Writing Hats & Other Oddities

So, NaNoWriMo is just about here. If you don’t know what that is, I’m not going to explain again. You can see my blog post about it here or visit the official site here.

I’ve finally decided on the plot, after three or four have been duly considered – I should be fine as long no alien abductions or teenage vampires creep in. They would not fit very well into 1909 North East England. I’ve got together a little kit, including a brand spanking new pencil case. For more ideas on a tool kit, have a read of Catherine Ryan Howard’s post here. I’ve read advice blogs, the best by far of which is here, and gathered my favourite writing advice books together.

What I’ve noticed as other writerly friends limber up for a month of madness, mania and mental agility is our tendency to accumulate Things to help or inspire us. I don’t mean the copy of Stephen King’s On Writing growing steadily more dog-eared or music ranging from soothing classical to raging metallic, although these things are important. I mean actual THINGS. If you follow @mruku on Twitter you will have noticed many references to his writing hat, and the considerable anguish involved. Catherine’s post, above, mentions a clicky pen – not to write with but to click incessantly to keep her fingers busy as well as her mind. I am only glad I’m not working in the same room, or I would have to throw her out of the window – sorry Catherine! (or force her to make me coffee constantly…)

I have a necklace. That’s it, in the picture. I tend to wear it when I want to feel inspired – not because I think it brings me luck or anything, but because one day I’m fairly sure I’m going to write a story featuring the necklace. It just looks like it should have a story. Like it has magical properties or something. Again, it’s not that I DO think it has magical properties, just that it looks like it should. I look at it, I start imagining a story, and the bit of my brain that fools me into thinking I can tell a story kicks in.

I always think writers should have a little quirk. Like a ritual or an possession or some little oddity like a writing hat. Something we can tell the interviewer from The Times when we are on the bestseller’s list for the fourth Christmas running. Something where we can tell our grandkids, “And Grandma always had to have her special necklace/pen/hat/coffee stirred three times anti-clockwise, four times clockwise then blessed with holy water, before she wrote a masterpiece.” And if I’m not on the bestseller’s list four Christmases in a row? I can blame the necklace. Obviously, it just wasn’t magical enough.

Anyone else got any oddities they’d like to own up to?

Expert Weaning for Second Babies

I felt I should really share my wisdom on this topic, having been giving Emily solids for several weeks now and thus qualifying as an expert *ahem*.

Like so many parts of having a second baby, this is nothing like the first time you did it, and can be quite a shock to your system. So sit down with a large glass of wine, I mean fresh-pressed organic orange juice sorry, and prepare for the horror. Experience, I said, experience. No horror. No siree.

To make it clearer, I’ve compared each aspect with weaning a first-born.

  • First time – you set aside the same time each day to build weaning into a calm and settled routine.

Second time around – “Oh no, I forgot to feed the baby again!”

  • First time – you carefully select a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables, invest in a selection of food processors and special ice-cube trays and lovingly cook and freeze purees for your angel.

Second time around – you scout around the kitchen and find an assortment of fruit and veg that are probably ok still, chuck them in a pan and mash them into ice cube trays, having tipped out the ice cubes you were saving for your night-caps.

  • First time – you religiously check food safety guidelines, developmental guidelines, health visitor guidelines, GP guidelines, old-lady-across-the-street guidelines to make sure the baby is getting the right food at the right time. Finger food is cut into exactly the right size pieces.

Second time around – “Will she choke on it?” “No.” “She can have it then.”

  • First time –  you sit for hours, coaxing every little mouthful, celebrating every time the food stays in the mouth, playing all the ridiculous aeroplane games you swore you’d never catch yourself dead playing.

Second time around – “You’ve got 20 minutes. Now eat.”

Fun and games, people, fun and games. Now, where’s that drink?

Celebration!

Back in January I wrote a post about The Year I Turn Thirty. I talked about some of my thoughts about turning thirty and a kind of forecast for the year. Do pop over and have a look, it is (as you’d expect from me) extremely wise and witty. Ahem.

The Big Day is next week (all gifts and cards accepted, form an orderly queue) and to be honest, most of the expectations in that post are not far off. The biggest change has obviously been Emily’s birth – it seems very strange that I am revisiting a blog post written only  a few months ago yet Emily wasn’t anywhere near born. The experience of becoming a mother of two, by the way, was completely different from how I expected it to be. If you’re the parent of 2 or more kids, you know what I’m talking about. It’s a whole other blog post in itself.

One thing that is more or less how I expected is Daniel going off to nursery. I’m enjoying the mornings, although I’m still getting the hang of making the most of the time, and he is thriving amazingly well. He’s a clever, happy, confident little boy who I am very proud of. And Emily fits into our family perfectly – she really completes it. I have become more relaxed about some parts of parenting and more stressed about others. I’m probably as sleep-deprived as I expected, disappointingly!

As far as writing goes, tangible success isn’t yet mine – no book contracts, agents and publishers beating my door down, prize money and world recognition of my genius. But I am a different writer to what I was ten months ago. I’m more confident, I’m more willing to try stuff. I now have a respectable number of rejections under my belt, and a shortlisting in a competition (Writing Magazine, back in the spring. Yey!). I’ve been submitting my first work – a picture book that wasn’t even written when I did that post. I’ve got a novel in progress and am planning to attack NaNoWriMo with gusto, fun, and in the spirit it was intended. I have subscribers to my blog – yey you people! – and have tried cool things I never envisaged. I’m talking reviews, interviews, short stories. One month with well over 800 page views – that wasn’t even a dream in January! More importantly, I have made the most amazing friends, and chat with really inspirational people who are fast becoming heroes of mine. I’m not published, but I’m slowly gaining the confidence to think that one day I will be.

Personally, it’s not been the totally optimistic year I had hoped. When I wrote that blog post in January, my husband’s Grandad was feeling under the weather with shingles and had had a fairly miserable Christmas. By the end of February, he’d died and the following month we learned that his wife had cancer. A month later, I found out my own Grandpa had leukemia. They’re ok at the minute, just playing it step by step. It’s been hard in that respect, seeing people you love suffer in all sorts of ways. We’ve had some tough times ourselves in our immediate family unit too, although I think we’re out of those for now. We’ve had some real foundations put down in our faith too, which is stronger and more real than it’s ever been, and I know now as well what my vocation is. If you’re interested, look at Isaiah 65:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
…to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,

…to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.

I’m pretty much convinced that my long-term vocation is to care for people who are suffering, to reach out to them in love and comfort.

Anyway, now my birthday’s nearly here, I’m even more excited than I was then. I’m not having any pre-mid-life crisis or anything, quite the opposite. I’m actually relieved to be coming out of my twenties. I never fitted in as a twenty year old. I was never young or hip or fun or confident enough, and I always felt like I was trying too hard to fit in to that. As I approach 30, I’m growing into myself day by day, and feeling happier to be me than I’ve been since I was a child. So next week, I’m not celebrating presents, cards (although you will note I’m not turning them down. That would be silly.), balloons (yes, balloons, Husband of Mine, hint hint) but I’m celebrating being me. And, I almost forgot to mention, being four years married too! Do join me and raise a glass!

Elastic Time

It’s recently been hammered home to me how elastic time can be. I’ve suspected it for a while – ever since my husband was supposed to pick me up from work 5 miles from home at 6pm and didn’t leave home until 6pm (this was about 6 years ago and he’s never going to hear the end of it). Man-time is definitely on a different scale to normal time.

But today Toddler Time really hit me. I know children have no idea of time, I knew this before having them. It’s the excuse they give for waking at all hours of the day or night (although personally I’m sure they’ve been to Parent Torture School to get it down to a fine art). The thing I wasn’t prepared for was how elastic their perception of time is.

Example: 3 year old: “I need a wee, I really need a wee. NOW!” We rush off to the toilet, abandoning work in progress, baby, pots of something vaguely home-cooked boiling over on the stove. I help child pull down trousers and pants, expecting him to leap onto the toilet and heave a sigh of relief, as he has obviously been desperate. Instead he becomes fascinated with some pattern on the floor or the way the toilet paper roll spins on the holder. Me: “Daniel? Do you not need a wee any more?” Daniel: “Oh yes I do.” And he carries on gazing around the bathroom searching for the answer to life, the universe and everything. Eventually he gets on the toilet. About 5 minutes after he desperately needed a wee, NOW.

And I won’t even mention getting out of the house for nursery. Now he’s in school nursery, not pre-school, and there’s a proper start time (although his teachers, bless ’em, are so kindly relaxed about it) and it’s almost an Olympic challenge to get both children fed, dressed and a cup of tea down my throat and into the car on time. At this point the Elastic of Time gives up the ghost completely and we move into Slow Treacle mode. Watching him is like watching one of those scenes in panto where the strobe light is on and the actors are playing to it, with exaggerated slowness.

So we’ve established that with small children, as with their fathers, time moves at at least half the speed of the real world. Except that that’s not the end of it. In some ways that would be quite nice. We’d have that cuddly stage for twice as long, he’d be cute and snuggly for longer. Clothes would last for months instead of minutes. But here, time snaps back together with a vengeance and before you’ve blinked, they’re growing out of their clothes, shoes, car seats. They’re not just speaking, they’re stringing together sentences and practically re-writing War & Peace. I keep calling Daniel a toddler, then correcting myself because he’s not anymore. I have to fill out his school application next month. Where’s that time gone? Why couldn’t that move at Toddler Time too? I hear lots of advice to make the most of this time, but it’s impossible because it snaps back and forth too randomly for me to grasp.

Never mind 42, if someone could figure out the secret of Elastic Time they’d have cracked the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Contortionism

I find myself in one of those places right now. You know where I mean. Swinging between fired up with enthusiasm for writing – ideas pouring out of every brain cell (until you sit down at the computer), supreme confidence that the next email will NOT be a rejection (except that I know it will be), The Phone Call will come (apart from the certain knowledge that it’s a pre-recorded advert for ‘No win, no fee’ sharks) and I WILL be published because I’m good, darn it (yeah, right).

I have things to work on – I actually have works in progress, plans and goals that are slightly more defined than “write something”. And I’m not totally depressed by the many rejections I’ve had so far. I had a blip last week where there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I do know that every one gets rejected, it’s par for the course, and if I want to be a Real Writer I’d better just get used to it, and JK Rowling had 50 million rejections and agents cursing themselves left right and centre, and one day my time will come, and… Yeah, anyway. But I’m finding myself paralysed.

Partly paralysed by exhaustion – brought on by the very inconsiderate sleeping habits of my baby and toddler. But also by the feeling that every word I write is leading towards kill or cure. I will either begin to see some progress, or I will lose all faith in myself. I’m hoping that I’m edging towards cure – as I said, I do have some plans and a couple of rays of light. But I’m stopping myself from really sitting down for a good spell at the computer by worries that I’m just not good enough and maybe it’s all pointless after all.

I need two things. I really, really need a good kick up the behind. I know the best thing I can do is start writing again and sending stuff out because The Call/Email/Letter will never come if I don’t but I need a push to get my brain out of that paralysis and moving again. I also need a big boost in self-confidence. My family are very encouraging, my writerly friends are amazing but I think (without being dramatic?) I need more. I need positive feedback – even if it’s in a rejection – and some real, deep constructive criticism. So I’m praying for both and I’m giving myself the kick up the bum (which is very difficult, ever tried? You need to be a real contortionist). I probably also need to stop writing self-pitying blog posts – this could have been 500 words of my novel…

Thanks for listening, folks. Tune in again.

PS keep an eye out for some exciting interviews coming to My Little Notepad soon…