Try again fail better
Would you like the good news or the bad news first?
It won’t surprise you to hear that I am very much a ‘good news first’ type of woman… so – HOORAY – I am in excellent company on The Bookseller’s 2014 list of Rising Stars. I said it on Twitter but I’m going to say it here too…this was for The WoMentoring Project and so also belongs to each and every one of the ninety amazing women who offer their time and knowledge for free as mentors. It only exists because of them. Anyway, very lovely and especially to be on there with fellow Womentorers Sarah Savitt and Sarah Rigby (the project has a fair few Rising Star alumni too).
More good stuff…I’ll be appearing at Edinburgh International Book Festival event with Simon Van Booy on the 25th August. We’ll be talking love stories and ‘the calm violence of attraction’.
And the bad. 30kin35 ends today and I managed 13k-something so just under half what I’d hoped. My excuses are plentiful and creative: WoMentoring, being back in London and then at Lumb Bank teaching Arvon, the Thirst promotional ball starting to roll. These are all facts but also, honestly, I could have hit that target if I’d really wanted. The truth is I wanted to take time off to see friends, to cycle about Berlin, browse at Neukoln flea market, eat delicious torte (I’ve set up an Instragram called ‘Kerryeatsalot’ because cake this good deserves to be revered), to go rollerskating at the park that used to be an airport, get my hair cut like Japanese schoolgirl’s, have sweat run up my nose while downward dogging at ‘hot yoga’.
Guys I know, I know: you’re not angry you’re disappointed. But look, I have my second novel coming out in four weeks and that’s really (super, fucking, very etc.) exciting and a privilege but also a little (wee, tiny etc.) bit stressful. So I want to do things that make me feel happy. And it’s summer and I’m in Berlin and I want to enjoy that too. That’s not to say I’m slacking, as my gran would say, I’m ‘working my dogs off’ but I kind of felt I had enough going on.
So, I hang my head in defeat over 30kin35 but will now probably go and have a hullumi wrap in the sun unrepentant. It was useful though, I realised posting my daily wordcount motivated/shamed me into writing more than I ever usually would and that the whole thing helped me return to the story when I’d been away from it for a while.
In other news yesterday I found a whole box of old photo albums for sale at the market, full of family pictures, new born babies, birthdays and weddings. The writer magpie in me rejoiced but the more human part of me felt a bit sad to be honest as I wondered how they’d ended up there…except I suppose each photo represented a moment of life, something important to whoever took it. Anyway, they were beautiful and a bit sad and I looked at them for a long while in the sunshine trying to imagine who had taken such time with them. I’m going to make stories from them.
