Had a great time on the golf course today - amazing to see the summer at last. Mind you, I went out fully equipped in jumper, woolly hat, gloves and coat, and spent most of the time gradually stripping off. To a reasonable level, of course ... Not that there was anyone to see if I had gone rather more insane than usual as the course was virtually bare. Ho ho. All very odd anyway, but Marian and I appreciated being almost the only ones there. And I soooooo nearly got a birdie on the 9th. Honestly. I was only this much away from the hole. See? Still, I had to make do with a par. Oh how sad. I shall have to trade off the memory though as, what with Marian now being on a long holiday, we won't be able to play again for ages. Sigh ...


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I've just lifted this from my email box because I think it's an important point.

Hi irene,

We are all basically selfish. I know, I know, you are generous to a fault, but think of how you browse websites. You want to be entertained, informed, and so on. It's all about our needs, wants, interests and desires. Common sense? Why then, knowing this, do so many bloggers make their blogs all about THEM?
=======================
What's in it for ME?
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Have spent some of today attempting to get more to grip with Hallsfoot's Battle. Much to my relief, I've finally finished the scene with Johan's battle preparations that was giving me so much trauma. Thank the Lord. I think part of the problem for me is that the battle training scenes bring in a fresh supply of new characters as they can't all just be faceless Gathandrians - I have to give some of them a personality and a voice, otherwise the whole scene is dead in the water before it even sets sail. And to me, too many characters can be overwhelming - much as in my own life, I find it sooooo hard to deal with more than four or five people at once. Most of my novels have a very narrow stage with only a few people able to stand on it - that's how I work best and where I'm happiest. Even in The Gifting (of which more later), the character numbers aren't huge as most of that novel is a journey from one place to the other. Now in the second of the trilogy (trilogy - God help me!), they're staying in one place - and, worse, of necessity the novel is set in two countries - so the character numbers have to mount. Doubly. Help! All this makes me feel rather out of control and is giving me the heeby-jeebies, which is thus causing me to view Hallsfoot as a great, unwieldy solid mass of stone tumbling down on me from a great height. And I'm unable to jump out of the way. Lordy, what an exciting hobby writing is, eh ... Still, at least it's a chance to learn new ways of writing. Ho ho. Anyway, I'm now scraping in at 38,000 words and I've put some titles for additional scenes in the few blank pages ahead of where I'm at, so there's hope, Carruthers, hope. Possibly ...


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Lord H was hugely pleased today at the discovery that three cups of tea a day is good for you, as advised on the BBC news site. I suggested it would be a good idea to up our intake then as we hardly drink tea at all. Ah, innocent wife! Lord H casually replied that he drank loads of tea at work anyway, so it wasn’t a problem. I think he was about to go on with some other remark but I was staring at him with such stunned surprise that he was forced into silence. In all the years I’ve known him, and in fifteen years of marriage, I’ve never realised he drank tea at any other time than on holiday. Aha, the truth is coming out now - obviously I just don’t understand him, you know …


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My agent Sid has invited me to drinks with the literary legend, Conrad Nolan. He has written fifteen novels of considerable artistic merit. Apparently. I have never read any of them. Sid thinks I will benefit from talking to one of the masters and to my surprise I am genuinely excited to meet him.

Sid calls me to stop in the John Snow for a cheap pint beforehand. He has brought a Singles Club date along; a plump, homely girl with kind eyes. She is introduced as Molly.

“I wish I’d known you were bringing someone,” I tell Sid. “I could have brought Cheryl. She’s talking to me occasionally now.”

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I've just come across this, which is Margaret Atwood talking about historical fiction in general, and in particular about writing Alias Grace:

"Fiction is where individual memory and experience and collective memory and experience come together, in greater or lesser proportions. The closer the fiction is to us readers, the more we recognise and claim it as individual rather than collective. Margaret Laurence used to say that her English readers thought The Stone Angel was about old age, the Americans thought it was about some old woman they knew, and the Canadians thought it was about their grandmothers."

Here, surely, is why I so often find close analogies between writing historical fiction, as I keep finding myself doing, and what the writers of sf/f say (is 'speculative fiction' the current term?) about why they do as they do. I confess that through no fault of LeGuin, Patchett, Asimov or whoever are in your pantheon of greats, I am almost completely missing the sf/f gene. (Thinking of Atwood, it was that strand of The Blind Assassin that made me give up). But why they do it makes so much sense.

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Managed to get the first draft of the minutes from yesterday’s meeting done this morning, so I am obviously cooking on gas in one aspect of life at least. Hurrah. Only wish the same could be said of my writing, which is rather fading into obscurity at the moment. If only I could drum up some enthusiasm from somewhere for the novel, eh, but I simply can’t. Ah well.

Still, at least we have this week’s heroes sorted in the office: they are (a) Bruce Parry, as Andrea likes him; (b) Carol’s husband for taking such a fabulous photo of a bridge built by; (c) Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose bridges rock (according to the Dean); and (d) the new Chaplaincy flat and toilet, which are both wonderful and no-one dare use for fear of taking off the shine. As it were ...


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Just a quick note to let you know that I've a very short story, Zalon the Hairdresser, up at Bewildering Stories (and thanks to Fionna for reminding me!).

Zalon was a real pleasure to write (I think I wrote the original draft a year ago - actually, as a point of (debatable) interest, the picture, the one on the right below FOLLOWERS and above the cover of I Met a Roman... is of me reading it last September) anyhoo, back to the point. Yes. Writing it was a pleasure, not least because of Don Webb's terrific editorial input.

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Last night in my dreams I found the most wonderful stuff on an indoor market stall; there was a set of dishes that fitted together, some kind of condiment or jam thingy. One of them opened like an oyster and had a kind of pop-up detail inside with little ducks and water lilies. I asked the price and was amazed at the £2.98 tag, so naturally I couldn’t wait to buy it. I’d taken a china teapot with a cane handle to use as a bag and had carefully placed it on the table so that everyone around could see that it was mine, that I’d arrived with it – I didn’t want it to get mixed up with the ornaments and ceramics for sale, but I thought I could always show them my money inside. It was gone.


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A sharp autumnal day today. I really needed my hat and fingerless gloves, in spite of the sun’s deceiving brightness. Though actually I do rather enjoy autumn. Indeed the season has most definitely turned towards winter, so the bad news is cold weather, but the good news is no more nasty insects, hurrah. Not that there have been that many of the latter this year, a miracle for which I am truly grateful.

This morning I have caught up with the last-minute panics about Freshers’ Week, and am still trying to thrash some of them out. Double dammit. I do like to feel in control at this stage (a false illusion, but a nice one), and this year I really don’t. I also had a phone call from the hospital admissions department asking me if I wanted to be transferred from the consultant I saw about my operation as she’s not free till next March to actually do anything. Um, yes please. I really can’t wait till the spring, dammit. So I said I didn’t mind who did the operation as long as they were (a) alive, and (b) sober, and am now awaiting their response. Mind you, once they’ve seen the extent of my notes, I guess it’s whoever draws the short straw, poor them …


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