Tiptoeing into 2012

I'm not keen on New Year resolutions. You know, the sort where you pledge to give up something or lose a ridiculous amount of weight in next to no time. They are the sort which you break almost immediately and then cause you guilt.

But I have been taking a look at my life and how I can better prioritise in 2012. The last few months of 2011 have been a rollercoaster, from a desperate low to a fantastic high and back to low again. It's not been easy and some things had to give, mostly my creative writing, which made me sad.

In terms of writing, my currently small scale commercial work has to take first place, as it reliably pays. I then intend to concentrate on short stories for a few months, whilst I further flesh out my plot for novel two. Having already made one false start on novel two, I've had to go back to the drawing board, and will eventually start to write again in a different genre, with a different main character and more plot points on the scaffold. But I'll get there, I really will.

I also need to start sending Walking on Tiptoe out again. It is currently out with a few agents but I suspect that the silence from two of those can by now be construed as a no. I think that this will be the year when I start sending it out to indie publishers, whilst also looking into electronic possibilities. I'd love to see it on the Kindle one day, but if I go down that route I'd probably need help with the cover and formatting, which is fairly complex, and I don't have the funds to invest right now.

2012 promises to be an interesting year for the boys. If all goes to plan we will be waving Son 1 off to his first choice university in the autumn, whilst concurrently making plans for Son 2's future. This is likely to be less straightforward.

I have a secret project, which I hope to start working on quietly in the background during the year, building perhaps towards something for the future, when the nest is finally empty.

Last, but definitely not least, December has shown me that I need to take even more care to preserve my health. I'm doing okay, but there is still room for improvement, still a need to be more selfish sometimes and take a little more time out for myself. Recently I have felt as if I am spending almost every waking hour either caring or working (I include thinking about work here!) and my body is telling me that it can't continue. It's difficult to balance Hubby's ad hoc work against my needs but obviously the guaranteed money has to take priority at times.

So what are your plans for 2012?

Merry Christmas

Can you believe that Fairytale of New York by The Pogues, featuring the late Kirsty MacColl, was first released in 1987? No, neither can I. Enjoy.

Thirty years on

This time last week I travelled into the West End to meet up with six friends from university. Two I hadn't seen since our graduation day almost thirty years ago, others I hadn't seen for at least seven years and the last meeting with some of those was sadly at a funeral.

It was a reunion which grew out of a chance comment on Facebook and an effort to get in touch with the fellow students for whom I still had contact details, some of whom then brought in others. The only thing we all have in common is that we studied single or joint honours German at The University of Reading in the same year group. But it was amazing how we immediately fell back into easy conversation. Someone brought along the departmental photo (which I'd missed as I was at a job interview) and time was spent trying to recall the names of other students and sharing anecdotes. I was glad to discover I was not the only person who struggled to put names to the familiar faces in the picture.

Some of those present had lived in my hall of residence, others spent the year abroad in the same location as me. As well as the memories we talked about families, jobs and our fears that some of our children will be going out into the world during a recession, just as we did. I wonder if our career paths might have taken different courses if that had not been the case.

Whether or not we ever manage to get together as a group again, the afternoon was life-affirming. It showed that most people's lives don't follow the path they had expected, yet we have all survived. And it proved that friendships based on shared experiences never quite die, however long they are neglected.

Depression in the news

The tragic death of the Wales football mamager, Gary Speed, last weekend brought depression into the limelight.

Now I don't intend to speculate on any individual case, but some of what I read online over the next few days both encouraged and upset me because I think it generalised too much. 'Talk to someone' was the general mantra being bandied about the social media. Now I have no argument with this, CBT and counselling are widely and successfully used in mental health treatment and the Samaritans do a fantastic job. It would be wonderful if everyone with depression could confide in a friend or family member and be gently pointed towards the doctor as a starting point for timely and appropriate treatment.

But real life isn't like that. In real life a person who is clinically depressed or experiencing other mental health symptoms may internalise their pain and confusion to such an extent that they are unable to open up to anyone. In real life a seriously depressed person may be clinging onto everyday life with such success that their true condition is not obvious to even close family and friends. Most of us have an impression of a clinically depressed person as being unable to get out of bed and unable to function, but it isn't always like that. In real life depression can cause paranoia, even psychosis, and can be part of another disorder. In real life medication handed out readily by doctors can, in rare cases, actually make the depressed patient suicidal. And there are significant waiting times to see a psychiatrist on the NHS even after a referral has been made.

So yes, if you suspect someone is depressed encourage them to talk. But if someone is, or appears to be, having suicidal thoughts get emergency help for them. A visit to Accident and Emergency will enable a proper assessment to be made and can be a fast track into psychiatric services. It doesn't necessarily mean that the patient will be hospitalised, as if needed there are intensive crisis services operating in the community nowadays. But it might just save a life.

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?

An MS update

I've just realised that I've not written about my MS for a long time. Now this is partly, of course, because it means that there has been no significant change to write about. Given that it is a progressive disorder, just pootling along in a sort of equilibrium has had to be good, right?

Over the past two years since diagnosis I've become much more body aware than I ever was. I notice small changes that indicate that something is starting to go wrong and I can act accordingly. Luckily my doctors recognise this. After all it's probably not every doctor that would accept that I know a bladder infection is about to start because my eyes feel strange. Especially when the urine test is clear. But the requested prescription always does the trick and gets me back to normal. I've since learned that this sort of weird occurrence is quite common in MS.

I feel at my best in the late spring, early summer and early autumn. My body hates cold and damp weather, but it doesn't like too much heat either. I am conscious that I walk better and further in pleasant weather but I'm not afraid to use a stick or even, on rare occasions, a walker with a seat if that will enable me to do some of the things I want with confidence. I've been on medication for stiffness and the pain of leg spasms since the start of the year and that has helped too.

I've been seeing a lovely physiotherapist for the last few months to work on dizziness and my core stability, as one side of my body is definitely weaker than the other. She is part of a rehabilitation team and that has led on to appointments next week with an occupational therapist and a speech therapist, because I have some functional weakness in my right hand and arm and a tendency to slur words a little when I am ill or very tired. None of this is earth shattering or even too horribly restrictive yet, but such problems are best tackled early if the access to therapists is offered, so my work doesn't become affected.

I feel lucky to be getting so much help. Sometimes I worry that it is because I am worse than I think I am, but just chatting to doctors or therapists makes me realise that I am at the higher functioning end of MS and that is where I want to stay. I think the input may be influenced by the fact that I am a carer and I am honest about the fact that because of Son 2 I don't get the amount of sleep I should, which is probably a factor in my dizziness. I'm usually pretty good at pacing myself, at taking notice of the spoon theory, but occasionally I forget that even on a good day I can't rush around like I used to and it takes me days to recover. It seems I never learn!

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.

Pink October

I'm sure you are all aware by now that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and right on cue, today I had to go for my first routine breast screening mammogram.

I did have a mammogram two years ago, when I had a cancer scare, so the procedure was familiar. I knew it would be slightly uncomfortable so I swallowed a couple of paracetamol in advance and was in and out of the screening trailer in less than ten minutes. By the end of October I should have the results.

Breast cancer charities are a cause close to my heart. About a decade ago I knew four women, who were all diagnosed with breast cancer within the space of a couple of years. All were mothers in their prime. Two of them are no longer with us.

When my close friend and godmother to Son 2, K, was diagnosed with breast cancer I bought a lovely pink ribbon brooch sold by QVC in aid of Breast Cancer Care. It was sturdier, and more expensive than a breast cancer pin. When K sadly passed away 7 years ago, following a recurrence of the cancer, I wore the brooch to her funeral. I pinned it to the soft pink sweater I was wearing under a black leather jacket. I remember fiddling with the brooch when we stopped in a service station on route to the funeral. By the time we moved with everyone else to the pub, following the burial, it was gone.

I like to think that it fell off in the graveyard when K's husband fell into my arms for a hug as we shared tears together. I want to believe that it is still there hidden in the grass, bringing me closer to K, my friend through university and beyond.

Every year I try to support a breast cancer charity in memory of K, who inspired me to take my writing seriously. If you do just one worthy thing this month, please consider doing the same. Buy a pin, or any one of the special breast cancer items which many high street stores and charities stock. Give a money donation to any cancer charity, if you prefer.

Breast cancer affects so many, men as well as women. It could be any of us next time, but I'm hoping that the test I had today will be clear.

The brooch pictured above, which I may well buy for myself, is available from Breast Cancer Care here.
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Taking a brief break

Every so often my time becomes consumed by unexpected events. This is one of those occasions and I'm being stretched in too many directions to have the energy to blog.

So I'm taking a brief break. I shall be back shortly, hopefully refreshed and with lots of new ideas but in the meantime I'll still be reading your blogs.

See you soon.

Kindle anniversary

So it's a year since I got my Kindle.

At the start I wasn't exactly sure how I would use it. But then I downloaded a few free classics, bought a couple of contemporary novels and I was away. A year later I can report that my Kindle has hundreds of books. Well I say books, but some are pdf ebooks and personal documents rather than Kindle books. And nearly 400 of them are samples.

I can honestly say that my book buying habits have been changed. There are, of course, some books which are perhaps not ideal on a Kindle, glossy illustrated books and technical books with lots of charts, for example. But for a straightforward book, which is mostly going to be read cover to cover, the Kindle is great.

A fair few of the books I've downloaded have been giveaways and I think I've found some really good freebies along the way. Others have been heavily discounted in promotions. If a book costs no more than a cup of coffee then I will possibly be interested and may buy it just to read later, despite the depth of my to be read piles. I have a very limited budget for books, but where I would previously have purchased from a charity shop, I am spending the same amount buying a bargain for my Kindle. This has to be good news for the authors, who will at least get some royalties.

My Kindle contains not only novels, but poetry, reference books, crochet and knitting patterns, recipe books, books in German and more. It's truly a portable library I can throw into my handbag. I take advantage of the free books and samples to experiment with less familiar genres, I download both books by very popular mainstream authors and books which have been self-published. I read the samples to help me decide which I feel are worth paying for and I use my sample collection as both a form of wishlist and a quick dip into authors' styles, something invaluable for a writer.

A year on I'm still totally convinced and I'm waiting to see what the rumoured Amazon tablet might bring...

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.

Liebster award

A few days ago I was honoured to receive a blog award from Miriam. You can read all about the Liebster award on her blog.

I'm supposed to pass it on to five bloggers I consider to be friends, but you are all very lovely and I really can't choose from those on my blogroll and more.

So if you'd like it, please help yourself and read how to pass it on yourself over on Miriam's blog, where she has described the purpose of the award so beautifully.

(Yes, I know I'm being lazy. And it's just reminded me that I really must update my blogroll...)

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.

Outside The Ordinary World - a review

As a child, growing up in a Seventh Day Adventist family in California, Sylvia is asked to be complicit in hiding her mother's affair. She vows never to become her mother, but then, just when her husband is engrossed in a major home renovation project, she meets Tai...

Outside the Ordinary World, the debut novel of Dori Ostermiller, explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships and how secrets can have an impact down generations. It looks at the devastating power of unexpected attraction in middle-age and above all it examines the burden of guilt; marital guilt, family guilt and religious guilt.

Outside the Ordinary World is literary women's fiction and as such is more character than plot-driven. Dori Ostermiller writes beautiful prose which is fluid and sensory, with evocative description which occasionally moves into dark areas. The story switches effortlessly between California in the 1970's, when Sylvia and her sister Ali were growing up, and New England of the present day, where Sylvia and her husband Nathan are raising their own daughters.

I absolutely loved it and will certainly be looking out for future books by Dori Ostermiller.

(Thanks to MIRA for giving me the opportunity to review this book, which is released on 17 August)

This week in London

I've lived in London for nearly 30 years and this week, for probably the first time, I was ashamed of my adopted city.

I'm sure there will continue to be be many inquests about what happened and why, but nothing can excuse the behaviour we've all witnessed in the media. The furniture store in Croydon, owned by the same family for nearly 150 years, razed to the ground. Young men clambering over roofs in Peckham (I believe). Not, as I first thought, to vandalise the buildings but to escape a ferocious fire raging in a shop below. A woman jumping from a window to escape flames. A young student, recently arrived in this country, physically attacked but then mugged by men who seemed to be offering him assistance. The video went viral but I find it just too distressing to offer a link. Looters stripping stores bare and running off with expensive trainers and electrical goods. Small shopkeepers staring at the wreckage of their livelihoods in tearful disbelief, families left homeless.

My husband worked in Camden for many years and we've both lived in Hackney. We know those boroughs well. Their quirky charm comes along with all the usual problems of inner city areas, but we've seen nothing on this scale before. The police seemed to be initially caught off guard when trouble kicked off in Tottenham and there was a total lack of political leadership in London for a few days. It is truly scary and saddening that the violence and looting spread so quickly to other areas and other cities in apparent copycat actions.

But some good has come out of it. The subsequent use of social media, not to incite riot but to organise clean-up operations, was impressive. Communities are pulling together and, thank goodness, the race card is not being played much. Perhaps the most impressive and moving response so far was the dignified speech yesterday by Tariq Jahan the father of one of the young men fatally mowed down whilst protecting their community in Birmingham.

Here in our borough there was heavy policing from Monday evening onwards. Shops and leisure destinations were closed early and I believe the main tube station was shut for a while. Any attempts at causing trouble in the town centre were peacefully repelled. We've had a lucky escape so far but the week has left a very nasty taste and an undercurrent of fear.

Summertime blues

We are just over one week into Son 2's summer holiday. Now we are lucky, because he gets a shorter vacation than most, four and a half weeks rather than the normal six, and we do have some respite. He will be attending a local special needs playscheme for two days, that is ten hours, a week.

Those hours are precious. They give a chance for us to recharge our batteries, for me to write. In the past I had to try to fit my own errands, as well as fun for Son 1, into the precious free time. It's easier now there are two of us around and of course Son 1 is independent, apart from the occasional lift.

Son 2 just doesn't do going out. He likes routine and familiar places, such as the playscheme which he has attended for years, but he has a huge fear of the unknown which permeates his life, whether at home or at school. This, of course, affects the whole family. For years now holidays and even day trips have proved impossible. We tried, we really did, but having to put your child through what is for them a form of torture is no fun for anyone, including innocent members of the public who happen to witness the resulting distress. As a child gets bigger the expression of anxiety becomes less socially acceptable and more difficult for carers to physically handle. And as children get older they can and should make their own decisions about what they want to do as leisure activities. But it is something that other parents, even those with differently affected special needs children, don't always easily comprehend.

Of course this time next year Son 2 will be under the adult social services team. His playscheme is run by a children's charity and not linked to his autism-specific out of borough school, so he may have nothing and that is a worry. It would be lovely to think that with maturity he will become more adaptable, but I seriously doubt that will happen.

For now we are spending our summer largely bunkered up in our own house and occasionally, as long as Son 2 can't hear any emergency sirens, the garden. I try not to get into conversations with friends about their wonderful holidays and fun camping trips. And I take vitamin D tablets to try to counter the lack of sunlight which is implicated in MS.

There seems to be an agoraphobic tendency running down my family, though thankfully one I escaped. We've developed our current approach to the summer holiday in order to preserve Son 2's mental health and existing behaviour levels, as a deterioration in those would affect us all year round, as well as his potential adulthood care. It's worth it.

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.

The river flows on

I posted my final small stone for July this morning, as I forgot yesterday. How annoying not to have fitted them all into the calendar month, but at least I did create a small stone for each day.

If you want to see how I got on you can find all my small stones here and I intend to carry on posting small stones there as and when, so do check back from time to time.

Just a reminder, you can find all my original small stones from the January river of stones here, on this blog, under the aros label

And many thanks to Fiona and Kaspa for creating the river of stones. Why don't you take a look at what else they have to offer?

Tragedies

This weekend has been full of sadness.

We watched the news in horror as heartwrenching photos of dying children in Somalia were replaced by those of a bombing and a massacre in Norway. At present the death toll is 93, most of them adolescents attending a camp. As the mother of teens I can barely comprehend the enormity of this tragedy and its aftermath, it almost seems disrespectful to even write about something which will have such profound repercussions for so many families and my heart goes out to them.

Then there was the death of Amy Winehouse yesterday and as soon as it was announced the social media started to buzz about her well-documented issues. Some people had little sympathy for her. But in amongst this I started to think about her family, about how helpless they must have felt over the last years. Because addiction, whether to a substance or a person, is a destructive illness and like most mental health issues it is not something you can switch off at will, even with the best professional input. This seems to be a point missed by many. I know from personal experience that caring for and about someone with a mental health problem, knowing that there is little you can do to help, is one of the hardest things. We don't yet know the exact cause of Amy's death, but addiction and despair can hit anyone and they are certainly reflected in Amy's music.

So I don't think yesterday was, as some have complained, about the perceived value of one famous life over many young ones. It shouldn't be about glamourising or demonising addiction either. It should be about remembering both the numerous young lives lost before they'd hardly begun and a tremendous talent who will never be forgotten.