Category: Parenting

Only Connect. But what if you can’t?

When the super-duper lovely agent I’ve been talking to came back with a no, I took a deep breath and pushed it away. I knew from the first line of the email. ‘Thanks for sending in your revisions…’

After a deep breath, I went back to my phone and read the whole email which was generous and fair. But still a no.

I closed it, turned back to my child and had a lively chat about Halloween. It wasn’t unexpected.  A few weeks had gone by. The lack of enthusiasm was clear. I apologised at tea-time for being tense lately and told the family my book wasn’t accepted.

‘Why don’t you write something else?’ said number two son, ‘something we can read?’

He’s never been keen on a psychological thriller about stalking. With swearing.

‘It’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’

‘That’s a shame. Can you fix it?’ said number one, ever optimistic.

‘I’ll try.’ I said.

It hasn’t all been bad news this year. I’ve had some success with short story competitions. The writing I’ve done recently is better than it used to be. Even I can see that.

‘How do you feel?’ said husband.

I explained to him how I was going to rip out the middle and restructure the whole thing, which would allow me to show great parts of the story I hadn’t shown before. I was really looking forward to it.

But two days later, after a long chat with a trusted reader, I’m bawling my eyes out. It feels like a real loss. It’s not just the scale of the task ahead, though having done one major rewrite over the summer, I’m in no doubt it will be HARD. It’s the thought that this book might never get there.

I LOVE my characters. I love their courage  and madness and strength and self-delusion. I love the depths of their despair and the wild solutions they come up with. I just can’t seem to make them come alive, believably, on paper. I don’t want to give up on them. Where will they go? What will they do? I can’t just leave them in the lurch! I’ll miss them. Is that the problem? I can’t round them off and let them go free, out into the world, to be who they are? I question my sanity. I think it’s still there.

On the one hand, I’m maybe gaining stripes as a writer, because so many of my writing heroes have gone through this and maybe I need to, to learn the craft. But in the meantime, years are going by when I could be doing something else useful. There’s no point persevering, if the writing’s just not cutting the mustard. Is it all a waste of time?

Deep down, this feels like a misfire. Or my aim is off. Or I’ve not committed to the act of killing. Writing! The act of writing. Maybe there’s a similar sort of focus required to properly see the target, read the moment, wait for the fatal move.

Maybe I’m not there yet because on some level, I’m not ready. I hope so. Either way, I’m not able to stop.

Structo issue 15

Love love love this literary magazine. Issue 15 has several gems in it. It also has my first published short story ‘3 for 2’, one for all the trackled parents out there. The excitement with which I received this news was topped only by the massive rush of reading aloud at the launch in Oxford.

Huge thanks to Euan, Keir and Elaine and shouts out to Claire Dyer, Claire Booker, Stephen Durkan, Stephen Hargadon, Jude Cook and Dan Micklethwaite fellow scribblers and issue-mates who cheered me along and my old pal Colette Coen who is in there too. I’m still smiling.

Structo 15

To the other woman crying in the car park this morning

I don’t know your name and I don’t suppose you know mine but we know each other through passing smiles of recognition on the way in and out of school, towing small reluctant cargo, grasping little hands tightly only to let them go for the day. I see your struggles when the reluctance boils over, your firm cheerfulness in the face of small fears, your soothing cuddles when it’s all too much.

I see the effort that it takes to hide your own fears, to master your own desire to run, screaming, back through the playground, to stay positive when there is  wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I see your hair growing drier, though the grey is dyed neatly away, and the glow fading from your skin, as the years pass, making us all older, the small ones taller. I see  you slick on the lipstick, before you get out of the car, and pull on a smile for each friend you meet.

I see the conversation in the playground when someone has a weird bug, or a discipline issue or a bullying friend. I see you take the time to chat, to share and take the weight.

And I see you on the days when it is just too much. The days when you cannot raise your head to meet the smile, cannot stop to chat, can only plough on to the door and back to the car because that is all the energy you have left.

I think today was one of those days for you, as it was for me and that is why I’m glad you’re here, because we are not alone, even as we sit alone here in our cars, behind our rainy windscreens. In a while, we will wipe our faces and drive on,  and never speak of it, knowing that today was one of those days for someone else and they were there to share it.