Mamma Mia.. who would have thought!

I used to go to the cinema because I wanted to see a film. For a period of time I used to go alone. I worked a late shift and often had day times to myself while everyone else I knew was at work. Sometimes I would go and see a film because a friend wanted to see it. When I had children I stopped going to see films that I wanted to see and began seeing the films they  wanted to see. So for a good few years I have seen every Disney, Pixar etc that came out. Now the older two are 13 and 15 they are able to go without me and L and I take it in turns to accompany Curly Boy when his kind of film comes out - do you know how much it costs to go the the cinema now??

But, last week I went to the movies with The Lovely J - a bit of mother daughter bonding. There were two films she wanted to see and with her friends away on various holidays, I agreed. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snoggingcame first. I should have known when I saw the credits - a Nickleodeon production. Absolutely dire! Then I had to go and see Mamma Mia. I had expected it to be a bit of cheesy fun, prepared to smile at it and tap my foot (never was an ABBA fan - my first proper ‘date’ was to see ABBA - The Movie! and that was terrible), prepared to grin and bear it for the sake of mother daughter relations. It is however a great film. The cast slip into the songs with an ironic smile on their face, when the lyrics are cringeworthy, they skirt round them with humour. My personal favourite was the rendition of Chickita- with Meryl Streep crying in a grubby Greek toilet whilst her two old friends try and soothe her. Hilarious. Close second Dancing Queen with a chorus of young lads in flippers and trunks dancing on a pier. I cried, I laughed, I tapped my foot and cringed slightly as Piers Brosnan rocked it through a couple of songs - but hey all in a good cause. I  recommend it and shall be returning again to enjoy it once more. Apologies to ABBA fans but the songs in the film are much better renditions than the original efforts. The script is great and relationships between the characters very real, I had a lump in my throat for living on a Greek Island too - forgetting all the reasons why I chose to move back to England for the length of the film, wishing I had let my daughter grow up by the sea in the sunshine - but then dilapidated houses seem so much more romantic on screen than they are in reality!

Engleby

I picked up this one because several people had asked if I had read it - because part of it is written as journal entries - one of my narratives in Korakas is in journal form and they thought it might be useful to me. Very different from mine however, but I am glad I read it. Mike Engleby is an odd chap but worth reading.

If like me you were anywhere near London in the 80s it will make you smile. If like L you were at university during the 70s it will make you smile. It’ll probably do the same wherever you were or whatever you were doing during those decades. The unreliability of Mike’s (Engleby’s) narration crept over me slowly - maybe I’m just slow. I found myself laughing at some of the statements he made and as the story unfolded my laughter turned to gasping as I couldn’t believe he actually said some of the stuff, then it dawned on me that pooor old Mike might not be all he cracked himself up to be.

Another one I am pushing at people saying, ‘you must read this’ although since reading it I have read some of the reveiews and they are anything but complimentary!

Macmillan New Writers

Long time no write I know - but I went to a writer’s group in Leicester the other evening to listen to a chap from Macmillan New Writers speak. MNW was set up two years ago by Pan Macmillan to find new writers. You email your complete manuscript to them (usual thing - guidelines on their web site) at the moment he reckons they are receiving 150 a day and they are trying to respond withing twelve weeks. If you haven’t heard within that time you haven’t been selected. If you are selected to be published (they are publishing twelve new authors a year at the moment) they do a basic run of hardback, no advance just a share of royalties. The reality of this is that you may not get an upfront payment, and due to average sales for first novels in hardback you may only get £1000 or so in royalties. But it still seems a good option to me. I don’t expect my first novel to be a smash hit, I’ll just be content to see it published. Macmillan are looking for writers with potential, who can go on to publish second and third novels. The thing that attracts me to this is that unless somebody would give me an advance of £30,000 I wouldn’t be able to give up work anyway, so for the moment writing is going to have to fit around paid work, so waiting for royalties isn’t a problem. As the whole novel is submitted the readers have the opportunity of whizzing through to see how good it is throughout and at the end, so the emphasis isn’t on those first three chapters. They came in for a lot of bad press at the outset, but I reckon it is quite a good way to get into the market place. If they choose to publish your novel (has to be a debut novel, any genre) they have an option on your second one and if you want an agent you are still free to get yourself an agent.

However… isn’t it a bit like self publishing? They copy edit but don’t edit, they do a special hardback edition rather than paperback. No special marketing budget. No advance just royalties? Is it a step into the world of publishing or is it just their way of low risk publishing and picking up on second novels if they hit a winner?

Interested to know what you think.

Yeauargh

I can’t think of anything more coherent to write at the moment. Work is manic, home is manic, life is manic - now someone is going to tell me what the dictionary definition of manic is and that it is the wrong word to use

manic

 

  • adjective 1 relating to or affected by mania. 2 showing wild excitement and energy.

  — DERIVATIVES manically adverb.

okay - missuse of the word - but it is busy and irritating and non  stop and wearing and tedious and I am on the verge of applying to the Apprentice or Britain’s Got Talent - anything to bring me a blast of money and a change of life - perhaps that’s not the right phrase either - let’s hope that particular hormonal interlude will stay away for a while - don’t really need any more imbalance right now. Why am I working so hard to pay the gas man?

 

Caught up in The Gathering

I have just finished reading Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering’. What a bloody marvellous book. My good friend Maxine told me it was the best book she’d read in decades and so off I trotted during my lunchbreak to buy a copy (with the WH Smith voucher I bought off Tall Boy - an unwanted gift at Christmas.) I have read it in two days flat - and that with work and family getting in the way - standing waiting for the kettle to boil, stirring spag bol in the pan and sat on the toilet (lid down) whilst curly boy is in the bath.

She writes with such embarassing honesty. Maxine said it was so good it almost made her want to give up writing, I do hope she won’t. For me, on the contrary, it made me rethink how I am writing. I am resolved to write as honestly too, no holding back, cut the gentility. I have no aged relations who may take offence at what I have written. She says stuff that all of us must think some of the time, or at least some of us think, some of the time, or at least wish we could think. She doesn’t bang on about being Irish (sorry Frank McCourt - loved Angela’s Ashes, but ) it is just who she is. I didn’t feel excluded from a special club, ‘well you’re not Irish..’ ‘ well you’re not Catholic..’ she deals with men and sex and marriage and children and love and grieving and held me in limbo along with Veronica, who waits for her brother’s body to be shipped back to Ireland. Memories floated around, tangled and confused, much as they do in my own family, ‘you weren’t even there,’ ‘that wasn’t Summer, that was Easter,’ ‘it was a blue car,’ ‘ we never even had a car when we lived there,’ you know how it goes. It made me cry like funerals of virtual strangers can make me cry, because I’m afraid next time it will be someone closer to home, and because I know one day it will be somone closer to home. It made me cry because on some days that’s exactly how I feel, except I’d never even get as far as Gatwick airport, I only get as far as wanting to run away. It made me cry because I run around being indispensable too, when actually if I stopped doing it, it wouldn’t matter at all, because most of it is pointless in the greater scheme of things.

And look what it’s done as well - I’m back blogging - can’t be bad - just had to have something worth sitting still to write about.

Sidetracked by Deep Hanging Out

Since Korakas is set in Crete, I couldn’t resist picking this up and having a read. I thought I’d check out how Richard Gwyn tackled the place. Funnily enough, although his book is far from what I am aiming for, we have the same feelings about the place - Crete that is - a land of stories and mis-information, myths and legends which tip over into reality. There’s a fair amount of sex in his book, and little more than sexual tension in mine. Mind you, his sex is very clear and unfussy, does what it says, no more, no less. Not gratuitous, just there. His book is set in the 1980s. My ex lived on the island for a while in the 70s and much of what he remembers is echoed in Gwyn’s version of the place, which is pretty close to how I remember the place when I lived there during the late 80s and early 90s.

I don’t suppose I would have picked up Gwyn’s book to read were it not for the setting, but I’m glad I did. It’s easy to get into habits with books and I enjoyed reading something that I ordinarily might have passed over. I did have the odd inward groan that he discusses topics which I cover in my as-yet-incomplete book, and writes passages in italics - as I do in parts of mine - although his italics are a stream of consciousness and mine are for the character of the mother. I suppose it would be impossible to write about a place like Crete without echoing some other book which has come before. At least it shows that if Korakas were published it may well pick up readers curious about the setting as much as those curious about the story.

If you have ever visited Crete, Hania in particular, I think you would enjoy reading Deep Hanging Out. If you enjoyed his last book The Colour of a Dog Running Away I reckon you should give it a whirl. If neither of the above apply, you could give it a whirl anyway. It took me a while to settle into, but I did eventually and I’m glad I did. I wasn’t too keen on the young protagonist, Cosmo Flute, but I don’t suppose I was meant to be. There were moments where I felt it was a bit over-written and Gwyn packed in too much factual/political information, perhaps a bit heavy handed in places, but the politics of Crete is quite heavy, so he’s forgiven. I may even have to lend my copy to the ex - much as it pains me to share with him - but I think he would appreciate the book, if only to reminisce about his home from way back.

windswept and interesting…

Well - found a photo for the book jacket - all I have to do now is get a book to go inside it. Had the letter saying no thankyou for my one-to-one at the Writing Conference on Saturday, so that’s another avenue temporarily closed. Ah well,  back to the grind, done 3,000 words today, not bad going. If I can get this thing finished I think I might be able to write a decent synopsis or outline - that seems to be the hardest part for me. What is Korakas about anyway? Is it about a girl, a mother, a daughter, an island, a man, a beast? Is it about magic or is it about control? All of the above, but so hard to pin it down and make it sound interesting.

The photograph was taken by the other half last year, possibly the year before. In Norfolk on the beach, I think. Might have been Dorset though? Both holidays under canvas where nature and the wind played a great part in proceedings. I found the picture stuffed behind the computer, a real print of a real image printed on real photographic paper from an actual negative - how old fashioned. Not having a scanner, I snapped it on my mobile phone and transferred it here that way - how very modern. I must say I still prefer good old prints to digital - but the quick fix of digital makes this blogging thing more colourful.

Just time to post this before doing the school run. So my day of writng will come to a halt and the afternoon of cooking several meals to placate the disparate tastes of my lot will commence. I swore I’d never do it, but one of them only eats veg, the other won’t eat any veg at all and likes fish, the third will eat some veg, likes meat with gravy, but won’t eat casserole. Added to this the oven has broken, so somewhat limited as to what I can produce. You get the picture, I’m sure.

Notes from…

It took a while to get through On Chesil Beach, a few weeks ago. I enjoyed parts of it, but I must admit I was left feeling a bit in the lurch. Not really a novel and not really a short story. I know, I know, a novella. But honestly, I wanted more. Maybe it’ll make a great film one day - I found the last part a bit tedious and a bit of an ‘information dump’ (a Graham Joyce phrase which I think describes perfectly that thing writers do when they just drop a whole load of facts on the reader instead of weaving them into the story piece by piece).

I set to on my own writing for a while, but then the computer went on the blink and I had to send it off to be fixed. Then my aged laptop decided to follow suit. So, I grabbed a cheap book at the supermarket - Patrick Gale’s Notes from an exhibition. What a great book. It is about a bi-polar painter and her Quaker husband (and their four children) and the truth about her life, which is revealed after her death - set for the most part in Penzance - it sounds dreadful, but it isn’t. He switches the narrative from view point to view point effortlessly, skipping from the present into the past and back again, allowing the reader to learn about every family member. No point me explaining any more, but if you fancy a good read, then read it.

The computer is back with a brand new hard drive (thanks to the extended warranty I didn’t even know I had) and I am inspired by Patrick Gale to attack my own stuff again. I have two viewpoints in my book (mother and daughter) and the narrative flips between the past and the present in turn, so reading Notes from was really helpful. I think so hard about how I am writing and which view or what time I am in, sometimes it seems quite laboured - having read Gale’s notes at the back of his book I realise that he planned and plotted to achieve a seamless result, so there is hope for mine yet.

Guidance required…

I am managing to keep up so far - only January I know - but not bad for me. I’ve sent off two copies of three chapters this week, one for a ‘free read’ by a panel of professionals (writers and publishers) - the idea being that they select a certain number of manuscripts received and give feed back on those chosen. The other is to be selected by a panel of organisers of a local writing conference to be read and evaluated by an agent - a one to one in fact. Fingers crossed. I’ve allowed enough of my friends and family to read it now, so it’s time for the real deal.  I did send chapters to agents last year, with no positive response. Those chapters have since been cut or re-written. That is my mission for this year, to grab the attention of an agent. Some people have suggested self publishing but I want to scrape a living at this and without an agent helping me to pick my way through, I’m not sure that would ever happen. I am constantly amazed at the sheer amount of published work out there, some of it not to my taste, but published and selling, so it must be to someone’s taste. How can I hope to get my offering out there without expert help? So if any of you happen to be writer’s agents do let me know! Are any of you self published? Published? Do you think self publishing is ‘vanity’ publishing or do you think it has a place in the world of books?

New Appointment

I spent the week before last short listing candidates to replace one of my ladies at work - we are currently four, three of us in our forties and one lady, fifty odd. Last Thursday my boss and I interviewed nine potential candidates and agonised over the right choice. Who has the right product knowledge? Who has the right people skills? Who has the right feel? Of course as an ‘equal opps’ employer you can’t appoint on the ‘feel’ of a person or the fact that you think they might fit best in the team you already have. You can’t rpesume or assume anything, it has to be evidenced. You have to appoint according to the person specification and the job description. It’s to stop me being ageist or sexist or racist or anything, which I have to say I’m not. Sometimes you just know don’t you?

 So we have our new person - and it is a man! How will that work out I wonder? It takes a very special breed to manage to work along with us lot I can tell you - we are controlling, capable, strong, moody, funny and far more able than anyone else! You know what I mean.

I will let you know.