Asking for what you want

As I’ve said before, I do believe in prayer. It’s not necessarily a simple process however – or at least it’s not for me.

    First, you have to know what you want, and for me - brought up never to want anything for myself - that’s not easy. Secondly, you have to ask for it, and that’s not easy either, for the same reasons as above. And, thirdly, when you ask for it you have to really mean it; you have to be prepared to put up with all the disadvantages of having whatever it is you want (of which another part of you will always find plenty).

    Finally you have to be specific and the more specific the better. It’s like magic wishes. They do come true, but you have to make sure you phrase them in the right way.

    For example, it’s no good saying, ‘I’m fed up with being stuck at home.’ You have to say, ‘I would like a car of my own.’ Nor ‘I would like a job,’ but ‘I would like part-time work as near home as possible in something like a bookshop.’ Both of these being prayers I’ve made in the past and both of them granted almost immediately in completely unexpected ways.

    I’ve never knowingly prayed for anything harmful. I’ve never dared because I know from experience that all harm you cause rebounds on you at least threefold (as the old magic precepts have it), as if the universe were beating you about the head saying ‘no, no, no’ until you learn your lesson. But I dare say those prayers come true too.

    All of which is a lead-up to the point of this post.

    A couple of days ago I had a bit of a meltdown. I felt as if I’d been plugging away for ever at this fiction lark and I was fed up. Nobody read my blogs, I thought. None of my books was published. I’d had to stop The (latest) Novel because I was messing it up, even though I needed to write because not-writing made me ill, but I had no ideas for what else I could do.

    Please, I said, just give me a sign that it’s worth carrying on with the blogs – a comment, a new follower. And give me an idea of where to go next in the rest of my writing.

    Not very specific, I grant you, either of those wishes, but they did the trick.

    So, thank you to the Killerton Dragon for her comments on Her Outdoors and thank you to my new Banker’s niece follower (you know who you are).

    And thank you to the universe for showing me how to take two of my books one step forward so that I can then put them aside and get on with something new, and how to take one of my books one step out into the big bad world. More of all that anon.

    There’s no limit really to what one could ask for, if only one had the courage.

The need to write

I have a horrible night. I spend the whole time running, dreaming that I have too much to do and too little time in which to do it. It’s that feeling that gives me migraines, and I’ve been feeling migrainous on and off for 8 days now. (No chocolate, no wine. Just unadulterated reality.)

I explain all this to Frog this morning at breakfast and as I do so I realise that I need to start writing again. That is what the dreams were telling me.

Ever since I stopped writing (a few weeks ago) I’ve been running around like a headless chicken. Do I garden or sew? Do I feed the birds, do my washing, wash up? Should I take that bag of old clothes to the charity shop or should I go to Homebase and replace our 1960s’ iron which has started to burn things because its thermostat has gone awry and even Frog has given up on it? I’m overwhelmed by choice. I’ve lost my centre, my raison d’être.

The need to write, I realise, is part of me, like the need to eat, or sneeze. I ignore it at my peril.

Losing the plot

I’ve been meaning to update this blog for days, if not weeks, and I’ve made several attempts, but each time I write something I think, ‘This is so boring. Why should anyone want to know about the progress of my novel?’ I keep looking for something topical to bring the subject alive and make it more relevant. Nothing, however, has materialised, so you’ll just have to make do with the bones. Which are as follows.

A few weeks ago, as you may remember if you’ve been paying attention, I completed the first full draft of the novel – ie, as far as I knew I had everything there and everything in the right place. It had taken me three years (on and off) to get to that stage and I felt as if I’d reached some sort of watershed.

I knew however that several of the chapters could do with rewriting and I knew there was lots of editing to be done plus pruning in some places and expansion in others. So I set to immediately, excited by the thought of all the fame and money that awaited me when my masterpiece was published, not to mention the joy of having someone else actually read the darn thing and hear what I have to say.

Disaster. The more I worked on the book the more confused I got. I changed one bit and all the rest fell apart. I seemed to have lost the plot – literally.

So I took the only course open to me. I abandoned it. What was probably happening, I thought, was that I needed time to detach myself from the book so that I could come back to it and see it dispassionately.

I’ve given myself three months. It may take longer than that, but I’ll see how I feel.

I do miss it though.

How I live now

 

We saw an extraordinary film last night called How I live now. It’s based on an equally extraordinary book of the same name by Meg Rosoff which I read a few years ago. Both are intense visionary accounts of an American girl who comes to stay with English cousins in the countryside and gets caught up in a war. Do check them both out.

You’ll probably find the book in the ‘Young Adult’ (teenager) sections of libraries and bookshops. I’m a great fan of YA books. They’re like pared-down versions of adult books – more emotional and less likely to stray off the point. Ironically they’re often deeper too, tackling the really important subjects.

Another YA book that knocked me sideways is Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. This deals with racial discrimination by making black people the race in control and whites the underdogs. What a brilliant way of bringing the subject alive.

 

Another one I remember is told from the point of view of a teenager who murdered another child when she was younger. Wow. When I remember the title, I’ll let you know.

Pictures from Amazon

When it's right to pause and when it's not

Well, here I am again after an absence of two months. I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I’ve just finished the first complete(ish) draft of The Novel. In other words, I’ve filled in all the gaps and have everything in roughly the right order.

I stalled before Christmas at the climax. I’d put my heroine in jeopardy, she’d reached her lowest point, but I just couldn’t make the leap from there to the ending (which I'd already written). I didn’t think that what I had in mind was exciting enough. I couldn’t fit all the strands together.

Then, a couple of weeks ago – after I’d fiddled around compiling a new chapter breakdown, timeline and synopsis and written a couple of new scenes for the middle of the book – I suddenly thought, oh bu**er it. Just do it. The waiting was worse than the possibility of failure. And somehow it worked. Everything fell into place.

Now, was that because the time was right – because my life had caught up with the novel – or was it because I put myself on the spot?

It’s a tricky business, this writing, knowing when it’s right to pause and when it’s not.