The blue petal and the red

My head is still full of novel so not many words today. Just two pictures which I took last week while walking Dog.

    The blue (speedwell) field belongs to a neighbour. She keeps her horses there and I’m sure she doesn’t use any chemicals on the grass. The red field has been farmed organically for the last few years. Two years ago the display of poppies was so spectacular that half the village turned out to have a look.
    One day as I walked past two Americans were filming it.
    ‘It’s like the Wizard of Oz,’ they exclaimed.
    I’ll let you know if it reaches the same heights this year.

Did you happen to watch the recent BBC drama ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’? It was the best thing I’ve seen on television for ages. There was a plaintive letter in this week’s Radio Times from another fan asking why no one else had written in to say they’d enjoyed it, so I emailed (radio.times@bbc.com) to say that I had. If you enjoyed it too, do let the BBC know so that they are encouraged to put on more quality dramas. If not, do catch any repeats.

What I'm reading

The Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke

An intense, multi-layered story of myth and magic and their place in contemporary life (I think - I'm only halfway through). His brilliant The Chymical Wedding won the Whitbread prize in 1989. Read either or both – they’re like nothing else.

Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes

Dismissed as ‘chick lit’ (whatever that means – books for young women? What's wrong with that?), but her books never shirk the darker side of life – addiction, divorce, domestic violence. This one is about grief. Nobody however makes me laugh more than she does, or cry – in a good way. Her fabulous Rachel’s Holiday (my favourite, I think) was chosen as one of the dozen or so books to be given away free under a recent scheme to get people reading more and more widely.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I adored his scurrilous novels about life in Australia and as an academic (Coming From Behind, Peeping Tom and Redback) and his (non-fiction) account of a journey round Oz in a van, In the Land of Oz, so I thought I’d try this, his latest novel, which won the Man Booker prize last year. The same outrageous observations and superb writing. Such dry wit. Perhaps not quite enough plot for my taste though with this one (my failing, I’m sure).

Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Also dismissed as ‘chick lit’, this series was thoroughly enjoyed by my late aunt in her mid-eighties, so not just for ‘chicks’. This is the latest in the series, but it doesn’t really matter what order you read the books in. A sweet endearingly-fallible heroine, surprisingly complicated plots, and gentle humour.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam

I don’t usually enjoy books recommended to me by my mother but this was an exception, even if parts of it are almost unbearably sad. ‘Filth’ stands for Failed in London, Try Hong Kong, and the book is about an elderly lawyer (who worked in Hong Kong) as he remembers his past. In particular he remembers his childhood as a ‘Raj orphan’, one of so many whose parents worked in different parts of the British Empire and who were sent ‘home’ at an early age to be educated.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Her books Surfacing and The Handmaid’s Tale have both made lasting impressions on me. She is the sort of writer who stuns you with the depth and accuracy of her writing, but she never comes across as ‘literary’. This won the Booker Prize in 2000. I’ve only just started it so can’t give you my complete reaction but I think it’s going to be good – and another book that jumps back and forth between the present and the past (which is something that currently interests me as that’s what I’m doing in my novel).

The pictures show a neighbour's glorious wild garden which is a riot of pink and yellow at the moment - yellow flag iris, buttercups, red campion and raggged robin.

Uni-tasking

I decided this week to have a break from the novel and catch up with the blog, so that I don’t lose all you lovely followers, signed and unsigned.

    I’ve tried three times however to write a blog about uni-tasking as opposed to multi-tasking and it’s not worked out.

    So here’s a picture instead, that I took this morning when I should have been stopping the dog eating a long-dead rabbit and contracting worms again.

   

    Back to the novel.

    (Unlike other women, you see, I can only do one thing at a time.)

Only a fool writes for money

Blogging is the writing process in miniature. You get an idea, you mull over it, you write it when it’s ready to be written, and then you publish it. Writing a novel on the other hand is rather like walking through a maze in the dark with no guarantee that the maze even has a centre. You spend months if not years on your own bumping into walls and coming up against dead ends and then when/if you do ever finish the darned thing it may never get beyond the shelf in your study. That’s why blogging is so addictive and that’s also why, if I want to get on with my novel, I have to stop blogging. It takes up the space in my brain that I need for novel-writing. And, in the long run, like proper food as opposed to chocolate, novel-writing is much more satisfying and nourishing. When it goes well, there is nothing like it.

            And yes, thank you, the novel has been going well over the last fortnight since I stopped blogging regularly. I’ve written two new scenes and have ideas for two or three more. Another thing that’s helped is that, although I’ve told myself that I am going to finish the novel, I’ve also told myself that I have as long as I need to do so. Pressure and rush of any kind are, for me at least, inimical to writing.

Dr Johnson famously said that only a fool doesn’t write for money. Because of all the competing media and because of on-line piracy, I think you have to turn that on its head these days: only a fool does write for money. Most members of the Society of Authors earn less than £5,000 a year. If you set out to write in order to be rich, or even in order to earn a living, or even in order to earn anything, you are putting yourself under impossible pressure. Writing is writing and earning a living is earning a living. If you are lucky enough to combine the two that’s wonderful but the chances are you won’t. Now I accept that, now I’m not in a hurry to finish the novel, get it published and earn some money, I can relax, and I can write. (For the moment anyway.)

As part of the on-line novel-writing course I’m doing (www.fire-in-the-head.co.uk or http://www.roselle-angwin.blogspot.com/ ) I have to keep a dream diary. I have actually been keeping one for many years, since my forties when I underwent counselling and hypnotherapy. These days I tend to relate the dream to Frog (poor Frog) instead of writing it down, or as well as writing it down, as that fixes the dream in my memory and because he almost always comes up with a brilliant interpretation. The other night I had a dream I didn’t understand. There were two polar bears in the kitchen and they’d chewed through the safety gates that separate the kitchen from the rest of the house. As soon as I started telling Frog about it I understood it. The polar bears – ‘the most vicious predators on the planet’ as they describe them in wildlife documentaries – were Ellie (who lives in the kitchen unless we are feeling exceptionally well disposed towards her when she is allowed to come into the sitting-room with us and watch television – which she loves).

With the recent hot weather I have been baring my legs to the little beast for the first time since she came to live with us at the end of August last year. It makes me feel very vulnerable. However, apart from a few bruises where her teeth have clunked against my flesh – by accident or by mischief, I’m not sure – my legs are clear of wounds, so far.

Once a week she goes to a dog-minder and spends all day haring around with a gang of other dogs, coming home rather grumpy and completely knackered. Today is that blessed day and I took myself off earlier for an ‘artist’s walk’ – a goal-less amble to some quiet spot where I could pretend to meditate without having to worry about puppy going AWOL. I intended to empty my mind so that ideas for the novel could flood in. Instead, I started planning this blog.

Oh well.

Exorcism

Last night Frog and I were watching the film The Exorcist. Although it came out in 1973 (?), neither of us had seen it before. As I watched the two brave priests tackling the demon that had possessed the girl, I began to feel bad about my criticisms of the Christian Church (see earlier posts).* Many church people do good work, and I have been on the receiving end of some of it myself.

            When Frog and I decided to get married (thirty-three years ago) all hell broke loose on my side of the family. He was not considered suitable. One of the few adults who did support us however was the vicar whom we visited about having the banns read in his church (a different church from the one in which we planned to marry – long story). We didn’t say much but I think he guessed the opposition we were facing. I expected him to be on the side of my parents but he wasn’t. He took us seriously. That was a welcome change for me. As we left he said, ‘Look after each other.’ Those words have stuck in my mind ever since.

            Nearly twenty years later when we lost our baby we went to a special service at Exeter Crematorium for parents who had lost babies, for whatever reason. There were only us and another couple there and all four of us cried all through. Afterwards I spoke to the vicar, trying to tell him something of the guilt and sorrow I felt. I can’t remember what he said but the important thing was that he listened and he was compassionate. He made me feel better.

            Back to the film.

            The possessed girl, especially when she growled and lunged, reminded me of Ellie, and I wondered if the film had been written by a hard-pressed parent (or puppy-owner**).

            They say it’s the owner not the dog that determines a dog’s behaviour but in my experience that’s not entirely true. We’ve had three dogs and they’ve all been completely different from each other. Our last dog, Penny, a rescue lurcher, was an angel by comparison with Ellie. But then she was grown-up when we got her. Maybe Ellie will turn out all right in due course – once we’ve exorcised her demons.

* Frog says I should insert a caveat here - that was fiction and I'm talking about real life. I don't see the problem.
** I don't like the term 'dog-owner'. Dogs are not possessions. But I can't think of another word at the moment. 'Carer' sounds too white coated.