Evidence that watching laughing baby videos is an integral part of a writer's day

I was the runner-up in a competition recently with this short piece about 'A Day in a Writer's Life'.  I thought you'd enjoy it, especially if, like me, you tell people you are 'writing' when you are really watching gymnastic cats and laughing babies on Youtube.

9 January 2013

6am

Woke up from a dream.  Was dressed in a lime green ski suit and running through a dark tunnel with my Granny and a cousin from Australia.  Granny was yelling out lines from ‘Macbeth’ and breathing fire.  There was a tsunami.  Wrote plotline in my ‘From Dream to Bestseller’ notebook and forced myself out of bed to make tea.  Was determined to get at least three chapters written today.

9am

NB: Confucius say: ‘Lady who take tea back to bed is not writing lady, but snoring lady.’

10am

Sat at my computer, staring at a blank screen and a reflection of me in the screen, staring at a blank screen.  Wondered whether the kitchen floor needed scrubbing.  Wrote a scene in which a woman cleans her kitchen floor and dreams of life on a Greek island with Tom Conti.   Thought it would fit well into my novel except that a) mine’s a crime novel set in rural Ireland; b) I would have to research Greece and research is so tedious; c) it was someone else’s story. 

12am

Made a sandwich and ate it while writing so I could tell Stewart I had a working lunch.  One thing led to another.  Those cat videos on Youtube are hilarious!  And the laughing babies!    

It’s surprising how long you can make a cheese and pickle sandwich and toffee yogurt last.

2pm

While having coffee, I read an article in a writing magazine about keeping a Writer’s To-Do List.   While having another coffee, and nine Bourbons, I wrote a to-do list of writing goals.  Then found, in the same notebook, a to-do list I’d written six months ago and forgotten about.  Compared old and new.  They were the same, though I did buy the printer cartridge.

3.30pm

Discovered that my main character, Daisy, had brown eyes in Chapter 1, green eyes in Chapter 3, and in Chapter 9, one brown and one green.  Chapter 9 must have been my ‘idiosyncrasy’ phase.  By Chapter 14, both eyes were brown again.  Did a ‘Find and Replace’ to change them all back to brown, but it did strange things to my descriptions of Ireland’s rural landscapes.  Aarrggh!

5.00pm

Started logging off so I could cook dinner.  Then Stewart texted to say he’d be late and not to worry about dinner until at least 7.  ‘Carry on writing,’ he said.  Wondered whether to start on another chapter.

5.15pm

Watched ‘Pointless’.  Then browsed BBC News website for news stories to inspire fiction.  Apparently Ian Rankin does this too.  Felt like a bona fide member of the writing community.  Made shepherd’s pie.

7.45pm

Stewart said he wanted to watch Die Hard 2 and, as it wasn’t my kind of film, he didn’t mind if I went up to the study to write.

10.45pm

Climbed into bed to write this.  Die Hard 2’s better than I remembered.

 

Another productive day 

Reasons why you should read 'Room' by Emma Donoghue

I don't know if you've read 'Room'.  I've read it twice now, once for pleasure and then a re-read to teach it.  I've been reminded of the book twice today, once for a trivial oh-doesn't-Fran-find-silly-things-amusing reason and once for a much more serious reason.

The novel is about a woman who's been abducted and trapped for years by a man in a shed in his garden.  She has had a child by him and the only world the 5 year old child knows is 'Room'.  The mother faces problems when he begins to grow old enough to realise that the world he sees on the TV represents the real world, and she begins to plan to get him out.  It's a really fabulous read.  Donoghue says that the Fritzl case in Austria partly inspired her story.  She writes about her novel on her website here

If you've been watching the news today about the three women and a 6 year old child found trapped in a house in Ohio (item here), you'll know why I thought about the book.

That was, obviously, the serious reason.

The trivial reason?  A few weeks ago, I brought my copy of 'Room' back home from school. And, because there was no space for it on my bookshelf, I'd lain the book horizontally along the top of others.

This morning, I note that my husband, who hates horizontally-placed books, had squeeeeeeeezed Donoghue's novel in between two other books, upright, but very unsuccessfully, so the spine sticks right out past the others, with the big word 'ROOM' very obvious.

No room for 'Room'.  I love that kind of irony.

Fran's husband's idea of bookshelves.  He also rearranges cutlery drawers so
the spoons face in the same direction......

Evidence that I have had at least 7 thoughts today

Things I have thought today:

1. Why did I ask the lady whose house I was in for a writers' meeting if she would 'kindly direct me to her facility' rather than just asking where the toilet was?  Since when did I get so euphemistic about my bladder?

2. When a very old lady staggers onto the bus, shuffles down the aisle and plumps down next to you with an audible 'Phew' of relief, what's the best way of saying, 'Excuse me, please.  Could you get up again and let me through?   I need to get off at the next stop.'?

3. Why have I never realised how grim Grimm's Fairy Tales were?  I'm reading them at the moment.  Were these written for CHILDREN?

4. The first Pimms of the year, even if you don't have any lemon, any cucumber, or any ice to put into it, and even if the sun went in just as you were mixing the drink, is still a wondrous thing.

5. I get very, very excited about being on a new bus.  The G1 is my regular bus, and sometimes I go on the X17.  Today, I went on the 68 to Lillington (where the lady's house was with the 'facility') and had to write it on Facebook as my status.  Someone replied, 'Easily pleased.'  With good justification, no doubt.

6. When I am sitting in a room with seven other people, and someone says the word 'solipsistic', I find it difficult to know what to do with my face.  I need to practise, in front of the mirror, a new 'I have no idea what that means but want to give the impression that I use the word three times a day in my own casual conversations' look.

7. Paperchase's mechanical pencils only work if you are not writing anything you feel cross about.  A romance, fine.  A piece of comic fiction, fine.  A rant.  SNAP!

8. I like to end lists on an even number, but have run out of things to say.  Be grateful.  Be very grateful.

One of Fran's readers only got to point 2 before lapsing into a comatose state at the keyboard

PS  Talking about tidy numbers, I need one more follower to make it 300.....

Evidence that fairy tale characters aren't always content to stay on their own patch

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs.  They lived with their parents, Mr and Mrs Pig, and they were all sitting in the living room one evening watching Masterchef and hoping for beef and lamb recipes rather than anything uncomfortably closer to home.  The three little pigs were intending to venture off the next day to seek their fortunes.  Their knapsacks were hung on the banisters in the hall.

There was a knock at the front door.  This is always a sign in a story of something dramatic about to happen, unless it's a very poor story and it turns out to be only a double-glazing salesman or a Liberal Democrat councillor.

Mother answered the door, and in came a beautiful young girl called Cinderella, wearing a sparkling ball gown which shimmered in the evening lamplight of the pigs' living room.  'I'm so sorry,' the girl said, wringing delicate hands.  'It's just that I'm trying to find my way to the palace, but we've got lost.  Does anyone know the way?'

None of the pigs was surprised that she couldn't find her way to the palace; someone who so easily stumbled out of their own story into someone else's was never going to be a world-class geographer.

Father Pig said he knew the way and would write it down for her.  He trottered off to the study for some paper and Mother Pig went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

'Are you not going to the Prince's ball?' Cinderella asked the three little pigs.  They told her no and the oldest pig said miserably, 'Being this fat and this pink and snorting your way through polite conversation doesn't get you many royal invitations.'

Cinderella smiled sympathetically and each of the young pigs felt his little porcine heart beat faster.

Appropriate dress would probably have been another hurdle for pigs going to  balls at palaces 

Cinderella looked happier now.  'Look, I'd better go and tell the driver of my pumpkin to wait,' she said cheerily, as though turning up at people's doors having clambered out of a giant vegetable was a normal state of affairs.

The three little pigs peered from behind the curtain to watch Cinderella dance down their garden path. She was singing 'Some Day my Prince will Come' in a very high voice.  She obviously hadn't realised that this was actually from Disney's version of 'Snow White' and was now trapped in two stories in which she did not belong.

'Just think,' said the youngest pig excitedly.  'There we were, thinking of going away to seek thrill and excitement, and then we have an adventure like this!  Pff to the silly old wolf, I say!'

The other two pigs looked at him with disdain.  'What wolf?'' they scorned.

'Oh, nothing,' the youngest pig said, crossing his fingers behind his back and vowing never to tell his brothers about the stack of 'Young Psychic' magazines underneath his bed.

Cinderella arrived back in the room for all the world like sunshine and they guided her to the sofa.  All three little pigs waddled over to see if they could bring her a cushion/a pouffe to put her feet up on/a book to look at/a bacon  tuna sandwich.

But Cinderella said, 'It's very sweet of you all, but as soon as I have the directions, I must be off to the palace.'

As she sat and waited, the three little pigs squeezed next to each other on another sofa opposite Cinderella, swinging their trotters back and forth, contented to gaze intently at her rosy complexion.  There was no doubt about it; the way she did pink, and the way they did pink, were worlds apart.

Cinderella shifted awkwardly.  She was unnerved at being scrutinised by three hundred kilos of under-age pork, although she'd have to admit that it still beat clipping the Ugly Sisters' toenails and scraping out the fungus from inside their navels with an egg spoon.

Father Pig arrived back in the room with directions neatly written out and the three little pigs looked at each other, dismayed.  This surely meant that any minute, Cinderella would disappear out of their lives.

Suddenly, even though suddenly is a very hackneyed adverb and to be avoided at all costs by proper writers, suddenly there was a flash, and a Fairy Godmother appeared.  'Hello all,' she said.  'I am Goldilocks, Cinderella's Fairy Godmother.'

The five pigs in the room, Cinderella, and Goldilocks the Fairy Godmother all glanced at each other nervously in an 'Are-you-too-having-an-identity-crisis?' kind of way.  Mother Pig, who was just lifting up the teapot, froze.  Father Pig stood by the fireplace, checking through the directions.  The three little pigs' eyes were wide with bemusement and their jaws were slack with the wonder of it all.  And Goldilocks the Fairy Godmother held her wand in the air as if about to wave it.  It was like a scene from a Beckett play, with its long silence, and ..... no, maybe just because of the long silence.

Suddenly, even though using suddenly twice in one story is as bad as having a double-glazing salesman knock at the door for no narrative purpose, there was another flash, and only the pigs were left in the room.  The little pigs darted to the window and peered outside, but no, the road was clear, with no sign of a giant gourd masquerading as transport.  They sighed with disappointment and made their way back to the sofa where they sat, dejected.

Not a picture of one of the sofas in the Pigs' living room 

Mr Pig folded up the directions resignedly saying, 'Oh well.  I'm guessing Fairy Godmothers aren't in need of this kind of help.  I'll keep them, though, in case we ever get an invitation to the palace.'

Mother Pig looked at him as if to say, 'In your dreams, my Piggy Spouse.'  And she carried on pouring tea.

But the youngest pig felt a stirring in the depths of his pork belly and sensed future adventure.  No way was he going off to seek his fortune and risk being huffed and puffed at by a wolf.  If tonight was anything to go by, pigs could end up in other people's stories and marry princesses, and that was worth staying around for.

Evidence that loving food is in the genes

Just a quick visit to provide a link to my-daughter-who-was-on-Masterchef's cooking blog.  It's funny as well as foody.

You will get hungry reading this. And you will laugh.

Reasons to avoid alleys in Tenby

So, it's Leonhard Euler's 306th birthday, is it?  This is what Google is telling me when I go onto its Search page.  He's today's Google Doodle.

What I REALLY want to know is, how many people say, 'Oh yes, Euler!  I was only thinking about his amazing work in the fields of mechanics, optics and astronomy just yesterday!   306th?  No, surely he wouldn't be a day over 285!'

While we're on useless pieces of information, I thought I'd better tell you about the scaffolding near Tesco which I mentioned in yesterday's dose of triviality 

We went to Tenby in Wales at Easter and took my daughter Sarah and her partner John.  By the way, Sarah was on Masterchef last week.  You can catch the episode on iplayer right here for a few more days.  She didn't get through to the next round, but she proved she knows what a proper fish chowder is, and how many of us can claim that?  I, for one, can do cod, haddock and the odd prawn, but I'd be stumped to have to use a proper-fish.

Tesco was very near our holiday cottage -  just across-the-road-and-through-an-alley so it only took 3 minutes to get there to stock up on key ingredients for our evening meal and for our nightly Scrabble session: meat, potatoes, vegetables, wine, liquorice allsorts, Revels, fudge, Galaxy, Ferrero Rocher, chocolate-coated peanuts, etc.  All the essentials.

However, there was building work going on in the alley and they'd put up scaffolding which virtually blocked it.  It took some nifty moves for us to navigate it and not dislodge the scaffolding with our hips.  It reminded me of this game.

Sarah and I decided on the Saturday of our holiday that, if by the end of the week we weren't able to get through the scaffolding, we'd know that stuffing ourselves to perdition with Liquorice Allsorts and fudge while playing Scrabble had not been the wisest move.

Don't tell her this, but I wore thinner clothes on Thursday and Friday for our trips to Tesco.  I learned all these tricks attending Weightwatchers for years.  Wear thin clothes.  Take out the earrings.  Don't wear a pair of pants over your tights to keep them up.  Wear the bra without the wires in.  If you're booked in for a filling that day at the dentist, reorganise for the following week.  Cut your nails.

I'm so glad I made it through the alley all week. There's nothing so shaming as being tugged from between scaffolding by three hunky firemen.  You can bat your eyelashes all you like, but it's not going to be the thing they notice, is it?  

Now, if I'd taken old Leonard Euler to Tenby instead of Sarah, I reckon he'd have been able to calculate for me whether I could get through the scaffolding without embarrassment.

Never claim that I don't provide you with clear links between each post's apparently-random themes.

Evidence that Fran is collecting ideas that will make her a millionaire

When I'm out and about and see something I think could one day form the basis of an original and transfixing piece of writing that could change the world, I write it down in a notebook.  

This is how world-class writing gets produced and I'm sure I'm only one in a long line of creative artists keeping notes of this kind.  Steinbeck probably wrote in his notebook, 'Two itinerant workers; Great Depression; tragedy; could be a great GCSE text'.  Austen, I'm sure, had a little notebook in the pocket of her apron in which she jotted down 'Two sisters; one sensible; one romantic' or 'Damp man emerges from lake; myriad BBC adaptations?' ready for when she'd finished her Bible verse cross-stitch.

Here's the list that's in my notebook, just as I've written it.  Don't be tempted to steal my ideas, mind.  I am putting my trust in you here.

Square cows with corners in field
The swinging coat hanger - creak, creak, creak
Sign outside old people's home: Later Living!
Sheep look dirty in snow
Scaffolding in alley near Tesco
Seagulls have knobbly knees


I've been turning these ideas over in my mind and wondering how I can incorporate them all into a coherent piece of work: a novel that will win the Booker prize and enable me, at last, to buy that mansion in the country with Gothic windows and a resident housekeeper who'd bring me Marmite sandwiches and Nutella pancakes at the ring of a little bell.

For now, inspiration is proving elusive.  And if it refuses to come, I may just have to use my ideas for individual blog posts and earn my millions another way.  Watch this space.

In the absence of literary genius, just for the moment, here's a picture of my grandson Elijah for you.  This is what my son calls 'playing with the baby'.  One day, Elijah is going to be with a therapist, reliving this memory ....