Tag Archives: full time mum writing

18 Aug 2013 · 9:21 am

More McMini…

It has occurred to me that outside the input from others this blog is officially, not funny any more. So I decided the best way to fix that was to abandon my postings about McMini on facebook and put them here, where everyone can see them. So, here they are.

First up, McMini on… hmm, yes, well, I suppose this is a kind of recycling.

He sits in bed examining the soles of his feet and carefully peeling off a bit of loose skin (have you got the boke yet? I have). He holds it up.
“Look Mummy, I am eating this meat. It is delicious,” he says, puts it into his mouth, chews and swallows.
This morning, things have changed.
“Mummy, I picked a bit of skin off my feet just now but I didn’t eat it because it stinked, so I threw it away somewhere. I don’t know where it is.”
“Great, I’ll look forward to finding that later,” says Mummy.

McMini on hunger; recently, he has been developing hollow legs.

“I’m so hungry I could bravely eat a dinosaur’s tongue! And the horns of a dinosaur.”

Polite rebuttal.

“If you will excuse me Mummy, I am feeling a little tired now so I think I will have a sleep.”
“Night night.”
“Night.”
Mummy gets three quarters of the way down stairs.
“Hey Mummy! Come and look what I’ve found!”

Scientific enquiry…

“You know the little hole on a whale’s head? Well you know the water that comes out of that? Well, it’s old air. I am going to try and blow the old air out of my nose. When the water goes into my mouth it is cold but when it comes out it is warm.”
Science fact number 63. Old breath has water in it.

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11 Aug 2013 · 9:00 am

Redline it but don’t pop it.

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that I should explain why it takes me so effing long to write each one of my books and today I’ve been galvanised into it by reading this cracker of a post, here. As well as why it takes me so long to write a book this also brings me onto a subject dear to any writer’s heart; mojo management.

Basically, the premise is that a lot of people are a bit wishy-washy about art and not ‘forcing’ it and use the ‘don’t force it’ line as an excuse to give up and be lazy. He talks about how mood alters your perception and how you can write stuff you think is rubbish only to find, the next day, that it’s not so bad (unfortunately, in my world that process also works in reverse, but I digress).

Now, I get exactly what this fellow means, especially the bit about writing stuff that looks crap and then finding that it’s not so bad. I find reading the first draft of a scene incredibly depressing but I shut my eyes to it and edit. And then somehow, if I put in enough work, it becomes magically transformed and when I read it and think,

“Blimey, I can’t believe I wrote that.” I know it’s time to move onto the next scene.

However, for what it’s worth, I think most of the people talking about not forcing art are actually talking about burning out.

Burn out is way different. Burn out is dangerous. Let me explain.

OK, so, I’m a stay at home Mum with a very lively little 5 year old, elderly parents who aren’t too well and who live a long way away and as the result of a recent traffic accident I currently have to snarf painkillers like smarties. So my life right now features three things in sensurround; worry, constant interruption (welcomed but constant nonetheless) and chemicals.

Hmm… so as you can guess, none of these things are conducive to quality writing outside school hours and none of them make for a lively brain. The chemicals are temporary, so the background is usually just the two things; Mumzilladom and worry about my folks – I’m definitely not the dutiful daughter I always assumed I’d be, which is kind of grim face on.

What I mean is that in anyone’s life there’s a lot going on. Add the odd curve ball, traffic accident at the moment but things like family deaths, organising a surprise party or something like that and it’s easy to find that the heart, not to mention the diary, is too full to create. In my case that’s usually at the point where my mind is so fucking knackered it can’t be arsed to wander.

Trust me on this, I’ve been there and hit the wall and at that point if you don’t step back, you’re going to end up mental. This is not about laziness or procrastination or refusing to start in case we fail, this is about capacity. That’s the point when it’s almost physically painful to write – not at the end of the day, we all feel like that then – but at the beginning.

That’s when you’re in danger of losing the love, of becoming a slave to the addiction as opposed to in love with your characters and addicted to the process. When this happens to me, the only cure is to stop everything, rest my mind and spend a few days/weeks/months, however long it takes putting stuff back in until my mojo returns. It’s entirely natural so if this happens to anyone else, don’t worry, the mojo will return you just have to be patient and wait.

So the big trick, for supreme mojo-management, is never reaching that can’t be arsed to wander point; knowing when to stop spewing out words. There is no option, in times of impending burn out but to sit back and reset.

RevvingRevs

There’s no harm in redlining your mojo occasionally, except that… hang on… where is the red bit? Oh for heaven’s sake! Trust me to have a car with no red bit. Alright, look, just try to imagine it in OK?

So for me, never getting burn out means writing a bit less but giving it more welly when I do. It’s worth it because when I can’t write, I miss it. There’s no harm redlining your mojo occasionally to, erm, de-carb your chambers (phnark) just don’t keep it there. Burn out is why it’s good plan to have more than one project on the go. Burn out is deeply unpleasant because it leaves you desperate to create, but unable to.

However, burn out should not be confused with laziness. Writing, painting, any art is the most fantastic fun, more than fun, it’s a drug, but it’s also bloody hard work. And frankly, if it isn’t, I suspect you’re doing it wrong.

There are days when writing my book feels like weeing a full sized house brick, except that there are days when I think pissing a housebrick would be easier. What I’m trying to say is that I have never done anything so hard in my entire life. But I can’t let it go. Right now, I’m not writing, but that’s because it’s the holidays and trying to write now is the fastest short cut to burn out there is. I know my limitations and that, I’m afraid, is why I take two, whole, sodding years to write a book. I know, it’s shocking isn’t it?!

Please be patient, K’Barthan three is nearly there but it may well be next April before I can release it.

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28 Jul 2013 · 10:00 am

That’s genius mate.

Those of you daft enough to follow my occasional ramblings on facebook will recall that I posted this article the other day.

Basically, it asks are creative people nuts? And the answer is pretty much, yes. Here’s how.

Everyone’s brain filters the stimuli around it, everyone’s brain dumps a truckload of stuff so it can make sense of what’s going on around it without overloading. However, if you’re creative a) your brain doesn’t dump as much stuff and b) it tends to dump the wrong things even if, c) you’re a genius, and you can deal with more information than the average Joe and process the whole lot at once – because that’s still going to make you seen odd to the rest of us normals who can’t keep up.

You knew this though, right? I did, my brain always dumps the wrong stuff and flags up the weird or funny shit. That’s how it managed to gloss over the very important sight of a big green car bearing down on me the other day, which is how I rode my bike happily into its path, bending the bike, and myself, and possibly the car – although I haven’t confirmed that yet – and thoroughly alarming both my son, on the back, the poor woman at the wheel.

Where was I? Ah yes. Scientific American. So I read this article and by the end of it, despite the car experience I had convinced myself, that I’m a fully paid up category c genius. The evidence is incontravertible. I can’t remember my own name without cue cards and can’t be trusted to boil a kettle. Add having to remember stuff like when sports day is, when dress down/dress up days are, when stuff has to be taken into school and when not and… well you get the picture. And if you don’t believe me, here’s the proof.

There’s me wishing I could chalk it up to the painkillers. But now I know it’s genius, mwah ha ha haahargh! Whatever it is, it’s endemic to being M T McGuire.

Last night I got into my pjs early and McOther came home and said, “Aren’t you going out?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes…”
“I thought Thursdays was metal detecting club night.”
“What? Is it Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“Bollocks! I am going out,” glance at watch, “and, I’m going to be late.”
So I leap up as fast as a person with two knackered knees and a walking stick can and run upstairs. Donk-thump, donk-thump, donk-thump (repeat 30 times) to get dressed again. Once finished it’s thump-donk, thump-donk (ad nauseam) I hear, as I come back down again.
Now I creep, as fast as my borrowed knees will allow, to my car. Brilliant! That only took ten minutes.
I unlock and…
“Ah.”
I’ve parked it a bit close to the other one, mainly so McMini doesn’t twat the door into the wall when he gets out. But now I’m having trouble getting in, and I’m late. Nothing worse than a small gap a large arse and a late woman with a limp, it’s a recipe for disaster. I put my stick onto the roof and siddle into the gap. Brilliant. Got it. As I make to lower myself into the seat, there’s a strange ripping sound.
“Bollocks! The special pocket knob.”
Half in, half out, I freeze but it’s too late.
The door of a Lotus Elise latches onto a sticky outy bit of metal (don’t ask me it’s proper name) on the bodywork. Over the years I’ve removed the back pockets of enough pairs of trousers in just this situation to have given it a name. This tiem it’s worse though. This time it’s more than a pocket. When I put my hand behind me I feel – yeek – arse. It’s more than the pocket.
“Bloody hell!” I get back out and it’s donk-thump, donk-thump, donk-thump back to the house.
Never mind, it could be worse. There’s a pair of trousers hanging on the laundry airer and they’re only slightly damp. I slip them on, ignoring the fact that they will probably fall down without a belt because the belt’s upstairs and I really do need to get to this meeting before it actually ends. So, back to the car, donk-thump, donk-thump, and off we go with a loud kerboing, which I ignore.

It’s only when I reach the club and haven’t got my stick that I realise the big kerboing was it doinking off the back of the car as I drove off, having left it on the roof.

Never mind. I was only half an hour late.

You see? Incontrovertible proof. Next time I do something monumentally stupid and McOther adopts his ‘strained expression’ I can reassure him that I’m not a dippy twonk at all. I’m a Genius.

Now all I have to do is find out what at. Mwah ha hahargh.

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10 Jun 2013 · 4:32 pm

I’ve got my inner lumberjack out, and the painters in: Luck is in the eye of the beholder.

We have a tree in our garden. We have several but this one hangs out over the road. About a year ago now, it was hit by a recycling lorry. You know, one of those ones that appears jacked up with a metal box on top that is so dented it isn’t really a box any more, but looks as if it has been distressed, via the medium of carefully lobbing it off Beachy Head, before fitting. They’re big and tall these lorries which is how it hooked the lowest branch of the tree. There was a lot of creaking the branch bent a bit and then, thank heavens, it pinged back into position and the lorry went on it’s way.

“Phew,” we all thought, watching from the kitchen. But it wasn’t ‘phew’. It had cracked the branch without us realising and it hung lower after that, high enough, for the winter, but when the spring came and it was covered in leaves and seeds we could hear it getting lorry dinked more often.

So McOther and I discussed it on the way to my parents this weekend. We’d get it pollarded, we decided. When we got home, the offending branch had a big crack in it and new wood showing. It was hanging even lower, precariously over a small red citroen.

“It’ll fall and crush that,” I said. “We ought to find out who it belongs to and get them to move it.”

“It’ll be fine, said McOther. That branch isn’t coming down any time soon.”

“Hmm…” I said. McOther is a qualified engineer, which makes him think he can comment with knowledge and certainty about pretty much anything. I’m not an engineer, but I am a bumpkin, so I know what a bit of tree that’s about to fall off looks like.

We found a pair of police bollards we borrowed for moving in in – which I was supposed to have taken back to the police station; 4 years ago – and put them hopefully under the branch, or at least in the bits under the branch which weren’t occupied by red citroen and went back indoors.

This morning as I was leaving with McMini a large lorry went past and with a horrible rending and cracking of wood, it removed the branch.

“Fucking hell! Shit! The red citroen!” I shouted, throwing a stressed, “You didn’t hear any of that!” back at McMini as I bounded over to the fence.

Amazingly, the red citroen was unscathed. The lorry had taken the branch with it a little way and deposited it about an inch in front of the bumper.

“Praise the Lord the citroen is unharmed,” I said.

The lorry driver stopped and got out. There wasn’t much either of us could do, except be very, very glad about the citroen’s narrow escape – he’d clonked the branch on the way up too which would definitely have been automotive curtains. I asked him if he thought he could get the branch to the side of the road. I think he was delivering malt to the micro brewery round the corner because he did, without any trouble, and I had to saw it into four pieces. After that there wasn’t much more we could do, we bade each other a cheery goodbye and on he went.

Cursing my luck at yet another thing thrown in my path to the computer and my writing, I returned from the school run put on my baseball cap and checked shirt got the saw, secateurs, big cutters, huge suede bus-driver’s luggage removing guantlets stolen from National Express (which I still use for gardening after all these years) etc out and removed the branch from the road. It was a big fuck off branch and I was proud to have it sawed, broken and chopped into manageable pieces in two hours. I divvied it up into logs, kindling and brown bin fodder and put it away.

What does this have to do with luck?

Well, sure, it was unlucky that the branch fell down but it was very lucky that it didn’t hurt anyone or break someone’s car.  I fear it may well have damaged the lorry. I didn’t look and luckily, neither did the guy driving.

On one level, I was unlucky having to remove it today, when I’d wanted to write. On the other, there are certain, hormonally charged days in each month when writing is impossible. Yes, hormones screw us ladies up THAT badly. And there’s nothing like a bit of exercise to help with stomach cramps. So while it could have been bad news, I ended up feeling better sooner than I normally would and seeing as I’d only have been staring at my screen/book/notes/whatever getting steadily more and more pissed off, it was probably a stroke of good luck that I had to get my inner Lumberjack out, when I had the painters in.

On terminally unproductive days it’s hard to walk away from the er hem, terminal. Even if you know it’s the right thing to do. Today, fate made the decision for me.

As I chopped and sawed and pootled around I found myself whistling merrily. It was only after a while that I realised what the tune I was whistling was. And now I am clearly doomed to have it going through my head all day. But it’s not so bad. After all, it’s a cheery tune.

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3 May 2013 · 11:30 pm

Note to self: Must buy fairy dust.

A slightly dodgy post tonight because my life is officially like pushing a rock up hill. I’m not sure what’s going on but the chaos gremlins won’t leave me alone… and I seem to be waiting… for everything. (sings, ‘the waiting is the hardest part… one more day sees one more yard’)

For example, I decided to put a thing on my bike and McMini’s bike that means the two are attached like a tag along.

In the whole container there was only one screw that was bespoke, that I couldn’t have replaced if I’d lost it. So after I’d put the rest of the contraption onto both bikes, which screw did I discover was missing? That’s right. And to be honest, while I know how to do some fairly comprehensively mechanical stuff to an engine, I couldn’t for the life of me work it out. I gave up. McMini has decided he likes the seat anyway, so we’ll stick with it.

My car. No fascia. No dash, no petrol gauge. The 50 mile journey to the garage down a road bristling with speed cameras… interesting. The solution, discovered by the garage, disconnect the battery. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Then again, if I had, I’d have only broken the alarm.

Other areas of life… Flat.

I think it’s book sales that’s getting to me. They look terrible, going backwards, but the demographic is different so I’m clinging to the hope that when I finally come to do the figures, it’ll be the same numbers over a wider selection of platforms. If it is, that’s good, but I have to face the possibility that my books may just be bombing.

Writing the books? Well at the moment, I feel like I’m chasing a mirage, the more I write the further away the end seems to be. I would like to finish the K’Barthan trilogy before I die but I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s going to happen. Rolls eyes. Yes it’s taking that fucking long.

Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a trilogy, I’m about a third into the last book and it’s already as long as the middle one but I think it best to finish it and see if there’s a neat point to halve it.

There are times, when I just have to accept that however ‘real’ writing feels to me I’m not really a ‘real’ author because the only thing I have the capacity to do full time is bring up my boy. Sometimes that’s quite hard, other times I wonder why it might possibly matter. At the moment it’s hard.

Different people have different commitments and also different capabilities – I really can’t write books unless I’m on my own in a quiet room. That does hamper me somewhat. I know other people who can sit to one side at a kid’s party and bash out a couple of chapters. I am in awe, and obviously, seething with professional envy. In any job you’re going to encounter this. There are going to be people who are more productive than you there are going to be people who succeed faster and you have to suck it up.

However, working within your limitations can be quite hard. I always knew my career was going to happen slowly but there are days when I wonder if it’s too slow. Is being an author like escaping the Earth’s gravitational field? Will it be impossible to escape the oceans of dross without rocket boosters? Will writing and producing books in slow motion render me a failure? Unless I achieve escape velocity will I be trapped here in the one sale a month club for eternity?  Only time will tell but very probably yes. Then there’s the really evil one. Am I deluded? Have I, actually, written two shit books? Is that why they are only read after prolonged begging… or at gun point?

OK, so we’ll put the maudlin, self-pity back in the box now and think about what can be learned. What are the lessons here? What have I learned that might be useful to anyone else? Hmm. Well it’s these things:

  1. Something that applies to pretty much any endeavour in life. Avoid looking at other people’s output except to learn positive things, like what works for them that might work for you, that kind of stuff. NEVER compare someone else’s output to yours. That way madness lies. Switch off the internet if you have to but don’t do it. Set your own targets. Make them realistic in the framework of your life and your abilities and then stick to them – if you can. Should you hit them feel glad and when other people produce six times as much stuff in half the time, chill. Yes you may not be achieving the standard norm but you’re achieving something and that’s better than nothing.
  2. Don’t worry about other people’s sales figures – yes I am a fool, I’ve been to kindleboards again and depressed myself reading the threads about how well everyone’s doing. There will always be people doing better than you and for many of us it will be most people. This is the way of the world, if you have less time, people who have more will write more books, faster and achieve success faster. Embarrassingly, people who are way smarter than you will use less time than you have more wisely and write their books faster.  Yes you will feel left behind. This is the harsh reality of life. Deal with it.
  3. Sometimes it will feel as if you are standing still and everyone is running past you and disappearing into the distance. Try not to think about it.
  4. Don’t start your writing career with a trilogy, or at least not unless you’re absolutely lulu. A series of stand alone books, yes, but a trilogy? No. Because a trilogy merely extends the first book angst for three books. That’s OK if you bash out a book every six months but if it takes you two years…? It’s been 16 years and counting. Mmm, I’m sure you get my point.
  5. Hard work begets success but unfortunately, so does luck and no amount of hard work will make up for that 1% of luck on top that puts you onto another level. This applies to anything. I’ve always had to make my own luck and to be honest, I’m piss poor at it! Phnark.
  6. Be patient; with your books and yourself. Yes Tom Petty was right, the waiting IS the hardest part. Aim to enjoy what you do and look upon anything else as gravy because however hard you work, the fairy dust may miss you.

So I reckon that’s some great advice, which I know and understand but seem to be pathologically unable to accept. Especially number 6. I think if I had the smallest modicum of patience, I wouldn’t be feeling quite so pessimistic. Or it could just be that it’s May and it’s sunny and although that’s absolutely lovely it does mean there’s a very high probability that it’s going to sodding tip it down for the rest of the year. If I’m not around so much it’ll be because I’m writing. I have to write because if I don’t finish my magnum opus this year, I fear I really will go crazy. After that it’s going to be short, commercially viable books. Oh yeh. No trilogies. Not ever, ever again.

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2 Dec 2012 · 10:27 pm

A little of what you fancy does you good.

Today McOther whisked McMini and I off to a wine fair. We met up with another couple and agreed that the boys would taste wine in the morning while we girls nipped off with the kids, we’d have lunch and then the boys would nip off with the kids while we did some tasting.

It was a beautiful sunny day, blue sky, bright sun and we headed to a local garden centre to meet Father Christmas… but to meet him we would have to trek back to another part of the site, buy Santa tickets, come back and queue.

On the other hand… outside… was an ice rink. It was all white (real ice) and the sky was all blue and it was calling…

Mmm, would 4 year old McMini take to skating? Probably not. Should I be skating with my comprehensively bollocksed knee? Absolutely not but what the heck? The timings didn’t quite fit, the next session didn’t start for 15 minutes so we would only have 15 minutes to skate but that was good right? Time to get the skates on and 15 minutes, half a session. Time enough to have fun but hopefully not to break any thing.

We decided to give it a go.

Now, me, I am the ultimate urban jungle bunny because I grew up in a school. We lived on site. Do you know how much smooth concrete and tarmac the average boarding school contains? A sod of a lot, I can tell you. If there is one thing I miss about having two functional knees it’s the ability to wear wheels instead of shoes. As a kid in the 1980s, I lived on wheels. Even when, aged 11 I was banned from all sport because of my dodgy knee, I was allowed to skate on the grounds that it was “low impact” and “the child has to be allowed to do something”. I liked taking exercise and since I wasn’t allowed to do anything else, I spent every Saturday and every evening after school with wheels attached to my feet, cruising the concrete cloisters and smooth bricked quads… and hiding when the bell went and the big, scary boys changed classes for lessons.

My Mum decided to turn a blind eye to my preference for wheels over shoes So, I was a pretty dab hand at it. Even after I reached the point where my knee was utterly shot, when I couldn’t physically run, I could rollerblade, and did, although the tricks were way beyond me by that time. First rule of aggressive skating; don’t do anything on skates on that you couldn’t try out with them off first. So that, for me, was everything…. except going forwards, and backwards, and jumping over the odd small obstacle… but nothing ritzy. Eventually that got too much and about 10 years ago, I had to hang up my skates. I really, really miss it but it is just not possible to do it with only one proper leg and until they invent some kind of skater’s zimmer frame (phnark) that’s the way it’ll stay.

Back to today… there it was… ice, white ice, blue sky. Mmm. Not as easy as wheels but oh so tempting. So we gave in, we hired the skates and stood on the rubber bit at the side with severe misgivings and butterflies wondering who would break which limb first. Finally, we got on and the four of us made one disastrous circuit with two petrified children; McMini almost in tears and me realising that my left leg was really, really not working, at all and that it probably wasn’t safe for me to do this unless I could find some way of skating with a walking stick.

The answer was a thing that looked like a banana with handles. Seats two, slides beautifully and gives just enough support for the dodgy kneed lady. We had a gas! We slalomed in and out of the other skaters at speed – controlled, of course – and on the corners I could safely throw the banana sideways, shouting,

“Feel the drift!” while the kids screamed with glee and shouted.

“We are going faster than anyone else!”

As the banana went sideways I went straight… leaning on the handle. Jeez, I could actually do crossovers! I was safe and in control. Indeed, leaning on the handle, I could skate pretty much normally, with the banana taking some of the weight, the knee held up. And the kids shouted,

“Faster! Faster!” and well… it was churlish not to oblige.

Eventually the pain hit the warning threshold and I knew the time had come to quit while I was ahead. We’d had our 15 minutes, anyway, and we didn’t want to be late for lunch. So we parked the banana and skipped off the ice, two cheerful rosy-cheeked women with two (equally rosy-cheeked) and utterly gleeful bug-eyed kids. Sure, I could be walking with a stick for the rest of the week but… bloody hell that felt good.

So the point of this story is this: every now and again we all need to throw caution to the wind do something a little bit out there. I confess I thought I did, but clearly, not enough. Many of us live lives which are hectic or busy and we can’t vary the mix that often. But I have always believed that if an opportunity crops up, everyone should. And I suppose, in my case, the exuberant glee I’ve been feeling all day bears it out! Because that ten minutes on the ice, doing something I’ll be paying for all week, something I really shouldn’t have been doing but that I miss, left me feeling absolutely fantastic. It was a tonic. So there we are. A little of what you fancy does you good. Especially if it’s naughty and you’re not meant to.

Even better, right now, I’m buzzing with ideas. And I know why K’Barthan 3 isn’t clicking. And I might even be able to fix it. Funny how sometimes, the the best way to find a solution to a problem is to stop thinking about it; and the best way of writing is not to. I suppose, if you’re endlessly dragging ideas out of your brain it’s only sensible to do something off piste now and again; to put things in.

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30 Nov 2012 · 10:49 pm

When real life treads on your hands…

I’ve gone and depressed myself again by looking at one of those ‘uplifting’ posts on Kindleboards about people who’ve had an e-book out for half as long as I have and are making a gazillion times more money. Sod it, just making any money. Maybe you just have to be American to earn a living selling e-books. I dunno. Or maybe you just have to have time. Lots of time. And maybe it’s something that you just can’t do in tiny slices of time, slowly, over years, like I’d hoped.

You know I am basically a happy bunny, I am surrounded by sweet people, I’m happy, I’m cherished, I cherish  others… I’m blessed with a very happy family. I also live in a lovely house and drive a car that, as an incurable petrol head, I still can’t quite believe I own. There’s really nothing wrong with my life except that not everyone in that cherished, loved support group around me is as they should be. I’m not one to spill my guts over the internet but let’s just say this. There’s something they don’t tell you about heart disease. A lot of it gives you brain damage. Because a lot of heart disease causes a lack of blood to the head. Over time, this gives similar symptoms similar to those of exposure only they come on very, very slowly. Every day you get a little more fuzzy. Every day another little piece of you, the essence of you, is carried away. Slowly but surely, inevitably, you lose your mind. Add a succession of really hard winters, because heaven forfend that fucking sod might pull any punches and you’re in the poop. Big time.

So, one of my cherished people is in the doo doo and those years and years of bitty, incremental damage are beginning to show. And I can’t do a fucking thing.  And I’m miles away from them when I should be there. When the simplest thing becomes a marathon slog for them, I’m not there to help or reassure when all my life, I believed I would be. I’m not there to fix the computer when it freaks, or go through the paperwork or deal with the admin that escapes; things like tax returns or driving license applications. I’m trapped here at the end of the phone and all I can do is listen. And it feels shit. Because to watch the people I love suffer from a long way away and not help; people who have given me everything and made me who I am, people I look up to. That makes me feel like a special kind of bastard.

So the wheels have fallen off my writing a bit. I can’t stop, I’m addicted, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be hitting any deadlines, and I probably won’t be very professional about it either. In short, if K’Barthan 3 is ready by next Christmas I’ll be surprised. But in my defence, although I can’t name names and be straight about it here, there is a good reason. Real life has painfully, comprehensively, trodden on my hands.

I feel a bit like this. As Arnold the Prophet says in K’Barthan Three.
“Life is a gift, reach out and take it with both hands.”
And The Pan of Hamgee says.
“That’s all all very well for you to say but the gift I’m being offered looks suspiciously like a dog turd in a paper bag, to me.”
It isn’t all pants and it’s a lot worse for them than me but there’s a very, very sad bit and I have to accept that I can’t fix it. And that rankles. Big time.

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29 Oct 2012 · 5:38 pm

Mini Man Says….

This afternoon, McMini approached me with his doctor’s kit and explained that he was going to ‘make me better’. He sat me down on the sofa with his medical case and protective knight’s helmet beside him and got to work. He selected the special looky-in-the-eary-thing. No idea what its technical name is.

“First I will look in your ear,” he says and proceeded to do so.
“Anything in there?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Do you need to look in the other one?”
“No, I saw right through to the other ear from this side.”

I admit I’m a bit of an airhead but not that much, surely. Then he gets out the reflex testing hammer.

“Now I must put on my hat to protect me if bits fly off your elbows. Please roll up your sleeves, Mummy.” He put on the knight helmet and proceeded to tap my elbows very gently with the hammer.

Then he listened to my tummy with the stethascope.

“Mmm. Your tummy is full of bugs. I will have to kill them.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
“Scissors,” he said holding them up. “Open wide.”

Other gems he has come out with include.

“Rain is like wee falling from the sky.”

“If you’re not careful you will get dirty and have purple skin and the purple won’t go away.”

“Turn the lights off please. Thank you. Look! I can see in the dark. It is because I have been eating lots of carrots. I have eaten so many carrots that soon my eyes will pop out and turn red like a dinosaur.”

He is very into dinosaurs at the moment. Last night, he squatted down, looking, to all intents and purposes, as if he was about to have a pooh and started to bounce slightly, humming as he did so. It looked as if he was doing the Mr-Whippy-having-a-crap-joke.

“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly bemused. He smiled up at me and said,
“I am laying my eggs.”
Later I found him squatting down humming but without moving.
“Hello Mummy. Now I am sitting on my eggs,” he told me.

Today we went to a Dr Who exhibition at my local museum. It was great. I’d like to go again, but I doubt I’ll make it. It’s only on for a week but there was a worksheet and a prize draw and I didn’t get to totally fill it in. Mwah ha hargh, no! Not for ME; for McMini.

At the end we spent a lot of time looking at a life size Dalek, one of the really early ones, pre my era (mine are the 73/74 ones). I came under heavy bombardment to buy one of the souvenir Dr Who action figures – the Daleks were well cool but £15 a pop – so I demurred and promised him one when we got home as I have a few spares in my collection of shame.

When we came home, McMini proudly told McOther about the ‘garlic’ he’d seen while I chortled into my hand. McOther didn’t seem to get it. I went and got a Dalek for McMini which he proudly rushed downstairs to show McOther. It was only then that the dear man realised what a ‘garlic’ was. He thought we’d been to the cook shop. Phnark.

Finally… he’s doing phonetics at the moment so he has a song about the letters c and k which he sings. He whispered it very quietly to me in church.

“Well done, that’s great,” I said when he’d finished.
“K, k, k, kite, kit, kate, can’t, CUNT!” he shouted. It was very innocent, he was just making noises but… hmm.

Never let it be said that having kids is dull!

Stop Press: He has just asked if I could show him some “pictures all about onions” on the computer.
“Onions?” I said. “Do you mean Daleks?”
“Yes! Garlics.”

Latest (20:30): Apparently he went upstairs to find McOther shouting, “Extra-erminate!”

He will kill me for this when he’s grown up… 😉

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31 May 2010 · 8:04 pm

Erk

My writing is going incredibly badly, not just a little bit out of kilter but oh blimey I think I’m going to have to re-write the first 50,000 words badly.

It does happen with every book I write but I’ve never had a two year old to look after or had my in-laws turn up to stay for an unspecified time until they find a house at the same moment. Usually I have time to concentrate, this time, not.

Hmm… It seems there are finally too many balls in the air and I’ve dropped the fucking lot.

Oh dear.

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