Agreed several weeks ago to participate in a writing marathon. I’m told it involves 50 prompts - literary fireworks - dispatched at intervals over a 12 hour period and it’s happening tomorrow. It’s in aid of Volunteer Reading Help (VRH), a national charity that ‘helps disadvantaged children develop a love of reading and learning’. The best work will be published in an anthology, available spring 2009 and all profits go to VRH ... (more)

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No real need to cover your ears and blush today, people, as the Swearing Queen of Godalming is (relatively) under control. Or - which may be more likely - too drained to shout. Thank goodness for calming pills, eh. Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that I finally got the all-important operation code last night due to a combination of (a) my very talented and totally lovely sister-in-law-to-be Googling it for me (thank you, Sue - I was way too stressed to think of that, doh!); (b) the Clinic finally ringing me up with a list of possible codes; and (c) the Consultant (well, gosh, I must indeed have sounded desperate ...) herself ringing me up and suggesting that I didn't have to have either the D&C or the ablation, and could in fact just have the Laporoscopy and the Hysteroscopy, but she'd discuss it more with me next week. Lordy, but it's getting more complicated by the minute (not least due to her rather snippety comments about my nice GP's "interference" - then again, dear, at least he's had the decency to read my medical notes, and no-one else round here has). Anyway, I'm keeping calm (deeeeep breaths and humming ...) and I'm not going to think about it till next Thursday. I'm fully convinced I'll opt for just the 2 operations however. Let's minimise the fiddling around is what I say ...


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It is always a real treat having our babies for the weekend and we cherish every second but my God is it tiring! And of course having them and then the humdinger meant that no writing at all has been done this week - except for one very short poem in preparation for Poppy Day and this blog. Now next week, I will make sure I do something. I have promised a fellow Writewords member a critique on her children's story so that is my first priority. I also need to upload some new work of my own because the summery poem and kid's story currently displayed there are now weeks out of date. Plus, I really do have to make some time to sort out the research I have already done for The Historical Novel - or The Emma Book as it is now known throughout the family. And I still need to find a way that I can maintain a steady income whilst promoting the Yuck series, so there is plenty to do. It is just a case of finding the time. Still - something will turn up, I am convinced of that.


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Duncan Glen, who died on 20 September 2008 was a poet, literary historian and critic, editor and designer but I knew him as my typography tutor. Duncan headed the Graphic Design department whilst I was a student at Preston Polytechnic between 1974-78. The department had evolved out of the Harris School of Printing and it was not only an inspiring place to be but an interesting time to be there. Duncan used the traditional letterpress facilities in the basement of our department to publish his own imprint Akros - and as students we were invited to practice our typographic layout skills on individual editions ... (more)

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Not a good day today, I'm sorry to say. I suspect this will be a rather short blog as I'm utterly wiped out in terms of energy. So, hey, there's always a silver lining for my reader then ...

Most of my day has been spent ringing PPP, ringing the hospital and ringing the Surrey Park Clinic. Over and over and over again. All I want is for someone - anyone, please! - to give me a code for a D&C operation, as PPP won't speak to me, or even acknowledge my presence without it. It was actually so incredibly stressful that at one point I couldn't stop shaking, so lay down on the bed and cried for a while. I still feel incredibly tearful now, as it's late afternoon and nothing's been resolved. I desperately, desperately want it to be sorted out by tomorrow as I can't bear the thought of starting the working week next week, knowing the op is on Thursday and I'm still struggling with the admin side of it all. I think that, if I don't hear anything from anyone today that's remotely helpful, I'm going to drive to the Clinic tomorrow and just sit there sobbing until someone gives me the fucking code. I mean, for God's sake, how hard can it be?? Give me the fucking code, for crying out loud!!!! I'm not even worried about whether it will or won't be what they end up doing to me next week - I just want the code so it goes on PPP's paperwork and is therefore an option I can have. I don't know why everyone is making it so bloody difficult. Fuckers, all of them. Even the nice ones ...


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It is an absolute pleasure to welcome author, poet and creative writing tutor, Sarah Salway to my blog (click here for her website, and here for her terrific blog). She’s written two of my favourite books, (Something Beginning With and Leading The Dance – I’ve yet to read her third, Tell Me Everything, but I wouldn’t bet against it being added to the list) - she’s able to list Neil Gaiman as a fan, she temporarily joined the circus – and do you want to know something really cool – she’s agreed to be interviewed here.


So Sarah, tell us a little bit about your work.

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the poet Ruth Padel's mother was a biologist, and her grandmother Nora was a botanist in the days when botany was more or less the only acceptable science for women. Apparently Ruth took her mother to a poetry reading, and afterwards her mother said, 'I see the point of poets now. They notice things.'

Don't laugh - though poets are allowed a wry chuckle before they open the email which tells them their publisher has gone bust because their Arts Council funding is now paying for a few seats of one of the Olympic Stadia - because it's actually very important. It's the same idea as Gwen Raverat's 'losing experience'. If you spend as much time around poets as I do, you know that no one observes better, athough people don't think of it as part of the training as they do of visual artists like Gwen. And when it comes to novels, let's face it, people first notice the plot. But that capacity to observe is so important. I don't think I'm the only writer who doesn't read on buses or have an MP3 player because I'm too busy eavesdropping. And I can particularly recommend the cafeteria of the Croydon IKEA, for truly bizarre conversations.

When you say that you spend time observing, non-artists (there, I've managed it, obliquely) think that you're going to start putting the things and people you've observed into your work, but it's not as simple as that.

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Not only does my father email to invite me to lunch - his treat - but he actually makes the trip to London by train to meet me. He asks me to pick the restaurant, so, through a total lack of imagination, I choose Christopher’s in Convent Garden.

As I wait for my father to show up I try to think of things to say that aren’t bitter, hurtful or childish.

“My name’s Christopher as well,” I tell the pretty waitress as she pours my bottle of beer into a glass.

“Wow,” she says, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. In a place like this the staff is supposed to treat its customers reverentially but they see through me.

“If I was wearing a suit would you take me seriously?” I ask her.

“Possibly,” she says, smiling, and she takes the empty bottle away as my father arrives.

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Lots of strange dreams last night about baths which I couldn’t really make a lot of sense of. Always good to be clean, I suppose … Still, at least I did get to sleep at a reasonable time, hurrah, so feel less like a squeezed-out sponge with no soul. If sponges even have souls, that is … Meanwhile at work, the saga of the info talks timetabling continues – some of it is gradually falling into place, or simply falling perhaps, I think, but it’s hard to say. At the moment it feels as if I’m still battling for survival in the middle of a rather large jungle. And I’m not sure which direction the enraged puma will leap from next. As it were. Ye gods, but my mind needs to chill out more for certain. Even I’m not quite sure where that image is going … Anyway, all the different talk timetables seem okay for this week at least, and possibly even next, so probably best to leave it there and not look too far ahead where the undergrowth is thickest. I’ll do that when I’m feeling stronger ...


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I'd never really thought of it like this, but Joyce Carol Oates nails it:

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul."

I came across this quote here, where it kicks off a very interesting meditation - by a psychologist, not a novelist - on how empathy works in fiction. One of the most interesting things it mentions is that people who don't empathise easily in real life have a stronger empathic response to characters in a movie if they think they're fictional, than if they think they're real. The suggestion is that empathy in real life is dangerous for people like this (and we probably all are like this to some degree, sometimes): it involves relaxing your guard, becoming vulnerable to someone who may take advantage, or whose pain may destroy us, whereas empathising with fictional characters will do no worse than, say, make you cry at the end of the novel.

This makes it sound as if reading is living lite, as it were: reality safely eviscerated.

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