I’ve not been updating my website much recently because my partner died in March, just three months after the death of my mum. I thought I knew a lot about grief but this grief has been on a scale unlike anything I’ve experienced before.
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It is so hard to sum up a person like Paul in a short space of time: warm, eloquent, funny, kind, wise, philosophical and feral are just some of the words people have used to describe him. He was such a unique human being with so many interests and talents and friends.
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I’m sitting in The Rude Shipyard cafe with poet, Suzannah Evans, at the moment. It’s our usual Monday rendezvous in which we commit to our writing in one of Sheffield’s cafes. Although we spend a fair amount of time talking and lavish money on lunch and pots of tea, I cherish this time as it’s the one day of the week when I can guarantee that I will at least write something.
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I began my first working day of the new year thinking that my favourite writing retreat run by NAWE at Ty Newydd wouldn’t be happening this year owing to lack of funding and by the end of Monday, I found myself volunteering to run it with my colleague, Liz Cashdan.
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2015 was a good writing year for me. I published my first book which included a launch in Waterstones in Piccadilly and media coverage in the Observer and the Guardian and the Daily Mail.
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It’s been a crazy week for Archie Nolan and for me with well-attended book launches in London and here on our home turf in Sheffield, where the Donor Conception Network and Archie Nolan were both conceived.
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I didn’t have any choice about where I came from but where I go next is up to me and I’m going to make it somewhere really great. Someone has to make it into space and Dad’s right – why shouldn’t it be me?
So says Archie Nolan at the end of my children’ s book: Archie Nolan: Family Detective so it seems appropriate that Archie’s book will have a proper ‘launch’ next week.
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Looking forward to taking part in the Novel Slam next Tuesday. Do come along.
http://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/events/novel-slam-2015
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I’ll be hosting discussions at this event tonight which will also be the launch of the Sheffield Authors Network.
http://offtheshelf.org.uk/events/diy-publishing
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So, the littlest child is settled at school and I have begun a wondrous new regime of doing only writing-related work, Monday-Friday, 9-3pm. Well, I still have to walk the dog and have done a bit of clearing out of the house and we have the usual hospital appointments and other domestic stuff to fit in but still, I’m writing more than I have for a while, which is great.
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Summer’s here and the kids are off school which means there won’t be much writing time for me for a while. Luckily I have just filled my writing tank up with a week at Ty Newydd in Wales where I’ve been doing a course in writing Women’s Popular fiction with Julie Cohen and Rowan Coleman.
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“I am not a writer except for when I write” Juan Carlos Onetti
Yesterday I saw the cover of a book that I have written for the first time. It is the first book that will have my name on the cover and it felt like a monumental moment for me.
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I love being in the company of writers. Whether they’re famous novelists, performance poets, young writers or total beginners, I simply love being around people who write.
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It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged, mostly because I’ve been snowed under with Off the Shelf events. It’s been great fun but a lot of stress and made me reflect again on where I put my time and energies.
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Tracey Emin has been making the news again. She’s perhaps as famous for being controversial as she is for her art and she will have raised the hackles of many women artists this week with her statements about the incompatibility of the creative path and that of motherhood.
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I’ve always been interested in exploring boundaries. I’m tempted to say that I like grey areas but grey isn’t a colour I feel comfortable associating myself with so I’ll say that I like rainbows instead; the boundary where sunshine and rain meet, creating something colourful and transient.
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I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front recently, partly because I’ve had the children at home for the summer holidays but partly because I’ve been reflecting on this writing business and particularly on the business of self-promotion.
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I’ve been meaning to practice mindfulness for years, decades actually. But I’ve been too busy to make time for it which seems laughable now. I first discovered meditation when I discovered buddhism about ten years ago.
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As anyone who knows me will attest, I am fascinated by romantic relationships. It’s my favourite topic of conversation and the inspiration for pretty much all of my poetry, so it makes sense that I would choose to write fiction about the subject as well.
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I spent a lovely day on Saturday with an old friend. He’s a fellow Aquarian and this may or not have something to do with the fact that he’s something of a free spirit, like myself. As a childless man, he was asking me whether having children is really all it’s cracked up to be.
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