keris stainton

Possibly my favourite ever Harry video

This morning, Harry asked me what my book (the adult one) was about. I told him it was about three women who are friends and then have a big argument.

This evening, Harry said he was going to write a book...

I love that he ends with, "Oh shucks!"

It was a dark and stormy night...

This (left) was me all day today.
And, for that matter, most of the summer.

And this (right) is me now. Because today I finished the adult book (working title: YOUR PERFECT LIFE). The first adult book I've ever finished. I can't quite believe it. But it feels really good.

(It's really quite sad how much I still love animated gifs.)

My first royalty cheque

I got it last week. It was for Perfectly Plum and in the amount of $21.55.

No, hardly life-changing, but exciting all the same.

The first of many, I can only hope. :)

A meme: Call yourself a writer?

Lovely Linda (who I've known online for YEARS and who I finally met at Blognor) tagged me for this one.

Which words do you use too much in your writing?

In non-fiction "so" and "anyway". Fiction-wise, it's cliches. I noticed recently that the hearts of all my characters were sinking every couple of pages.

Which words do you consider overused in stuff you read?

Myriad. It doesn't bother me, but I notice it because I read somewhere that you should never write it because you would never say it. I disagree. And since I read that, I've read "myriad" in a myriad of articles. 

What's your favourite piece of writing by you? 

This was important for me to write but I can't really call it my favourite because it's not funny and I do try to be funny. So maybe this?

What blog post do you wish you'd written?

Anything by Catherine Newman. Like this.

Regrets, do you have a few? Is there anything you wish you hadn't written?

I can't think of anything. Not on a blog (where if I did regret it I could just delete it anyway). There was an online petition I signed that I shouldn't have, but apart from that, no.

How has your writing made a difference? What do you consider your most important piece of writing?

Probably the birth experience post above. I got a lot of comments and messages and I wish it had been more widely read. Just yesterday I got an email from a friend who'd had a horrendous birth experience, much of which could, I'm sure, have been avoided, so it's a subject close to my heart (and other parts of my body!).

Name three favourite words

Joy. Spring. Bubble.

...And three words you're not so keen on

"I shouldn't really" (well then either don't or do and shut up).

Do you have a writing mentor, role model or inspiration?

Loads. May I refer you to the screengrab of my desktop below.

Lauren Child (represented by Lola), Nora Ephron, Meg Cabot, Martha Beck, Marian Keyes, Amy Sherman-Palladino (writer of Gilmore Girls) and Aaron Sorkin (writer of The West Wing). They all make me happy and they all make it look easy.

In the real world, there is no way I would be getting published if it wasn't for the writer friends I've made online. Like Linda herself, plus Luisa Plaja, Claire Allan, Lisa Clark, Emily Gale and loads more that I can't think of right now, but will kick myself for forgetting later (and then come and add them in).

Total overall inspiration is Meg Cabot though. I really should have "What Would Meg Do?" hanging above my desk. When I don't feel like a writer and have to pretend to be one in order to get my bum on the seat, Meg is the writer I pretend to be.

What's your writing ambition?

Erin, a very gorgeous online friend of mine, recently wrote, "You're destined to be the next Meg Cabot, I think", which made me go all bashful and beam with pride at the same time (see above!). I would love to be the next Meg Cabot (although I don't want the current want to go anywhere either!). I would love to write for both young adults and, um, old adults. I'd like to write a screenplay (and have Nora Ephron direct the movie, natch). I'd like to write a stage musical (the story, not the music!) and a TV series.

Linda also nailed one of my ambitions in a lovely recommendation she wrote: "I look forward to the day when she is a household name jostling for space on the It Takes Two sofa alongside Marian Keyes." The "household name" bit makes me do the bashful/beaming thing again, but the It Takes Two sofa? Hells, yeah.

Plug alert!  List any work you would like to tell your readers about:

Have I mentioned I've got a book coming out? :) 6 May 2010. All good bookshops (I hope). £5.99. Although it's already been reduced on Amazon. 

Also, my book review site, Five Minutes Peace, is going great guns. We've got some fab reviewers and would love you to come and chat books with us.

Do the tagging thing: 

Apologies if any of the following have already been tagged (I'm behind on my blog-readin'):

Claire

Emily

Gabrielle

Michelle

Stella

The rules:

If you have time to do this meme, then please link to my original, then link to three to five other bloggers and pass it on, asking them to answer your questions and link to you. You can add, remove or change one question as you go. You absolutely do not have to be what you may think of as a "published" or "successful" writer to respond to this meme, I hope people can take the time to reflect on what their blogging has brought them and how it has been useful to others.

[photo via with love & such]

*Drumroll* Presenting... my book!

One of those 'real writer' moments

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger, but I've got my reasons, honest! First of all, last week I was informed by one of my fellow freelancers that Shiny Media had gone into administration (and is, apparently, "engulfed in chaos"). It wasn't exactly a surprise, but they do owe me a fair amount of money, so it was somewhat of a downer. 

The following day, another email brought more bad news, but nothing I can share, I'm afraid. I only mention it because of the whole 'bad news comes in threes' business.

And then the day after that, David texted to let me know that his car, which had been in the garage from the beginning of that week, needed a new clutch. So that was £250 smackers down the swannee. (In case you're interested, had Shiny paid me what they owed me, we could have bought five clutches.)

So last week was a bit of a sorry-for-myself write-off. Plus, of course, it's the summer hols and so I'm spending lots of time out and about with the boys. The park, the cinema, soft play places, visiting friends. We're having a lovely time, but it doesn't give me that much time on the computer. And the time I *have* had has mostly been spent trying to finish the adult novel I vowed would be finished by the end of July. It's not. But it's actually not *that* far off and I'm hopeful of finishing it in the next week. Or so.

And the other thing I've been doing is getting into a routine of blogging at Five Minutes Peace. If Trashionista has bitten the dust (I don't know if it has permanently, but it's certainly out of action at the moment), I'd like all the lovely readers who will presumably be suffering from book review withdrawal to come to my new site. Come on. You know you want to.

Oh, but none of the above was the 'real writer' moment referred to in the title. That was when my editor sent me the COVER of my BOOK! I don't know if I can show you - or even share the title - so I'd better not, but it was ... thrilling. I opened the file with some trepidation, but then I laughed. And then I cried. And then I felt... proud. It's a book. With my name on it.

Actually, it's *my* book with *my* name on it. Blimey.

[Photo: 'Shiny' by m4r00n3d on Flickr]

Good Enough

The Way I See It #17, originally uploaded by Wonderlane.

A couple of months ago, me and David went to stay at the Midland Hotel in Morecambe. It was quite expensive and, when we walked into the room, I was disappointed. I was expecting a wow factor for the money we were spending and I didn't get one.

My first thought was to complain, but then I almost talked myself out of it. It was "only" £150, I reasoned. Maybe this is what you get for £150? And then I became aware of feeling that I should be grateful to be staying there at all. And we'd paid £150!

What, I asked David, is the opposite of a sense of entitlement? It was a bit of, as Oprah says, an "A-ha moment". Why did I feel like this sub-standard room was all I deserved? I have friends (Hi, Jo!) who would not hesitate to complain about better hotel rooms than this one. Why did I think I should just put up and shut up?

I've thought about it a few times over the past couple of months - Oh, by the way, I complained and we got upgraded to an amazing suite, which definitely had the wow factor, but I was left feeling a little bit like we'd got away with something! - but then this morning, I read a quote from Sheila Hancock in The Observer:

Everything happened late to me because I thought I should keep my place. I thought you had to be immensely educated to be a writer, and as I left school at 15 I didn't think I was permitted. Now I don't care.

I've always hated the thought of keeping or knowing your place. I would never have thought I felt that way about myself, but reading the above set bells ringing.

As a teenager, I wanted to be a journalist, but didn't think it was something I could do. I didn't have the confidence, the education, the contacts. Later, I wanted to try freelance writing, but I read that you had to have worked on magazines first and so I discounted it.

Even later, I remember reading a book about writing that said something along the lines of if, when you ask yourself what you want to do, you answer "be a writer" rather than "write", you're a phony. You want the lifestyle, to be Carrie Bradshaw with a laptop in a coffee shop (this was before SATC, but that was the drift), you don't really want to write. And I'd answered "be a writer" so I took it to heart.

When I worked in Legal & Business Affairs in London Records, I really wanted to work in Press, but I never said. Just before I left the company, I mentioned it to Juliette, Head of Press and she said she would have LOVED to have me in Press, I would've been GREAT at it. She was shocked: Why had I never said? I didn't really know. But I know now. Because I didn't think I was good enough. I thought I was a secretary, an administrator. I thought I'd found my place and that was as a PA, not as a "creative". I know now that I was wrong. Now, I think Juliette was right. I would have been GREAT in press.

I know that this feeling is still with me. I didn't feel good enough to write some of the articles I wanted to write. I didn't feel good enough to write for some of the magazines I wanted to write for. I know I'm good at fiction, but I haven't really let myself get excited about my books, because I haven't let myself believe it's going to happen. Because being a published author isn't really my place, is it? Except that I think it just might be.

Get Gilbert*

My lovely friend Zoe posted this in our writers' group and I love it. It's from Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the amazing Eat, Pray, Love.

As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love).

The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as a strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this – I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write.

* Anyone - apart from Suzi, Sarah and my sister - remember this?

Halfway* there

I hit 40,000 words on the adult novel (working title YOUR PERFECT LIFE) earlier this week and since I happily aim for the  minimum word count, I call that halfway* there! Woo! And the most exciting thing is that I still have more plot to include and there's some stuff that will be earlier in the book that's come to me as I've been writing, so I'm (fairly) confident I will actually make it all the way to 80k.

Assuming I do, that'll be a first for me. Usually with adult novels, I get to the end, check the word count, find it's 35,000 and bang my head on the desk.  That's why I much prefer writing YA, because 35k is finished - woo hoo!

I've also included a couple of characters from a previous (unfinished) book. The 71-page manuscript of that book has languished on a floppy disk (remember them?) for the past five years and I assumed it was lost forever (my Mac doesn't have a disk drive), but David managed to retrieve it yesterday. Hopefully, there'll be some stuff on there that I can pinch for this book.

I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of July at the LATEST. Fingers crossed, eh?

* Is this a real word? It doesn't look right...

Getting this letter was one of the most exciting moments of my life