And that was 2018...

I haven't done this for quite a while, so maybe it is time to revive the tradition!

BEST BOOK READ: Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins.  Completely transformative.  What a wise old owl he is.  

BEST FILM: The Right Stuff. Saw it two weeks before First Man and it was miles better in every respect.  Think I love Ed Harris...
BEST SONG: Ruby by Ray Charles.  
BEST MEAL: Tapas in Glasgow.
BEST THEATRE MOMENT: Manon at the Royal Opera House with the astounding Roberto Bolle (did I mention he liked my tweet?) and Jeeves and Wooster at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick  - a comedy masterclass!
BEST BALLET MOMENT(S): As above! And La Fille Mal Gardee in London.
BEST TV MOMENT: Gordon Buchannan and all the wonderful bears.  'Hey, bear!'
BEST SILLY MOMENT(S): Spending the day as a Welsh Dragon for European Day of Languages.
MOST EMOTIONAL MOMENT: Far too many really - it's my age!  Year 13 singing 'Time to Say Goodbye' at the end of Year concert and the sight of the burning Glasgow School of Art yet again...
BEST PURCHASE(S): New glasses!!! I can SEE!!!  My tartan coat. Patchwork fabric.  Lots of patchwork fabric...
BEST GIFT: My moon lamp and rather a lot of Archibald Knox pewter.
BEST NIGHT'S SLEEP: Edinburgh Travelodge - like a top!
BEST PLACE(S) VISITED: Melrose, Amsterdam
BEST CONCERT(S): Georgie Fame at the Sage. Yeah yeah!
BEST DECISION: Urban Writers' Retreat in Newcastle
BEST DISCOVERIES: Rhubarb and Ginger gin, Michael Collins, Landscape Patchwork.

BEST MOMENT(S): Directing the Sound of Music, Singing with the choir in Amsterdam, walking in Beatrix's footsteps in the Lakes, The Edinburgh Book Festival, Burne-Jones exhibition at the Tate...

Happy New Year!

There's no beating this Retreat!

It was my birthday last month.  One of those birthdays with the zero on the end which means you have to tick the next age box down when you take part in on-line surveys.  I was blessed with lots of cards, enough cake to start a patisserie and several bottles of rather nice gin...

And somewhere around the cusp of passing from my fourth decade into my fifth, I decided the time had come to do something mildly radical to shake myself out of the writing glums. Which is why I took myself off yesterday morning in a large room overlooking Pilgrim Street in Newcastle with other several people who I'd never met before to take part in an Urban Writers Retreat, my birthday present to myself.

Having run successfully in London for several years, the Urban Writers Retreat has made a little toe-hold in Newcastle upon Tyne and it offered special rates for its first three sessions.  It promised plentiful tea, coffee, cake and lunch and the opportunity to write without distractions from 11 in the morning till 5.30 surrounded by other people who were doing exactly the same.

And it did exactly what it said on the tin! After a few brief introductions, we launched straight into our own projects and after that hardly emerged except to retrieve some nice M&S sandwiches, carrot cake, oranges and (begone, temptation!) roasted pistachios from the central table, which was groaning under the weight of all the goodies.

The chairs were not desperately comfortable. The coffee could
have been warmer. And after a few hours, my extremities did begin to numb with cold.  But I had a big jumper, some fingerless glove/wrist warmer things and the view across the rooftops was spectacular - you could see for miles - especially as the November evening drew in and the Christmas lights came on.  And we typed as if our lives depended on it, completely oblivious to what was going on around us.

I'd decided to work on a Christmas story which ran aground last year amid much family illness and I managed to double the existing word count until my fingers finally froze and I admitted defeat with fifteen minutes left to go... retreating over the road to the Tyneside Cinema where my best friend was waiting in the warm with hot coffee to thaw me out!

Worth it? Every blinkin' penny! Although WHEN I return in the Spring, I will wear thermals and take a hot water bottle!

Remember Me?

I am still here.  And so is my unfinished novel. I could make excuses.  But you've heard them all before.  Just scroll down the page : look at how positive I felt last May that I'd be finished!  And then the Block arrived: the huge concrete mass of a Block which has left me feeling as if I cannot write at all.

I did do some new writing back in the summer when we visited a 'new' part of Scotland (for us - the people who live there have always known about it!) - visiting Dumfries and Galloway - discovering the delight that is Kirkcudbright.  We stayed in a tiny 4 roomed cottage with bats roosting in the eves and did very little except eat and read and walk in the rain.  But since then, there has been nothing.

I think about my characters often, and feel sad that they're stuck in limbo.  I feel like I abandoned them in their hour of need and suspect they may not want to work with me when I finally force myself to the keyboard again.  (There's a half-finished Christmas story as well.  I'm just not very good at commitment.)

I spent a snowy Saturday this week sorting out the wreckage of Scotch on the Rocks yet again and think I am within six chapters of finishing the first draft. If I can start to write again, work out how I used to do it, I think it will be okay eventually. I don't even know if I have an audience any more. 

 It is sad but I no longer even think of myself as a writer.  I've tried, in recent weeks, to do 'writerly things' in the hope that it might stir me to action, but I'm not a sociable bunny and the writer's group type events I've been to have left me unstirred. My job has become a greedy monster, swallowing up any free time I might have had, leaving me drained and demoralised with little to offer my imaginary friends.

I know I need to escape the shackles of everyday life for a while: break out of the crippling routine of teaching and allow myself to be creative for myself.  I need some space and quiet.  I probably really need Scotland. More than anything,  I need to finish this book so I can move on from it.  It has occupied my mind and festered for too long away from the sunlight.  Poor book. Poor brain.

Or, to the knowing, the inspiration for the 'Slap and Tickle'

 

Power from the Glens...

Sandwiched between two really hectic weeks, I've managed to read the current draft of Scotch on the Rocks and added a couple of hundred words to try and kick-start things before the summer holiday.  I was less disappointed with it than I remembered - I'd completely forgotten some sensible structural changes I made after my reconnaissance trip up to Pitlochry in September...

Pitlochry is is a lovely little town, right in the middle of Scotland: north of Perth, on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, nestling at the foot of Ben Vrackie.   It is a town of elegant Victorian buildings - booming in the wake of Queen Victoria's visits to the Highlands - and it's main street is a mix of high end tourist shops (whisky, cashmere, Harris tweed...) and foodie places, many of them specialising in locally produced delicacies.
It also has a fabulous repertory theatre situated near the Loch Faskally Dam with stunning views across the valley.  It has a steady stream of tourists passing through and so it has a very high proportion of locally run restaurants and coffee shops - no chains at all.  It's been a family favourite since before I was born (my first visit there was in the womb!) although we haven't been back there since 1999.

We rented an apartment rather than stay in a B&B or an hotel and I was delighted to discover that the place we'd chosen was just five minutes walk from the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Hydro Electric Dam.


It's strange, really, to consider a dam a tourist attraction and really it is quite a modest structure, but it is somewhere I've always really been drawn. I can remember visiting as a teenager and thinking it would be the perfect place to set a story: there's a hum in the air there which is genuinely 'electric'!   When I was first planning Scotch on the Rocks it was a given that Hamish's glen needed to have its own hydro electric dam and that it would be based on Pitlochry.


I'd written the Hydro Electric Dam scenes from memory and to be honest, I'd taken a lot of liberties with the facts! Being on site allowed me to photograph all sorts of angles for reference: I felt like Elizabeth George as I tried to make sure I had all the details I'd be likely to need. The re-written scenes do it much more justice than my originals as a result.

A bit of a facelift...

After spending the last weekend at the fabulous Newcastle Noir Crimewriting Festival, I thought this blog was looking a bit tired and unloved.  So its had a bit of a make-over to go with the mental makeover that I had after two totally inspiring mornings in a beautiful library with amazing people.

There will be a fourth novel.  And it will be this year...

Watch this newly re-decorated space!

A New Toy...

As you are well aware, I am the Queen of Procrastinators.Why else would it be almost a year since I was last here? I'm so angry about my procrastination that I’ll even find anything to do rather than tackle it head on, And when it comes to writing, I am even able to procrastinate on the page I’m supposed to be filling up: I play around with spacing, I edit to the point of silliness, I restructure and reorganise for hours and though my word count does creep upwards, the novel makes no real progress towards completion...

So, I’ve made a purchase.  I’ve gone back in time by fifteen years or so and found a piece of writing kit which I’m hoping is going to stop me from being the timewaster and start me adding actual plot, not just words, to my story.  I’m using it now to type this – putting it through its paces, if you like –  before launching into a full scale writing task.  It’s a little machine called an Alphasmart Neo. It’s a basic – very basic – word processor, designed for use in schools, the sort of technology which was useful and productive, but which found itself superseded by laptops and tablets.  There’s a thriving market for reconditioned ones amongst writers, who generally view it as a kind of ‘first draft’ machine, and after a week or two of hunting, I was able to track down a reasonably priced one on ebay. It has probably had quite an interesting journey here, having set off from the USA on November 4^th. 

Now I'm a happy laptop owner for the most part, but I have toyed with tablet purchase on several occasions. I’ve been almost seduced by the ‘take it anywhere do anything with it’ idea. However, I suspect that the practicalities of writing on a tablet would be rather unpleasant for any length of time, and I know  I’d need a ‘proper’ keyboard. I’m basically one of those people who really likes the clackity-clack, that feeling of having actually pressed down a key and the tactile satisfaction of the writing experience. 

But I’m also rather pushed for time.  I could write on paper – I frequently have done – or I could use an actual typewriter but the basic problem with both of those methods is that I then need to find the time to transfer the information to my laptop, effectively re-writing, and that’s precisely what I’m trying to avoid.  Allegedly, the Neo is a perfect halfway point.  I’m supposed to be able to send whatever I’ve written to my laptop, simply by connecting a USB cable and pressing SEND.  I’m about to try that out in a minute. So far, I’m finding the experience very refreshing. And the whole thing, p&p included, has cost me less than £40 ( It’s American and so there isn’t a pound sterling sign so I added that later!)Which, considering they cost over $300 new in 2004 has to be a bit of a bargain.  Right: here goes... connecting USB...  If you are reading this, then it has worked!

(It did.  I’m a convert! Now to write something more imaginative...)

Goodbye old friend...

This is will probably be my last ever post on this laptop.  Until two weeks ago, I had no intention of buying a new laptop, even though this one has done a fair few laptop years.  It's withstood a post graduate degree and dissertation, a change of jobs and a vast amount of downloading of obscure books on theatre history.  It has taken the place of my defunct TV, has acted as a music centre, held recipes and patterns, kept me up much later than I should ever be up and generally been my best friend for the last six years.

Which is why, when I dropped it and cracked the screen two weeks ago I was entirely more distraught than I was when I smashed my face up in 2013. I had no sentimental attachment at all to my teeth, but my laptop is an entirely different matter.

It still works, but the screen is fractured and a large greenish black leaf-shaped blob has taken possession of one corner.  It is spreading a little more every time I switch it on.  When I enquired about having it repaired, a new screen was going to cost half the price of a new laptop  I have, therefore, made the most of the January sales and made a purchase.  It is lovely. I've set it up and started to install programs.  I just can't quite bring myself to use it yet - it seems somehow disloyal when there's still life in the old one.

This weekend, I've decided, will be D Day.  I'll finish transferring all the important stuff and then let the old laptop out to grass. My head knows its for the best - faster speed, bigger memory, sleeker design - but my heart is still broken...!