My latest creation

Little Chick-pea arrived on the 22nd February - a baby sister for the other three to dote on. Turns out I can create something even more perfect than I can envisage.  She is a delightful little chubster - 8lb 6 and a half oz - and we are all in love, as we should be.

Project hopping

Half-term is over, and I'm on maternity leave, playing the waiting game.  What a gorgeous amount of time to spend on writing projects to pass the time....but of course not.  The two-year old is at home, and finding it risible that I suggested he amuse himself, even for half an hour. (He's helping me type now, with sticky fingers on my laptop keys).

Fortunately, in trying to keep a little writing routine going as much as possible -for as long as I can - I have things that I can tackle in ten minute slots. I dug out my Grandad's life-story this week; I had typed it up a year or more ago, but it needs lots of footnotes.  One day I hope to use a POD service so I can give my sisters and Dad a copy.  It's a very personal project, which I'm trying to edit and interfere with as little as possible - it's about Grandad, not my writing, and I only wish I'd asked him to write it earlier, as he might have got further along before he died. It's a completely different project, and the change is good. It also has intriguing little stories in that I would love to use sometime; he was a dispatch rider in the Royal Signals during WW2, and had a fascinating wealth of life experience by the time he was in his early twenties. It turns out that this project, at a very uncreative point, fits well into ten minute slots.

In direct contrast, my next book-to-be is still at the planning and plotting stage, and I can pour gallons of creativity over it to help it to flare into life.  Yet it also fits into short sessions. 

There's a definite benefit to having a range of projects, of wildly different kinds, on the go at the same time.  I wonder if you work like this, and if it suits you?

Baby Brain

Photo: vichie81

Baby brain.  It's one of those funny phenomena that is always up for discussion.

 Pregnant women go on and on about the strange things they do - a colleague of mine brought her home phone to work in her handbag instead of her mobile. I've lost the sugar for a morning, because I'd put it in the fridge with the milk instead of the cupboard where it belongs.

Perky magazines trying to convince their pregnant readership that pregnancy is a superior state (an effort I'm grateful for) constantly quote any new research that proves the hormones zipping around during pregnancy are magical things.  I've read that they make pregnancy the perfect time to  use the imagination, try new things, become a miracle multi-tasker and that actually pregnant brains function better than pre-pregnant brains.

And I have a lot to say to that. Like gah, surrenbet, and flumduh?  If baby brain is a myth, I must have premature senile dementia. If I weren't pregnant, I'd be seriously worried.  Words - the simplest of nouns, mostly  - are deserting me by the bookful. I can laugh about it, knowing they'll come back again to roost, one day.

But it's disconcerting at best when your small child looks at you quizzically and says, 'Did you mean teeth, Mummy?' and you realise groggily that you've told her to brush her hands.  Sometimes I can get around it (with some frustration) by describing things.  Steve wanted his hospital wristband tonight, from when he was newborn. (It's a long story).  I could see it in an instant. I knew exactly where it was.
'It's in the bookshelf, with the other....things. It's a purple - a purple striped book thing. Look in the bookcase, second along, third shelf up with the other... oh, for goodness' sake.' I took a deep breath, then shouted triumphantly, 'Photo albums! It's in a purple stripy photo album.'

I wasn't quite sure how to take it when he suggested my next story should draw on my experience, and involve the frustrations of Alzheimer's, apart from to feel thankful that I haven't got to face something so crippling in reality. Then, two minutes later, he called up, 'Where did you say this album is?'

'Never mind. I'll come and get it.' I heaved my considerable bulk off the sofa (having baby bump as well as baby brain) and found it, exactly where I'd said: second bookcase along, third shelf up.

So while I wait for my language skills to return, I get the last laugh. At least I don't suffer from Man-Blindness (the inability to spot the obvious, right in front of your nose). 

Little Quitter

My daughter has her characters in place for the story she was going to write.  She has a plot that isn't terribly exciting, but it's all hers. She knows where she's going and all that is left is to put pencil to paper. Today I suggested she make a start; told her she'd probably get it done today, or she could do a bit at a time if she preferred.

She slanted her mouth down and dipped her head to look at me from under her wayward fringe.

'I don't really want to,' she said.  And ran off to fetch her Hama beads instead. 

It would be lovely to try to glean a lesson from this.  It is so often hard to start  writing (either a new thing, or sometimes on a new day!); to begin committing an idea to print, knowing you're going to spoil it along the way.  But let's face it. She's six.  She's not afraid of failing yet. She simply wanted to do something else instead. Perhaps it was my fault for trying to help her too much. Perhaps I corralled her imagination and creativity into something that no longer held any sparkle for her. Or perhaps she has the focus of a grasshopper. There's no point sucking the joy from it by forcing her to do it, so that, it seems, is the end of that. 

Here's to feeling the joy; but keeping up the 'work' even on the days the joy stays in bed.

Imagination

It's working.  I'm getting a few more ideas for my plot down on paper, and fleshing them out.  I am trying to think of less and less original or predictable outcomes, too - tricky, as I want the characters to be believable, and none of them (so far at least) appears to  suffer from any form of psychosis.  So there are definitely a few options there that aren't going to fit.  But it's a good exercise for my imagination.  I want to avoid falling into the trap of my six-year old, and churning out the easy and obvious....since I have nearly thirty years on her, I have no excuse.

The plot thickens

Was re-reading some of Jurgen Wolff's excellent 'Your Writing Coach' again today.  He suggests that early in plotting (before character profiles) it is useful to interrogate yourself on the 'Why?'s of your idea, and to keep questioning until you have more insight, and also perhaps other avenues of the story. 

After this, he advocates using some 'What else could happen?' questioning.  It was delicious opening a brand new notebook.  I have quite a little stash of them, most of which I'm slightly reluctant to use - they're so pretty when they're pristine, before I've filled them with scribbles and post-it notes. But I carefully wrote a title and the questions above.  And then I closed it again. 

I will come back to it - maybe even tonight - but first I had to take the children swimming, and make turkey burgers with them, and listen to them read, and cuddle the little one and read to him, and then I fell asleep on the sofa in a late-pregnancy induced stupor.  But that notebook is like a promise to myself-  planning this as a career, not just another dabble at a story.

More six-year old scribbling

At tea-time tonight we tried making a list of horrible things that might happen to the 6-year old's main character. She wasn't able to embrace the idea of horrible things. I was touched by her innocence and sweetness.  She thought perhaps the problem might be that her protaganist might fall...off a swing.  Or in the playground, six times. Her 5-year old brother suggested brightly that she might fall on a railway line and get dead, and R sucked in her lips and said, 'Well, it would have to be a toy railway line.  And it would have to be switched off.'

Trying to persuade her to include any real peril was difficult. We moved onto things that might happen at school that were bad.  Could the baddie (Evil Boy Cousin) do something naughty? Perhaps he might damage something valuable of the teacher's...? Oh, she liked that. He might steal a pencil. Bless her.  We brainstormed for ten minutes, with her brother interjecting several interesting and dangerous scenarios, while she...didn't.  At the end, there was perhaps one that stood out, involving getting lost in a cave.  And I felt strangely proud of the fact that in her world, at the moment, falling over in the playground, or stealing a pencil are the worst things she can imagine.

We finished the session with me scribbling down a story for the five year old, who was so desperate to be involved.  It went like this:

A bad boy called Luke put Jessie in a rocket that was about to blast off. It went to the moon and bashed into it. Jessie fell out all the way home, and broke her arm and had to go to hospital. Her mum was cross with her, and so was her dad and the doctor and all the other patients.

Oh, the simple joy of an unfettered imagination.