Weathering Storms

I have been a little quiet recently due to a rather large stormy patch and I'm not talking about the snow. I believe that everything happens for a reason, even the really bad stuff. Sometimes they are like road signs pointing you in the right direction, you haven't been following the right path so something happens to nudge you right. You have to believe that there is a purpose to everything.

The last few weeks have been the worst I have had in ages. Someone really close to me has been broken down and watching that happen can be soul destroying, but at the same time I've also seen the great strength that they have inside and that has given me endless hope.

Finding Comfort

I have been doing a lot of soul searching recently. I think when you hit a particularly sticky patch in your life then you start re-assessing everything, looking for an answer to the question: where did it all go wrong? What I tend to find are the actual good bits of my life instead.

Rex. My faithful hound is probably one of the things that can bring an instant smile to my face. He's ten years old with a little grey beard and I've had him since he was a tiny little puppy with kennel cough and a runny nose. Whenever I walk into my home he comes and finds me, he sleeps on the bottom of my bed and when its really cold tries to get under the covers, he loves having his ears rubbed and his fear of squeaky toys has been replaced by an actual obsession with them. How can the world be a terrible place when little dogs like Rex exist?

I also have my family, my writing, my friends and all the other things that bring an end to the misery which can sometimes feel overwhelming. I can get lost in a song or a daydream, I can go to my favourite restaurant and just eat the best food, I can watch my favourite tv shows, go to a gig, watch a film at the cinema or empty the shelves at Blockbusters, I can drink a skinny latte in Starbucks or surf the net. There are so many good things to look forward to but sometimes we forget them, we take them for granted so often they almost become invisible.

When I write I give my protagonists so many challenges and disappointments that I feel like I'm inflicting all of my disillusions on them but its good to let them suffer for a while so I don't have to. My challenge is going to be writing a chapter where everything is good, where the character realises how many positive things there are out there and finds a little hope and its not going to be right at the end of the book its going to be somewhere unexpected.

x

Black and Slippery Patch

Emotionally it has been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last few weeks. This time of year always brings out the misery in people as well as the happiness. Sometimes I forget that Christmas isn't always about presents, celebration, family. It is also about loneliness and the realisation that another year has passed and nothing has changed.

Living with someone who suffers severely from depression is a constant reminder that some people can see the good in things and some people just can't, no matter how hard they try. It's easy to pretend. I do it sometimes. Plaster a smile on my face and walk around pretending that nothing is hurting and everything is exactly as I would wish it to be but its a lie and sometimes constantly lying becomes impossible. Depression is like living a lie. If you fight it hard enough then you can convince yourself that you are getting through it but then one knock back and it feels as if you are back to square one. It is like living with an addiction, you can fall back into it at any time so you are never really cured you are just surviving. Survivors can enjoy life as much, if not more than everyone else and that is something that we all need to hang onto.

Let's spare a thought for the people who are suffering this Christmas. Whatever that suffering may be let's all just send up a silent prayer that things are better in 2011 for whoever needs them to be.

A Gig and A Crit

This weekend has been inspiring in many ways! Last night I had a 30 Seconds To Mars gig which was an amazing night.

I'm always inspired by music but particularly by actually watching musicians and the raw talent and focus that they put into every performance. As a naturally shy person I find it remarkable how easily they feel comfortable in front of thousands of people. Lyrics that I have fallen in love with on my ipod seem all the more magical when I actually witness them coming from the person who brought them to life.

I've never been to a gig at Manchester Central before and the venue is enormous. One of the things that has always terrified me in gigs is the actual crowds, the way they all surge forward when the band take to the stage and the way that personal space becomes a luxury rather than something to be taken for granted. Despite all that and despite the fact that my throat ached from singing and my body ached from the crush I came away feeling more alive than I had in a long time.

The Crit Group today met in the basement of Starbucks. It was a small intimate turn out which was good given that Manchester has been hit with the Christmas shopping frenzy and every street was reminiscent of the gig in the general push of the crowds. Whether I submit work or not I always come away from the group feeling inspired to write, feeling the need to go home and pick up my netbook and get some words down. Sitting round a table with people who share the love of writing is inspiring in itself, talking about agents and submissions focuses me on actually writing and that is something I have to be grateful for.

x

Finding A Place

Firstly a big congratulations to everyone who took part in Nanowrino! Whether you finished or not well done. It was like an extreme sport for writers but totally worth the effort.

There is nothing more important to me when I'm writing than finding the perfect place to hide away. I can't write with distractions, not the kind that talk at you or expect reactions but I like to be surrounded by every day life. My favourite place is the basement in Starbucks. I have a table, the one I always sit at, which is tucked away in a corner under the stairs. It feels like I have a hiding place from which I can peek out at the rest of the world but remain for the most part undisturbed. Now and again people will walk over and ask what I'm writing, especially if they have seen me there every morning but mainly I am the observer and they are the observed.

At home writing is more difficult for me. I have the distractions of people demanding my time and attention, plus all the things that prove writing killers like television, playstation, books..... I have to admit that I'm not the most disciplined or writers, I have the attention span of a small child and broadband has been a curse because I spend a lot of my time surfing websites and checking up on what my favourite celebrities are doing. The flip side of this is that I often find a lot of character inspiration from my rambling internet searches.

One piece of modern techology that has been an absolute blessing for me is my netbook. Now covered in stickers and with a memory faltering underneath numerous draft manuscripts and music videos it is still one of my most treasured possessions and enables me to find the perfect writing place anywhere. I have no boundaries! I am like the gypsy traveller I have always thought I would have quite liked to be, carrying my writing life on my back. I don't have the painted wooden caravan but I have the imagination and is probably even better because tomorrow I might decide I want to live in Ancient Egypt and now I can, sort of, manage it.

x

Inspire Me

I don't know about you but I find my inspiration in the strangest places. Snatches of songs are the best, a stray lyric that wanders into my head and stays there, refusing to leave no matter what I do.

My latest plot is currently forming in my head, a twisted tale that mixes the destructive romance of Wuthering Heights with a chaotic, dystopian rebellion. Inspired by the newMy Chemical Romance album I have been plagued by a new character who gives me no peace, forcing me to create him and all the swirling artwork that covers his arms. I have to be able to visualise a character to be able to write them and then everything else slots into place.

I am one of those writers who stacks notebooks one on top of the other. I scribble on the front pages, a snap of an idea and then I leave them, abandoned but not forgotten to return to later. I have a lot of ideas and will be briefly sucked in by each and every one of them but it takes a really strong idea to properly pull me in. That is what happened with Being Lucky, an idea formed and then I kept coming back to it until I wrote it. It's okay to abandon the other ideas, to have them and dwell on them briefly and move on. You never know when you might return to them or what they might inspire.

At the moment I am quite taken with winding links that cross between books without being obvious. Until now I have had the town of Winterdale, a small town somewhere where most of my books and ideas are based. My latest novel wouldn't fit there, it needs to chase across sprawling landscapes and it needs to be rebellious and impossible to contain. Winterdale was not the right setting and so I decided that one of my other characters might wander across and within seconds he just fit there so well it was like he had always been meant to be there.

That's what I'm encouraging today. Take a character from an old book and see if you can place them in another. See if they fit there. Characters are simply too good to waste and more often than not the peripheral characters are fabulously fickle, fitting in whenever and wherever, like terrible attention seekers!

x

Welcome and Don't Forget Me

I've been writing teen novels for the last few years and decided it was about time I set up a blog and got talking to the world outside of the one I've created so here goes.......

It's been a rollercoaster of a year. Anyone who says that being a writer is easy is lying to you. Not only is the writing in itself hard but the rejections and the criticism can be soul destroying. What I would suggest is that you don't lose the love of writing in the desperation to get published. It's hard and sometimes I fail miserably, but at the end of the day your writing will be better if you keep hold of the passion for writing and let go of the game plan for domination of the publishing world.

Today is World AIDS Day and I'm encouraging people to create a new character who has been diagnosed with AIDS. They may not have a place in your current novel, but perhaps in your next one and it may help to raise awareness. Get to know your character. Find out their motivations, how they contracted the disease and how they cope with life after diagnosis. Go on!!! The world needs to be shaken and waken when it comes to AIDS and what better way to do it than to infiltrate the mind with a character they just can't resist.

x