L.C. Fenton's Blog, page 4

When exactly are you a “success”?

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on what it would take for me to consider myself a success. It could be the less than overwhelming response to my last book or the approach of a large numbered birthday, but there has been an unusual amount of navel gazing. If I don’t figure this out shortly, I’m likely to run into something hard and its going to hurt. I don’t do a lot of the angst-filled woe-is-my-life thing generally, so it could just be that I’m not that good at it, but I can’t figure out exactly when or how I could get to the exact spot where I nod my head sagely, decide that I have made it and have a lengthy lie down. If it’s money earned, how much? If it’s book sales, how many? There’s really no end point. Number of books published? What did the last one do?

Lying down is something that I do well (which could be another reason for the aforementioned issues with success) but even so, I have trouble picturing myself relaxing, job done. And this is from someone who has envisioned multiple battle scenes between imaginary creatures with barely a passing sweat. I’ve jumped a few hurdles – I got an agent and a publishing deal – but even then, that’s not quite enough. The agent didn’t sell either of my books and even with a publisher, there is no guarantee of sales. Like a desperate miner panning for gold, I’m hoping the next one will be the one to make it (or the one after that possibly). It’s the hope that keeps you going and the fact that there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. But what if I stopped chasing success? It would do away with the nagging feelings of disappointment when things don’t go as I envisioned, but would that just be accepting failure? If there is no hunger (or more superficially the ability to haul out some actual accomplishments when meeting people at parties) is there a reason to get out of bed in the morning, other than small children bouncing on my head?

It was suggested to me by someone recently that maybe I could write a non-controversial, sweet, formulaic novel and possibly make some decent sales. My immediate reaction was NO! Absolutely not! but then I thought about it some more. There is nothing wrong with me doing that, it’s not like I have delusions of grandeur, but deep down there is a fear that even if I did that, sold myself to the devil of commercialism, it still might not sell. And that would leave me in the completely untenable position of having nothing else to blame. I need to hold on to my excuses, along with the idea that I’d rather write something I find interesting than solely for the money. But between you and me? I’d write anything if it was certain to be another Fifty Shades and I defy you to find another writer who’d disagree.

Filed under: books, publishing, success, writing Tagged: agents, commercialism, literary agent, publishing, success, writing

Something odd is happening…

I thought I knew what I liked when it came to music. There’s some variety there: I nod along to eighties classics, raise a hand to nineties house, shout along to noughties girl power ballads and attempt to rap with Iggy (I like to think I’m fancy too). Given my husband’s musical taste stopped in the late eighties and is limited to ACDC, U2 and Guns n’ Roses, I felt it was my responsibility to keep up to date with current music trends for the sake of my kids’ musical education. I felt I had succeeded when watching the school Kindy to Year 2 disco, where my boys were right at home and grooved along with the girls to the latest hits played by the DJ.

There has been a recent, very troubling development though. I’d like to say I could trace it back to my childhood and the deviant tastes of my parents, but it was the odd humorous/folk musings of Harry Neilsson or Welsh tenor Harry Secombe that was played with alarming regularity in my formative years. Frankly, I’m surprised I turned out as normal as I did, given the number of times I heard “Put the Lime in the Coconut”, which contains the very misogynistic lyrics “you’re such a silly woman”. I’d like to say we’ve come a long way, but I’ve seen music videos in the last decade and I think it’s gone backwards. There’s nothing like an 80′s retro set on MTV to make you realise how G-rated those videos we grew up on were. The clothes might have been appalling, but at least they were there.

But back to the point of my post – I think I’ve been dreading actually admitting it and have been beating around the bush for the whole post. It started with some harmless and seemingly ironic banjo playing by the bearded hipsters in Mumford & Son. But it didn’t stop there! A few more songs entered my library that had a similar sound. I then thought, how bad would it be if I admitted that I injured my knee dancing to Dolly Parton? “Nine to five” is very catchy. Slowly, but surely, the creep had begun. Then tonight, watching Jimmy Fallon, it hit me in the face like a wet salmon straight from the river: I was nodding along and admiring the cowboy-ness of a band called Florida Georgia Line. For a moment, I was outside my body looking in, disbelievingly. If I was enjoying country music, did that make me a country music fan? Who am I…

Filed under: aging, country music, music, parenting Tagged: country music, music, parenting

The Perks of Aging

I’ve been reading a bit of YA (young adult) and NA (new adult) at the moment, as my current WIP(work in progress) (that was the last of the acronyms, I promise) is YA, so it gets me in the head space and also allows me to see what’s out there. I enjoy the genre, though it tends to be the exception, rather than the rule, unless its Dystopian. I love a good world-gone-bad/struggle against the powers-that-be  book. The problem for me is I’ve been an adult for a long time and my recollection of my teens and early twenties are nothing like in these books. On more than one occasion, I’ve rolled my eyes and scoffed loudly.

I remember the confusion and the acute embarrassment stemming out of what now seems fairly minor occurrences. I also remember being crippled with self-doubt and covering it as best I could with some fairly spectacular bravado. I had boyfriends and I fell in love, but I had no perspective to judge how important they were. To be honest, my perspective on most things was lacking. I went from experience to experience with no real goal or idea where I was heading. The entire time was chaotic.

I knew I was a pretty girl, but I didn’t ever grasp where exactly I sat on the scale. I wasn’t like the gorgeous model types, too short and rounded no matter how I starved myself. You can’t diet yourself tall and lanky. I was smart, but not brilliant enough to be one of the intellectual girls. So what was I? I never found where I fit and always felt I was chasing after a label that I wasn’t really good enough for. What I didn’t realise is that no one does, because the whole thing is illusionary.

Now I’m at the stage where the beauties are all much younger and career accomplishments I used to chase are obsolete. I’m no longer comparing myself to other women and can celebrate their accomplishments without feeling myself lacking. Compliments about appearance go with the mostly unspoken caveat of “for your age”. To be honest, it’s kind of liberating to not be trying to find a label anymore. I can finally relax and not worry about whether or not I’m attractive, because no one is looking at me like that any longer. Now when I’m walking down the street, the only thing I’m getting judged on is my parenting.

 

Filed under: aging, new adult, writing, young adult Tagged: aging, new adult, writing, young adult

Confessions of infidelity (not mine!)

Having written a book about infidelity, it is amazing how many people have approached me with stories of their own or others close to them. One of the commonalities, amongst all the differences in who, how and where, is that their partners were usually blindsided. Whether it was the husband or the wife who went looking for something outside their marriage, when they announced they were leaving, their partners had no idea it was coming.

For anyone who is married or in a serious relationship, this is obviously scary. While we like to think that we know our partners and how everything is rolling, it seems that the people who were on the receiving end also thought this and were wrong. You can never know what chance encounters or events conspire to leave yourself or your partner open to the suggestion of others. Maybe it has something to do with our age, as most people I’m chatting with are around the same age as me, nearing forty with all the kids at school, but a lot of marriages are breaking down. When I ask why, partly for research and mostly because there might be something to learn from it, the reasons seem to be something that is resolvable (he/she never listened to me) or that was present from the beginning of the relationship (I don’t like his friends/family). No one has said because they fell madly in love with someone else, though a someone else is generally there in the background.

Given the level of difficulty managing new partners and extra children of blended families, especially around holidays, you’d have to really want out to put yourself through the aggravation and negotiation stretching for years ahead. Which begs the question – was the choice of partner wrong in the beginning or do people change? Or does what we want out of relationships change over time and if your partner doesn’t flow in the same direction is it largely inevitable that you will one day look across the table and feel nothing but the desire to flee? Maybe the couples who stay together are mostly lucky, and any smugness felt at not getting divorced has less to do with any conscious decisions you have made, but that you were fortunate that events outside your control went in your favour. There, but for the grace of God, go all of us.

Filed under: relationships, writing Tagged: divorce, infidelity, writing

Goldfish Guilt

This week I nearly killed the goldfish. His name is Boots, named by a few years ago by a child in the thick of Dora the Explorer fever. Being someone who grew up with a variety of pets, I understand that pet deaths are mostly inevitable, though sometimes due to carelessness. The most striking example of this from my childhood was the short-lived Yabby the yabbie (a small crustacean)  who lasted exactly one change of water in the tank. While it was great that my brother was so proactive cleaning it out, he forgot that Yabby was a saltwater creature, not a freshwater one. In case you had any doubt, it matters.

So why do I feel particularly guilty about Boots? Well, Boots is a survivor - he outlasted his original companion Dora, who went off exploring into the sky on week one, then Tico and Benny (the golden snails who were supposed to clean the tank) and a much later companion Swiper, who lasted a couple of months.  He’s been through so much over the years, and I really sort of bonded with him. He watches me in the kitchen and begs against the side of the tank for me to come and drop the manna from heaven. I don’t really expect the child who “owns” him to actually feed him, so I have really assumed responsibility for it. And I forgot. For I don’t know how many days. He was limply flapping around, barely moving. I thought he was gone. And that was when I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I sprinkled those fishy smelling flakes to his gaping little mouth.

This week I’ve been assuaging my guilt by nursing him back to health. Today, he was almost back to his old perky self, flipping his tail around with only a hit of dorsal fin droop. In my guilt spiral, I flirted with releasing him into the wild, where he wouldn’t be adversely affected by an inattentive owner and could seek out his own food. Then I realised what a ridiculous though that was – a goldfish in the wild? Surely it would last mere moments. We keep creatures in our houses that are completely reliant on us, bred to be unable to survive on their own. They are as reliant on us as we are on technology, helpless if it were taken away. Without my phone, computer, tablet or more basically, dishwasher, washing machine, etc I too would struggle. I am Boots.

Filed under: relationships, Uncategorized Tagged: goldfish, guilt, pets

The Ill Winds of Rumour

I seem to be on a bit of a roll – first secrets and now rumours – but it is particularly topical, given my day today. Luckily for me, I wasn’t the one being talked about, but there’s nothing to stop it happening to me too, or anyone really. The facts were scanty but the words being thrown around were worryingly harsh.

When your kids go to the nearby public school, you encounter people regularly on a social level that are different to you in many ways – race, religion, ideas on how to raise kids and the importance of vegetables. Though I have to admit, where I live doesn’t have a vast amount of racial and religious offerings on the school smorgasbord, I think this makes the small differences seem far larger. The people being talked about would have a fairly similar social and educational background to me and work in traditional fields. So far, so good. They went through what seems to be a bad divorce though and I’m not sure if this is where the trouble started or if something had happened prior to this, but of the many people talking about them, not a good word was said about either. And that’s enough to make other people who might otherwise have been friendly, stay away.

Obviously, getting divorced is harrowing and unpleasant and it is the rare person who is able to set aside their weapons and endure it with grace. The people around them may only see the worst side, particularly when the former spouses collide in public and small children are involved and emotions high. Because most people will not be taken into their confidence of both, they know one side or the other or merely observe the strained relationship and come to their own conclusions. This, I think, is where the worst of the rumours start. Not being close to either party, there is no obligation to hold back and with each subsequent retelling over the day, the details became more scandalous. What is worse is although I saw the evolution of the rumour and recognised that the lack of detail was getting filled in too quickly to have had any verification done, I had to keep a firm hold of the part of me that really wanted to join in. Why, when I knew I had nothing to base it on, did I want to contribute something? I gave myself a mental spanking, but I’m still thinking about it and whether I have been on the receiving end of similar treatment but just don’t know about it. To write means that you expose parts of yourself, cleverly hidden amongst other details in the storyline of course, and you never know what people are going to assume about you after reading your books. There is no way to prevent it – even if you hide out in your home people will still talk. If what people say about you is none of your business, why should you still have to deal with the fall-out?

 

 

 

Filed under: relationships, writing Tagged: divorce, rumours, writing

Secrets

Secrets – is there a good point to them? In light of the desire now to spew every thought you ever have into the ether, should we even have them or should we relinquish all control to the greater knowledge base that is the internet, to be lost in the vast swelling vortex of information? I think almost everyone has something deep within themselves that they never want other people to know. Tonight I told someone something I thought I would take silently past my deathbed and into the grave. Despite what they tell you in movies and books, it didn’t feel good or cathartic. I wish I hadn’t said anything, because it’s now out there and I have no control over it anymore. Though to be honest, there were five of us who knew and now there are seven, so realistically not much has changed. The five who knew though, would never have said anything, though there has been the odd fluttering conversation around it a couple of times over the years. The new two? Who can tell what they will do with it.

I don’t feel brave, having spoken. I fell vulnerable and sick. Why exactly is talking about things the answer? Nothing has changed and nothing can be changed. If I don’t feel better, the people I spoke to certainly don’t. I was asked a direct question, and I didn’t lie. But should I have? What is more important – a truth that can only harm or a lie that will function as a Band-Aid, covering it all over like a faux skin-coloured piece of plastic?

Filed under: Uncategorized

Twitter – still a mystery

As part of my ongoing reluctant attempts at marketing, I’ve become more active on Twitter. This is a social media platform I didn’t really get but I can say that days and weeks later I am nearing 100 followers and still have no idea what I’m doing or why. I know if I googled it, I could have endless websites telling me the answer but I’m too lazy and my brain is full. I blame my son for telling me constant useless information about Minecraft, which is taking up too much space. People’s names and birthdays have already dropped out, and now my brain is clearing space by nudging out the more important stuff, like the “whys”. Clearly, just knowing I have to turn up to a freezing oval at the crack of dawn with strangely dressed and protesting small boys is enough. If I thought about the why, I’d still be snuggled up in bed in my pyjamas sound asleep, like all rational people. I’d also know why my husband likes to watch so many varieties of people moving balls around on grass, rather than leave him to it and doing something more productive, like blogging or reading lovely books about alpha male alien cyborgs who turn into wolves while handcuffing beautiful women (who don’t know they’re beautiful, despite being told regularly) to beds or posts or other random furniture.

I’m just at the end of a particularly good series about alien vampires (excellent combination) though the phrase “internal muscles clenching” is used with alarming frequency. Part of me hopes he eats her in the end, but I know it’s fairly unlikely. Still the instance on a happily ever after (HEA in industry-speak) really limits your anticipation of the ending. If you know its going to end happily, then you know the main couple will end up together, most likely at the end of a lengthy heart to heart. This might be sacrilege, but sometimes I’d like to be surprised! Not all the time, but every so often, just to keep things interesting. It would be great to get some authors together and draw straws on who has to write a crazily unexpected ending. I’d be more than willing to contribute.

Filed under: books, writing

Betrayed by my (ex) favourite author

I was in denial for the last two books, but can deny my ire no longer. I’m pissed, feeling let down by someone I’ve invested so much time, money and emotional energy in. I loyally stuck it out to the end of the series, but months later, I’m still feeling betrayed. How could she do this to me?

You might wonder why I’m still bearing a grudge, after all, it’s not a new thing. Rarely does a series stay gripping until the end. The last book is usually a fairly large let down and for true fans only. The thing is, this series (which I’m not mentioning the name of) was good for nine books before it started to whiff. If you can write nine good ones, surely you can write another three that don’t completely suck? Apparently not.

The reason I’m writing about this is because Amazon kindly sent me an email, rubbing in the fact that I’ve bought so many of her books, by suggesting I might like her new one. I have to say, it did look good. But dammit! I’m still cranky at you (CH) for taking me for a ride on the last books you wrote, which were clearly phoned in to finish out your contract. I swore on the last page of the last book that I would never purchase one of yours again! But then, reading the blurb of the new one, I started to remember all the good times we had, and I’ll admit, I started to waver…

Now I’m conflicted – I’ll probably enjoy it if I read it, but then there’s the principle of the thing. But am I being too harsh? You will never get everyone to like your material and you can only write what feels true for you. I think this is why I’m not good at writing romantic declarations. With the exception of my first boyfriend at sixteen (who was American), all my other significant relationship have been with almost non-verbal Australian men. Oh well, at least there’s still the spin-off TV series…

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Beach Holiday

Sand, sand and more sand. I love the beach but would love it more if it stayed where it is supposed to be, which is picturesquely on the actual beach and not in my kindle, ears and sheets. Small children are magnets for sand and even after a thorough rinsing, seemingly retain it by the handful, cleverly stashed somewhere on their little person, only leaving them when they climb into bed with you where the magnetic property disappears and you’re left to exfoliate while you sleep. I woke up yesterday, thoroughly encrusted, my night cream having acted like glue. It made for a spectacularly romantic moment with my husband, who made a small “eep” of fear when he opened his eyes to my gloriously glamorous self, salt-encrusted hair reaching for the sky and aforementioned skin covered with sand looking like I’ve half-turned into a crocodile.

There is something quite enjoyable about still being able to startle a long standing partner. Sure, it’s not the romantic, “I love you so much I want to consume you (in a non-Hannibal Lector sort of way)” but not many couples I know still have that. Strangely enough, the ones that did are largely divorced now and fighting over custody of the soup tureen. Fear and laughter can make a glue that, like sand in the bed and night cream, may  not be particularly comfortable, but can still hold a relationship together.

Filed under: relationships