paused. I remembered. I changed my mind. I didn't want to close the world away and lie down on my orthopaedic mattress. I wanted to draw up my ancient wicker chair, leave the curtains wide open and watch the quiet world. Like all that time ago, of which I remember little, but those window-side moments have stuck. Why them, and not others? What was indelible about those small snatches of time?

It's not the same place. I can stand with the same feet on the same floor and remember being here, at this view, in this night. But it wasn't here. It was another place, a one that lives in my head. A one connected with here, but not here. The passage of years has taken it as far as though it were miles and miles ago. I have moved through this space and each step on the same-worn ups and downs has moved me further away.

Even the ceiling is lower.

But that former me and all those others besides are here in the air and the walls, and they make this house be what it is - a pulsing repository for all that has gone before. 138 years of history. I could live to be the age of my grandfather - a century old this year - and still my life would be nudging just half of the story of this house.

It holds me in its bricks.

I like that.

Pictures, Lovely Pictures!

2010-05-01T12:43:00.006+01:00

Me and Him Indoors (or rather, Him Indoors and I) spent the evening last night looking at book covers and thinking about what we want mine to look like.

A few days ago I had one of those "Doh!" moments when I was reminded of the fact that Him Indoors runs a small community magazine for a living, and spends a goodly chnk of his life tinkering with design software, pdfs etc. And he has a whole team of designers who are itching for exciting projects to get their teeth into. Which means that not only can Him Indoors do the typesetting and formatting of the text for the book, and create one of they mystical pdf doodahs the printers keep asking for, he can also help with the design of the cover. I have an extremely talented ilustrator lined up, but although he has some experience of design he's not a designer, and also doesn't have the correct software available. But Him Indoors does. Hurrah.

So anyway. We looked at book covers, we looked at books illustrated by our illustrator, we mucked around a bit on Him Indoors' computer, and we came up with a tentative idea for how the book might look. And crucially we came up with what the illustrator has asked for, which is a brief for what we want him to draw.

I've just spoken to the man himself on the phone, and what a lovely man he is. He's an old friend. Well, I've known him for about six years, but it feels like I've known him forever. I met him on the internet. I just happened across his website, and liked a picture of a tiger I saw there so much that I emailed him and told him I wanted to be his friend. Several emails later and he was just that. Then he came to my first book launch, and now he is my first choice of person to stay with or otherwise catch up with whenever I'm in London.

(that's one of his)

(he's called Francis Blake)

Anyway, we had a lovely chat and I described what I think we want and he's going to do some rough sketches and then we're going to see what we think. The best thing about all this is that he has a naturally collaborative approach, but also he is a librarian and a bibliophile and is as excited as I am about making this book a really wonderful thing. Although he won't be doing the actual design, he will be acting as consultant in the design process, and hopefully between us we can come up with something great. We're aiming for a vibrant, slightly anarchic, humorous, irreverent feel, with bright colours and strong design.

If all goes according to plan, we'll have an image in four weeks' time which will then form the basis for the design of the cover. That may be ambitious, but we'll see. In four weeks I will also do a revised edit on the text, and create a rough review copy in Lulu which I can send out to a small number of people to get reviews and quotes. Then a month after that (early July) I will hopefully have reviews, quotes and a finished cover design. Then I can go about getting advance orders, and if I manage to get at least 50 of them I can send everything off to the printers and get a book printed! EASY!

:O)

This is an Experiment

2010-04-26T00:01:00.003+01:00

I recently came across a furore on a forum because one member used another member's private Facebook photo to poke fun at her. She said she had made her photo albums private, so that only friends could view them. And yet this person - who wasn't one of her Facebook friends - had posted this photo on a public forum, and it was clearly visible to everyone, despite being hosted by Facebook.

So, long story short... Can you see the pic in the link below? And are you one of my Facebook friends?

UPDATE: This utterly gorgeous pic was in fact taken by Ms SpiralSkies, whose details you will see in the comments. She is very talented!

What Flippin' Book?

2010-04-25T22:56:00.002+01:00

Some of you will have no clue of what this book is, about which I chunter so endlessly.

The latest is that I have an illustrator and a design team and have now been charged with the frankly-slightly-terrifying job of deciding what kind of thing I want on the cover, so the illustrator can produce a rough sketch. Eek! And ooh! I have a week to make my mind up. I have some ideas though, thank Dog.

Anyway. Here is the blurb. Just in case you were wondering, like.

Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex
by mutter mumble.

It's completely mental.

Or so Leo thinks, and he should know - because Leo is a mentalist.

Henrietta thinks people should stay the hell out of each other’s heads, keep their hands to themselves, and dance with people they know. Not with strangers. Not in public. And especially not psychically. That’s just ridiculous.

Psychic Dancing is a New Age sensation, but is it a trick of the mind? A harmless self-help technique? Or a breakthrough in human consciousness, which will end all pain and disease?

Leo makes money from reading minds, so he knows full well it’s a con. But Leo’s gigs are poorly attended, and Psychic Dancing’s a hit. So when his dead grandad sends an insult from the grave, Leo does something drastic.

Henrietta’s past won’t leave her alone, her neighbour's a Psychic Dancing fanatic and Henrietta’s fallen in love with Belle, who loves Leo, who loves Denzel, who will only love him back if Leo admits he’s gay.

The climax comes in the Albert Hall in the presence of thousands, when something magical happens. Something which shocks them all.

Told with humour, magical know-how and a twisted eye, this book is an energetic and intriguing tale of love, lust and illusion. With a cast of tricksters, worshipers, lovers and bent spoons, it will have you guessing - and believing - to the end.

After all...

We easily believe what we ardently desire to be true.

To Charge or not to Charge?

2010-04-25T22:36:00.002+01:00

(background: I've decided to self publish a novel which has been published in Germany but not the UK, and I'm thinking of funding it by asking people to pay in advance)

This is yet another post which started out as a reply to a comment. Somebody suggested that if I try and get people to pay money for the book before it's even been printed, I may end up having to pay it back, which would be tedious and disheartening. An alternative suggestion was that I might ask for promises followed by money. I can see the point of that, but I think it's a bit vague, and would be hard to administer. How awful to be chasing people for money they promised, only to find they didn't really mean it. I think it has to be either promises OR money upfront.

I'll see how it goes. If it's a total disaster I can change it mid-track. But my experience in the past is that people are more likely to be excited by / willing to commit to something if that commitment is tangible. They then become part owners in the whole scheme and are more passionate in its support.

In 1999, my partner and I couldn't decide what to do for The Millennium. It felt as though it would be like any other NYE but to the power of 10, towhit: You're never quite sure what to do or where to go and you can't get your mates to commit to anything definite, so you end up panicking at the last minute and struggling to find a taxi. Or committing in advance to something, only to find that everyone decides to do something else.

So we decided, in July 1999, to sound out all our mates about the possibility of throwing a party at our house. But we had to find a way of making people commit in advance. We didn't want to end up in a half-empty house while all our mates did something more exciting instead. So we produced a leaflet with a simple proposition: If we could get 50 people to pay IN ADVANCE, we would lay on a lavish not-for-profit party at £25 per head. If we didn't have all the money by October, we would cancel the plan and refund those who had paid.

It worked. 50 people paid up, and because they had paid, they felt they owned it. We had a veritable army of willing volunteers to transform our house into a mini night club for the night and then help run the whole thing. We also bought loads of lovely treats in bulk, and there was tons left over for days afterwards. Nobody had to bring any booze, everything was free, and there were no gatecrashers because we were all very clear that only those who had paid could come. And because people had actually paid money, and helped organise it, they were wedded to it and there was never any question of absconding elsewhere. It was the best party we have ever had, by a mile.

Anyway. I think I need to make a bit of A Thing about this book. Get people excited, have some kind of whizzy online counter which clearly indicates how many people have signed up, so we can all will it on to the 50 mark and maybe even 100. It'll be clear that it'll be a limited edition, so anyone who doesn't sign up in advance will potentially lose out. First come first served. After that, the financial sums will dictate what happens. But it would be something along the lines of, "If another 40 people sign up I can afford the next 50-book print run." I doubt I'll ever be able to afford to give away Beautiful Hardbacks as review copies. The review copies will have to be proof copies, just cheap plain Lulu paperbacks, or even manuscripts. Everyone will have to pay for The Real Thing**. But that's just another aspect that makes them properly special.

Of course I can't entirely quell the tiny voice at the back of my head which says, this could really take off. But it's unlikely. I don't have the marketing power. But I'll publicise it wherever I possibly can (which is, come to think of it, a lot of places) and what's really important is that a small number of quality* readers get to finally enjoy my book. And I feel, just a little, like a writer again.

And faint heart never won fair adventure. That millennium party was a great example, I'm glad I thought of it. I've taken loads of risks in my life. I regularly get over-excited and have Great Ideas. Some of them fizzle out. But some of them work, and life is so boring if you don't take risks. Sometimes you just got to close your eyes, shout WAHAAAY! and jump.

*By quality I don't mean posh, or clever, or superior. I just mean that they are people who know something about me, people whose feedback is meaningful to me, people I don't have to insult by appealing to the lowest common denominator and watering everything down as a result.

**I've just realised there'll be people reading this who know eff all about the book itself. Time to dig out that blurb, methinks. Coming up next post.

Forward Movement

2010-04-24T22:06:00.002+01:00

I think I mentioned ages ago that I'd foolishly volunteered to help out with a local musical. I was also for a while in charge of the music side of things, which was very daunting. Luckily I was relieved of that responsibility earlier this year, and became instead a General Helper-Outer And Keyboard Player.

Well, we put it on this week, and it was utterly exhausting but very rewarding and I'm both pleased and sad that it's over.

And it's meant that there has only been a small amount of movement on the book front, but there has been some. I now have a vague idea of how I'm going to do it, and am gradually getting involvement from Clever Creative Types who will help me make this book A Beautiful Thing.

I can't write too much until I have a better idea of who's doing what, but I'm aiming to have a cover, blurb, quotes and maybe even reviews ready by the end of June / beginning of July, which is when I will start a massive campaign to get advance orders for the book. The number I get will determine the size of the print run.

I'm hesitating slightly over whether I can ask people to pay upfront. I'm tempted to accept promises rather than actual hard cash... but this is probably foolhardy. And I *think* I could get enough people to do it... or could I?

It's horribly easy to get ahead of yourself with these things. You think to yourself, "Well, I know hundreds of people in this context, and hundreds more in this other one... and thousands of people have read my [previous] blog... so that adds up to a gazillion book sales, right?" WRONG. You can't assume anyone will buy anything. Ever.

But... out of the literally hundreds of people who read and enjoyed my first book, and the hundreds more who have met me since and responded positively to the various writing-related things I've done... I can surely find 50* to commit to buying this book. Friends and family alone ought to cover that. Easily. But will they? And will they be happy to pay up in advance?

NEVER ASSUME.

Problem is... I don't think I can hedge my bets here, or start on one track and then switch halfway. Either I'm asking people to pay up in advance or I'm just asking them to commit to buying the thing after it's been produced.

But then again... NEVER SHOW DOUBT**. Assume a thing will work, act like there was never any question that it would work... and chances are, it will work.

And anyway. It was published by a major international publisher. It's not a complete punt.

Eek!***

*100 would be better, but 50 is a viable option. I think.

**Ahem. So this post doesn't exist, right? You're not reading it. Yes? Good. Glad we cleared that up.

***That's eek as in "Oh help!" But also as in "Eeee, how exciting!"

On Dreams and Growing up

2010-04-12T15:53:00.003+01:00

In this post here I said "Did I spend too much time in the past on impossible wishes? Am I more rooted now, moving towards an achievable future for once? I don't know. I think I might be growing up. Finally.", and Sarsparilla asked: "Do you believe that growing up is a process of losing your dreams, then? What has made you come to believe such a thing?"

...and the whole discussion is salient to my New Plan, so I thought it was worth reproducing my response here:

"Not losing your dreams, but giving up on the impossible ones.

I have new dreams, and they're achievable. Before, I spent a lot of time chasing rainbows.

Now I'm more sensible and realistic, and yes, those feel like attributes one might give to a more mature person.

There's also that thing of having less energy and more responsibility. I'm not the only person I have to look out for now, and my mind and body are slightly more fragile and need protecting - by me - from more of life's dangers.

But this achievable dream thing... it's coincidental I think that you should have arrived here today, the first day in weeks that this blog had fresh content... content which details (see here) my latest dream. This new dream is an example of the less-likely-to-be-possible replaced by the definitely-possible. Not long ago I was a full time writer, chasing after a dream of stardom. Now I've given up on that, which means that instead of panting on the heels of dismissive publishers I can happily announce Fuck All That and publish my own book with impunity.

Self-publishing is inadvisable for a writer trying to get the attention of mainstream publishers. It actively disimpresses them. Getting the attention of these people is something you do if you want to be a "successful" writer, when success is measured by how many books you sell and how many good reviews you get. But there are literally millions of writers and not enough publishing deals to go around... and even if you get published there aren't enough readers either (if you're chasing "success" on publishers' terms), so you have to jump through a million hoops in your efforts to get the attention of publishers and readers... unless you stop, step back, rethink what it's all about. What if what really matters is that you produce a beautiful book? One that you are proud of, that a small number of people can read? People you actually know? People whose opinions matter because you genuinely care what they think, instead of strangers pitching into your meaningless popularity contest? If that's your aim, then self publishing is an entirely reasonable enterprise.

And I think that counts as growing up: working out what will really make you happy, instead of chasing miserably after things which won't make you happy even if you catch them."

... to which I'd like to add that another reason I was chasing mainstream publishers was that I wanted to make a living from novel-writing, which is impossible without massive book sales.

Why did I want to make a living from it? So that I could do it all the time and not have to lose all that lovely writing time on Making Money To Feed The Kids.

But why did I want to write all the time? Because I wanted a life of dreaming, instead of a life trying to make money. But what if the dreams become your means of getting money? Then they stop being dreams, they start being work, they stop being fun, they start to destroy the very soul you were trying to preserve.

I know there are full time novelists who are happy that way and find a route through all this, but I wasn't one of them.

Old Dream, New Dream

2010-04-12T01:41:00.004+01:00

I'm always coming up with Grand Plans. I'm also naturally impulsive, so will often jump straight in with both feet*, only to discover later that it's not going to work - for whatever reason. But sometimes I jump in and keep swimming, and there must be some tipping point beyond which there's no return**, because once I really get going, I don't stop until it's done.

Well anyway. This New Plan I'm currently jumping into is actually an Old Plan, and I talked about it in detail here. But this time I'm going a little further, and think I might actually do it. Self-publish, that is.

My life is busy and manic and tiring and the new career is by far the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. It's also very rewarding and I'm glad I'm doing it, but I still get a little sad about Not Being a Writer any more. But there's no time to do any writing. I have a third novel sitting on my hard disk, but it's still only in Second Draft form and needs a good few months of work on it before it's publishable - months I just don't have.

But... what about that second novel? The one that only ever got published in a foreign language? There was a while when I really didn't like it or think it was publishable, but that was as much about self loathing as anything else. It's a good book and I put a lot of work into it. And it's bonkers that it's sitting there, fully edited and ready to go, and yet hardly anybody's ever read it in English. Plenty of people who know me and like my work are interested in reading it. And how lovely would it be to have a brand new book with my name on it, under my control, designed purely as an object of beauty with no marketing departments breathing down my neck? It's already been published by Random House in a major European country, so it's not like it has no merit or is a pure vanity thing.

That said, this IS a vanity project. I'm happy with that. I'm also happy that it won't lead to fame or fortune or a "proper" publishing deal, and the whole project will run at a loss. But it's this or nothing. It's this or the book never gets published in English. Ever. Which would be a shame.

So, I'm speaking to designers and getting quotes for printing costs and thinking about producing a limited run of gorgeous hardback books, which will be a pleasure to hold in your hand, let alone read. I will of course do yet another edit, which is good cos it's now nearly two years since I last edited it and I've got better perspective on it. It's a good book, but the dialogue needs work and I can make the prose flow better.

So, this is my plan: I'm going to contact everyone I can think of who might conceivably be interested. Friends, family, people who enjoyed my first book, people who have enjoyed my various writing/blogging projects. And I'm going to ask them to commit to buying a copy. I'd probably charge a tenner per book. Might have to be more, depends on production costs. But I'm aiming to subsidise the whole thing myself, so it's not about making money. But I do need to know how many people will buy one so that I know how much money I've got (cos I'm not earning much at the mo) and how small a print run I should go for. I'm thinking 100 is probably a good number, but it might be too high.

This is sort of the wrong place to introduce the idea, cos hardly anyone reads this blog or even knows that I'm blogging here, so it won't give me any idea of potential numbers. But it might be a good test for attitude. Am I mad? Would you commit to buying a book under these circumstances?

I think I'm going to do this. I hope I'm going to do this. I have a bit of spare time coming up, and it'd be nice to be a writer again.

* Thinks: How would you jump straight in with only one foot?

** Tipping point? In a swimming pool? Oh, shut up.

Dreaming

2010-02-19T10:40:00.000Z

I was reading someone's blog just now. They were talking about dreams, about what the future holds. I had a small pang, as I realised I have let go of my dreams. I still think about the future, but it's more pragmatic now. As someone close to me said, it's nice to see me excited about something realistic for once.

Is this a good thing? Did I spend too much time in the past on impossible wishes? Am I more rooted now, moving towards an achievable future for once?

I don't know. I think I might be growing up. Finally.

I evpleaarticus

2010-02-19T00:19:00.004Z

"It's stinthat I evpleaarticus"

Is it just me, or does everyone see occasional crap in the sidebar of this blog? I suspect it's something to do with the latest Firefox update. Yesterday I got this:

"It's stinthat I evpleaarticus=rof 80ficalvd'm domdosl whae caspowdaeethens,t,ae cassoc wasskillsut that are so twrovidblems: (a)m esetwrsrle Iythusiastic misut the 8s to i I evpthe mh. Bf gind I je lisvpthe mh. Bf giem as ve in do exssiveem. She I'd ve no advf in-coanus-res of ut thespeng lisup the habssive, wethefngers? O. (b)e bikle newtg is, Iomagned a pn I'm leanerv-re'm fm leanew a Youch of ratple su,e nt to be ressiveem, slo I faileelke makIould loodhis posson bl theloof thiff."

What's fascinating about this is that it looks as though, if you squinted and had the correct brain in, it might actually make sense. Like it's in code or something. And clearly it kind of is, as somehow some link in some computing chain has turned something that makes sense (to someone at least) into what you see above. How did it happen? What process turned sense into that? Do I have a virus? I'm intrigued.

Update: I've decided it's a rather fine example of some Vogon poetry.

It's stinthat I evpleaarticus
=rof
80ficalvd'm domdosl
whae caspowdaeethens,
t,ae cassoc
wasskillsut that are so
twrovidblems: (a)m

esetwrsrle Iythusiastic
misut the 8s to i
I evpthe mh. Bf gind I
je lisvpthe mh.

Bf giem as ve in do exssiveem.
She I'd ve no advf in
-coanus-
res of ut
thespeng lisup the habssive,

wethefngers? O.

(b)e bikle newtg is,
Iomagned a pn I'm
leanerv-
re'm fm
leanew a Youch of ratple

su,e
nt to be
ressiveem, slo I faileelke

makIould loodhis
posson bl
theloof
thiff.

My favourite bit: "Whether fingers? Oh."

Wonderings, Ponderings and Musings

2010-02-15T11:17:00.002Z

Life's a funny old thing, innit?

Once upon a time not so very long ago I spent a large part of my life on the internet, and my blog was a central part of that. And not just my blog - all the other things wot I rote - novels, articles, stories, whatever - were a large chunk of how I defined myself, how I interacted with the world at large, how I got praise and feedback and general validation.

But things change. I had a baby. I got a bit fed up. I lost my agent, I failed to get my second book published in English, I threw my toys out of the pram, said "fuck this I don't want to be a writer any more" and buggered off to do something else instead.

And now I'm here in this new all-consuming life, getting validation in new ways and mostly forgetting about this corner of the internet which would once have been my home.

I've mentioned it before, so I won't go on about it, but in my new career my previous existence as a novelist is not only unknown, it's my dirty little secret. I live in fear of people finding it out. So within a short space of time it's gone from something I was proud of and showed off about at the slightest opportunity to something to brush under the carpet. That's a bit odd. And a bit sad. But there you go.

This is what I do though. Every few years I pick up the tablecloth upon which my life sits, and I shake it.

I get bored. I want change. I want excitement. I need projects.

Currently I am sitting in my study. I'm supposed to be tidying it. I'm supposed to be using some rare and much-needed Me Time to catch up on admin and jobs. But I'm hungover.

It's nice, this bit. The reason I'm hungover is that yesterday, when I returned from a long car drive...

OH, maybe I'd better explain that journey. It was originally dead simple: Drive my eldest son to my parents' house, a simple 1.5-hour motorway journey, and drop him off there for a week's holiday. But then he convinced us to have his friend for a sleepover, and then his friend had to be returned to his new house in the countryside, only once visited before, and then I had to find my way from there to my parents' house. So I checked on the map and worked out what to do, and set off and did it, and after a while saw a sign which pointed the way I was going and said "this way for a totally other destination in the opposite direction from the one you think you're aiming at," but I kept going anyway and suddenly found myself being shot out on to the roundabout I'd started at 20 minutes previously. This was a bit freaky. Groundhog Day. But I was sure I'd been going in the right direction so I set off to do the whole thing again, this time keeping my eyes peeled for a missed turning. Which I found, with barriers and "Road Closed" signs and all that malarkey, so I kept going and did the whole circle again.

Long story short: It took bloody ages, but eventually I arrived home again, late and sans eldest son. And what did I find? A bath ready run, with scented candles, and the instruction to strip off, relax and drink gin and tonic while my Lovely One put the finishing touches to the special meal he was preparing.

This was in addition to the card and flowers I found on my pillow that morning. The envelope was covered in hearts, doodlings and little loving rhymes which made reference to love and stuff as well as lots of clever jokes about my new career. Inside the card was a series of little puzzles, which when answered gave the message "I LOVE U". And more loving soppy stuff.

And then in the evening I was wined and dined and generally looked after in way that made me happy, drunk and eventually, now, hungover. But still happy. But not functioning very well in a tidying-my-study kind of way and deciding instead to type random musings into the internet.

You just never know what's coming. I'm doing something with my life that fills me up and throws me down and which I'd given up on a long time ago. I'm confounding my own expectations of myself. I thought I would be a writer. I thought I was too selfish to do anything with my life which would be significantly helpful to anyone except myself. I thought I was lazy, I thought I preferred the easy route.

It seems I was wrong.

Hurrah for being wrong.

xxx

Four and a Half

2010-02-03T22:49:00.001Z

I've eaten two apples and some satsuma today. I left two satsumas (and two apples) sitting on the side in the kitchen, to remind me to eat fruit (I keep forgetting). It worked. But then my 18-month-old son came along and said he wanted some satsuma too. I kept giving him segments and realised he was having so many that he was significantly eating into my 5 a day (4.5 fruits (I also had half an apple in my muesli this morning) plus some random bits of veg scattered about half-heartedly) (I am now imagining a house with lettuce leaves on the floor at sporadic intervals) (are you?). So I peeled another one. He had some of that too.

It bothers me that I now don't know whether I had more or less than 2 satsumas, and by what margin.

Unsophisticated Taste in Numbers

2010-01-18T12:12:00.001Z

I noticed the other night that I had managed to get over two weeks into the new year without getting confused about what the date was. Not only had I written "2010" or "/10" correctly several times, but I hadn't even noticed myself doing it. Indeed I can't quite remember or imagine it ever being 2009, as 2009 just seems a bit wrong. This is partly because of the new decade and all that, making the number of the year quite memorable. But it's also cos 10 is just a better number than 9. Ten is right. Nine is wrong.

This is because I prefer even numbers to odd numbers. The best numbers of all are those which have many factors, like 36 or 1024.

My mum, on the other hand, prefers prime numbers. She sewed an extra pocket onto her new coat so that the total number of pockets would be a prime number. I've always felt that my mum was more sophisticated than me because she prefers prime numbers, which are quite clever cool things, rather than even numbers, which are the white bread, the processed sugar, the ITV of the numbers. I am a populist unsophisticated fool in my numbers taste.

I suggested this to Him Indoors the other night and he said I was wrong. He said that it wasn't so much a question of comparing processed sugar with organic home made apple pie, but more like comparing posh caviar with cheap caviar. Most people just don't have favourite types of number in the first place.

The question is, was he right?? Do you have a favourite type of number?

Snow Family Rising

2010-01-05T11:22:00.001Z

Behold!

Snow!

2010-01-05T10:44:00.008Z

Woke up this morning to find ourselves snowed in... in inner-city Manchester. Astonishing. The 7-yr-old's school is shut, we can't get along the road to the baby's nursery, my partner can't get to work, and I had to go fetch a scraper and clear six inches of snow off the skylights in my attic office because no light was getting in. And the stuff's still falling.

This is How it's Supposed to be

2009-12-28T13:31:00.002Z

A seven-year-old boy I know said to me:

"This is how it's supposed to work: Men look after babies and women do all the cleaning. But in this house it's the other way round."

Me: "Well actually, some people say women should look after the babies AND do all the cleaning AND do all the cooking."

7-yr-old: "Eh? But that wouldn't be fair!"

Quite Striking

2009-12-23T11:27:00.003Z

I was handed a book last night, and challenged to find a single paragraph that made explainable sense.

I tried, and I failed. But I did find this gem of a sentence, which I read out loud several times because it was so tongue-warmingly nonsensical:

"Liberal cultural studies' enthusiastic misrecognition of the media-marketing apparatus as the supplier of malleable symbolic material to an autonomous, creative plurality external to itself - a theoretical development that occurred at the same time as the countercultural icon of the 'cool individualist' was replacing the responsible collectivist - is quite striking."

It's the pay-off that I love the most. "- is quite striking!" We were all in agreement that something was most definitely striking, we just weren't sure what. Granted we were a little drunk on tequila, pomegranates, port and stilton. I expect we could have made some meagre sense out of it if we'd tried hard enough. But that would have spoilt the fun.

Musical

2009-12-11T22:15:00.003Z

Like the great big sugar-coated fool that I am, I volunteered to "help out" with a local production of a musical, and suddenly find myself in charge of all the blimmin' music. Help!

It's called Ocean High and is a Grease-a-like with a soundtrack consisting entirely of 80s pop songs. They were all in the charts when I was a teenager, or in some cases even younger, and I am becoming awash with nostalgia. Material Girl, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Footloose, all get me gazing into the middle distance and remembering the excitement, the angst, the sheer giddy giggliness of being 13. And then the other day, preparing for a rehearsal, I clicked through to a YouTube recording of Video Killed the Radio Star, and found myself in tears. It's just such a great song, and I loved it so much when I was ten. And I'd just been (rather foolishly, I suspect) looking at a satellite pic of my grandparents' old house, which hosted so many happy childhood memories and has now been turned into a sock factory (a sock factory!).

I was ten!! It's so long ago. 30 years ago. THIRTY YEARS! And what really gets me is that when I was a kid, various pop songs from the 50s and 60s made comebacks, and they were great (all that Motown and Atlantic Soul) but very old. Very much part of the past - the kind of thing that old-fashioned people once listened to. And now there's a whole new generation thinking that way about me and my youth, and I just can't get my head round it. Partly because I was quite sniffy about the 80s when I lived through them and I still can't think of them as cool, not in the same way that the 50s and 60s seemed cool to me. How can shoulder pads, big hair and rara skirts compete with teddy boys, leather and psychedelia? But partly because... it's not old! It was only yesterday. Wasn't it?

Unkempt

2009-12-07T22:13:00.003Z

There's a bunch of rather lovely and unkempt women over here on unkemptwomen.com being, well, unkempt.

I recommend.

Personally I am permanently unkempt, to the extent that my employer gave me a mild ticking off about it today. How I manage to get washed and dressed at all is a bit of a mystery. It's not unusual for me to drag myself up after four hours' sleep (and I'm a woman who needs her slumber). My baby son is teething, and I'm struggling to remember why the hell I'm putting myself through all this.

I think it's known as challenging. And it'll get even harder in the new year.

Being unchallenged is looking a lot more attractive than it did before. This is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do.

Suspicious Requests

2009-12-05T11:11:00.002Z

"Hi,

I have a client for whom I'm looking to purchase advertising from quality websites. I've had a look at your site at http://beleagueredsquirrel.blogspot.com/ and think that it would be a good match for our client, whose target demographic is similar to your own.

We would be interested in purchasing advertising in the form of a text-based link on your site. To reduce unnecessary administrative costs we prefer to pay a fixed annual upfront fee for such advertisements. Once the ad has been placed, payment can be made quickly by PayPal or check.

Please let me know if the above is of any interest to you. Thanks in advance."

How odd to send a request like this without even hinting at what the product in question is. Surely nobody would say Yes without knowing what they were going to be advertising? And how likely would it be that, given that I currently have no advertising at all, I would want to have just one advert for this product? It would surely make it look as though my blog was a cover, whose real purpose was to advertise this thing (whatever it is), which would just make people suspicious and unwilling to read on?

People are funny. I won't be taking them up on their offer. Not that I even have a clue what it is.

Bad Squirl

2009-11-22T00:59:00.003Z

I am a bad bad squirrel. There you all are, visiting my world-wide-web-log in your dozens, saying delightful things in my Designated Commenting Area, and I am ignoring you all.

I don't mean to, and I don't want to, it's just that my new career is living up to all the dire warnings I was given. Rather impressively, in fact. It sucks the very marrow from my bones.

It's still the right thing for me to do.

But it is also all-consuming, and I am consumed.

The Chaos Hour

2009-11-18T20:59:00.002Z

There is this hour every day, after the kids have come home, before their dad appears, when suddenly everybody is shouting in my ear, wanting stuff which I struggle to provide.

The baby wants boob and a cuddle. The child wants his tea. The dog paws at me with her unclipped claws, demanding moist chunks of meaty goodness. The phone rings, the doorbell clangs, and all of this waits until I am changing a stinky nappy, about which the baby is complaining vociferously. And then the sausages / fish fingers / unhealthy chunks of easily-cooked junk catch fire, just as my fingers are covered in poo.

I don't like that hour very much.