Jan Carson's Blog, page 14

Ten things I learned at the Festival of Faith and Writing

The Festival of Faith and Writing is over for another two years. I’m off to Chicago in the morning with an enormous bag of recently purchased books and the feeling that I’ve just been steamrollered with words. It’s been a great few days. I’ve met some wonderful people, heard some great readings and a few pretty mediocre readings and been given an awful lot to think about. Here’s ten things I learned from my time at Calvin.

Everyone in the world loves Flannery O’Connor. She is basically the Marilynne Robinson of dead writers. This is my favourite FC-themed quote of the conference, “is your fiction violent and sort of strange and references God in some weird way? Then, it’s like a Flannery O’Connor story.”
I thought science fiction was my least favourite literary genre. Now, I know it’s actually memoir.
95% of the entire American population is currently writing a lifestyle blog. The other 5% are thinking about starting one but can’t decide which cool pun to use for a name.
I really ought to give Chekhov another chance.
Also Kafka.
There is a physical limit to how many granola bars a person can consume in lieu of an actual plate-based meal.
I thought I wasn’t a Zadie Smith fan. Actually I am. Quite a big fan.
When given the opportunity to partake of a six hour road trip with complete strangers it is both wise and appropriate to jump at the chance. People who attend literary festivals are by default nice people, (already thinking of at least fifteen exceptions to this rule).
Trying to accomplish actual creative writing at a literary festival is like trying to do Pilates in the middle of the London marathon.
George Saunders once drove a deliver truck for a fried chicken joint.

On meeting your heroes and not being an idiot.

I don’t have the best track record with meeting famous people I greatly admire. There was that one time I talked to Jon Snow for almost half an hour before I realised he wasn’t my friend Heather’s dad and that it was the TV I recognised him from, rather than Heather’s living room. Also the time I sat next to Patti Smith without realising I was sitting next to Patti Smith, the infamous being mocked by Thom Yorke on the steps of Westminster story and the time I dropped a burrito on Neil Hannon’s foot. I am also reasonably reluctant to meet my heroes because most people I know who’ve managed to do this have confessed that their special person was pretty ordinary and a little disappointing in the flesh. (This, I must be clear, was not in any way true that one time, circa 1996, when I met veteran local football commentator Jackie Fullerton and had a cup of tea in his house and maybe a biscuit too). For the purpose of avoiding idol-related disappointment I fully intend to run like the clappers in the opposite direction if I ever get a chance to meet Dylan, Charlie from Casualty or Marilynne Robinson. (Flannery O’Connor and Agatha Christie are dead and therefore no longer pose a threat). I’ve had plenty of practice in doing this having turned heel and dashed off in the opposite direction when I chanced upon Stuart “Belle and Sebastian” Murdoch loitering in the corridors of the Ulster Hall, and once, albeit a very long time ago, burst into tears and left the venue when your man from Del Amitri said I could come backstage for a chat.

Today I had the opportunity to meet one of the people who has most influenced my writing, impacted my thinking and generally inspired me to keep persevering with books. While I might, in my over-awed enthusiasm, have threatened to handcuff him and drag him back to Belfast with me, I think for the most part I behaved reasonably normally. He did a little better than this. Tonight’s reading from Tenth of December was one of the best readings I’ve ever been party to. Both interview/discussions I sat in on today were practical, insightful and above all else, extremely humble. Also, I noticed that he signed everyone’s book with an extra personal little flourish and there was a really long line of people waiting to get there books signed. What a man! Here for all those, unfortunate enough not to have spent their day in the company of George Saunders are ten wise things he said today. I could have written about 50 more. He really is some pup.

“Whatever you have is sufficient” – write the story you can write and stop trying to write like someone else because your readers can tell when you’re writing something which isn’t truly you.
“A short story is a box that we go into to be stimulated.” – if your reader is bored with the story, no matter how well-written it is, you’ve essentially failed as a writer.
“My method might be strange, but my stories have the same old intention: the heart in conflict with the self.” – there’s no difference between the themes in a Chekhov short story and the themes explored by an extremely experimental Saunders story, it’s the method of exploring these themes which is different.
“Failure for me would be to put out stories that are just like all the other stories.” – there’s too much fear around what’s marketable, trending etc. Writers shouldn’t concern themselves with this when they sit down to write. (see point 1. for further thoughts on this).
“Start writing with the barest notion of an idea.” – it was so liberating to hear another writer admit that they have no idea where they’re going plot or character-wise when they begin a story. I can’t write any other way but this and it’s great to know I’m not the only one. Saunders has gone years redrafting short stories to get them to a point where he finds them believable.
“The reader does not like mere recklessness.” – don’t be obtuse and off the wall just for the sake of shocking your reader. The writer has a responsibility to deliver a good story and experimenting with form, language or plot should always be secondary to, and ideally partner with, good strong writing.
“Writing is play like football is play, sometimes you get the crap kicked out of you.”  – if you’re not essentially enjoying your writing, even when it’s a difficult process, then something has gone wrong.
“Your first draft is usually mockery. As you revise your characters and your reader comes up in your estimation.” – the more specific definition you give to characters and their situations the closer you get to the character and the easier it is to empathise with them rather than stand in judgment. The reader is also turned off by a derisive, overbearing authorial voice and will feel alienated if your characters are only objects of mockery.
“Your voice is often realised by cutting.” – The distinction in a writer’s voice will often emerge through pairing back rather than over writing. Always try to get your sentence across in the most succinct manner possible whilst conveying everything you need to say.
“If I can’t make literature out of this then I can’t make literature.” – if you can’t see the stories in your every day life then it’s likely that you don’t know what a story is or how to create one. Start with the things you encounter every day before you try tackling grandiose themes.

Yes, you at the back, desperately signalling for the microphone.

I’m in Michigan. I’ve never been in Michigan before. I can’t think why I would, under normal circumstances spend any time in Michigan, (this judgment is based entirely upon the hundred or so miles of Interstate I saw between Chicago and Grand Rapids, the generic motel I’m staying in and the surrounding strip mall, these being the only parts of the state I’ve had opportunity to see so far). I’m sure it’s a fine place to live and wear plaid shirts and cultivate mid-nineties style facial hair, (also based on my limited experience of Michigan).

I’m here for Calvin College’s every other year, (is this bi-annual or does that mean twice a year, I’m never quite sure?), Festival of Faith and Writing: three jam-packed days of readings, lectures, seminars and workshops on the theme of faith and literature. So far it’s been excellent if a little overwhelming. I saw Zadie Smith. She blew my socks off. I saw Tobias Wolff and his wife, Catherine Wolff; bother were very good. It has been wonderful to be neither a reader nor a literary programmer for a change, to merrily sit back and enjoy watching punters get lost between seminars, enormous registration queues snake round the car park and technology fail as technology invariably does at every arts event i’ve ever been party too. Not my circus, not my monkeys this week and it’s very refreshing.

I have also been delighted to see the stateside literary event attracts the same breed of post-reading question asker as we have in Belfast. These people seem to speak some universal language of weirdness which translates easily on both sides of the Atlantic. Having had to deal with more than my fair share of strange questions at literary events, (both as a reader and a microphone holder), here’s my guide to questions which will invariably be asked after every reading or author talk. I do not, as yet, have a partner guide as to how to deal with these questions and I fear that, “shut up and pass the microphone to a sane person,” is not an appropriate come back.

The glaringly obvious question : “So do you like writing then?”
The, not really a question, question : “So, once I went to Vegas on vacation with my wife, who’s not actually my wife any more, long story, I’ll tell you another time. We had the most awesome weekend playing black jack and we saw Elton John perform at that hotel that’s shaped like a pyramid. It was, like super hot, and everything but of course there’s air-conditioning in all the hotels so it didn’t really bother us at all. I’d totally go back to Vegas with my wife -different wife, another long story- it was one of the best vacations I ever had. Anyway, I saw in your book one of your characters was from Vegas.”
The, what are your influences, question : variations include “what were/are your influences as a child/woman/person writing crime fiction/in Ireland/with a disability/right now?”
The I wasn’t paying attention to the other question askers/fell asleep and just woke up question : “So, what other writers have influenced your work. Oh, I’m sorry, the lady before me just asked that. Let me say it again in an only slightly different way and hope no one’s noticed I wasn’t paying attention.”
The, hey I am a writer too, question : “As a fellow writer of science fiction I totally understand where you’re coming from on the alien reference. When I was writing my book, which is about etc etc.”
The, what are you working on now, question : “Variations include can you write more books about the little kid with no arms in your first novel, I just loved that kid/are you still working on that mad idea you mentioned under duress at a similar Q and A session last time you read here/I hope your next book isn’t going to be historical fiction.”
The, we’re so glad you’re here but this isn’t really a question either, question : “Hi, John, my name’s Sandy. I just wanted to say that I loved your reading today and I have all your books and they’re all great, even the non-fiction one about the Cholera epidemic, though if I’m honest I prefer it when you do the short stories, but anyway thank you so much for coming here today. That’s all I really wanted to say. I’ll just sit down now.” (Sits down, still holding the microphone).
The, oh I don’t need a microphone, question : “Incomprehensible muffled noises, impossible to hear if you aren’t sitting right in front of the person asking the question followed by a long anticipatory pause.”
The, let me tell everyone present how much I know about the topic that you have chosen to write a book about, question : “Long-winded waffle, invariably including the words ‘dichotomy’ ‘aesthetic’ ‘synonymous’ and the name of at least one academic with a foreign-sounding name, mispronounced.”
The, just plain crazy, question : “So, Arthur Conan-Doyle’s interest in the paranormal was very much like the early 90s movie, Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze wasn’t it? Such a pity that Arthur Conan-Doyle never got to see Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze!”
The, i’m pretending to be an ordinary audience member but I’m actually the reader’s spouse/publisher/literary agent, question : “So, your book sounds fascinating. I’d sure like to get my hands on a copy. Where can I buy one?
The no one else is asking questions and either I can’t bear an awkward silence, or I work for the literary organisation hosting this event and therefore feel compelled to ask a question, question : “So, what are your influences?”

Postcard Stories April 2016:Week One

April 1st 2016

Bray

Gabriel DeRose

In the waiting room two old men are discussing onions: the cooking, eating and growing of onions. Mostly growing. This is Ireland proper and the old men’s voices are damp spoons stirring their vowels and staunch consonants to mud and butter as they roll the oniony chat around their mouths.

I want to talk onions too. I want to say, “I enjoy onions. I specifically like the paper bag feel of the onion’s skin as it peels from the bulb and the way the onion’s flesh is both luminous and cloudy when held to the light,” but I’ve never grown an onion and I’m not even sure if they bloom above the ground or below. I don’t even have a garden. Though perhaps I could lie; fabricate a vegetable patch and the desire to grow onions therein.

I look at the fingers of the old men, all gnarled up with age and holding and they are honest like carrots, like parsnips and other muck-birthed things. It is better, I understand, just to listen.

 

April 2nd 2016

Dublin Airport

Tiffany and McKenzie Stubbert

Your suitcase swimming through the security tunnel will pause for a moment beneath the scanner and click. The conveyor belt’s slow grind will hesitate for just long enough to catch a grey-grained image of all your holiday crap, jumbled up together like the inside of a glutton’s stomach.

Then, all the people lining behind you –who are, for the most part, strangers with their own suitcases- will crane their necks for an eyeful of your socks and pants and various electrical cords ghost-caught in all the negative shades of bruise. Your sandals and sunglasses and paperback novels skimming the screen’s surface like unborn children on hospital machines.

They will judge you then, these strangers with their holiday tans, and wonder what your house is like inside with the doors closed and the curtains drawn in upon themselves and all the strong lights silenced.

 

April 3rd 2016

Heathrow/Philadelphia

Alastair Block

Somewhere high above the Atlantic Ocean, objects in the overhead lockers shifted and when they arrived on the runway, wheels screeching against the tarmac, she reached up to retrieve her little, wheeled suitcase and found it had been replaced by an entirely different bag. This one was black where hers had been covered in a jolly, leopard-print design and bore the logo of an expensive fashion brand on its handle and once again, discretely, on its front.

Opening this bag she found a laptop computer, a daily planner, a series of carefully pressed business shirts and, amongst other things, details of a holiday apartment in an upmarket Florida resort.

“So,” she thought, “this is to be my life now,” and could not imagine how she’d fit into the tight-lined confines of it. But something had shifted in her, high above the Atlantic Ocean and she was done with running and other frantic pursuits; ready now for a grown-up change. She lifted her new life down –it had a retractable handle- and strode off purposefully in the direction of customs.

 

April 4th 2016

Gettysburg

Matt McIvor

The Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 was one of the last so-called spectator battles of the American Civil War. Expecting uniforms and fancy sword the locals packed picnics and settle around the edges of the battlefield waiting for the show to begin. They were not anticipating quite so many bloody deaths or the cannons, (which were dreadfully noisy), or the muskets, (which left inconvenient holes in their blankets and picnic rugs). After the battle noise subsided Abraham Lincoln stood up and said something important in a loudish voice, but with the microphone not yet invented, and over 100,000 bodies pressed between them, the locals heard virtually nothing of this address; only, that it was a particularly good one. “Next time,” they said, “we shall stay home and watch the battle on television, in the comfort of our own little home.” They were not done with war, only the nuisance of having it happen in their backyard.

 

April 5th 2016

Littlestown, Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Donaldson

We are a horse family. For as long as we can remember we have made horses and sold horses, kept horses and raced horses on brown, dirt tracks shaped like blunt rectangles. We have barns for these horses and the barns are painted yellow, as are our houses, and our sheds, and the pitched outhouses were keep our lawnmowers and golf equipment. All our buildings are painted yellow so we can remember where our empire begins and ends. We are a kind of kingdom with our barns and horses: bigger than a village but not yet large enough to call a town.

Last summer my brother painted his barn blue. He did this at night, with paint, while the rest of us slept. The next morning when we woke my grandfather said, “what the Hell, David?” and my father said, “what’s with the blue barn, Son?” and my brother said, “I just felt like a change.”

Six months later he was making cows for milk in his barn and all his sheds had turned blue in sympathy. Thankfully my brother’s buildings were on the edge of our empire. So we shifted our fences and said he was no longer one of us. We are a horse family. Our barns are yellow.

 

April 6th 2016

Baltimore

Tara McEvoy, Caitlin Newby and Padraig Regan

It looks very much like I have left my baby in a fried chicken joint.

You know what it’s like- you’re standing at the counter, pointing out the chicken leg you want, loading your pockets with little sachets of hot sauce and ranch, filling your cup at the soda fountain- you’ve only got two hands for all this doing so you set your baby on the floor for a minute, careful like, by the potato chips rack. And then you pay for your chicken and you get in your car and you drive home listening to Merle Haggard on the radio, maybe eating a leg or two on the way, tossing the picked off bones out your car window as you go. Then you get home and your belly is sleepy full from all the deep-fried dark meat so you go straight to bed still wearing your work socks and you wake in the night- somewhere just shy of five- with the fear like a lump tumour heaving in your gut that you might have left your baby in a fried chicken joint.

But no, thank the Lord, there she is, still strapped into the back seat of your Honda, Civic, pink-eyed from howling herself to sleep. It is just like that time you left your purse at the 7-Eleven and drove all the way back for it only to find it slipped between the driver’s seat and the handbrake. It is easily done, this sort of thing.

“See,” you tell yourself and your screaming baby, “I am not the world’s worst mother after all.”

 

April 7th 2016

Capitol Hill, Washington DC

Kristen Kernaghan

You parked your car somewhere on Capitol Hill. You were late for dinner. Not as late as I was, walking from Union Station in my blister shoes, but still running fast enough to muddle the streets between 8th and 12th. After dinner and stiff drinks, followed by looser drinks, you could not remember where you’d left your car and we walked the peculiarly clean streets of DC for a half hour or so; you, with your electronic key held aloft, click, click, clicking, waiting for your tail light to sing out to us through the gathering dark; I, with my blister shoes in hand, avoiding the places where the afternoon’s rain had collected in the sidewalk cracks like tiny lakes and rivers. And we talked quite honestly about everything. Later, I wondered if the DC streets had conspired to keep your car hidden for just as long as we needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Away we go (hopefully)

I’m sitting in Dublin Airport waiting for check-in to open. I have arrived five hours early for my flight just in case. I’m not entirely sure what this, “just in case” covers. It’s hardly rush hour in Terminal 2. I’ve triple checked all my tickets. I’m here on the right day/month/year. My passport is in date and it’s actually my passport. I have an ESTA. I have double print-outs of every single piece of travel documentation required for the next three weeks. I have a huge suitcase of books and a dozen draft copies of Belfast’s Tourism, Culture and Arts strategy. I think I’m pretty organised this time.

I have forgotten my lip balm but this seems like an entirely rectifiable situation. Even if there is no lip balm to be had in the entire US, if this is to be my worst travel disaster of the trip then I shall just get by with chapped lips. I’m reasonably sure I’m actually going to get to America this weekend but, (in light of last year’s travel apocalypse and that time I turned up one month early in Bristol Airport and the thirty six hour layover/flu disaster and various other on-the-road mishaps), I don’t want to jinx anything by being over-cofident.

So, let me just say, that if I make it out of the country tonight I will be flying to Baltimore to talk to some college students about Northern Irish literature, amongst other things, (politics, Liam Neeson, 1980’s confectionary), then I’ll be reading in Washington, DC, and trying to catch up with all the great people who live there, then I’ll be heading over to Madison, Wisconsin for cheese curds and quality time with the Lockes, up to Grand Rapids to hear George Saunders read and coerce him into coming to Belfast and finally, over to Chicago for a wee break. I’ll be blogging about my travels here and writing a daily Postcard Story recording my adventures. It’s going to be great. If I can just get out of Dublin Airport.

 

Talented Friends: Manuela, Stephen and Padraig

This post will feature a triple bill of talented people, doing a variety of talented things.I’m going to try not to gush because I’m awfully fond of all three of them.

It must be almost five years since I first met Manuela Moser and Stephen Connolly. The first thing I noticed about both of them individually, and later collectively, was the very high quality of their hair, (Manuela: French-style bob, Stephen: early-era Dylan mop), also they wore a lot of black which, at the time, having had limited experience with poets, I assumed was a kind of uniform. I remember sitting in the not-yet-defunct coffee shop of the Ulster Hall giving Stephen a, probably very patronising, pep talk about running literary events and everything he’d need to learn if he wanted to make The Lifeboat readings a success. At this stage the readings were still taking place monthly on the Belfast Barge, showcasing one up-and-coming poet beside a more established poet and producing a small pamphlet of new work. This was the era of cramped, sweaty rooms, pounds in a pint glass, Ben Maier and Charlie setting her hair on fire with a tea light. We were all young, (or at least younger). We loved words. We loved arguing about words and we mostly loved being around each other. Sometimes we couldn’t believe how lucky we were, or maybe we hadn’t quite realised yet. I’m pretty sure none of us thought this could last.

Fast forward four, maybe five, years and thanks to the hard work of Stephen and Manuela The Lifeboat is still sailing, albeit in a different, slightly more land-locked venue. We’re mostly all still here. Some people have gone overboard, (I’ve learnt about extended metaphors in the interim), other have joined. The Sunflower has become a kind of second home for great poetry in Belfast and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve stood at the back by the door and thought, “I really wish I could write like that,” as one poet after another devastates me with their ability to place exactly the right words next to each other. Stephen and Manuela have managed to make a good thing last and I want to salute them for all their hard work and enthusiasm. The Lifeboat has been much more than a reading series: it’s become a community for most of us, a rallying point in the midst of some terrible seasons and an unswerving example of what good writing should look like. The night I found out my job was ending I still went to The Lifeboat and mostly cried all night but it was the only place I wanted to be because I knew all the people who hold me together would be there. Anyone can host a reading series, it takes a pretty special pair to drive something this special.

Which brings me to this week’s developments. Manuela and Stephen have been working hard to make The Lifeboat even better than it already is. On Tuesday they launched their first publication as an independent press. They received no funding to do this. They are not beholden to anyone so all the creative decisions will be their own. All the money for this venture was raised by local people who love poetry and want to support new writers. The Lifeboat will fill a massive gap in the publishing industry here in Northern Ireland, providing young poets with an opportunity to see their work professionally published for the first time. It’s a kind of lifeline and also a defiant gesture in an arts scene which has been decimated by recent funding cuts. We’re not only writing great poems here in Belfast, we’re publishing them too and I couldn’t be prouder of Stephen and Manuela for the hard work they’ve put into this so far and the years of hard work, commitment and success I know they have ahead of them.

Last, but never least, I also want to commend Padraig Regan, whose pamphlet, Delicious is the first of The Lifeboat’s publications. Padraig is one of my favourite people in Belfast, for many reasons including fashion inspiration, wit, kindness and intricate knowledge of Holby City plot lines both past and present. He is also a blindingly talented poet. He writes the sort of poems you can actually taste. They’re visceral, wickedly funny and clever in a way which can only be fully understood if you actually know Padraig himself. Yesterday I spent a wonderful hour with a glass of wine in one hand and Delicious in the other and it is testament to Padraig’s writing that my first thought upon finishing the collection was, “I really must go and track down some Stilton.” Marks and Spencer’s should be paying Padraig to run their advertising campaign. These aren’t just poems about food. They’re almost edible poems about food and the sort of people who eat food. Delicious is on sale in No Alibis and online from www.thelifeboatbelfast.co.uk It’s bright pink so you can’t possibly miss it. It’s an amazing collection but more than this, it’s also a testament to what can be achieved with a great deal of talent and hard work. Some people were just born to be brilliant.

 

 

Things to bear in mind when you can’t stand still.

It’s been two weeks since the launch of “Children’s Children” and I’m having a sit down, the first full day off I’ve had since the book came out. It’s the end of the year for us in work and i’ve not really got any annual leave left to take so, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been madly juggling work, book promotion and all the other functional aspects of being a human being, (sleep, laundry, Holby watching). Let’s be honest, most writers don’t get paid enough to do anything but juggle. I’m knackered but i’ve been learning lots of important, how-to-keep-going-at-a-hundred-miles-an-hour lessons and I haven’t fallen over yet, (though I did get my shoe heel stuck between the cobbles in the Cathedral Quarter tree separate times on Tuesday alone). Here’s what I’ve learnt so far, no doubt I’ll be updating the list over the next few months.

Soluble Vitamin C is your friend- While I’ve not quite managed to cure my early morning sore throat/runny nose combo I’ve been successfully keeping it at bay since the second week of February. I fully understand that the minute I go on holidays I will be struck down by a mad dose of super flu.
You can’t be working in the cinema – You can’t answer emails, tweet, write articles or answer your phone in the cinema without incurring the wrath of all your fellow movie goers. Therefore the cinema is a good place to relax for a couple of hours. Therefore I have been to see an awful lot of movies in the last two weeks.
Never mind what Drew Barrymore says in Donnie Darko, the phrase “can I make you dinner and you don’t even have to talk to me?” is the most beautiful sentence in the human language. I have heard this multiple times in the last few weeks. I am a lucky girl.
After a week red lipstick becomes like paint stripper for tired lips.
It is possible to get blisters on the tops of your toes from too much standing/walking/being in high heels- (and, related to this point), it is perfectly acceptable to wear old boots/trainers/slippers right up the very second before you get photographed and equally acceptable to don the same pair of old boots/trainers/slippers two seconds after the photograph is taken.
Do not believe photographers who say, “no, of course it doesn’t look like you have five chins/strange arms/gorilla legs when posing in this super-awkwards, entirely contrived position.”
It is possible to survive for up to three days on nothing but coffee and Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches – it is not advisable.
The point at which your signature morphs from a semi-legible scrawl to a completely indecipherable squiggle is around 8 books in – you will, at this point stare at what you have done to your own book, and wish it was acceptable to use Tippex and start again. It is not acceptable to Tippex out your own signature. Book shops don’t like this at all.
When people stop you to say, “I just wanted to let you know that I read your book” be sure to quickly reply, “thank you so much,” before they get a chance to continue, “you’re a strange one, aren’t you?” or, “it’s a bit all over the place isn’t it?” or, worst of all, “it really reminded me of David Sedaris.” In doing this you will have clawed a compliment out of a possible David Sedaris comparison and you’ll be much more likely to be able to move swiftly on to safer conversation topics such as the weather and Colm Toibin’s novel, Brooklyn.
Remember that you cannot teleport between appointments – leaving a meeting in a flagship arts venue on one side of the city with only one minute before another appointment begins in a flagship arts venue on the other side of the city is not feasible, (even if you do have the use of a Belfast bike).

 

(Something tells me this won’t be the year I get round to reading Infinite Jest).

The Seven Day Mile

This is yet another very short blog to say a massive thank you to everyone who made the last seven days so much more than manageable. They say it takes a village to raise a child, I’ve learnt this week that it takes an entire city to launch a book.

For me this week has involved too many radio interviews to recall, trying to keep reading even as my throat succumbs to a horrible cold, approximately four pints of soluble Vitamin C, a heck of a lot of photographs and rapid outfit changes in odd places, much dashing, much diary juggling, much smiling and a little crying, (in a good way). Trying to answer emails while walking/eating/posing for photographs. Wobbling along the fine line between overwhelmed and incredibly excited as I read all the lovely emails appearing in my inbox. Trying and mostly making a hash of trying to remember everyone’s name and how its spelt. Two kilos of gingerbread and a further kilo of shortbread, plus a Caramac revival. Also a lot of trying, and failing, to keep my hair under control in blowy, outdoor photographs, (most notably under the shipyard cranes where I was told I looked windswept but not in a mysterious Wuthering Heights-esque fashion). Dealing with the odd feelings which arise and settle somewhere between pride and complete horror when you see things you’ve written beginning to appear in newspapers and journals and know that people are actual going to read them. A strange pain in my calves which might be exhaustion and might just as easily come from spending an uncharacteristically large proportion of the week in heels. This has been my week. It’s been a head melt and a complete blast. I’m knackered but very happy.

For you, the wonderful individuals who make up my community, this week has involved, baking hundreds of little biscuit people, decorating dozens of paper dolls, standing on tables and holding lamps at odd angles to get the light right, taking millions of photographs and not even getting cross when I blink in 99% of them, filling my freezer with home-cooked meals, turning up early, staying late, moving chairs/tables/elderly people around, sending encouraging emails, texts, incredible letters, blogs, postcards and tiny little hand-crafted children’s children, constantly placing coffee/wine/water bottles into my hand, driving me places, driving biscuits places, keeping the laughter from succumbing to exhaustion. Being wonderful. Hooray for all you. You’ve made this week very special. Now I sleep.

This Week

Apologies in advance for what will most likely be an extremely generic blog. It’s been a busy few weeks and only looks to be getting busier. By Friday I’ll have clocked in eight radio interviews in the last few weeks and I’ve lost count of how many questions about writing habits and which authors have most influenced my work I’ve answered in the last wee while. I’m coming down with the cold and feeling the pinch of juggling a day job and all the business that goes along with launching a new book. I’m looking forward to a very far off point in the future when I can go to bed with Iplayer and a stack of books and catch up with my own soul.

BUT, tiredness and sniffly nose aside I don’t think I’ve been this excited at the beginning of a new month in a very long time. Children’s Children is in the shops. Thanks to the wonderful Karen Vaughan it looks great. I have readings a plenty already booked in for the Spring and Summer and a fabulous collaboration with the visual artist, Orla McAdam in the pipeline. I’m off to the States in a few weeks time and have a couple of top secret, very exciting announcements to make towards the end of Spring. It’s all good and actually starting to feel like the last few year’s hard work has been worth it after all.

This coming Thursday (March 3rd), we’ll be launching my short story collection, Children’s Children in the Crescent Arts Centre at 6:30pm. They’ll be a short reading, delicious biscuits, (thanks to my mum and the legend that is, Hilary Copeland), wine and music from the wonderful Hannah McPhillimy. I’d love it if you came along. It has taken an enormous community of people to translate these stories from little fledgling ideas into an actual book and I know it’s going to take an army of strong shoulders and wise heads to steer me through the next crazy season. So it only seems fitting that we celebrate this one together. You’d be so very welcome to come along on Thursday. You’d be even more welcome to bring a few friends. I can’t promise I’ll be wide awake for the whole evening, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy.

 

The Unlove List

It’s Valentine’s weekend and someone just stole my wheelie bin so here’s a list of things I really don’t love. I’ve taken the liberty of missing out the glaringly obvious, so you can take it for granted I’m still anti-U2, Turkish Delight and general injustice. There’s something awfully cathartic about a good old moan.

(You might want to listen to “I Don’t Love Anyone” by Belle and Sebastian whilst reading this blog).

Things I Do Not Love:

People who steal wheelie bins
Eddie Redmayne’s face
Markets
Russian Literature, (and before you ask, have I read Chekhov’s short stories? I have, and I didn’t much like them. Sorry).
Cats.
Dogs.
Pretty much every other animal with the exception of foxes, penguins and Shetland ponies.
People who save tables in coffee shops while their partner waits in line for the coffee so when you get to the end of the line there are no tables for you to sit at.
When the BBC move Casualty to accommodate Rugby/The Eurovision/Last Night of the Proms/other “supposedly” more important events.
Animated films. All animated films. You’re not going to convince me otherwise so please stop trying to make me watch Howl’s Moving Castle or Up!
When electric doors open so slowly you have to change your walking pace to avoid walking straight into the glass.
Cricket.
Magic.
Very small shops where, when you walk in it is only you and the shopkeeper and you feel embarrassed that you don’t want to buy anything, (this may be why I also don’t love markets).
Poems about trees.
Poems about hedges.
Poems about the wind in trees and hedges.
Weddings, if it is not me getting married.
The taste that is left behind in your mouth after you eat yellow or orange fruit pastilles.
People who walk, very slowly, two or three abreast on the pavement so there is no room to overtake them without stepping into the road and potentially causing a road traffic incident.
Ted talks.
Fizzy alcohol of all varieties, Prosecco being the worst offender.
People who find you standing on the edge of dance floors and refuse to believe you when you say you’re quite happy just standing around, nursing your glass of wine and not dancing.
Songs where the lyrics are a form of nonsense eg. Radio GaGa and I am the Walrus.
Skype. Mostly just Skype.