To be a writer, you need a thick skin

I am very lucky to have Jane as a co-writer. Her judgment is impeccable, and she cares as much about the exact arrangement of words and the choice of said words as I do. Sometimes I find her comments bracing, but I realised yesterday that the mood I am in, and the amount of effort I have put into a piece of writing that I send her, impact unreasonably on my reaction to her emailed response.

Yesterday, I sent her yet another draft of the synopsis for Plotting for Grown-ups (Yay! See! We got a title in the end! Although…it is just a working title at present…) and she sent me this reply:

hi daise

no this doesn't work at all - it doesn't begin properly, it looks a) very bitty  b) very un-slick and hence un-pro - i would so not want to read a book by peeps who couldn't even get a snazzy synopsis together

but I think if I get out my hatchet it may work -

can't decide if i need to do this or september

best dilemmas love g x

A perfectly fair email. But I was tired and fed up, and what I saw, were the words “This is total crap.”

Poor Jane, she has to put up with someone who has knee jerk emotional reactions to emailed comments, and sees words that just aren’t there.

Sally Howe/Sue Hepworth crossover

 

Sometimes people ask me if Sally Howe (in Plotting for Beginners) is me. The answer is “no” but nevertheless, some of the things that happen to Sally have happened to me. And some of her opinions are the same as mine. Some of them.

And I have a feeling that in the sequel to Plotting (that I am writing with Jane, and which is on the verge of actually having a title) Sally is going to mock the sleeveless trench that appears in her latest copy of the Pure catalogue.

A sleeveless trench? Give me strength. The catalogue says - “it is a real statement piece…” Too right. It states: “If you’re wearing this, you’re a bozo.” Don’t they realise that the rain falls on your arms as well as your body?

You decide

My sister Kath has just sent me (by phone) the song of a nightingale because i said I didn’t know what it sounded like.

This is not her recording, but listen.

Now, listen to this blackbird.

Which do you prefer?

Can someone tell me why so much fuss is made about the nightingale?

I miss my mother

It’s three years and six months since my mother died. Usually, she pops up in my head and I’m happy to think of her. But these last two weeks, I’ve been yearning to see her, feeling sad that I can’t.
I always wonder what brings it on. This time I think it’s hearing about other people’s much loved elderly mothers passing away. There have been two in the last month, and yesterday my lovely hairdresser (of 20 years) told me about her father-in-law who is fading away.
Or is it the season? The arrival of spring? The brightness, the possibilities, the new openings that she is not here to share?

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T S Eliot

Odd, isn’t it, that on Thursday I was delighting in the joy of spring in The Secret Garden,  and here I am tuned into its melancholy?

Hope and transformation

I’ve nearly finished reading The Secret Garden for the third time. If you don’t know it, it’s a children’s book and a classic, published a hundred years ago.

I love this book. It’s about the Spring, and hope and transformation, and opening out to love. It’s about hope that things can be better, daring to move outside one’s comfort zone, being transformed. I love the fact that it’s firmly set in Yorkshire, and I love the descriptions of Spring and the joy that the children have in the opening out of the world in Spring.

It’s a great book to read when the winter is getting you down, but I am enjoying it now. It makes me think that things that I yearn for, for other people - such as healing from trauma and heartbreak, and new beginnings, and moving forward in the face of difficulties – that they are possible. And you know, sometimes they are.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

(extract from the poem Sometimes by Sheena Pugh)

Blessings

Sisters are one of God’s better inventions.

You can get the train to Bingley together and see the Five Rise Locks for the second time this spring (but this time in sunshine)

and then walk the 3 miles down the towpath to Saltaire and eat your lunch in the sun in your shirtsleeves, overlooking the River Aire and the park and the wooded hill beyond. You can hold a young mother’s baby while she eats her lunch, and think that while it is a very nice baby, it is not as nice as any of your own (of either generation).

You can wander round the Mill (and yes, I do realise that this is not the Mill you wander round, but the correct one had cars in front of it which spoiled the view)

and check out the titles of novels in the spacious bookshop, looking for inspiration for your own. My favourites today were Care of Wooden Floors, Cheating at Canasta, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

You can curse together that the Hockney exhibition is closed on Mondays, but read about the history of Saltaire and its massive Mill, and watch the documentary about Titus Salt, and relish the narrator’s soft Yorkshire accent.

You can have a coffee in Salts Diner,

forget to pay and only remember when you have walked down four flights of stone steps and down the road, and you’re leaning on the bridge over the canal, and have to go up the road again and the four flights of stone steps to make an honest woman of yourself.

You can sit together in companionable silence waiting in the sunshine for your train, while you munch on apples and idly watch the two pigeons in front of you picking at a squashed Ferrerro Rocher on the platform.

And as an end to a perfect sunny day in the midst of a fortnight of rain, you can hug and part, and lose yourself in The Secret Garden on the train home and almost miss your stop.

A rare sighting

You know how Jane and I have been working hard and having fun with our new novel? Well, most of our collaboration is done by email, so I have an MSWord file on my computer named:

Sue’s version of Jane’s version of Sue’s tweaked synopsis suggestions from Jane for PfB2

Yes – really.

We are rarely together. And probably the last time we had a photo taken together was at the launch of Plotting for Beginners. But here we are in my study in an editorial session this afternoon. Dave took the photo, under strict instruction as to angle and distance, poor chap. This was the only one we both approved of, poor chap. He’s very patient (poor chap.)

April is the lambiest month

“April is a beautiful month in the Derbyshire Dales: the colour returns to the landscape. All through the long cold winters, the grass in the fields is a wretched faded khaki or a pale acidic green. Add a leaden sky, and that’s how dreary it is from December to March. But in April, the grass begins to grow, the fields light up with the vibrant green, and the lambs have grown strong and chubby, and chase up and down from dry stone wall to dry stone wall in crazy races, like balls bouncing off the cushions of a snooker table. They climb up on ancient tree stumps and manure heaps in the corners of fields and then charge down again, they butt each other and climb on each others’ backs, they spring up vertically on ridiculous, unbending legs.” 

– from But I told you last year that I loved you by Sue Hepworth

 

Sue Hepworth is a ratbag, again

I am working really hard and loving it – Jane and I are having immense fun with this new novel (so far untitled – yes! Still untitled!)

Anyway, I can think of nothing with which to entertain you, so I thought I’d re-run a mea culpa post of mine, which I wrote when i was waiting for news of Lux’s birth.

Sue Hepworth is a ratbag

I am a ratbag. It’s official. I chew people up on the phone. And I don’t mean people selling double glazing or trying to entice me back to BT, or someone from the subscription department of The Times, with a great, great offer.

I chew people up who I like. I chew them up when I’m stressed. I chew them up when I’m waiting impatiently for a particular call and the wrong person rings.

On Saturday morning my daughter got it. She was due to come over with her boys, and after speaking to me, she changed her mind. (Who could blame her? Even I didn’t like me much on Saturday.) Tate and Gil were looking forward to coming to see me, so she tried to bribe them to go paddling in Padley Gorge instead. They chose me.  She told them I was a ratbag. They still wanted to come. She told them she’d buy them an ice cream. But they wanted to see me more. I apologised profusely on the phone to Zoe, and begged her to come. She relented, bless her. She forgave me.

So…I may not have a publisher for my novel, but it is a delicately nuanced novel.

I may be a ratbag, but my grandsons like me more than ice cream.

No-one is perfect. And I am especially not perfect, but the people who matter still love me. So everything is OK.

And here is an official apology to everyone I have ever chewed up. I’m really sorry.

And this was Lux almost two years later (this last weekend) practising her newly acquired skill of walking downstairs.

Anne Tyler

I’ve told you how much I like her books: here is an interview with her.

The old me

Yay! I woke up at the normal time today and feel like I used to do before I went away. So it did take a day for every time zone to feel better.

I’ve been catching up with all my friends, such as Mary, who told me how worried she gets about forgetting the most basic of facts – e.g. the names of friends’ partners, and I told her not to worry, that it happens to everyone, that I once forgot the name of my brother-in-law. So she said “Oh well, if you do it, that’s OK, because I think of you as being on-the-ball.”

Later I saw Ruth and Annie, and we were all saying how we can’t remember the plots of books we have read, and sometimes ones we’ve read in the last month. I left Ruth’s house and walked down the dark rainy street under my umbrella, and found the car and had a struggle to get in, with my umbrella and basket and big bag of books. When I put the key in the ignition it wouldn’t turn. I switched on the light to see why not, and saw that the car seats were grey, and not black, like mine. I was in the wrong Polo!

This is me, signing off, the woman who is on-the-ball.

Arranging words

Do you remember that Eric Morecambe quote: “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”?

When I was sitting at Gate A4 at Heathrow Terminal 5 last week, I saw a Pret a Manger notice which said

“Next month we are opening a big, new kitchen and a new, little shop,”

and it stuck in my head.

Why?  Because the phrasing of the sentence sounded exactly right, but I couldn’t work out why it was correct to have big as the first adjective in the first adjectival phrase, and little as the second adjective in the second adjectival phrase. Both adjectives are to do with size, so why did they not occupy the same position in their respective phrases?

Are there some grammatical rules that have passed me by? Or is it a hidden mystery and all to do with how things sound, and therefore something that cannot be taught? Someone somewhere knows the answer to this.

 And on a loosely connected point, while I was in San Francisco I was watching (and loving) the award-winning 1980s children’s TV series Press Gang.

At the end of one very moving episode, there is a bit of dialogue that I have remembered since I heard it the first time, more than than twenty years ago. Spike is very upset and Lynda asks him what’s wrong, and he says, “Nothing, maybe. Everything, probably.” Why have I remembered it? Because of the way the words are arranged. A lesser screenwriter than Steven Moffat would have written “Maybe nothing. Probably everything,” and an even lesser writer would not have chosen just four words to express the sentiment. Yes, Press Gang is “only” a children’s TV series, and not a great work of literature, but of it’s kind, it is pure class.

p.s. Press Gang was Steven Moffat’s first TV work. His latest writing includes Doctor Who, Jekyll and the co-writing of The Adventures of Tintin with Steven Spielberg.

 

Jet Lag day 5

I haven’t mentioned this before, because I know how lucky I am to be able to fly to San Francisco to spend time with my family, and i didn’t want to be a Moaning Minnie, but…

I’ve had really bad jet-lag, worse than last time. I shan’t rehearse the symptoms, because listening to other peoples’ health problems is tedious, but this morning when I was stumbling around the kitchen, Dave asked me to describe how I felt. So here goes – it’s like waking up and feeling as if your brain is submerged in jelly and it takes the whole morning to get clear of it.

The other night when i was awake from 1 a.m. till 5 a.m. I looked it up in the net and found that:

1. It is worse when travelling west to east (that’s me)
2. It takes a day to recover from every time zone you cross (that’s 8 in my case)
3. And it gets worse the older you get (oh, goodie!)

So please forgive my not posting much. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. And if any of you have any remedies or prophylactics, please let me know.

Souvenirs

I know I always say this, but it doesn’t matter where I’ve been or how much I’ve enjoyed my time away, I always love to come home to Hepworth Towers, with its views of the Derbyshire countryside and the quiet of our lane. I didn’t feel like that when we lived in Sheffield, even though I liked where we lived.

I don’t buy souvenirs, nor do I spend much time in shops while I’m away, but this time I was walking along the jetties behind the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero – one of my favourite places in San Francisco –

and I was drawn into Book Passage to look at book titles. I wanted to see which one attracted me: I was looking for inspiration for the new novel I’m writing with Jane (Linfoot.) And there was Anne Tyler’s latest book, just released, in hardback. OK. You need to know: I never buy hardbacks. I always wait for the paperback to come out.

But I was down on the waterfront in San Francisco (a place I love) and the book had just come out, and Anne Tyler is one of my favourite authors, and this edition was so beautifully designed and produced, and it had been signed by Anne Tyler, and I amazed myself and bought it. I don’t understand why having her signature makes such a difference. She is an author I revere, but she’s just a person, like me, so why was her signature the clincher? Mmm….interesting….

when is a vest not a vest?

I know it's time to go home, because:

• It's been warm and sunny the whole time I've been here and today it's raining. It always rains the day I fly home.
• Yesterday I used the words " your folks" in an email. I never say "your folks" at home.
• Yesterday I rushed into the Precita Park Cafe at 4.15 on my way back to my SF home and asked for an Americano to go. The extravagance! I would never ever buy a coffee to take home to drink from a cafe that was five minutes away from home. I'd wait till I got home and then make a coffee myself.
• I am not American yet, however. Also yesterday, I was in a shop ogling one of those long sleeved sheer cotton T shirts with a fraying scoop neck (like rock chicks wear) and I asked the shop assistant if they had a vest in the same fabric and she showed me a sweatshirt and a cardigan, and I left the shop baffled. Then Wendy explained that I should have asked for a tank top, as a 'vest' is a jacket over here.
• Lastly, I need to be able to write blog posts in my usual package (Windows Live Writer) and not on this stupid Blogger template which does not understand the concept of a paragraph, nor sensible bullet points.

West Coast trivia

I've been away. I've been away from away. I went to Redwood City to stay with the Aging Hippie, and I've come back to the city to have a rest. She has so much energy, that woman - she ran me ragged!

I had a great time, and saw something of life in what she calls the "suburbs." To me it looked like the American Dream - wide leafy streets, immaculate front gardens, non-stop sunshine. I did lots of things I've head about and never done, things that make up everyday life for a lot of people, things that Anne Tyler mentions in her books, and the Aging Hippie drops into her emails, and I'm not exactly sure what they mean.

1/ I went to a thrift store and bought a beautiful cashmere jumper for only $5. The thrift store was a huge charity shop the size of a small supermarket.

2/ I went to a garage sale and ogled a 1930s handmade quilt, but didn't buy it because it was $65. (It was an upmarket sale - actually, an 'estate sale' and the prices were upmarket too.) There was a sofa I liked but I couldn't persuade the Aging Hippie to buy it.

3/ I went to a line dancing class, which I loved. Once you know the steps of a particular dance, it's a bit like a meditation.

4/ I went out for maragaritas. (Oops, no change there. I do that in San Francisco. But it was a relief to get them in as they were the first I've had this trip, and my crime writer friend back home, Chrissie Poulson, wanted me to have one for her.)

5/ I heard a screen door slam. You know that line in Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow taxi - Late last night, I heard the screen door slam?

6/ I had an American scone, which was very cakey and very buttery and very rich, and not at all like an English scone, which probably explains why the Aging Hippie wasn't much taken with our scones when she came to visit last year.

I did other things too, such as go on two long walks, and visit a photography exhibition at the Stanford University Art Gallery. All of this was packed into two days, so you can see what I mean about the AH being energetic. There was some down time for slugs like me, involving sitting, talking and sunshine. It was a wonderful 48 hours - thank you, AH.

Hip, or what?

How hip am I? I'm sitting with Isaac's super slim laptop and a cafe latte in a cafe on the edge of the Mission district. Yesterday morning I stayed home and wrote. Today I thought I'd try it in the big hip world. It's good. I have a huge bench table to myself, and there's music playing and a view of Precita Park. But how do I go over and get a refill without worrying about the laptop?I'm thinking it's probably not cool to take it with you to the counter. Hmmm...this is when my newly acquired San Franciscan hipness fails. I'll have to check what the form is when I see Isaac tonight.

What the Americans can teach us

I've just come back home from brunch in a cafe. I love brunch. And I love it in the USA. You can order a bottomless mimosa, and a main of almond french toast (which comes with vanilla bean cream cheese, fresh citrus compote, and vermont syrup) along with a side order of bacon, and no-one bats an eyelid. You can order anything you want with anything else you want at any time of day or night and the waiting staff will say "Of course" or "You're welcome." They won't say "We don't serve sandwiches in the evening," or "We stop serving lunch at 3" or some other piffling British non-service crap. Let's hear it for the Yanks!

Come home Anne Tyler

That's it! I am done with Sebastian Barry. I don't care if he does write like an angel. I can't take any more of the unhappiness and violence in his novels. I don't care if it is all based on the kinds of things that have happened in Ireland over the last century: life is hard enough and tough enough without reading novels about misery as well. I need lifting up. I need encouragement. I need solace. I am going to read Breathing Lessons while I am here. I can't face East of Eden now.

Wendy and Isaac saw me taking Plotting for Beginners off their shelf last night and said - "Good book! You ought to read it!" but I only wanted it to check what Sam calls Sally, (i.e. does he say Mum, or Ma?) as I am working on the sequel during the silent watches of jet-lag, when everyone else is asleep.

one difference between a mother and a grandmother

So here I am sitting in bed with a laptop - no change there, you might think. But here in SF it is time to be asleep. Lovely little Lux in the room next door has had a disturbed night, and so have I. I have only been in to see here a couple of times to settle her, whereas Wendy has been in far too many for her own comfort. It is likely that I (the Gran) enjoy cuddling a wakeful bundle of fun in a rocking chair in the middle of the night rather more than Wendy (the mother) does. The difference is what happens afterwards. When I was a young and exhausted parent, I could go to sleep anywhere, even sitting on the loo. Now I am an ancient crone, once I'm disturbed I lie awake. But I came to see my family, didn't I? And that's what I am doing, and loving it.

I just wish I'd brought more cheerful novels along to read on my holiday, because lying awake is sometimes like that Fleur Adcock poem - Things: "It is 5.a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse."

I brought with me The Secret Scripture, which is wonderful - of course. (Sebastian Barry is my latest writing hero.) East of Eden is a classic: I always bring a Steinbeck to read when I'm here. Rose Tremain's Temptation is also on my bedside table. But why are all serious books also rather miserable? Can you tell me one that is substantial and thought-provoking without making you feel desperate when you're reading it?

Aha! Just been to the sitting room and looked on the bookshelves and found Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler - just the ticket.


p.s. If you live in India, and you have arrived at this post after searching for differences between mothers and grandmothers, I would love it if you would tell me WHY you are looking for this topic. I have had a lot of hits from India on this post and I am intrigued as to why...

I see hills of green

This is the first time I have been in San Francisco in the spring, so it's the first time I have seen hills that are green. It's also the first time I have needed a woollen jacket when eating outside. It's all new.

The best thing so far is that Lux remembered me! It's tough having a grandchild 5,000 miles away. I don't expect I will ever know her as well as I do my grandsons - who live half an hour's drive away from me - but I still want her to know who I am and be pleased to see me when I visit. So far it's working - pretty good for someone who is only 20 months old. Or, as they say over here, "Good job!"

On the move

It’s raining in San Francisco, and Isaac has bought Lux her first umbrella. But look at the photo! Both she and Wendy are wearing warm coats! Is this what I should be packing in my suitcase? Aaarrgghhh!

I have never been to stay in the rainy season before. Wendy said it was only fair I should get some rain some time as it ALWAYS rains when they come here. I am flying there tomorrow, but I shall be blogging when I get there. Unlike the narrowboat, the SF house is uber-wired.

(So anyway, that’s why I’m changing the header picture to my April one today – even though it’s still March. I shan’t have access to all my photographs over there.)

Priorities

Narrowboats naturally reflect the tastes and lifestyles of their owners, and this applies to the boats of boat companies too.The boat we were on last week was clean, bright, and it had a good engine.  It had basic cooking equipment, a self-tuning telly (a miracle if you watch the telly) and it had a HUGE clip file containing details of all the pubs and eateries along the length of the canal, often with menus included. (We did not need this – we took most of our food along with us.)

The boat had everything we needed apart from one thing.There was no shelf above the bed for a book, a mug of tea, your glasses, a torch, whatever. Every other boat I have been on has a shelf by the bed.

I guess the owners of our boat spend the evening in the pub, stagger home and settle down to sleep under their minus 3 tog rated duvet and the idea of reading never enters their mind. But don’t they even like to start the day sitting in bed with a mug of tea, while the boat warms up?

AWOL again on the Leeds-Liverpool canal

I’m sorry to have left you in the lurch with no explanation. We went for a surprise holiday on a narrowboat on the Leeds-Liverpool canal with the family member who declines to be named. Sadly you won’t be seeing any photos of said family member because they also decline to be pictured.

It’s thirty years since we were on that canal and in the intervening time the noise of traffic has grown, spoiling a considerable length of it for country dwellers like us, who live up a lane and whose favourite sound is the song of the resident blackbird at dawn.

But there still are some pockets of quiet loveliness, namely on the Yorkshire side of the Pennines, west of Skipton. It was beautiful above Gargrave, and we hung around there for several days rather than venture further. There’s no county compares with Yorkshire – the countryside, the accents, the fish and chips cooked deliciously in beef fat.

We had a great time (naturally! - we were on a narrowboat holiday!) despite the traffic and the frosty nights and the duvets with minus 3 togs, necessitating my sleeping in two pairs of pyjamas and a cashmere v-neck, a hoodie and a scarf. Dave wore even more than that: he is a true gent and insisted I had all of the inadequate duvet to myself.

I cycled the tow path down to the Bingley Five Rise locks, built 200 years ago, and rang one of my sisters from there to say – I’m here! One branch of our family comes from Bingley, and one of my grandfathers had barges carrying coal up and down the canal.

I am sitting here in bed with the cat and my laptop, wearing only one set of pyjamas. It’s warm. It’s silent. It’s magic.

Book titles

oh dear oh dear oh dear – it doesn’t suit me being busy. I want to be sitting in bed all morning with my laptop writing the next 10,000 words of the new book – which, incidentally, still has no title.When are we going to find the right one?

If an author is a bestseller writer, the title and the cover are pretty much irrelevant. Eager readers will leap on the latest book with enthusiasm, whatever.

Jane and I are not bestseller writers (yet) so we need to get a title which grabs the reader and INSISTS they read the book.

Ones that attract me are quirky, intriguing, and/or which contain a personal pronoun.  So, for example, I found Charlotte Mendelson’s title When We Were Bad, irresistible. The book had good reviews, so I bought it. I wasn’t disappointed: I loved it.  What kinds of titles attract you when you see them in a bookshop, when they are not on the books of authors you know you like?