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Another voice

As I’ve been working through my draft, chopping and changing and adding and tweaking, there’s something I haven’t quite been able to reconcile.

On one level, this novel is a thriller. Something bad is happening – right from the beginning. Except my protagonist doesn’t know about it, and we’re seeing things from her point of view. I need to create a growing sense of dread, a sense that all is not right in the world – but from Grace’s perspective, for the majority of the time at least, everything is unfolding as it should. There are moments where her intuition tells her to be careful, but it’s hard to really work these without things seeming ham-fisted. And besides, she’s not stupid: if she was really uneasy then she wouldn’t take the steps she needs to for everything to pan out as it does.

When I was in the planning stages I thought perhaps I could tell the story through multiple voices, weave the different versions of reality through. I soon concluded that this wouldn’t work, that it would give too much away where I wanted to leave the reader guessing.

Except now I’m not so sure…

I wrote a character exercise last week to explore things as my antagonist sees them, and it turns out his voice is so strong that I don’t think I can silence it. He can’t have equal airtime in the novel – it is not really him that this story is about – but I think there can be flashes, moments of insight into the dark mind at work behind the scenes that will colour the reader’s interpretation of the rest.

That’s where I’m at right now anyway. I’m going to see what happens if I let him have his say at a few key points, whether I can manage to craft his interludes so they create that sense of dread without giving too much away. If I can pull it off it should add an element of dramatic irony as things unfold, give the reader a smidgen more knowledge than Grace has herself to filter their reactions to her through.

And if nothing else then just the process will give me more of an insight into what’s driving him, and that can be no bad thing.

October sun

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As I watch the world through rain-battered windows, white horses galloping across the bay to the invisible shores beyond and the wind, still eerie in the daylight, ricocheting off my neighbours’ walls, it’s worth remembering that not every day is like this.

Just the other side of the weekend we woke to blue skies, the sea calm and the sunlight glinting off cliffs as far away as Dorset. The air was crisp but still warm in the sun. It didn’t feel much like autumn then at all.

I followed Arthur up through the woods and along the path to the fort. His excitement was palpable: as with all of our little adventures, even the well-trodden ones, there was a sense that anything might happen.

When we got there, it wasn’t clear whether he had shrunk or the world had grown. Whichever it was, he looked so tiny as he ran around being chased by his shadow that it almost took my breath away.

Once his efforts had exhausted him he came back to me again, both bigger and smaller now and ready for sleep: peaceful and contented in the October sun.

Silent Sunday: 12th October 2014

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The plan

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***

It was still seared into his memory, the moment when he’d told her. Fear had flashed across her face at first, but that had quickly turned to contempt.

“I can’t actually believe you thought you’d get away with it.”

She’d spat the words at him, not caring how hurtful they were.

“I trusted you, and this is how you repay me?”

He’d tried to explain to her that this, in fact, was the deepest kind of trust. He’d let her be a part of something special, something new. But she was having none of it.

She had almost destroyed him, but this time would be different.

He had it all worked out: how he’d reel her in, draw her closer and closer so that by the time he revealed the truth she would be in too deep to see things any other way. And if she let him down – well, he was ready for that too. He knew exactly how he was going to cover his tracks this time.

She wouldn’t let him down though, not this one.

He scrolled through the information he had about her so far – the photographs, the friends, the good times and the bad. He already felt he knew her intimately, and the next stage would fill the gaps that were remaining.

She had no idea what was about to begin. He wished he could tell her, let her in on his plan and watch the admiration spread across her pretty face, but there was no doubt in his mind that this was how it had to be.

He looked at the bank of screens staring coldly at him for the last time and picked up the black holdall at his feet. If he could just get this bit right then everything else would fall into place.

The leather of his gloves hugged his hands assertively. He could do this. He would prove them all wrong. And he would not make the same mistakes again.

***

Thank you to Sara at Mum Turned Mom for inspiring this post with her prompt: ‘The mistakes we make…’.

This piece is another exercise in character development, this time jumping inside the head of my antagonist at the point the novel begins. The story we actually hear unfolds from the protagonist’s point of view and it is a long way into the novel before the truth begins to come out.

Word of the week: autumn

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There’s no escaping it: after an unseasonably warm September, and some tantalisingly sunny days at the beginning of this month, autumn has finally arrived.

I’ve never been that great at dealing with this time of year. I thrive on light and sunshine, and as the nights begin to close in I can’t help but feel a lingering sense of dread. Things are a lot better than they used to be, now that I’m out of the city and not doing a job that means never seeing daylight in the winter months. And this year Arthur and I have actually been enjoying the coming of autumn rather a lot.

We’ve made the most of it being a bit colder, wrapping up warm and snuggling up whenever we get the chance.

There’s generally been lots of time for snuggling: we’ve had some pretty spectacular rain this week, and there’s been nothing for it but to stay inside. Arthur’s really embraced this. He’s been having tea parties with his animal friends, and devouring books like they’re going out of fashion.

We’ve been getting out of the house whenever we can too, breathing in the changing landscape of the sea and sky. The air is deliciously refreshing, and there’s a whole hat collection for us to revisit.

To fuel our way through this seasonal shift, we’ve been doing our best to eat healthily. We had our first roast last Sunday – I’m looking forward to many more of those – and I’ve been drinking even more water than usual.

One of the problems with this time of year in the past has been that I’m not terribly good at making the right choices – I know what will get me motivated, make me feel better, but actually doing it is another matter. Having an awesome toddler to hang out with is obviously one way to make making the right choices easier. And I’ve also been getting a helping hand from Tea with Miss Beatrix’s #BashSAD challenge.

I don’t feel sad this year – and that’s despite an October which so far has held more than a usual amount of sorrow (more on that another time). In fact I’m looking forward to embracing autumn – and even winter. There is so much in this life to enjoy, and I intend to make the most of it.

Things not to say to a babywearing mama

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I’ve been wearing Arthur since he was five weeks old. It was a bit of a revelation to me, and in many ways has shaped my whole approach to parenting. In the beginning the world seemed pretty supportive of my choice: there were still those who had something to say about it, but most mums I know wore their babies at least part of the time when they were tiny.

However as Arthur’s got older – and bigger – an increasing number of people have felt the need to voice their opinion on me wearing him, from well-meaning friends and family to total strangers in the street or on the bus. Most people are of course still lovely and supportive, but there are others whose comments range from the slightly irritating to the downright disturbing – and having spoken to other babywearing friends I am by no means the only one on the receiving end of them.

So here, in no particular order, is my list of things you might want to think twice about before saying to a babywearing mama.

“You’re going to spoil him, you know.”

Now I get this quite a lot. I suppose it’s my own fault really, for leaning towards the attachment parenting side of things. But as I’ve said before and I’ll doubtless say many times again I don’t believe that keeping my baby close and secure is going to spoil him. Yes, he’s very happy being worn. But does that mean I should be choosing to follow an approach that makes him less happy, just in case? I think not.

“Gosh – is that safe?” (For one friend I spoke to this question was combined with vigorous tugging on the straps of her baby carrier)

Um, yes, thank you for your concern, but this is perfectly safe. (At least it was until you started to undo the buckles!) There are of course precautions to be followed when wearing a baby, just as there are with any means of transporting a child. People have been wearing their babies for hundreds of years, and if I didn’t think it was safe then I wouldn’t be doing it.

“Oh your poor back. He must be so heavy!”

Now I feel a bit bad about including this one, because I know that most people who say it do so with my best interests at heart. But still, when you hear it several times a day it can get a bit annoying! There are of course carriers on the market (naming no names of the carrier that inexplicably seems to be the most popular despite managing to make newborns feel heavy) that are not as comfortable, for mums or babies. However having fallen in love with babywearing I’ve done my research and found one that is supportive and spreads the (quite considerable) weight of my baby evenly. There are lots to choose from, but the carrier we use now is a Toddler Connecta, designed for babies from 18 months. It’s fab, and I find it decidedly easier to wear my son than I do to carry him in my arms.

“Heh heh, I wish that was me nuzzled up in there.”

This one freaks me out a bit to be honest, and depressingly it’s the one I’ve heard most. It’s most commonly uttered by old men, and why they think they can get away with expressing to a mother walking with her child their desire to have their face in her breasts is beyond me. Seriously gross.

“Can’t he walk?”

Do mums with pushchairs get this one? I’ve been hearing it since not long after Arthur turned one, and I’m not entirely sure what the implication is. Yes, he can walk. But like most not-even-two-year-olds his little legs get quite tired when I’m rushing around trying to get things done. And if he couldn’t walk..? Well that would just be entirely inappropriate.

“You don’t want to still be doing that when he’s a teenager!”

And we’re back to that other attachment parenting chestnut. My son is one. Much like co-sleeping and breastfeeding, I very much doubt I’ll still be wearing Arthur when he’s a teenager. I might be wearing him for a while longer yet mind – I’ve been quite inspired by mamas wearing their pre-schoolers, and he still feels light as a feather when I put him on my back.

So there we have it: the things I most definitely don’t want to hear whilst I’m wearing my baby. I’d love to hear about your experiences so please share them in the comments below!

V is for Vietnam

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For our honeymoon we went to Vietnam. It was a challenge fitting even a fraction of what I wanted to see there into those two weeks, but I was determined to try.

We started in Hanoi, spending two days walking around the city, soaking up the sights and smells and flavours. That was where I took this picture: just another selection of wares in a pavement stall, but one that with its seafood and herbs and vegetables sums up what I love about Vietnamese food. I love the colours and textures in this picture too, and the shapes – all those circles full of promise.

So much of our trip was about the food, really. That was what had inspired us to go in the first place – the pho and the summer rolls and the banh cuon we’d enjoyed in restaurants in Hackney. We had a Vietnamese supermarket near us there too, but it was wonderful to see all of the ingredients in their homeland.

By the time we left, we’d sampled all sorts of new dishes, successfully dodging the peanuts that would have triggered an allergic reaction to discover a huge range of exciting tastes. We’d seen noodles being made, rice paper rounds drying in the sun, prawns being crushed to create the pungent paste that was seemingly at the base of everything. We’d learnt to cook some new dishes as well: spicy seafood hotpot, and even those delicious banh cuon – delicate and slippery steamed rolls filled with prawns and pork.

I’d love to go back, and not just for the food. It is such a beautiful country – and so steeped in history. Hopefully one day, when Arthur’s a little bit older, we’ll be able to revisit for a longer trip.

V is for Vietnam.

Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODCast Dove.

What if my normal isn’t normal after all?

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I have encountered this week a particularly pernicious breed of self-doubt.

On the surface, everything’s going pretty well with the edit – fantastically well in fact. I’m a few pages from hitting the halfway point, and well on my way to getting this round of redrafts completed by the end of the month. My characters are being extremely helpful as I try to tweak the various elements of their story, and the conceit I’ve adopted to deal with some of the bigger problems with the way it’s told seems to be working – at least to my mind.

But this is where the doubt is seeping in.

When I shared my thoughts about the challenge of writing dreams last week I got some really useful feedback, but it did make me realise how completely subjective peoples’ experiences of the world are: that something I think is entirely normal might be entirely alien to someone else. This might be particularly pronounced when it comes to dreams – they are after all not bound by any of the normal rules of reality. But it’s not only this that worries me.

Way back before the summer, as I got ready to release the first draft to my initial readers, I had a niggling sense that maybe my main character wasn’t very nice. I knew why – she’s on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but doesn’t really know it, and that’s manifesting itself in a combination of abrasiveness and shyness, shutting herself away. I’d been there, and I felt sorry for her. I knew she didn’t mean to come across the way she did, and so did her friends. And anyway, she really wasn’t that bad.

But the feedback I got – not from everyone, but from people whose opinions I really trust – was that she was really quite unpleasant. Completely unlikeable in fact, to the point where important elements of the plot just cease to make sense.

I’m working on that – I can see where they’re coming from after all. But as I change the things Grace says and how she says them, as I try to get her to open up a bit and to demonstrate that she really is a friend worth having, I start to doubt myself. Maybe the reason she comes across so badly is because I’ve modelled her on myself, and maybe I’m just not all that likeable. Maybe my ideas about what makes someone worth caring about are just so far removed from what normal people think that I’m never going to be able to create a character who people will like enough to invest in her story.

And then this makes me wonder about everything else. Things I take for granted as thoughts or ideas or experiences that people will share, that I’m counting on to be able to create the common ground that will form the foundations of the world of my novel: maybe they’re just me, just my warped way of seeing things which will do nothing other than switch people off and make them look away.

I think maybe I’ve been spending too much time in my head.

And actually, even stepping back enough to write this makes me realise that things are probably ok. That this is just another one of those self-doubt demons, adopting an increasingly sophisticated guise as I become wise to his usual ways.

I know that I’m more than a little bit bonkers. And it is this that, hopefully, is going to lend my words the original edge they will need to be heard. If people don’t instinctively identify with the characters and ideas in my story then I will just need to make damned sure that my writing is strong enough to convince them to go beyond their comfort zone.

Who needs normal anyway?

Trains, goats and autumn leaves

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This weekend, we managed to tick something else off our South Devon bucket list. We’ve been past the Rare Breeds Farm in Totnes countless times on the train to London, the vintage-style platform of the South Devon Railway looking like a gateway to another world. Having finally made it there on foot I can confirm that those first impressions really are quite accurate.

From the first steps beyond the station car park into the woodland path you feel like you’re onto something special, a sensation made even stronger once the bridge across the river comes into view.

I think Arthur could happily have stayed right there, watching the mainline trains speed past mere metres away, but little did he know the other treats in store.

To get to the farm you have to walk along the steam railway platform. Everything is beautifully maintained, and we were lucky enough to arrive just as a special service was pulling in. Arthur was captivated by the comings and goings, eagerly ‘choo choo’ing as Leigh explained the mechanics of the steam engine to him. Once again we could have ended our trip right there and they both would have been very happy.

We managed to tear ourselves away, and headed over the tracks to the little farm itself. After picking up some feed in the cafe we went through the gates – and immediately came face to face with a row of owls.

I’m not sure Arthur believed they were real at first, but then we found a very little owl called Flitwick just waiting to be stroked.

After a gentle stroke of Flitwick’s feathers we continued further on, coming across some very lively red squirrels. I’m not sure Arthur knew quite what to make of them!

And then we found the goats. I don’t think Arthur’s met goats before, and these ones were very friendly. One of my favourite moments of the afternoon was him giggling ‘Fingers! Fingers!’ as they greeted him enthusiastically through the fence. He even had a go at feeding them, and when we ventured inside was quick to make himself at home.

There were some beautiful sheep too, though Arthur was happy to let Daddy take the lead on feeding those.

After meeting all the larger animals we came across the guinea pigs, and Arthur sat himself down for a little cuddle. He thought it was a ‘baby dog’ at first, and got very confused when we said it was a sort of pig…

All in all it is a very special place, and we will most definitely be back. It’s just a shame we discovered it so late in the season! Though that did give us the excuse for a bit of frolicking in the autumn leaves – the perfect end to a perfect afternoon.

Silent Sunday: 5th October 2014