Here goes

‘You try too hard,’ said my hairdresser Michelle as she worked something called ‘craft clay’ into my hair and mussed it all up.

    She was talking about my hair, but I haven’t been able to get her words out of my head.

    I’m terrified of doing anything to The Novel (always in capitals, note) in case nothing comes to mind. In case I can’t do it. I try to impose words on to the page. I don’t wait for them to come. I try too blxxdy hard.

    The paralysis has even extended to The Blog (as you may have noticed) – something which came so easily to start with.

    Yesterday I had my once-every-three-weeks collapse in bed – not quite a migraine this time – nausea and headache, yes, but not quite the black pall of all-over wretchedness that signals migraine – so today I feel good, back in touch with myself, liberated from the ‘to do’ list. I spent a day in bed and the world didn’t collapse. Maybe I could do more just for myself.

    Writing – when it works – gives me the same feeling. So here goes. Blog post first (good or bad) and then Novel.

My weekend

Yesterday I drove for half an hour into the wilds of Mid Devon and went for a walk along a wooded river valley protected by the National Trust.

I needed to get Ellie away from all possible sources of illicit sport so that I could have a peaceful walk for once (Ellie’s illicit sport being one neighbour’s pheasants and another’s rescue sheep and chickens, as well as all the children on bicycles who appear at the weekend).

Apart from one family also out walking their dog I saw no one all morning. The river burbled and the leaves drifted down like snow. Ellie ran free.

In the words of Van Morrison, wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time.



The enchanted wood



My poetic aunt Annabelle has recently had her autobiography published in Norway where she lives to rave reviews. Partly at my insistence, she has now translated it into English, and Frog and I have been reading it for the last two days, riveted. It is called The Girls’ School (Pikeskolen in Norwegian).

She has so much to write about – what it’s like to live in two cultures at once (English and Norwegian), losing her mother at the age of six and her current battle with an obscure illness called myasthenia gravis to name but three of the themes.

Please, English publishers, take hold of this book and give it the attention it deserves.

Spot the dog

Fits and starts

Many apologies for my long silence. I am still here.

As I’ve said before, I’m a person of small brain and can only concentrate on one thing at a time and, as I’ve had absolutely no ideas whatsoever about what to write here, I think that my brain must be occupied with Novel at the moment.

Contrary to what I said in the last but one post, I’m still on the first draft. I discovered that while I knew roughly what happened in the second half of the book, I didn’t know how it happened. So that’s what I’m working through at the moment – in fits and starts.

I find this stage both the most exciting – when inspiration arrives – and the most terrifying – when inspiration departs. With later drafts you have something concrete to work on – words you’ve already written, however bad they are – but at this stage all you have is the mush in your brain and the divine spark that transforms it but which isn’t under your control.

I think I’m coming to my main character’s lowest point and I find it hard to put both her – and me – through that. It’s also hard to see her getting things so wrong. It’s like admitting to one’s own failures. (It is admitting to one's own failures?)

Is this all interesting to anyone apart from other writers? Or to anyone? I don’t know. In case not, here’s a picture that I took a few days ago while walking Dog. I always get Lord-of-the-Rings-ish at this time of year and this path reminds me of the (first) film.

Several pictures, not many words



Sunbeams





More sun, more trees



Dead oak tree and view



Nearly-new moon



Toadstool row