The Romantic Feminist p 136

Another random selection from the current version (could it be the final version?)   Leo is grown up and married to his second wife Melissa.  He has just read Lucy's recently published novel...

Melissa had interrogated him about his “past” when they first met – he’d told her very little about Lucy, he hadn’t realised there was much to tell.  He smiled as he remembered how tenderly and earnestly Mel had extracted the information about his past from him.   She told him she was “exorcising his demons” and he wanted to believe her, to unburden himself to her.  He felt he’d met someone who really understood him at last.  She had pointed out patterns in his behaviour and tried to help him amend them.   As the years passed though he couldn’t help noticing how hostile Mel became whenever they met someone from his past.  Not content with having rescued him from what had seemed to be a downward spiral, she seemed to want him to obliterate the past, and disliked any evidence of it.   This could make things very difficult with Alexa his ex-wife, who also lived in Cambridge – and their two children.  Melissa could be a little sticky about the time he spent with them.

It was important that no one told Melissa about Lucy’s book.  He was pretty sure she didn’t know Lucy’s surname, and she wasn’t a great reader, so unless the book became a monstrous best seller ... Only one way to resolve this problem: go out and buy the book. He looked at his watch: he had plenty of time to go down to Heffers and see if they had a copy.  And then saunter down to a nice pub by the river and a bit of a read.  He glanced around the house – if he quickly tidied up the newspapers and threw out the old flowers, plumped up the cushions, he could probably get away without doing any hoovering.

Having the book safely in his bag, Leo entered his favourite pub.  It was quiet in the mid afternoon, and he could sit outside in the sun.  He opened the book with a certain amount of anxiety; he had no idea what to expect.   As he read the dread gradually dissipated, there was some pain in reading it, but also satisfaction.   It would have been an easier read if it hadn’t been about him.  He couldn’t help being flattered that she had obviously observed him closely – taken so much notice of him.  Of course she didn’t really understand him, couldn’t guess what his motives were.  But some of the observations.... had she been stalking him?  How did she know that?  The legendary female intuition he supposed.  She was a lovely woman really, so many good things about her.  But why hadn’t she got in touch with him about the book?

It brought back all that teenage insecurity.  It was a shame one felt so intensely when one was least able to enjoy the feelings, because one was so full of anxiety about getting things right.  What had happened between them had just been a collision that had happened when they wanted different things.   Not so different from an adult love affair – except of course at 16 one is less well-equipped to deal with it.  Perhaps it would have been different if they had met when they were adults...

The sun had moved around and he was sitting in shade now – he looked at his watch: it was after five.  Oh Lord, Melissa will be home in a minute. He got up quickly, fumbled for some mints in his pocket, and left the pub, with a half glass of rose on the table.  The bike ride was knackering – and he arrived home with a few minutes to spare.   He was carefully stowing the bike in the shed when her car pulled up.  God knows why he called it her car – but she seemed to use it more than he did.  

17 Years

I am having ideas - it's very good - very happy making... I wrote a little section, about 1500 words of previously unconsidered topic the other day.  But I don't have much time to write at the moment - I am carrying out various attempts to make money - gardening at the moment, and the B&B stuff etc.  Every little helps - wish I could so something a bit more lucrative like journalism...or giving lectures!

Met a nice woman called Jo last night - she won the writing competition at the Squall last year - and I asked how she was getting on - she said she'd written 12,000 words.  She is busy - she hasn't yet settled into her stride... can't write, too much else going on.  I suppose I've written about 12,000 words of Islanders - but I did that in a few days.  I realise how lucky I was last year to finally tell myself to make the transition - even though our finances are a disaster - I feel that this was the right thing to do - and it has made all the difference to quote Robert Frost.

The Romantic Feminist p. 91 ff

Lucy and Leo haven't seen each other since 1973. She's married to Phillip, a lawyer and has two children.  Helen is her mother.

4

“For the heart of man is deceitful above all things.... who can know it?”

Jeremiah 17.9

August 1989

When she received the invitation to her sister Ceccie’s wedding Lucy noticed it would be on Leo’s 33^rd birthday.  The wedding was to take place in Wiltshire, Ceccie was marrying a banker.

 “A lovely country wedding” Helen told everyone proudly. “We’re all staying at the Angel in Laycock, it’s absolutely charming.”

Lucy wished that occasionally her mother would include her in “family plans”. 

“You’d better book somewhere quickly Lucy – or everywhere will be full.”

“You could have mentioned this and booked a room for us too.”

“Oh – do you want to come with us?  I didn’t think. It might be difficult with the children – we don’t want them running about everywhere.”

“Does the hotel not accept children?”

 Lucy booked the ground floor family room in the hotel and arranged for the baby listening service.  They could have a nice family meal with everyone – and have a few drinks.  It might be fun, Phillip might enjoy it – once he’d stopped grumbling about how much it would cost them. 

Lucy and Phillip were sitting in a pew which is not quite as near to the front as she thought a bride’s sister should be – those pews are filled with other people: defective ushering perhaps.  But it is a glorious medieval church which Phillip is enjoying; Ben and Max are small, cute pageboys, trained and protected by bossy ten year old bridesmaids, and receiving admiring glances. Lucy experiences restrained maternal pride and she sits, flipping over pages in the hymn book and thinking, as she often does, that people should have more adventurous hymns at their weddings.  She is fairly happy because she is wearing a silk dress she has had for years and a beautiful hat.

Someone is getting into the pew behind and her back suddenly prickles as if she is being scrutinised: I know it’s Leo.  She waits for a polite pause before turning around, and there is Beata and this man, Leo.  Nobody told her he was coming – was that an oversight?  Or her mother’s deliberate policy?  She smiles with genuine pleasure, it is lovely to see Beata again, then she turns to him – is that really Leo?  After 16 years she can’t be quite sure, but it can’t be anyone else.  She knows it’s him and flashes a quick smile and says “Happy Birthday” to him rapidly, before turning back as she doesn’t believe in lots of inter-pew chat before a service.   There is a rustle from them, a slight ripple of consternation.  They are whispering to each other; Lucy catches the words “incredible” and “she”.  

Lucy sits there, wanting to do or say something, and doing nothing.  The first thought, it isn’t a conscious thought, just a vast sensation that takes her over, which could be loosely expressed in these words

“I love you – what went wrong in 1973?”

Suddenly she has the disloyal wish that Phillip wasn’t with her and that she and Leo could go away and talk about things together.  She knows she will be talking to him later, almost certainly, but she wants this to happen at once. Her heart is beating fast enough to make her feel sick.  She is excited by his proximity and much too proud to turn around and smile at him again – although she wants to, I want to be sure he’s really there.

She could not pay 100 per cent rapt attention to the wedding, but was grateful that it gave her a chance to calm down a bit. Afterwards everyone drifted out into the churchyard, to hang around while the photos were taken.  There were a lot of people to say hello to as they milled about the graveyard (In the midst of life we are in death) chatting and greeting; she wasn’t avoiding Leo, but had to avoid making an eejit of herself.  The risk of it becoming apparent that all she really wanted to do was talk to him and be close to him, was too great.  There were other cousins there for Beata and Leo to talk to, they didn’t have to talk to Lucy.  She divided her attentions between an old family friend and bar mitzvah dancing partner, some friends of her parents whom she barely knew, and the world's most rugged merchant banker, an ex-colleague and a friend of Charles, her latest brother-in-law, before they set off for the reception.

There had once been a mansion on the site, but now there were only some ruined walls and a grassy terrace where a huge marquee stood, looking down on a formal garden with a beautiful ancient pond.  The children were ushered off into a separate tent with entertainers and a shock troop of hired nannies, leaving Lucy unusually free from responsibilities.  There was no seating plan, so Lucy and Phillip sat down at a large, empty damask covered table and waited to see who would join them.  They were only alone for a moment before Beata and Leo came over and she said almost tentatively “Can we join you?”  

Post librum, omne animal triste est

Yes, there's definitely a post-librum collapse in spirits.  Last night I felt so liberated and happy - I really felt TRF was IT - that nothing significant could be added, and this morning I cheerfully sent it off to The Agent - the sun was shining and I felt full of oojah-cum-spiff... Now, an hour or so later, it is raining, I feel a bit glum - despite some innocent fun on Facebook.

Why?  Well, I suppose there is something of bereavement about it.  Also, unlike sex (the original quote is post coitum...) there is no shared pleasure.  No one to turn to share the rapture with.  Oh yes, there is a husband, but he is not a naturally rapturous person, and rejoicing with me isn't one of his virtues.   So I have lost the thing I loved, am alone in the world, with only the prospect of writing another novel to sustain me.   I would love to think the Agent will give herself a shake and decide to read it this weekend, but it seems most unlikely.  I expect I will have to wait until October (3 months) before I can politely suggest I she's had it long enough and perhaps it is time someone else had a look at it.

I forced Anna to hear brief synopses of my 3 half-written works, and choose: she opted for 17 years - but said I must do a lot of chopping between the two alternative lives... I also like the idea that the sections are named after the men and only very small sections are Izzy's own life.  I think I may take a few days off, there is stuff to do for the Arts festival and so on, and I have to write and picture research my talk on "Naked men wrestling in sand: The Ancient Olympics".

Meanwhile, I shall put another page or two from TRF on the blog - as a way of farewell.

The Romantic Feminist page 25

This is an extract, chosen at random, from what I hope will be my first published novel - are you looking Johnny Geller!?  It's 1972, Lucy and Leo are second cousins aged 15 and 16 - this is the first time they've seen each other for 4 months, since the (for Lucy at least) momentous occasion of their first kiss.  The book is written largely, but not exclusively, from Lucy's point of view.

 “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in the boxroom, like you did last time,” Beata says. 

Last time Lucy stayed they all did things together en famille.  Bike rides around Waterlow Park and trips to see the latest Disney film are not going to be on the agenda now.

“Take Lucy’s bag up Leo.”

He grunts, grips it and says “Come on.”

She follows him up the stairs and he dumps the bag on the floor in the boxroom, a narrow room that looks over the front garden, which is a mass of entangled shrubs, seldom pruned, never controlled.

“How was Africa?”

“Big!”

“Ha-ha!  Oh – you know what I mean...” 

“Sorry – it was amazing.  I took loads of photos.  Do you want to see them?”

In his suspiciously tidy room there are books and collages of photos across the wall showing dusty expanses of bush and the herds of antelope familiar from wildlife documentaries.

“Those are gemsbok – they’re endangered – only a few thousand left.”

“Here – impalas – common as muck.”

 She giggles.

“Here’s one of Mark and me with Aunt Jo.”

She sees them in their hats and shorts.  Why couldn’t I have gone with him?  They are leaning on his table, close and companionable – but not quite close enough to touch. He could touch me, put his arm around me, why doesn’t he?

“This is fantastic,” she says, pointing at a long strip of photos pasted together to form a panoramic landscape.

“Couldn’t get it all in one shot.”

She hasn’t seen this done before and is genuinely impressed; Leo is pleased, because he only got the photos back that morning, and he spent ages lining them up and arranging them to display them to her.

So they while away an hour or so: he tells her about the trip, about the Okavango swamps, about the game parks, about zebra and wildebeest and hippos.  It sounds fantastic, she is envious and wishes she had been asked to go.   The photos are great too.  He obviously knows about photography, as well as drawing and writing and politics and science.  There has been no awkwardness, just the flow of ideas and impressions and opinions, although she is impressed by his talents and cleverness, she doesn’t feel in any way unequal to him.

Then it’s time for tea and chocolate cake and general conversation.

Editing

At the beginning of last week I suddenly got the urge to insert some more things into TRF - there were scenes I hadn't felt able to handle when I wrote it originally... and I needed more of Leo's POV... a bit anyway. I have now more or less completed this to my satisfaction, and I thought - well, why not, instead of ranting about the novel all the time, put some up on the blog. So the next entry is going to be a short extract chosen more or less at random - for you to enjoy, and if you have any editorial comments please feel free to leave them.

All my friends are in my computer

This isn't true - but was the message of a recent cartoon someone posted on Facebook.  The social media give one the impression that friendships are live - and indeed the people one responds to certainly are.  But in the case of writing, it's rather more odd.   When one is writing something that is intensely peopled, then one's "friends" are in one's laptop.   When you finish something, the computer - and one's life seems empty.

What has happened is that the computer no longer contains the "love object" whether a real person, a fiction, a collection of characters, and I drift hopelessly from site to site, hoping for something to engage me, when what I ought to be doing is getting down to the real world - reading a book, doing some gardening, phoning a friend - or something.  At the moment, as I correct TRF I feel similarly at a loss when I'm not doing it.   I have definitely morphed into "a writer" in the last 6 months - and I'm not totally sure the results are entirely pleasing - perhaps I'll feel better when I get some financial results.

Roget and the slow writing method!

Today, having decided that my best bet was to improve the glorious text of The Romantic Feminist, I worked carefully, as I have done since Monday, to improve the last 100 pages or so.   In the process of this, I've added about 12 pages, done more work from Leo's POV and added a rather delicate sex scene.   I spent a great deal of time over the latter - and I've seen "how it's done" - the trick is, I think, that everyone knows what the bits are called, and somehow using their proper names makes it sound a bit calculated.  Therefore one has to make it clear what the objective is and then carefully describe what is being done with it and the characters' responses.  If people find it erotic, fine, but that isn't the intention.  I find it quite erotic, but that's because I'm writing about the kind of sex I like.

It is all too easy to use cliched words like plunge and thrust - and I stopped myself before I even typed them, but - how to do it instead?

I kept finding my mind filled with words like "thrilled" and "sensitised" which are either toodated/romantic or too scientific for the effect I wanted.  So I grasped my trusty Roget's Thesaurus (which I almost never use for first drafts!) and looked for synonyms... at one point I wanted to say that an act of penetration was very quick and intense,,, but spent a long time trying to think of a noun that would describe an act of penetration that wasn't one of the usual ones... I was looking for synonyms for "visit" - but flipping through the pages glanced down and saw "voyage" - which gave me a nice little metaphor... not too extended which perfectly described (in my view) the half-satisfied/over-satisfied state one sometimes completes coitus in...

I must say, I really ought to use R'sT more often, just flipping through it at random one comes upon quaint phrases (my edition is very old fashioned - not updated at all).  It is a delight.  I do have a fairly good vocabulary - and when an English word don't (sic) come along, a foreign one is sometimes even better... or an Americanism.  However, I think a trawl through Roget might give even more precision to my choice of words, as well as widening it.

Back to the Book

I haven't written for a few days - so confused, at first so delighted with the first free-flowing 11,000 words of Islanders  and thinking "this is it!"  I've always wanted to write a dystopia - this isn't the first attempt - but at last I had a concept - and all my projections and extrapolations came out clear and bright... I was happy.   Then I began to fret "what's actually going to happen in this book?  What's it about?  How can I describe it?"      Then I found a book on Saturday that was perfect research for Conscience and began to fret that I ought to go back to that... and so on.   So this morning I did two things: first I gave the Agent a gentle prod - and then I went back to have a look at TRF.  I had actually been editing/updating and there were two issues I felt needed to be better dealt with.  So I re-wrote and added a great deal to the scene when Leo and Lucy meet in the restaurant...it's now much better.  I told the Agent that I regarded the version I sent her as up for discussion and alteration, but I hadn't wanted to change much in case she had another idea which made everything I did unecessary.  However, after waiting two months for her judgement, I felt I really needed to improve the work any way.

In some ways I am finding it easier to write certain things than I would have 3 or 4 months ago - something about distance of some kind I think - whether this means I will be further nourishing the sex scenes (in the light of the success of that book) perhaps to resolve the oral sex issue.  I still slightly shrink from that - not from writing it, but the prospect of the former LO reading it.  Or perhaps his wife won't let him read another novel by me in a hurry!

Islanders!

I really think I am going nuts.  Today I forced myself to blog because I wasn't writing.   Not only have I got sick of Seth and Osric, but I have written 10,000 words of a dystopia set on the Isle of Thanet in 30 years time when the water has risen sufficiently to make it an island again.

I was gasping at the inventiveness that was coming out, it was so utterly exciting - and then I slowed down, didn't write over the weekend, or Monday (I couldn't type because of deep cut requiring huge bandage).  I have this feeling with the book that I should trust it - a plot will develop... there is a rough idea - a fugitive from London taking shelter in independent Thanet and the problems that arise... but we shall see, there are already a number of promising threads of plot.  Or maybe I'll just start yet another project.   I wonder if awaiting the Agent's response is driving me crazy...

50 Shades of Grey

Can one have a view on a book one hasn't read?  Have the extracts I've seen and the commentary I've read give me enough info?  There was an interesting discussion about it this morning - on Woman's Hour.  The argument for was that the woman didn't comply with the man, she was actually a stronger character than him, and so on.  Against: would you want your teenage daughter to read this book - a woman abasing herself, everything we've fought against as feminists, "I didn't burn my bra for this!" (A joke I think).    I am pretty convinced that I am against it - and I won't read it, not even to inform my opinion on it.  

I knew that The Da Vinci Code was rubbish - but read it to understand what kind of rubbish.  It was a waste of time, that I could have spent reading something much better.  I know what sort of rubbish 50 Shades is - so I'm not bothering.  Why enrich this mindless ex-marketing woman who has written something so cynical?

But the trouble with these books is, when everyone is reading them, people talk about them a lot.  I have already got into some sticky topics from this book...and a lot of people feel they must read them because they aren't strong minded enough to see that they don't really matter, except perhaps to sociologists.

I suppose...

I will get more readers when I actually publish something - but it's odd that quite a few people read Quotidiana - but virtually no one reads this one - perhaps people are less interested in writers and the dreary process we undertake than they say.   Perhaps it's become a minority activity - or perhaps everyone's just reading 50 Shades of Grey.