Yesterday I went to the end-of-term meeting of U3A writers’ workshop and was delighted to hear our anthology had raised £120 for the charity MIND.


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Having a links page on your website can sometimes be a bit of a pain...


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friend asked this, this morning:

Just read elsewhere someone say: "Like all 'creative' people, we need other people to validate us." And I wondered about this, and whether publication is the only, or ultimate, validation of a piece of work? And do all creative people need other people's validation? And if so, why?

and I've realised it's not as simple a question as you'd think. There's a lot of talk about believing in yourself, at the 'motivational' end of the Creative Writing word (I usually enjoy language change, but isn't 'motivational' a beastly word? Almost as awful as 'inspirational'. Whatever happened to 'motivating' and 'inspiring' - the humble, necessary verbal noun which used to be called, much more confusingly, a gerund? Sorry. Where was I?) Believing in yourself implies that you don't rely on others to tell you if you can and should do something, which is hard to do when so much of the social and educational world has so much invested in 'success', which entails not daring to try things which might fail, from the librarian who won't let you take out books which are 'too difficult' to the writing teacher who tells you to stick to a single point-of-view. So of course it's important to develop that self-belief, as a necessary step for anyone who wants to move any distance beyond the life they were brought up in.

Only of course the need for validation, if you want to call it that, is inherent in us from birth:

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This year, no such option was given so who knows what any of us will end up with? Do men take things like a Secret Santa seriously or is that strictly a female domain? I have been worried ever since that I will end up with totally inappropriate smellies, a vibrator or some Chocolate Body Paint - or something from the Pound Shop.

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I found out yesterday that this morning The White Road and Other Stories was going to be reviewed in New Scientist's Chrismas Books Special: Best of 2008. The print edition is in the shops today, it is also online. This is the whole review:....

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To your good 'elf...


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When my book was accepted for publication by Salt, one of my first thoughts, when I had stopped jumping up and down and weeping, was that I wanted Eco-Libris, a company founded by Israelis that I had written about when I was a journalist, to "balance out" the paper that would be used to print my short story collection by planting a tree for every book. I got in touch, we all got excited, and you will notice that on the back of The White Road and Other Stories is the beautiful Eco-Libris logo. I pay them a small amount per book and they use the money to plant trees, together with their planting partners in Central America and Africa.

I like their ethos, it speaks to me:

"We believe in providing people with easy and affordable ways to take responsibility for their actions and go green. We don’t believe in preaching doom and gloom. It’s not our style. We do believe in taking action and in the power of small changes to make a big impact."

To this end, they aim to balance out (Eco-Libris doesn't like the term "offset") half a million books by the end of 2009. As well as collaborating with authors and publishers, any reader can go to the website and pay Eco-Libris to balance out their own books.

Well, I was happy enough to be collaborating with Eco-Libris, but I didn't know how much effort they would also put in to publicise my book, which they have written about on all sorts of green websites, for which I am very grateful! And now, I am appearing on the Eco-Libris blog as part of my 11-stop Virtual Book Tour. We're talking about green issues, as well as other topics like living in Israel. A taster:.......

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It's what we do, as writers and readers, isn't it? Sharing our words, or other people's.

Tonight there was a bit of time over with my group. I had the library's copies of two of my favourite books to hand (some members have been reading them, see) so I read from them. And it was brilliant.

I read Toad in The Hole, from Sarah Salway's Leading The Dance, and they loved it.

Then I read Plaits, from Tania Hershman's The White Road and Other Stories *and they loved that as well.

Sharing words is good. And to be encouraged.

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It's odd, I've gotten over one illness and seem to have acquired another!

I have an interesting question which I have posted in the Beginners Group. If you could ask your characters questions, what would you ask them? It's an idea I had that will help me flesh out my characters and make them come alive. From simple things to asking their favourite food to big questions like what they think the meaning of life is.

I'll compile a list of questions from myself and various people and possibly take one of my characters and put them up here as an example.

Hope you're all healthier than me.

Ja ne~

The characters were all one-dimensional, and coincidences notched up the melodrama. Saviour Malkovich arrives just as the asylum nurse is about to throw the switch on the electric shock machine and even worse, when Christine faints at seeing the headlines in the street, he's there on cue to catch her.

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