I love lambs

We used to bring tiny weak lambs into our farm kitchen when I was little, and sit them in a box by the Rayburn, and feed them with a bottle. If they were really struggling to stay alive, we put the box in the stick oven and left the door open.

Last weekend, my daughter-in-law met lambs face to face for the very first time. Brought up in Colorado, and now living in California, she'd never seen a lamb in the fleece. So we sought some out on the fields above Eyam, and she fell in love. My son Isaac shot a video of some lambs and it's her grinning face at the end. Click here to view.

Earthquake

A friend said in a recent email that she has missed my blog, which was a sweet thing to say, as it's nice to feel appreciated. I miss my blog too, but there are times when one doesn't feel like sharing one's life with the world, and the last couple of months have been such a time. Losing my mother (see the November 2008 archives and some of December) has turned out to be so much harder than losing my father. I used my experience of the latter in Zuzu's Petals. I was sad for a long time when my father died, but adjusting to the loss of my mother has been qualitatively different.

Someone at my Quaker meeting said to me "It's very deep when your mother dies, isn't it? The world feels like an unsafe place." Absolutely. Dave has been extending our teeny tiny bathroom into my old study. He knocked down the wall between them in February and when I reviewed my photographs of the process and saw the one above, I thought - Hmm...a picture of my life.

No, my life wasn't in ruins. But losing my mother has been like surviving an earthquake.

Frogs

It's been such a long, hard winter here in the Peak District that everything is late this spring...the daffodils, the forsythia, the flowering currant, the seething stew of mating frogs in the pond. But now the frogs are at it - see those huge mounds of frogspawn, and just listen to their ribeting. Don't you think it sounds like the revving of tiny motorbikes?

Solace

I was a guest on a phone-in on Radio Five Live the other night. The topic was losing one's mother. I had to stay up way past my usual bedtime to be on, and when I listened to it later on the net, I thought I sounded drugged. Fortunately, my son said I just sounded sad, which I was.

A lovely woman who phoned in about grieving for her mother said her husband had taken her on a cruise to try to cheer her up. When I reported this to Dave, he said "I could take you on the boats in Markeaton Park, if you like."

Guest for the day

Fiona Robyn's novel The Letters is published this month. Hello, Fiona! Congratulations!

You have three novels coming out soon, and The Letters is the first to be published. Is The Letters your first novel? If not, how many others have you got stashed on the shelf that you regard as learning exercises?

The first novel I wrote, Thaw, will actually be the last to come out (in Feb 2010). I wrote The Letters third. And no - I have shelf-fuls of poems that never made it into the world but no spare novels!

If someone asked you to describe the type of fiction you write, what would you say?

I am usually tempted to be poncy and I say 'literary fiction', but nobody seems to know what that means, so then I say something like 'stories which often have something to do with secrets.'

What are you trying to achieve in your novels?

My main aim is to be true to my central character, and 'tell their story' with accuracy. If I do this well, I hope readers will be able to see my characters as 'real' (which they are to me), and get swept up in their stories. I also hope my readers will enjoy my use of language along the way.

How much of your own life do you use in your novels? I know that all writers use material from their own lives – it is inescapable. What I mean is how much of the things that have happened to you personally, and the dilemmas you yourself have faced, do you use as material for your novels?

I do slip in details from my life here and there - my character might listen to some music that's very important to me, or I might set a scene in a coffee shop I've visited. In terms of the broader themes, I'd say that these absolutely come from me too, but they come from a subconscious level so I don't really know what I'm writing about until I've finished the story. As an example, I think The Letters is partly about us being able to accept each other as we are, which is an important concept to me in my own life.

When you begin to write a novel, what comes first – theme, plot or character? Or is it something else?

Definitely the character. My main character (Violet for The Letters) appears in my head in a vague way, and I spend the following months 'getting to know them' - trying to work out what kind of job they'd do, what their parents are like, what kind of relationships they have. The story comes through the character.

Do you plot your novels before you begin to write them? If not, can you explain your method to us?

I do have a vague idea of what's going to happen by the time I start writing my first draft - for The Letters I knew Violet would divorce and move to the coast, and I knew who'd be sending herthe letters written from a mother and baby home in 1959... but I often get surprises along the way. Things will happen to my characters that I didn't expect. This has been especially true of the novel I'm working on at the moment - someone died when I was least expecting them to!

What type of writing (in fiction) do you enjoy the most? E.g. description, action, dialogue...

I feel least confident about getting dialogue right, and so maybe I enjoy that least. I do admire people who write plays. I enjoy writing description the most - especially little details - a caterpillar inching along the wall, the buttons on a character's cardigan. I also enjoy writing the scenes where something important is happening. I know I'm getting close when I read them back and they make me happy for my characters or they make me cry!

What aspect of writing a novel do you find the most difficult?

I find writing first drafts very painful, and will do almost anything to avoid it. Once I've got the first 100000 words down, even though they are TERRIBLE, it gets a little easier.

Why did you write The Letters in the present tense?

There are three strands to the book that alternate - Violet's story (in the present tense), the letters she receives from the mother and baby home, and Violet's past (told in the past tense). I am always drawn to the present tense - I think it's a habit from writing poems for so many years! I like the immediacy of it, and I know some people think it can slow things down too much, but I like that.

Which of the three novels soon to be published – The Letters, The Blue Handbag, and Thaw – is your favourite, and why?

That's like asking me which of my three children is my favourite! I like the darkness in Thaw. I like the plants in The Blue Handbag, and the mystery. And I like the humour in The Letters, and the ending.

Which novel - written by someone else - do you wish that you had written?

I feel pretty happy about only being able to write the novels I can write, and I'll leave the ones I can't write to other people! I greatly admire all kinds of people's writing - Lorrie Moore, Richard Ford, Annie Dillard, John Irving, I could go on and on...

Hello

I'm not blogging at the moment, but scroll down and see the links on the right hand side. In the gallery section there are photgraphs of places in the Peak District that feature in Plotting for Beginners, and ones of Wensleydale that are mentioned in Zuzu's Petals. In "Popular Posts" there's a piece in which Jane and I explain how we wrote Plotting for Beginners together, and there is also my baby bio.

p.s. there will be a guest appearing on the blog on Wednesday March 11th.