Celebrations and Memories.

This is a self indulgent piece. The photo is my family. These are the ones who as I said in my previous post have supported me and encouraged me throughout this new part of life. The occasion was the night my Mother's funeral. We got together as a family and I don't just mean my lot. I am one of five and we have all produced numerous children who have all started to pair off and produce themselves. To meet as a family is no small event.It was a wonderful evening as we all spoke about our memories. There was a lot of laughter. She was a character.

Today is another of those days. This time it is of celebrations and memories. Celebrations because it is my daughter's birthday. Memories because my daughter shared her birthday with her grandmother, along with a love of ballet that is. As a tribute we are going to see the Bolshoi ballet perform tomorrow night.

It is the first birthday without her. It has been a strange and hard day so far. There is an emptiness where she should be but a wonderful friend pointed out she was as close as my heartbeat. I am sure she is watching over us and hope enjoying the celebrations. Tonight we will toast her.

This blog is meant to be about my PhD but sometimes life gets in the way so you can't write or research. Today is one of those days. I will be back on track tomorrow - 43,000 words is not a bad place to be starting from, the novel will be finished soon and then it will be back to the critical piece.

An itch that needs scratching

These two photos are from the British War Cemetery at Bayeux. They are central to a chapter of my PhD novel. The character Ben meets a veteran called Finley in the shelter. This chapter will tell Finley's story which helps Ben understand part of his life. I have done a lot of research both on the Normandy Landings and the current war in Afghanistan and it is because of this that I have an itch that needs scratching. All this research is causing the itch, it is demanding to be written.

This chapter doesn't actually need to be written yet as there are at least four chapters before it appears. Does it matter if you don't write in a linear way? I don't think so, writing it now doesn't prevent me from changing it slightly (or a lot) when I get to it. But I think it needs to be done whilst the research and ideas are fresh in my mind. During editing there will always be the chance to spot any inconsistencies or irrelevancies.

I wonder if other writers find themselves doing things the wrong way round?

Perfect Days

You can never have too many 'Perfect Days'. Yesterday was one of mine. What has this got to do with my PhD....everything.
Yesterday my job in the morning was to get my daughter out of her house and take her shopping. At a set time (actually slightly earlier as she was so cold - sorry Greg) I brought her back. She found a house full of her friends and family all there to celebrate her birthday...or so she thought...I knew different.
Half way through the afternoon, and beautifully planned, Greg put their song on and she was presented with a birthday cake. The cake was rapidly removed and Greg turned to my darling daughter and asked 'Will you marry me!?' She couldn't speak for crying. As were the rest of us! Don't worry we did get out of that the crying meant 'Yes!'. I am delighted, they are the most gorgeous couple and I know their life will be full of happiness and joy. Plus they have made me a very proud step-grandmother of three wonderful children. It really was a perfect day.
As for my PhD, I wouldn't be doing it without the support of my daughter and my two sons. They gave me the confidence to go to uni in the first place and have encouraged me the whole way through from BA to MA to, now, PhD. They often give me inspiring ideas for stories....not always deliberately ;-). They have stood by me however difficult things got or however ill I was. They were always there.
So to Charlie, Leo and Toby plus now Greg, AJ, Seb and Bea - Thank you. May there be many more 'perfect days' for all of us.

Word Counts

Word Counts! Love them or hate them they are they there with the aim of either making a writer's day or throw them into the deepest despair. Dear Mr Microsoft decided it would be an improvement if you could see your word count in the bottom left hand corner as you type. This is fine if it is a day of flowing letters where you don't even notice the numerals clicking rapidly over until you suddenly glance down and find you have mysteriously added a thousand words.
On the other hand there are those days where every single word has to be drawn out of you like blood out of the proverbial stone. Each one is so painful and takes forever to appear. Those are the days when you keep checking the word count and it appears to go down rather than up. This is equally as mysterious as finding you have added a thousand.I think there is a word count 'dog' that either brings bucketfuls of words or if in a contrary mood sneaks them away from your screen.
As writers and/or academics we are surrounded by word counts. Book lengths, essay lengths, thesis lengths - all are measured in word counts. They haunt me. Today I have knocked up 40,000 words of my PhD novel. I should be over the moon. That is a lot of words and they are words I am relatively happy with for a first draft. But all I keep thinking about is the next x-number of words that need to be written in order to finish it. I have a deadline. I need the first draft completed by the end of the summer and I probably have at least 20,000 words to go. Gulp! I can do it. After all I have a retreat to do it on. Stop panicking woman and just write. Don't think about word counts. Just write.....
It sounds so simple doesn't it, but everyone of my writer/academic friends knows it is anything but a simple thing to do. My advice therefore is don't think about it. Just keep writing...(I need to make sure I listen to myself for a change)

Retreat

This is where I am going on the 16th August for a week's tutored writing retreat for novelists. It is called Moniack Mohr and is 3 miles from Loch Ness (this fact is very important to me as I am called Ness most of the time). I have this opportunity after being awarded a grant by the Arvon Organisation for which I am truly grateful as it is something I would never be able to do otherwise. I am going to take the train up to Scotland, in itself an adventure, plus something I have always wanted to do.
My plan is to finish the novel I am writing for my PhD. I am not that far off as it is but the opportunity to spend a week writing without the influences/distractions of the outside world just seems a prime time to finish it off. Plus I can start the editing/polishing process. It is all planned in my head and the research has been done so having dedicated writing time in somewhere so beautiful has got to be a bonus hasn't it?
Until April I could not have considered things like this. Let alone going to Normandy one month and Scotland the next. It just wouldn't have been possible as it would have been far too complicated to organise. There are times when I almost feel drunk with the sense of freedom I now have. But don't get me wrong I still miss her desperately and would love to tell her about the things I am doing and how lucky I am. Though I am sure she knows really and she is chatting all about it with my Dad, well until tomorrow when the British Golf Open starts and they will both be sitting there, wherever they are, watching as it was something they both loved.

A fine line....

I have spent today having an interesting email conversation with Nicky Schmidt. We have both reached certain points in our novels which have caused us both to think. We discussing the fine line between grit and reality. Where do you draw the line when writing for teenagers? We know that they have a huge amount of access whether via the Internet or enumerable media outlets. Having access to this stuff does not mean that they understand it. Nicky signposted me to Bill Nicholson's blog who recently wrote Rich and Mad. It partly answers our questions.
Somebody has to write about these things, but should it be us, is this what we really want to do, to tread that fine line? It seems to be that we have both found ourselves there without thinking too much about it. Actually that is not strictly true of me....as you know my PhD is couched in all these sensitive subjects. However, I have had to sit and think about how I am going to deal with it. Is it going to be pure grit...a bit of teenage porn...or more realistic and showing the foibles of first sex and love aka Rich and Mad. I think you can guess where I wanted to go. We both decided that we wanted to write books that teenagers might want to go to if they had questions.
With the research I have done over the past couple of days I became very aware of how easy it is to get onto porn sites.Obviously some have restricted access but others you just get straight into this world of fake sex. This is what our teenagers are going to in order to find out about sex. I have concerns about this so have used my book to highlight it and address it. Whether it works remains to be seen but at least I know I have tried.
Thank you Nicky for such a brilliant and inspiring conversation today. You gave me a lot to think about.

Perfection is not always perfect # 2

Following on from the post this morning I have now written the chapter that was inspired by Jen's comment. I have written it in a different way and I have yet to decide whether it works or not. My PhD is looking at the issues of representing/representation of sex, drugs and alcohol in British contemporary YAF (the fact it is British is important as the US deals with some things very differently).
The subject of my PhD means I am very aware of how sex is portrayed not only in books but in all other forms of media as well. This perfect form that is offered to teenagers by these mediums highlights 'The' way to do it and 'The' way they have to look. But 'The' doesn't exist. Perfect doesn't exist - as I said in the previous post - perfection is not perfect. This is the approach I have taken to this particular chapter. What I have found though is how fine the line is between writing about a loving sexual act and writing pornography. The approach I have taken is to consider what language I am using, trying for the gentle rather than the brutal but still keeping it real and not slushy or aggressive. Maybe I can claim to be the moral pornographer as suggested by Angela Carter? Who knows? Only time and the thesis will tell.