Tag Archives: confidence

The gift of feedback

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I have realised this week how much I absolutely love getting feedback on my writing. Compliments are nice of course, especially useful for storing up and peeking at when confidence is low, but ideas, advice, opinions – they’re like gold-dust.

I’ve had some incredibly useful feedback this week. Some interesting thoughts about the opening of my novel (if you haven’t seen it then I would love it if you’d take a look), and also a long and detailed email from a novelist friend of my agent who was kind enough to read my second draft.

There’s a sense of pride that bubbles up as I read what people have to say about my writing. It comes from the fact they’ve read it, for a start, which is pretty awesome in itself. But then they’ve thought about it, and applied a critical eye that’s so, so hard to do to something I’ve written myself, and offered up their own ideas about what could make it better.

Even if I don’t agree with everything they say the feedback is still invaluable. It starts a chain reaction in my mind, a network of ‘what ifs’ that cuts through the editor’s block that I find so much more insidious than its first draft counterpart.

I have to admit that after the cautious optimism I felt this time last week I’d actually hit a bit of a wall. I felt overwhelmed by the task of once again picking my manuscript apart, and began to doubt whether I was capable of it.

But then the new wave of feedback came in, and alongside that I was asked to write a post for Faber Academy about why I write, and I remembered that it is all about pushing my comfort zone, about confronting my fears and daring to do it anyway.

And so I will.

 

Writing Bubble

 

Independence

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There is no denying it: my little baby is growing up.

Since he turned two ten days ago, it is almost as though a switch has been flicked. He wants his own space, to do things at his own pace, in his own way and his own time.

It’s almost left me feeling lonely this week. Leigh has had a crazy week, having to stay up in Exeter for two consecutive nights because of shift patterns and deadlines. Arthur has generally been great company, but he’s been utterly determined to eat alone, sitting at his little blue table on his little blue chair.

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He clearly loves the autonomy of it, taking advantage of it at times to get up and wander around. I’ve watched him from my seat on the big table, missing my dinner companion in his highchair.

He has been testing his freedoms at bedtime too. We took the side off his cot a week or so ago, once it was obvious that he was perfectly capable of climbing out.

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After the first couple of nights where he was still exhausted from his New Year sickness, passing out quite happily and staying asleep whilst he rolled onto the floor, I invested in a Sleepyhead Grand – kind of like a pregnancy cushion for toddlers which cocoons him safely on his bed.

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He loves it – his ‘new cosy bed’ he calls it. As soon as bedtime is mentioned he’ll make for the stairs, keen to get up to his room. But then once we’re there he’ll take full advantage of the fact that he is no longer trapped by the bars on his cot, climbing in and out never mind how exhausted he is – or we are for that matter.

It felt endless the nights I was on my own with him. I have even more respect now than I did before for the parents I know who are doing this solo. It’s almost 10.30pm now, and I can hear him chatting away to Leigh as I type this. I know he’s tired, and he normally would have been asleep for ages by now, but the novelty is clearly still too much for him to handle.

I’m trying to encourage his independence – to give him the freedom he needs to test these things out. It’s hard when he pushes boundaries in a way I’m not comfortable with, but I don’t want to knock him down, to damage the trust I’ve been carefully building up over the last two years.

I have a feeling we’re entering a whole new zone of unchartered parenting territory. For the first time in ages I’ve been scouring Amazon for parenting books, looking for advice on how to continue the attachment approach that has worked so well for us up till now into toddlerdom and all the fresh challenges it brings with it.

It’s exciting, and just a little bit scary. But Arthur seems to be facing this new phase with confidence and relish. And ultimately that is of course what matters most.

 

My Word of the Week this week is Independence, linking up with Jocelyn at The Reading Residence. 

Now you are two

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Dear Arthur,

A year ago today I wrote my very first post on this blog: a letter to you, a week and a day after your first birthday.

Reading back over those words now it is hard to believe that only twelve months have passed – and at the same time I wonder where that time has gone, where my little baby has disappeared to.

You are still my baby of course. I suspect that will be the case for many, many years to come. But there is no denying that you are growing up.

A month or so after that first post you started walking. Unsteady on your feet at first, you soon leapt in confidence. You are so strong and fast now – running around on your tiptoes, a look of glee on your face. You have finally learnt to jump: you worked on that for ages, such determination as you squatted down and pushed upwards, not quite understanding why your feet wouldn’t leave the ground. Gymnastics has taught you to be increasingly comfortable in your body in many ways – walking backwards and sideways, rolling and balancing and climbing. I reckon it’s going to be a pretty active year ahead!

There’s swimming too. You’ve loved the water since you were little, but in your second summer, with the help of your float suit, you began to move yourself around in the pool and the sea. It made me very glad to live where we do, that there were so many opportunities for swimming in the open air feeling the breeze on your skin and the sun on your hair, looking out over our beautiful bay.

But the biggest steps you’ve taken this year have to be in your language and communication. You had a handful of words by your first birthday, and as you learnt to use them and discovered where they could get you your vocabulary snowballed. I stopped counting back in April as your list of words neared one hundred. Since then you’ve picked up many more from your books and films and conversation and just listening. You can put them together in simple sentences now, ask questions and express your preferences. Your definitely starting to do that rather a lot: I love the clear-minded and strong-willed personality that is emerging.

Your independence takes me by surprise sometimes. You still like your booba, and cuddles in the sling, and the moment in the night when you come and join mummy and daddy in the big bed. But none of these things are stopping you from developing your own sense of self.

You like to sit on your own table at mealtimes now – the blue table with the blue chair. You feed yourself with a fork or spoon, still wolfing down porridge and pasta. You love fruit too, especially bananas and satsumas and pears. And salmon – well, all fish really. Especially if it comes with chips. Though potatoes in general are pretty popular.

We took the side off your cot this week, and you’re very excited about your ‘new bed’. You like to be able to climb in and out. That was the problem with the high cot side in the end – it was a good thing daddy was there to catch you! You haven’t quite mastered staying in your bed when you’re asleep either, but you’re very close to the floor. The last couple of nights, when I’ve come in to check on you, you’ve been fast asleep on the mat we laid out to cushion your fall. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it, and for now I can’t help but find it super cute, especially since rolling out of bed doesn’t seem to wake you.

If you do wake in the night then more often than not daddy’s songs will soothe you back to sleep. You definitely still love your music – dancing and singing, playing piano and drums and your little ukulele. We actually had to replace that finally last month – it’s taken a bit of a battering with all your enthusiasm. Definitely worth it though.

The other thing you love, more than anything at the moment, is trains. You have a wooden train set which was added to this Christmas and birthday with all sorts of new and exciting bits of track. You could happily sit and play with it for hours. We’re lucky to have the steam train so close – we went on it for your birthday again this year, remembering that life-changing trip two years before when my waters broke at Paignton station. You love to watch trains too – Thomas is becoming a firm favourite, but you’re just as happy with the hours of footage on YouTube of steam trains all over the world, chugging and choo-chooing along with them as you sit on daddy’s knee.

There is so much more than this. Sitting here now trying to capture you at two years old is really quite overwhelming. I know that as this year unfolds you will blossom more and more – finding the words to express all the increasingly complex concepts swimming around your head, growing in strength and dexterity, playing with more and more purpose and absorption as your imagination opens up a whole new world.

And so, just for a moment, I will hold you close and breathe you in, savour the magic and wonder of your existence. And then I will take your hand and let you lead me into the next year of our adventure.

All my love for always, Mummy xxx

 

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Out on a limb

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I’ve never been one for doing the obvious. If there’s been something out there that tests my boundaries, that alters peoples’ preconceptions of me, then that’s the route I’ve always taken.

Tell me I’m shy? I’ll throw myself into acting. Tell me I’m not sporty? Well then I’ll take up trampolining. Tell me I’m sheltered? I’ll forge a career as a teacher in challenging comprehensive schools.

I haven’t done any of these things by halves either. Winning a place at drama school, competing in trampoline competitions at a national level, heading up an English department: all things that involved taking risks, going out on a limb, and pushing myself way outside my comfort zone.

When I was at university I came across a quote:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

It’s not a new idea, or a particularly original one, but it really resonated with me and how I wanted to live my life. I didn’t want to take the easy route, to do what was expected of me. I wanted to feel that frisson of excitement as I met new experiences head on: I wanted them to make me feel alive.

Looking back on it all now though I wonder if there wasn’t something else I was even more afraid of, something that held me back from doing what I might be truly good at, what I knew in my heart would make me happy.

Don’t get me wrong: I love all the different directions my life has taken me in so far. I honestly feel like I’ve stretched myself, achieved things I never would have thought possible. But I wonder whether doing the unexpected was a way of sidestepping an underlying fear of failing in the one thing I wanted to do but never did.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to write. I lived and breathed stories as a child, would read beneath the covers until the early hours and tell my own tales to anyone who would listen. In my little village school in Llancarfan I spent a whole week working on my sequel to Ted Hughes’ ‘The Iron Man’. I was asked to write a story as part of my entrance exam for the school I moved to in Birmingham and wouldn’t stop – I spent the whole afternoon in thrall to the characters I had created.

But then not long after that the whisper of self-doubt began. I started to take risks, but wouldn’t go back to the thing that had always made me feel safe. I always said I would – I talked about wanting to be a writer, but was seemingly incapable of actually doing the one thing that could have made that wish come true.

In my twenties I tentatively penned poems and short stories, my confidence growing through nurturing young minds in the classroom. I had ideas for novels, but never moved beyond scrawls in a notebook. I told myself I didn’t have time. That one day I would do it, but that I wasn’t ready yet. I dreamed of moving out of the city, having a child, and finally being able to write.

And now suddenly I’m doing it. Every day. And it’s terrifying me, every single day. In the eighteen months since Arthur came along I’ve written two novels, and since January this year I’ve poured everything else into this blog. I don’t know if what I’m writing is any good, I don’t know if it will ever catch the imagination of a publisher and be read further afield than the small circle I’m reaching out to now, but I am writing.

It’s strange that the one thing I always felt I could do was the thing I never did. That I could pride myself on pushing myself to my limits but resisted the urge to write that was burning in my core. I am very glad that after all those years of wondering I am finally getting the words out of my head and on to paper – and I hope that in the not too distant future what feels like the ultimate risk will bear fruit.

Thank you to Sara at Mum Turned Mom for inspiring this post with her prompt: “Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.” (Mark Twain)

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