Kerry Hudson's Blog, page 6

Hudson on House and words and things I saw today

That’s right my disbelieving friends, two blog posts two days in a row. I treat you good. So here are some things that are happening:

Hudson on House 

On Sunday I am ‘in conversation’ with Richard House, Booker Prize longlistee and author of the epic and awe inspiring ‘The Kills’…one of my favourite books of recent years. It’s at Gay’s the Word in Bloomsbury (one of my favourite bookshops in the world run by two of my favourite booksellers in the world). It’s at 4pm. Today I described it to my German flatmate as ‘me and Richard just having a chat but with an audience watching…’ And that’s basically it. But I would love, LOVE some of you to come. So do. It’s free. It’ll be pretty fucking good. Do come (pretty please etc.).

Details here…

#30kin35

So I’ve been mightily busy and the auld third novel has taken a right back seat. But I write fast. I’m very lucky that way - in that if I carve out the time, and put my arse on the seat, the words do come. But it has been harder and harder to carve out time among deadlines and other demands on my time. So I decided to set myself a very public challenge. I’m writing 30,000 words in 35 days. Lots of folks over on Twitter are joining in too. If you’d like to as well then use the hashtag #30kin35 and tweet your word count each day. It’s amazing how, as Anne Lamont would say, ‘bird by bird’ (or 1000 words by 1000 words) a novel can be built. In the last two very days I’ve written 1366 words…a decent start and 1366 more words than I’ve written in the last week…it works. 

#ThingsIsawtoday 

Another wee project I’m starting largely because of how busy I’ve been. When I’m busy I find it hard to stop and properly look around me, to observe and appreciate where I am. Not only is that dangerous for a writer like me, who channels lots of observational material into her work, but it’s also a fucking crime when you’re in Venice or Berlin or Budapest. It’s about mindfulness, properly seeing things and being grateful. 

So. So starts #thingsisawtoday. Each day I’ll make a note and maybe take a picture of something I saw that made me stop for a minute. Today it was a blackbird singing its heart out on a bare branch outside the library in the middle of the city. I stopped, watched the way its body moved, took note of its little dark silhouette against the grey of the sky, enjoyed its song and then went on my way. A single moment of something good.

I didn’t get a picture so instead here is yesterday’s….a scrub of grass by a busy road filled with dandelions so the the sunny sky was filled with their spores like the softest snow tangling in your hair….

#thingsisawtoday

 

I think we're going to need a bigger tumblr...

Brace yourself, get yourself a cup of tea and a biscuit, hell, a packet of biscuits…this will be a long one.

Last Friday I left Budapest (insert melancholy music – I recommend something from Cat Power’s Covers album). I’d spent the week before wrangling with deadlines – I have literally never been busier - but each day I went for a walk at dusk and along the river, when the whole thing looks like a watercolour painting and it’s so fucking beautiful it  squeezes your heart a bit to look at it. I packed up my stuff in my old apartment in my beloved 8th district where I’d just started to make friends: the local cafe owner, the lady who sold me vanilla cookies to go with my morning coffee, the green grocer, the kids who played in my courtyard (Hello! Hello! Hello! Giggle, giggle, giggle). All just getting used to this strange smiling foreigner often wearing sweaty gym kit. I knew when I arrived I would love the city and I loved my time in it just as much. As the airport bus wove through fields with wildflowers just starting to appear I was already thinking about returning. I’m not done with Budapest, this I know.

That airport bus was taking me to my flight to London. At the airport I sent off a short story I’d been commissioned to write for Freight Books, an anthology of LGBT Scottish Fiction edited by Zoe Strachan, it will launch in August and Freight are sure to do a gorgeous job of it. My story is about queerness and love and sex – it has chip wrappers tumbling along a beach, a squeaky rubber bacon rasher, anallingus – let it never be said I don’t go to All Of The Places.

In London I caught the train directly to Norwich where I’d be teaching a day-long workshop for the Writers’ Centre Norwich on redrafting your first draft. A day long. On novel redrafting. I was nervous, really really nervous. Because of this I prepared like my life depended on it – which when you’re standing in front of twelve expectant participants who’ve paid good money for it, it does. The day was brilliant though and, as you always hope will happen when you’re teaching, I left feeling like the participants will go off and do very good things indeed. I got the feedback and it was bloody…well, glowing…which has made me so happy. I celebrated with an ice-cream sandwich and G&T on the train home and a weekend in London with all of my favourite people eating, drinking and laughing so hard I ruined my eyeliner every twenty minutes.

Picture of food I have eaten number 1…

Then I was off again, on another plane to Italy, this time to visit the brilliant writer and human being Lisa O’Donnell. For the past two years Lisa has been intermittently renting a beautiful wee house just outside Treviso to Get The Writing Done. She kindly let me come visit and together we laughed like drains, swore like fishwives and ate like fat lads…there might also have been an Aperol Spritz or two involved. I had four glorious sunny days in Treviso, Venice and Fagare (home of beautiful rose gardens and multitudes of tiny rabid dogs) and then I found myself back at an airport looking out at planes gliding on and off the runway with a tub of gelato and Kundera’s ‘Unbearable Lightness…’ to keep me company…oh, and this…why Italy? Why?

And now? Now I’m in Kreuzberg in Berlin where I’ll be for the next month or so. I’ve cycled from one end of the city to the other on a rattling old Dutch bicycle. Kreuzberg feels a bit like they’ve transported Dalston, mixed in a bit of Camden and introduced rye bread and fixed pricing – there’s the same skinny jeans, freelancers lined up in front of Macs in minimalist coffee shops, the same artfully distressed cafes serving really good food. No complaints here. It might be hipster but it’s sunny, good to cycle in, cheap and full of art and books - all things that make me happy.

And that’s the point of this post. The last month might have been the busiest in my professional life: two trips back to London for multiple events, three big deadlines which I needed to do a good job on, the launch and management of the WoMentoring Project, the bazzillions of emails that having a book out in a few months generates…I also just worked out I transited four countries in the last seven days. 

But, but…fuck, I am happy. Today I found myself doing a little dance in my pants from sheer joy. And of course I have the occasional whinge about being knackered or stressed but I make sure I have a word with myself and stop being an ungrateful fuck good and quick. I’m remembering every day this is the life I always wanted, one full of change, adventure, productivity and completely on my own terms. This month I learned that working hard brings rewards but making time for happiness is important too and, if you are very lucky, the two will be entwined.

Are you still reading? You deserve a medal…or just have another biscuit…

Tomorrow I’m going to write about these things…(TOMORROW…I know this level of blog productivity is unheard of but in Kreuzberg if you’re not hunched over Tumblr you’re nothing…)…#30kin35 - #ThingsIsawtoday and how you should all come to this at the weekend and say hello to me and Richard House…

a very queer few weeks

Hello, 

You might have noticed that I don’t do this a lot (maybe you’ve been too distracted by my many pictures of cake and coffee to notice too, that’s ok…you’re forgiven)…but I’m having a very queer few weeks at the end of May and the beginning of June and I’m excited about them and wanted to share…

May 18th, Gay’s the Word, Bloomsbury

The first thing is that I’m going to get to do an ‘In Conversation’ event with one of my favourite new writers Richard House (clicky click). I read The Kills as as part of the Green Carnation Prize judging duties. It is a big, beautiful, ambitious novel and a tour de force of characterisation and plotting. And when I say big I also mean BIG…it is a testament to my love of the book that I carried the length and breadth of South Korea because I was so enthralled.

Anyway, yes, I’m chatting to him on Sunday May 18th at one of my favourite bookshops in the world (I have done some research…) Gay’s the Word in Bloomsbury. It’s going to be brilliant and you will all get to enjoy seeing me blushing and gushing and maybe even asking some interesting questions too. So you should come. Come. 

June 2nd - 7th, Queer Fiction with Arvon 

I can’t quite believe I’m getting to teach a Arvon course but I am and on something which I care greatly about. As a queer writer - though not usually with overtly queer content - I’m fascinated by how that influences my work in more subtle ways, what makes things ‘other’, how can I harness that different perspective to make my writing better.

I’m teaching this course with Jonathan Kemp who has a giant brain and a huge talent. If he wasn’t such a lovely man I would resent him thoroughly. It’s also being held at Lumb Bank which I have on good authority is one of the most beautiful places you could wish to write some words at. There’s still spaces and I think you should all come, hang out and write some excellent words with like minded folks…

Here’s some more info:

GENRE: Fiction
Jun 02nd - Jun 07th 2014
Lumb Bank

What is queer and how do we write (about) it? This week will provide an energetic, safe environment in which to explore writing about LGBT lives and issues, or lives and characters ‘outside or against the norm’. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just beginning, you’ll be encouraged to be bold in your choice of stories, voice, style and character in representing alternatives to mainstream gender and sexuality.
All genders, all sexualities and all subject matters warmly welcomed.

And here’s a link to the website with all you could want to know… 

WoMentoring by a fearless worrier

Hello. Sorry I’ve been away (do I start every post that way? (Yes)). I’ve been setting up this thing. This WoMentoring Project thing. Some of you might have heard about it, or applied for it, or maybe you’re one of the amazing women who has given up their time to mentor somebody.

It all began on Burn’s Night in January about four nights before moving to Budapest. I’d had a tea with a young female writer who wanted some advice and took to Twitter to ask for advice on where she might go next. The answer was that there weren’t many places for her to go and those that did exist were largely eye-wateringly expensive. It also so happened that a few weeks before I’d read some articles on gender bias in publishing (women being paid and reviewed less than male writers in a endless self-perpetuating circle) and had got fucking angry about it. 

These two thoughts entwined: something accessible for writers starting out and something to address the gender-bias bullshit. So I took to Twitter and asked, mostly out of curiosity, which women would donate time to mentor a young female writer. As I put on my dress to go out that evening, as I applied mascara and tamed my (always mad) hair the offers of mentoring flooded in.  

And so I went off to Wiltons Music Hall full of the milk of human kindness - which was soon replaced my the milk of the Guinness tap - listened to some beautiful folk music and thought no more about it. Until the morning. Then I scrolled through the tweets and saw what I’d been offered…so much generosity and from women at the very (very) top of their game…women who ran literary agencies, noted debuts, best-sellers, Editorial Directors…a veritable whose-who of the literary world. And then? Then I reigned in my hangover and started thinking about making it real.

Some of you know me. Most of you don’t. That’s not a typo it in the title: fearless worrier is about right. My friends often describe me as fearless. It is true when I want to do something I pretty much just do it (it’s how I’ve found myself in Budapest, how I came to write my first novel in Vietnam, travelled across Russia to write research my second). And when things stop making me happy I simply don’t do them anymore (it’s how I walked out of my day job last year to go full-time as a writer).

And I wanted to set this up. Selfishly, as a working-class writer I want more people from my sort of background to have a voice - or at least the change of being heard if they’re good enough. As a woman I want to put two-fingers up to those who think women’s work is in any way ‘lesser’ by dint of (most of) us having a vagina. And so that fearless part took over and I decided to Just Fucking Do It.  

But, oh, I am worrier too. I’m a terrible, terrible worrier. A trait handed down generation to generation from other women in the family (who had a damn sight more to worry about that me). And so…along with the fearlessness comes the worry hand in hand. Kerry Hudson: chatterbox and fearless worrier. 

To be honest when I started I thought this wouldn’t be a big project. I saw it largely my introducing one set of women to another set of women. Lots of the mentors were my pals…I saw it as no more than email introductions. Which is in fact what it is at core - my introducing women to each other. Very simple. Very grassroots. 

But then it needed a website. So I built one while eating Pombears, drinking Diet Coke mostly in pajamas. Then suddenly we had over seventy mentors who I needed to collect information from and keep informed about everything. Then I realised women would need to know about the opportunity. And slowly, slowly it became bigger and bigger.

During the eight weeks of set-up (I needed settling in/drinking time with new friends in Budapest) the fearless side of me kept saying (mostly when it was 2am and I was pulling my hair out over Wordpress) ‘no biggie, just do it, what’s the worst that can happen? Get yer arse in gear’

And my worrying side (which sounds like Kermit the Frog) kept saying ‘what if the website doesn’t work? What if the mentors think you’re doing a poor job of coordinating? What if no one applies? What if you look stupid for even trying this?’

What can you do? The only thing you can do is listen a little to both voices while knowing neither is entirely accurate. And so I kept on keeping on.

It launched on Tuesday. I sat down at my computer at 9am and literally didn’t get up from my desk until 1pm when I made a cup tea. On our first day we had a staggering 28,500 page views (and 49,887 to date). Almost a week later the applications are flooding in. The website works (hallelujah) the processes work (double hallelujah). We’ve new amazing mentors signing up every day and will have mentions in this week’s Bookseller and the next The Writer magazine.

So that’s it really, that’s what I’ve been doing. Listening just enough to my fearlessness and to my worries get things both in motion and done properly.

Huge thank yous go to our amazing mentors, PR support from Lisa Devaney, illustration from Sally Jane Thompson and all of the people who blogged and tweeted on our behalf all week…it has been so, so appreciated. 

So, here’s to an amazing twelve months to come! 

If you want to know more about the WoMentoring Project go here

Got questions go here

Apply go here

 

Tony Hogan mi ha comprato un galleggiante gelato prima ha rubato mia madre e Thirst

Hello. I know I have been away for long while. Sorry. I’ve been setting up #WoMentoring mostly (another proper post about that in a wee bit). And writing my new book. And catching trains to Vienna on no sleep having danced the night away in a Budapest piano bar. And travelling back to London to attend a gorgeous friend’s wedding and guest on Paul Burtson’s Guardian Masterclass on overcoming writer’s block.

I’ve been reading emails on the cross trainer and moving into my new old beautiful apartment (replete with puppy, piano and big desk by sunny window), listening to Emiliana Torrini and Kings of Convenience as I walk the city streets. Needless to say cake has been had in epic quantities. I have been far too busy and having far too much fun too but I’ve had some excellent times with it and written some decent words too, so no harm done. 

Also…today I heard that Minimum Fax (who are home to translations of both Jennifer Egan’s and David Foster Wallace’s work) will be publishing both Tony Hogan and Thirst. Apparently this is the first time in the publisher’s history that a two book deal has been made when one of the books hasn’t been published yet…so I’m determined to do them proud if I can. It means another translation, two more beautiful covers, some more pennies to keep writing, probably a trip to see my book in an Italian bookshop (because…why not?). I am bloody delighted.

I found out a wee while ago there’ll be a Tony Hogan French paperback at some point too…so maybe a trip to Paris is in order as well. Oh, and I’m moving to Berlin in May. 

Ok. That’s enough from me. Back to #Womentoring website copy writing, then writing a scene where a woman whose life is about to implode goes nail varnish shopping as coping mechanism and then to see a contemporary dance piece about, essentially, human desire for group rituals. Just yer usual. 

Oh…didn’t have an Italian picture so here’s a picture of me at my new local cafe with my favourite sad-eyed resident dog called ‘Cigar’. You’re welcome. 

If I ever needed a good excuse to go to Paris

A wee round-up of French reviews for Tony Hogan. Editions Philippe Rey have done astoundingly in getting it read and reviewed. Parfois, la vie est assez étrange et incroyable. C’est tout…

Thirty Days

Hello. Sorry it’s been a wee while. Here are the things…

Hourra!

First up, Thirst, Dave and Alena and their fractured, fragile love affair has been bought by my current amazing French publisher Editions Phillipe Rey. They have done the most amazing job with Tony Hogan and I can’t wait to see what they do with Thirst. I genuinely couldn’t be more thrilled to be staying with them and know Dave and Alena are in such safe hands. 

Speaking of Thirst

The proofs went out about a week and a half ago. I feel a bit exposed but I think this is natural. People tweet occasionally to say they are reading it and, quite often really, that they are loving it. Those messages assuage my nerves for about ten minutes at a time. But this is part of the job. I’m sometimes asked advice from people about to have their first book out (I know, it’s not like I’m exactly a veteran…) but the way I got around Tony Hogan Fear (which was FAR worse because it was such a personal book) was to remember I was not in control anymore. I’d done my bit and it was happening anyway and all I could do was hold on and enjoy the fuck out of the high bits and hold on tight for the scary bits. I’m trying to take my own advice. Also, I remember that Thirst was the book that was there. The book I worked my arse off on and put huge chunks of my heart into. There was nothing else. So that’s what everyone got. I’m just trying not to be mental and stay happy really - shouldn’t prove hard, eh?  

Otherwise…

I’m sitting in my wee studio with the rain lashing down outside - all the drops clinging to the ivy on the big tree outside - little worlds within themselves. I’ve been in Budapest for only thirty days and it kind of fascinates me how quickly I’ve inhabited this new life and place. 

Budapest is still making my heart swell each time I step out onto the street. I look up at the blue sky and gorgeous ruined buildings and realise there’s still a thousand streets to explore. It is my place. At least for now.

I’m working on book three. So far it’s 8000 words in. The first person narrative comes fast and fully-formed and I’m letting it spill freely from my head so I have my ‘clay’ (those raw words) to sculpt into something hopefully true and sore and good to read. I work at the library often, which has chandeliers and velvet armchairs and is quite literally gilded. The coat check man kisses my hand and once an old lady gave me a sweetie. It is the library you fantasise about that somehow I’ve been given. 

I’m moving in a few weeks into an apartment in a courtyarded old house in the centre of town. My room has a big work desk by a tall window and a piano. The artists who live there have a little puppy. Like everything else for me the moment it’s transient but it is perfect in its transience still. 

And tonight I’m off on a wee weekend adventure to Belgrade. I’m taking the sleeper train (sleeper train journeys are one of my favourite things ever since watching too many black and white films as a kid on Sunday afternoons on my council estate dreaming of Life Out There). Just me, my notepad, big walks with good music, lots of food. I ask nothing more. 

So yes, staying sane in the face of the sophomore novel, living well as an act of gratitude, writing Tumblr posts longer than my WIP, eating a fuck tonne of cake basically…la vie est belle! 

Beautiful drawing courtesy of my lovely pal Sharon Macdonald (@sharonronronron)…loveliest postcard ever! 

Budapest: A beautiful woman who has lived a little

I’m going to start this with a disclaimer that I’m going to try very, very hard for this post not just to be one long happy gurgling sound. But I honestly can’t promise anything. 

Hello from the ‘lived a little’ beauty of Budapest. I’m in my little studio by city park, filled with brooding Hungarian wooden furniture, a big oriental rug over parquet floor, shutters on the windows and a tiny little kitchen with a good coffee pot and antique gas cooker…I’m cosy as a cat and could not love it more.

Budapest is astoundingly beautiful. Each day I’ve gone out for a walk and spent my days striding through the streets, looking up at the buildings against the cold bright blue sky, listening to music…this city is unfolding my heart and smoothing out its creases like an origami puzzle. 

There are two others times I have felt such a sense of rightness at being exactly where I am. The first was when I was writing Tony Hogan in Vietnam - no company, just me, the story, my bicycle, the rattling, joyful activity of Vietnam’s streets and me feeling completely alone and totally peaceful.

The second was when I took a broken heart (mine) away from London to the work at a Sultan’s Chateau in Paris. Those weekends wandering the streets of Paris, watching films in the afternoons, eating really good food, sweating in the Mosque’s Hammam and walking the Seine to cool down afterwards, somehow gave me back everything I thought I had lost when I arrived there.

And now here I am in Budapest. My third Place I Am Meant To Be. It was risky to come. I didn’t have a broken heart to mend or a stressful all-consuming job to retreat from (except, y’know, writing). I love my London life and it was harder than I imagined to leave it. But in the interest of being brave, of being grateful for freedom, in the interest of living as well as possible I chose newness. I am so happy I did. One gamble and I found myself here. This is the perfect place to write a book and I’m going to write something fucking beautiful. Thank you Budapest. Also thank to le Figaro and the Boston Globe for giving me two reviews which made my first week here even more glorious*.

Tired of my happy gurgles? here’s some pictures so you can see just what i mean…   

*Feel I should put *something* useful in here…

These things...

These things…

I am in Luton, the most unlovely of airports but Jesus, I love an airport. I’ve written about my love of the airport the plane journey before - this bubble within the bubble of travel – before so I won’t again but…I am happy and I’m excited for my Budapest adventure.

I notice that it gets harder and harder to leave my London life for these trips and I feel glad that I love the city and the people in it so much, that for someone placeless like me it has become my place. But I am ready too. I am ready for solitude. For long bundled up snowy walks with good music and a coffee. I am ready to find a new city’s secrets. Most of all, I am ready to write another book, to tangle myself in some made up people and their made up world and make it real, truthful, beautiful and hard. I feel lucky to get to do that.

There’s other things…

I’m setting up a peer mentoring for women pilot project.  After meeting with a young writer and offering her some advice I started thinking how nice it would if all young female writers had the benefit of a chat and some support from someone who understood. Women writers are still paid less and reviewed less than their male counterparts which I’m sure you’ll all agree is pure bullshit. Publishing is still largely middle-class and there is still an element of ‘knowing someone’ being beneficial (though it’s worth saying I am working class and knew no one and was just very lucky…). What if young women had access to professional women who could help them somehow? What if those mentors donated their time so that those who otherwise couldn’t afford access could? …And so it is born. I took to Twitter and was flooded by amazing, incredible women showing support.

I’m emailing them (you) all next week. It will be a simple process: a database of professional women, a very simple and easy application process for mentees (because they are trying to earn a wage and write and do everything else on top), mentors will choose who they mentor, mentees promise to ‘pay it forward’ if and when they can to another group of women…I’m working on a yearly bursary idea too (but one step at a time eh?). Anyway, THANK YOU to all those who responded – I haven’t forgotten, it is happening and I think we’re going to smash it.

Oh and the US Tony Hogan came out this week. Published by the mighty and admirable Penguin. I ate a big burger and couldn’t quite believe that people on the other side of the world would be reading about what wee Janie Ryan did.

Oh and proof of THIRST are being printed…who would like one? If you’re a reviewer, journo or Oprah please just drop me a line…

Finally, remember that one women show of Tony Hogan? Well you can come see an excerpt of it with Spread the Word (who generously provided a bursary for me to adapt the book)…on 19th February at The Albany. Tickets are cheap (£3!) and you’ll also get to see the (far more talented) performance poet Simon Mole and then participate in a robust (read opinioned) discussion of live lit performance. I am nervous. Please come if you can and smile at me from the audience.

That’s it…my flight has been called. I’m going to curl up and read about my lifestyle crush Robert Capa and his adventures…then I might go emulate a few of them.

These were my ‘leaving cocktails’ (I’ve been having leaving cocktails for two weeks – I am a shell of myself…but thank you for all the loveliness guys - especially my lovely friend Gosia who made cookies…) - cheers!

       

Living well as an act of gratitude

I know I said no resolutions last time but, as is a lady’s prerogative (I know: ‘lady’ part is dubious), I would like to retract this.

In one weeks time I’ll be in snowy -4 Budapest. I’ll wake in a tiny studio by City Park, I might go feed the pigeons, it will be the beginning of a five month adventure through Europe - I don’t know where yet. I’ll be writing what I want to write and living as I choose. I decided that for 2014 I do have a resolution: I want more. I want to live fearlessly, with kindness and with gratitude for the freedom from convention that writing allows me. Don’t give me the same as last year 2014…give me more and I promise to use it wisely and make good work from it.

My book comes out with Penguin US on Monday. The reviews for the French edition have been cest magnifique. I have started my third book and have enough time and peace of mind to write it. I can’t think of a better way of acknowledging this than by making good work and living like my heart may suddenly stop (which of course it might).

Anyway, here are a few things from writers who held me up when I was a furious teenager raging at life. I thought, though they are well known quotes, I might write them here too. A wee gift or a statement of intent or…I don’t know…a something. So here you go (with thanks to the lovely Jenni Fagan for Vonnegut goodness…)…

Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past.

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. 

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. 

- Sylvia Plath 

Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

- Kurt Vonnegut 

Images courtesy of this talented Etsy artist Ryan Sheffield…I highly recommend you go buy a print.