Family Opposition

I find individual members of my family lovable but recently some of them seem to have taken it into their heads that writing is an unworthy activity - a sort of hobby, a pastime.   It is true that for the past 3 or 4 years we have been astonishingly hard up because of the economic climate in the UK - and until recently we were receiving benefits.

I have written before I think about how my first husband urged me to go out to work rather than write, at about the time a publisher had expressed interest in my first non-fiction project.... and how marriage and starting a family happened almost as soon as my first ever work was published.  I have been writing full time since January 2012 - that decision felt briefly "vindicated" when TRF was noticed by an agent - see earlier posts.... after a long wilderness period of writing, trying things out, losing faith and so on, I have two New York agents interested in The Ash Grove - and I am immediately told by my father (87) and a sister (48) that I must go out to work!  I tell them I am broadly faced with a choice between being a carer at £7.00 an hour, or perhaps getting on the tills at Aldi for £8.65 an hour.  I would not be able to choose my hours...I don't think they believe me, I point out all the other things I do for money (odd bits of catering,.hosting students, B&B and even the odd bit of writing) but they don't seem to realise that this does add up.

Ironically these two family members are the ones who are strong on being encouraging - both have repeatedly said "If only you could find something worthy of your talents"... do they really think I should take ANY job... do they understand how disruptive of the work this is?  Arrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhh

I think what I find so oppressive is that they should have chosen now - when, objectively I look like I might be going to get somewhere...it creates the impression that they don't believe in me or my abilities - maybe I should write to them and tell them that.

Anyway, it is rather a shame at my advanced age that they should decide I need to be whipped into line.  I know my father thinks I am going to squander all the money he gives me - and his idea that he is going to live to 112 is rather absurd... if he does he will certainly have to use all his funds to go into a home.  Unless I take him in to so that he can spend more time being unhelpful about my writing. 

September

It's the 6th today - I have not done anything on GATD yet... Tara said "oh, just a bit of touching it up" - I think it's going to need a bit more than that.  I will definitely start on Monday.  What I have done is 6 submissions to NY agents and - gaudete! - been asked for a full read by another agent - this is a happy moment, never had 2 agents on the case before, and Naomi R has suggested another, her cousin... Perhaps all I have to do is just a hell of a lot more submissions.  Of course, they may just rapidly find the defects and bounce it back.   Curious the way the two agents who have picked it up did so within a couple of hours of my querying them.  This new agent is a man, at a rather large agency, the name of which for the moment escapes me.  He comes from Iowa and looks a bit like Garrison Keillor (spelling?).

I am feeling a little bit bored - but I shouldn't really - there is a lot happening, and I am wondering how I will fit the writing and the increasing pace of political activity together. I think Stand up to Ukip is going to eat up a lot of time - I want to keep it under control.  I have learned to do this over the years, and I am congratulating myself for not having got involved in council matters and that I am managing to keep aloof from other campaigns.  SUTU will have an intense period of activity - but it will come to an end on 5th May next year (well, the intense phase will)..

I am hoping that writing and activisim will complement each other - the sociability and sense of purpose of the one, feeding into the isolation and the slight rootlessness of the other.   There is something very unanchored about this life when I'm not writing.  I could do anything - but I tend to just drift about doing very little.   It doesn't help that I'm not very well at the moment - I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm having blood tests to check my platelets inter alia.  The rootlessness has exacerbated since it is clearly the case that I will not be going back to tutoring in the foreseeable - which is good in a way.  I loved doing it, but it did interfere with my writing, although it gave me some valuable insights into the marginalised....and some language hints.   Anyway, although the money would be nice, earning it on one day a week would be better than the way I was doing it.  So I will have plenty of time to write now - especially once Ned has gone back to UEA and Finn is settling down in school and M is actually doing some work - which involves going away! 

On my break

It is now the middle of August:  I have been resting for 2 weeks approx - after finishing GATD there was my cousin's funeral - and the horror and emotion of everything that happened there.   I relaxed by just seeing friends, getting drunk, cooking food, making jam, and washing sheets for the continuous round of visitors we have had since then.   It has not been a time for kicking back and reading - nor have I written anything on the Last Things project.

I have not touched GATD - but I have had one or two satisfactory experiences of seeing "Darren" around the place - giving his kids instruction and support... wonderfully vindicating.  I didn't just make him up, these blokes exist.

However, the fact is, that I don't want to sit around and read - and I am finding it hard to settle to a book.  I fear I am going to be reading Antonia Fraser's The Loves of Louis XIV because it's nice and easy.

I am also full of ideas for revising TRF (groan) - I think there were a lot of good things in the original versions, and I want to get those back somehow.  I also think maybe (and there is of course an IRL reason for this) that I want to change the ending - he goes back to his wife, and stays with her... and she concludes her meditations on love.... BUT then I suspect that we would worry about whether the story is "too slight" - or does she push him under a train... 

Finito!

Actually, of course it is nothing like finished - but I have completed the first draft of GATD and it is not going to do anything now until September.   I have told myself I will take a break from writing for August...

I do feel very pleased - for all sorts of silly reasons, because I finished it two days before my deadline, because I wrote 6,350 words today, because whole unplanned scenes occurred - and so on.... I am thrllled.  I am also of course terrified, since I wrote this deliberately to do something "commercial" - and I may have missed the tone in some way.... but what else can I do?  I couldn't keep writing the Conscience series - my heart wasn't in them. I couldn't keep re-working the feminist in 70s love affair sagas (there were a couple of other ideas I toyed with along with the Romantic Feminist) and I needed to DO something.

Since I wrote it relatively quickly - in about 4 months - I now have lost any fear of not being able to finish.  I can do it, that's not a problem.  Whether I can do it to internation gibberish standard is another question.  I have tried to avoid comment in this book, tried to allow the reader to make up their mind - and using the universal viewpoint is apparently desperately tricky - and not encouraged because few people are able to handle it...as I will no doubt discover when I go back to the book in September.

One of the things that interrupted me was the "Last Things" project.  I do hope no one's written a book like this before... I think it could be rather good.  I am gathering ideas for it - and will hope to write a little more.  The one piece I wrote is very good and different.

Innermost fears
I think what I am always afraid of, especially when I read the review pages, is that my writing will somehow fall between two stools - that I am insufficiently intellectual to drag home the bleeding carcase of inspiration and transform it into something universal that will pique people's intellects as well as their emotions - and so I will never write anything as good as....[your author of choice here].    On the other hand I fear that I am too over-educated and knowledgeable to really manage to write the sort of book which appeals to off-duty middle English working women who like to put their feet up with a good book and buy them by the dozen on kindle.

Top Tip: It is possible to read Simone de Beauvoir while your hair dries

  I was hoping these women would enjoy The Ash Grove, I thought they might be amused by The Romantic Feminist - but the market said "no" - now I am going to throw GATD at them in the hope that they will love it even more than Harold Fry (pah, and double pah!) despite its swearing and filthy sex (which of course we can now include - ever since 50 Shades).   Of course, there was once a place for people like me: we wrote well-crafted novesl [eventually] and these were taken from the Boots Circulating Library by ladies in gloves and hats and read on steam trains or at other leisure times.  But then I wonder if my slightly over detached emotions make me unable to write really moving emotional scenes.... Anyway, perhaps if I just Google "how to write emotional scenes" I will find the answer!

A new trick

I have learned that if you stop writing in the middle of a scene, when you resume you know where you are going next!   So...this has been working well.  GATD is progressing, I reckon another 20,000 words should finish it - but I fear I will need to do research...

I think it's time to start reading all those blog posts about how to create suspense, or emotional tension - but perhaps there isn't enough feeling of jeopardy - depends how much people have engaged with the characters... hmmmm.

The Tapestry

This was a book for older kids I was writing some years ago - I got to 45,000 words or so, and then I got a bit bored... this morning I thought I would finish it when I've finished GATD because it was rather good... and it is now relatively easy to finish books - psychologically - in a way it wasn't before... so I was rather looking forward to that - because it's basically an adventure story...and I more or less have the plot.

This idea was backed up by my friend Clare saying she had a friend who had come back into her orbit recently - who runs a Children's publishing business... of course she may specialise in picture books, but it seemed very opportune.   So then I can "fail as a [children's] writer" as someone once said to me... actually two people have said that to me in so many words.  I was upset, but I realise now that I hadn't even begun to start as a writer then... people do have weird expectations though.  If you are writing they think you are as good as published....

Progress report

!.  The Ash Grove:  There has been no news from New York
2. The Romantic Feminist: I have submitted it to another London agent, after the last polite ("try other agents") rejection.
3.  The GATD: has now crawled to 53,000 words and I feel I just have to bring a few matters to a head before I steam down hill into a glorious ending....   Then I will have to re-write the beginning - and add a few emotional tricks.... I always feel my novels aren't as "we laughed, we cried" enough.  I want people to be happy that Darren has been redeemed. - Even if it is at a cost to others....