On Tea (mine) and Tenacity (Liz's)

Yesterday I did a guest post over at Liz Fenwick’s blog. I was talking about tea; actually I was talking about life in a foreign country but channelling the tea theme. (And do go and look at my sister’s beautiful teapot, which has a starring role in the post.)

Liz and I met online as early Novel Racers. I think I’m going to make her blush but have a huge admiration crush on Liz. She was already taking her writing seriously when she joined the novel race but she has shown such tenacity through those years of learning the craft, that… well, I just really admire her. I know a teensy tiny bit how difficult writing a novel is and I hadn’t even got to the rejection stage!

So this month, Orion is publishing Liz’s first novel, The Cornish House. I cannot wait to read it.

Liz was always a great support to me when I was writing and I am enormously grateful for that. It leads me to thinking about my own experience and of my recent giving up status. Have I given up? Have I stopped just for a bit? My good friend, P – of the ‘total strangers for Christmas’ episode…. (Gasp! I don’t think I’ve ever recounted that story on this blog. There’s a post for this week, then.) Anyway, P asked me yesterday on skype about my writing and how I feel about not doing it. I’m still very happy with the decision. I often have ‘mmm, that would make a good story’ thoughts and I think regularly about the non-fiction book, which I think has real potential if someone else hasn’t already written it by the time I get my act together. In fact, I’m pretty sure I will write fiction again but right now I’m happy because I'm still creating: I've returned to my art roots for the time being. More on that another time.

Quick catch up

Turning off my Bangkok topic Twitter stream has been very good for me. It’s still bloody awful out there and everywhere I go I hear people say their company is sending wives and children home. But going on Twitter now means I hear my writing and blog friends talking about normal stuff and not dead bodies and fighting. I feel less anxious. 

I won’t go home until Son has done his exams… so we went to school this afternoon for a geography exam – it was only open for exams today – and we got there and back without seeing anyone with guns; we saw no razor wire, or burning tyres.  I did see some sand bags but I pretended they were for the rain. I waited the three hours in the coffee shop with my laptop rather than going home.  And I wrote. Well I got myself ready for the next step of writing.

In the gym on Sunday (oh yes! I was there voluntarily…) I was listening to A Conversation on The Writing Life with Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. One of them described the different drafts that they do. In their second draft they write out a description of each scene’s business and they stick it together and then up on the wall. I’ve always been a cutter and paster: actually cutting up my essays and sellotaping them back together again in an entirely different order so this idea resonated with me. Then Liz said something in her post here about writing a synopsis in order to diagnose where the plot holes are.

I am struggling with the gargantuan thing that is my draft. It’s too big to see any sense in it so I’m going to make a mixture of these two pieces of advice in the hope that it gives me something of a manageable size to work with.

Oh and check this out: I'm one of the 32 blogs! Please come back on Thursday. I can't wait. Caroline's work is extraordinary. Her writing is like poetry that I can understand without having to read it six times. (Oh dear, don't think too badly of me.)