C.A. Hocking's Blog, page 2
January 20, 2018
The Joys of Editing. Not!
I love writing. Love love love it! It's my happy space. But let me be clear about something - to me, writing is the process of putting down a story, building worlds, creating and caring for characters both good and bad, and ensuring that the stream-of-consciousness writing of the first draft is not tampered with.
Then there is editing.
Editing is different from writing. Yes it is. The story is already there, the characters complete, the best ideas safely deposited in the first draft. The first draft is always a joy. The second draft is the beginning of the actual work phase for me. And it goes like this.
Second draft - read through to proof errors and make changes to plot threads left hanging, characters who need completing, check for doubling up and ensure the story energy reads consistently. Make sure the chapters are linked and there is plenty happening on each page. Check word count and page count aren't too little or too much for one novel. If it needs adding to or culling, this draft is where that is done.
Third draft - edit the story paragraph by paragraph, now paying attention to grammar, word placement, adjectives and adverbs, dialogue and narrative. Be picky. Be cold. Be critical. It hurts sometimes, but it has to be done.
Fourth draft - now read through sentence by sentence, ensuring they have correct spelling and grammar. Then do a computerised spellcheck and grammar check to see if it comes up with anything I missed.
Fifth draft - the book now goes to an external editor in hard copy (I hate editing electronically) with my briefing of what I want, which is usually "don't touch the story, just proof and note anything that doesn't add up or jars when you read it." When it comes back to me, I make any changes required and I'M DONE!
Next, I format it for Kindle and Createspace and Smashwords. The book covers are ready. And finally I publish the blighter, which by now I am usually glad to see the back of!
And then I start the marketing and promotion. Which, incidentally, I find harder than all of the above. That's just plain hard work and I know that most Indie Authors feel the same, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I do it diligently, I do it reasonably well (past sales attest to that), and I have complete control over it. Which is the best part.
And I get to sleep again.
Sleep. That precious, underrated gift that eludes so many writers during the whole process, but for me, especially during the editing process. Here's how it goes.
The typical sleeping pattern of a writer in the editing process: 9.30pm go to bed, asleep within half an hour; 1.30am wake up with ideas buzzing in my head about what needs to be added/deleted/changed in SARAH ANN ELLIOTT Book 1; 3.00am still staring at the ceiling because the brain won't shut down, but too tired to get up and write; 3.30am going crazy, so turn on Netflix and watch a couple of episodes of Grace and Frankie; 4.30am back to bed and sleep finally; 7.00am wake up exhausted. Back at my writing desk by 9.00am. Do as much as my tired self can do, then repeat the whole process again the next night. Sigh....
Then there is editing.
Editing is different from writing. Yes it is. The story is already there, the characters complete, the best ideas safely deposited in the first draft. The first draft is always a joy. The second draft is the beginning of the actual work phase for me. And it goes like this.
Second draft - read through to proof errors and make changes to plot threads left hanging, characters who need completing, check for doubling up and ensure the story energy reads consistently. Make sure the chapters are linked and there is plenty happening on each page. Check word count and page count aren't too little or too much for one novel. If it needs adding to or culling, this draft is where that is done.
Third draft - edit the story paragraph by paragraph, now paying attention to grammar, word placement, adjectives and adverbs, dialogue and narrative. Be picky. Be cold. Be critical. It hurts sometimes, but it has to be done.
Fourth draft - now read through sentence by sentence, ensuring they have correct spelling and grammar. Then do a computerised spellcheck and grammar check to see if it comes up with anything I missed.
Fifth draft - the book now goes to an external editor in hard copy (I hate editing electronically) with my briefing of what I want, which is usually "don't touch the story, just proof and note anything that doesn't add up or jars when you read it." When it comes back to me, I make any changes required and I'M DONE!
Next, I format it for Kindle and Createspace and Smashwords. The book covers are ready. And finally I publish the blighter, which by now I am usually glad to see the back of!
And then I start the marketing and promotion. Which, incidentally, I find harder than all of the above. That's just plain hard work and I know that most Indie Authors feel the same, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I do it diligently, I do it reasonably well (past sales attest to that), and I have complete control over it. Which is the best part.
And I get to sleep again.
Sleep. That precious, underrated gift that eludes so many writers during the whole process, but for me, especially during the editing process. Here's how it goes.
The typical sleeping pattern of a writer in the editing process: 9.30pm go to bed, asleep within half an hour; 1.30am wake up with ideas buzzing in my head about what needs to be added/deleted/changed in SARAH ANN ELLIOTT Book 1; 3.00am still staring at the ceiling because the brain won't shut down, but too tired to get up and write; 3.30am going crazy, so turn on Netflix and watch a couple of episodes of Grace and Frankie; 4.30am back to bed and sleep finally; 7.00am wake up exhausted. Back at my writing desk by 9.00am. Do as much as my tired self can do, then repeat the whole process again the next night. Sigh....
December 31, 2017
My two "F" words for 2018 - FOCUS and FINISH!
2018 begins!
2017 was a year of distractions for me as a writer. I should have finished and published the first SARAH ANN ELLIOTT book. Well and truly. However, I got distracted. The first distraction was getting two producers on board for my TV series, MRS P. I have to admit to getting excited about that. Acknowledgement and praise are heady things for any writer. Great things were discussed and promised, but as yet nothing has come of it. I should know by now. This is how things work when you have to rely on someone else to get your project off the ground.
In the film and television industry, many people are required to get a screenplay from the page to the screen, and every one of them has their own ideas about what works and what doesn't, what is good and what isn't, what is financially viable and what isn't. One person's enthusiasm is another person's boredom. Which is why I adore being an Independent Author. It's up to me and me alone to write, complete, launch and sell a book. And it has been working for me for the past decade.
But I took my eye off the ball. The novel ball, that is. I turned my attention to my screenwriting. I set about polishing up MRS P which I enjoyed, as I love the characters, setting and stories in the series. There was to-ing and fro-ing with the producers, changes asked for and made, and one particular opportunity seemed full of promise. But that opportunity was blown, and not by me, and won't come again, so that was a disappointment to be dealt with. I dealt with it quickly and moved on.
During the latter half of the year, a young family member who is an actress asked me to write an audition piece for her. I did so happily, she liked it and it was suggested that it could be tweaked a little to make a short film to be entered into an interstate short film competition. I tweaked, my talented relative produced and starred in it and it has indeed been entered into that competition. It will be another week before we know if it made it through to the final cut, but regardless of that, it was a wonderful experience to FINALLY see something I wrote on film!
While all that was going on, I was asked to take part in a screenwriting program that runs over several months and finished up in December. I so enjoyed working with other writers, being in a "writers' room", tossing around ideas, listening to other creative spirits. It was a real buzz! Out of that, I developed a new TV series to the stage of completing a Show Bible and a Pilot Episode. And while I did well with anything that required writing, when it came to a verbal pitch, I discovered I was lousy at that. I wasn't surprised. I used to act on stage in the 80's until I developed stage nerves and gave it up. Racing heart, sweating, shaking, blank mind - I FROZE! Now there's an "F" word I want to forget! So the lesson learned from that program was that I should read from a prepared script when pitching to anyone. Easy peasy!
And did I do much work on SARAH ANN ELLIOTT? Nope. An occasional burst, but I found I had stopped lying in bed, writing the next chapter in my head which is what happens to most writers when they are mid-writing. SARAH ANN had been given the boot by various screenwriting projects. Without those midnight lying-in-bed-staring-at-the-ceiling-writing-tomorrow's-chapter sessions, I found myself empty when I did sit down to work on the book. I was mentally and creatively scattered and I actually could feel it weakening me as a writer. Strange feeling. Like losing hold of all the necessary threads that go into making a strong cord. I was diffuse instead of focussed. And I didn't like it one bit.
So 2018 will be a time to pull myself together, FOCUS on SARAH ANN ELLIOTT (I am soooo close to The End), get it to a professional editor, sort out the cover, prepare the marketing and promotion and FINISH the damn thing!!!! And this is only Book 1!
Fortunately, I love writing and I actually feel comforted by the knowledge that I will be spending a lot of time alone in my little study with my characters and plot lines and story world. Bring it on!
So cheers to all those writers out there who are feeling diffuse, dispersed, scattered. May 2018 bring you FOCUS and may you FINISH at least one book. A book a year would be such an achievement and not hard if life didn't keep getting in the way. And for those of you who are not writers, may you enjoy reading our finished books.
Wishing you all health, happiness and prosperity. In the immortal words of Bill and Ted: "Be excellent to each other - and party on, Dudes!!!"
2017 was a year of distractions for me as a writer. I should have finished and published the first SARAH ANN ELLIOTT book. Well and truly. However, I got distracted. The first distraction was getting two producers on board for my TV series, MRS P. I have to admit to getting excited about that. Acknowledgement and praise are heady things for any writer. Great things were discussed and promised, but as yet nothing has come of it. I should know by now. This is how things work when you have to rely on someone else to get your project off the ground.
In the film and television industry, many people are required to get a screenplay from the page to the screen, and every one of them has their own ideas about what works and what doesn't, what is good and what isn't, what is financially viable and what isn't. One person's enthusiasm is another person's boredom. Which is why I adore being an Independent Author. It's up to me and me alone to write, complete, launch and sell a book. And it has been working for me for the past decade.
But I took my eye off the ball. The novel ball, that is. I turned my attention to my screenwriting. I set about polishing up MRS P which I enjoyed, as I love the characters, setting and stories in the series. There was to-ing and fro-ing with the producers, changes asked for and made, and one particular opportunity seemed full of promise. But that opportunity was blown, and not by me, and won't come again, so that was a disappointment to be dealt with. I dealt with it quickly and moved on.
During the latter half of the year, a young family member who is an actress asked me to write an audition piece for her. I did so happily, she liked it and it was suggested that it could be tweaked a little to make a short film to be entered into an interstate short film competition. I tweaked, my talented relative produced and starred in it and it has indeed been entered into that competition. It will be another week before we know if it made it through to the final cut, but regardless of that, it was a wonderful experience to FINALLY see something I wrote on film!
While all that was going on, I was asked to take part in a screenwriting program that runs over several months and finished up in December. I so enjoyed working with other writers, being in a "writers' room", tossing around ideas, listening to other creative spirits. It was a real buzz! Out of that, I developed a new TV series to the stage of completing a Show Bible and a Pilot Episode. And while I did well with anything that required writing, when it came to a verbal pitch, I discovered I was lousy at that. I wasn't surprised. I used to act on stage in the 80's until I developed stage nerves and gave it up. Racing heart, sweating, shaking, blank mind - I FROZE! Now there's an "F" word I want to forget! So the lesson learned from that program was that I should read from a prepared script when pitching to anyone. Easy peasy!
And did I do much work on SARAH ANN ELLIOTT? Nope. An occasional burst, but I found I had stopped lying in bed, writing the next chapter in my head which is what happens to most writers when they are mid-writing. SARAH ANN had been given the boot by various screenwriting projects. Without those midnight lying-in-bed-staring-at-the-ceiling-writing-tomorrow's-chapter sessions, I found myself empty when I did sit down to work on the book. I was mentally and creatively scattered and I actually could feel it weakening me as a writer. Strange feeling. Like losing hold of all the necessary threads that go into making a strong cord. I was diffuse instead of focussed. And I didn't like it one bit.
So 2018 will be a time to pull myself together, FOCUS on SARAH ANN ELLIOTT (I am soooo close to The End), get it to a professional editor, sort out the cover, prepare the marketing and promotion and FINISH the damn thing!!!! And this is only Book 1!
Fortunately, I love writing and I actually feel comforted by the knowledge that I will be spending a lot of time alone in my little study with my characters and plot lines and story world. Bring it on!
So cheers to all those writers out there who are feeling diffuse, dispersed, scattered. May 2018 bring you FOCUS and may you FINISH at least one book. A book a year would be such an achievement and not hard if life didn't keep getting in the way. And for those of you who are not writers, may you enjoy reading our finished books.
Wishing you all health, happiness and prosperity. In the immortal words of Bill and Ted: "Be excellent to each other - and party on, Dudes!!!"
November 28, 2017
Just when I thought SARAH ANN ELLIOTT could not surprise me any more...she has!
Once again, it has been a long time between posts. For all sorts of reasons.
Recovering from major surgery - a year out of my creative life, but an important year for the rest of my actual life and I'm happy to say I am feeling well and raring to go. A shift of focus from working on my new novel, SARAH ANN ELLIOTT to my TV series, MRS P, which I wrote several years ago and which only recently has acquired two producers who are doing their best to get it off the ground.
A request from a talented South Australian actress to write an audition piece for her which led to a producer suggesting it be made into a short film and entered into a film competition. That resulted in the short film, FLAMES, currently in post production and hopefully it does well. I haven't seen the final cut yet, so still holding my breath. If I like it, you'll all see it. If I don't, well...
One of the producers of MRS P suggested I get involved with a local screenwriting development program which has resulted in a new TV series concept, MIXED SIGNALS. The Pilot episode has been written and I loved doing it, but I had to compartmentalise in order to focus on it, and that meant stepping away from SARAH ANN ELLIOTT. Some people can juggle several projects at the same time quite successfully, but I need to zero in on each project as I work on it, and that means ignoring everything else.
But I was missing SARAH ANN ELLIOTT. She's become an obsession, that old great-great-great granny of mine. Such a different and at times inexplicable life. A bit like my own in many ways. It started out as one book (I published the first chapter in a previous post on my blog called "SARAH ANN ELLIOTT makes her entrance!"), but as I discover more and more about her life, it has become a series of books, the first to be published soon. And whilst the first decades of her life produced quite a bit of documentation to guide me through her story, there was nothing to tell me about her last years before she died aged 88 at her son, George's house in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire in 1912. And how was I to make those last years as interesting a story as her earlier years? What's so interesting about growing old?
Last week, I was feeling all screenwritten-out and decided to take a break from MIXED SIGNALS. I thought a bit of recreational family history research on British Newspaper Archives was in order. It's a truly wonderful site which I have a full subscription to and which has given me more insight into various members of my British ancestry than many other documents. Trove is the Australian equivalent and has also proven invaluable. But if an ancestor makes it into the newspapers, it's usually for the wrong reasons and can be quite upsetting at times. I discovered a great grandfather who "accidentally" murdered a young returned serviceman in Adelaide in 1918. A great-great grandfather who was arrested in London in 1884 for drunkenness and consorting with prostitutes while his poor wife and young children waited at home for him. Two great-great grandfathers who were hauled up before the courts for beating their wives, one in England, the other in Australia. Ahh yes, every family has them, these less than perfect and sometimes downright dirty ancestors. But I wasn't prepared for what I discovered last week about little ol' Granny Sarah Ann.
I idly entered "Sarah Ann Hocking" into the British Newspaper Archives search area (Hocking was her common-law married name to my 3xgreat grandfather William Hocking) and hit "enter", not really expecting anything, and instantly found an article in three Sheffield, Yorkshire newspapers in August 1907. She was 84 when this article appeared. Here is the transcription:
"Sheffield, England, August 1907AN OLD WOMAN'S HOARDOBTAINED RELIEF BUT HAD PACKETS OF GOLDThe discovery of a packet of sovereigns in the bedroom of a small house in Ellison Street, occupied by a woman who for years has been in receipt of outdoor relief, led to an unusual application being made...at the City Police Court yesterday.
The woman (Sarah Ann Hocking) first obtained out-relief in 1900. She declared then that she was destitute, and to all appearances she was indeed in very poor circumstances. A sympathetic board granted her a certain sum per week, and this she has been in receipt of ever since. Altogether the Guardians have paid her £65 of which her sons have contributed £28.
Yet, all unknown to her relatives or to the relieving officer, she has possessed quite a hoard of gold. The discovery took place in this way. A little while ago she was making her weekly visit to the Union offices, when she was taken ill suddenly in the street, and upon the advice of the Medical Officer, she was removed to the Royal Hospital. While she was there, a relieving officer, accompanied by one of her sons, visited the house in Ellison Street, and upon opening several packets which they discovered in the bedroom, to their surprise they found half-sovereigns and sovereigns - £174 in all.
Yesterday, therefore, an application was made to the magistrates for an order permitting the Guardians to retain £38 of the money - the amount the ratepayers are out of pocket through the woman having needlessly obtained relief. The application was granted."
Goodness!! She was 84, an old pauper of no particular note, but was still fit and active enough to walk to the Union office every week. Not bad for a mill girl from Stockport, Cheshire (now a suburb of Manchester) whose parents and siblings had mostly died in their 40s and 50s from the diseases that plagued the Industrial Revolution towns of northern England in the 19th century. She lived in a small three roomed house (1901 census information) in Ellison Street, Sheffield in humble circumstances. Until 1900, she had been living with her youngest son, Albert, but he dropped dead suddenly from natural causes at age 36 whilst working at his labouring job, and at the age of 78 she found herself living alone. Albert was the eighth of her thirteen children she'd had to bury in her lifetime. Unimaginable to today's parents. She could have gone to live with one of her five surviving children who were scattered around the country - Phoebe or Henry in Portsmouth, Hampshire; William in Vange, Essex; Selina in Sheffield, South Yorkshire; George in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire - and indeed that was the custom back then, the alternative being the workhouse, but it appears she either chose to stay where she was, or they didn't want her. My research has indicated she was a particularly spirited and independent woman, so I wouldn't be surprised she chose to live alone.
With Albert's sudden death and her financial support gone, she applied to the Board of Guardians for poor relief. Out-relief was the equivalent of today's social security payments which allowed a pauper to remain in their home rather than enter the abysmally overcrowded workhouses. Her family contributed towards her support by sending money to the Guardians who supplemented it with money obtained from local ratepayers and then administered an agreed amount to Sarah Ann each week. Life went on for her, until she collapsed in the street seven years later and was taken to the hospital. Her family would have been notified of her illness and one of her sons had accompanied a Guardian to her home, as much to collect things she may have needed in hospital as to check on her home situation. Another article in one of the other newspapers says the gold sovereigns they found were kept neatly in a packet, an envelope and a tin box, but they were not hidden away. And yet none of her family knew about it. Did none of them visit her or ever go into her bedroom? Her daughter, Selina, lived a couple of streets away, just a short walk, and she had grown grandchildren living close by as well. Nobody locked their houses in those days, yet thieves had not attempted to break in and take her gold. She had maintained the facade of a worthless old pauper to perfection. It wasn't just her family who didn't know about the gold sovereigns. Nobody knew! £74 was a vast sum for an old lady to have lying around the house in 1907 - today's equivalent £20,000. That's $35,000AUD or $27,000US.
So many questions here! The obvious one is - where the hell did she get all that money? In gold sovereigns no less? Well, it appears it wasn't stolen because the Police Courts did not accuse her of theft, no charges were laid against her, and they did not demand she hand all of it over. Only the portion of out-relief the Guardians had paid her was asked for, which, by the way, was minuscule compared to social security payments today. £65 over seven years works out to about 3 shillings and sixpence a week, barely enough to pay her rent, buy coal and a little food. But her family had paid £28 towards that £65, so they were contributing to her care, they hadn't abandoned her and perhaps they were helping out in other ways, otherwise how on earth did she manage? The Sheffield ratepayers covered the extra £38. So even after the Guardians had got their £38 back, she still had £136 in gold left!
Had she been in possession of that gold when she applied for out-relief in 1900? Was she the original dole bludger?? They imprisoned people for defrauding the Guardians back then. They did not imprison Sarah Ann. Her son, Albert, had been involved in stealing a few years before he died and had served six months hard labour (her family - my family! - was rather colourful), then worked honestly until his death. He was described at his trial as being 5'1" tall, severely short sighted with very thick glasses, and sporting a large mole on his left cheek. The magistrate described him as being a bit simple and falling under the influence of his accomplice who got two years hard labour. Did he hide some of his ill gotten gains in the house on Ellison Street which Sarah Ann discovered after she'd already applied for out-relief and was too ashamed to declare? Remember, she didn't try to hide the money. It was lying around her bedroom quite openly and easily found. Or was my Sarah Ann a wicked, cunning old lady who acquired £174 in gold sovereigns through some unlawful method and was arrogantly careless about how she kept it? Hmmm, I think not, because she didn't appear to ever spend it.
Or was she just plain batty? Did the gold sovereigns fall into her possession quite innocently and she thought, "I'll just put them here on the chest of drawers while I go to collect my 3 shillings and sixpence from the Union office," and then completely forgot about them?
Anyhoooooo, so many questions and so many possibilities about this fascinating ancestor. And to think I was worried about how I would keep the last part of her story interesting! These articles have been a gift for me, the storyteller, and I will spend the early part of next year hiring researchers in Sheffield to find out what they can from whatever records they can find. It is pure Dickensian, this old lady's story. I could not have thought it up myself, as wild as my imagination is. Where did that money come from and why was she, a pauper, sitting on it instead of improving her life and the lives of her family with it? I need to know. I need to KNOW!
Recovering from major surgery - a year out of my creative life, but an important year for the rest of my actual life and I'm happy to say I am feeling well and raring to go. A shift of focus from working on my new novel, SARAH ANN ELLIOTT to my TV series, MRS P, which I wrote several years ago and which only recently has acquired two producers who are doing their best to get it off the ground.
A request from a talented South Australian actress to write an audition piece for her which led to a producer suggesting it be made into a short film and entered into a film competition. That resulted in the short film, FLAMES, currently in post production and hopefully it does well. I haven't seen the final cut yet, so still holding my breath. If I like it, you'll all see it. If I don't, well...
One of the producers of MRS P suggested I get involved with a local screenwriting development program which has resulted in a new TV series concept, MIXED SIGNALS. The Pilot episode has been written and I loved doing it, but I had to compartmentalise in order to focus on it, and that meant stepping away from SARAH ANN ELLIOTT. Some people can juggle several projects at the same time quite successfully, but I need to zero in on each project as I work on it, and that means ignoring everything else.
But I was missing SARAH ANN ELLIOTT. She's become an obsession, that old great-great-great granny of mine. Such a different and at times inexplicable life. A bit like my own in many ways. It started out as one book (I published the first chapter in a previous post on my blog called "SARAH ANN ELLIOTT makes her entrance!"), but as I discover more and more about her life, it has become a series of books, the first to be published soon. And whilst the first decades of her life produced quite a bit of documentation to guide me through her story, there was nothing to tell me about her last years before she died aged 88 at her son, George's house in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire in 1912. And how was I to make those last years as interesting a story as her earlier years? What's so interesting about growing old?
Last week, I was feeling all screenwritten-out and decided to take a break from MIXED SIGNALS. I thought a bit of recreational family history research on British Newspaper Archives was in order. It's a truly wonderful site which I have a full subscription to and which has given me more insight into various members of my British ancestry than many other documents. Trove is the Australian equivalent and has also proven invaluable. But if an ancestor makes it into the newspapers, it's usually for the wrong reasons and can be quite upsetting at times. I discovered a great grandfather who "accidentally" murdered a young returned serviceman in Adelaide in 1918. A great-great grandfather who was arrested in London in 1884 for drunkenness and consorting with prostitutes while his poor wife and young children waited at home for him. Two great-great grandfathers who were hauled up before the courts for beating their wives, one in England, the other in Australia. Ahh yes, every family has them, these less than perfect and sometimes downright dirty ancestors. But I wasn't prepared for what I discovered last week about little ol' Granny Sarah Ann.
I idly entered "Sarah Ann Hocking" into the British Newspaper Archives search area (Hocking was her common-law married name to my 3xgreat grandfather William Hocking) and hit "enter", not really expecting anything, and instantly found an article in three Sheffield, Yorkshire newspapers in August 1907. She was 84 when this article appeared. Here is the transcription:
"Sheffield, England, August 1907AN OLD WOMAN'S HOARDOBTAINED RELIEF BUT HAD PACKETS OF GOLDThe discovery of a packet of sovereigns in the bedroom of a small house in Ellison Street, occupied by a woman who for years has been in receipt of outdoor relief, led to an unusual application being made...at the City Police Court yesterday.
The woman (Sarah Ann Hocking) first obtained out-relief in 1900. She declared then that she was destitute, and to all appearances she was indeed in very poor circumstances. A sympathetic board granted her a certain sum per week, and this she has been in receipt of ever since. Altogether the Guardians have paid her £65 of which her sons have contributed £28.
Yet, all unknown to her relatives or to the relieving officer, she has possessed quite a hoard of gold. The discovery took place in this way. A little while ago she was making her weekly visit to the Union offices, when she was taken ill suddenly in the street, and upon the advice of the Medical Officer, she was removed to the Royal Hospital. While she was there, a relieving officer, accompanied by one of her sons, visited the house in Ellison Street, and upon opening several packets which they discovered in the bedroom, to their surprise they found half-sovereigns and sovereigns - £174 in all.
Yesterday, therefore, an application was made to the magistrates for an order permitting the Guardians to retain £38 of the money - the amount the ratepayers are out of pocket through the woman having needlessly obtained relief. The application was granted."
Goodness!! She was 84, an old pauper of no particular note, but was still fit and active enough to walk to the Union office every week. Not bad for a mill girl from Stockport, Cheshire (now a suburb of Manchester) whose parents and siblings had mostly died in their 40s and 50s from the diseases that plagued the Industrial Revolution towns of northern England in the 19th century. She lived in a small three roomed house (1901 census information) in Ellison Street, Sheffield in humble circumstances. Until 1900, she had been living with her youngest son, Albert, but he dropped dead suddenly from natural causes at age 36 whilst working at his labouring job, and at the age of 78 she found herself living alone. Albert was the eighth of her thirteen children she'd had to bury in her lifetime. Unimaginable to today's parents. She could have gone to live with one of her five surviving children who were scattered around the country - Phoebe or Henry in Portsmouth, Hampshire; William in Vange, Essex; Selina in Sheffield, South Yorkshire; George in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire - and indeed that was the custom back then, the alternative being the workhouse, but it appears she either chose to stay where she was, or they didn't want her. My research has indicated she was a particularly spirited and independent woman, so I wouldn't be surprised she chose to live alone.
With Albert's sudden death and her financial support gone, she applied to the Board of Guardians for poor relief. Out-relief was the equivalent of today's social security payments which allowed a pauper to remain in their home rather than enter the abysmally overcrowded workhouses. Her family contributed towards her support by sending money to the Guardians who supplemented it with money obtained from local ratepayers and then administered an agreed amount to Sarah Ann each week. Life went on for her, until she collapsed in the street seven years later and was taken to the hospital. Her family would have been notified of her illness and one of her sons had accompanied a Guardian to her home, as much to collect things she may have needed in hospital as to check on her home situation. Another article in one of the other newspapers says the gold sovereigns they found were kept neatly in a packet, an envelope and a tin box, but they were not hidden away. And yet none of her family knew about it. Did none of them visit her or ever go into her bedroom? Her daughter, Selina, lived a couple of streets away, just a short walk, and she had grown grandchildren living close by as well. Nobody locked their houses in those days, yet thieves had not attempted to break in and take her gold. She had maintained the facade of a worthless old pauper to perfection. It wasn't just her family who didn't know about the gold sovereigns. Nobody knew! £74 was a vast sum for an old lady to have lying around the house in 1907 - today's equivalent £20,000. That's $35,000AUD or $27,000US.
So many questions here! The obvious one is - where the hell did she get all that money? In gold sovereigns no less? Well, it appears it wasn't stolen because the Police Courts did not accuse her of theft, no charges were laid against her, and they did not demand she hand all of it over. Only the portion of out-relief the Guardians had paid her was asked for, which, by the way, was minuscule compared to social security payments today. £65 over seven years works out to about 3 shillings and sixpence a week, barely enough to pay her rent, buy coal and a little food. But her family had paid £28 towards that £65, so they were contributing to her care, they hadn't abandoned her and perhaps they were helping out in other ways, otherwise how on earth did she manage? The Sheffield ratepayers covered the extra £38. So even after the Guardians had got their £38 back, she still had £136 in gold left!
Had she been in possession of that gold when she applied for out-relief in 1900? Was she the original dole bludger?? They imprisoned people for defrauding the Guardians back then. They did not imprison Sarah Ann. Her son, Albert, had been involved in stealing a few years before he died and had served six months hard labour (her family - my family! - was rather colourful), then worked honestly until his death. He was described at his trial as being 5'1" tall, severely short sighted with very thick glasses, and sporting a large mole on his left cheek. The magistrate described him as being a bit simple and falling under the influence of his accomplice who got two years hard labour. Did he hide some of his ill gotten gains in the house on Ellison Street which Sarah Ann discovered after she'd already applied for out-relief and was too ashamed to declare? Remember, she didn't try to hide the money. It was lying around her bedroom quite openly and easily found. Or was my Sarah Ann a wicked, cunning old lady who acquired £174 in gold sovereigns through some unlawful method and was arrogantly careless about how she kept it? Hmmm, I think not, because she didn't appear to ever spend it.
Or was she just plain batty? Did the gold sovereigns fall into her possession quite innocently and she thought, "I'll just put them here on the chest of drawers while I go to collect my 3 shillings and sixpence from the Union office," and then completely forgot about them?
Anyhoooooo, so many questions and so many possibilities about this fascinating ancestor. And to think I was worried about how I would keep the last part of her story interesting! These articles have been a gift for me, the storyteller, and I will spend the early part of next year hiring researchers in Sheffield to find out what they can from whatever records they can find. It is pure Dickensian, this old lady's story. I could not have thought it up myself, as wild as my imagination is. Where did that money come from and why was she, a pauper, sitting on it instead of improving her life and the lives of her family with it? I need to know. I need to KNOW!
March 20, 2016
IABOS aka Independent Author Burn Out Syndrome
IABOS. Independent Author Burn Out Syndrome. I invented the phrase. I invented the acronym (patent pending). I diagnosed it myself (ex nurse so I can do that). I expect there are many Indie Authors who have been at it for as many years as I have who will recognise what I'm about to describe.
First, a brief history of my writing career. Well, maybe not so brief. Definitely more than 25 words.
I have been writing stories since I was six. I had no encouragement from family, friends or teachers - with one mistimed exception The day I turned 16, I left school because I hated it and couldn't wait to get out. As I was going, I got bailed up in the quadrangle by my English teacher, Miss Law and berated for leaving because "I had the talent to be a successful writer and should go on to university and study English literature." Really? Why hadn't she told me that some time during the four years of High School instead of yelling at me, humiliating me and singling me out for constant criticism? Sorry, Miss Law, but you left it a bit late and I didn't believe you. But then, that's the way school was back in the 60's, especially in the country. So I got a job as a shop assistant, married at 18, first baby at 20, three more in the next eight years (no regrets there, my children are still my pride and joy), divorced and began a complicated, convoluted, unsettled life for the next twenty years. Until I met my present husband and found that rare gift - domestic bliss.
But I never stopped writing stories. Even when I wasn't scribbling ideas in notebooks, I was writing in my head with an imagination that I felt I had no control over unless I could put it down on paper. Kind of a sanity saver for an over active imagination. I learned over the years that I saw the world differently to most people, didn't like groups, hated being told what to do, and often preferred to observe rather than participate. I now know many writers share these same qualities, and they are qualities, not disadvantages, if you are a writer. I firmly believe writers are born, not made.
I taught myself to type with my brother's school typing manual on a golf-ball typewriter that kept breaking down and which my son kept soldering back together again. I completed my first full length novel at 35, sent it off to a major English publishing house (before countries closed to foreign submissions) and bugger me if it wasn't accepted! Yep, first cab off the rank. Seemed so easy. But I was about to begin my lessons in dealing with the publishing industry and some of those lessons were brutal.
I had snail mail contact with two editors who had approved my book for "the list", editors with lovely English names and charming manners. They asked me for some specific revisions which I duly did and sent the revised manuscript to them. Then...nothing. Nada. Not a thing for months. I sent off letters. No response. After quite a wait, I finally rang the publishing house in England in the middle of the night (I'm in Australia) only to be told that they had been bought out (by a wealthy and well known Australian no less, the traitor!) and most of the old staff replaced. I burst into tears. The receptionist took pity on me and gave me the home phone number of one of those lovely editors. I rang her and she was dismayed that I hadn't been contacted. She and the other editor had been replaced as Fiction Editors and the new guy didn't like my book. And that was that!
Back to the drawing board. Having been accepted by one publisher, I assumed I would be accepted easily by another. Not so. I did the rounds with no success. Then overseas publishers stopped taking foreign submissions and local publishers stopped taking direct submissions from authors. The rules had changed. I needed an agent.
Didn't take me long to find an agent. She told me my book was "the best thing to cross her desk in two years." She proceeded to send out letters etc, but without success. After six months, she left the agency she worked for and went into another line of work, but left me with a list of people I could follow up with.
Then illness hit my family and I had a year of dealing with real life issues. When I was able to pick up that list again, I found the people on it had either left the industry or moved into other jobs within the industry. Another lesson learned - this industry is fluid. It never stays the same for long.
I kept writing and sending out manuscripts and letters to agents/publishers and built up quite a collection of rejection letters. At the same time I bought my first computer. No, that's not right. I rented my first computer because I was too poor to buy one. I borrowed 'Computers for Dummies' and taught myself to use it. We're talking the 80's here. What a revelation that computer was! I no longer needed to retype the whole manuscript every time I made changes.
I kept writing and getting rejection letters. Then I found another agent who made a big fuss of me - to begin with. She promised me marvellous things and delivered nothing, then dropped me, but forgot to tell me she'd dropped me. She just didn't answer my calls or emails etc etc. I finally got the message. I was on my own again.
I kept writing and kept trying. I was a single parent of four children with a full time job and writing in my spare time, which I didn't have much of, so I put in a lot of late nights. Fast forward to 2006 and Lulu.com arrived, borders and Trad Pub rules disappeared and the world opened up to writers. I published two paperback novels there at no cost to me (not the first ms that "almost" got published, that's still sitting in the back of the cupboard) and began my journey as an Indie Author. Not a lot of sales and not a lot of outlets for marketing and promoting back then, but it was the beginning and my lessons in the industry continued. My first novel, A Place In Time, was shortlisted for an Australian literary award, but I considered my second novel, Damaged Goods, to be better and indeed it sold more. Sales were few but my books were out there at last. And there ain't nothing sweeter for an author than knowing strangers all over the world are reading and enjoying (or not) your books.
Skip to 2010 and ebooks arrived. Glorious, wonderful, miraculous ebooks that could be downloaded onto Kindles and tablets in an instant for a fraction of the cost of a hard copy book! Along with ebooks came marketing/promoting outlets, again without borders - Twitter, blogging, Facebook, Kindleboards Writers Cafe, Amazon and Smashwords. And I became one of the Indie Author ebook pioneers, connecting with other pioneers on Kindleboards Writers Cafe. It was exciting back then. We were all learning at the same time and helping each other out. Some of us went on to big things, like the wonderful Amanda Hocking (something in the surname perhaps?), but most of us continued with modest success and if they were lucky like me, they were happy with that. I sold books in varying numbers every month, got regular royalty payments and considered myself successful. I worked every day on new stories and marketing and promotion, whilst still dealing with real life around me and all the trials and tribulations that brings.
I had a new dramatic fiction novel ready to launch, a children's series (the Aunt Edna books, still to come) and a humorous novel all ready to go, and then real life intervened as it so often does. I had an accident and was laid up in splints and bandages and antibiotics for a year. Those books didn't get launched and by the time I was well enough to get back to a computer, I thought they all needed a rewrite - The Curse Of The Author when reviewing "completed" work, they always look like they could be improved despite seeming perfect last time you looked at them. So I worked on the dramatic fiction novel, Home To Roost and launched it in early 2013.
And then a miracle and a disaster happened at the same time. I woke up one morning and discovered one of my books had made it into Amazon's Top Ten. Good Golly Miss Molly, did I ever celebrate! And a week later, the second novel was there, and a few days later, the third. I had arrived! Albeit very briefly. One stayed in the top ten for about an hour, another for a day, and the third for three days. The royalties were sweet indeed, but when I checked my stats and saw that I'd sold books in seven different countries - well, that was as sweet as it gets.
As for the disaster - at the same time as I launched Home To Roost, Amazon went on their review culling mission, now known as the Review Scandal of 2013, and in the first week after the launch I saw eleven 5 star reviews appear and disappear overnight. I stopped looking, so I'll never know exactly how many reviews were taken down, but I emailed Amazon (along with all the other authors this was happening to) and got some very nasty responses accusing me of paying for reviews, using family and friends to put up reviews, doing deals with other authors to exchange reviews and threatening to cancel my Amazon account if I continued to challenge them. Amazon was still my biggest sales outlet so I stopped complaining and decided to wear it - another lesson learned. Just when you think you have total control over your work as an Indie Author, you discover you don't.
I decided to wait it out while more cashed up authors challenged Amazon in court, the review culling and the nasty emails to authors stopped and I hoped that the reviews would begin to appear again for Home To Roost. But the Review Scandal did it's damage and even though the book still sells, as I type this I only have three reviews for it.
I turned my attention to the humorous book and the children's series and real life intervened again, this time in the form of a long term (but treatable) illness. I kept writing and marketing and promoting as much as I could. I researched my new book, Sarah Ann Elliott for eighteen months and started writing it, published the first chapter on my blog and felt on track with my career.
And then one day late last year I walked into my study and my head began to hurt. I walked out and it felt better. Hmm. Odd. I lay down for a rest and slept for four hours in the middle of the day. Odder. Tried to go into my study again the next day, same thing. I thought I was just tired, so went with it and took a few days off. Then discovered my passion for my garden was missing and I'd lost interest in my Bonsai, two things that I had long been devoted to. And I felt terribly tired, really fatigued in the head as well as the body. I wondered if I was depressed, went to see my very good GP who knows me well and was told I was not suffering from depression, but possibly was simply burnt out from working and trying so hard for so long. She advised me to simply take a break from everything - and I did. No writing, no thinking about writing, no marketing or promoting (I hired someone to do that for the first time ever, what a waste of money, saw my first ever month in ten years without a single sale!), no gardening or Bonsai-ing. I was taking long service leave from all my passions. I slept, ate, watched movies (didn't even have the energy to read all those books I've been looking forward to getting to), stayed at home and became a proper dag, and loved every minute of it! I'm fortunate enough at 63 to not have to worry about money, I have a wonderful husband who was quite happy with his frumpy, boring, sleepy wife slouching around the house, and there isn't anyone out there demanding anything from me - no deadlines because I set my own, no touring or book signings because that's the past, no readers pestering me because I simply ignore their emails if they do (sorry, readers, but I'll get to you eventually), and the best part of all is that whatever talent/skill/ability I have as a writer is not going anywhere. It will be there when I am ready to partake of it again. Which I feel may be soon.
This blog is the first time in four months I've been able to walk into my study without my head hurting and turn on the computer. Earlier I went into my garden and smelled the roses. Yes, they are still growing despite my lack of attention towards them. And my Bonsai are still small and healthy, thanks to the shade house and automatic watering system. Am I over the IABOS? Maybe. Maybe not. I'll take one day at a time. But just writing this bit of stream of consciousness has felt good, so I'm making progress.
But I've had enough for today. So I'm going. If anyone reads this, great. If not, it doesn't matter. If an Indie Author reads this and recognises a little of themselves in my story, I will not be surprised. If they don't, well we are all different and writers should be different. Right?
So I'm knicking off now. Got a movie to watch and a nap to take. But I think I may be back tomorrow. Maybe I'll try reading what I've already written of Sarah Ann Elliott and pick up the flow and add a little more to it. Or maybe not. We'll see. IABOS is, IMHO, a very normal part of being a hard working Indie Author. Now that I recognise it and know how to manage it, I will never worry about it again. If I burn out, I'll simply stop for awhile. And when I'm not burnt out, I'll write, market and promote. It's not rocket science.
Ciao for now!
First, a brief history of my writing career. Well, maybe not so brief. Definitely more than 25 words.
I have been writing stories since I was six. I had no encouragement from family, friends or teachers - with one mistimed exception The day I turned 16, I left school because I hated it and couldn't wait to get out. As I was going, I got bailed up in the quadrangle by my English teacher, Miss Law and berated for leaving because "I had the talent to be a successful writer and should go on to university and study English literature." Really? Why hadn't she told me that some time during the four years of High School instead of yelling at me, humiliating me and singling me out for constant criticism? Sorry, Miss Law, but you left it a bit late and I didn't believe you. But then, that's the way school was back in the 60's, especially in the country. So I got a job as a shop assistant, married at 18, first baby at 20, three more in the next eight years (no regrets there, my children are still my pride and joy), divorced and began a complicated, convoluted, unsettled life for the next twenty years. Until I met my present husband and found that rare gift - domestic bliss.
But I never stopped writing stories. Even when I wasn't scribbling ideas in notebooks, I was writing in my head with an imagination that I felt I had no control over unless I could put it down on paper. Kind of a sanity saver for an over active imagination. I learned over the years that I saw the world differently to most people, didn't like groups, hated being told what to do, and often preferred to observe rather than participate. I now know many writers share these same qualities, and they are qualities, not disadvantages, if you are a writer. I firmly believe writers are born, not made.
I taught myself to type with my brother's school typing manual on a golf-ball typewriter that kept breaking down and which my son kept soldering back together again. I completed my first full length novel at 35, sent it off to a major English publishing house (before countries closed to foreign submissions) and bugger me if it wasn't accepted! Yep, first cab off the rank. Seemed so easy. But I was about to begin my lessons in dealing with the publishing industry and some of those lessons were brutal.
I had snail mail contact with two editors who had approved my book for "the list", editors with lovely English names and charming manners. They asked me for some specific revisions which I duly did and sent the revised manuscript to them. Then...nothing. Nada. Not a thing for months. I sent off letters. No response. After quite a wait, I finally rang the publishing house in England in the middle of the night (I'm in Australia) only to be told that they had been bought out (by a wealthy and well known Australian no less, the traitor!) and most of the old staff replaced. I burst into tears. The receptionist took pity on me and gave me the home phone number of one of those lovely editors. I rang her and she was dismayed that I hadn't been contacted. She and the other editor had been replaced as Fiction Editors and the new guy didn't like my book. And that was that!
Back to the drawing board. Having been accepted by one publisher, I assumed I would be accepted easily by another. Not so. I did the rounds with no success. Then overseas publishers stopped taking foreign submissions and local publishers stopped taking direct submissions from authors. The rules had changed. I needed an agent.
Didn't take me long to find an agent. She told me my book was "the best thing to cross her desk in two years." She proceeded to send out letters etc, but without success. After six months, she left the agency she worked for and went into another line of work, but left me with a list of people I could follow up with.
Then illness hit my family and I had a year of dealing with real life issues. When I was able to pick up that list again, I found the people on it had either left the industry or moved into other jobs within the industry. Another lesson learned - this industry is fluid. It never stays the same for long.
I kept writing and sending out manuscripts and letters to agents/publishers and built up quite a collection of rejection letters. At the same time I bought my first computer. No, that's not right. I rented my first computer because I was too poor to buy one. I borrowed 'Computers for Dummies' and taught myself to use it. We're talking the 80's here. What a revelation that computer was! I no longer needed to retype the whole manuscript every time I made changes.
I kept writing and getting rejection letters. Then I found another agent who made a big fuss of me - to begin with. She promised me marvellous things and delivered nothing, then dropped me, but forgot to tell me she'd dropped me. She just didn't answer my calls or emails etc etc. I finally got the message. I was on my own again.
I kept writing and kept trying. I was a single parent of four children with a full time job and writing in my spare time, which I didn't have much of, so I put in a lot of late nights. Fast forward to 2006 and Lulu.com arrived, borders and Trad Pub rules disappeared and the world opened up to writers. I published two paperback novels there at no cost to me (not the first ms that "almost" got published, that's still sitting in the back of the cupboard) and began my journey as an Indie Author. Not a lot of sales and not a lot of outlets for marketing and promoting back then, but it was the beginning and my lessons in the industry continued. My first novel, A Place In Time, was shortlisted for an Australian literary award, but I considered my second novel, Damaged Goods, to be better and indeed it sold more. Sales were few but my books were out there at last. And there ain't nothing sweeter for an author than knowing strangers all over the world are reading and enjoying (or not) your books.
Skip to 2010 and ebooks arrived. Glorious, wonderful, miraculous ebooks that could be downloaded onto Kindles and tablets in an instant for a fraction of the cost of a hard copy book! Along with ebooks came marketing/promoting outlets, again without borders - Twitter, blogging, Facebook, Kindleboards Writers Cafe, Amazon and Smashwords. And I became one of the Indie Author ebook pioneers, connecting with other pioneers on Kindleboards Writers Cafe. It was exciting back then. We were all learning at the same time and helping each other out. Some of us went on to big things, like the wonderful Amanda Hocking (something in the surname perhaps?), but most of us continued with modest success and if they were lucky like me, they were happy with that. I sold books in varying numbers every month, got regular royalty payments and considered myself successful. I worked every day on new stories and marketing and promotion, whilst still dealing with real life around me and all the trials and tribulations that brings.
I had a new dramatic fiction novel ready to launch, a children's series (the Aunt Edna books, still to come) and a humorous novel all ready to go, and then real life intervened as it so often does. I had an accident and was laid up in splints and bandages and antibiotics for a year. Those books didn't get launched and by the time I was well enough to get back to a computer, I thought they all needed a rewrite - The Curse Of The Author when reviewing "completed" work, they always look like they could be improved despite seeming perfect last time you looked at them. So I worked on the dramatic fiction novel, Home To Roost and launched it in early 2013.
And then a miracle and a disaster happened at the same time. I woke up one morning and discovered one of my books had made it into Amazon's Top Ten. Good Golly Miss Molly, did I ever celebrate! And a week later, the second novel was there, and a few days later, the third. I had arrived! Albeit very briefly. One stayed in the top ten for about an hour, another for a day, and the third for three days. The royalties were sweet indeed, but when I checked my stats and saw that I'd sold books in seven different countries - well, that was as sweet as it gets.
As for the disaster - at the same time as I launched Home To Roost, Amazon went on their review culling mission, now known as the Review Scandal of 2013, and in the first week after the launch I saw eleven 5 star reviews appear and disappear overnight. I stopped looking, so I'll never know exactly how many reviews were taken down, but I emailed Amazon (along with all the other authors this was happening to) and got some very nasty responses accusing me of paying for reviews, using family and friends to put up reviews, doing deals with other authors to exchange reviews and threatening to cancel my Amazon account if I continued to challenge them. Amazon was still my biggest sales outlet so I stopped complaining and decided to wear it - another lesson learned. Just when you think you have total control over your work as an Indie Author, you discover you don't.
I decided to wait it out while more cashed up authors challenged Amazon in court, the review culling and the nasty emails to authors stopped and I hoped that the reviews would begin to appear again for Home To Roost. But the Review Scandal did it's damage and even though the book still sells, as I type this I only have three reviews for it.
I turned my attention to the humorous book and the children's series and real life intervened again, this time in the form of a long term (but treatable) illness. I kept writing and marketing and promoting as much as I could. I researched my new book, Sarah Ann Elliott for eighteen months and started writing it, published the first chapter on my blog and felt on track with my career.
And then one day late last year I walked into my study and my head began to hurt. I walked out and it felt better. Hmm. Odd. I lay down for a rest and slept for four hours in the middle of the day. Odder. Tried to go into my study again the next day, same thing. I thought I was just tired, so went with it and took a few days off. Then discovered my passion for my garden was missing and I'd lost interest in my Bonsai, two things that I had long been devoted to. And I felt terribly tired, really fatigued in the head as well as the body. I wondered if I was depressed, went to see my very good GP who knows me well and was told I was not suffering from depression, but possibly was simply burnt out from working and trying so hard for so long. She advised me to simply take a break from everything - and I did. No writing, no thinking about writing, no marketing or promoting (I hired someone to do that for the first time ever, what a waste of money, saw my first ever month in ten years without a single sale!), no gardening or Bonsai-ing. I was taking long service leave from all my passions. I slept, ate, watched movies (didn't even have the energy to read all those books I've been looking forward to getting to), stayed at home and became a proper dag, and loved every minute of it! I'm fortunate enough at 63 to not have to worry about money, I have a wonderful husband who was quite happy with his frumpy, boring, sleepy wife slouching around the house, and there isn't anyone out there demanding anything from me - no deadlines because I set my own, no touring or book signings because that's the past, no readers pestering me because I simply ignore their emails if they do (sorry, readers, but I'll get to you eventually), and the best part of all is that whatever talent/skill/ability I have as a writer is not going anywhere. It will be there when I am ready to partake of it again. Which I feel may be soon.
This blog is the first time in four months I've been able to walk into my study without my head hurting and turn on the computer. Earlier I went into my garden and smelled the roses. Yes, they are still growing despite my lack of attention towards them. And my Bonsai are still small and healthy, thanks to the shade house and automatic watering system. Am I over the IABOS? Maybe. Maybe not. I'll take one day at a time. But just writing this bit of stream of consciousness has felt good, so I'm making progress.
But I've had enough for today. So I'm going. If anyone reads this, great. If not, it doesn't matter. If an Indie Author reads this and recognises a little of themselves in my story, I will not be surprised. If they don't, well we are all different and writers should be different. Right?
So I'm knicking off now. Got a movie to watch and a nap to take. But I think I may be back tomorrow. Maybe I'll try reading what I've already written of Sarah Ann Elliott and pick up the flow and add a little more to it. Or maybe not. We'll see. IABOS is, IMHO, a very normal part of being a hard working Indie Author. Now that I recognise it and know how to manage it, I will never worry about it again. If I burn out, I'll simply stop for awhile. And when I'm not burnt out, I'll write, market and promote. It's not rocket science.
Ciao for now!
November 4, 2015
I was interviewed by a Whale!
I was interviewed on American radio this week by the wonderful Ron Shaw, AKA The Whale and it was a lot of fun. Enjoy!
http://www.artistfirst2.com/ArtistFirst_Ron_Shaw_2015-11-02.mp3 …
http://www.artistfirst2.com/ArtistFirst_Ron_Shaw_2015-11-02.mp3 …
July 30, 2015
DEALS (dedicated to all parents stuck at home with children during the school holidays)
DEALSBy C. A. Hocking
Dedicated to all mothers/fathers/grandparents stuck at home with children in the school holidays - with love and understanding.
(Note from the author: this was written in 1987 before tablets, devices and cell phones. The gadgets may have changed, but children haven't. Now my children have children of their own - and they're making their own deals!)
As a single parent on a low income with four young children in a small country town, going away for the school holidays was out of the question. So we took a holiday at home. Goodness knows we needed it. We were all tired after a year of work, school, chores, responsibilities and a tight routine that I adhered to strictly in order to survive.We talked about what each of us needed in order to achieve some real time out. It wasn’t hard to come to an agreement as each of us basically needed the same thing – to sleep in every morning with no timetables or alarms, eat what we wanted when we wanted, stay up late to watch the all night movies or play on the computer, have meals on our laps in front of TV, play or garden outside when the weather was good, read or watch videos inside when the weather was bad. No normal washing, ironing, cleaning, tidying up or shopping. Fast food and bad habits for two weeks.Sounds like bliss and it was!I relaxed supervision of our usual rules and regulations, ignored the consequences and we slobbed it for two weeks. It was easy and it was fun, but, oh dear, the mess at the end of the fortnight had to be seen to be believed. Two weeks of goofing off, four active children and a spate of wet, cold weather had combined to create an environment worthy of any pig.So Sunday, the day before school started and I was to go back to work, was, naturally, clean-up day. We had agreed on this at the beginning of our holiday-at-home. Didn’t seem like a problem at the time, but now it looked daunting. I made up the normal duties roster for the coming week, stuck it in its usual place on the fridge door and circled the children’s duties for Sunday so that they knew exactly what had to be done. I called them into the kitchen and pointed out what each of them was assigned to do.I would tackle the laundry, the ironing (what a nightmare!), my bedroom and ensuite. I assigned the other rooms to the children according to age and, in my opinion, ability. Each was responsible for their own bedroom, including changing the sheets. In addition, Mr. 13 took the kitchen which looked as if it might need a blow torch applied to it; Miss 11 had the family room which appeared to me to be buried under more STUFF than I ever thought we possessed; Mr. 8 was assigned the bathroom, toilet, and passage; and Mr. 5 took the lounge room which I considered to be the easiest, as we had spent most of the time in the family room and hardly used the lounge room.There was an immediate uproar.“It isn’t fair! He/she has got it easier than me/us!” And so the day began.13 and 11 started to argue about where the kitchen ended and the family room began. After a few minutes of this, they agreed to do the kitchen and family room together as they figured it would be quicker that way. 8 whinged about having to clean behind the toilet. After all, it wasn’t he who “missed” all the time and glared at his younger brother. 5 immediately objected – he wasn’t the only one who “missed”! Everyone “missed”! Female 11 put him right very quickly on that one. An argument ensued in the middle of the passage and didn’t stop until I intervened. Finally, a deal was made. 5 would clean behind the toilet and do the passage if 8 would do the lounge room.Loud noises from the other end of the house. What now? 13 and 11 simply could not tolerate working together. OK, fine, so work separately. Then who does what? The family room looks easier than the kitchen, so based on age alone, I give the kitchen back to 13 and the family room to 11. Much wailing and gesticulating. Not fair! 13 says 11 is taller than him, so she should get the hardest room. 11 says 13 is older than her, so he should get it. They can’t agree. I say, “You aren’t expected to agree, just to do it. You made the mess, you clean it up.” They’ve heard that before. Compromise. 13 says he’ll do the kitchen if 11 sweeps and mops it when she is sweeping and mopping the family room. I say, “If you spent the energy on cleaning up that you spent on arguing, you’d have it done by now.” They’ve heard that before, too.8 ventures into the fray (on his way to the kitchen for more cleaning equipment, he assures me) and mentions, just in passing, that his friend at school NEVER has to clean up at HIS house. His mother does it all for him. I say, “More fool her,” and remind them all that mother is NOT spelled S-L-A-V-E! They’ve definitely heard that before!I finish my bedroom and ensuite and hang out the fourth load of washing. The line is full and there are at least six more loads to do. I set the tumble dryer going.Time to check the children’s progress. The house is too quiet for anything of real value to be going on, housework-wise, that is.13 is sitting on the kitchen bench, swinging his legs, drinking cordial and reading next week’s TV guide. The dishwasher is half packed, but nothing else has been done.11 is reclining on the family room floor, playing with the puppy who should be outside. The broom lies idle next to her.8 is diligently cleaning the bathroom wall tiles with a toothbrush and toothpaste. That should keep him busy until the year 2050.5 is – where is 5? A quick search finds him asleep on a pile of cushions behind the lounge sofa.I explode. Everybody jumps and, for a few moments, I am hopeful.“We’re hungry, Mum. Can we have lunch now?”I’m hungry too. “Sure, as long as you all promise to get stuck into your chores as soon as you have finished eating.”“OK, Mum, it’s a deal.”Vegemite sandwiches and cordial at the table, humble fare, but the children treat it like a six course meal. An hour and a half later, we are ready to begin again. New deals have been struck during the lunch break. The children say they have it all worked out, but do they? Let’s see, just what do we have here?13 will tidy the table; 11 will clean and polish it; 13 will clear the kitchen benches; 8 will scrub and polish them; 11 will finish packing the dishwasher; 5 will press the start button; 8 will wash the pots; 5 will wipe them; 13 will put them away; 11 will sweep the floors; 8 will mop them; 5 will vacuum the passage; 8 will vacuum the lounge room; 13 will wash the finger marks off the doors; 11 will wash the upper half of the walls, 8 the lower half, 5 the skirting boards; 13 and 5 will do the bathroom together; 11 and 8 will do the toilet; 11 will straighten the bookshelves; 8 will move the family room furniture back into place; 13 will do the same with the lounge furniture; and 5 will straighten the toothbrushes.I smile at my clever little darlings and say encouragingly, “Sounds terrific.” I’m interested to see how far they all get before good intentions give way to petty bickering, for I’m just a little sceptical. I’m half way through the ironing when the first fight breaks out. It sounds like 8 and 5, but before I can set the iron down, 13 is in there, mediating. I hear him say, “Sshhh, quiet, don’t upset Mum,” and all is well again. There is peace in the house. Well, a sort of peace.13 has his portable CD player set up at one end of the house. 11 has her portable CD player set up at the other end. Both going full blast. 8 has the radio going, also at full blast, somewhere in between. They don’t seem to notice the competition of sounds and beats. As for me, I don’t mind in the least. I am ironing in my neat and orderly bedroom listening to my favourite opera through the headphones attached to my own portable CD player.At last, the opera and the ironing are finished. My back is killing me. Time for a coffee. Better check on the tribe first.Mmm, bathroom and toilet look good, passage and lounge are lovely and the family room is spotless. The kitchen is – well, it’s a definite improvement. I can see that they have done their very best and I am proud of them. I’ll put the finishing touches to it after they are in bed tonight.They are still scrubbing walls. So what if they have left a few water marks running down the walls, they are so pleased with themselves that I cannot bear to criticise. I make afternoon tea for us all and we sit down with great relief. We are all tired and it seems too much effort to begin again. But we must. The children haven’t done their bedrooms yet and the thought of cooking dinner is as intolerable to me as cleaning their bedrooms is to them. So more deals are made.11 will do 5’s and 8’s bedroom; 5 and 8 will do 11’s bedroom; I will do 13’s bedroom; and 13 (bless him) will cook dinner. Oh no! That will mean messing up the kitchen again. The thought is too much for any of us. So 13 will ride his bike up the street and pick up fish and chips for dinner. Sounds good to me. We shake hands on it.An hour later, we all sit in front of TV, picnic fashion on a tablecloth spread on the floor so that we don’t mess up the freshly polished table, and enjoy our last holiday video with fish and chips. We’ve had a wonderful rest, and thanks to my clever children’s clever deals, the house is clean and tidy and the washing and ironing up to date. I kiss them all good night and tuck them into their freshly made beds, ready for a couple of hours to myself with a cup of tea and the Sunday night movie.There is a knock at the door and my neighbour pops in to join me for the cup of tea. She has also been home with her two children for the school holidays and is most admiring of how clean and organised the house looks. While I make her a second cup of tea, she uses the toilet at the children’s end of the house. She returns with a strange smile on her face. “Have you checked the toilet?” she asks. “Yes, it looked spotless to me. Why?”“Did you look up?”“Up? What do you mean?”“Go see,” she says with a chuckle.I go see. Miss 11 and Mr. 8 had done an excellent job of cleaning and disinfecting. I look up and gasp. They had taken Miss 11’s box of tampons from the cupboard under the toilet vanity, dipped the tampons in the toilet water until they swelled, then flung them upwards so that they stuck to the ceiling. It must have happened reasonably early in the day because they were already drying, their strings hanging down limply in a decorative fringe. All twenty of them.My little dears had gone through the whole day without giving it away. They must have been waiting for me to notice. Did they think they’d get into trouble? In the normal course of events, they probably would have. But we’d just had two wonderfully relaxing weeks together, they’d worked hard all day to make our home liveable again, and I wasn’t about to do anything to spoil that. So what are a few tampons on the ceiling? Nothing more than an aberrant moment’s fun in an otherwise exhausting day.
I am too tired to laugh. Instead, I just sigh and make a deal with myself that that’s a job that can wait until tomorrow.
Dedicated to all mothers/fathers/grandparents stuck at home with children in the school holidays - with love and understanding.
(Note from the author: this was written in 1987 before tablets, devices and cell phones. The gadgets may have changed, but children haven't. Now my children have children of their own - and they're making their own deals!)
As a single parent on a low income with four young children in a small country town, going away for the school holidays was out of the question. So we took a holiday at home. Goodness knows we needed it. We were all tired after a year of work, school, chores, responsibilities and a tight routine that I adhered to strictly in order to survive.We talked about what each of us needed in order to achieve some real time out. It wasn’t hard to come to an agreement as each of us basically needed the same thing – to sleep in every morning with no timetables or alarms, eat what we wanted when we wanted, stay up late to watch the all night movies or play on the computer, have meals on our laps in front of TV, play or garden outside when the weather was good, read or watch videos inside when the weather was bad. No normal washing, ironing, cleaning, tidying up or shopping. Fast food and bad habits for two weeks.Sounds like bliss and it was!I relaxed supervision of our usual rules and regulations, ignored the consequences and we slobbed it for two weeks. It was easy and it was fun, but, oh dear, the mess at the end of the fortnight had to be seen to be believed. Two weeks of goofing off, four active children and a spate of wet, cold weather had combined to create an environment worthy of any pig.So Sunday, the day before school started and I was to go back to work, was, naturally, clean-up day. We had agreed on this at the beginning of our holiday-at-home. Didn’t seem like a problem at the time, but now it looked daunting. I made up the normal duties roster for the coming week, stuck it in its usual place on the fridge door and circled the children’s duties for Sunday so that they knew exactly what had to be done. I called them into the kitchen and pointed out what each of them was assigned to do.I would tackle the laundry, the ironing (what a nightmare!), my bedroom and ensuite. I assigned the other rooms to the children according to age and, in my opinion, ability. Each was responsible for their own bedroom, including changing the sheets. In addition, Mr. 13 took the kitchen which looked as if it might need a blow torch applied to it; Miss 11 had the family room which appeared to me to be buried under more STUFF than I ever thought we possessed; Mr. 8 was assigned the bathroom, toilet, and passage; and Mr. 5 took the lounge room which I considered to be the easiest, as we had spent most of the time in the family room and hardly used the lounge room.There was an immediate uproar.“It isn’t fair! He/she has got it easier than me/us!” And so the day began.13 and 11 started to argue about where the kitchen ended and the family room began. After a few minutes of this, they agreed to do the kitchen and family room together as they figured it would be quicker that way. 8 whinged about having to clean behind the toilet. After all, it wasn’t he who “missed” all the time and glared at his younger brother. 5 immediately objected – he wasn’t the only one who “missed”! Everyone “missed”! Female 11 put him right very quickly on that one. An argument ensued in the middle of the passage and didn’t stop until I intervened. Finally, a deal was made. 5 would clean behind the toilet and do the passage if 8 would do the lounge room.Loud noises from the other end of the house. What now? 13 and 11 simply could not tolerate working together. OK, fine, so work separately. Then who does what? The family room looks easier than the kitchen, so based on age alone, I give the kitchen back to 13 and the family room to 11. Much wailing and gesticulating. Not fair! 13 says 11 is taller than him, so she should get the hardest room. 11 says 13 is older than her, so he should get it. They can’t agree. I say, “You aren’t expected to agree, just to do it. You made the mess, you clean it up.” They’ve heard that before. Compromise. 13 says he’ll do the kitchen if 11 sweeps and mops it when she is sweeping and mopping the family room. I say, “If you spent the energy on cleaning up that you spent on arguing, you’d have it done by now.” They’ve heard that before, too.8 ventures into the fray (on his way to the kitchen for more cleaning equipment, he assures me) and mentions, just in passing, that his friend at school NEVER has to clean up at HIS house. His mother does it all for him. I say, “More fool her,” and remind them all that mother is NOT spelled S-L-A-V-E! They’ve definitely heard that before!I finish my bedroom and ensuite and hang out the fourth load of washing. The line is full and there are at least six more loads to do. I set the tumble dryer going.Time to check the children’s progress. The house is too quiet for anything of real value to be going on, housework-wise, that is.13 is sitting on the kitchen bench, swinging his legs, drinking cordial and reading next week’s TV guide. The dishwasher is half packed, but nothing else has been done.11 is reclining on the family room floor, playing with the puppy who should be outside. The broom lies idle next to her.8 is diligently cleaning the bathroom wall tiles with a toothbrush and toothpaste. That should keep him busy until the year 2050.5 is – where is 5? A quick search finds him asleep on a pile of cushions behind the lounge sofa.I explode. Everybody jumps and, for a few moments, I am hopeful.“We’re hungry, Mum. Can we have lunch now?”I’m hungry too. “Sure, as long as you all promise to get stuck into your chores as soon as you have finished eating.”“OK, Mum, it’s a deal.”Vegemite sandwiches and cordial at the table, humble fare, but the children treat it like a six course meal. An hour and a half later, we are ready to begin again. New deals have been struck during the lunch break. The children say they have it all worked out, but do they? Let’s see, just what do we have here?13 will tidy the table; 11 will clean and polish it; 13 will clear the kitchen benches; 8 will scrub and polish them; 11 will finish packing the dishwasher; 5 will press the start button; 8 will wash the pots; 5 will wipe them; 13 will put them away; 11 will sweep the floors; 8 will mop them; 5 will vacuum the passage; 8 will vacuum the lounge room; 13 will wash the finger marks off the doors; 11 will wash the upper half of the walls, 8 the lower half, 5 the skirting boards; 13 and 5 will do the bathroom together; 11 and 8 will do the toilet; 11 will straighten the bookshelves; 8 will move the family room furniture back into place; 13 will do the same with the lounge furniture; and 5 will straighten the toothbrushes.I smile at my clever little darlings and say encouragingly, “Sounds terrific.” I’m interested to see how far they all get before good intentions give way to petty bickering, for I’m just a little sceptical. I’m half way through the ironing when the first fight breaks out. It sounds like 8 and 5, but before I can set the iron down, 13 is in there, mediating. I hear him say, “Sshhh, quiet, don’t upset Mum,” and all is well again. There is peace in the house. Well, a sort of peace.13 has his portable CD player set up at one end of the house. 11 has her portable CD player set up at the other end. Both going full blast. 8 has the radio going, also at full blast, somewhere in between. They don’t seem to notice the competition of sounds and beats. As for me, I don’t mind in the least. I am ironing in my neat and orderly bedroom listening to my favourite opera through the headphones attached to my own portable CD player.At last, the opera and the ironing are finished. My back is killing me. Time for a coffee. Better check on the tribe first.Mmm, bathroom and toilet look good, passage and lounge are lovely and the family room is spotless. The kitchen is – well, it’s a definite improvement. I can see that they have done their very best and I am proud of them. I’ll put the finishing touches to it after they are in bed tonight.They are still scrubbing walls. So what if they have left a few water marks running down the walls, they are so pleased with themselves that I cannot bear to criticise. I make afternoon tea for us all and we sit down with great relief. We are all tired and it seems too much effort to begin again. But we must. The children haven’t done their bedrooms yet and the thought of cooking dinner is as intolerable to me as cleaning their bedrooms is to them. So more deals are made.11 will do 5’s and 8’s bedroom; 5 and 8 will do 11’s bedroom; I will do 13’s bedroom; and 13 (bless him) will cook dinner. Oh no! That will mean messing up the kitchen again. The thought is too much for any of us. So 13 will ride his bike up the street and pick up fish and chips for dinner. Sounds good to me. We shake hands on it.An hour later, we all sit in front of TV, picnic fashion on a tablecloth spread on the floor so that we don’t mess up the freshly polished table, and enjoy our last holiday video with fish and chips. We’ve had a wonderful rest, and thanks to my clever children’s clever deals, the house is clean and tidy and the washing and ironing up to date. I kiss them all good night and tuck them into their freshly made beds, ready for a couple of hours to myself with a cup of tea and the Sunday night movie.There is a knock at the door and my neighbour pops in to join me for the cup of tea. She has also been home with her two children for the school holidays and is most admiring of how clean and organised the house looks. While I make her a second cup of tea, she uses the toilet at the children’s end of the house. She returns with a strange smile on her face. “Have you checked the toilet?” she asks. “Yes, it looked spotless to me. Why?”“Did you look up?”“Up? What do you mean?”“Go see,” she says with a chuckle.I go see. Miss 11 and Mr. 8 had done an excellent job of cleaning and disinfecting. I look up and gasp. They had taken Miss 11’s box of tampons from the cupboard under the toilet vanity, dipped the tampons in the toilet water until they swelled, then flung them upwards so that they stuck to the ceiling. It must have happened reasonably early in the day because they were already drying, their strings hanging down limply in a decorative fringe. All twenty of them.My little dears had gone through the whole day without giving it away. They must have been waiting for me to notice. Did they think they’d get into trouble? In the normal course of events, they probably would have. But we’d just had two wonderfully relaxing weeks together, they’d worked hard all day to make our home liveable again, and I wasn’t about to do anything to spoil that. So what are a few tampons on the ceiling? Nothing more than an aberrant moment’s fun in an otherwise exhausting day.
I am too tired to laugh. Instead, I just sigh and make a deal with myself that that’s a job that can wait until tomorrow.
July 11, 2015
IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT ... writing Sarah Ann Elliott.
Now that has to be the worst way ever to begin a story. Right? 'It was a dark and stormy night.' Seriously? Does anyone really begin a novel with that sentence? Not me, that's for sure.Umm, hang on, Sarah Ann Elliott's story begins on a dark and stormy night. Oh dear. Can't get around that because it's a fact. I could have chosen another night to begin the story. "It was a clear, moonlit night" or "the night sky was filled with stars". Or clouds. Or rain. Or a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm that devestated the whole of northern England in February 1823. Sounds a bit Dickensian, but then Dickens wrote about those times as they were, not as they were imagined, and bad weather meant terrible hardship for many. It still does if you don't live in a civilised part of the world with good infrastructure, a comfortable income and central heating.
It could be a romantic lead in to a great love story - the heroine born into tragic circumstances, overcoming all odds to find her Mr Darcy. Oh come now, that's been done to death, and surely we all know in these times of social media and 24 hour news broadcasts that life isn't really like that. Although some naive souls still cling to that myth.
But Sarah Ann Elliott's story is indeed a love story, just not particularly romantic. It starts off badly, continues uncertainly and sometimes perilously, but endures despite the harsh realities of working class Victorian England. But back to that dark and stormy night beginning...
Sarah Ann Elliott was born AFTER the Great Snow Storm of 9 February 1823, three months later in fact, but her mother was pregnant with her and twin sister Jane when that blizzard raged across northern England, leaving towns and countryside buried under eight to twelve feet of snow. Sarah Ann's Irish-born mother, Nancy, her father, John and her older siblings would have endured that frightening storm along with their neighbours and friends in Stockport. It was indeed a dark and stormy night - and day - for them and most probably a time filled with terror, for when it was over Stockport was under so much snow that the populace had to tunnel their way through the frozen drifts to reach neighbours in distress, to tend to livestock and property, to seek out food and fuel to keep their fires burning and prevent them from freezing to death, to make their way to the textiles mills to work, and simply to get out of their cottages and houses. It was an infamous event at the time, but long forgotten now. And for no better reason than Nancy Elliott was about five months pregnant at the time, I've chosen that night as the first time Sarah Ann Elliott makes her presence felt in the world.
Did I hear you say "Stockport?" Oh, you don't know where that is? Well, these days it's a southern suburb of Manchester in Northern England with a population of over 280,000 people. It has seen better days, or so my Stockport-born researcher told me, but it is currently undergoing regeneration, part of the cycle of many of those post-industrial towns around Lancashire and Cheshire. And locals are known as Stopfordians, not Stockportians. Now here's another thing you should know about Stockport. It may be seen as a suburb of Manchester in Lancashire now, but it is actually south of the Mersey River and therefore in Cheshire, a whole different county. And don't you go getting that wrong if you find yourself in the company of a Stopfordian or you'll be smartly corrected. If you're a Stockport born and bred Stopfordian, then you're a proud Cestrian, not a Lancastrian! (If I am wrong and you are Stockport born and bred, please feel free to correct me.)
When Sarah Ann's parents came to Stockport as a young married couple around 1802, fleeing the poverty and hardship of Ireland to look for work and a better future for their family, the once small thriving rural market town had already grown into a substantial centre for spinning and weaving with an impressive population of over 18,000 people. It had been the site of the first powered textile mill and therefore saw the very beginning of the industrial revolution that was to come. In 1802 Stockport was still spoken of in glowing terms by those who passed through it. A pleasant town with a good market place and fine cobbled streets, albeit those streets were often narrow and steep as Stockport lies in a deep river valley.
However, by 1844 Stockport was home to over 50,000 and was described in the most horrific terms in Friedrich Engels book, "The Condition of the Working Class in England": 'Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill.' A grim picture indeed.
When Sarah Ann Elliott was born in 1823, Stockport already had a population of over 30,000 and was somewhere between that pleasant town and the grim industrial wasteland it was to become. It was her home, her turf, her environment. Until she was forced to flee, it was all she knew. The changes which happened in the first decades of her life were to shape her into the woman she became and equip her to survive situations which seem unimaginable to some of us in our comfortable first world lives, although most of the world still experiences now what she accepted as normal in those hard times.
Writing about my great-great-great grandmother Sarah Ann Elliott is proving to be a remarkable journey for me. I'm learning things about my family, my heritage, my genes and why I am who I am in a way I've never experienced before. Her life story has at times been alarmingly like my own. They say history repeats itself in families and it's certainly true in my case. But to find out why that is, you'll have to wait for the book to be finished - and I'm only into the second draft.
So that is the beginning of Sarah Ann Elliott.
It was a dark and stormy night...
May 3, 2015
SARAH ANN ELLIOTT: the chicken or the egg?
No, my next book is not about chickens or eggs. It just so happens that I have the cover for the book, "Sarah Ann Elliott: a Victorian Family Saga based on a true story" ready to go before the book is completed. Here it is. The cover. Not the book. Like the egg and chicken. Which comes first? Or should come first? The unanswerable question.
But like Frank Sinatra sang, I'll do it my way. When the inspiration for the cover arrived, I just did it. And I like it. I hope you do, too. If it seems that I've been "away" for awhile, you're right. Just over a year since my last blog. Shameful for an author, I know. I could give you a hundred excuses about being busy, or ill, or having family problems, or etc etc, but ... hang on, that's all true! But I've had time to Tweet, Facebook and work on Sarah Ann Elliott, so I should have had time to blog. And I did! Have time. But I didn't blog, did I? I'm just slack when it comes to blogging. Hanging head in shame. OK, moving right along...What I have spent a great deal of time on over the past year is research for Sarah Ann Elliott (SAE from now on, takes too long to type it out in full). It began as family history research on Ancestry.com. I've now become the family historian and have uncovered a wealth of information and stories, including some secrets that were never meant to be known by the family. Murder, lunacy, drunkenness, abuse, theft, prison, illegitimacy, divorce, bigamy, suicide. Just the usual stuff that happens in every family. I've also discovered love, great courage, endurance, survival, intelligence, talent, ambition and good will. Again, like any normal family.What I did uncover was one particular story which resonated with my own life over and over until I felt I had to write about it. My great great great grandmother, SAE, born in the north of England in 1823, died 1912 aged 88. Parts of her life parallel my own weird and wonderful life so much that I began to feel as if I had been channelling Granny Sarah. So I started researching her life in detail. Great detail. And the more I searched, the more questions I found. As I endeavoured to find answers to those questions, I realised that it wasn't only SAE's life I was writing about, but the lives of many, for no-one lives in isolation and our lives are greatly affected by intersecting with the lives of others. So my research became more intense - and also an addiction. Just ask my Hubby. At least he always knew where I was. Attached to my computer or iPad, oohing and aahing over my latest thrilling bit of research, which didn't thrill him at all. Lucky for me, Hubby is well housetrained and kept me fed, clothed and clean whilst I was immersed in my research.And the moment arrived when I was finally able to put all my research into some sort of order (called a Timeline) and proceed with actually writing the book.So I'm well into the story, but it's happening non-chronologically in the first draft stage, which is not how I normally write. First draft is usually a stream-of-consciousness writing session beginning at the beginning and not stopping until "the end". Then I go back and begin the tidying up, usually taking 4-5 drafts until it's ready to publish. But SAE is based on documented facts about her life, and I find myself writing around those facts as I put them together. So the birth of her fourth child was written about before her own birth. Basically writing the "dots" as I find them. Then I have to join the dots together in the next draft and put them into a readable order. Several people have asked me how long this book will take to finish and how long will it be. It's well under way, it will be finished in the next year and how long is a piece of string?So the cover comes before the book in this instance. The unanswerable has been answered!
But like Frank Sinatra sang, I'll do it my way. When the inspiration for the cover arrived, I just did it. And I like it. I hope you do, too. If it seems that I've been "away" for awhile, you're right. Just over a year since my last blog. Shameful for an author, I know. I could give you a hundred excuses about being busy, or ill, or having family problems, or etc etc, but ... hang on, that's all true! But I've had time to Tweet, Facebook and work on Sarah Ann Elliott, so I should have had time to blog. And I did! Have time. But I didn't blog, did I? I'm just slack when it comes to blogging. Hanging head in shame. OK, moving right along...What I have spent a great deal of time on over the past year is research for Sarah Ann Elliott (SAE from now on, takes too long to type it out in full). It began as family history research on Ancestry.com. I've now become the family historian and have uncovered a wealth of information and stories, including some secrets that were never meant to be known by the family. Murder, lunacy, drunkenness, abuse, theft, prison, illegitimacy, divorce, bigamy, suicide. Just the usual stuff that happens in every family. I've also discovered love, great courage, endurance, survival, intelligence, talent, ambition and good will. Again, like any normal family.What I did uncover was one particular story which resonated with my own life over and over until I felt I had to write about it. My great great great grandmother, SAE, born in the north of England in 1823, died 1912 aged 88. Parts of her life parallel my own weird and wonderful life so much that I began to feel as if I had been channelling Granny Sarah. So I started researching her life in detail. Great detail. And the more I searched, the more questions I found. As I endeavoured to find answers to those questions, I realised that it wasn't only SAE's life I was writing about, but the lives of many, for no-one lives in isolation and our lives are greatly affected by intersecting with the lives of others. So my research became more intense - and also an addiction. Just ask my Hubby. At least he always knew where I was. Attached to my computer or iPad, oohing and aahing over my latest thrilling bit of research, which didn't thrill him at all. Lucky for me, Hubby is well housetrained and kept me fed, clothed and clean whilst I was immersed in my research.And the moment arrived when I was finally able to put all my research into some sort of order (called a Timeline) and proceed with actually writing the book.So I'm well into the story, but it's happening non-chronologically in the first draft stage, which is not how I normally write. First draft is usually a stream-of-consciousness writing session beginning at the beginning and not stopping until "the end". Then I go back and begin the tidying up, usually taking 4-5 drafts until it's ready to publish. But SAE is based on documented facts about her life, and I find myself writing around those facts as I put them together. So the birth of her fourth child was written about before her own birth. Basically writing the "dots" as I find them. Then I have to join the dots together in the next draft and put them into a readable order. Several people have asked me how long this book will take to finish and how long will it be. It's well under way, it will be finished in the next year and how long is a piece of string?So the cover comes before the book in this instance. The unanswerable has been answered!
