It’s been 30-somethong years since I visited Stokesay Castle but I love it just the same. One day I will use it as a template for the house I will build… #dreams #homes #nottoostately #pretentionsofgrandeur #castles

Oxford’s Story Museum: a place where creativity and imagination lives and unfolds… @thestorymuseum #stories #imagination #dreams #nofilter

Once I had got all these sensible suggestions out of my systems I settled on writer/author. I struggled for a bit with novels so tried plays, film scripts, and TV drama. I knew the odds were stacked against me but I always believed that I would be different – that I would break through. I would be the youngest writer to get published in a generation (Caitlin Moran kind of put pay to that idea with her Chronicles of Narmo). That I would win the Booker prize with my debut novel.

I went to college, where I studied (amongst other arts) Writing, and realised like I didn’t already know how much harder it was. It didn’t stop the dreaming though. The dreaming is part of what makes a writer. Which just means that when I hear today’s news that Fiona Mozley has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her debut novel, it just brings up the jealousy. And not only has she had this awards success but she does it whilst working part-time in a book shop in York. Isn’t running a bookshop like my other dream?

Booker Prize: Selling my book ‘strange and embarrassing’

To understand exactly the nature of this morning’s anxious dreams we have to go back a few week’s to another dream that I don’t think I realised was a dream until now…

It was the weekend that my Mum and Dad came to stay to celebrate my birthday. I have this memory – a false memory as it turns out – that whilst on the way back from somewhere we stopped in Brill (maybe?) at a tumble-down little cottage on the hill, where an old lady was selling plants and crafts. Emma bought something – some crafts I think, and I remember her saying something about what her Dad told her never to do as she was getting money out her purse. Then later on she discovered her wedding ring was missing. The only thing that we could think was that she put her wedding ring in her purse whilst she tried on the ring that she was buying from the old lady (the crafty thing must have been jewellery?) and then paid for the gift jewellery with her wedding ring. I remember saying that we can just go back and see her, but Emma pointed out that the old lady had it now and wouldn’t give it back, and that can’t be what happened anyway, and that not to worry because it would turn up.

I really should have know that was a dream there and then then because that’s a very rational, considered – unbelievable response! But anyway I thought it was real even though nothing more was said about it.

So this morning I woke up really anxious and panicky about it, and thinking all the time that I must make sure to remember to ask/check with Emma if she had her ring still or if some old lady with a tumbledown cottage in Brill had taken it, before I left for work and really worrying in case I didn’t and then I would be worrying about it all day. Clearly, my anxiousness stayed with me after I ‘woke up’ properly. I even kept on going back trying to remember the details of what we did and where we went that weekend to try and remember where it was that it happened (was it Brill?) and why her Dad had warned her about something…

It really freaked me out.

Nice, relaxing breakfast, and then I set to cleaning out the animals in the sunshine whilst listening to last week’s Desert Island Discs with Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter. I made lemonade from the kit that the Shaw’s gave me for Christmas and I finally got round to writing my review of Time Was Soft There which Helen gave me for my birthday. I mention this last act particularly because I wrote the review on my laptop, which whilst still being a little slow to open things (it is 4½ years old though!) was accessing the old t’internet with some degree of speed expected of it. Maybe whatever it was I did succeed in doing yesterday worked?

I’ve earthed up the potatoes this afternoon too, and read lots more of my book during the heat of the day – well I sure as hell ain’t getting hot and sticky vacumning when its already hot and sticky! Then I made dinner of mashed fish (really this is a dish that is a lot tastier than the name might suggest – I seem to have quite a few recipes in my repetoire that seem to fall into this category) and then we settled down to watch the new production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood with an all-star, mostly Welsh cast. It was very interesting done, briliantly made in a way that completely highlighted the power of Dylan Thomas’ words…. but they cut it! It was only about an hour long which means they actually cut at least half an hour, maybe more. I would love to have seen this version but complete. Oh, why BBC, why did you deprive us so.

And now I’ve caught up with writing about my weekend in these pages. I used to write about my daily goings on so much more regularly than of late. I need to get back into the habit of it.

Last night though, I was attending a writer’s conference with all my old university cohort. Jon Scotcher was there and was trying to talk to me about eBooks but could never quite get to talk to me because some really annoying lady (who seemed to know me, but I had never met before) kept on pestering about me about her own experiences of being published.

I went to college in the middle of a Cheshire field, but for some reason the Creative Arts Reunion Writers Conference (I have no idea if that’s what it was called but it describes it quite well) was being held up the Queen Elizabeth Lecture Theatre – a surprisingly auspicious name for a temporarily constructed room erected prior to major campus redevelopment – which post-dated our time at College, and was in fact located in a now demolished building in the old two-story bit of Darcy Building at Oxford Brookes University. It didn’t seem to matter that we were existing in the same time and space as the new pubic plaza at the front of the new entrance…

After the plenary we broke out into discussion groups which seemed to bring in people who worked in the National Trust volunteer office, and I was very excited to see the new working holiday brochures with some of Emma and my wedding photographs from Craflwyn Hall.

We had been booked into one, massive hotel somewhere but we were being switched and I got a taxi with some of my course-mates to the new hotel on Above Bar street in Southampton…

…only at this point did it occur to me that this was some crazy, mixed up writers’ conference. Still, if you’re going to have a crazy, mixed up conference then it might as well be for crazy, mixed up writers.

We did have a typewriter in the family. It was an old, basic one with a missing Q key and a dodgy ribbon that belonged to my Dad. I did type some little things on it, but it was the classic one (or possibly two, on a good day…) typing… it would be years later before I finally learnt to touch-type and then it would be on a computer keyboard rather than on good old-fashioned typewriter.

This story on the BBC website about Keira Rathbone, the artist who makes pictures with a typewriter, made me fall back in love with typewriters all over again…

The artist who makes pictures with a typewriter

It’s a highly impracticable love though. As has been well-documented elsewhere in these pages, I don’t even write my stories on a computer, but long-hand with pen and ink, so what would possess me to even attempt to write a story on a typewriter. But when has a writer ever been practical about these kind of things? It certain didn’t stop me googling, and a short ebay search later, finding this beauty to drool over…

It was about Red Riding Hood in a modern, real-world setting. The Girl, Red, was facing something but it wasn’t the wolf. Annoyingly I can’t remember the precise story – it was just based on that setting but was a new story. It’s annoying me. I want to remember. I want to write it down…

This has got me thinking. I am currently revising The End Of All Worlds with a view to self-publishing it as an eBook. I can imagine the squee factor coming into play the first time that I receive a notification that it has been bought and downloaded by someone whom I don’t know, indeed there will be probably be various levels of squeeness ranging from the moment my Mum downloads a copy – I hope that she may even though she doesn’t own an eBook reader(!), through to friends, and various members of the public. But I can’t imagine any of that comparing to the joy of someone else telling me that they would like to publish my book. If I self-publish, then I have written it, I have revised it, yes I may have got someone else to edit it but, I have made it available to buy. It’s not the same.

Of course, the eBook might sell. It might, I guess, sell very well, and I might get a publisher contacting me saying that they would like to pick the book up and publish it as a printed book – maybe even offer me an advance on my next one. That would be wonderful. That would be what dreams are made of. But then, here’s another thing, if it were to sell that well that a *real* publisher was interested, then surely it would be popular enough for me to go the whole hog and publish a real book too, myself and keep all the spoils for myself.

An interesting conundrum…

I had obviously sent an early draft of my novel to Ros to read, which I haven’t, I’ve sent it to Jane (so this explains the impossible part of the dream), and had now had an email reply from Ros with her thoughts.

I remember clearly, looking at the email and reading it, and feel a pain in my stomach as I read the first line: that it was disappointing and not good (this explains the alarming part…)

The email was long though and of several paragraphs, and it went on to say how she loved various bits of imagery and the clever use of literary quotes and references to popular culture, and that all in all she loved it.

I remember lying in bed afterwards looking at the email and trying to re-read it but only getting ever-diminishing snatches of it. It was definitely one of those occasions when I wished I had a print key on my brain and that I could have saved it for later.

~ Thankfully no hurt was done in the event, although bizarrely the doors under the bureau had also fallen out. We can only imagine that (psychologically‐disturbed) Ronnie had gone to wee on glass again only to have the fright of his life!!

~ Cat #6, Madeline, has been settling into the homestead quite well. Yesterday she was decidedly wobbly but today she’s been much more stable on her feet which is good. You can see a picture of our harlequin‐faced new arrival in the userpic to this post.

~ We went to see Heather in her new Buckingham house this morning. She had had some new curtains made and needed help in hanging them. Her house is lovely, with a good view of Buckingham and its church. What’s more she wanted to give us her old lounge curtains which are, IMHO, almost brand new and go with our three‐piece suite very well.

~ In the afternoon and evening we went to Em’s parents for dinner. There we were able to talk over wedding matters and songs for the reception. We’ve had suggestions from a couple of people now and I was able to plunder their CD collection for a few of the tracks. Emma’s dad also gave us a pair of Revolver speakers for use at the wedding but which we can also keep.

~ Upon getting home we hooked up the new speakers to find them very, very good. We also discovered that my parents had come up with their list of wedding songs. They finally manage to short list 14 tunes from a long list of 178!!! I think they were having fun down memory lane this evening!

2. Procrastination big time today. I’m not entirely sure how it happened. I certainly didn’t intend to do it when I got up this morning, but I redecorated three walls of my bathroom. I have been meaning to for a while, and it does look so much better, and cleaner and brighter, but why today? Why on earth, today? Will have to go out and buy another tin of paint now to finish it off…

3. I’m thinking of getting some new foam for the cushions on the sofa. They’ve not been done for a while and they are probably a bit thin now. Edit: Actually, it may well be 20 years since they were last done!

4. Finished editing down part two, chapter one of my novel. Hopefully it still reads tighter and sharper. Hopefully also, I will have learnt something from the recent crits I’ve had for earlier chapters.

Last night, the same cast of characters turned up for episode two. The castle ended up being a remote community built on a steep, craggy island. I was one of the older kids of varying ages, and my peer group seemed to be those in charge. Our leader was a girl, a powerful witch. During a game, some of the younger kids ran off – a herd of horses were charging towards us, and we had to watch, unable to help as unicorn reared up on the younger children, just as the heavens opened and the storm broke. I’m not sure what happened to the kids, but events caused panic and we ran for cover. As the storm swept in across the island from the sea, the sky was lit in shards of striking colours, and and we took cover in the stone buildings, taking to narrow staircases that went down into underground chambers…

I’m sure there’s a story in here somewhere.