Tracey Sinclair's Blog, page 6

Round up!

Round up of guest posts and reviews - and reminder that both Dark Dates and Bridesmaid Blues are still on offer on Kindle! https://darkdates.org/2017/01/24/revi...

Bad times and good art - how to help by reading more books!

I originally wrote this just after the US election, but now it feels more urgent than ever. The Women’s Marches this week showed there is an enormous amount of energy there waiting to be harnessed, and while I think it’s crucial to engage on a political level (here in the UK, where I am writing from, and wherever you are – whether it’s by marching, joining organisations you believe in, or supporting candidates who speak out for your beliefs) I think today’s new social and political climate also requires a different attitude towards books, and art of all sorts.

Because I do still believe that art and storytelling has a tremendous role to play in the world, now more than ever: in connecting people, in sharing perspectives, in helping us see ourselves as more the same than different – while also acknowledging and honouring those differences, and how important they can be, how core they may be to someone’s being, history, community and sense of self. In today’s world, where the media is dominated by fake news and ‘alternative facts’, it’s more crucial than ever that we stand up for different voices, and make space for different experiences, different ways of seeing the world.

And one of the ways you can do this is actually pretty easy, it’s doing what you love doing anyway: read more books! Read more writers who are women, disabled, working class, POC, LGBTQIA, non-Western. Support them by buying their books, reviewing their books on Amazon and Goodreads, sharing with your friends, telling people you like them on Twitter or Facebook, buying them as gifts for friends’ birthdays. (Remember, women are less likely to be reviewed in the mainstream or literary press, less likely to be considered for prizes, less likely to be included in ‘books you must read’ lists – and the chances are that any problems straight, cis, white, able bodied women face, women who don’t fit into that narrow category will face multiplied).

Outside of books, support independent investigative journalism (for example, organisations like Mother Jones and Bitch Media) by buying their publications or subscribing to them. (Needless to say, if you can afford it, support other organisations committed to justice, civil rights and fairness – Amnesty International, ACLU, or whatever supports the causes most close to your heart – but my focus here is on the arts).

People say times like this create good art, which is easy to say if you have a platform for your voice already and the time and money to express your anger and fear through creativity. But art isn’t created in a vacuum. And it’s incredibly hard to spend time on your art when you’re working two jobs to support it, when you’re exhausted from all of the cut backs and compromises you have to make to carve out time and energy to create it or when you are genuinely terrified about – or spending your energy fighting for – your more basic rights.

Not everyone has a supportive partner or parents, or a lucrative side job, or the health or energy to balance so many demands. It’s easy to point out the examples of people who make that look easy – who get up at 5am to write a few chapters before looking after their kids and doing a full day’s work – but not everyone is capable of that. I know from my own experience: my desire to go freelance stemmed in no small part from the fact that after my first novel came out, I didn’t write for 2 years, floored by a combination of a demanding job, a long commute and health issues that meant I could barely cope with my day job, never mind spare any energy on anything else.

A young creative I know and follow on Twitter really struck a chord when she tweeted that the hours she worked and the level of her income bore no relation, and that she was simply exhausted from all the cut backs she was having to make even just to have a chance to keep doing what she wanted to do. I know many people think that a creative career is an easy one – visions of Carrie Bradshaw lounging on a bed, maintaining a New York apartment and a dazzling wardrobe by seemingly writing a couple of good sentences a month – but for most creatives, it’s actually a slog, and one with no guarantee of reward. You can spend months of work and hundreds of pounds of your own money on producing a play that gets staged to 20 people in a cold room above a pub. You can spend a year writing a book that someone pirates for free rather than buying for less than the price of a cup of coffee. And you know that, going in, and yet you still do it.

I’m not saying abandon your favourite authors or your blockbuster movies or your West End shows (if you are lucky enough to be able to afford West End shows…!): just that if we want diverse voices, we have to seek them out, and support them. Buy a book by an author you’ve never heard of. Chuck a couple of quid into some indie filmmaker’s Kickstarter. Pay a fiver to see a bit of Fringe theatre. If you can’t support financially, share on social media. Help them get their message to people who can support them. Anything can help – even, sometimes, just the feeling that other people are willing to help, to listen, to connect.

Because we’ve seen what the world looks like when it’s run by the old boys club of the pale and male and entitled to whom our lives are just a game: when the agenda is set by whiny white boys whose reaction to anything they see as encroaching their supremacy (whether it’s a woman candidate or a gay superhero or a Ghostbusters remake or a coffee cup that isn’t Christian enough) is threats of rape and violence. I’m not fond of how that world looks, and I want to play my part in changing it. I hope you do too.

Price promo on Dark Dates and Bridesmaid Blues

Because most of us could do with some more romance in our lives - whether that comes with fangs or not! - I'm making both Dark Dates and Bridesmaid Blues only 99p/99c on Kindle until Valentines Day! So why not indulge?

http://amzn.to/2iA9QuE

Q&A at Chat About Books

Whose writing do I envy? Some great questions on Chat About Books today: https://chataboutbooks.wordpress.com/...

Owning your anxiety - it's OK to not always be OK

This is a post I wrote in October, for Mental Health Day, but since I suspect 2017 is going to be An Anxious Year for many people, thought it might be helpful: if you make only one resolution this year, make it not being embarrassed to talk about mental health!

So apparently it’s World Mental Health Day today [it's in October] – a much-needed reminder that it’s totally OK to admit you have or have had mental health issues, to tell your friends it’s OK if they have mental health issues, and maybe to start some useful or helpful conversations. Those of you who follow this blog will know my own mental health has occasionally been wobbly, and while I (generally) feel much better these days, it’s always a process, not a final result.

So, while I am in no way a mental health expert (I’ve listed some resources at the end of this) in the spirit of You Are Not Alone: Most People Struggle, I thought I would share some (just some!) of the things that I have been anxious about over the last few weeks, whether in a minor tweak of existential dread, a 5-minute (or, um, 50 minute) freak out, or a two-hour, two-AM anxiety spiral that’s left me tearful, sleepless and nauseous. Because, my lovelies: it’s never just you, I promise, and it’s really OK not to always be OK.

So: Things I Have Freaked Out About Recently

Brexit and Syria and Russia and ISIS and Donald Trump (but that’s everyone, right? We’re all terrified about that?)

My cab not coming to pick me up in time, so I miss my flight and ruin my holiday to New York so of course I need to google last minute services to Heathrow even though the guy I use is super reliable and has never let me down. Because that’s an incredibly productive use of my time at 3am, a full 7 hours before the car is even due to collect me.

Reverse of the above: my Uber not coming to pick me up from my friend’s apartment in New York so I not only miss my flight, but, as he was going away the same day, I’d be stranded with no money* and no way of getting a car ** and I’d… I dunno, get eaten by dogs*** or something. (I told him this, before we left, and he was kind enough not to laugh and to assure me he would have made sure I got the car before he left. Sometimes owning your craziness and having people reassure you it’s fine, they still love you and will accommodate it as best they can is the only way to work through it). (*I had money.) (**I had a phone. I was in a heavily populated area heaving with cabs. I have no idea where this came from). (***New York dogs are tiny. Seriously, if it came to it, I could eat them first).

Talking too much on a girl’s night out (I mean, I probably did, but they’ve known me 20 years and I’ve always talked too much, so realistically they are used to it by now and they still invite me).

Meeting cool new people, in front of whom I was convinced I seemed fat, frumpy, loud, crass, obnoxiously working class, clumsy, and drunk. (Note: they were all lovely.)

My book sales: What if they don’t pick up? What if I never make enough money? What if people think I’m a terrible writer and are just too polite to tell me? (Note: I have no idea what ‘enough’ is in this context).

My book sales: What if they pick up massively, I become really famous, I become really big-headed so all my friends all dump me, and All My Dark Secrets are revealed on the internet, and the world castigates me and I end up poor, disgraced and alone? (Disclaimer: I really don’t have a lot of dark secrets, I’m kinda dull, but that has not stopped me stressing about this for hours when I should be sleeping)

What if I get bad reviews for my books?

What if I get good reviews for my books, but then I can never write another good book, so I’m always sad about the days when I used to get good reviews?

What if I never get another good idea for a book?

What if I get too many good ideas for books and choose the wrong one? Or get paralysed with indecision over all of these clearly genius ideas and never write again?

What if I get evicted? (I was, as my regular readers know, technically homeless for 6 months so this is a recurring anxiety issue for me, despite the fact that I have a ton of friends who have proven they will put me up if that happened.).

What if my clients all ditch me, I end up bankrupt and homeless? What if I don’t get enough work? What if I get too much work, I can’t do it all, I let people down, they get sick of me, ditch me and I end up bankrupt and homeless? (There’s a theme, as you can see).

What if I’m actually a terrible person and everyone really thinks that but just haven’t told me?

Is that ache in my hip cancer? Is that a headache a stroke? Should I be this tired? Am I more tired than anyone else? I feel like I am. But maybe I’m just really lazy. Should I be less lazy? Do people think I’m lazy? Why am I so lazy? Or maybe I work too hard. Do I work too hard? Am I working myself to death? Do I talk about work too much? Am I boring?

Should I talk about anxiety because I want to be open about it, or does that make me whiny and negative? Will no one ever want to hire me/read my books if I am honest about this? If I try to make light of it, do people think I’m mocking them? Am I being ridiculous? Do I worry too much about being anxious? Am I being self-absorbed when I write about my anxiety when people have bigger problems than I do?

Is this the dumbest thing I’ve ever written?

So repeat: it’s not just you. You’re not alone, you’re not super weird, and you’re not actually surrounded by people who are better, more capable or more together than you are. Honest, we’re all in this together. So let’s be kind – including to ourselves.

Further reading:

Get help for yourself:

https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/men...

Support someone else:

https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/sup...

On Kindness, Grief and the Art of Asking

Four years ago, in May, I became homeless and an orphan in the same weekend. Both of those things are true, while at the same time, not true: factually accurate, emotively incorrect.

Only child of a single mother, I was indeed (to my knowledge – hi, Dad, if you’re out there!) an orphan, though that word conjures up sniffling and abandoned Victorian waifs or traumatised refugee children, and I was a grown-ass woman in her mid-40s with a pretty settled life. And though my relationship with my mother had often been fractious – inevitable, perhaps, when two strong willed, very different women live yoked together in sometimes straitened circumstances, with her need to protect me from the things she had suffered herself rubbing up against – occasionally with enough friction to catch fire – my own need to leave the town I grew up in and test myself and my art against the wider world – I was devastated by her loss. Without siblings, without a partner (and with a family I cared deeply for, but saw only rarely), I felt utterly alone.

Through the kind of cosmic coincidence that ensures that troubles indeed never came as single spies, at the same time I had to move out of the London flat I had lived in for over 10 years, and was faced with the crushing realisation that I could no longer afford the city where I lived. I’d quit my job to freelance, recognising if I didn’t my desire to write would always be smothered not by the needs of a job but more by my own inability to stick to the routines of 9-5 (or, this being London, 8-7.30) employment, and though my little publishing business was starting to take off, my income was erratic.

Without a partner to rely on or access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, I found it difficult to find anyone who would rent a flat to me that didn’t look like it hadn’t been cleaned properly after the last murder. But I still felt a weird mix of shame and embarrassment when I referred to myself as ‘homeless’ – after all, I was staying on the sofas and in the spare rooms of friends’ (often very nice) houses. I wasn’t on the streets. Wasn’t I somehow making a grand claim that diminished the suffering of people who needed the sympathy more?

I’ve always prided myself on my independence: I wanted to be the bolshie, working class feminist who would (one day) prove that the restraints of a system that favours the wealthy and connected and, yes, the male, couldn’t keep me down. But the one thing that happens when your life falls apart and you realise you absolutely, absolutely cannot cope, is you simply have to ask for help. And you have to not be proud about where it comes from.

And so, I asked. In fact, I pleaded. My mum was a clutter fiend who lived in a council house. This meant it had to be cleared out fast: there was no luxury of time (and no payday at the end of it – in fact, because she died at the start of the month, I had to pay a month’s rent for the privilege of clearing it out). I didn’t have a car – I can’t drive – and I was living out of a suitcase. All of my own belongings were in storage, I was in no position to take possession of any more.

So everyone who came to visit, I asked to take stuff: to the dump, the recycling, the charity store. My mum was a strong part of her community, and committed to good causes, so I was pleased that we managed to donate a lot of her things to a local refugee centre, but so much of the stuff had to be got rid of piecemeal. And so I lived, for a month, the weirdest of lives: knowing I had no home of my own, while dismantling around myself the place my mum, my life’s anchor, had called home for more than two decades. Every day something else went – the new Dyson hoover and the drier to a neighbour’s daughter who was starting a family, the TV to a friend’s teenage son – so I was constantly disoriented, not knowing what was going to be in any room I walked into, looking for things that were no longer there.

Swelled with the kindness of my friends and my mum’s neighbours, I headed back south. I still had nowhere to live, and the uncertainty of literally not knowing where I would be sleeping a week, even sometimes a night, ahead, frayed me: I’ve always been someone who craves security at home, even while I’m happy to live the rest of my life without it.

But people stepped up in astonishingly generous – and sometimes just astonishing – ways. They let me ‘housesit’ their homes when they were away, pretending that I was somehow doing them a favour (one even left me a fridge full of prosecco and nice pasta as payment for looking after her cats). A woman I had only met once (on a friend’s hen night a full decade earlier) offered me her flat for a week when she was away. People I had not seen in years messaged me through Facebook offering me their sofas, their spare rooms, their parent’s holiday cottages or summer rentals. I was flat-out broke – struggling to keep my freelancing going in the face of all this upheaval, while saving for a deposit for somewhere to rent – and people cooked for me, bought me wine, and pretended not to mind or notice when I burst into tears on their sofa. It wasn’t everyone – some people I had thought were close friends simply froze me out of their lives (some never to return), my disintegration too much to deal with – but it was enough. In fact, it was plentiful.

(An aside: Not long after my mum died, I went to Glasgow – on a trip funded by a group of old university friends, who rightly and thoughtfully believed a train ticket would be a better idea than flowers for my mother’s funeral – and got the chance to reconnect with them.

It turned out to be a poignant, but timely trip, as that very week one of that close knit crowd who had remained in the city after we all graduated was told that her cancer had returned, and was taken into hospital where, only a few short weeks later, she died, snuffing out a life that had been filled with brightness and warmth, and leaving the world a far colder and poorer place for her absence. And while I don’t want to talk too much about her death – her story is not mine to tell – I’ll always be grateful that through that serendipitous generosity I got to spend much of that week with her (a week in which she, breathless in her hospital bed, took the time to console me for my loss: such was the person she was, the size of her spirit). And I also saw how kindness creates communities, as her friends and family rallied to support her: the selfless and unshowy practical acts of friends banding together to keep someone else afloat.)

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately – it’s that time of year, I guess. And also because I’ve been reading Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking, and it’s an inspiring read, but one that provokes introspection.

Palmer is the kind of woman I admire but could never be – far more comfortable with chaos than I could ever manage (I read about the house she lived in, always bustling with strangers, and it literally makes me feel a bit queasy: I like my solitude, and my space). But she talks a lot about how art is an exchange, and how much of her early career was based on, basically, asking fans of her band to help them out, but how she also struggled when it came to accepting financial help from her husband, Neil Gaiman: the push and pull of the creative life. Of any life.

It made me look at how weird and self-conscious I can be about asking for help for my own work (‘oh, god, there she is: banging on about those stupid books again! FFS, we’re sick of it, shut up already. Does she think she’s actually good at this shit? Does she think she’s a real writer?’). It’s not something I’m comfortable with (I do it, slightly cringingly: ‘if you like my books, can you review them? Can you tell people? Can you read this blog post? Can you maybe come see my play? Click that link for me to get hits on a website so they’ll want to hire me more?’).

And yet, I’m always happy to support others: I’ve sat in cold churches in small audiences watching amateur plays, I’ve bought cheaply burned CDs and tweeted about friend’s rock bands – and I’ve been happy to do so. Look at me, supporting the arts! Being all cutting edge at the frontline of someone else’s creativity is actually an exciting thing to be. Why am I assuming I’m more generous and supportive (and whisper it, special) than anyone else? Or is that I secretly think everyone else’s art is worth supporting, but I’m just a big old fraud who risks exposure at every turn? Look at me! But not too closely, or you’ll see the cracks.

What makes this quandary even more ridiculous is that my life has been shaped by random kindness at every turn. Pretty much every job or gig I ever had has come from someone going: ‘Oh, my place is hiring, I’ll put in a word for you.’ ‘Oh, we need some writers, you could try out for the gig.’ ‘Oh, I know a small press publisher, your book might be perfect for them, I’ll put you in touch.’ From someone connecting with me on Facebook or Twitter or yes, even LinkedIn, wanting to hire me. A huge proportion of my work comes on personal recommendations: I can’t tell you how many emails I get that start ‘I was given your name by…’

And none of my current books – which I love working on and which give me enormous, visceral joy, even if only 10 people ever read them – would ever see the light of day without my little bunch of supporters, who selflessly give their time and enthusiasm (and sometimes their very, very detailed notes) to make them better stories and get them out there. And who always seem happy to do so, and who hopefully get something enjoyable out of the process as well: whether it’s an early peek at the books, or just the satisfaction of helping, or the knowledge that they genuinely contributed: it might be my name on the cover, but there’s some of them in the contents.

So my point – maybe? Do I even have one? – is that not only should we be more open to the idea of asking for help, and receiving it when offered, and also being as generous as we can when others are doing the asking – recognising that there’s something to be gained from being either end of that equation.

But also that even the smallest of acts have ripples that can spread, the lightest of connections can blossom – a one-off interaction a decade ago might see someone offer you their home when you need it. Who knows? (You might never need it. But isn’t just that very possibility somehow wonderful?) And that that most of us already benefit more from everyday kindnesses than we realise, and we should celebrate that fact more often.

[This post originally appeared in an edited version on darkdates.org]

Writer's Resolutions You Might Just Keep

Ah, the heady feel of a new year, when you can leave all of last year’s mistakes behind you and emerge as some shiny, productive, improved version of yourself. At least until the second week in January, when it all seems a bit too much like hard work, the weather is bloody miserable, your next holiday is months away and what was wrong with the old you, anyway? So while I couldn’t resist the urge to add to the cacophony of New Year’s Resolution pieces, I hope at least these are some tips that will last you through the year…

Read lots, do little

This time of year you can find a million pieces of advice online about making this the year you write that novel, finish that screenplay, Become A Writer or whatever, and lots of that advice is really useful. But not all of it will work for you – and nothing will crash your good intentions faster than trying to implement a rigorous schedule of multiple new habits all at once. Pick a few small changes to start with – you’re more likely to stick with them and see results. You can always add more later.

Pick the bits that work…

Just because a whole programme or course doesn’t suit you, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. I’ve done The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron several times during my life, and always find it a useful jumpstart to stalled creativity. But I’ve never managed to complete the ‘no reading’ part of it successfully and one of the main components, the morning pages (where you journal at the very start of your day), has never worked for me. While I have learned that journaling is a useful tool, I’ve also realised that, as a chronic insomniac, an extra half hour in bed does me more good than any early morning creative exercises.

But be open to what that might be...

One of the reasons I like books about writing is they often throw up ideas or exercises that I wouldn’t ever think of – and, more than that, that I would normally run a mile from doing. But while you ultimately need to find techniques and habits that suit you, it’s worth at least trying things that might not initially appeal, whether it’s reading your work aloud, or going on an ‘artist’s date’ – the very act of stepping outside your comfort zone can be useful in itself.

Ignore any rules about ‘real writers’

‘Real writers write every day’ is probably the most common, but these come in many hues. ‘Real writers can’t stop writing’, ‘real writers will always find time to write’, blah, blah, blah. When in fact plenty of ‘real’ writers (if you are judging ‘realness’ in terms of success, which is pernicious in itself) only write for part of the year, or take long breaks between books, or find that life occasionally derails them just as much as it does other people.

Don’t wait until you have the time

All of that said, looking at my writer and would-be writer friends, I think the biggest stumbling block is the fallacy that you will be a writer one day, just not now. You’ll do that first draft when you’re on holiday, or when you take a sabbatical, or even just when work gets a bit easier. I wasted three years between books waiting for the ‘right time’: in the end, my next novel was written in 15 minute bursts, time snatched out of busy days in a demanding job. Don’t feel like writing needs a lot of time and ceremony – you really don’t need to put aside hours and hours to do it. Sure, you might benefit from doing a writer’s class or going on a writing retreat, but don’t keep waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to arrive, or you might be a year down the line and still not have written a word.

Stop being scared of the title, ‘Writer’

OK, this is a personal one to me, but it’s my own bête noire and it’s something I am determined to beat this year. Because, despite the fact that I got my first story published over 20 years ago, I have written for a dozen publications, I have won several writing competitions, have 8 books and 2 plays under my belt and have, in one way or another, been making my living as a wordsmith for the last decade and a half, just because I’m not on the bestseller lists I shy away from the word ‘writer’. I get nervous and fumble my answers if people ask what I do, or about my books, playing it down so that they don’t think I am bragging or laying claim to a title that only belongs to more talented, more famous and more successful people. Well, in 2017: screw that. I am writer, hear me roar…

[Edited and updated from a piece that originally appeared on darkdates.org

Talking Christmas...

In which I blether on about all things Christmas at Alba in Bookland:
http://www.albainbookland.com/2016/12...

Round up of the year

Reminding myself that not everything has been terrible in 2016 with a round up of lovely reviews for Angel Falls and Bridesmaid Blues:

https://darkdates.org/2016/12/01/2016...

Favourite things...

Talking about my favourite things over at Sincerely Book Angels: http://sincerelybookangels.blogspot.c...