NANOWRIMO : THE BLOG

It's that time of year again when writers all over the world slink away from social media and can be seen scratching their heads, weeping over their laptops and consuming copious quantities of coffee.

Yes it's NaNoWriMo - that's National Novel Writing Month to the uninitiated. It's a writing challenge. All you have to do is write 50,000 words in 30 days and you win! It's as simple as that.

The name is a misnomer as it's actually an International affair now. Last year 351,489 people signed up from countries all over the world. Only 42,423 actually finished with their 50,000 words in the bag by 30th November.

I have entered NaNoWriMo twice and have completed the full word count both times, although there was a week or so in the middle last time when I thought I might have to give up for lack of inspiration.  It's exciting and frustrating and exhausting all at the same time with a vibrant and very supportive community who are all there to help (and/or distract) you with your novel.

The only trouble is that back in September, I decided that I wasn't going to do NaNo this year and promptly stopped thinking about my plot. Then today, October 31st and the day before it starts, I changed my mind. So now I am having to think very fast.....

Anyway, I'll keep you up to date with how it's going and in the meantime, I can show you the cover that I've quickly made. I was going to call it "The Girl in the Lighthouse" to follow current trends but there wasn't room for all those words.

Wish me luck. I'm going in!

WHY WON'T PEOPLE SMILE AT ME?

Nobody smiles at me any more.

It's true. Even though I smile at everyone I pass on my walks, almost none of them smile back. Some of them don't even smile when I'm grinning at them like a Cheshire cat.

And they say Yorkshire is friendly!

Actually, I'm not telling you the whole story. I do walk a lot and I smile at everyone. But I am multitasking. I will invariably be listening to a book at the same time as walking which means I am wearing earphones. 

I have decided that it's the earphones that put people off. It's as if, by putting on my earphones, I am telling the world that I no longer want to engage. I have partitioned off my sense of hearing and thus part of my self and as a result shown that I do not want to be disturbed.

But this isn't true. Yes, I am using the time that it takes me to walk to do something else as well - in this case read books that I would otherwise never make time for. What I don't understand is why this means strangers can pass shoulder to shoulder with me and still fail to acknowledge that I am there. This makes me sad.  (Here I am looking sad in my earphones.)

There are a number of explanations for this odd response.

1. They assume I do not want to be disturbed... but I'm not looking for a twenty minute conversation - just a smile.

2. They think that because I'm wearing earphones, I must be the kind of person that will not engage socially, like some kind of thug. I sometimes want to stop them and say 'Honestly! I'm no threat. I'm listening to The Archers' Omnibus!'

3. They are just glad of an excuse not to engage with me because they are naturally anti-social themselves.

I have tried to find earphones that are discreet and won't put people off but I can't get them to stay in my ears so all I can do is continue to smile and hope to surprise them into smiling back. Actually, it's quite disconcerting to be ignored. It's like I'm a ghost or am wearing an invisibility cloak. And also, I think it's a bit rude. But then maybe they think I'm the rude one for listening to books in the street?

Imogen.

WHAT MAKES AN IDEA GOOD? (And other related thoughts)

Are you an ideas person? Do you come up with schemes, congratulate yourself on your ingenuity and spend a small fortune buying the constituent parts only to decide later that you've changed your mind?

I think that's pretty normal. Your idea could be about anything but it'll be the best one you've ever had and it makes your insides fizz just to think about it. It scampers around the back garden of your mind, squealing from time to time and demanding to be let around the front.

So you open the gate.... only to find that your idea has suddenly gone all shy, lost its self-confidence, is skulking in the dark alley and won't come out. Or worse! It appears in your public space in a blaze of noise and fury and then when it's there, centre-lawn so to speak, loses its nerve, like it has suddenly realised that it's dressed in a bikini when everyone else is wearing anoraks.

I'm like that. I have ideas all the time - mainly about how I'm going to become a successful writer, which is my dream. It's a lovely dream. Every day I take it out, huff on it a bit, polish it with my sleeve. But it's not very stable. It shifts about all the time. Just when I think I have hold of it, it wriggles out of my grasp.

And, I have realised, the slipperiness of my dream (and so the validity of my ideas) depends entirely on my levels of self-belief on any given day.
Yesterday : I am great. I can do this. People tell me all the time that they like my stuff. All I have to do is keep working hard.
Today : I don't know why you're wasting your time. It's almost impossible to get an agent. The market for the stuff you write is already flooded and anyway, what makes you think it's any good?

This is normal, I know. Head versus heart. The intellect beating the intuition into a pulp. But what I MUST remember is that how I feel on any given day doesn't alter the validity of the idea. If it was a good idea when I felt positive about it then it probably still is.

This is a picture of the sky over my home town. That's my idea, that is. That orange bit burning bright in the middle of all the grey...

BEING (VERY NEARLY) FIFTY.

Drum roll please.......

In three days time, I am going to be 50.

There. I've written it down and it didn't feel too awful. Actually, I've been saying it out loud for a while, just so that I get used to hearing it. 'When I'm 50....' and 'I'm 50 this year...' and even once 'I'm 50 now you know so you can't expect me to...'

The thing about milestone birthdays it that they just keep coming. I remember being devastated that I was going to be 17. It felt so very grown up when 16 had been filled with childish frolics for which I didn't have to take responsibility.

I have no recollection of turning 20 - it's lost in a haze of other Septembers.

When I was 30, I had a party at my house which was fun but not wild because I was pregnant with my eldest. I felt old, that my youth was already behind me but I was just starting out on my new motherhood adventure so that didn't matter. I remember telling myself that the passing years were not an issue because I was managing to cram so much into my life.

By 40 I was exhausted after a decade of pregnancies and babies but I scrubbed myself up and had a party. I mean, you do, don't you? Just to show that you've still got it. Life begins at 40, people kept telling me. It was like some desperate mantra that we all grasped at so that we could pretend that we weren't perturbed by the top of that hill which was looming into sight.

It turns out that being in your 40s is actually pretty cool. I discovered a clear sense of self without the fear of what others thought and surrounded myself with other strong, women who all seemed to think like me. It's been a cracking decade.

And now 50.

I've read lots of articles - it's the new 30 you know. We can do as we please, wear what we like, are just coming to our peak and certainly women in their 50s don't look like women in their 50s did when I was growing up.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's the new 30 though. My eyes no longer function as effectively as they did, my hair seems to have forgotten what colour it's supposed to be and if you pinch my skin it doesn't spring back into place obediently. They are definite signs of wear and tear.

But my attitude to life? Now, that is definitely still improving. I am excited about my future. I have really big plans. The world is most definitely still my oyster. I also appear to have developed some wisdom of sorts on my trail through the first 50 years and the foundations of my life seem pretty stable. Whilst I may be on my way back down the hill, I can take the journey as slowly as I like. Why not stop to investigate the tiniest flower or spend time dangling my feet in a cooling stream? There is absolutely no rush any more. I don't know how long it's going to take me to reach the bottom but I'm going to enjoy every step.

Imogen x

SUMMER HOLIDAYS GUILT TRIP

The summer holidays are almost upon us. Six long, hopefully hot, weeks without the pressure of extra-curricular schedules and nagging about homework and uniform laundry. The kids sprawling on a blanket under a tree reading books for pleasure and contemplating the shapes of clouds. Games involving water, perfect ice cream cones, camp outs.

And now back to reality. Six weeks of trying to do what I have to do with four, slightly smaller people getting in my way. Six weeks of cajoling them away from their screens and then, when that doesn’t work, banning screens entirely. Six weeks of trying to get them to leave the house because I’m bored and them flatly refusing because they want downtime. Six weeks of them eating whatever they can forage because frankly, with so much extra tidying up to do, who can be bothered to cook?

No. For me, the summer holidays seem to start and finish with one thing - parental guilt.

It’s ridiculous really. My children are perfectly content to lounge around inside, playing, chatting, listening to music and doing things on screens. They don’t mind what they eat as long as there’s a plentiful supply of it and if I didn’t suggest a single outing all holiday then that would be completely fine by them. All this perfect summer outside rot is entirely the product of my imagination, formed partly from my own childhood, from books I’ve read and The Waltons.

So why do I feel so guilty when the real summer doesn’t match the imaginary one?

I think it’s because I see how they choose to spend their time as a waste. If I had endless free days, I wouldn’t spend them inside, building invented worlds out of cubes or watching American sitcoms on repeat. But what about when I  was 12-19? What would I have chosen then? 

That’s the trouble. I didn’t really get a choice because there were rules about what was acceptable. No-one offered me a smorgasbord of relaxation options and said - pick one. I played out because I wasn’t allowed in. There was barely any TV and I had no you tube. I was bored so I had to make my own fun. And this is what I want to impose on my own children because that’s how it ‘should’ be.

It’s not like they are wasting their lives. In term time, every available moment is filled with something worthy and two of them have activities that don’t stop even for the summer. So surely I should just chill and let them do whatever they fancy, no matter how pointless?

Well, one things’s for sure. If I try to impose my idea of summer on them, then we will all have a much more confrontational holiday than if I don’t. And from a selfish point of view, if I let them ‘chill’ all summer then I will have no problem hitting all my own deadlines. 

But what will I do with the guilt?

Imogen x  

PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT

Apparently there are lots of signs of a misspent youth - an ability to blow perfect smoke rings, previously unexpected skills in beer mat flicking, knowing all the words to Grease.

I may or may not have skills in these areas but one thing I can do is roller skate backwards. I can do this quite well. Well enough to irritate my family anyway who are used to me being the tail-end Charlie of any mildly competitive activity that we undertake. I can spin too and do interesting figure of eight shapes with my feet.

These hidden talents are the result of a couple of long hot summers in the early 80s that I spent on roller-skates. This was the time of Fame and headbands, of Wired for Sound and Sony Walkmans. Everyone was at it and in the absence of any screen-based distractions, there were plenty of spare hours to practise. So every night after homework, I would meet up with my best friend and we'd skate until we could do it. Living in rural Lincolnshire, she was my closest friend geographically too and sometimes I would skate the two miles over to her house so we could practise on her streets rather than mine.

When we got good then there was the roller disco at the Drill Hall  in Lincoln to attend. In dim lights with loud music we would all skate round, anticlockwise, at great speed spotting handsome boys in the melee. There was even a ramp in the middle of the room where the really brave ( and sexy) boys would do tricks.

This has never left me and I am keen for my children to learn too but there is one small difficulty. Time. Skills like these aren't learned overnight. It takes patience and resilience and determination and perseverance. I love my children dearly but these are skills that seem to have been a little lost over the years. In this age of X Factor fame and instant gratification, just plugging away at something until you can do it is less fashionable.

I saw Matthew Syed speak at a conference recently. He talks about the need to keep trying, to be open to failure and to practise to achieve what you want out of life. It doesn't really matter what it is that you want, roller skating, writing a novel, running the world. They all take the same skills.

So I'll be encouraging my kids to learn to skate until they can do it well and then maybe, when they are adults with children of their own, they will be able to skate backwards too!

Imogen

THE PLAN IS MADE.

Ok. Enough Navel gazing on the subject of my literary future. I have made a decision and it really wasn't that hard once I got some perspective.

I asked myself a really simple question. I had asked myself it before but I'm not sure I've always been completely honest, tending to skirt round stuff, and peppering my answer with lots of buts and maybes. I thought I was being realistic but actually it was probably just plain pessimism. So here's the question -

What do I really want?

It's not rocket science is it? The answer isn't either.

To be sitting on a train and see someone nearby reading something that I wrote.

So then came the tricky follow up.

How will I achieve that?

By working really hard to make my books the best they can possibly be and then following the traditional publishing route to get them to the person on the train.

There you go. That wasn't that difficult, was it?

I didn't get there all by myself, mind you. My lovely meditation teacher Melanie Kirkbride had a hand in it. I thought that my head and my heart were pulling me in different directions and I couldn't decide which one knew best. Melanie pointed out that I should allow my intuition (heart) to make the decision and then use my intellect (head) to make it happen. So rather than constantly coming up with barriers as to why I shouldn't try traditional publishing, I should put all that effort into trying to make it work.

Now that I've made that decision, life is a whole lot less complicated. I have Lucinda Fox to have fun with in the self publishing world but when it comes down to my true passion, the books that I write for the love of writing, I am going to try to push them into the deep, dark cave of traditional publishing. There be dragons on that path, and scary rejection letters but I intend to gird my loins and do battle with them both.

So that's it. I promise to torture you no more on this subject and life here at my blog will get back to normal.

Quick update of where things currently stand?

Lucinda's second book will come out this month. I am editing Postcards from a Stranger like a demon and I'm doing some messing about with Facebook platforms so no doubt I'll tell you all about that soon.

Thanks for sticking with me. If you like what you see here then why not subscribe to the blog ( see left ) and please tell other people who you think might like it too.

Imogen