What is a writer?

"I am not a writer except for when I write" Juan Carlos Onetti

Yesterday I saw the cover of a book that I have written for the first time. It is the first book that will have my name on the cover and it felt like a monumental moment for me. 64 of my Facebook friends (and counting) agree which is not really an indication of the validity of anything but it occurs to me that more virtual friends have applauded the creation of my first book, than the birth of my children, which is fair enough really: there are probably more writers than mothers amongst my Facebook friends and they know what it takes to write a book. In fact, for most people, creating a human being is easy in comparison (gestating them, giving birth to them and looking after them once they're born - not so much.)

Not that it is my first book of course. In fact, it's my fourth book. The others took just as long to write (probably longer) and all of them have had a good reception, as unpublished books go. The first one gained me a distinction on my MA and could have been "a bestseller" according to one of London's top literary agents. The second one got through an agent to an editor before being ultimately rejected. The third one won me £2000 and a Northern Writers Award but is still unpublished. I've written hundreds of poems (some published), have written endless copy for websites and handbooks, have a mountain of notebooks full of my scribbles and I even have an MA in Writing. I'm known as a facilitator of writing and increasingly writing forms more of my public persona and yet, there's something about the publishing of a book with my name on that gives credibility to my life's work.  Particularly for people who don't write, writers are the J K Rowlings and Maeve Binchys of this world and, if you don't have a book with your name on, you may as well be a failure. It is the curse of the novelist in particular that, unlike poets, no-one reads unpublished novels. Until you  have a book with your name on it, it's easy to feel like you don't deserve the title of 'writer', which is nonsense of course, but pervasive nonsense!

It's something I talk about a lot with other writers: when can you call yourself a writer? It has taken me a long time to own that title but I do believe what I tell my writing group: a writer is a person who writes. Nothing more and nothing less. I've been a writer since I was 5 years old and I will be a writer until I die and I only stop being a writer when I lose my way and stop putting words on paper or screen. And yet, in spite of this, I can't help feeling a glow of pride when I see my name on the cover of my first published book. It is another step on the writers' journey and I will enjoy it.

The other thing I outlaw in my writing group is apologising for your work. We're not allowed to preface our readings with disclaimers like, "it's not very good," "I don't know why I'm reading it", "it's probably nonsense" and so I won't allow myself to say that the book with my name on it isn't published by a 'real' publisher. It's a book, with my name on it that will hopefully help hundreds of children around the world and that's good enough for me. You can buy it here, if you like:

http://www.dcnetwork.org/products/product/archie-nolan-family-detective-story-8-12yr-olds

The company of writers

I love being in the company of writers. Whether they're famous novelists, performance poets, young writers or total beginners, I simply love being around people who write. I love them because so often they're kind-hearted people with generous spirits and because they're often people who like to look below the surface or beyond the horizon of our day to day lives. And I love them because, in spite of all the cliches of tortured poets (and let's face it, many of us have our tortured sides) writers are grown-ups (or children!) who remember how to play - with words and ideas and with each other.

Yesterday I walked into a meeting between my colleagues Joe Kriss and Matt Black who were talking about a funding bid (yawn). I asked if I should leave them to it and Matt said he was leaving and that I had created a neat segue between meetings. Cue a discussion about the wonder and origin of the word segue and it's relationship with the segway. There was banter, laughter, hugs and even mime as I tried to explain the art of segwaying which, if you're interested, looks like this and nothing like the action I was demonstrating. I guess, laughing about words isn't everybody's cup of tea but my cup runneth over when I'm with people who love words like I do.

Often, when people ask where I'm happiest, this is what I think of. I think of all of the writing groups I've been part of and the groups that I've run. I think of writing retreats and courses and all of the people who have shared their words and their souls in those precious moments together. The people in those rooms feel like people who are my friends for life even if so many of them live far and wide and the only access I have to their faces and words is via my Facebook newsfeed. They are people with whom I have shared something special.

The poet and novelist, Sarah Salway, is one such person. I met Sarah on NAWE's Coaching for Writers course. Her recent blog on this theme resonated so strongly with me and I loved the line from Yasmin Khan Mughai's poem about her group in which writers share confidences like this is our last night alive. That's exactly how it feels in a writing group sometimes. Like everything mundane has been stripped away and we are looking into the very heart of what it means to be human. And it is a heart that is shared by everyone in the room.

Sarah's blog reminded me how much I was missing being part of and running a writing group. Since becoming a single parent, I find it hard to get out in the evening and I rarely get to run the Writing Yorkshire young writers' groups because 5-7pm is what's known as the witching hour in households with small children and it's not a convenient time to be out. So, it prompted me to set up a new group which will be in the daytime on a Wednesday, when I can get out and share my skills and my words with others. I've called it Get Writing and I hope it will inspire others and myself to do just that. Please get in touch if you'd like to come along and share in the magic. It also prompted me to plan a Writing Yorkshire masterclass on running writing workshops and to set up the first Writing Yorkshire retreat. Writing inspires people and being amongst writers makes me happy.

Of course, I'm also happy in the arms of someone I love and I'm happy when I look into the beautiful faces of my children or when I gaze at a gorgeous view of the sea. But, truly, many of the happiest times of my life have been when I'm in room full of writers. On a writing retreat at Ty Newydd last year, we were asked to write about why we write and I wrote these words:

I write because what else is there but the flow of ink on paper?

Because, sitting here with this pen in my hand,

hearing the pens of neighbours pouring forth, I feel at home.

I feel whole. I feel this is where I belong.

With writers is where I belong and I am so lucky that I spend so much of my time in their company. Thank you to all of the writers I know who have inspired me and shared themselves and their words with me.

Being a writer first

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged, mostly because I've been snowed under with Off the Shelf events. It's been great fun but a lot of stress and made me reflect again on where I put my time and energies. The freelance career is always a juggling act (albeit it a fun and colourful one), but the juggling act of a freelance single mother with a sick child is even more complex. Once I've factored in the time spent arranging childcare for evening events (and in some cases paying for babysitters) and the emotional energy expended in dealing with children who say things like "can't you do a different job where you don't have to go out in the evening?", I've been wondering whether it was all worth it.

On the plus side I got to feel like my old self again. I rediscovered the reader development worker in me when I ran the Book Buddies event; I engaged with interesting discussions about being a writing mother at the Writing Motherhood event and I enjoyed hearing new writers share their work at the Fiction Slam. I also enjoyed doing some coaching as part of the Inner Critic event. Most importantly, I got to feel like a real writer when I read my novel as part of the event about doing an MA and perhaps I put myself back in the public eye as a writer to some extent and maybe this is important. The financial gain wasn't so great. I earned a few hundred pounds for an awful lot of work.

Thinking about it now, perhaps the most important thing I did as part of the festival was submit a little piece of writing for the Shedloads of Work website. I was promoting the initiative with my literature development hat on and then, at about 10pm decided, as a writing exercise, to write something about my own workspace and submit it before the midnight deadline. And now it's live and it's pleasing to have a piece of my writing, albeit it a small one, in the public arena. You can view it here along with other writing by new and established writers:

http://www.shedloadofwork.co.uk

I end my piece talking about my office space and the little piece of paper that is stuck to my wall which says "I'm a writer first". It's a mantra that came out of a coaching session with life coach Andy Leigh who ran the Inner Critic masterclass and it's something I go back to. Running events is fun. Writing is something more than that and it's where I should put my energy. So, festival over, I'm back to my writing projects and am sending my young adult novel out again. And I reflect that my renewed enthusiasm for doing that is also something that has come out of being around published authors and discussing my writing journey at the MA event. I want to be known as a writer, not just as a facilitator of other people's dreams.

Can a woman be a writer and a mother?

Tracey Emin has been making the news again. She's perhaps as famous for being controversial as she is for her art and she will have raised the hackles of many women artists this week with her statements about the incompatibility of the creative path and that of motherhood. 


In an interview with Red magazine, she said


'I don’t think I’d be making work (if I were a mother). I would have been either 100% mother or 100% artist. I’m not flaky and I don’t compromise. Having children and being a mother… It would be a compromise to be an artist at the same time. I know some women can. But that’s not the kind of artist I aspire to be. There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men. It’s hard for women. It’s really difficult, they are emotionally torn. It’s hard enough for me with my cat.'

Initially I was kind of following her train of thought and having some sympathy with it. Being an artist does require an uncompromising commitment to something that is esoteric and hard for other people to understand. It requires focus and dedication and unsociable hours. It requires a brain that can think straight, or rather a brain that can think tangentially and metaphorically and that's not always compatible with holding information about feeding and nap schedules, dentist's appointments and the buying of children's party presents. Being a childless artist has got to be the easier path.


My own daughter has always been precocious and when she was three, she announced to me, "I'm not going to have children. They would get in the way of my art and I'd have to ignore them." Out of the mouths of babes........ She's changed her views slightly now and would quite like baby twins conceived by donor so that she doesn't have to bother with the annoying issue of finding a husband. She's probably realised that, unless you choose carefully, they can get in the way of your art too. 

Tracey Emin has neither a husband, nor children, and she seems to have done pretty well in the art business so maybe she has a point. But I lost sympathy with her when she made her comment about

good artists that have children being called men. Clearly she was being deliberately inflammatory but it kind of undermines the many many examples of great women artists and writers who have managed to combine the two. Ok, so I doubt that any of them would say it has been easy, but they did it. And women the world over continue to do it. And the comment about being emotionally torn seems to put women (and men) back in a very traditional box to me. Don't fathers who are artists sometimes feel emotionally torn too? As responsible men take on a greater role with childcare, male artists and writers are struggling too. I know several who are quite open about the challenges. And the rewards. 

As for myself, I find combining writing and motherhood to be immensely challenging. Combining writing, motherhood and working is even harder. If I hadn't had children, I would undoubtedly be further on with my writing career now. Equally, if I'd had a supportive partner, I would have done better. At Writing Yorkshire's Pick Up Your Pens festival, novelist, Gavin Extence's advice to young writers was to "get a wife". I've said on many occasions that this is what I need. Who doesn't? Even a wife must need a wife. And with writing or art, as in every other walk of life, if men and women shared housework and childcare, women's lives would be a lot easier. Unfortunately, in my case, a wife hasn't been forthcoming so far. Instead I continue to juggle. This morning I have been writing this blog whilst cooking potatoes for my allergic child, promoting Off the Shelf events and putting away the shopping. It's not ideal but it's the way of life I'm used to. I do it because when I was a child like Edie I said that the two things I wanted to do with my life were to have children and to be a writer. While plenty of women can be fulfilled mothers without careers and other women are fulfilled career women without the need to have children, I am somebody who would have felt incomplete without both. Call me greedy. I want it all. And I want to be a role model for my daughter (and my son). Last week Edie wrote a story at school and was asked to read it out to the class. The teacher asked her if she wanted to be an author when she grew up. How proud were we both? As it happens she wants to be an eco pop star, a brain surgeon, an explorer and a fashion designer (as well as mothering her baby twins as a single parent). Maybe she's a bit ambitious but hey, better that way than thinking she belongs in the kitchen.

If you'd like to join the debate about writing motherhood, I'm chairing an event of that name at Off the Shelf on Saturday 18th October. I'm really looking forward to it as it's a subject that is close to my heart. Please come along: 

http://www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/dms-connect/search?dms=3&feature=1027&venue=2161600

On boundaries

I've always been interested in exploring boundaries. I'm tempted to say that I like grey areas but grey isn't a colour I feel comfortable associating myself with so I'll say that I like rainbows instead; the boundary where sunshine and rain meet, creating something colourful and transient.

In life, being interested in exploring boundaries can be somewhat hazardous both personally and professionally and I've had a bit of experience of that. When you're young taking risks can feel thrilling and soul-destroying in equal measure. Having had a bit too much of the soul-destroying, in life, I'm trying to get better at having clearer boundaries. Thankfully writing is a place where I can still take risks though without causing too much damage and I realised today that issues of boundaries come up in lots of my writing. In fact, I'm concurrently writing three books at the moment and boundaries are a feature of all of them.

Recently I've been editing my young adult novel, Straight on Till Morning, for the umpteenth time. The book deals with the relationship between Lorna: a young, middle class volunteer literacy tutor and Tag: her homeless student. It's based on some of my early work experience in community and youth work, where I'll admit that I struggled with maintaining my professional boundaries. When you're a compassionate human being, it's hard to know where to draw the line between a professional role and the responsibility to be humane, hard to go home at the end of the day and leave your work behind. Lorna also struggles with this when she bumps into Tag when he is begging in Sheffield city centre.

 She looked at Tag. She should bring him with her. He must be frozen. It seemed ridiculous to leave him here. She was sitting close enough to him that she could feel him shivering in the cold. Then she remembered the last time she’d been to town with her mum, when she’d stopped to buy The Big Issue. “Do you have to do that, darling?” her mum had said, like she’d been caught picking her nose. Somehow when she pictured Tag sitting across the table from her mum with a cappuccino, it just didn’t work.

In spite of Lorna's initial recognition that she and Tag are from different worlds, gradually the boundary between these worlds becomes eroded and the pair embark on a romantic relationship, not to mention an exciting road trip.

I'm also involved in working on the final draft of a book for the Donor Conception Network which will be published next year. Entitled Archie and Jemima: The Family Detectives, the book tells the story of donor conceived twins as they unravel their personal and family history as part of a school project. It's a factual book told as fiction and it is also a book full of grey areas or, more accurately, a  colourful patchwork, as it deals with the essence of what makes a family in a diverse and modern society. It's an uplifting book that affirms each of us as unique individuals with an important part to play in this world.

The new novel that I'm working on, provisionally entitled, Perhaps, also deals with boundaries, this time between friendship, sex and love. Twenty years on from when they missed their chance to be together, Jack (a married father), and Miriam (a divorced mother), continue their friendship online and their conversations push the boundaries of platonic friendship to their limits. Seen through different lenses, their communication could be perceived as harmless fun, philosophical engagement, true love or dangerous flirtation. It makes both of them question the paths that they have taken through life and what they want to do with their remaining years.

All of my writing (aside from Archie and Jemima) has elements of autobiography in it, although what grows from a seed of something factual mutates into something that ultimately is entirely fictional. Sometimes I work stuff out in fiction in the same way that poets often explore their own life experiences in poetry. Usually I don't know what I'm trying to work out until the book is finished. This was the case with my children's book, Under the Indigo Waves, which started from a memory of myself as a child on a beach but which ended up being a book about grief following the death of my father.

Like Miriam, in Perhaps, I'm approaching middle age (or maybe I'm already there) and wondering how to spend the second half of my life. I've not done things in a conventional way, although, as Archie and Jemima know, there isn't really a normal way to do things these days. On Friday night I sat with my daughter, Edie, looking at photos from my past. For the first time she realised that I'd been married before I met her father from whom I am now separated. I was worried how she might react but she thought it was hilarious that I'd been married and not had children and then had children without getting married. Thankfully, she's a free spirit, like me, and wasn't phased at all. But, as I know in my role as her mother, even a free spirit needs boundaries. I started my most recent book, Perhaps, because, like all of my books, it was the book I needed to write. Perhaps I'm writing this book to think about what I might do next. And, as time, and the writing, goes on, I feel a shift taking place within me. My first book, Once Upon a Pony Tail, ended with the rejection of the fairy tale happy ending of marriage and a reassertion of individuality and freedom. But I have a feeling that Perhaps might end up going in the opposite direction. I have a feeling now that having clearer boundaries might actually lead to greater freedom in a relationship and in life. And I have a glimmer of hope that perhaps I might have found someone to explore these boundaries with.

Self-promotion

I've been a bit quiet on the blog front recently, partly because I've had the children at home for the summer holidays but partly because I've been reflecting on this writing business and particularly on the business of self-promotion.

I went to a fantastic Writing Yorkshire masterclass run by my colleague, Iain Broome, a while back and it gave me a lot of food for thought about how to create an "online platform" for my writing. It made me think that I need to resurrect my website (which has been on my to do list for about 2 years) and that I need to blog regularly (oops!) I was also inspired by Iain's Write for Your  Life podcast and thought it would be fun to try that one day. And I need to tweet. But most of all, of course, I need to write. And, I have, at least, started to get back to this recently.

On Saturday, I read with some colleagues from the Sheffield Hallam MA in Writing in a Wakefield Literature event about the pros and cons of doing an MA. Reflecting on my writing journey, I reminded myself of how consistently I have been close to publication only to give up and change direction. So, I'm trying not to do that any more. I won a Northern Writers' Award for my young adult novel, Straight on Till Morning, last year and, following a few positive and constructive rejections from agents, I have kind of put it away and started a new book, which I read from on Saturday. I'm pleased with the new book and I want to pursue it, but first I am going back to the young adult novel and editing it again in preparation to send it out again. In the light of recent news events, it is topical again and I should seize that moment.

The other thing I've been reflecting on with regard to my blogging and my author persona, is the diverse range of things I write about. I'm considering creating a pseudonym for my adult writing (the new book) and keeping my own name for my children's and young adult writing as this is where my professional reputation lies. But then which persona would I blog in? All very confusing. Watch this space and I might work it out soon.

On mindfulness, meditation and raisins

I've been meaning to practice mindfulness for years, decades actually. But I've been too busy to make time for it which seems laughable now. I first discovered meditation when I discovered buddhism about ten years ago. I did an introduction to Buddhism course at one of the Buddhist centres in Sheffield and, whilst the teachings made intuitive sense to me, I found the meditation excruciating; sitting still has never been my strong point. And so, it turns out, I gave up the bit of the philosophy that I needed the most.

I decided to start it up again recently when a friend recommended the book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. At the same time, the local Coaching Exchange (a network of life coaches), ran a mindfulness session in Sheffield so I went along. As their introduction to the topic both the book and the session used an exercise in which you had to focus the full five senses on eating a raisin. The results were profound and led to this poem for me. It occurred to me that actually, in so many writing exercises that I've done and facilitated, I have actually been practising mindfulness all along. So much of the writing life is about paying attention, trying to find the perfect form of expression for both simple, concrete things and complex abstract emotions. It is about noticing the beauty and the horror of reality. And, as I said in my last post, it is also something that my children encourage me to do all the time as well. So, suddenly, I feel less like a novice. I hope you like the poem.

The raisin meditation

First we are invited to look.

Not just to glance.

To really look.

I take in the shrivelled skin,

try to name the particular hue of brown:

it has hints of red, shades of rust, echoes of black.

I come up with the inevitable similes and metaphors:

it is like rabbit droppings or the skin

of a sun-kissed matriarch on a Greek porch.

Then we must feel it.

I close my eyes and roll it inbetween my fingers.

It bumps along like an ill-made wheel.

It is rough and tough on the surface but

when I press the skin

it is soft at the centre.

Squeeze it hard enough and it will

ooze it's juice like tears on my fingers:

the cracks are showing now.

Listen.

I put the raisin to my ear expecting only silence

but, in the stillness, when I pay attention

I can hear the tiniest of voices

longing to be heard:

I was once cool like you, it says.

I was plump and fresh and green.

But wrinkles are just the lines of life

and experience has made me sweet.

Smell me.

I bring the raisin to my nose,

breathe in deep

like I'm inhaling the bouquet of a fine wine

or the scent of a rose.

Something so small has never smelled so good,

like caramel and sugar and sunshine.

Taste me

It is the end of the journey for the raisin.

It rests on my tongue and we savour

our last moment together.

I hold it in my mouth, taste the flavour, then

chew it like toffee between my teeth,

feel solid melt into liquid.

And then I swallow

and I am swallowing not just the raisin,

but this tiny glorious moment.

And not just this moment but all the

moments that went before:

the grape, the vine,

the hands that tended the vine,

the sunshine and the rain.

In this one tiny raisin,

I taste life and, in this moment,

it tastes good.

http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Eight-Week-Finding-Peace-Frantic/dp/1609618955