A confession

You've probably been wondering where I was. In fact for much of this year I've been wondering where I am too. I've been lost.

It has been a difficult year. On the positive side, Son 1 did exceptionally well at college and is now at his first choice university. On the negative side Son 2 regressed into increasingly difficult behaviour. His anxiety increased and his mood darkened. We still don't know whether home or school was the cause, but I suspect both. Without wanting to go into too much detail, I became a victim of abuse.

I was lucky that Son 2 currently has an excellent social worker who responded very quickly, but he and I were badly let down by another professional who was supposed to be helping with his behaviour. The crisis escalated to the point where we had no choice but to let social services accomodate him in order to safeguard me, as a physically vulnerable adult myself.

The wonderful social worker swung into action again and just a couple of weeks later Son 2 was able to move from respite care into a specialist residential placement which will hopefully be his long term home. It means that he has left school a year earlier than planned, but he can get consistent care and regular psychology input at the home as well as learning life skills and trying new activities. It is a lovely, newly renovated building and he was the second resident into this brand new service. He seems very happy and settled there and it is very much what we'd have been wanting for him next year anyway.

Of course you don't stop being a carer just because someone no longer lives under the same roof. Son 2 now lives 50 miles away from us but we visit when we can and I am in regular contact with his carers by phone. I organise his finances, liaise with his social worker and attend meetings about his placement. He is still very much part of our family, even though, like his brother, he has reached the age to leave home.

The events of this year have left me shaken and for a while I understood exactly how women who victims of any sort of abuse feel. My health is currently suffering and I have not been able to write creatively since the start of the year. I'd had lots of plans for the next year, to bring me to the place I wanted to be when both boys had left home. The timetable has been thrown into disarray, but I shall still go ahead.

But that brings me to the future of this blog. It's been a record of my sons and my writing. The boys are now both independent adults and it is no longer appropriate to write much about them. The creative writing has temporarily stalled. This is the 700th post on this blog but it could be one of the last.

I'm planning a new writing and creativity related blog to accompany what I hope will be my future life path. I'll be sure to let you know when that is up and running and I hope you'll follow me there. In the meantime thanks for reading about my journey so far and bear with me while I reinvent myself.

100 RPM

I have a tiny flash fiction in this book, published today. 100 RPM is a collection of stories inspired by music found on YouTube, each story being 100 words or less.

The anthology, to benefit the charity One in Four, was edited by Caroline Smailes, who explains here how she went about publishing it as a Kindle ebook. I'm proud to be included with so many brilliant writers and look forward to discovering the work of those I don't yet know.

My own story, number 48, is called Barricades. It might not surprise you to learn that it was inspired by a famous Spandau Ballet song.

100 RPM is currently very cheap on Amazon and all profits will go to help survivors of sexual abuse. What's not to like?

January

So January slipped away before I knew it.

What have I been doing? Well, I had a birthday. I've been organising, but not going on, two uni applicant days for Son 1. I've been downloading lots of cheap and free books to my Kindle. I've been trying to deal with Son 2's increasing behavioural issues.

And I've been writing.

I completed the 31 days of the River of Stones project. To be fair I did on a few occasions forget to post the stone which was germinating in my mind, but I always caught up the next day and I ended the month with 31 stones written.

I've also started doing Helen M Hunt's Hop On, Hop Off short story course and I'm enjoying it very much. As some of you may know, womag story writing is an area in which I've had no success so far and I'm a great admirer of Helen's stories for that market, so I'm hoping some of her skill will rub off on me. Woman's Weekly has always been the weekly magazine which I feel suits my writing style best and Helen has had significant success in that very competitive market. Although womag stories require the same writing skills as other genres there are definite restrictions on content and I'm trying hard to rein in my darker side!

Helen also runs face to face workshops but if you are looking for something very flexible the Hop On, Hop Off course might just fit the bill.

Success

I told you about Caroline Smailes' flash fiction writing challenge here. Well it was a huge success. Over 350 stories were submitted of which 100 were chosen for the anthology and I'm delighted to tell you that my story Barricades was one of them.

I'll give you the details of the Kindle book as soon as it is released, but don't forget you won't have to own a Kindle to read it.

A new writing challenge

There are writing challenges out there at almost any time: NaNoWriMo and Sally Quilford's 100,000 words in 100 days being two recent and current ones. But I'm not a fast writer and have to fit my writing in between so many other commitments that I've never dared tackle a big challenge like that.

I do, however, enjoy the challenge of writing short snippets such as small stones and like to use my writing to support worthy charities. In fact my first publication came in a charity fundraiser as a result of a 300 word blog challenge, Your Messages.

So I was delighted to read that Caroline Smailes has set up a new challenge for 100 word flash pieces to be included in a Kindle book to raise funds for One in Four. The catch is that each piece must be based on, inspired by or linked to a song on YouTube and the closing date is next Wednesday,11th January.

I'll leave Caroline to explain all the rules and the story behind why she has again chosen to support that charity here.

I've already entered, please join me.

Another river of stones

I forgot to mention that I am once again taking part in the River of
Stones writing project this January and you can find all my recent small stones on a separate blog, small stones in a river.

I've already shown myself to be rubbish at remembering to update the blog regularly between projects. But even just writing small stones daily for two months a year, and knowing others are doing the same, has proven to be very satisfying.

For more information on the River of Stones project, and how you can join us, visit Fiona and Kaspa here at Writing Our Way Home

Creativity as therapy?

I've been taking a brief break from the blog while I toss around a few ideas for future projects. Possibly not for the immediate future, but I'm beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel and starting to plan, in my head at least, for the day when I may have more time available. Not just more time to actually write, but time to expand my interests into other writing-related projects.

One of the questions I've been asking myself is why do we write? I'm guessing that the answer to this will be different for every writer. Some may write as therapy, others just to let out the stories which are swirling around their heads. I guess for many writers it will, initially at least, be a combination of the two.

My first novel, Walking on Tiptoe, has its seeds in my own experience. But it's not my story, nor that of anyone I know. It was created from a mish-mash of things of things I've seen, heard and read over many years, with a lot of imagination thrown in. Most of my short stories have started in the same way.

Actual life writing (memoir) is much harder. I find that I can only write about life events from which I now have a considerable distance. When Son 1 was a new-born, struggling for life in intensive care, my writer's instinct told me I should be keeping a diary. But I could only live in the moment, I couldn't even revisit the trauma of earlier the same day. Perhaps my brain was protecting me.

I've only written about our experiences in the neonatal unit once, a poem which is on my website. I rarely write poetry, except for writing course assignments, but almost sixteen years after the event I was compelled to write that one and doing so was hugely beneficial at another difficult time.

I truly believe in creativity being therapeutic. Not just writing but fine art and handicrafts, music and dramatic arts. I've always had the urge to create, to write, to knit and sew, or even create greetings cards and jewellery. I find such creativity both relaxing and occasionally frustrating when things go wrong. It's not coincidental that creative arts therapies are used to much with people who have disabilities or mental health issues.

I wish that more people had the time to explore their own creative sides. The product doesn't have to be beautiful or saleable, it is the process of creation which provides the benefit. Whether we sell our work or not we should be proud of it.

National Short Story Week

I've just started to dip my toes back into short story writing after a break of about a year, when I was concentrating on other forms of writing. So I was delighted to find the website of National Short Story Week, which starts today.

The website is a treasure trove of writing tips and resources for short story enthusiasts, both young and old. I'm particularly looking forward to listening to the exclusive interviews from Sue Cook's The Write Lines radio show.

I'm off to read more and hopefully become inspired. Why don't you join me?

Self publishing

Self publishing is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. In the past, when it was so closely linked to vanity publishing, I wouldn't have even considered it. But now, with the success of the Kindle, it is becoming a much more credible route for a book that is perhaps not commercial enough for the big presses and it's certainly not one I'd discount for the future.

One of the things I've frequently done since I got my Kindle is to download samples, including many of self published books from both sides of the Atlantic. I've been surprised by the variation in quality. Some are easily up there with commercially published books, while some contain enough typos and grammatical errors to make them unreadable for me. Others contain faults which confuse me because I can't work out, for example, whether the author really doesn't know how to set out paragraphs or speech properly or whether the formatting errors are arising in the conversion of a document to a Kindle book.

Now as a writer I'm probably more tuned in to errors than the average reader and I also know none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes, of course, but most of them should be picked up in the editing process. For me more than an odd slip in a Kindle sample will make sure I don't go on to buy the book, however promising the story itself might seem, because I know I'd find it too distracting to read.

Yes, I am a language geek and perhaps I'm a bit anal about this, but I think if a writer wants to self publish it's important to make the book the best it can be before letting it loose on the world. When you've spent months or years writing a novel, why not give it the polish it deserves? If a writer doesn't yet have the skills to edit or alternatively the funds to pay a professional editor, then maybe they are not quite ready to launch a book via the self publishing route.

But please don't think I'm knocking all self published books, because I'm not. There are some really good ones out there and just because a book isn't picked up by a mainstream publisher doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's just that when you read some samples on the Kindle you can start to understand what agents have to wade through on a daily basis and you can see how occasionally books with promise must slip through the net.

There's a lot to think about before deciding to self publish. Whilst I'd much rather find a traditional publisher for my work, if in the future I decided to go down the self publishing route I would want to educate myself on the pitfalls before rushing in.

Festival fever

Seeing excitement on Twitter and photos on Facebook of the Edinburgh Book Festival reminded me of the only time I've been to Scotland. It was 20 years ago, I was six months pregnant and we spent a few days in Edinburgh before going to stay with my sister in Falkirk.

We loved Edinburgh. We took in the sights and I managed to climb the hill to the castle, but we spent most of our time at the festivals, watching comedy shows and visiting book tents. We went to one literary event, a discussion about female sleuths between crime writers Antonia Fraser and Sara Paretsky, who was one of my favourite authors. I still have my signed copies of their books.

We left Falkirk swearing we'd go back soon. But just six weeks later I gave birth prematurely to Son 1 and not so long after Son 2 was born my sister and her family moved back to England. I never got to go back, to either Scotland or the Edinburgh Festivals.

But I will. Maybe next time as an author.

Talking in the powder room

I've got a short article on In the Powder Room today. It's a personal piece about how we found out that Son 2 has autism, but it's also very pertinent to some of the themes of my first novel, Walking on Tiptoe (which isn't about me, honest!).

You can find my article here.

Charity funding crisis

The BBC reports today that small charities are fighting for survival due to the loss of funding from local government.

I've worked for and with several local charities over the last twelve years on a voluntary basis and I know this is true. Many of the services they have offered in the past have been partially or wholly funded by grants from the local authority from various pots of money. Funding from central government to local government has been drastically reduced with the inevitable knock-on effect.

There are of course other sources of funding such as the Lottery, the big media-promoted annual fundraisers such as Children in Need and various trusts. Each one requires a not only a stringent project proposal and budget but also a carefully worded form. Many charities will need to apply for pots of money from several different funders to keep a service afloat.

It all takes time and many small charities don't have a member of staff dedicated to such fundraising. Charities are struggling and some are merging with another compatible local organisation to reduce core costs (admin expenses, rent etc). Valuable community services are closing down due to lack of funding, staff are losing their jobs and it looks as though things will be much worse in the next financial year. So much for the Big Society.

I'm currently starting to work on funding bids with one local charity I know well. It's a side of business writing I hope to do more of in my future as a freelance writer, because it draws on both my writing knowledge, my Open University studies and my previous career as an accountant. I've served my time as a charity volunteer, now I hope I can sometimes use my skills to help others as part of my work.

Of course I'm not giving up the fiction, just broadening my writing horizons.

Writing update

You are probably wondering what has happened to novel two, as the word count doesn't appear to have risen in a long time.

Well the truth is that I forgot to update the word count meter. The novel was growing, slowly, but all the time it didn't feel quite right. A lot of thought, and a few random online conversations, convinced me that this one has to be a literary novel. I was trying to write commercial fiction, with a 21 year old main character fighting for attention with two older complex characters and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it just wasn't working. So I deleted novel two before I got to 10,000 words and I'm about to start again, with another woman as the main focus. It will still be the same three main characters and the same story, it will just have a different slant. Wish me luck.

In the meantime I have been turning my attention to writing and submitting shorter work ( both fiction and nonfiction) and developing potential commercial writing opportunities. I'm currently doing some pro bono work for a local charity, which I hope will eventually lead to more paid opportunities and I've created a page on my website for my business writing. I have years of past experience working with small businesses and charities, it seems silly not to try to combine that with the writing which is now my main career focus and I've been learning copywriting skills.

As for novel one, it is still out there. In the autumn, I shall take a decision about whether to stop submitting to agents and to send it instead to indie publishers or even consider self-publishing. I still believe there would be a market for it, but I also realise that certain aspects may need a little more work and I'd obviously be very happy to do that with proper guidance from an agent or publisher. In the meantime I'm somehow resisting the temptation to fiddle with what is a clean draft.

The summer holiday is nearly upon us and I'm just trying to remain as flexible as I can and not drop any balls. Which reminds me, I'm also now having to fit physiotherapy appointments and new exercises into my schedule...

Half term blues

I'm back.

I've had some hopefully temporary problems with Blogger, which have made posting and commenting difficult.

I've also been battling my way through half term, feeling guilty about the amount of work I'm able to do (or rather not able to do). I tend to use school holiday time for catching up on reading, rather than writing, but during this long half term even that has proved difficult, due to Son 2's constant noise levels. Right now he has the radio on in the kitchen (it was a pop channel, Radio 1 perhaps, but has just been changed to classical) and at the same time is watching YouTube videos on the computer in the living room. I often feel as if my head is going to explode.

My mind is also flitting in a very haphazard manner between different writing projects, some started but none completed, and I need to rediscover my focus. Son 2 is back to school tomorrow, after 17 days at home, so that should help.

Novel one is back out there and I'm at that stage of checking my email regularly, hoping, hoping...

Good news

No, not mine. Not yet, anyway.

There seems to have been a flurry of good news in recent weeks on Twitter and in other writerly places I frequent on the internet. Writers landing an agent, writers getting book deals. It makes me happy, because it gives me hope. There are many good writers out there fighting for so few opportunities, but to see people I know online or in real life actually achieving that success now is highly motivating.

In the meantime I've just about finished this round of submissions for novel one. I'll probably send off one more this week, then I shall take another breather and try to decide whether it is almost time to bypass agents with this novel and starting approaching a few of the indie publishers who take direct submissions. I've always known that it is likely to be a small press book, but ideally I would love to have an agent to present it properly for me. An agent who can also tell me what, if anything, needs to changed or improved before it goes out to publishers and who could deal with the complications of publishing for me, leaving my precious hours free to write.

I learned a lot writing novel one. There's an article by the ever brilliant Emma Darwin on the website of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which I think explains the problems with which I struggled far more articulately than I ever could.

Maybe I tried to be a little too ambitious for the first book I ever completed. It was, after all, originally conceived as a potential project for an MA which I will not now be able to study. But I've always thrived on a challenge and I don't give up easily.

Dropping a ball

Do you ever find you are juggling so many balls that you spend most of your time worrying about which one you are going to drop first?

Well that has been me since Christmas. I've been juggling health issues, first my own and now Son 2's. Small amounts of work, which is currently mostly unpaid but very relevant to other areas of writing I want to develop. Non-fiction writing, just a few small speculative pieces but one of which has been accepted for publication. Further research for novel two, as my ideas take me in new directions. And most importantly trying to accept the need to catch up on sleep in the day sometimes, because I am often up with Son 2 for hours in the night and my body is complaining. I don't like life eating into my writing hours like that, but sometimes it's necessary.

Novel one had been put on the back burner for a short while, but I've finally started to submit again. Unfortunately I accidentally lost the long list of targeted agents I'd prepared last year, and although I can remember some of them, I'm having to research others again. That's not entirely bad as things do change, agents come and go or close their lists. I'm finding new books to which I can compare my writing in my submission letter. I'm feeling positive, but I know I must push on with novel two as a matter of urgency. A two week half term is nearly upon us...

Rediscovering the personal

When I first discovered blogging, five or six years ago, I followed a small selection of blogs which had something in common, namely great writing. Some of these blogs were written by writers, others by bloggers who had a gift for writing, yet no ambitions in that direction.

The blogs provided snapshots of the bloggers' lives, both past and present. Life, death, children, broken and new relationships were covered and sometimes I would smile as I read, on other occasions I would cry. Those blogs led me to a continuing interest in the therapeutic use of journalling and creative writing.

Many of those early blogs now lie abandoned or are seldom written, though I still have links in my blogroll and on Google Reader, keen to catch any occasional post. Blogging seems to have moved in a new direction, away from the personal and over to the promotional, but I'm afraid I soon lose interest in blogs which do little other than promote freebies the blogger has received. I think we've all become rightly wary about how much personal information we disclose on our blogs and as a result something very creative is in danger of being lost.

But there are still many fascinating and beautifully written blogs out there and in the last few weeks I have found myself crying at blogs again. I have read blog posts which were truly heartfelt, yet so personal that I feel it is not right to link to them here. At a time when my own blog has been feeling very stale, I've been reminded why I first started blogging. It feels good.

The river of stones book

I've just realised that I neglected to tell you that the river of stones book, pay attention: a river of stones has been published (sorry, Fiona and Kaspa).

The book is available here in both paper and pdf ebook formats. I've been enjoying dipping into it and spotting the contributions of online friends, as well as my own stone. There's going to be a new river project in July, all details can be found on the blog or the Writing Our Way Home forum.

Pausing for breath

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last week. There was a reason for this, I wanted the Authors for Japan post to stay at the top of the blog until the auction finished. Not being in a position to either donate or bid, my only contribution to that very worthy cause could be to use social media to raise awareness in my own limited way. The auction finished last night, having raised an amazing total of £10962.25, so huge congratulations to Keris and her team of helpers.

I'm still doing little actual writing, as we are struggling with Son 2's lack of sleep and the knock-on effects on our own health. I'm feeling a little brain dead, to be honest, so I'm using any time I do have to do a little more background reading for novel two, some of it in German! I also hope to get novel one out to a few more agents either later this week or next. I've had some very positive feedback on my writing, but it isn't the light commercial fiction which agents and publishers seem to be looking for right now. I still have many options to try, so I'm far from giving up, but I think having a few weeks off to take stock has been healthy.

Onwards and upwards.

Authors for Japan

I've known Keris Stainton online for several years now and have been constantly inspired by both her writing and her enthusiasm. So I shouldn't have been surprised when she felt compelled to do something to help alleviate the current suffering in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami.

But what she has achieved in just a few days is mind-blowing. Authors for Japan is an auction where readers can bid for signed books, manuscript critiques and even the chance to have a character named after them in an author's next book. Some items will appeal especially to writers, others to anyone who loves books. All the above, and many more goodies, have been donated by the huge number of authors of adult and children's/young adult books who responded to Keris' plea for help.

Authors for Japan is currently listing 150 items. Bidding starts at 8am GMT today (15th March) and will end at 8pm GMT on Sunday 20th, full details of how to bid are on the website. All proceeds are to go to the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

What are you waiting for?