Not quite Simon Hoggart's week (The Guardian)

If I run into someone today, or tomorrow, and they ask how my week's been, I'm going to have to warn them that they may not actually want me to respond. Because I won't be able to say, yeah not bad, or pretty good thanks. I won't even be able to stop at, you wouldn't believe how good my week's been. I'll have to give them this:

Tuesday:
Booked 3 night trip to meet my 18 year old nephew (and godson) in Belgium. He's part of an organised tour of battlefields with a group of his peers from Adelaide. It's the longest consecutive time I'll have spent with him since 2009, and I will try not to hold his hand and hug him any more than I can sneak in without him or his friends noticing.

Wednesday:
Went for a long lunchtime swim and came home to the best rejection letter I've ever had - Graham Connors (Number Eleven magazine) compared writing to a successful writer.
Watched the Swedish film, Play. It's 118 minutes of cinematography so beautiful you could cut and hang most shots as an exhibition. It's 118 minutes of creeping tension that reminded me of the 102 minutes of Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Don't remember dream details but they had an edge.

Thursday:
The text for this week's Reading To Write class was The Field Guide to Getting Lost, and the critique of my homework helped me to shape it into a story almost ready to submit.

Editing ideas meant I couldn't sleep properly.

Friday:
Walked through Wandsworth Common to the Earlsfield Cemetery for Hauntings: Ghost Stories at The Chapel and sat on heated pews for candlelit readings by Tania Hershman, Alex Preston, Adam Marek and Stella Duffy.

Creativity, and maybe a post-event drink, meant I didn't sleep well.

Saturday:
Joined 24 other writers for the Start Small: Think Big masterclass - Alexa Radcliffe-Hart has posted a great write-up of the weekend here - and (not in anyway detracting from the other sessions), I was introduced to and mesmerised by David Vann. When he began I feared it was going to be far too academic for my brain to absorb, but very quickly he worked incredible intelligence, knowledge and passion into a talk I could have sat listening to for another few hours. Whoever it was that suggested he do a TED talk, here here. Came home and ordered Legend of a Suicide.

Couldn't stop thinking, wrote "important ideas" down during the night, didn't sleep much.

Sunday:
7am coffee in bed, 8am coffee in local cafe writing and watching Clapham wake up with blue sky. Joined the group at Birkbeck College for more incredible hours with inspiring talents, and thanks to Carrie Kania and Deborah Levy, came home in the dark with an ambitious but do-able plan for the focus of my writing to finish up 2013, the year I 'came out'.

Couldn't sleep, excited about the plan.

Monday:
7am coffee with Evie Wyld. Well the last 70 pages of After The Fire, A Still Small Voice. Sat silent in my reading chair after finishing.

Wrote my list of targets for the week:
- 3 x short shorts to send to workshop partners for feedback
- 1 x short short to update following magazine editor's feedback
- 2 x longer short stories to do last couple of drafts and re-send to workshop partners for feedback
- Draft cover letter while I have the tips and notes from yesterday's session with Carrie Kania

Will I sleep? Don't really mind. Maybe I'll lie awake thinking about how lucky I am, thinking of how many people I've met and shared passion, laughs, coffee and beers with this week, and thanking the people who give their time to make all of these opportunities.

Black Dogs

- 12 Edmondstone Street - was divided into - Three Houses, Many Lives -. It was a - House of Earth - a - House of Exile - A House of Slamming Doors -.

- One Night In Winter - The Outsider - approached, holding - The Golden Notebook-.
It was not the first time she had arrived with - The Notebook -. After - Forty One False Starts - she was - Unbored - , knowing that - This Book Will Save Your Life - . Knowing that in this house there wasn't - Too Much Happiness - and wanting to be - The Help -.

For - One Glittering Moment - Magda - heard - The Goldfinch - and the - Yellow Birds - screaming, as they did at - Inconvenient People -, and it was - Total Chaos -.

- At Last - The Door - opened.
- My Name Is Red -.
- Hello Again - . I am - The Gift Of Stories -. I have - A Tale For The Time Being -.
- Here Comes Trouble - The Son - cried out. - Enter The Evil - he yelled, the - Catastrophe -, the - Night - and - Nausea - The Storm At The Door - .
- Talk Softly - The Girl In The Photograph - whispered. - Like A House on Fire -, here, - Things Fall Apart -.
I bring - Some Hope -.
- In A Strange Room - Mud - The Pattern In The Carpet - .
-Tell Me No Lies -. - Disgrace - has been our - Harvest - of - Plenty -. We need to - Rub Out The Words -.
I bring - The Invisible Writing - Written On The Body -.
- The Book Of Cloud -?
- Tales of Protection - for - Writing Down Your Soul -...
- Inconceivable - !
No, - Stranger -, - The Information - you need is simple:  - All Dogs Are Blue -.

*   *   *   *   *

Response to Sarah Selecky's daily prompt for 1st November - Written at Woolfson & Tay watching Sarah Butler in residence for the Live Writing Series.

Sarah's piece, also using book titles - You Have Been Warned

BIG THANK YOU TO THE VERY SPECIAL WOOLFSON & TAY 

- not just a fabulous day (as usual), also thoroughly enjoyed my spicy chicken take away for dinner. 

Time out track: Wolf's Law

This week I've caught up on a few new and not so new releases: Boy George's first album since 1995, Arcade Fire's Reflektor, the latest from Cut Copy and Mercury-award winner James Blake.

But the title track from The Joy Formidable's latest album is one I'll keep going back to.

This is one of the most dramatic and powerful alignments of image to lyric, melody and rhythm I've seen in a music video.

My walk with Autumn

Autumn and I decided to go for a walk together.

I said - Aren't we lucky, we don't have anywhere that we have to be.

Autumn was silent.

We walked for a long time and I remembered how Autumn can be a dramatic toddler sometimes. 

Autumn said - I can't stay here. With you. I'm sorry. 

Autumn left me last Thursday at 4.55pm. I felt the cold of the abandoned, but kept walking. We've been through this before but I'm not sure how many more goodbyes I have left in me. So I put my scarf on and walked underneath determined trees and kept pace with men with satchels and resolved that in fact it is for the best.

After a 5 hour walk I'd left Clapham for Arsenal. Autumn was fading. I felt that there was someone else just around the corner who may turn out to be more reliable.

We all need a lighthouse of our own...

We already knew the setting was going to be stunning, but when you stop in a pub not more than a few miles from where you need to be to ask directions, and the barmaid and three regulars haven't heard of a lighthouse nearby, certainly not one that you can stay in, well it just becomes even more exciting.
When we found the entrance, drove around a couple of narrow hair pins and dropped down a steep steep hill, the silence in the car was utter awe.
Amanda welcomed us and showed us around the long building that has been respectfully restored to feel warm and lived in, but the bedrooms are quite stark. And why would you distract a room with too much decoration when you have an outlook across the Bristol Channel.

Many writers draw from it and have their own theories of its lure, but which ever way looking out over a body of water effects you, with moors and sheep and wild ponies on the hills behind you, well it's bound to spark something creative.
I find it unbearable to look at so much water and not slip in. Even knowing it's freezing beyond bearing, each white crest curls at me like a forefinger. I thank my childhood for making me a fish with legs, but last weekend I settled with the sunset from the rocky goat track, looking west towards Lynmouth.

Apparently I could ramble on and on about the weekend, so I'm restricting myself to two highlights:

Mealtimes
My vegan experiment stayed in London. In fact I treated myself to a Jamie Oliver bacon and egg sarnie before I caught my train. And over the weekend I enjoyed hearty homemade meals and puddings - chilli, chicken stew, vegetarian lasagne, apple pie, chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis...ok, you get the picture. Veganism is now reinstated, with many fond food memories. And a takeaway container in my freezer (thanks Amanda).
But apart from the food itself, the dining table was where we all came together, and really talked. Our group writes poetry, quirky flash fiction, short stories, humour, dark, women's lit, the (extra)ordinary...so it didn't take long to get into rich conversations, and establish links that spread from Wales, to London, to Cambridgeshire to...well Amanda's on her canal boat adventure now, last heard heading north.

Alison Moore masterclass
On Saturday afternoon, Alison Moore's smiling face appeared at the bottom of the stairs and we had wind-whipped introductions. Her taxi driver had asked if she was going to a hen's party - there's got to be a 'setting' story there.

The focus for our afternoon was setting and landscape in literature, which opened with reading and discussing extracts from a selection of books that all went on my to be re-read list, including Wuthering Heights, Waterland and The Woman in Black. And now elevated to the top of my must read list, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' (Jon McGregor) for his use of urban landscape as powerfully as the others use the wildness of moors and weather.

When Alison asked if we'd like her to read one of her short stories from 'The Pre-War House and other stories,' my enthusiasm nearly deafened my neighbours. Sorry about that guys. But I do love being read to.
Somehow the afternoon just ran seamlessly from listening to writing to discussing each other's writing to listening, afternoon tea, writing, discussing, and then Alison had to return to civilisation.

It's no wonder her events schedule is so extensive - I'm looking forward to the incredible line up at the 'Start Small Think Big' weekend workshop in November.


This was the first residential retreat for Amanda's Retreat West, and I have no doubt that it's the beginning of a very successful programme. Her plans for future stays in remarkable settings, with authors lined up to hold workshops around themes, it's a recipe for rewarding experiences all round. If you can get away from families and work for a few days, you can know that you'll be well looked after and there'll be lots of time and space for writing. And, if you're lucky, you'll make some great new writing friends.

Before I went to Exmoor last week I'd been struggling with a bit of a word rut. Now I'm back, writing, editing, smiling. And vegan. And now I really must head to the gym.

Soundtrack for the weekend? Of course I'm listening to The Waifs

Time out track - thanks to 'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen

I'm little kid excited about going on the Retreats West Lighthouse Retreat tomorrow. What a stunning setting, surely it's going to bring out thousands of words. Earlier this week I put aside Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' to take as a cold night companion, but I couldn't resist starting it on Tuesday. And I'm already half way through.

One thing I rarely try to do is write a review/summary of a book, so I'm stealing the quote from the cover -  'Deeper, funnier, sadder and truer than a work of fiction has any right to be' (Independent on Sunday)

Whilst reading this exploration of love, families, wanting and abusing freedoms, I'm also trying to finalise a short story that is about the stages of a relationship. I'm at a scene where my couple go to a wedding. She looks across the room at the partner she loves but who doesn't fit in, and my aim is to describe the complication of emotions that sparks in her. As always I went searching for a song that might help, and tying it all together nicely, I came up with this fantastic clip that shows the mess a wedding party can become. It's 'Tangled Up In Love' by The Rifles. It's, well, it sure shows how a wedding can have a range of consequences! I can't say I've been to one where all of these scenarios have played out, but some of them are familiar.

With thanks - this writer getting out of a rut

I've been in a word hole for about a week. Who knows why, but it got to the point where I couldn't even read. I started 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost' by Rebecca Solnit (irony is recognised). By the end of the introduction I was so excited by it that I ordered it for dear friend in Australia. And yet, I had to put it down, because I knew I wasn't in the mindset to appreciate it properly.

And when I had the confirmation email that the book had been dispatched, I realised that I'd ordered the wrong book. So Mel, I look forward to hearing how you enjoy 'Wanderlust: A History of Walking'. At least I got the author right.

For several days I was more likely to eat large bowls of pasta and watch poor tv than be involved with written words.

A combination of things have got me back at the desk, but most importantly I'd like to thank Matt Haig, and all of the people who have tweeted about what an inspiration THE HUMANS is.

I could easily have finished it in one sitting, but I'm not willing to let it inspire only one day.

I remember reading someone saying something like - you should leave your desk when you still want to keep writing. For me it's the same with this book.

Music, as usual, has also got me back on track, and this week it's discovering Agnes Obel's new album. 'Aventine' was released in the UK on Monday, and has been 3 years in the making. It's a struggle to pick one song to highlight. Reviews describe the 'mournful sternness' of the album. As usual I get something slightly different from it. I've felt like I've been swimming out from a bay beach on the Mornington Peninsula, swimming past children's thrill squeals, through the chimes of anchors and sails moving with the tide and the wind, and swimming on out to the deeper water with sun on my back, salt thick hair, and the tranquil space of contentment. And that's when my word brain really takes flight.

So for any one struggling for inspiration at the moment, I hope this might help. As for me, I'm off to the local pool. And then I'll be back to finish another draft of a 4,500 story called 'Shame'. And maybe tomorrow, or on the weekend, I'll be loving 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost'.