The box office and bar staff were very welcoming, as you'd expect on a press night. Press nights are good for spotting celebrity thesps who attend to support their fellow actors. The downside is they laugh like hyenas and try to instigate standing ovations even when they aren't quite justified.

As it happened,The Gift of Lightning was thought-provoking as well as enjoyable and I gave it four stars in my review



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Ten weeks ago, I moved to a new city. Somewhere I'd never lived before. Somewhere where I only knew one person.

Since then, there have been plenty of ups and downs, including 15 workman visits to the flat I'm renting, most spectacularly from the utilities company who took 7 visits to move my gas meter (which was located, bizzarely, in the maisonette below). I have been deafened by Water Hammer (don't ask), traffic, the road being dug up outside my window and the complementary strains of sander, saw and drill from the renovations in the flat above. I have taken to wearing earplugs a lot.



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I've always been able to console myself that despite lacking an agent or a (conventional) publisher I am still, at any rate, the most successful writer in my lone occupant household.

Sadly, even this turns out not to be true.

I got a letter last week addressed to "Paulo Coelho", who has given the Metropolitan Police my address in connection with an incident they would like to talk to him about. I'm not sure where in the flat he's been living but I guess it's a sign that I need to be a bit tidier around the place; clearly I'm providing too much habitat for writers. I cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards before the riots, but maybe he's been putting his head down in my wardrobe. Note to self: really must be more careful.

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One of the editorial comments (for which, read reasons for a rejection) which I often hear about is "There's too much introspection", or "The main character is too passive and doesn't do anything, just thinks." And although I see what they mean, I also see the writer's problem. I'd say that it's most common in character-driven novels, and perhaps it is a particular risk there, but the most recent version of this question was in fact from someone writing fantasy. The character had killed a person in self-defence, at the beginning of the novel. She must show remorse, but how to do that without make the character come across as a whingey drip?

Of course this is a version of a general problem, which is how to convey the full complexity and psychological depth of someone grappling with their situation, and then again when their situation changes (what do you mean, it doesn't change? You haven't got a story to write, if it doesn't) without running the story aground?

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A skint, frustrated mum of two with a deranged Dad and mentally unstable cat – making sense of the world.

So why Polythene Pram? Well, I guess it kind of sums me up. It draws up images of a cheap, functional, model for mobilising children from one place to another and for most of the day I feel the same. I’m certainly not one of these polished, smiley “yummy mummies”. I fulfil my purpose as best I can…

Also, I love the Beatles…

I have a crazy life and crazy things seem to happen to me.

This is my blog about demented familes and frustrated musings.



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I’ve just handed in the third draft of my second YA novel for Piccadilly Press.

Phew.

It’s a longer book than my first one, plus the story is more complex. The second draft came back with loads of comments from my editor...so many in fact that I groaned and collapsed in my chair when I read them. Annoyingly, they were all great suggestions [she’s like that, damn her]. Everything she highlighted, I was probably aware wasn’t working deep down. I spent a good few days brooding, mumbling and generally fretting.

Then I picked myself up, dusted myself down, put on my thinking cap and got out the highlighter pens and jumbo pads of paper. I was ready to go back in. I finally emerged, blinking into the sunlight, at the end of last week. It felt as though life was on hold until I’d got it done.


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One of the joys of being published by a small press is the sense of involvement and collaboration throughout the process. Not just the writing and editing process, but the whole business of producing and marketing and selling the book. Some may argue that it is the writer’s job to write and the publisher's job to publish - a simple division of labour. I disagree. I have no wish to hand over my novel to someone else and forget about it. I find the whole publishing process intensely interesting, especially since this is my first (and quite possibly only) chance.

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You'll know by now that I don't believe in "rules" in writing, and point-of-view "rules" are some of the most discussed/agonised-over/struggled with of the lot. Jauss's exploration of point of view and distance is so persuasive that even people who are looking for rules are brought to agree that there's no inherent reason why a first-person narrator can't narrate stuff s/he can't see or wouldn't know. If you follow Jauss, though, you could write things which "break the rules": any individual paragraph may look very like sheer incompetence. So what's a writer to do? You may know why you did it, but what if an editor/agent just tosses your work aside as incompetent?*

The truth is that you can do anything, if you do it well enough, but it's not a truth which gets you much further. Any agent/editor will say that the novels they take on or come close to taking on are the ones where they stop noticing technical issues and find they're reading for the story. Teachers and competition judges say the same. And most agents (I know, I've asked quite a few) would agree that they've got authors who do exactly what they've just said they reject: the writing just works. Yes, 80% of men/women answering a survey say they're looking for a partner who has long legs or blonde hair or a sense of humour. But, actually, lots of short-legged, dark-haired, nice-but-not-terribly-hilarious people do seem to find partners, because what actually makes people fall for each other is much more subtle than that.

Fundamentally, within the very broad spectrum of techniques current in early 21st century fiction writing, you should be using the ones which serve your project best.

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To write about something, you need to know a lot about it. I have always liked to read and fancied to write, maybe not as a way of life (although who knows), but alittle bit more than a hobby. I find it easier to write about fiction than non-fiction, although both genres mixed just do for me. For example, I'm reading now a spanish author called Cesar Vidal Manzanares, la lawyer turned historiand and radio and TV presenter with more than 100 books published (and going), some of them classed as best-sellers. He uses his vast knowledge of History and mixes it with a little bit of fiction to make a very amenable reading. However, as with everything in life, there are titles not to everyone's liking, specially when writing about the old spanish dictatorship.

Right now, I've just finished a book called "The Fisherman's Testament" by the aforementioned author that is the perfect example of mixing History with fiction: the book is abouth a sort of interview between Caesar Nero and an old man called Petros, or Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, remembering the final years of Jesus and his whereabouts, a few decades before that meeting between the Emperor and the old fisherman took place. Quite an interesting read indeed, if only for the way that the author has developed the storyline and makes it very enjoyable and educating.

I've never been a religious person, having been brought up into a catholic family (although barely practising). Now, in my early thirties, having achieved greatly in my personal life as a husband, a father and a professional I turn my interests into what I've always liked: reading and writing.

I recently read a book, "Heaven is for Real" (Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent) that was such a great read: not only made me weep and sob like a little girl, but it also made me change some of my views and aproach to those special moments in life that you need to turn to a something for help. This little book about a little kid made me reflect over things that I have witnessed in my life, over those intimate little chats with those people dear to me and, all together, made me wanting to know more about what's been there all my life. Not in a religious way, but in a historic one: who was this Jesus the Nazarene? who were the disciples? what was life like at the time? how could the powers that be get it so wrong (or right) on the many centuries afterwards? who were the powers that be? etc etc. Definitely, it doesn't help being a scientist (never a "sicentist" - made up word, albeit not very methodic as I tend to get diverted from my main objective quite easily.

Proof: another interest I have is to learn as much as possible about the Spanish Civil War. I'm aware that too much has been written and said about the subject but I just want to follow my mother's footsteps. She put her soul and very little available spare time to put into words a little story that was a catharsis for her, a way of letting go her feelings over her parents, who lived through those dark years of the war. She wasn't successfull, so I'll try this time.

I want to develop that story in a way that could be understood as "what-if non-fiction genre", although I might have just made that up. In two lines: what if some events that happened 80 or so years ago converged with my own present in the case that I did something that I would not do. It could be like living your life onwards time-wise (inevitably) but backwards History-wise. It is much more complex than that but, as you can see (if YOU are still there, reading me) I lack plenty of experience in writing.

So, this has been a kind of introduction from me, although I might have overstayed my welcome with such a long, incoherent, tirade. Oh, always the optimisthic. Never mind.