Anna Vaught's Blog, page 3

About the man

Summer twenty three years ago, the man asked me for directions on a flooded street. I was living and working in Kolkata at the time. November twenty three years ago, I said goodbye to the man. It seemed like, whatever we thought, it could not work. I was too broken, we lived in different countries and many other things. Twenty two years ago I married the man. He is Dixie Delicious here (he is from Georgia), Santa Maria is my late mother who, in my psychological experience was, in death, as in life, a peril to me. I am Alison. It was all broken – you can see. But it didn’t matter then and it does not now. This is an extract from my first book, now out of print, but which I will be bringing back in a different form.

The Man

There was a man on the other side of the street, wading through water happily and going in the opposite direction and he called across to her, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me the way I could get to the Blue Sky Café?’

  Alison was startled because he had chosen a sentence with  pleasing internal rhymes (though its tetrameter was imperfect) and momentarily thought she might have imagined the man. She said, ‘Go straight ahead to the corner and you’ll see it there.’ To have attempted the beckoning symmetry of meter really would have been a shade too far. Anyway, what she should have said was, ‘Turn round and go straight ahead and you’ll see it there’ because the man whirled, lost in the watery street. Thus the ability to give inaccurate directions for the simplest of journeys was a point he raised with her later that day when they met on the same side of the street. And still he followed her (with his own directions), alter ego, embolus, itch and all to Albion and the funny old house and came to visit a while and then never left. 

And she told the man, ‘I forgive you for the broken tetrameter.’ 

And he said, ‘Your directions suck and why didn’t you just point to the signpost?’ 

And she said, ‘Signposts and I have a difficult history.’ 

His name was Dixie Delicious. 

Alison met him, as if in a story, stumbling across a book by a familiar author in an unfamiliar place―and this was, truly, how it was, after the day in the flooded street in Kolkata, Eric Newby, and the very wrong directions which turned out, in a funny sort of way, to be the right ones. Dixie Delicious had a calm eye; he didn’t wake in the night, sitting bolt upright, like Alison did. He had faith: he had it in the palm of his hand and the heel of his shoe and she looked at it and saw possibility and she followed him, just as he followed her.  Sometimes, they fell over one another and laughed as they travelled on. And in another city, Alison watched him go out and imagined what he saw, single and indivisible: this was how it went. 

Benares, Varanasi, one of the world’s oldest inhabited cities. It was not his city, but she sensed he felt at home there. He sat by the river at dawn and a multitude was there, bathing and praying and offering up what they could. Look at him. Look at how still he is. How does he do that? The sun hit the water and he watched them quietly, not able to offer a libation, yet content to watch and bless vicariously. He bought tea and set it by her bed. Then, later, mangoes, limes, tomatoes, onions and some olive oil from an ayurvedic medicine shop so that he could make a dressing of sorts. He begged a small hillock of salt; his eyes said he hoped she would be proud of what he had done. On the balcony of the room, the light was dazzling. There, he assembled the breakfast for her, and called her out from her room. With his call, though, she sat at ease; he smoothed her hair, put on her hat for her and gave her what he had made. They said little as they ate and watched the sun, still in its ascent. The colour of the Ganges changed from white and gold to the more familiar muddy brown. Now, he stood up and told her that, from now on, he would stop running, stop travelling away from and start travelling to a destination. Whenever he put one foot in front of the other, it would be with her. She understood and that was that. There were smiles of complicity.

 ‘Stay with me.’ 

‘I don’t know if I can. I am broken; was never made properly—and there is more than one of me.’ 

‘And you think any of that bothers me?’ 

In the lanes below, the monkeys chattered. They could smell the food he had prepared and were ready to steal. He spoke a prayer. The heat of the day was becoming pressing already and the yoghurt sellers a little further along the street were doing a good trade from their trestles full of clay cups, filled with the cool, sour yoghurt.

‘And again and again, I don’t care who you are and if you are more than one,’ he said. 

‘What about my dead mother? Dead Santa Maria?’

 ‘We’ll ignore her.’ 

‘And Brother who Might as Well have been Dead?’

 ‘If he Might as Well have been Dead, does it matter? He’s nixed anyway, isn’t he?’

 ‘I hurt myself.’

 ‘I’ll stanch the blood or maybe just tie you up to stop you doing it.’

‘That sounds alluring,’ said Alison. Then, ‘What about God who was―or should I say is Dead if He ever Existed?’ 

And Dixie Delicious said, ‘He is alive. He was down by the river.’ 

When he was ten, Dixie Delicious happened to be in an elevator in a hotel in Dallas, Texas. In walked a tall man; the boy looked at the man’s shoes. From there, it was a long way up, but look he did. The boy saw that it was Johnny Cash. No, he must be wrong. But hang on; Johnny Cash must have had to ride in an elevator some time, so the boy looked again. He nudged his little brother, ‘Curtis: I think it’s Johnny Cash.’ Maybe the man heard him, maybe not. But he bent low and smiled a warm, wide smile and said, ‘Helllllllo boys.’

The child was star-struck and cannot remember if he said hello back; little brother was possibly unmoved, being too young and green to comprehend that Johnny Cash was not to be seen riding in an elevator with you any day of the week. Cash was, like him, a Southern man. Little links kind of went in deep: faith and difficulty and broken things and joy. And riding in that elevator. Alison noticed that Dixie Delicious would listen and feel at home; saw that Cash was flawed, powerful and weak. He had struggled with addiction and the darkest of insecurities; had gone on a journey from the Arkansas mud to a meeting with a luminary or a President. Cash had faith that was angry and brave and music that haunted even when it jangled. So our boy shared and, for a quiet moment, he picked ‘Down there by the train’ with its invocation to meet him if you had travelled the low road; if, broken and sinning, you had passed the same way. 

‘Could that be so? That my friends and I don’t have to do this alone?’ 

There are some times when the puzzles and the headaches just drift away: the meeting of the man, the thought of the young Dixie Delicious and the notion that now the man who was THE ONE—who could not be otherwise—had a faith that was flawed and wanting and made sense, now that was like moisture on Alison’s parched and callow soul and for a while it washed away her feeling of the absurdity and booted those who created it out of the door. It was temporary, but it was beautiful while it lasted: it was utterly beautiful, and she had the tiniest of notions that one day it would come back. One fine day when golden light breaks through the mist and, as in the song, Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus, carries John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln; when rifts are healed and the person who hated you forgives you. 

Tear-drops fell like summer tempests and Alison, glimpsing the world through another’s eyes, (sometime while listening to Johnny Cash) sensed possibility and found it both gorgeous and painful. But we must carry on, hankie applied, and tell you that when Dixie Delicious followed Alison there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from both families once everyone began to understand that he might be staying. For issuing from tomorrow, come today and other people, when time is no longer away. 

Dead Santa Maria was there, inviting them all out, smilingly, winningly, ‘Come and see my bitch daughter. Look what she’s done now.’ 

One of the neighbours came out from her house with Dead Santa Maria and shrieked, ‘What the fuck are you doing marrying your holiday romance?’ and there was stony silence from all members of both families, probably for the same reason. The words shotgun wedding hung heavy in the air and over in Georgia the furiously Anglophile family of Dixie Delicious went off ‘yonder’ a bit. Alison dutifully tried to win over them, despite her not being a good church-going girl from below the Mason-Dixon Line. She might by now have been Oxbridge and able to read Greek and Latin, but she was still a liability of big emotions, with a tendency to curse, an untidy Anglo-Cymric background, two dead parents and a Brother who Might as Well have been Dead. In normal families, older siblings didn’t usually leave the younger ones out in a dark and shadowy wood to be eaten by wolves, and normal people didn’t discuss violent and splashing death over tea. Did they? 

‘It’s okay,’ laughed Dixie Delicious. ‘My family is entirely dysfunctional, too.’

‘What about the way the dead are present all the time? That there’s little distinction between who’s dead and who’s not? In my case, who’s real and who’s not? Santa Maria is now Dead Santa Maria, but it hasn’t made any difference!’ 

‘Ah, maybe not that bit, although my mother insists that being dead is no excuse, but that’s because she’s a steel magnolia.’

The best piece of publishing advice ever?

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Here it is.

Think of all your creative endeavours as ONE BIG PROJECT.

In other words, do not pin your hopes on one book. Actually, do not pin all your hopes on the query, the acquisition of an agent or an indie publisher sans agent who will stick with you; do not pin all your hopes on the success of said book, a linear and clearly burgeoning career and further books following on from that and, PLEASE, do not pin your self-worth of any of the things I just described OR sit around thinking that if you don’t have recognition it isn’t worth it; you’re no good. (I have done all of these things until someone gave me the advice and then I tweaked my thought and began to feel better.)

Now, it may be that you are lucky enough to find artistic and commercial success quickly, to find and develop a niche for yourself and to be able to form/be given a team around you with which you can nurture your talent. I KNOW that a good number of writers are in this position, but I would bet that the vast majority of writers are not.

My seventh and eighth books have just been placed. Well, seven years ago I hadn’t started a book, so I know I have the ability to be prolific. BUT MY GOD. There have been some wonderful adventures in that time and I have made some brilliant friends and discovered many wonderful things to read, but until I tweaked my thought I would feel really wounded by two episodes of bad treatment that seemed to come from nowhere, the exasperation of waiting and ghosting, of publishers not wanting a second book from me (see waiting again) and of books that weren’t good enough to take forward. I have yet to have a breakthrough book in that I have not been particularly visible yet in not having been with a major publisher. And yet and yet.

The one big project. If you think of it as a series of creative endeavours, things begin to look different. Two books have led on to two years’ teaching, university teaching and workshops. I have pitched and written features and columns for national and industry press and kept a focus on mental health and wellbeing; as a result of that focus, I have been asked to take on further columns and workshops and to speak to university students about imaginative routes to publication and lots more. Because I have written all of my books – and particularly in the past three years – managing additional needs for my family and then my son was very ill for three years, and because I was teaching all that time, I have been asked to speak to MA students on time and on productivity; I have written a new book on gentle productivity and just set up a literary prize for carers. Do you see how all these things are connected, and that I might argue I can likely do them better because I wrote in hardcore circumstances and have not had a smooth path? Like I said, no breakout book, publishers not wanting further work and, at one point, my agent removing rights from a publisher. Rocky!

So, if you are feeling blue, look at the possibilities of what you might do to make YOUR one big creative project. Writing in other forms and genres? Offering copywriting and editing, mentoring, gradually accruing some teaching, doing an online discussion group, making an online themed retreat – just for starters! Don’t make it only about one book or about your books. When you shift your thought and begin to hustle and then to jostle sideways, things begin to look very different.

Will you write and tell me how you got on?

Anna.

Updates, updates!

Very soon I shall be able to share further details about a forthcoming book we have yet to announce and share information and hopefully excitement about the…journey of another book!

So, for now. If you have been reading Ravished, which came out two weeks ago, let me know what you think!

Ravished – Reflex Press, and ed. D Borrowdale

Then, in February, the Italian translation of my 2020 novel, Saving Lucia, will be out. Cover as soon as we can.

Bluemoose, 2020, ed L Webb; trans. Cristina Cigognini 8tto edizione

In March, my memoir is out; twelve linking essays…

Reflex Press, ed D Borrowdale

Then, in September, you have my new novel, The Zebra and Lord Jones. We don’t have a cover yet, but here is the series of paintings which I saw and…up came an idea. Zebra is out in the UK/Commonwealth (excl. Canada) in September 2023 and is currently on submission in the US.

Weight, Carel Victor Morlais; Escape of the Zebra from the Zoo during an Air Raid; Manchester Art Gallery; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/escape-of-the-zebra-from-the-zoo-during-an-air-raid-206376

Then finally, in October, and no details allowed but I *think* we are announcing in earlyish November, is my first book about writing. That’s all I can say. During the year, I will also be writing my column for Mslexia – here was the first –

Mslexia autumn 2022 Part one of ‘The Voyage Out’, Mslexia, autumn, 2022

Then, I have just written for The Society of Authors here https://societyofauthors.org/News/Blogs/SoA-Blog/October-2022/A-new-approach-and-a-literary-prize-for-the-writer all about the Curae, a new literary prize for carers, which opens to submissions in two categories in January, 2023.

Back soon, with more news and, also, website redevelopment!

On figuring things out and answering things back

Parents of children and young people with additional needs which present in behaviour that may hard for others to understand – perhaps because their offspring or those in their care are autistic, or there are mental health problems, mental illness or a developmental or learning disorder of some kind – may have to listen to a lot of comments from others. Those comments come from family, friends, strangers and also from health professionals and teaching staff. I thought it might be helpful to get a few things off my chest and, also, let you know I feel it too.

We are all on the spectrum! NO WE ARE NOT

How can he be autistic? He’s so empathic. THIS IS A COMPLETELY OUTMODED AND IGNORANT THING TO SAY ABOUT AUTISM

Autism is a mental illness. NO IT IS NOT. IT IS A NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER

Do you think he/she is like this because you are too soft with him/her? I AM A LOVING PARENT. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE AND HOW?

I really didn’t like that at all. He/she should learn to control his/her rages. It’s really bad behaviour. THAT IS AN UNKIND THING TO SAY. IT IS HORRIBLE FOR THEM TOO – WORSE IN FACT. MAY I SUGGEST SOMETHING MORE COMPASSIONATE?

They must not let their peers go past them! IT IS NOT A RACE AND NOT ALL YOUNG PEOPLE CAN DO THINGS AT THE SAME TIME

If you cannot manage school, how will you manage university or a job? How will anyone write you a reference? NOT EVERYONE CAN COPE IN A MAINSTREAM SETTING AND PERHAPS THE PROBLEM IS NOT ENTIRELY THE YOUNG PERSON?

When I was young/starting out as a teacher/health visitor, we never saw these sorts of things? HMMM. BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT THERE OR JUST BECAUSE YOU DID NOT SEE THEM BECAUSE OUR KNOWLEDGE HAS DEVELOPED? ALSO DON’T SAY THIS TO A PARENT OR CARER WHO IS TRYING THE BEST THEY CAN.

It is a short post, but I am in such pain. I thought to write it just in case it helped someone else to brew up and get rid of some righteous anger – and maybe feel a little less alone.

Love, ever,

Anna x

Where there’s shit, there’s gold

On writing, sadness, self-worth and opportunity

This is for my grandmother.

Where there’s shit there’s gold.

This is a personal essay: how the inside of my head works and what that has to do with my writing you and with yours. It’s the first – and far longest – of a series of essays for you. It’s partly about my nan and I promise that its content is relevant to the feeling and use of this book, so stay with me, but you pop off and get a cup of tea and a snowball [1]if you need because this essay is perhaps a little intense. Remember what I said to some of you (and I have said it a lot) about working with what you have and finding your voice? The essay has those things at its heart, too.

Where there’s shit there’s gold

This saying, which you may either like or not, is a favourite one of mine: it reminds me – reminds us – that in tough times, when we are laid low, we need to look for the bright spots; to look for the treasure in the mire. I use this phrase today in a variety of contexts, but because we are talking about writing, and this essay is about writing, including in the context of chronic health problems and difficult stuff, I will look specifically at what this means in that arena.

The saying, by the way, is from my late grandmother, and I must ask you to say it with a South Wales accent and slightly theatrically and to know that she was a working-class woman of limited education and literacy who had a huge number of children, a husband she was not keen on and a tough life. So, if she could say this about finding gold in shit, then I insist that I can. This essay is partly in her honour, because she was well loved, but had little or no opportunity to follow dreams, such as writing romantic novels or being on the stage: I could have been on Broadway, some people said to me. I take great pleasure that my literary agency is right there on Broadway and that I am her granddaughter doing it partly for her. I am not exactly dazzling anyone as yet, but give me time: give me boldness, people to treasure that and not crush me, and I will pass it on to you, hundredfold.

But back to the essay on shit and gold.

I carry with me the confusion and weight of complex trauma. My nights were sometimes punctuated with fear as a child – and this explains why I am to this day such an avid reader, for it was always in books that I found solace and company – and I evolved into teenage years when I was part carer (for ill and dying parents), part wild child and eldritch child all over. That is, I felt separate and odd but could not embrace the very weird of me and could not for a long time. Books always accepted me in times of intense loneliness and strain; I ran to them when I dying to tell the outside world that those who were held up as pillars of society were also responsible for demeaning me, subjecting me to slaps, punches and kicks in the sides and the loss of handfuls of hair. And I say I was dying to tell the world, when what I really mean is that I thought I deserved it, was told that everyone else would think I had deserved it and so had colluded; moreover, there were lovely times too, so those lovely things seemed to give credence to the fact I deserved or sometimes, even, that I had imagined it. You see how confusing that must have been. I do not remember a time when I did not carry around the intense pain of this and I want to say that I do not, even after good therapeutic care (though extremely late in the day) believe that all sickness can be healed, even that of the mind. We do not all get well, and, in a way, I became freer when I stopped trying to. I understood I had to live with it and that trauma response had hammered in several responses and appeared to be the reason I was prone to periods of depression, generalised anxiety, dissociation, panic, and OCD. That was not even the whole adventure.

As I became an adult, I still read and read, then taught, read, and mothered and was a mentor and volunteer and read some more, but I did not dare write until I picked up a sharpie and scrawled a title about five years ago. This will sound ridiculous: something lit up. I cannot explain why it happened just then. Did I finally see the gold? I was angry and inspired and crying all at once and, in five years, I had written seven and three quarters books, pitched another parenting book and here I am doing this. That is eight and three quarters. I was told, by the more gaslighting end of the industry, to present as if I had struggled to get published because this was a good story for a woman of a certain age (which meant, I think, an older-than-twenty-five-year-old debut) and it reinforced a narrative that was helpful. Think about that. Not that it supported women, but that it was a helpful marketing tool. In the end, I railed, and things changed there, too: more excitement, energy and crying: more being livid. Why? Because it was untrue, and the real story was that I did not start writing. The point was that, during a long early period I had felt nothing, a weirdo, someone who was tolerated and someone of extraordinarily little talent. It was hard for kinder and more expansive minds to puncture this, though wonderful insightful people did try. In short, I was hard-wired to feel like a failure, scared of exposure and I did not have a voice. But it came. When it did, it was like a torrent and I can feel it raging, a river in spate, right now: I can feel it in tender and tingling hands and wrists, my eyes are sparkling, and you could detonate a small bomb next to me and I would carry on tapping away. Once I started writing, I could not stop and until my toes curl up, I absolutely promise you now that I will not. As I said, I took a long time to start.

Stay with me: I promise this is relevant to the thrust of this essayt and to so much more I want to write!

Let me tell you a bit more about the path I had been on before I put pen to paper.

I have, over many years, been introduced as ‘the crazy one’, ‘the mad one,’ ‘the nutter’ and, best of all, ‘the weird one I was telling you about’ – thereby revealing that they have been talking about your peculiarities behind your back. I used to get terribly upset about this. It is because I have been described in this way my entire life and, despite parts of my brain wanting just to be me, weirdo, the other parts yearned for acceptance. This is not a comfortable thing. However, what does fitting in mean? If it means suppressing your character, oddities, imagination, beliefs, and those things that make you you, then this is sad. You should be you. Certainly, you ought to reflect on others’ responses and needs; check your language and outlook are broad and inclusive – and you ought to self-reflect, because from that stems greater kindness to others. However, if you have earnestly done those things, then come as you are. Because, other than that attention to kindness, detail, and community, FUCK OFF, basically. Weird is great.

Also, weird might be your voice. Your art. It is mine. Trauma and heavy reliance on the world of the imagination do tend to set you a bit apart. That could kill you. It almost killed me twice.

So, I am thinking I have grown into my weird self a bit better. I think I might have raised slightly weird children. One of my offspring was described critically as ‘weird’ by a teacher on parents’ evening and it was not meant in a positive way. So, I quietly said, ‘And with that I am going to leave and maybe we can talk again later while we consider what might be positive about being weird?’

Then I put him in a story because I like a bit of revenge every now and then.

Because of things that happened to me, I made a few unusual but creative choices: I had a catalogue of imaginary friends well into my teens. This is precisely because I was beaten and scared and gaslit. I made myself into Frida from ABBA because I liked her red hair – my parents had ABBA albums – and my best friend was Agnetha who had awesome counselling skills. Dolly Parton was another gem in the catalogue (or gold in the shit?), because she was my imaginary mother and big sister. In my late teens, I used to go out with Albert Camus. When I was sixteen, my best friend was eighty-eight. She got me. She was weird too and liked bird skulls, tarot and Irish myths and legends. She was a storyteller; God rest her soul. I think that, as with my grandmother, her voice is melded with mine; the one that comes out in writing. I would not have had that had I not been a bit odd. I also wonder if, because I felt lonely and afraid to say things, I listened more. To morbid family stories and myth and legend on both sides. Tales, apocrypha and skewerings that were way too gory to be brought up over sausages and mash. And yet and yet.

A child at my youngest’s primary school recently said to me, ‘My mum says you’re weird, but I really like you.’ Think about that sentence. You do not know the half of it, love. There was another time when someone said to me (I remember it; I was outside the school office, attempting to partially conceal myself behind the bin while trying to hoick my tights up), ‘You are clinically insane.’ That was someone’s ma too, but directly to me. I was dumbfounded on this occasion because she was smiling, and I was a bit stuck on the word ‘clinically’ because as far as I knew she was an interior designer. It might have been the fact I was partially concealed behind the bin that prompted the comment, but more likely a sense, after having made various observations and tours of me, of having to express a dislike of something…off; odd; eldritch. To spit it out; like, if you thought you had put a chocolate in your mouth and realised it was a rock or some poo. I had started writing by this point though, so, instead of suppressing tears at her laughing, callous comment, I decided I might have her exit pursued by a bear in something. So, this is another thing. When I found the gold, it did not take away the shit, then or now, but it also helped me find recourse so that I could recover: now, I could take revenge from having (a version of) the mouth that spawned those words heartily eaten by an evil pie-maker in my short story volume, Famished.  Do you think me awful? I really do find it a relief from tension and unkindness to write someone out and occasionally have them in the wrong place when the kraken rises.

And yes, maybe I do look ‘clinically insane’ to some people.

I dress in a funny mixture of Victoriana and sports kit and my tattoo is in Latin. I carry my chickens about, crooning to them. I was reading Dostoevsky to them the other day, although they prefer Flaubert, and the shorter prose, at that. Do you see where I am going with this? Because of my past and because of the problems I have had and will likely always have, I spot inspiration in unexpected places, and my oddity, born I believe of necessity and separation from the healthy mass, looks for conversations in unusual places. I cannot wait to start a conversation with the man who whispers and gurgles to his rooks, the lady who has a tiny glittering altar outside her house or the man who crosses the road every time he sees the local priest. I have a theory, which is that maybe, if you are a bit odd, you notice more. And maybe – even more radically – you notice people who might be a bit marginalised but with whom you could have a great chat and suddenly everyone there is having a better day. You do that because you have been so hurt and so lonely and feel it to your core and it makes you more responsive to others.

What do you think? That is the point and it took me years to figure it out: what do you think? (You superb weirdo.)

I think, then, that my grandmother’s saying was right. There have been long days and nights, with cortisol firing and flashbacks; frightening recurrent dreams and in the day, I ordered and reordered like a talisman and thus OCD came to stay, with all its persistent, intrusive thoughts: as a primary school child, I would have to go and tell a person a bad thought I had about them to stop the bad thing happening to them. It was not even a bad thought, just words that occurred and had not even coalesced into a pattern. Either way, this is not normal behaviour by any stretch. Not the intrusive thought, but its persistence and the fact that I really did believe that if not surrendered to source, calamity would befall. Somewhere, embedded in my psyche, were the words of my mother repeated early and thus lodged; I did not know how to tease them out. I had been led to believe that I was a burden, that I was the calamity and that I was the bringer of harm. Where is the gold in that shit? There was none; not then. But one day, I realised that all along I had believed in the transformative power of words; I had just believed in it the wrong way and had yet to connect this kind of magical thinking with the magic I felt wrapped up inside books, sucking on words, transported. That was the gold, and it also came later, when I found my voice. Not only because I had spectacular anecdotes, but because I was quite capable of being in my imagination and creating something, inhabiting it passionately. I had learned that exceedingly early and, five years ago, when I found my voice, it was what helped me make books: all that mental health adventure and the horrible events which preceded and accompanied it all, now that was threaded through narratives and made richly coloured.

My thinking goes rat a tat rat a tat all day long; allusive; solving problems with quotations; snatches of song if need be. It is how I manage things but also, I am always making stories and seeing links. I wish I had had the confidence to write books earlier – but it is all coming out now. That is because of the weird I am, you see. It is liberated. And partly because of the shit: I take the worst moments from dissociative episodes I have had, and images, rhythms, and repetitions I recall and feel from the psychotic episode I had before one of my breakdowns. I am not – please do not misunderstand me – saying that suffering is a path to art, because I have always found that trite and offensive. But I could not escape, and I had no-one to tell. And I could not get better – I am not better – so I have tried to mold it and form it into something I can share with others.

Here is the thing: we are all a patchwork of oddities, and everyone really is an outsider in their questing and difficult experience. We all hurt, and we all have emotional problems. How much better to channel those into something creative which might absorb and bring pleasures to others, than to suck that pain in, yet turn it outwards by planting it on others, manipulating and gaslighting them instead as a displacement activity because you hurt inside. So, find your weird. Explore it in writing, as I have done and will continue to do. Ultimately, just be you: perfect and as you were meant to be, memento mori, spoon collecting, fancy dress you. Perfect you in pain, not fixed, sick, screwed up and shat on, but indescribably beautiful and incandescently talented.

Remember: where there’s shit there’s gold. That gold is your work.

That gold is also, my darling, YOU.

[1] I realised, while writing the essay, that this word caused confusion. Your snowball in its finest incarnation is made by Tunnocks and it’s a generous-sized and chocolate-covered marshmallow garnished with coconut threads.

For you. If you want to write and get it published; if you are tired, unwell, stretched or broken-hearted. This is for YOU

I took a long time to be published; by that I mean, I took a long time to start writing. I didn’t have the confidence. Now I have, it’s like a torrent. I am six years in. When the occasional person decides to be a bit snarky about the seven books I have written in that time, I tend to explain that they were in my head for decades and that’s why everything is as it is now. My bravehearts, do your own thing; believe in your work first and foremost and do not apologise for the way in which you work, whether it be ‘too fast’ or ‘too slow’. Here is my first bit of love for you all and it is about productivity – but perhaps not in the way you might expect. Also, being gentle on yourself and always working with what you have.

So, let’s go on this adventure together. For a start, you work with what you have. That is, it’s lovely to have an office or a dedicated room, but if circumstances demand that you write at your kitchen table, or on your lap wherever you are, so be it. If you wait for those perfect circumstances, you will never start, so yes: always go with what you have. I write at the kitchen table and am frequently interrupted. I go with it and use headphones for busy times. Remember that genius exists in the finest library, but also at a scruffy kitchen table. Also, if you think you must assemble ideal conditions – that is, ideal emotional or psychological conditions – before you write or continue writing, then I do believe that is deferring your creativity to fate. You may feel down, sad or that heavy weight of grief that comes after the first pains which you think will kill you. My darlings, I am so, so sorry. But you know, you can write in rage and sadness, too. Maybe not yet, but you will. Sometimes, little bits of story unfurl within the sad story of you and yours; cling to them, because they are still there and precious. Think I don’t know? I am writing this now, to you: after a second very broken night, this little story unfurled while I was on the phone to care providers and emergency staff because I have a very unwell eldest. I find it heartbreaking sometimes and after years it seems a solution is not within our grasp, but within those feelings, I try to draw something else out. Today, this morning, so tired, it was for you. Take it.

It may seem that, with difficulties in our daily life, for those we care for or, or with ourselves, we cannot create, but that is not so. Here is more about me: I manage several long-standing mental health problems and I have been recovering from Long Covid (I think we are getting to know each a bit better, right?) – and I am not writing from a position of privilege, telling you sweet things. I am aiming to comfort you, so that you might follow a dream and, hopefully, get paid for it, too – but we will come back to the latter.

What about the adage of writing every day? That real writers write every day. Well lovely if this is you, but it cannot be everyone. I cannot do it. If you are poorly or managing any combination of circumstances, or just because it doesn’t work for you, then you cannot do it. This does not mean you cannot produce a book. Again, go with what is available to you because, again, if you think it is only possible with (perceived) ideal circumstances, then you may never get started or find your progress is stymied because you are feeling anxiety about your lack. Look, instead, at what there is. Thought. Cogitation. Reading. Listening. Man, you’ve been busy. So, you may not have committed words to the page, but a process is still ongoing. Pondering is the writing, too. Don’t forget that now. (I dedicate this last sentence to my fantastic agent who had to remind me about this and specifically in the context of pondering the plot. Ahem.)

This point follows on from the last. You may not write every day – as in get words down on a page – but try to inhabit the world of your book. What might that mean? Perhaps, that you mull over its characters and plot, read, think about it all on your commute, go for a walk and just let it sit and let your mind freewheel and see what springs up; that you keep reading; that you look over edits – your own or someone else’s – and maybe you could do bits of admin if the urge is that strong. Do your page numbers, check SPAG or write an acknowledgements page: these things can be lovely little boosts and make you feel your book is evolving into an actual THING. Think of the work and the writing as not only being the writing down, but also of the rumination while you are having a bath, or resting, say. If you do that, you may find your attitude to it shifts and you realise you’re further along than you thought.

A little exercise to do right now. If you don’t have a dream…Grab anything (if it were me, it would be a not very fancy exercise book and a felt pen, I expect). Now, scribble down in any way it comes to you some thoughts about the kind of book you want to write. What would it explore? What themes are in it? Where is it? Not what you think you ought to be writing, but what you dream of doing because you need to test it on your pulse. It must make you feel excited. That will focus the mind. You could also think about what your dream is in publishing: again, consider what you really want. Shall I tell you mine? It’s to write books that you can see in bookshops, have at least one of them made into a film and empower as many people as I possibly can along the way. That’s what this book is. I also want primarily to be a novelist, but with other short fiction, features, and non-fiction texts. To build a portfolio of varied books. In terms of industry, I want to be with industry professionals who are supportive, open and flexible. Over six years this has not consistently been the case and, with my everyday concerns, I found it startling and then eviscerating. We will return to looking after and working with this side of things  later as it is all part of the picture.

BUT

Most of all I am going to get totally lost in what I am writing – and we are back to testing on your pulse. This is where everything starts.
I have a second exercise too. I said, work with what you have. Well, what do you have and how can you make it better for yourself? Never mind the conditions in which you think you ought to be writing; never mind what you have surmised everyone else is doing. Where can you work, how can you make it a nicer environment for you – which includes things that are soothing if you are prone to anxiety or those troubling MY WORD MY WRITING IS SHIT WHO AM I KIDDING thoughts which may bubble up as you work. I have essential oils and fake peonies in a vase and music to the rescue on the kitchen table or a desk in my bedroom. Think also about you: reflect on your assets, your reading, life experience, the way you see the world, your dialect, accent, phrases specific to you: all that richness and beauty that you are. Think about where you have been – yes, even if it was in your imagination – your sufferings and joys and know that with all the stories and the myriad experiences you have, you are extraordinary. And don’t tell me you are ordinary, because no-one is that, especially not you. In reflecting honestly on what you have, your vision becomes clearer, I think. Your vision of who and what you are as a writer; if you can feel reassured that you don’t need the glittering education, (readers, I went to Cambridge, albeit from a not very good comprehensive and was sure that everyone there had had a better previous education than me and I still met lots of people – forgive me – who were exam-smart but dumb as soup),or  the MA or MFA (although there are many lovely reasons for doing one). I do not have a room of my own, but I have a table I gussy up and earplugs. And I know who I am. I have found my voice. I hope you can hear it speaking to you as I encourage you or remind you to find yours.

Next three books and a new literary prize!

So, it’s going to be a busy ten months or so. This week, UK rights of my new novel, The Zebra and Lord Jones, sold to the brilliant small publisher, Renard. http://renardpress.com/

Ta da! I will stay in touch to bring you Zebra news as it happens over the next few months.

THIS September (29th) my second volume of short fiction is published by the excellent small press, Reflex.https://www.reflex.press/ If you want, you can pre-order through the (subscription) newsletter, or at bookshops – such as, https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/ravished-a-series-of-reflections-on-age,anna-vaught-9781914114106?term=ravished+anna

And then…we just announced publication month (date tbc) of my memoir, These Envoys of Beauty from the same publisher. March, 2023 – you can read about it here https://www.reflex.press/these-envoys-of-beauty-by-anna-vaught/ and here is the just-revealed cover:

And finally, I have started a new literary prize, just for carers; it’s free to enter and you can do so from January, 2023: have a look! https://thecuraeprize.uk/ and here is the Bookseller coverage: https://www.thebookseller.com/news/vaught-to-launch-curae-literary-award-for-writers-who-are-carers#:~:text=Author%20Anna%20Vaught%20is%20launching,for%20submissions%20in%20January%202023.

That’s it for now.

Love, as ever,

Anna x

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Author burnout

It may be that you saw a recent slew of articles in the industry press on burnout in the publishing industry. I then did my best to dovetail with pieces in The Bookseller on this – you can read what I had to say here:

https://www.thebookseller.com/comment/under-pressure-the-authors-perspectiv

Here is the first paragraph of my article:

First let us define burnout. The World Health Organisation, which classified it in 2019, conceptualises the syndrome as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It has three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy. When it comes to authors and this definition, it’s important to remember that our workplace is often our home, and the site of a multi-strand freelance career, which can make things harder, rather than easier; I personally have experienced all these feelings over the past three years while launching two books in lockdown, being unwell, home-schooling, teaching online, and being a carer. Writing can make for quite an isolating as well as an overwhelming life, especially in times of strife.

So there is a definition.

Then, I was able to suggest some things we might do to support ourselves, but in a short piece I could not offer much detail. So that’s what I want to do now. If you are feeling rotten, exhausted, what might you do?

First line of defence – and I am not a medical or mental health professional, but these are things I know: if you feel you are in crisis and you are frightened, remember that The Samaritans are there twenty four hours and here is a link. There are ways to access help beyond calling and these are outlined here: https://www.samaritans.org You may be aware of the text line SHOUT but here: https://giveusashout.org/ – this is twenty four hour text support. I also offer you this next page, because there are further resources and it also lists urgent mental health care routes in your area: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/where-to-get-urgent-help-for-mental-health/ Promise me you will not ever be embarrassed about being scared, feeling vulnerable or needing help? Human beings get ill; they have tipping points. Here are some starting points if things have got very bad and you don’t know what to do. Emotions are massive unwieldy things for a start, no-one is invulnerable and it is estimated that, at any one time, one in four people in the UK is coping with a mental health problem. It may be that you are overwhelmed and exhausted and what you need are rest and pals and respite; or it could be that this needs input. I think it’s important to say that it need not be your call: I have been in and out of mental health care for decades and this is something I would say. On two occasions I got extremely ill and because I had things to do, kids to look after, classes to teach, I did not ask for help soon enough: it resulted in people needing to advocate for me because I fell apart and could not verbalise what was going on. For me, that’s bad! So yes: promise me that you will take action and not feel embarrassed, that someone else’s need is greater or that you ought to toughen up or you’re probably okay really. Bravery is actually asking for help. Now, in more specific terms, that is, in terms of being an author, what might you do? I am going to have to approach this one rather broadly, because being an author may mean that you are first querying work, that you are more established, or that you have stalled. That’s a lot of situations. Some things that I have done, because of feeling awful, have included everything on this bullet list…Evolve a group of writers at similar stages. Your tribe. It can be online: put the call out on twitter and do not be shy. You could have a writing support group through twitter DMs or WhatsApp, say, considering which option feels best. When people are very down or overwhelmed, the tap tap and pressure to keep up in an online group can be too much, so you could all set some parameters for what is helpful.Compare and despair. Look: I regularly see people with the opportunities and exposure with one book and after one book (and no other writing) that I have yet to access after many articles, pieces in the national press, a column in the industry press and seven books either published or coming to press. Is it fair? Well no, you could say not, but it’s common, just as it’s common in life. If you are expecting parity of this sort, you’ve come to the wrong industry! Possibly the wrong planet! So you can allow resentment to curdle here or you can smile (I KNOW it is hard) and understand that everyone has a different route in writing and publishing. You do not know what will happen further down the line after a magnificent debut with full voltage exposure, just as you do not really know what else is going on in that person’s life. Be generous and also be kind to yourself. As I said, compare and despair. Plough your own furrow here. If you reiterate to yourself how unfair it is, you will suffer creatively and become – which I know, because it happened to me – less buoyant and more vulnerable. It is hard, but focus on you.Now, people may write, oh take a break. But that is predicated on privilege and, frequently, ableism, and the assumption that we can all get out for a run, or a weekend away. I have tried to rethink this, so it is the case of finding time and support in your mind supported by, as far as possible, being in and honouring your body as best you can (which you are also not going to beat yourself up about right?) How might you repeat helpful things to yourself, praise yourself? How might you develop that quality of rest? Think about that and do it. Write it down if need be. Because of the serious challenges my family and I have had to face over the past few years, I have had to recalibrate and rethink the notion of success. So, for example, while other families were putting their amazing holiday pictures on socials, I was focusing on the maxim, ‘Everybody fed, nobody dead’ at Bookworm Towers. Do the same with your writing. It takes courage to put your creative work out there, for example: never stop reminding yourself of that. As treats, be very kind to yourself in your head. If I do this, it is like a tiny holiday and it makes me feel less tired. It all helps.It is trite as hell, but live in the moment as much as you can to minimise panic and overwhelm. You can never BE in the future, up ahead, and the past is a different country: it was and there’s nothing you can do about it now. Focus on right now: what you can do, in this moment, to make yourself feel better. Because I have had a very ill offspring, I have had to do that. I didn’t at first, but exhaustion claimed me. Things are scarier when you are always anticipating and, in my experience, getting too stuck in anticipation leads to catastrophising. Feel free to disagree. Try using the Kaizen method – google it but there are a number of books (around £2-3 second-hand; I just checked) – where you think about making very small positive changes – VERY small – to change your attitude or practice. That could be a simple to-do list you set down for writing goals; a small piece of industry research. The point is small. It’s all you need to keep moving.If you are burning out or think you have burned out because of others’ unkindness in the industry – cutting to the chase here, in seven years I have encountered a handful of shockers – take it to your tribe (point 2, above) and don’t be shy about joining and telling a union. In my case Society of Authors – such as here https://societyofauthors.org/advice There is a range of guides, but you can also call and write to them about a specific matter. Something that caused me a great deal of upset led me to ask for help and they replied in considerable detail to everything and also outlined how a professional complaint might be made. My point here is two-fold: don’t suffer alone and, also reclaim some power – which brings me to the next point…Rejection happens at all stages, whether you are first querying or a few books in. Some have an easier road of it than others but, as in point 3, compare and despair. So know that this is normal and natural. It is actually ghosting and being ignored – from first queries to full books sent to commissioning editors by your agent – which floors me. I got extremely low about this. Talk about it, but look at what you can do – because this is disappointing and feels disempowering, yes? (And I should say, cope with rejection by always being working on something else, at however tentative a stage.) What I have done now in response to the ghosting is to set deadlines in my mind and then move on. In some cases. I have begun, very politely, to ask for deadlines when I have queried independently. For agency work, I’ve asked that we do the same. It has been a way of reclaiming some power.Don’t see patterns where there are none. It is very easy to assume that because it has been tough, it will always be tough; even to connect other areas of your life where you have screwed up and connect that to feeling terrible as an author. But life is not a place where everything happens for a reason; it is full of happenstance and changes, small and radical, and tomorrow can be different from today. That is easy to forget, isn’t it? I believe that human beings mess most things up and I am absolutely sure that most creative projects fail – because creative endeavour is full of risk. I would say, start each day – each moment – afresh and then it is easier to spot opportunities; to be as positive as you can be. This is something I have been practising in order to feel lighter.Reading. I am a reader before I am a writer. I think of reading as my saviour, so if you are burned out, increase or vary your reading and into your life will come new forms of beauty, new worlds and new ideas. And do you know, I talk a lot about gentle productivity, so I want to emphasise that it is in play here: you are also working – writing – when you are reading, even though you don’t notice it. Nourishing your imagination, your core; relaxing into it and finding a myriad ways of looking at the world.

With much love and remember that you are not alone,

Anna xxx

And so begins a quiet period…

Hello everyone,

First of all, I hope that we will be able to give you news on placement for my new novel The Zebra and Lord Jones at the end of this month and hopefully there will be some lovely press announcements about that. This is a book I have done with my literary agency, Wolf Literary in NYC. Then, I am about to get my edits on Ravished, which is my new collection of short fiction – if you like, you can pre-order now: https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/ravished-a-series-of-reflections-on-age,anna-vaught-9781914114106?term=ravished+anna Here she is below – and here is a little more detail in this link: https://www.reflex.press/ravished-by-anna-vaught/ Ravished is a book on which I am working independently with this wonderful small publisher.

Then, I have finished my memoir, These Envoys of Beauty, also to be published with Reflex – this will be out next spring. More detail nearer the time. Beyond this, a novella, Her Winter Song is also out on independent submission and we will see, and, of course, I am still hoping to fully crowdfund for my first book about writing, The Alchemy. If you like, you could pledge here. https://unbound.com/books/the-alchemy/?utm_campaign=the-alchemy&utm_medium=AuthorSocial&utm_source=AuthorActiv

Beyond this, Italian rights have recently sold on my 2020 novel, Saving Lucia – so more news on that when I have it.

At the end of the month I start a year’s teaching with Jericho Writers on their novel in a year course. I hope I will be able to bring interest to what they offer; also to motivate, and provide a compassionate and safe-feeling environment for my mentees in which, frankly, to pursue their dreams. On top of this I will continue a small amount of secondary level teaching and one volunteer component which is for exam year Ukrainian students in our area.

The stuff about dreams, though: I realise – and it took me some time to realise it because I held stubbornly to certain beliefs – that, because of the demands on me at home and in particular because one of my sons has additional needs that have not been met by professionals over a long period, I have to retreat somewhat. I cannot keep being out there plugging myself on social media and, in addition, I think that I have worked so hard on writing that is close to no longer being a joy. I cannot let that happen. I am very, very tired and, even with an eventful life to date, nothing comes close in terms of awfulness to seeing my son suffer like this. So I am just going to be doing some gentle writing for pleasure for the time being, not submitting, no great plans – and I am going to have to rely on others to promote my work, share my work and help me break through more. If I don’t? Well, I have done my best in the circumstances – which include having some industry incidents which left me baffled and very unsure of myself – and I need to focus on healing and quiet times. I have done my best as a parent in truly challenging circumstances, trying to keep a family of five afloat without adequate professional input. Plus in six and a half years, I have placed 7 books with two more a going concern: it worries me I don’t feel proud of that. Now you see what I mean about healing; something has gone very wrong with my perception and I have very substantially moved the goalposts.
So here is to things getting better, helping others, fewer distractions, different hopes – at least for the time being – and getting back to more reading. Also, in building greater confidence in knowing that my own voice is good enough; interesting even: of value. That is what I would tell you. In this deep sadness, I am having trouble telling it to myself.

I will write soon my darlings.

Anna xxx

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On creativity and deep sadness

I have written before about how writing need not live in ideal conditions. If you wait for the planets to align, a better desk, a writing shed, more time, more supportive people about you or any number of things, you may never start. You are, in effect, deferring your creativity to fate. To random acts. To heartbreak being mended.

Sometimes heartbreak is not mended.

I have a broken heart. I have no sense of whether it will ever be mended and I have gradually come to this realisation.

I know that sounds bleak.

Some problems do not have a solution, some things are not recoverable. There are not always resources or will to help you and illness or pain may not be fixable. And no, things do not always happen for a reason and no, you are not only given what you can cope with. These are trite, empty affirmations; arid lies. Of course they are.

This is where I am right now.

But take my hand. Sometimes, I sit at my desk, or the kitchen table, I can feel a deep pain in the region of my heart. This is not all, though. Yes, I sit there and feel it could be torn in two – ‘break heart, I prithee break’ – but it does not. It refuses. Because this is not all.

Here is what happens. I use words and small questions. I start asking myself those questions. How does it feel? What is happening elsewhere? Who can I hear? Somehow, just those simple acts, of focus and using language to mould my experiences of the world, in the smallest possible way, right then, enable me to cope. Some say I am thriving. It is the greatest paradox and also what I want to reiterate about writing- and starting it or continuing.

You may think you are too put upon, ill, sad, to ask those small questions and consider language and its aspirations; what it might do for you. This is not so. Sometimes, there is no happiness; you do not have that. In my case, there is the work. I teach teenagers, I mentor young adults and, increasingly, I am a creative writing teacher too. There are my books. Everything you can read of mine has been forced onto the page, in small questions, and small but resolute conversations with language. I have written sitting on the bonnet of my car in hospital car parks, lying on the floor at night on duty; I have reimagined what writing is, by coming fully to understand that it is not only the words onto the page, but thinking and reading. Also, as I said, that creative work, if you can trust just enough, will still emerge in the most disconsolate moods, times: in the life which has come unstuck because of grief. Your intellect wants to play; to dance: respond to it.

So I know this piece is sad and yet it is also not. At the heart of sadness is miracle. It does not fix anything but it is still there, like an impulse to life. Perhaps not hope, but beauty.

You can trust me on this.

With all my love,

Anna x

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