Mentoring

Last Thursday evening I got my second report from my mentor.

There was always the potential (in my head) that the first 10k of words was a fluke and she’d come back and say “Oh dear, what happened to the second 10k?”

But I am a bit excited. I love how she’ll say something, such as “you have a tendency to do this…” and I go and look at it thinking ‘Do I?’ and yes, she’s right, so I do. I love how she’s not spoon feeding me but is highlighting things (tendencies) for me to identify and amend: all the while being there to feedback to if I don’t understand. Personally, I think it’s important for me to learn how to spot this stuff myself and what I intend from this experience, is how to stand on my own two feet with my work.

About one scene, she said: “… far and away the strongest passage is the conversation between M and her mother in C’s study. This is packed with dramatic tension, pathos and humour, beautifully balanced in that you invite us to sympathise with both women in their troubled relationship. The narrative pace is spot on…”

Coo.

Fancy that.

I worry a lot about everything narrative pace. My notion of pace is based on a woolly feeling such as ‘ooh, isn’t it about time we had a bit of a drama?’ I have absolutely no idea how to decide these things in any other way, so it’s a boost to hear that it’s working.

Today I was on ‘take Daughter and Friend to a party’ duty. I took my laptop to Starbucks while I waited for the pick up and wrote 720 words and felt myself getting back into the flow.

It’s so exciting. I am so excited.

(Please forgive the me me me-ness of this post)

Yo ho ho

I saw my first Christmas decorations in Bangkok this year around the 28/29 October. I think it was a record.

We are purists when it comes to Christmas trees: only REAL will do.

Then we moved to Thailand where there is a distinct lack of choice: Non-drop, traditional, Nordman fir, Frasier Fir, Norway Spruce, Blue Spruce, Scots Pine?

Nope. Here, it’s no tree or fake tree.

Rabidly against fake trees, in our first year we found a distant relative of the fir tree in one of the garden centres. I think its genetic similarity was tenuous. It had pine needles and droopy branches. All the baubles slid down the branches overnight and had to be replaced every morning. The tree couldn’t cope with our Western need for air conditioning – we’d only been here a few months – and it got sicker and sicker, dropping its needles, and then the baubles wouldn’t wait until night time to fall off.

The following year we caved.

Yesterday we built our tree (you have no idea of the pain it causes me to say this out loud.)

Teetotally sober!

Yesterday’s lunch was lovely. My headache started before I was half way through the welcome glass of champagne, so I didn’t need huge amounts of will power to avoid the booze.

Still, we had a fire break out on our table which was pretty exciting. No, I’m not joking: a piece of cracker debris spontaneously combusted on our table, making quite a table decoration for several seconds. It’s a sad state of affairs when one’s first reaction is ‘Is there time to get my camera out so I can blog this?’ Really, I’ve got to get a life.

Carol and Caroline helped me build the grotto. Then, as I was ‘on duty’ as one of the ‘meet and greet’ team, I showed the ladies where to put their charity gifts in the ball room. Finally, I herded women toward Father Christmas to pick up their Christmas presents.

We appealed to all lunch guests to bring Christmas presents for the Karen Refugee children from Burma/Myanmar, living in the Mae La Camp and students at the Thai Noh Bo School. We had a fantastic result and Christ Church, Bangkok, will take the gifts to the children. It always makes me a bit weepy to see people’s generosity.

Happy Christmas already

I’m off to the BWG Christmas lunch today.

I went to look for pictures of last year’s Christmas lunch to post here. Yeah … you know what? Perhaps I’ll just leave it to your imagination.

This has been getting lots of hits on my stat counter. I don’t quite know what people are hoping to find when they search for how to make a Christmas Grotto… I hope they’re not hoping for 3D constructions. Anyway, I’ve pulled the sign out again for this year; (I think a new one might be in order next year) found the red velvety material and the white snowy fabric; packed a toolbox of equipment which might enable me to cobble together a ‘grotto’ (a festive looking area for Father Christmas to sit to hand out presents…) I’ve brought along some lovely green tinsel too.

THIS YEAR I’m staying sober as a teetotaller. I cannot afford to annihilate my writing brain cells for a week.

“Not with a bang but a whimper”

Well, there it is. It’s 'over'. A court ruling declares that ‘the court held the parties, their respective leaders and executives accountable for the electoral fraud committed during the December 23 general elections.’ Forgive the pessimism realism but let’s just wait and see as the ‘new’ parties are formed.

Now, we are turning our thoughts to a holiday.

Me? I’m turning my thoughts to not panicking. I haven’t written for several days and I hate the feeling of losing my train of thought. I'm busy all day tomorrow; I’ve got to send Husband to work with a costume for the Christmas party and my next Novel Racers coffee is on Friday, for which I am entirely devoid of subjects: eeeek. I won’t panic. I won’t.

This one's for Husband

Regular readers know that Husband had a horrible time getting home from India last week.

We were lucky that he wasn’t in Mumbai. But terror, being what it is, meant that I was worried sick especially as I knew that he couldn’t get back into Thailand because of the anti government demonstrations taking place in both Bangkok airports, Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang. With these two airports closed, the regional airports were under enormous strain to try and deal with everyone diverting to them.

In order to get out of India, he left Bangalore on Thursday night, not for Thailand as planned but for Singapore. Once there, a complicated plan to return to Thai soil was sketched out. ‘While you’re in Singapore,’ I said, ‘if you can get to Takashimaya, please would you swing past that nice stationery store? I’d like an orange box folder please.’ OMG. Do you remember the post about the divine Bookbinders Design shop? Oh dear, I salivate, dribble…

So lovely, patient readers, this post is for Husband, who thought that ‘Update: arrived home 7.30pm’ was an insufficient fanfare for his eventual homecoming. I present to you, my very own ‘Milk Tray Man.’ This is what I imagine his trip home, accompanied by my orange box file, was really like:

I ♥ Book Club

My being ‘a reader’ isn’t unusual here on the blogs. Among those of us also writing it’s also a requirement, although I’ll bet, entirely a pleasure. When I meet people who don’t read (in the same compulsive way I do) they often remark on my ‘head in a book’ habit. It does define me.

I’ve always known what I wanted to read. I’ve no idea how early books came into my life (did my parents choose them?) My parents certainly never ‘managed’ my reading nor forbade anything. I was aware that my Mum disliked Enid Blyton, but both she and my Dad had a ‘any reading is good’ philosophy; they believed if you discovered a love of reading (anything) you’d always be a reader and your critical faculties would develop with maturity.

About four years ago I had a fiction reading crisis. It came upon me slowly, but I ceased to be satisfied by the type of books I was reading and then worse still, I stopped being able to choose books. It was so frustrating because I’d never been unable to select books. My lovely friend The High Priestess of Punk-chew-ation let me loose on her bookshelves. Among the ones I took and never read was Bel Canto by Anne Patchett.

Then I found out we were moving to Bangkok. There wasn’t room in my head to worry about what to read and so I just consumed ‘escapist’ novels because I needed more than ever in this time of upsidedownyness to read. This took the pressure off me and my panic and misery subsided a bit.

Then when I got to Thailand I joined a couple of book clubs. Once a month my reading was prescribed and I had agreed to read whatever it was that was nominated. (When I read in the blurb of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami that there were ‘talking cats,’ I nearly expired on the spot. I didn’t do talking animals ... but I really enjoyed it.)

I don’t always like the book club choice but I always (barring life events) read it. Brilliant books I would NEVER have picked up with being made to, are: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

This month’s book for Book Club… is Bel Canto by Anne Patchett which I’d already got.

And OMG: I’ve found the book I wish I’d written.

It’s my first 5/5 for Book Club.