Why I’m self publishing - 15th July 2010

I had a friend who studied for a Masters in Publishing and claimed she didn’t understand anyone who published via the traditional publishing house route. Well I work for a publisher, so I’m glad they do, but for my latest project I have decided not to seek publication via the traditional routes but to go it alone and publish it myself. Is this mad? Slightly. Easy? God, no. Fun? Very.

Doctor, I’ve got an awful case of Zugunruhe - 9th July 2010

I’ve recently written a new story called ‘Zugunruhe’ which you can read on the Short Stories for Women blog here. Now I know it’s not a literary masterpiece or likely to win any prizes, but it was sooo much fun to write. Hopefully it’s as much fun to read, do let me know!

So all this talk of Zugunruhe has got me thinking about our tendency to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side (if you don’t know what Zugunruhe is then read my story, or you could Google it but that would be much less fun!) Perhaps it’s because we have so many options. We spend our lives wondering if we’ve done the best thing: is this the best career for me? Is this the best man/woman I can get? There is always another option if we don’t like what we’ve got. As far as I can tell (not having been alive in the time frame I’m referring to) this is a relatively new phenomenon and is certainly not a global one. Our parents took the job that was available to them, they married the person they dated when they were a teenager, they lived in the place they were born and had their own family there. Now we are so transitory, families are scattered and the world is an open door to us. All of this is a wonderful freedom, for which we should be very grateful, but sometimes it seems like we just don’t know what to do with all these options. We think this new boy (or girl) will be better for us, this new job will revolutionize our life, that this new house will be the place where we are finally happy.

Speaking as someone who has recently moved 400 miles and has had two new jobs in eight months, I have had my fair share of chasing after different things (and trust me this is just the tip of the iceberg in the randomness that has been my twenties so far). I’ve never been afraid to take chances and many times this has paid off in a big way. But the really sad thing is that sometimes, when we’ve done all the chasing and amassed everything on our list, we’re still not satisfied because ultimately it’s not our circumstances that are the problem, it’s us. In a culture that is always driving us to have more, more, more sometimes we need to stop and realise that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you water it. And so I wish you all a satisfying weekend, where you enjoy being just where you are - because perhaps, perish the thought, this is exactly where you’re meant to be.

In which I become all hippy on your ass - 4th July 2010

The last couple of weeks have been completely insane. The new job has brought many new (and exciting) demands, to which I have been giving my absolute all. This, along side the usual self induced mayhem in my life of working on my own writing every hour I can, has been a recipe for extreme tiredness. It is in the midst of all this life changing stuff that I retreat into my inner hippy and now, more than ever, I have discovered it is a great place to be (in spite of the mocking that ensues.)

This summer I decided to have a vegetable growing experiment. Now, before you marvel at my success I must say that my plants were delivered in cardboard boxes (from the fabulous Rocket Gardens) fully developed through the awkward seedling stage and all I needed to do was shove them in pots. But nonetheless I now have a garden full of monster plants that I have nurtured into producing lots of food for me and many that show the promise of lots of good meals to come.

The whole thing is profoundly satisfying - and here comes the hippy bit - incredibly relaxing and therapeutic. Sometimes it feels like life is just about running from one appointment to the next, always getting to the next rung of the ladder and, quite frankly, it’s exhausting. At the end of another long day there is honestly nothing better than wandering around the garden barefoot and seeing what the plants have been doing that day. They don’t demand budget reports or need you to be on your game, they just want you to pop down, check their still thriving and top them up with a little water. And the food - it’s amazing.

So I am a happy soul, standing at my kitchen door looking out on my garden with very dirty finger nails. On Monday morning I’ll have to scrub up and it will begin all over again, so for now - I think I’ll go visit my plants!

Satsumas and the Art of Blagging - 28th June 2010

So last week I started my new job. I am now on my second Monday and it’s all rather exciting. It’s amazing how quickly you become accustomed to a new desk and new people sitting around you. Then you begin to feel like you’ve been here for a million years. Staring at the same screen and eating satsumas (I like satsumas and it’s too hot for chocolate, it melts everywhere.) I have discovered where the good cakes are to be had and where there is a steady supply of tea. I’m also working with one of my bestest friends from school so we can behave like we’re back in class again, but with freedom to roam from our desks and to go to the pub legally at the end of the day. Oh, it’s dangerous! My new desk has purple partitions that would have clashed horribly with my old green ones in the Death Star (my old hideous monster of an office building that looked like it should have been guarded by hooded men holding light sabres.) The partitions there were so tall there I couldn’t even see over them. It was suggested that I could have been sitting there with my head on my desk sleeping and no one would have known. Now there’s a thought…. No such luck at the new place. I arrived on Monday to an inbox FULL of emails. How is this even possible? I didn’t exist yet in Publishing World. I was still in Conference Land. But apparently I did and I had deadlines, yes: DEADLINES, for the week that I arrived no less. Then my phone began to ring. It went a little bit like this:

Criticism is Free Advice - 21st June 2010

Criticism is very hard to deal with and yet it is an inevitable part of life. In particular, it is an inevitable part of a writer’s life. You are constantly putting yourself out there. When people love your work it is the best feeling in the world, when they don’t it really hurts. People have their own reasons for giving criticism, good and bad, but sometimes it can come in a package that is really hard to deal with and very easy to take to heart. I honestly believe there are many good writers out there who never meet their potential because they haven’t managed to come to terms with criticism.  The result being that harsh words have crippled them, making them unable to write anymore. I would urge people who are asked to (or choose to) comment on other people’s work to remember this. We all need time to learn. No one is born a perfect writer; it’s a skill that must be learnt. So please tread lightly, treat others carefully if you can.

 

So in an effort to right some wrongs here is my four step plan to emerging from criticism better than you went in:

 

1. Cry

Or shout, or drink, or go for a run: whatever works for you to let off steam. I’m a sensitive soul so I have a big old cry. I love writing so criticism of my work really hurts. When it’s very harsh I need to grieve it to be able to really get over it. I need to allow myself to feel how crap it is to be told I haven’t done as well as I hoped. I give myself one night to feel sad and then…

2. Get over it

The next morning I turn to my most treasured motto: ‘Criticism is Free Advice.’ The person who said those things to you has done you an enormous favour, even if they didn’t mean to. Because usually there is some truth in there (and sometimes a lot of rubbish too. I must stress this – PEOPLE CAN BE WRONG!!) If you can identify that gem of truth in what they have said and use it to your advantage then you will be better at doing the thing that you love. What could be greater than that?

3. Be Humble

The best way to be in the face of criticism is utterly sweet. That’s why I wait till the next day to respond to any negative comments. By then I am calm and over the initial upset. I can be oh-so-kind and oh-so-very-lovely to that person. You leave the good impression, you take the higher ground, you are the professional, you are the kind hearted human being!

4. Move On

I spent a year being criticised fairly heavily (in a very fair way and very useful way I must add!) by my writing tutor and I finished the year wining an award. That’s how it goes. So whatever it is you are doing, chin up and keep going (And I’m saying that to me as much as to you!)

Mmmmmmm BOP! - 16th June 2010

I have deliberated long and hard about writing this. I have thought about the high chance of public ridicule. I have remembered the days that generated the photo above, when my friends at Uni discovered the truth about my murky past as…..gulp….yes I’m going to say it…...a Hanson Fan.

It all happened on Saturday night. I was home alone (a football widow), drinking wine, writing (yes, I have actually been writing during the football as promised!) and listening to a soundtrack of ancient mix tapes. And then it came on: Mmm Bop. Those angst ridden days of being thirteen and fancying semi-female looking boy children came flowing back and before I knew it I was bopping! Yes, it’s true. I confess it to you now. I bopped. I sang along loudly to the unintelligible lyrics and worst of all, I enjoyed it. If you leave right now, I understand. Thirteen years has done nothing to dilute the power of Mmm Bop.

And that, my friends, is my point (believe it or not I do have one besides publicly shaming myself). No one of our generation missed Mmm Bop. They can all still sing it (except for the aforementioned unintelligible verses – that is impossible for anyone but Hanson) and it was, and is, unique. That’s a pretty powerful debut. As I’m busy writing my debut novel this gave me (slightly drunken) food for thought. In the sea of unpublished manuscripts surely having that catchy idea for a debut is vitally important. I’ve heard of people not being published with a good book because it isn’t a suitable debut. It’s tough out there for unknowns. The idea has to stick with people long enough that they don’t put your book straight back down on the shelf and pick up another one, by an author they have heard of. And to even get to that stage an agent and publisher have to have found the idea interesting enough to even read the first few lines of your beautiful manuscript. The slush pile is high and that one little idea has to do a lot of climbing to get to the top of it.

This is where I get up and do a little dance because I think I have a really catchy idea. All I need to do now is write it in a powerful, exciting and skilful way. Easy right! Errrrrr….

The Real Waggy - 2nd June 2010

One of my stories, Waggy of the Mountainside, has just been published in the Cadaverine Magazine and you can read it here. So today I thought I might write a little on the real Waggy as the story is based on a street dog I adopted for a summer whilst living in Greece. I went to Athens for the summer after my first year at University. I blame my tutor for my apparent madness of travelling alone to a random European city and then living in an abandoned train carriage nursing sea turtles back to health for six weeks and for no money. She told us to have adventures while we could and I took her at her word. She spent a good proportion of her year between Costa Rica, New Zealand and Hawaii doing research so I figured she couldn't be far wrong in terms of life advice.

 

It was in Greece that I began to figure out that it's generally best not to worry about what other people are thinking of you. And that it can be much more fun to be the messy person with liquidized fish up their leg and a street dog following them than the person coming out of the boutique laden with shopping bags.

Waggy was fantastic, and Athens was fantastic. I'm sure it still is and I hope she still is. But the things in the story did happen and do happen. I was in Athens in the summer of 2003, just before the 2004 Olympics. The whole city was being cleaned up and improved which in a round about way caused a massive resurgence in the rat population (causing my one great phobia in life - more about that another day perhaps!). I came across a lot of people who worked long hours and turned their flats into menageries to protect the street cats and dogs that the city wanted rid of. Unfortunately I never saw the same for the street children, but perhaps I was just in the wrong circles. I hope so.

Seeing five year old children dart between traffic to knock on your car windows and ask for money is not something that you forget in a hurry. In Athens, street children have been rounded up and put into children's homes, a bit like the dogs were but they usually run away, just like the dogs usually did. Most street children in Athens come from Albania. There are some great charities working to solve the problems that cause children to end up on the streets in the first place. SOS Children’s Villages is just one of them. You can see their website here.

I don't know what happened to Waggy. The story ended for me where it did for the little boy. But I remain hopeful that someone found her who loved her as much as I did and I believe it’s entirely possible that she got her home on the mountainside. I like to think so anyway.