“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
The box started out as a robot costume, and soon became a spaceship.
Arthur loves all things space at the moment: he dreams of flying to the moon and floating amongst the stars.
And on his way he loves to listen to his stories.
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
Dear Arthur,
So now you are three.
How did that happen?
I remember when you were tiny, in those first magical, mystical days, I used to stare at you through the fog of sleep deprivation and try to imagine what you would be like when you were this age. How you would look, how you would sound, what you would do.
I never could have imagined you.
The way you draw in your breath and clap your hands in glee when something exciting happens: from the suggestion of a train ride to your first sight of snow to me making it home from an evening meeting in time to kiss you goodnight. You are excited by life, and I love that.
I love how you quickly make your way to the dance floor when a song you like comes on, throw your hands in the air and shake your booty with a huge smile on your face. I love that the dance floor is whatever you decide it is in that moment, from a clearing in your toys in the lounge to the rug in your bedroom to a select few tiles in the kitchen marked out by something only you can see.
Your imagination is spectacular. Inspired by story books and movies you create all sorts of people and scenarios to take you through your day. Wherever we are you can conjure up your own entertainment – and as your vocabulary increases you can share it with others too, making up stories for us just like we do for you.
And what a vocabulary. There was a moment recently, when you were once again telling me the story of The Polar Express, when you described the train arriving outside the window with its ‘hissing steam and screeching brakes’. Several times a day I am astounded by the words that have found a home inside your head.
You absorb everything around you, and if I stop and pause for a moment I can watch you do it. Almost hear the cogs in your brain turning as you focus in on new little details you haven’t noticed before. You ask about things of course – ‘why?’ is an increasingly common refrain, and I always try to answer you the best I can, even if the level of understanding you are seeking is beyond me.
You don’t just rely on other people for answers though. You are fascinated by how the world works, and are constantly experimenting, trying it all out. Sometimes your methods are a little frustrating – the throwing, the tasting, the taking things apart. But I know why you’re doing it, so it’s ok.
Don’t ever stop exploring, my little bear. Don’t ever stop seeking out the truth and trying to make sense of the world, even when it seems completely unintelligible. Especially then.
There is so much about your emerging personality that I hope you hold on to as you grow.
I hope you will continue to try to understand your emotions, and those of other people. When you look up at me with your big blue eyes and say ‘I’m sad’, and together we try to work out why, a part of my heart aches for my inability to protect you from the darker feelings that will inevitably engulf you from time to time. But I’m glad you want to talk about it. Know that I will always be here when you are sad or angry or afraid: my love does not need you always to be happy.
Though of course when you are my heart sings. Your laughter is, hands down, the best sound I have ever heard. I think you like it too. If there’s a lull in conversation you’ve started saying “Let’s laugh! Will you laugh with me?” It is impossible not to agree, and usually I’m giggling before I’ve even had time to answer.
You bring so much joy to my world.
There is nothing sweeter than hearing you say, “Can I give you a toy, mama?”
You say it when we’re in the midst of playing, when I’m distracted by my work, when we’re talking about something you’ve done that’s made me cross. And when I say yes, which I try to always do, you go and pick out one of your favourite cars or creatures or maybe even a train and carefully hand it over with a smile.
I think what you’re saying is “I love you, mama.”
And I love you too. Very much.
All my love for always, Mummy xxx
What is it we find so irresistible about dark and twisted fiction?
I’ve wondered sometimes whether it’s just me: often when I relay to my husband the plot of one of my favourite books, or try to convince him to watch a film that’s caught my eye, he can’t quite understand why I would want to immerse myself in such torment.
It’s not so much horror I like, and certainly not gore, but rather the depths and depravity of human emotion at its worst.
Since I first read it when I was about seventeen, my favourite book has been Ian McEwan’s ‘A Child in Time’ – a harrowing account of the impact losing a child has on her parents. He is still the person I come back to as my favourite author, the person whose body of work I most aspire to, and it is the strong element of macabre I think that lures me in most effectively.
More generally I find myself drawn to tales of loss, of death, of suffering and abandonment. Stories which explore the evil that humanity is capable of, and expose parts of the soul that you would never wish to encounter in real life. And I find them fascinating rather than depressing. There is definitely something cathartic about them – a place to play out my deepest fears which I can put to bed again simply by closing the book.
My most recent novel definitely strays into this territory. An examination of the horrible ways people can treat each other, with an antagonist who brings together some of the worst traits I have come across in my experiences and those of others. It was a little harder to switch off from that – there were days (and nights) when his consciousness seeped into my own and left me feeling distinctly unsettled. But still I found myself compelled to tell his story.
The short stories that I have written are even more twisted. I’m sort of playing around with the idea of putting together a collection, and in trying to identify the common thread which binds them together there is no escaping the darkness at their core. Obsession, murder, man-eating hermit crabs, psychosis, self-amputation: putting them all side by side is making me wonder a little exactly what it is that’s going on in my head!
But it seems that I am not alone in feeling the pull of the dark side. When I alluded recently to a short story I was working that was possibly too dark to share I wasn’t intentionally building up intrigue, but it seems that just that thought was enough to make people want to read it. It’s still sat on my hard drive, waiting for an appropriate outing, but it’s kind of good to know that I’m not the only one who likes to immerse myself in these shadowy worlds.
I’ve been working on another story this week, one inspired by the awesome story of a woman in Exminster placing a Gumtree ad for someone to help her test her home-made time machine. I was struggling for a hook at first, and of course when it did begin to emerge it was from those shadows.
I guess there is just a part of me that is fascinated by the more sinister workings of the human mind, and how they play out in interactions with other people. The seeds of those workings must be lying somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but by germinating them in the realm of fiction I am satisfying that desire for darkness whilst being able to focus my real life on altogether more pleasant pursuits.
And I suppose that is one of the many reasons why fiction is so important! Who knows what would happen to the world if our imaginations did not have that safe place to explore their darkest fears…
On Saturday afternoon Arthur and I decided to make muffins. Faced with an abundance of blueberries and very ripe bananas, as well as a few hours to kill whilst Leigh knuckled down to some revision, there was nothing else for it really.
I decided to go for a paleo recipe – coconut flour, coconut oil and no added sugar. We’re not strictly paleo here by any means, but I do like to mix things up a bit. And if I’m taking the time to bake I figure it makes sense to go for something nutritious and delicious – especially since Arthur’s current diet is beginning to look a bit stereotypically toddler-esque for my liking…
I’m pleased to say that Arthur took the whole thing very seriously. He was particularly taken with the gloopiness of the eggs, and almost managed to whisk them without spilling half of them on the counter. Almost.
He was happy for me to keep an eye on the recipe, resuming his duties once everything was ready for the final mix – again using the worktop as the testing ground for the consistency, natch.
(I decided at this point that the batter was looking a little bit too solid, and added a generous glut of coconut milk to the mix. This might not necessarily have been a very good idea…)
Arthur’s attention wavered at this point, and he left me to get the muffins into their cases and on to cook whilst he got started on a second batch.
These ones took way less time to cook, and it was mere seconds before he ran off to grab his unsuspecting taster.
I can only imagine that dolly decided they needed a little more time, as they were soon back in the oven for another burst of cooking.
By now fortunately the original bluenana muffins were starting to waft their almost-cooked scent across the kitchen, and Arthur could barely contain his excitement.
A few minutes later and the muffins were finally ready. Despite my insistence that they needed to cool, Arthur was straight up there to check for himself, blowing on them impatiently.
He just about managed to hold off until they were no longer boiling hot, and proceeded over the next hour or so to eat six. Six! I’m very glad I went for a healthy recipe is all I can say…
I have to admit though that I was not overly enamoured with them. It may well have been the extra coconut milk but fresh out of the oven they were a bit soggy for my liking… We managed to keep a few back and they were admittedly much tastier after a day in the fridge. Though Arthur wasn’t interested in them at all then! Go figure…
All in all it was a highly entertaining use of a couple of hours, not just the ‘real’ baking, but Arthur’s seamless segue into his imagination too. I will definitely revisit this recipe and see if I can’t perfect it a little: I’ll report back when I’ve had a bit of a play… In the meantime though there is a bunch of rhubarb in the fridge crying out to be made into oaty crumble bars. That’s tomorrow afternoon sorted then!
So the edit’s progressing pretty well, which is good. I’m falling into a fairly productive rhythm, and whilst it’s not so easy to hold on to my clarity of thought now that I’m swimming in the words again I think things are heading in the right direction.
I’m definitely feeling like I’m getting deeper into my protagonist’s head, understanding more clearly why she’s acting the way she is (and actually sharing that with the reader rather than hoping they’ll work it out for themselves). I’m feeling the presence of my antagonist more keenly too, though he hasn’t explicitly made an appearance yet. And this is where the slight downside of all this comes in.
Having spent a week immersing myself in some incredibly tense and creepy thrillers, and now trying to layer that growing sense of dread into my own writing, I’m finding my relationship with the real world has gone a little bit off-kilter… I’m seeing things out of the corner of my eye, hearing noises that I’m pretty sure aren’t actually there, and at times feeling almost as on edge as poor Grace herself.
There was a particularly ridiculous night last week when Leigh was away in Exeter. I’d managed to get Arthur down to sleep reasonably early, and had stayed up a bit too late watching unnecessary TV. By the time I finally headed to bed, with revision ideas for the novel still whirring around my mind, I was overtired and a little too open to suggestion. It had just gone midnight, and Leigh’s bedside light was on when I got to our room. I’m still not entirely sure why (it hadn’t been when I’d gone upstairs earlier I swear), and at that moment in time I convinced myself it was because there was someone in the house. Heart racing, I cautiously checked the top floor was clear. I then crept downstairs and got Arthur from his room, waking him up in the process, and took him up with me to hide under the duvet. There was nothing rational about all this – and I knew that at the time, though it didn’t stop the creeping terror. I’m just glad I stopped short of calling Leigh and insisting he came home before I finally fell asleep!
It hasn’t got quite that bad since, but I’ve still been pretty jumpy. I’ve been prone to anxiety in the past, and it seems that letting my imagination wander into the recesses of a psychopath’s mind might just have awakened that… And I’m still only a few chapters in, so who knows what’s going to happen when things really start hotting up.
Ho hum… An occupational hazard I guess. Anyone else find their imaginary worlds seeping into reality, or is that just me?
“Baby play train tracks.”
Almost unfailingly the first words Arthur utters when he wakes up for the day, or as we finish a meal, or when we come in from our adventures in the outside world.
Usually swiftly followed by “Mummy play train tracks” or “Daddy play train tracks”. In fact I think pretty much anyone would do. He almost roped in the plumber today.
It’s seriously cute watching him become so obsessed by something. And he really is obsessed. He was given a brio train set for his first birthday and since then it’s been added to incrementally with new trains and pieces of track so that there is now some seriously good potential for imaginative play.
I’ve surprised myself by how much I’m enjoying joining in. Constructing different worlds so that Arthur’s trains can go over and under and through. It’s like a puzzle putting all the bits of track together. We generally freestyle rather than following any particular pattern, and it’s brilliant fun seeing where the different connections lead.
The freestyling is spilling over into some of his other toys now too. Combining the train tracks with his wooden blocks and duplo (very important for building Tidmouth sheds), as well as his stacking rainbow which makes great tunnels and his new wooden farm set which provides the perfect destination for the milk train.
It’s clear that these little trains reside almost permanently in his mind. He woke up at 4.30am the other day – unusually for him, but what was even more unusual was that he was perfectly content to stay in his room and was just running through his rolling stock, filling his bunny rabbit in on anything he may have missed: ‘the magic train, it goes choo choo! And the steam comes out, on the train tracks.”
He chatted for about half an hour and whilst Leigh and I probably should have been making the most of the time to sleep we actually lay there in the dark wide awake, listening and giggling softly as his little voice came over the monitor.
There’s something pretty awesome about being able to create such an all-encompassing world without even leaving our front room. I cannot wait to see where Arthur’s imagination takes us next.
So as well as thinking about how magical storytelling is for the reader as I watch Arthur discover how much he loves stories, it’s also been on my mind how incredibly magical it is for the writer.
Stories have always been a hugely important part of my life. From those early days devouring them as they were read to me and soon after, as a reader, staying up long into the night, hiding under the duvet with a torch and a pile of Enid Blyton. Later as a teacher I watched astounded as a class of challenging teenagers was silenced by the simple pleasure of listening to someone read aloud; I relished in the power of stories as entertainment and as vehicles for so much more. And now as a writer I feel enormously privileged to be consumed by stories and (almost) be able to call it work.
The magic of stories and of storytelling is something I explored thematically in Lili Badger. The folk tales Lili was told by her grandmother as a child return with renewed vigour in her teenage years, their metaphors seeping into her burgeoning understanding of what’s happening around her, helping her make sense of an otherwise opaque and unfriendly world.
What I didn’t realise then, though, what’s only really beginning to dawn on me now as I move deeper into my second novel, is that as a writer I’m not really here to tell stories. I mean, that’s part of it of course. Relaying a story in a form and a style that captures peoples’ imagination and makes them want to read on. But ultimately I’m beginning to see myself a bit more as a vehicle for a story that wants to be told.
When it comes to writing anything I’m definitely a planner. I’m not very good at just sitting down with a blank piece of paper and waiting for inspiration to strike, though I know that’s the way lots of novelists work. Before I started writing this novel, as with the first, I’d basically mapped out each chapter with a little summary to work from – something to inspire me, and something to keep me on track through the brain melt of motherhood. That bit of the process really isn’t very magical – it can feel like a bit of a slog just mapping everything out, and what seemed like great ideas in theory start to feel insubstantial and incoherent. But once I’ve worked through that, once the overall story arc is there and it’s time to actually get on with the writing – that’s where the real magic comes in.
Moving from those little summaries to the actual written chapters has been an amazing process this time round. I don’t know if with the first novel I was just too tired or too excited to notice it, but as I write the second I’m struck by it almost every day.
How I think I know what’s going to happen, and then as the words flow from my mind to the page events subtly change. How I think I know a character, and then they do or say something that surprises me but ultimately fits much better overall.
There have been some very specific incidences of this recently. Like my main character opening a drawer to get something out, but finding something else entirely different. She’d forgotten it was there, and I had no idea at all. But actually it explained a lot, and suddenly made the plot a lot less clunky.
Then yesterday lunch time I was sat describing a scene I was about to write to my husband, explaining how in control Grace was and how she absolutely definitely wasn’t going to cry. And then I sat down to write, and as the scene unfolded she felt tears pricking behind her eyes and ended up sobbing. Again it actually made a lot more sense than what I’d thought was going to happen – and I suspect the writing rang truer for me being taken aback by it as much as she was.
It’s taken me a while to write this post as I wasn’t quite sure how to put it without seeming entirely bonkers. Even reading it back now it all seems a bit improbable. Those ideas are coming from somewhere, and I guess that somewhere must be hiding in my subconscious. But it’s strange and exhilarating how they won’t reveal themselves to me when I think but only when I write. It makes the mantra I began this project with even more important, and it makes me really very excited about the story I might discover over the weeks to come.
Sophie is... 