Cheerio!

After blogging here more or less irregularly since 2007 I thought it was time to move everything to a new, specially designed site. My new website is ready and I'll be blogging there from now on. Adjust your feed-readers / subscriptions etc as this is the last post that I'll be making here.

And while Every Day I Lie a Little will have its very own page, you should look around the rest of the site. Mainly because it's beautiful but also because there's some bits n bobs on there about A Kind of Intimacy, Cold Light and various other things. And the more you click on the pages, the more the cool thing with the pictures happens.

I've got lots of news. A prize, publication for Cold Light, some new US reviews and project launches - progress on book three (I know...) adventures in reading, research and enforced bed-rest... but it will all be over at the new blog so you should go over there right now and see what's what.

Tom Stables and Mic Oldfield made the site and were very reasonable and tolerant of me waving my hands about and saying 'I want it to look a bit like this,' at various points in the project.

Bye bye!

Gone Fishing

Sorry blog readers. I've been quite and unexpectedly poorly and although I'm on the mend now, it is going to take me a while to catch up with things. Sadly I've had to back out of my last two Too Much Information gigs as well as a couple of other events I was planning to attend / workshops I was planning to teach. Sorry if you bought tickets. If it's any consolation, no-one in the world hates being ill more than me (possibly the Mr hates it more, as it's his job to stand over me and prise the computer out of my hands).

I hope to be back to blogging again soon, as I have some good news to share as well as some up and coming projects I want to write about. For the time being, I'll get to your message / email / voicemail / while I can, don't worry about me and check out these links:

Bugged, a mass overhearing / creative eaves dropping project I'm taking part in - developed by Jo Bell and David Calcutt and launching on the 1st July. Here for more. I'm really excited about this, and have spent some of my time languishing in waiting rooms, hospital wards, clinics and pharmacies scribbling down my over hearings for this project.... can't wait to read yours.

Next, Rainy City Stories and Creative Tourist are teaming up to run a short story competition and I'm on the judging panel. You can find out more, including how to enter and all about the prizes, by clicking right through to here.

Not So Perfect - Nik Perring's story collection. I've read it and liked it and will be blogging about it better soon, but until I'm able to, take a look at the online buzz surrounding the launch via Nik's blog here.

To coincide with the US Launch of A Kind of Intimacy, a guest blog by me about one of my favourite books in the on-line version of Elle (I know, and trust me, whatever you're giggling about at the back, it occurred to me first). Along the same lines, a blog about finding Annie in Borders - face out, no less (we don't have them here anymore...) by my friend and fellow writer Brian Centrone. Thanks Brian!

That's all for now. See you soon... :)

Mole Madness

Something strange is happening here on one of my old posts. It's not even about writing. It's about a mole I saw once.

Thank you Mole Poets. You are making me happy.

How it is Done

I have been enjoying reading Kim's posts about the evolution of her short story The Shoes from an idea into a Loomidob (technical term).

Here's the first post and here's the second one. Both well worth reading for an insight into what happens when you are drafting, editing and reading-like-a-writer all at the same time. I am curious about it because it shows a writer very aware of her own process and I'm not sure if that's the effect of writing something inside the confines of an academic course, of because that's the way this particular writer is.

I think I'd like to write something like that for the way I worked on Cold Light but it would be all lies in retrospect and my process is so messy and trial and error that, like the insides of my cupboards, I'd be ashamed to let anyone see it. I would dearly love to know what I am doing when it goes well so that I can do it again, but it hasn't worked out like that so far. Although it has improved slightly.

Last week when I was fretting over the impossibility of writing another novel, I remembered things about lists and diaries and time off and CALM and resting and 'we don't get paid much, so it's okay to have lies in and take afternoons off when you need to' which are all things I learned when I was being mentored, and help a lot still.

Yesterday afternoon I did CALM typed up all my notes about number three (need to call it something - I called Cold Light number two for ages, but only because that was comedy gold) and arranged them into a rough synopsis. I'm challenging myself to develop a structure - to decide about things like point of view and tense and time-scale first rather than let it evolve on it's own. That's because I want to do something a little bit more complicated and challenging this time and I have an idea for the sort of thing I would like to try. I have not done it before. I don't know if I can.

CALM CALM CALM

I also made a list of things that I need to research. Lists are excellent.

I will spend what time I have to read and work over the summer finding out about:

Crufts. The various categories, how you enter, how much you win, what the day is like.
My two settings: Salt Lake City, Utah and Chorley, Lancashire.
Being a Post Man. Secrets and tricks of the trade.
Long term faecal incontinence caused by unresolved birth injuries.*
Heathrow Airport.
Agoraphobia.


That's about it for now. My agent needed to see my plan and hear about the next book. When I told him about it he said it sounded 'fab' and very 'Ashworthian' which is I think a good sign.

It is no wonder I am not working very well. I am a cocktail of gestation hormones. I can't sit at my desk without a person head-butting me in the ribs. I had a bad dream last night that the Mr had touched, moved or otherwise disturbed my ludicrous pile of cot-blankets (it will be summer, and McTiny will be sleeping with me anyway... pointless blankets) and woke up so angry I had to poke him awake, shout at him and then check the blankets.

No-one can produce the great British novel under these circumstances.

*note to self - do not google this until Later This Year.

Third Thoughts

It's amazing what a few days off, a couple of pieces of good news and vast amounts of cake can do for your mood. Much better now, and thank-you for your comments on the last post. I hate to be a whining over-sharer but this blog is about what it feels like for me, being a writer, and sometimes it is nerve-racking and difficult and it feels bad, no matter what the life looks like from the outside. It doesn't look like much right now, because I am Between Projects and that's scary.

Carrying on involves finding ways to write anyway and figuring out what you need so you can write. I've been contenting myself with research and planning and day-dreaming, lots of reading and taking my daily photographs - which will be up here soon. I've convinced myself it is okay to be lazy for the next couple of months and staring out of windows and drawing flow-charts on the back of PTFA letters (no I won't give you any more sodding money) is work too, even though it doesn't look like it.

Carrying on also involves bucking yourself up and giving yourself a virtual slap around the head. This is the job I always wanted to do. I do it at home. I don't even need to wear shoes most of the time. We're all healthy and my run-away cat came back at the weekend. I can play with Lego whenever I like. What more could a person want?

I need to find ways to fill up the tank again before I start writing. Reading, I think, and meeting with the new fiction workshop group I've set up, and watching films, and getting outside, and making space in my day to be bored sometimes.

I think having these crises of confidence now and again helps me to be a better teacher too. It is scary to stand up in front of people and read your work. It is scary to share an idea and ask 'does this sound all right, do you think?' and it is scary to be between novels. Will I ever be able to do it again? I remember that feeling from last time. I think about the advice I gave to a writer in one of my workshops last week - you'll always be nervous because it matters so much to you, and if it didn't matter, you might not be nervous but the writing wouldn't be as good. Might not be true for her, or for you, but it was and is for me.

What do you do when you're not writing?

Second Thoughts

Maybe I shouldn't be taking pictures every day. Maybe I should be practising my writing instead. I need to get better than I am for me to be happy with my work, and sitting reading and doing other kinds of work might not be as good a way to get better at writing as writing would be.

Oh, but I do need a rest. I know what I want to write for the next one, but I don't want to be sitting on my own and typing all the time just now.

I think I'm feeling a little worried because my friends are being very prolific all of a sudden. I've got word-count envy. Here's a new magazine called Other by the novelist and blogger Socrates Adams. I think it's going to be good. Bookmark it now.

Here's an interview my friend Kim did with my other friend Tom about his new novel, The Leaping. It's good too.

I've also been sorting through old interviews, short stories published on-line, guest blogs etc and deciding what I'm going to feature on my new website and what I'm going to let disappear. Reading through some of the stories linked to in the side-bar I am not so happy. I could do better now. I think I could have done better then if I'd have rested more and not been in such a rush to be a real writer.

The new website is going to be good. I've seen some 'mock-ups' so far and it looks very exciting. I will be blogging at the new website too, so soon people who read this blog will have to change their bookmarks or point their feed-readers somewhere else. Don't worry. I will give ample and frequent warning.

I should be doing some magazines or new stories or the first draft of book three. I should be typing furiously. I feel racked with guilt.

Blog Preston Interviews me

"Imagine if Kathy Bates moved to a quiet cul-de-sac in Fleetwood and you’re half way there..."


Lisa McManus at Blog Preston interviewed me last month. You can read it here.

Spring Thing!

I'm taking it easy with events now - in fact, I've only got two more before I stop working (the feminist in me insists I correct that to this: stop doing work for money and start doing work in the house) for the summer.

One of them is another showing of Too Much Information at the Birmingham Spring Thing - me and Jo are part of a whole day of entertainment, (they are billing us as 'a new live literature experience') so if you're anywhere near, come and see us. I'll be around all day and am not easy to miss.

# 24 / 100

But some days it is hard to find things to be happy about.

# 19 20 21 22 23

Working at home means I can drink tea all day, take little bike rides in the late afternoons, go to Manchester for the second meeting of the newly founded Northern Lines Fiction Workshop, and be in the house for when the postman comes, bringing me lots and lots of books to read and blog about. Even when I'm out teaching workshops, there's always tea.

Sorry for lack of daily photo-blogging. My back REALLY hurts.

#18 / 100

Alison Moore's story chapbook, when the door closed, it was dark published by Nightjar Press.

I bought this, along with the rest of the Nightjar titles when Nicholas Royle came to Preston to read at the last Word Soup - all the titles had been recommended to me by Sarah Hymas, who knows the sort of thing I like.

This story was word-perfect, creepily heavy, not a word extra and had an atmosphere that started making me feel sick from the first page. It's a story that needs rereading, which I did, the second I finished it the first time, and again today. I have the rest of the titles from Nightjar, and I'll be taking my time over them. Need to space them out, as I've been seething with jealousy over the way Alison Moore puts her words together all day. I like feeling like that too. I've had a blue week and this dark, nasty story has jolted me out of it.

I don't know why uneasy, elliptical stories like this make me happy, but they do.

This one did.

This isn't a review, but a recommendation. Still, you should know that I don't know Alison, and I did not get this book for free either. Does that make my opinion count more? I have no idea.

# 15 16 17 / 100

A 'fossilised stone' found in the school playground by my geologist-in-the-making-daughter who knows that birds are dinosaurs in disguise, reading and writing together, having someone who will go and buy my printer cartridges because I can't be bothered.

# 13 14 / 100

Small Fry, unexpected presents, roast potatoes.

# 9 10 11 12 / 100

Shopping, US copies of A Kind of Intimacy, reading, cake, pictures of all us lot, special red nursing chair, blackberry yoghurt.

Also:

'The beautiful, provocative prose and dangerous, quirky protagonist mark Ashworth as a writer to watch'

which comes from the US mag Publishers Weekly, where A Kind of Intimacy is currently the Pick of the Week.  (plot spoilers in link)

I'd like the next thing I write to have the word 'dint' in it. It's a word that isn't used often enough.

Writing Tips #8

This isn't mine, but one stolen from Nik Perring's blog interview with Andy Devine.

The rest of the tips are worth reading too (although I take issue with #2 - which isn't, can't be and shouldn't be true for every single writer in the world) but the one I quote from below is my favourite, has made me feel better today and made me wonder about ways I can find to 'manage my incompetence'*

Every work of fiction can be improved. The fiction writer must find a way to manage their incompetence if they are to continue writing fiction. The conception of the fiction is always greater than the execution of the fiction.

 *not now though. I'm still resting.

#6 7 8 / 100

A montage of photograph happiness. It's been a lazy weekend full of dozing cats, Small Fry, LEGO goodness and purple sprouting broccoli. Eat something green and something orange every day. Make purple sprouting broccoli one of your green things (unless you're having spinach).

Linky

Here's an interview I did at Arts And Things Magazine

Here's a guest post I did about my diary writing, among other things, over at This Writer's Life.

Here's the blog I am writing for my Wirral Writing Project - we're calling it Out on A Limb and it's about on-line story telling. I'm really enjoying it.

Here's Jo Bell, writing a little bit about our first gig with Too Much Information at the Kendal Brewery Arts. 

Expect a catch-up post with my weekend 100 Days photographs on it later today. I'm tired of not having proper weekends I'm not going on my computer on Saturdays or Sundays anymore.

#5 / 100

slightly blurry picture of Jo Bell and me on the Too Much information set at the Kendal Brewery Arts Centre. Note the excellent lamp.

#4 / 100

Liverpool Central station, Northern Line.