friday five

from dazeychic

Thank God it's Friday! How are you, friends? What has been rocking your world this week?

I've been enjoying:

Healthy breakfasts
I've been having fresh full-of-fruit smoothies most mornings, or overnight oats. Making overnight oats is very simple - I put some ordinary porridge oats in an old jam jar, pour in enough milk to cover and leave in the fridge overnight. Add fresh fruit and yoghurt the next morning - so delicious! Haven't had much chance to experiment with different flavours yet so stay tuned. I also love going out for breakfast. We've had friends from Australia staying this week, so have shown them all our favourite local breakfast spots! The photo above is yoghurt and muesli at La Fromagerie in Marylebone (recommended by Mandy!).

photo from Nick Gilmartin

The London marathon
I feel like I did when I was a kid waiting for Christmas when I think about the London marathon. I watched it on Sunday afternoon, right by Big Ben (as above) so the runners only had less than a kilometre to go. It was amazing to watch. After waking up from a very late night feeling grumpy and sick, watching the marathon was the best cure for the doldrums ever!! I was in tears watching some of them. It was just amazing watching these determined, incredible people giving it everything they had for the final hurdle. Some of them were in big heavy costumes for charity too - and one guy even had a fridge on his back! The crowd support was really amazing too - they were cheering everyone on and I felt so pleased to be there. I ended up staying for nearly three hours - I hadn't looked at the time once, it went so quick! I clapped until my hands were stinging. I walked home afterwards, thinking to myself, maybe I could do this...... I am eagerly waiting for May 4th, the day the ballot opens! I'll put in for it and we'll see :D

Walking to work every day
The sun is out, the sky is blue, there's not a cloud to spoil the view.....I love walking to and from work at the moment. It really gears me up for the day, and lets me debrief after my day. It takes me about 45 minutes, really pushing hard and walking as fast as I can without breaking into a run. Sometimes the walk home is a pain, especially walking through crowded areas where I'm lucky I don't dislocate my knee with all the dodging I have to do (!), but I'm always glad I make the effort. In the mornings I can ring my family in Australia, or listen to my favourite podcast, and in the evenings I tend to just walk and take in all the surrounds of the city - the smells, the noise, the sun shining on the buildings.

Cheese on toast
This is my ultimate comfort food, I've decided. Forget mashed potato, forget rice pudding - it's cheese on toast all the way. I make it in the oven too - takes about 5 minutes and you don't have any dramas with the griller that way! It tastes best, I find, when you use the best bread you can get your hands on - I use either my homemade bread or the sourdough I sometimes buy from the grocer down the road - and really nice cheese. Our friends who were staying with us visited Cardiff on Monday and came back with a bag of goodies for me. Tom said my face was priceless when I realised it was full of Welsh cheese!! One of the cheeses they brought back for me was Y Fenni, which is a cheddar that has wholegrain mustard and Welsh ale mixed in. This was so delicious melted on my homemade bread! Next week, when Tom is out for the evening, I might just make cheese on toast for dinner.

Dresses
Seeing the wedding is not far away I need to get my act together and buy a dress!! I'm not going for a "wedding dress" though - I want to buy a dress I can wear again, and I also want it to be green. A couturier near my house had a dress in their window which I fell in love with three months ago. My sister, when she was visiting, and I went in and it was every bit as beautiful and silky and elegant as it looked - but the £3,300 price tag meant I left the shop with a heavy heart, wondering how utterly desperate it would look for me to maybe offer to clean their toilets for the next twenty years if they'd let me have the dress for say....£500?! :P

Then I found this one:


Still a bit ex-y (Alexander McQueen) but a bit more doable! And I loved the colour. Only problem was it was with The Outnet and they only had a size 6 and an 8 left. Sigh. If I put in a lot of effort over the next few months, maybe the 8 would be a possibility, but to be honest I don't think I can be bothered. Of course I want to look my best on the day, but I have a really healthy lifestyle already. I'm not dieting to fit into a dress. No way. Been there, done that. Note to brides: if you can't fit into your wedding dress a month before the wedding, take it as a sign :P

However, a kind friend at work came to the rescue and recommended a designer who will modify one of her designs for me - it's an emerald green maxi dress with cutaway shoulders - and it looks really lovely, so who knows. Or I might take that picture above to a dressmaker and see what they can do. Either way, this is the weekend I make a serious start on dress shopping :D

What about you? What's been your top five this week?

Enjoy your weekend peeps! :D

PS: Can you believe this time three years ago I was in San Francisco?! (not with flowers in my hair). Good times, good times.

the end of the beginning

I wrote this in my journal on the train from Edinburgh to London.....

And so I sat, as I let the enormity of the decision I was about to make sink in.

Did I want to keep going with The Memory of Us? At this very moment, the answer is no. I want to have a break from it. It isn't fun to write anymore. I have invested so much time and energy into it, and I know is a story that I will tell, that will be told. I just need to have a break from it. It just isn't inspiring me at the moment. The direction I have taken it in is definitely the wrong one, and I will need time to find my way again. I need to forget about all the bad influences on it, the doubts, the fear, the threats, the heavy weight of expectations. It needs to be free of those and find a new way through. I know I set the bar too high for myself, telling myself it could be nothing less than a masterpiece. It is no wonder I have struggled so much.

I want to write about what I have seen, what I have done, and known, and felt. I want to be able to sit and write with authenticity, humour and vivacity. I want writing to be fun again. In those few hours of writing that other story, purely from my own imagination, I had a glimpse of my writing life as it could be, and I wanted to grab it with both hands.

It didn't hit me how bored I'd been with The Memory of Us until I'd finally admitted it out loud. I don't doubt that, eventually, the story in The Memory of Us will be told. But when - that is a question I don't have an answer for right now. I think the decision to put it aside for now (I stress that) and focus on other things that are a bit more fun to write is a good one - and I also think it's been building for a while. I was just too afraid to admit it. The characters just weren't setting my imagination on fire. I've been frustrated and disillusioned for quite some time. But how could I admit this, after so much investment, so much work, over the past two and a half years - to say nothing of all the coincidences and twists of fate that led me to think yes, yes, yes, this is the story I've been waiting for.......

I've really let my pride get in the way here, I think. And I'm not short changing The Memory of Us, by any means. I just want to have a break from it. It did not prove to be stimulating or inspiring company in the near week I was with it constantly. When I talked to Morag about it on Wednesday, she seemed to think that this project had been weighing me down quite a bit, and it wouldn't be a tragedy if I put it aside for a while.

"But what would be a tragedy," she cautioned me, "is if you stopped writing all together."

There's no danger of that! Now, it feels like the possibilities for me have grown a bit wider. With time and energy to devote to things I do want to write about I feel like there are wider waters for me to cast my net. Topics I might not have thought were really my thing now intrigue me. I want to give pleasure with my writing. And I think that will only happen if it is a pleasure for me to write.

There are so many things I want to write about. I want to write about relationships, friendships, parents and their children, about people chasing their dreams. I want to write about people transcending circumstance. I want to write about fear and desire and love. I want to write about my country, the cities I've lived in, why I love it, why I left it and why I might or might not go back. I want to write about the city I live in now, where my freedom and independence came of age. People have told me often over the years that my own life has a wealth of material - and maybe it's time I started listening.

I don't really know what expectations I had coming on this course really - there was part of me that thought I'd walk away with The Memory of Us virtually finished, and there was another part of me that knew it was crunch time, and there was another part of me that wanted it to be the start of something, the end of the beginning, as Churchill put it.

So there you have it, my decision. Out in the open. I am free. I wonder what will happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The last night of the course was excellent. Over dinner we were given the task of writing a poem about any aspect of our time at Moniack - I wrote a traditional Aussie ballad about "Donald", this enigma of a character who had started making an appearance in the group class work! It was fun to write, and I didn't struggle with the rhyme like I have done in the recent past, I felt like I did as a teenager, making up silly poems for school plays or to make my sisters laugh. We all read our poems aloud to laughter and applause. Then, just as we were being served dessert, we heard the strains of....bagpipes?!

Not unexpected, I suppose, seeing we were in the depths of Inverness, but it sounded like it was coming from the kitchen! Sure enough, the door was opened and there was one of the Moniack staff's daughters, in a kilt, playing "Happy Birthday" on the bagpipes! It was one of our group's birthday, and they had arranged a cake and a piper in her honour. After the birthday song finished, the piper launched into a traditional tune and we all started clapping and stamping - it was amazing! All I needed to make the evening complete was a dram of whisky :)

I then poured an enormous glass of Cabernet Syrah and settled in for the group reading, which was taking place in the main room in front of the roaring fire. Everyone read. It was wonderful to finally hear some people's work, having been curious about it all week. Some of it was exquisite. Everyone's work is so different. The voices were so unique, no story was the same. It was wonderful to feel, possibly for the first time in my life, completely unintimidated. It was impossible to compare our work to anyone else's, because all the projects really are so different. It was really nice to feel among peers. Happy that I'm doing my own thing, and they are doing theirs.

I read my short story with gusto and humour, and some exaggerated accents - I got laughs where I hoped I would get them, and I was pleased with the flow of the narrative. There were bits I was really pleased with, that I could hardly believe I had written at all. Morag came up to me afterwards, her eyes shining, and told me how pleased she was, and that my writing just "sparkled" in that story. That made me very happy.

When we'd all read, Morag and Tim spoke briefly about the week and what their advice was to us upon leaving and going back to our normal, busy lives. Morag's wish for us all was to have energy and courage. Tim said for us to keep the momentum going, to continue to make the time and space to write every day.

I have definitely come away with that feeling. To keep the energy going, now that it has been unlocked. The course description was about falling in love with your novel again. I went a bit deeper than that. I fell in love with writing again.

~~~~~~

So there you have it everyone - the Arvon course, what I did, what I wrote, what I thought, and what I came away with. It felt like a spiritual retreat in a way, I felt my eyes were opened wider and I came back to London with renewed hope and zest.

It was a struggle to get back to reality. On the Monday when I went back to work I forgot my keys AND purse!! After a week of not needing them, I'd walked out of the house without them!! Moniack really was a world unto itself.

Everything is deepening and thickening. The biggest thing since coming back for me is learning to not fear the blocks. Not fearing having nothing to say. I have something to say. I need to fight harder, be stronger, give myself permission to explore, to try new things, to embrace all the fear. I am not good at it, but I am determined to conquer it, and to live a life that leaves me breathless.

another suitcase in another hall

Do you know the next line of the song?

So what happens now?


Friday 9th April 2010

The last full day on the Arvon course. Hard to believe, really. It's been amazing what writing something every day has done for me. It's reemphasised to me just how important it is, as any successful writer will tell you, to just show up every day and write. It doesn't matter what you write, or whether it's any good. You just have to do it. It sounds easy, doesn't it? But the truth is, it's hard. It's very, very hard. If it were easy, there would be no need for courses like this really. I don't know what my own reasons for avoidance have been - perhaps a whole host of psychological barriers it would take a textbook to explain, perhaps just pure laziness. Wanting to get out there and live life rather than just write about it, maybe.

This morning was our final class, with Morag, on plot. She showed us a photo she'd taken on holiday in New Zealand a few months ago. It was a sign in a shop window. We had to come up with a character, a set of circumstances and a things that gave them solace, grief and uncertainty. From this we were to develop a plot.

I don't think I stopped writing for the entire two hours. I was completely lost in it. Words, ideas, energy just flew out of me. Facts, history, real life timelines had no place. It was just up to me, so off I went.

Until that moment, I had forgotten how much fun writing is. I hadn't written this way since I was at school - well over ten years. Something was unlocked. My cheeks were pink and my eyes were bright. I felt energised, happy and excited about what I'd written. It's been ages since I've felt like that.

Went and had lunch, and then joined some of the girls on a little drive down to Loch Ness. Snapped photos of the vast, impressive Loch. You only have to look at it to know that it's bottomless.


Then we returned to Moniack and I went upstairs to work. I was still buzzing with the energy of what I'd written earlier. I loaded up The Memory of Us and stared at the last bit I'd written, feeling dull. My eyes hurt looking at it. I didn't want to try and write anything. The energy I had from earlier was bouncing off that impenetrable, invisible wall.

I was so very frustrated. I picked up my journal and reread the story I'd written by hand in my journal that morning. It was pretty good, I thought. It sparkled. It had wit and vivacity and a sense of fun - all things I want my writing to have. So I just thought I'd type it up, from the notes. Just to have my fingers moving, to be doing something instad of sitting there, stewing, feeling frustrated.

So I typed it up and enjoyed every minute of it. Tweaked a few things, but I typed away until I got to the natural point of conclusion and then sat back and surveyed the work I'd done. Two hours had just flown by.

Then I had to think about what I was going to read at the group gathering that evening. Everyone had been asked to read a small selection of their work to the group - it could be anything we wished, anything we were particularly pleased with or attached to, anything we felt showcased us well as writers.

So I clicked my mouse over the still open Memory of Us document. Read through it. Well, skim read it really. All the words and thoughts blurred together. It really is the dullest thing on the face of the earth. Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. I noted a few random paragraphs where I thought "that's pretty good" or "I like that", but these were just lone paragraphs, unrelated, from different parts of the story. I had to read aloud for at least 5 minutes and I had maybe....60 seconds worth that I was happy with?!

Then it hit me. 127 pages. Over 40,000 words. And there wasn't any significant chunk of it I felt was worth reading aloud to people. I felt like I'd been whacked in the chest.

And then I looked at the story I'd just written. Granted, it was only a first draft and wasn't perfect, but I liked it! It had something! I liked Viv and Rose and Col. I wanted to know more about them. I wanted to know what happened at the Auckland Cup. I wanted to know what happened to that ten dollar note that Helen Clark used to pay for the brooch.

I wanted to read that story aloud. I felt that those couple of hours I'd spent on that story had revealed so much about what kind of writer I want to be.

And so I sat, as I let the enormity of the decision I was about to make sink in.

Yes, I'm terrible and will make you wait for the next bit. Ha ha!! :)

london marathon on sunday!

I won't be running in it, but I'll certainly be watching! Maybe I'll see you there? Good luck to all my friends running in it!



I plan to enter the ballot to see if I can get a place for the 2011 race! How amazing would that be?! It's not that I think about marathon running all the time, but it's in the back of my mind a lot. I wonder what it would be like to do one - and if I actually could.

Sunday is also the day that marks five years since I decided to get off my arse and start living the life I wanted to live, and four years since I reached my goal weight. No doubt it will be a day of celebrating, reflecting, and giving thanks for all the blessings in my life - true love and good health being just two of them!

Wishing you all a happy weekend, friends - and thanks for reading and sharing the journey with me xx

thursday, two weeks ago

Another excerpt from my journal that I kept my Arvon writing course. Thursday was a difficult day. The day started well but as the night closed in, the knots were harder to untie.

Thursday April 8, 2010

Last night I stayed awake until I hit over 40,000 words. I unleashed. I did what Morag said to do - kicked down the bedroom door.

"Be impertinent!" she told me. And I was, even though I squirmed writing some of it.

It is so hard, having only known Ruth as a fairly asexual being, the 85 year old woman with the musical laugh, and her husband whom I know only from glowing memoirs and warnings not to say anything to tarnish their reputations. With all this in mind, I was never going to venture much further from the chocolate box school of romance, as Morag put it.

I was incredibly uncomfortable - for all my voyeuristic tendencies I'm surprisingly easy to offput - but the words were put down. I liked them. I then followed Morag's advice of transporting the two characters to somewhere and doing something that I have completely invented.

"Put them in a place you know they never went, doing something you know they never did. Completely invent it. See if it opens up something, see if you have fun with it. Then you might have your answer." she said to me yesterday.

So I put them in Amsterdam, in the late 1930s, exploring the red light district. The promiscuity they witness opens up a dialogue between them about their pasts. I borrowed a few things from the stories and experiences shared by various men in my life over the years - things that greatly disturbed me at the time (and still do a little). I figured I might as well put the anguish to good use.

I've made more progress in the last 48 hours than I have in the past year. Suddenly, this book is breathing, it has lungs. It is still on life support, but I know it will wake up and walk. One day.

This retreat has been good for me. Days that start with structured exercises, then food and tea, and then the afternoon to spend as I please - I read, I write, sometimes I nap! I have found myself incredibly tired in the late afternoons. So much mental energy. I would like to have a charger for my creativity, like my mobile. If only it were that easy.

It's wonderful to have the space to think about the book and what shape it might take. I thought I had to accept my original idea and specifications from elsewhere as it. Finito. Now there is room to move, there is freedom in what I'm doing. I'm still frightened, but not in the same way.

In this morning's group writing class Tim took us through "points of view". We had to write a list of 5 fights we'd either witnessed or been involved in, then pick one and write about it from all these different viewpoints. Very interesting! I picked a lovers tiff I witnessed while back in Hobart last year. It was at midnight, and the guy was threatening to throw himself into the Derwent.

Later, 4.50pm.

Have just had a meeting with Tim, the other tutor here - we were encouraged to have one-on-one sessions with both the tutors. It has buoyed my spirits but left me confused. He really liked what I showed him. "It's great!" he said, "keep going!". There didn't seem to be any of the novel/biography confusion that was evident in the excerpts I showed Morag yesterday. So I was puzzled. It's great? Keep going? That was the last thing I expected to hear.

Tim is such an interesting man. His features are very pale but his eyes are a vivid deep blue, like pieces of broken Spode china - they sparkle, and are so kind.

We talked a lot about me feeling obligated to the true story, to the people in the book as they were in living and breathing form, and about me feeling like a slave to the truth, constrictive as it is. He suggested perhaps I write a short non fiction piece, like an article, about them that is true, and then I will have, in a sense, fulfilled my obligation to tell the true story, and then I'll be free to do as I wish. An interesting idea.

I told Tim that there was a part of me that was still 17, the massive over-achiever at high school, who thought I would have done so much more by now, and that if I don't have something finished by the time I'm 30 I'll feel like a bit of a failure.

"How old are you now?" he asked, eyes twinkling.

"28. 29 next month," I answered.

"Oooh! There's still time!" he laughed. A pause. "No, seriously, I don't think anyone should publish a novel before they're 40."

Interesting.

The group writing exercises we've been doing have encouraged us to write in the now - as in what is happening this very moment, and to describe it with as much detail as we can. One exercise we did on Tuesday we had to recall memorable meals and describe every crumb, every every bite, every sip. It was so much fun. Inspired by this, last night I wanted to write a scene where my characters make and eat garlic bread. It was well after midnight. I felt twitchy, knowing there was real garlic bread leftover from dinner downstairs in the kitchen. I thought what better way to bring it alive with detail than writing it while eating that leftover garlic bread? It would be cold, of course, but I knew it would be delicious. As a child there was nothing I liked better than cold garlic bread, leftover from my parents dinner parties. So I walked carefully down the deserted hall, down the stairs and through the (also deserted) main room where the fire was still going, into the kitchen. I broke off a few pieces from the leftover loaf and scampered back up to my room. My heart was pounding! (why?! Probably because I thought I was going to get told off!)

I wrote the scene, described them making it and eating it. I don't think it would have been a common thing back in 1940 but I wrote that it was made because of one of them was reminiscing about a trip to France. Ruth's garden also conveniently revealed a flourishing wild garlic plant.

Hey, I'm the writer! I can make it up!

The bread was still a bit warm, and my fingers glistened with butter. My tongue burned a little with the heat of fresh garlic.

I also had a small bowl of ripe strawberries, which I ate afterwards to get rid of the garlic breath. Strawberries were also often a leftover at my mother and father's dinner parties. Sometimes they were chocolate dipped. Very pleasant sensory memories! I felt nine years old again, before I cared about calories, fat and weight watchers points, and the correct time of day to eat something. All I cared about back then was taste, pleasure, and satisfaction.

Later. 8.22pm.

AARGH!! This is so hard! From where I'm sitting right now I can't see where I'll end up. But I'm still sitting here. I will make progress before the day is out.

I wrote down all the questions I'm trying to answer with this novel. There is one answer for all of them. But what is it?! I feel like a very reluctant detective.

It feels like knitting. I'm a horrible knitter. I drop stitches. I can't cast on. I always need help from people who are so much better at it than me. Knots, holes, everywhere.

Later. 12.03am.

Knots untied to the extent of 1000 words. All of them rubbish. These characters are dummies -they are incapable of movement or speech. They just sit there. Blood from a stone. All this pressure I've put on myself for this to be a masterpiece.....the bar has been set so high I can't even see it. This thing doesn't even have a plot. It's just a load of "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." - the kind of stuff I was writing in primary school. My eyes start swimming when I try to read over. One big blur. That's what my novel is. I want the answers but they won't come. Nothing will unlock. I feel like I need to light a candle and pray.

And what did the final day and night reveal? Find out tomorrow.

a rock and a hard place

I arrived at Moniack Mhor on April 5th, after a day travelling up from London on the train. On the first night, dinner was cooked for us and we socialised a little, getting to know the other students and the two tutors, Morag and Tim, who were going to be guiding us through the week. It was an exciting night, and held a lot of promise for the week to come. I went to bed fairly early, I remember. I heard rain beat against my window, like handfuls of stones. My favourite way to fall asleep.

The way the course was structured was that the group met for writing classes in the mornings, from 10.00am to 12.00pm. This wasn't compulsory, but nearly everyone showed up for them and they really were a great way to get the writing day started. After our morning's work, everyone would go off and do their own thing for the afternoon. We were encouraged to make afternoon appointments with the tutors to show them our work and get feedback. The group of 15-16 students were split into groups over the week to do cooking duty once - the rest of the time you just showed up in the dining room and found dinner waiting for you! The evenings usually had some group activity on as well which, again, was optional.

What follows is some excerpts from my journal on the first two full days of the course.

Tuesday 6th April 2010

And so the Arvon course has begun. I am currently on my own in my tiny room, listening to Gershwin on my iPod speakers, breathing in the smell of mint tea brewing in my pink and white striped mug, noticing melted chocolate under my finger nails. I have spent the past hour and a half re-reading The Memory of Us (*the working title of my novel). And now I feel tired.

That is exactly how I feel most of the time whenever I think about it. Tired. Heavy. Bone weary. This mountain I have tried so hard to climb....well, come on Phil, how hard have you tried to climb it? Lately you haven't been trying at all. I keep telling myself not to worry, not to concern myself with what other people are doing. Just do what I came here to do. This is what I've been dreaming of. Time and space away from it all. To write.

I've got to stop worrying. About whether what I'm doing is as good as or on the same level as what others here are doing. About Ruth's family and what they might do to me if the story isn't to their liking. Well, especially about that.

I like the people on the course with me. I think the ability level in the group is very even. I feel out of my depth, however. The others here seem to have a coherent story, one that seems to flow logically. I have so many issues and obstacles. Well, perhaps that's my problem. I keep focusing on the hurdles. But bloody hell, I can't even write a synopsis for the damn thing. People ask what my novel is about and I don't know where to start. It turns into a long rambling speech when I should be able to tell them in a few sentences.

But it's amazing what having paid a small fortune for the privilege of being here will do for your productivity. I'm just telling myself to get the hell on with it. And, incredibly, I am. In between naps, reading and a few chocolate gingers. Still not convinced what I'm coming out with is any good....but still. Words are coming.

Wednesday April 7, 2010

A difficult day.

Where do I start?

Found the writing exercises difficult in this morning's group writing class. I kept hearing my own voice coming through, as opposed to Ruth's. We had to choose a partner and share our morning's work with them - the gentleman I was paired up with, after hearing my story, revealed to me that in the late 1960s he knew one of Ruth's friends from Palmers Green, whom I mention a lot in the novel as he became a famous novelist. It set me on fire. The coincidences and bizarre twists of fate never seem to stop with this story.

I then sailed through the afternoon writing about Ruth and her husband meeting their novelist friend, who I have used another name for - I've named him after my dear friend and collaborator Neil - and I was so engrossed I missed by 2.40pm appointment with my tutor Morag! I ended up coming back when Morag was free at 3.20pm. I was filled with the ecstasy of having worked, really worked, on the piece for the first time in eternity.

I had given Morag two sections of The Memory of Us to read. She had a lot to say.

She said that I wrote beautifully - there were some parts of what I'd written that were very evocative indeed. But she was confused. Was I writing a novel, or a biography? Because from where she was sitting, The Memory of Us is a biography, just written in Ruth's voice. We talked a lot about the process of turning a true story into a piece of fiction. It is inevitable that you have to make stuff up, you can't just stick rigidly to the events as they happened.

"No one's life is a plot, really, is it?" she said.

I revealed some of my fears to her about the story, and told her a bit more about the obstacles and barriers I'd encountered along the way. Morag said many things to me, all of which I already knew deep down to be true. Particularly about needing to flesh out my characters properly, as people, not just people on pedestals. "You've got to be really impertinent," Morag urged, "you've got to kick down the bedroom door and find out what's really going on with these people. At the moment, it's all a bit too....chocolate box-y."

When a piece of work is so close to you, you know its flaws, its holes and gaps. You know what the problems are. But it was still very difficult to hear. Not difficult in the sense that I didn't agree with her, I completely agreed with her! But having someone else say these things to me would mean I would have to face it, do something. It felt like when I've been to see my counsellor, and I've come away with clarity, but so much to work on. When you've shone the light on something, that's it. There's no going back. You can't kept working blindly any more.

Morag was so kind, and I could tell that she really believed in me. But having had a person who I respected confirm my worst fears about the book, I spent the rest of the afternoon filled with dread. What the hell was I going to do with myself over the next few days, if all I was going to end up doing was shoving this manuscript in a drawer?!

I mentally prepared myself for a night in the desert (NB: spelled "dessert" in my diary originally! ha ha). I thought I would have no choice but to sit with my journal for hours, writing whatever was in my head until the answer came. If it came.

I was on dinner duty, so went down to the kitchen about 4.30pm and helped cook the meal for the group with the people I was teamed up with. Their company was easy and friendly. I focused on my task of preparing the mini meringue nests with as much alacrity as I could muster.

After dinner, the novelist Andrew O'Hagan came to speak. He read from his new novel The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his friend Marilyn Monroe. I found him fascinating. One of the students whispered to me that he reminded her of a young W.B Yeats. It must have been the glasses :) He had so much wisdom to impart, and I was like a vampire, wanting to feed on it all. Morag, before I had a chance to raise my hand, asked Andrew to share his experience of turning a true story into a novel as a few students - she looked at me - had been faced with this.

As Andrew opened his mouth to speak, I had a moment where I just knew every word would be gold and I wanted to memorise everything he was saying. My pen was poised at the ready!

He said that stories belong to everyone. Nobody's story is theirs and theirs alone. When you live in this world and die in this world, your story belongs to the world. The world can use it and take from it what it wishes.

But what stayed with me the most was when Andrew said that we should never be worried about offending people with our writing, or whether people are going to be upset with us if we write about something that actually happened that doesn't fit with their version or perception of events. He said, "you don't have to apologise for being interested in this story." So many works of literature have been based on the life/lives of real people - Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, to name but a few....there's nothing wrong with finding a story that inspires you, and then telling it your way.

It was like a light suddenly went on in my head. All this time I've been thinking that I could only write this story a certain way, to keep other people happy. But sticking slavishly to the facts and the timeline has got me nowhere. The facts have no life, no oxygen. I must bring them to life. The potency of my work depends on my inventive power. At the moment, that power is running low. To make my novel what I want it to be, I'm going to have to dispense with getting everything right. After all I, as the writer, have ultimate sovereignty, Andrew said.

He truly was an inspiring man. I went up to him afterwards to thank him for his insightful words - I actually hugged him! Don't know what he must have thought of that, but anyway. Andrew O'Hagan, I will build a shrine to you, you are my God.

Then I went upstairs and wrote until 2am.

And then things took another turn.

looking out

On the inside, looking out?

My room on the Arvon course at Moniack Mhor,

Inverness, Scotland

Two weeks ago I travelled to Scotland to work on a novel I've been trying to write for three years.

I think before I go into what happened on the Arvon course I might need to give you a bit of background.

This novel was inspired by the life of a woman I knew as a child, who was a writer. Like myself, she was born in to a large family in Tasmania (75 years earlier than me) and then came to England in her mid twenties with a desire for adventure and to live where the great poets and writers lived. She didn't bank on getting caught up in the second world war, however, nor on meeting a poet who became her husband. After barely surviving the war, they returned to Tasmania on an extended holiday but ended up staying there for the rest of their lives. As well as writing, they were campaigners for social justice and also heavily involved and interested in environmental causes which came into the spotlight in the 1970s. Her husband died in the early 1980s, the year I was born actually, and she mourned him the rest of her life.

I knew her only for three brief years. My family and I had moved into a house two doors down from hers when I was ten years old. I don’t really recall how we became a part of each other’s lives, but in the two years we lived in that house in Mount Stuart, she became as much of a friend to me as my school friends my own age – but more so. This was someone whose wisdom and experience and knowledge I was in awe of, and I soaked everything she told me up like a dry sponge. I used to run down to her house every afternoon after school and show her, with childish pride, my latest story or poem, and always, without fail, she would praise it, and make me think that one day, one day, I could see something I had written in a book too.

We became very close, even though the only way we communicated was through writing things down (she had lost her hearing through illness some fifteen years earlier). I remember her house being filled with paper, like a park is filled with golden leaves in the autumn. Everywhere you looked, there was paper.

Ruth was my first mentor, and the person who made me want to be a writer. She passed away when I was thirteen. I was devastated. Yet somehow, I knew her spirit had not left.

Fast forward to 2006. I am nearly 25. I started writing a short story, and the voice that came out of it was unmistakably Ruth's. I had not consciously thought of her for many years at that point. But as I tried to write about the love story, her meeting her husband in London in the last golden years of the thirties, my own world was collapsing. Writing about a wonderful marriage when my own had reached its inevitable painful end, and writing about someone following their dreams when I was too scared to walk into a travel agent to book a ticket to London, was a harder task than I could manage. The story was put away.

2007. I am in London. I have started my first job, in Bloomsbury, and I find myself thinking about Ruth all the time. I get out the book she compiled in tribute to her husband, Forty Friends, which I have for some reason brought with me. I discover that her place of work, in the late 1930s, was only a block away from my own. The story is brought out again. It is full of holes and gaps. But I write and write and write, try to get blood out of the stone.

There were so many coincidences and uncanny twists of fate that led me closer to Ruth's story. I was so convinced that I had found my life's purpose. I lived on the same street as she had, at one point (unknowingly). The story was there. I was literally walking around in it. And yet writing it was harder than I had ever thought it would be.

There have been many obstacles and barriers to writing this novel, some not appropriate to mention in a public forum such as this. Not that I fear any repercussions, you understand, it's just that in writing this novel I've begun to understand how protective people are about their memories, and their versions of the truth. The ironic thing is that I didn't set out to tell the truth, just a story. But somehow my mind got knotted and lost. My imagination got confused about what it was supposed to be doing - telling the truth, or making something up. It abandoned me, fed up with all my empty promises. I think writing a novel based on a true story is so much harder than writing something you completely imagine. You get caught in the crossfire between accuracy and authenticity.

There were epiphanies though, over the last two years. There were nights where I woke up, reached for a pen and some paper in a half asleep state, and scrawled the title of the novel as it has come to me in a dream, over and over, for fear the pen might have no ink in it. There were photos my father found. There was an LP with Ruth's voice on it, found on some obscure website for £10.

And still the words would not come.

I tell myself that life has got in the way. Love, marathons, travelling, a full time job in publishing, a penchant for the Kings Road on a Sunday. If only I had time and space, and no distractions. If I tell myself that often enough I start to believe it.

Now it is 2010. The novel has not been touched for many months.

I read the description for an Arvon course for those with a "work in progress". Fall in love with your novel again, it promises. That is exactly what I need. I need to find out what the hell I'm doing with this beast of a story, and whether it wants to be told. I need to find the love that motivated me to tell this story in the first place. So after some deliberation, I book on the course with money my beloved grandmother left me, hoping she would approve. I toast to my bravery and hopeful success. As the weeks fly past and the course draws closer I feel equal amounts of terror and excitement. I know that once I've stepped through that door I cannot go back.

At 7.55am, on Monday April 5th, the train leaves Kings Cross station, bound for Inverness. It does not leave from Platform 9 and 3/4, though I hope that magic is in the air. I will need all the help I can get.

To be continued.....

the grumpy run

Just for a bit of fun, I have kind of logged my brain's activity as I did a run last night and then came home! It was amazing how the thoughts turned around halfway through. Hopefully you guys will get a laugh if nothing else - but I do have my grumpy days and I don't mind sharing that every now and then :)

But it's true. A run does cure everything (well, most things!)

Images in this post courtesy of the super cool Food Tees.
6.20pm.
Haven't done a run for two weeks. Need to get back on the horse.
Grumble, grumble.
Just go, you need to get this run out of the way, it will be awful but at least you'll have done it and be on the straight and narrow again.
Your jeans are tight.
Your arms look a bit...doughy!
Oh shut up brain!
Grumble, grumble.
Where's my sports bra?
Toilet.
Ipod. For fucks sake, my shuffle is out of battery! Have to take the nano instead.
Grumble, grumble.
Gulp half a bottle of Lucozade Sport Light. It's really nice!
Whine! I've just walked 3 miles home - and I walked this morning! Why do I have to go for a run?
Because I said so.
Keys, sunnies, nano.
Pin bit of unruly fringe back with bobby pin, I know it will give me the shits later if I don't.
Stupid hair. Stupid everything.
Lock door.
Fiddle with earphones. Not working. I need to hold the nano in one hand and keys in the other.
Grumble, grumble.
At least it's sunny. I haven't just worn a tank top running since....last September?!
Right, off I go.
I feel ok, legs aren't seizing, breathing is good, knee is behaving itself.
This is good.
Pull tank top down.
♫ You're so fine, I want you mine, you're so delicious! (Avril Lavigne song playing)
Pull tank top down.
♫ I think about you all the time, you're so addictive
Pull tank top down.
♫ She's like so whatever!
Right, this is getting old, tank top.
Feel like crying.
My tank top has shrunk! Or I've got fat. Yes, that's probably it.
I can't believe this!
I've only had two weeks off!
And I behaved while I was in Scotland! I had salad! I had alcohol free days! I passed on dessert...once!
How, HOW can I be huge again?! How did I lose my runners body so quickly?!
This bloody tank top fit perfectly at the 10k two weeks ago!!
Or maybe it did ride up but I didn't notice.
Oh I hate this.
Tummy mushrooming out on all sides. Tank top keeps sliding up.
Feel like an elephant.
See other people running. No one else seems to have a wardrobe malfunction.
GRRR!
Now on the main road and in full view of peak hour traffic. Great. Fucking great. The whole of south west London is going to see my love handles.
Keep running. The run ironically is very strong. Good pace. If only this fucking tank top would just stay in place!
AAARGH!!
I am the most ungraceful person on the face of the earth.
Maybe if I keep my moves smaller it won't move around as much.
Shuffle, shuffle.
No good, it rides up again.
My tummy bulges out again.
►Beep beep!◄
A bus driver (with an empty bus) has just beeped at me.
Oh for god's sake! I'm a lard bucket, why would you beep at me?!
Look down and can see my legs need shaving. A month ago.
Great. I'm really letting myself go!
At this rate there'll be Tom and a Girl Hobbit in the wedding photos.
Pick up the pace again as I approach the incline and get to the bridge.
Kids on bikes, get out of my way.
Grumble. Grumble.
Run down the cobblestone path along the river.
Breathe.
The sun is beautiful. It's wonderful to feel the warmth and the breeze on my skin after so many months of layering.
Breathe deeply.
The run, surprisingly, is going ok. I think I'm going to do my "long" run, down to the garden near Earl's Court, and back. Even if I have to throw this tank top off and run with all the flab swinging from side to side.
No, I'd never do that.
♫ Waiting for your call baby night and day, I'm fed up
Yes, Madonna, I'm fed up too.
The tank top is being a real bitch now.
Really concentrating on sucking the stomach in, hoping that that will help.
It doesn't.
Why didn't I just wear my I ♥ NY tshirt?!
Stop briefly at traffic lights.
Am happy when they change and I can run again. The run is actually going really well.
Maybe I should think about that?
I feel very strong. My fitness, at least, doesn't appear to have deserted me.
Don't think about the tank top.
Don't think about the tank top.
Looking at the beautiful river and the bridges, the buildings sparkling in the late evening sunshine. I can feel sweat running down my face and arms.
An ambulance siren.
♫ Take me.....to the......hospital
Watch other runners go past me, wondering how they all got so fit.
I've been running for three years! I don't ever seem to get faster!
Tummy pops out again.
Pull the top down, grit teeth.
Finally seem to be getting nearer to the gardens, where I'll do my tricep dips and pushups and then run back.
Check watch. I've been going for 25 minutes.
►Wolf whistle◄
A group of people with beers in their hands across the street are glancing over and grinning, just as the tummy pops out again.
Oh god, could this run get any more humiliating.
I just want to be left alone.
Alone with my enormous dough girl tummy.
I take this as the cue to run a bit faster.
Choof, choof, choof.
Finally make it to the garden. I haven't seen it for a while. It's ablaze with tulips.
Have a long drink of water and then find my bench. It is my bench the way some people have their bike in the spin class. I always do my tricep dips on it.
Manage 60. It canes.
Think about doing pushups, but see flakes of broken glass in the cobblestones and decide my living room rug will be a safer option.
Prepare myself for the run home.
Let's see if this tank top can be tamed. Bloody rebel that it is.
My Sweaty Betty capris have fallen down a little and are sitting on my hips. They usually sit a bit higher, so I pull them up.
The tank top then sits over them.
Run up and down for a few paces, just to check. It stays.
It's like I've lost 20kg in 10 seconds.
Maybe this was the problem? No other fabric to grip on to?
Certainly feel more comfortable. And my abs are aching with the effort of holding them in the whole way here!
Say hello to the gardener and tell him how nice the garden looks.
He looks really chuffed. I smile.

Start running. Tank top is staying put. Alleluia.
Keep running. Tank top is still staying put.
♫ Days keep getting better, nights keep getting better!
The run is still strong, but the legs are getting sore.
Come on, you can do this.
Keep running until you hit Battersea. If you want to stop then, you can.
Dig deep.
Nice things. The wedding. The dress. Must ask Mum if she'll bring over the combs Claire wore. How am I going to have my hair?
Nice things. Paris. Going there for my birthday. Mmm. Cheese. Croissants!
Nice things. Another half marathon, when my parents come over so they can watch me.
I've made it to Battersea.
But I want to keep going. I knew I would.
Tank top is staying put!
Maybe I'm not a lard bucket dough girl after all!
Happy. Sore. Keep going. Not long to home now.
I am so strong.
I am so happy.
Watch the river. Wonder what lies beneath it. I lost a ring in the ocean once.
The sun is still glorious. The promise of summer. I love not having to run in the dark.
Turn down the street that leads to my street.
I love this bit!
Have come to the end of my running playlist and need to find a track with more oomph. Kylie is a bit slow, she's usually my tricep dip track!
Ah, Sneaky. You'll do.
Oh, the exhiliration of knowing home is near.
Finally up my street. Dodge a council concrete truck.
Run, run, run.
The musical gate tells Tom I'm home. (the gate makes this gorgeous squeak when it opens - and it's very loud, so you know when someone is coming down the steps)
Calf stretches on the steps.
Hugs from my man. He doesn't care I'm sweaty!
20 "man" pushups on the rug. Whimper a bit from 12 onwards. Youchie.
The rest of my Lucozade Sport Light. I really like the berry flavour. Feel some electrolytes dancing in the bloodstream.
Then a shower.
Oh, shower. This is the best kind of shower ever. I stay in there for ages and sing old show tunes. Tom comes in and laughs at me.
In PJs. Cook a delicious veggie stirfry, with wholemeal couscous.
Mmm. Now I'm just......

a still and quiet place

Well, then.

I'm back.

I described the current state of my thoughts to a friend this morning as like a cup of tea, brewing. She replied that she likes her tea extra strong and quite stewed, so that is promising :)

I have many posts about my Arvon course, which was at Moniack Mhor in Inverness last week. I hope I'll be able to write about it in such a way that you will experience the revelations as I did - gradually, and in varying shades of clarity. And I wonder if you'll see the twist coming. I know I didn't.

Overall, it was a still and quiet place, where there was a lovely sense of camaraderie among the students, but still enough space for people to get on with their own thing. I enjoyed both the solitude and the company. I enjoyed the writing classes in the morning, and then breaking to eat, drink tea and go upstairs to my room where I'd write, read and sometimes nap. I could have happily lived like that for a long time!

Most of all, I enjoyed being still with my own thoughts. Without the distractions of every day life, things became clear.

~ ~ ~

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
- Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942