THE FORTY WORD – Hold it right there!

My real birthday cake!

Hello lovely peeps and thank you so much for all the wonderful good wishes for my birthday and most importantly for your generosity in crafting all the forty word stories. The competition is now closed and I am currently shortlisting your masterpieces. My dear husband, an avid reader and clever critic, will help me select the winner and runners up. I will announce the winner over the next couple of days – I won’t pin myself to a time as I am still recuperating after the weekend’s festivities, so keep an eye on the blog and keep writing in the meantime!

The Forty Word

When that significant birthday comes along we all take stock, ask ourselves important questions, for instance – will we be an ostrich or a diva? Will we sit in a comfy chair with a lap blanket and document the body bits that are no longer in tip top condition or will we metaphorically see our lives for the dusty rugs they are and take them out to the washing line for a good old beating – making ourselves wheeze with the debris of our decrepid DNA?

Well in what I hope will be the spirit of the coming year,  I choose DIVA! There will be a party and dancing in the non cyber world and maybe even in the blogosphere and twitterverse. But before DANCING, there has to be WRITING. And so I come, very longwindedly to my FLASH FICTION COMPETITION.

40 Word FLASH FICTION COMPETITION:

THEME – Seize the day.

I require you, dear people, to enter in the comments your entry for this competition. You must – loosely – follow the theme and your entries must be EXACTLY forty words long. I will take entries until midnight on Sunday 7th February, for those not in GMT this is whenever YOUR midnight happens to be. This will give me time to recover from my birthday celebrations before I and choose the winner. And because it is my birthday it will be the entry I like best. Oh and by the way, enter as many times as you like.

Prize:

Textured cover

Front

I’m not the only clever bunny in my family. My sister is a fabulous felt-maker and she makes gorgeous once-off notebook covers using wool, silk threads and ribbons. As you can see from the pictures they are different on each side, are textural, inspiring and unique.

The covers are made to fit an A5 notebook and can be removed and used on another notebook once your current one is full. First prize will be a notebook with a handmade cover and I will give further prizes of lovely felted bookmarks.

Good luck and thank you in advance for this bounty of birthday stories. And if you’re still wondering – why 40 words? – bless you.

Treacherous conditions at the keyboard

Tens of thousands of writers today braved sub zero temperatures as they sat at their desks to continue to work on their manuscripts.

‘Their commitment is startling’ said one agent who told me that she continued to receive the usual number of queries and submissions despite the treacherous conditions. In fact, it has been reported that several writers have been seen over the last few days, not only at their desks where ice on the keyboard has made writing slow, but also outside on dangerously slippery paths on their way to the post office to submit short story competition entries. As one commentator remarked, ‘in pursuit of their goals, writers share many of the characteristics of the first Antarctic explorers: courage, strength and resilience. Not to mention cold noses.’

But what are the conditions like? Many writers face frostbitten fingers and other extremities. ‘I was so cold that I could no longer feel my legs’ said A.B. Wells, the alter ego bestselling author version of this journalist. ‘My fingers welded to the keyboard’ said A.N. Other. Reports are flooding in that many writers have had to strap hot water bottles to themselves, while others are fashioning fingerless gloves out of old holey socks. ‘In desperate circumstances you will try anything’ said Utt. R. Commitment. Lap blankets and hot thermos’ are the order of the day and in extreme circumstances some writers have put on several layers of clothes, hats, scarves and, in some cases, balaclavas. ‘Writers refuse to believe that theirs is a Mission Impossible’ said a leading motivational expert who is twitter following 1 million writers.

Icicles attached to a writer's keyboard

What are the likely consequences of this cold snap? One renowned literary agent has said that she is ‘excited’ by the emergence of a new genre of writing she calls ‘Freeze lit’, while many literary landscapes have now been sprinkled with a layer of crisp white virgin snow. The snowman has become a motif for recession and New Decade economic and cultural chill. The cold hard truth for writers in the current climate is that it may indeed be the writers with the iciest digits that go on to become most successful. 2010 may turn out to be the year of the nine-fingered writer.

The Soul’s Re-education – who’s writing do you love?

Fuel for the soul

I will never be a literary critic. I say Wow. I say Yes. I feel a resonance inside, a plucked guitar string, light shifting, I find myself holding my breath. I feel a flicker of an idea, consciousness swirling, a pulse of feeling, a glimpse of memory that sets me ready to try to say…..something, something that might in turn touch and inspire others or provide them with a reflection of their emotions, or show them a new way of looking at the world.

Who are the writer’s that refill the well for you?

The last decade for me has been a decade of what I call ‘mud’. Not in a negative sense but in a hands-on, practical, prosaic, down in the thick of things kind of way. I have given birth to and raised four children with all the nappies and puree and wiping down and tidying up and cajoling and physical helping and emotional steering that that entailed. Something has to give, sometimes its ‘air’, what’s up there, the things that take us out of ourselves, music, words, exercise, theatre, new places, silence. The children are older now, the tiny baby stage has passed. I am about to start a new decade in age too. I want to begin to refuel in all the other things that I haven’t been able to get to. I still have the physical, the hugs, the squeaky noses, the lifting, the holding, the toddler insisting he can only be happy lying cheek to cheek with me but I want the breath as well, a little bit more than before.

This means catching up on old music videos I have never seen, bands that I hear fleetingly in the car between pickups but never hear the name of. It means, perhaps DVD box sets or catching re-runs of shows I missed like Madmen, The Mighty Boosh, The West Wing. It means getting to more music shows, more theatre, more galleries. (Even if its only 1 more!). And it means books and authors.

These are the books currently on my bedside table or in a tall pile beside it.

They are by writers who were recommended to me by others or are people that I have enjoyed in the past and want to continue to become more familiar with their work. In particular since I have begun to write so many short stories I have also become a voracious reader of short story collections.

• Hanif Kureshami: The Body (Already in awe!)
• J.G. Ballard: Kingdom Come
• A.S Byatt: Possession
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
• Nabokov: Collected stories (His work is a wonderful revelation!)
• Jeannette Winterson: The Stone Gods
• Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain and Other Stories
• Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze
• Virginia Woolf: The Waves, To the Lighthouse
• John Steinbeck: The Pearl, Sweet Thursday, The Wayward Bus
• Ivy Bannister: The Magician (short stories)
• Paul Durkan: Life is a Dream: 40 years reading poetry – 1967-2007
• Sylvia Plath’s: Collected Poems

These are books I have enjoyed most in the past few years and highly recommend.

• What was Lost: Catherine O’ Flynn
• The Accidental and Hotel World: Ali Smith
• One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• To a God Unknown, Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck
• The Gathering: Anne Enright
• Postcards, The Shipping News: Annie Proulx
• Map of Glass: Jane Urquart
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen (An event of a book, great illustrations, notes in the margins. Beautiful to hold.)

Short Stories

• How to Breathe Underwater: Julie Orringer
• Constitutional: Helen Simpson
• Lorrie Moore: The Collected Stories
• A.S. Byatt: Little Black Book of Stories

I also hope to become acquainted with the stories of Raymond Carver and to read the first two available stories from The Chaos Walking Trilogy (teen fiction) by Patrick Ness The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer.

Help me with my re-education, my filling up of the soul and the well of inspiration.

Who are your favourite authors? What are your favourite books? Do you have any recommendations for us of authors we should become acquainted with? Are you an author we should become acquainted with? Let me know in the comments. Add in your favourite band and TV show too if you feel it deserves attention. Hopefully we can share some gems.

NaNoWriMo Celebration Blog Tea Party

I can’t believe it’s over!

The challenge to challenge all writing challenges. This year almost 170,000 writers undertook the NaNoWriMo challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words in just one month. This entailed churning out a minimum of 1667 words every single day with no exceptions. But why? What communal madness infected all those of us who skirted around the idea, then nudged towards it, then checked out the NaNoWriMo website alone and under cover of darkness and then finally, trepidously and in disguisedly signed up?

Whatever the reasons, and hopefully we’ll soon find out (see below) today is a day for Celebration!

You deserve a nice cup of tea after all that!

For those who have finished and for those who finish during the course of today and want to drop in to let us know.  Bring a cup of tea, coffee, scones, cakes and join in for a day of chat and camaraderie. Those who joined and triumphed but didn’t officially ‘win’ are very welcome.

Here’s what to do.

In the comments, introduce yourself and tell us your usual writing activities. Then tell us more about your NaNoWriMo experience:

1: Why you decided to try it, especially if it was your first time

2: The most important lesson(s) you learned from it

3: Your biggest challenge, worst moment

3: What you wrote about and what you think of it now (honesty please!)

For Sally Clements who started all this

Then please include a link to your blog if you have one, so that we can visit  and get to know more about the writers behind NaNoWriMo! It would be great if everyone could visit at least one other blog and perhaps leave a comment, especially now that you have time on your hands! Let’s get the party started!

 

 

 

More on my NaNoWriMo

10 Recession Beating Personal Grooming Tips for Writers(!)

1: Save on manicures and nail trimming by typing extremely fast for long periods. If you participate in the yearly NaNoWriMo challenge you will automatically lose all your fingernails.

2: Dispense with face creams, anti-wrinkle products and Botox. This will automatically give your face a deeply etched, lived in look that will suggest wisdom and gravitas. This otherwise haggard, drained appearance will enhance your literary kudos and make you appear a serious author.

(Caveat: If you want to appear on the bestseller list, or in society pages, get an exorbitant book deal,  sell the film rights on your first effort at a novel, and appear on I’m a Celebrity ignore the above and get a complete makeover and facelift/get your younger sister to impersonate you, even if you are a man.)

3: For Men, stop shaving, grow a beard. See number 2.

4: Save an extraordinary amount on clothes, buy two tracksuits and wear them in rotation. If you are serious about your writing you will always be at your desk writing anyway and will never go out. In the month of November, if you are doing NaNoWriMo don’t bother to get dressed at all, wear your pyjamas all the time. You will not only save on clothes but on washing. This means you are a champion for the environment since you are not putting on the washing machine or travelling anywhere. This should make you feel super.

5: If you get an agent, take a risk and buy a smart casual outfit. If you don’t yet have a book deal go to a charity outlet. The charity shops do a wonderful line in jackets with attitude, for example, leather, tweed, floral. Choose the correct one for your genre. If you can’t stretch to charity shop chic, send your younger sister out to meet the agent.

6: Avoid hair cuts. They make you lose your power. If you are a real writer you will be more of an arty hippy type anyway and growing your hair long will promote that impression. You may trim your own fringe if it gets in your eyes and prevents you from writing. DO NOT. DO NOT trim the bit that you twist around your fingers while waiting for inspiration. If you cut that piece off you may never produce anything of quality again.

7: Have showers, they are wonderful places to get your creative head in gear and have the added benefit of make you smell slightly better after endless days in the same room with half eaten ham sandwiches. While baths have been accredited with give Archimedes his inspired Eureka! moment, they should be reserved for those working on intergenerational sagas only.

8: Brush your teeth, several times a day but try not to drip toothpaste all over your keyboard when you trail back into your writing room from the bathroom while forgetting what you are doing. As a rule, try to remove all evidence of your body parts/dna/hair/skin/nails from your keyboard each day as it may irretrievably clog up.

9: Make your own deodorant. There are many recipes on the internet for natural inexpensive homemade deodorants. Don’t search for/google these recipes. You are supposed to be writing, not wasting your time on fruitless googling. Most of the recipes include bread soda and shea butter. If you don’t happen to have shea butter use ordinary butter instead, its probably more or less the same. And speaking of fruit, oranges and lemons are often used for household cleaning so I’m sure if you squash an orange into your bread soda- butter concoction it will be work beautifully. Failing that add a kiwi. Don’t worry about the pithy bits or the black seeds, you are alone, writing, no-one can see you.  Anyway you want to be pithy, don’t you? If you really must, write and sell your recipe for homemade deodorant on the web. Once you get paid you will be able to buy some plain biscuits to dip in your hot water.

10.  Does my bum look big in this writing chair? Exercise. You do not need a gym. You can burn 5000 calories a day by participating in NaNoWriMo or churning out a YA novel series at speed. (You need to churn out YA novels at speed so that your target audience hasn’t grown up, moved onto the next bright thing, before you finish). Typing quickly is a terrific way of keeping yourself in shape. Get in the habit of doing ten star jumps every time you lose the flow of your piece. Do 50 press ups every time you think of giving up. Anything is easier than 50 press ups, even writing. Rotate your eyes every ten minutes to prevent goggle-eyed-itus. Rotate your neck so that it doesn’t jam in one position. Rotate your ankles and stretch your legs frequently so that your walking muscles haven’t deteriorated beyond use by the time you finish your novel. Good luck with your personal grooming and one final tip – never use webcam!

Running for my writing life

I did it. I jumped in. Which is why I haven’t been posting for a while. I mean NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month for which many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of crazed people with Obsessive Writing Disorder pledge to themselves to write 50,000 words on a new project in just one month. Of course tribute must also be paid to NaNo Rebels who bend the rules a little bit in terms of project (continuing with an already established project) or wordcount (adjusting the goal accordingly).

I jumped in. Mum of four less than double digited offspring, two who have already delightfully celebrated their birthdays in this auspicious month and just two days apart, the eldest, and youngest, my bookends.

For the first week of my novel writing challenge I kept to the obligatory 1667 word count faithfully. I chose, as my project a lighthearted domestic space chase, a fantasy in the parallel universes of Susan, the perfect mother and later a Housewife Warrier Princess. She is unceremoniously visited by her Fairly God Father who she renames Dave who takes her through time, space, and the freezer department in Tesco’s on a quest to keep her intact, as she is the disintegrating Housewife with a Half-Life stuck in a temporal loop. She must reintegrate pieces of herself that are stuck in parallel universes in order to survive.

Glad you asked? Aren’t you? Where Telepathy is the route telly’s take to keep fit and sentimental whisks save the day this fabulous story, surely is, for me, a distraction from my own everyday concerns. But one of my everyday concerns is now my wordcount. And I come to you today from the sorry position of being 5000 words behind (BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE.) (Especially me or I’ll panic).

Have you ever been in a situation where you are on a long walk, perhaps a hill walk over a few hours with friends. You realise early on that you are not as fit as they are and you begin to trail behind. You try to catch up but in the process you wear out and just as you reach them and are ready to catch your breath, they stand up and walk on again. Very dispiriting. That’s a little bit of what it feels like being behind. Luckily on Nano there are many people slipping behind, rallying, catching up, slipping back again. We encourage each other, we accompany each other, we keep going. There are many mothers that are taking on this challenge alongside the challenges that raising a family bring, as well as alongside their other endeavours. We will do what we can, we will move the goalposts if we really need to.

Taking up this seemingly impossible challenge (for the first time may I add) has been a very interesting and worthwhile experience for many reasons. These are some of the valuable things I’ve learned.

1: I can write without editing,

2: That its okay to get it all out and worry about it later

3: I am a writer

4: The more I write, the more I want to write

5: The more obstacles that come my way, the more I have become sure that this is what I want to do

6: That something I’m not sure about at the time sounds Really Good later

7: How to ignore the doubt demons

8: I can actually fit 1667 words into any mad kind of day.

I feel as if I am running, running, running both in my daily life and in my Nanowrimo quest (as is the woman in the story in her quest). I am running for my writing life because the more I do it, the more I know I want to. I am learning to writing without fear (jotting down my niggles in a seperate document and then writing anyway). I know now what is possible. I am going to take all that’s possible and run with it.

The Evangelical Writer: Why you need to believe in yourself

Be your own champion

Evangelism. It can be scary. It can put you off a nice walk in the park. It can make you squirm uncomfortably at the front door. Or it can be fascinating and illuminating to see how the power of belief can make someone turn their life around, dedicate themselves absolutely to what they believe in. At its worst it can become fanaticism, extremism, terrorism. At its best it can be selfless dedication to a philanthropic cause.

Evangelism is like being possessed by a virus of belief. You want to spread the word to everybody, you want them to feel as you do. I felt that way recently when I joined twitter and after the first self-conscious new kid on the block feeling, (tagging onto people and hoping they would be nice about it) I began to discover what a wonderful place it was. As a writers forum it is invaluable on a practical, social, mental and emotional level. There is the opportunity to meet so many diverse but helpful, co-operative and compassionate people. I began to tell other people about twitter and what I had gained from it, how it had changed my writing life but I could tell from their glazed expressions that my fervour was making them a little bemused. I couldn’t get them to buy into it. Recently a writing friend Sally Clements began expounding on NaNoWriMo (for the uninitiated it’s where you sign up to write a 50,000 novel in the month of November). She explained super-exhuberantly why she thought it was so great, what it meant to her, and why I should try it. (See her great NaNoWriMo post. At first I backed slowly away, but her enthusiasm was infectious and I began to think that I could, quite possibly give it a go. (I’m still lurking in the doorway on that one, but I might dash in at the last minute, you never know!)

Evangelism is defined as crusading zeal in support of a cause. As a writer you need to be an evangelist. You need to believe in your writing, in your story, in your characters. You need to be utterly convinced and convincing. You need make others suspend their disbelief and travel with you. You need them to buy into your reality and make it their own for a time.

To write requires self-belief. But in the creeping forward towards an obscure point that is the story or novels end all writers must encounter doubt. The way is not clear, the walls and floor are not solid, and until you reach the endpoint you can’t be sure that the story you have made is coherent, has integrity, says what you want it to say. And even then, you cannot be sure if your message will resonate with others or even reach them.

And when your book is written, you have to go one step further. Now you have to spread the word. You may need to convince an agent or publisher that your story is one they want to share. You need to travel virtually or physically to meet people, to let the world know about your book, to talk and blog and tweet about it, to be its champion. All this in the face of your own doubts and insecurities. A crusade is often a battle, it isn’t easy, it flies in the face of obstacles and resistance. You need to Feel the Fear and do it anyway. If you really want to be a writer and to be read, you have to be the evangelist of your own unique story. Go to it.

Related

Dan Holloway (Blogging at:The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes) has an excellent post on the relationship of doubt and creativity and Jemi Fraiser (Just Jemi) asks us to consider our writing fears.

Who’s Cool

My next post is going to be an indepth psychological analysis of evangelicism and how it relates to writing. (Betcha can’t wait!)  But in the meantime here’s this nugget of wisdom from the Four young ones.

Er (4yo girl): ‘Boys think they’re cool but they aren’t cool’

R (7yo boy): ‘Boys think they’re cool and they are cool’

Ev (8.5 yo boy) to  girl:

‘Girls think they’re cool. Some girls are cool but you’re not one of them.’

Baby (1.5 boy): ‘Cool, cool’

R to older brother: ‘You’re cooler than me, way cooler’

Me: ‘Are babies cool?’

Baby: ‘Yes,  shoes’.

5 ways to be a writer when you’re not writing.

When you're not writing, get into your writing mind

You may burn to be a writer, you may understand that it is your true calling and be prepared to put in the hours tapping away on the keyboard or scribbling with your pen but depending on your work situation and personal/family circumstances, there may be stretches of time when you are not able to be physically present with your manuscript. It’s still possible to be in your writing head and to progress with your story or piece even when away from it.

1: Let things simmer (incubation 1)

Psychological research has identified incubation as one of the key elements in creativity. Incubation is defined as ‘a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time’ ^[2]. Seabrook Rachel, Dienes Zoltan (2003). Incubation in Problem Solving as a context Effect (Wiki)

Incubation is the period between your conscious and practical outlining of your piece and the point where you come up with the hook or the usual slant on your proposed story. It’s the time when all your ideas mingle and coalesce and form unusual associations.

Writer Louise Wise recently commented on this blog Once I’m in my writer’s head my best writing has come from cooking the family dinner, wiping a 5 year old’s runny nose and mopping up a grazed knee! Somehow in between all that I’ve written a lovey dovey scene! Multi tasking? No sweat!!

Let things simmer

Sometimes when you are finding it difficult to begin or to progress with your writing you may just need to give your ideas time to incubate. While going about your daily chores, travelling, listening to music etc you can still orient your mind towards your writing project and with a sort of Zen wait and watch approach be receptive to new ideas rising to the surface of consciousness. By placing the elements of your story into a pot and letting it simmer you may find resolutions to your sticky writing problems, you may find an exchange between characters rising fully formed from the stew or a plot angle from a real news story attaching itself successfully to a stuck place in your novel.

2: Get the pot really hot: Engage in a cultural activity (incubation 2)

One writer I know makes it a policy to set aside time for regular cultural trips to museums, art galleries, music recitals, readings, and dance shows. Exposing yourself to a hotch potch of creative ideas allows you to come at stories from different angles, to experience them through a number of senses, to see the world upside down and back to front. Benedict Carey in the New York Times recently wrote on How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect. The article outlines psychological research which shows that the human brain strives for order. Exposing it to the bizarre makes it work harder to make sense of the world and preserve narrative cohesion by identifying patterns. Thus ‘disorientation begets creative thinking’. So while you are immersing yourself in a flood of fascinating ideas, your brain will be working to find a common thread and the juxtaposition of unusual ideas may result in a unique story or piece of writing.

3: Remember and record your dreams (incubation 3)

We all dream, whether we remember or not. Freud made a career out of the Interpretation of Dreams as part of his psychotherapeutic technique. It is true that our dreams may carry many of our conscious and unconscious concerns. Dream interpretation also suggests that many aspects of our dreams can be symbolic. For example a dream of a bath, can mean a tub, or a vessel that carries something important. I am not convinced that we can be absolutely reductionist about our dreams. Any analysis should be done broadly. I believe that our dreams are our subconscious efforts at creating narrative out of our experiences, fragments of memories, subliminal cues, peripheral inputs. We are programmed to make sense of things, to tell stories and our dreams do that while we sleep.

Record your dreams when you wake

It is the narrative genius of dreams – making sense out of the utterly bizarre – that makes it so worthwhile to try to recall and record them. It’s not often possible to do this and if we are woken suddenly our dreams often retreat out of reach. However I did, for a time, keep a dream notebook and with practice was able to write down many dreams.

There are, of course, many common themes, what may be called Archetypal stories, and these may as Jung suggested be common universal concerns. As a novelist we aspire to make explicit these universal stories. Our dreams can present us with unusual paths through our personal material that can give us an original voice when dealing with those themes.

4: Pay attention and Notice Difference

Decide to take notice (or notes) of things. I have spoken about this before but compared to children, for example, we take so much for granted, we are rushed, preoccupied etc and don’t take the time to notice the small details surrounding us, the details that can make a reader catch their breath with delight.

Psychology also tells us that we are attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, we are also programmed to gather evidence to support our own theories of life and notice environmental cues that feed into our preoccupations. For example if you are buying a house a drive around the neighbourhood will have you noticing all the For Sale signs. If you are into cars, you might take note of what is parked in the driveways. We need to make an effort to see things differently, to pay attention to the kinds of people we normally disregard, to take an interest in a different aspect of a scene, to watch or read something we might normally never consider.

This puts me in mind of an entertaining BBC comedy quiz show called Have I Got News For You. One of the quiz rounds is the fill in the missing word round. Phrases are taken from a guest publication. The guest publications chosen are a esoteric and ecletic mix including Welding and Metal Fabrication Monthly, Barbed Wire Collector, Hairdressers Journal International, Vacuum Cleaner Collectors Club Newsletter. While some examples are hilarious, these publications go to show that there are so many specialized interests out there, some you may never have imagined. What kind of people are interested in these sorts of things, what sort of lives do they lead? Aspire to see difference where ever you go.

Inspiration at the washing line

5: Finally find Inspiration at the washing line (Inspiration 1)

/in the car wash/emptying the dishwasher/having a shower

I don’t think there is a reason I chose washing related examples but it’s at moments of mindless activity where our garrulous consciousness coasts into automatic and goes quiet  that the subconscious gets a chance to speak its mind. I knew many years ago that I wanted to be a writer but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to write about. It’s true to say that the experience of years provides material. It strengthens associations and references that lend depth to writing. However I have discovered since I decided to just BE a writer that you can write about absolutely anything. And it’s at the washing line that all the phrases, news items, emotions, characters merge together and instantaneously throw out several fascinating ideas.

Why the washing line? It’s peaceful. I am momentarily (and I mean momentarily) away from the clamour of the children. It’s usually pleasant, uplifting weather (the reason I’m hanging out the washing in the first place). There may be a fresh breeze or bird song. The action of hanging out the washing is repetitive and soothing and requires little concentrated brain power. It is here that the fruits of all that incubation are realised, I become inspired and I find my way through. I trace the narrative thread of the line until a story falls from the bright blue sky. A man with an obsession with weeding is an emotional tyrant who bullies his wife. A pigeon’s coo reminds me of a time and a place and first love. A jokey remark made to one of the children becomes a possible children’s picture book story.

I am a writer in my head, in my dreams, in my outlook, in the middle of my chores. I nearly trip over the washing basket as I run back inside to find a pen to pen the ideas in and prevent them from getting away. So don’t sweat when you can’t be writing, get into your writing head, feed your subconscious and let it do the work for you.