How to be a writer – a homage to Meg Rosoff

I’m a big fan of Meg Rosoff.  Her latest book, There is No Dog, is a quirky and irreverent look at our potential deity – though you may end up despairing of him, it all makes quite a lot of sense. And the wonderful  How I Live Now is, as I type, being made into a film.  She’s a damned fine writer, Meg Rosoff,  so when I read her latest blog: Everything You Need To Know To Be A Writer I was laughing with joy.

I’ve always thought of myself as the woman who was so nearly good at so many things and now, instead of feeling like a failure, I can smile and say, oh yes, in that goes to the experience bank – it’s research don’t you know.  So here, after a special request by the lovely and talented Karen Ball is my list of:

Things I’ve Done That Will Help Me Be a Better Writer.

I belly dance. I fence.  I can make a poor fourth hand at bridge.

Doing acting....

I know what it’s like to work on a film, in the theatre and on a farm.

I’ve worked on the deck of the Mary Rose and I’ve worked in  The Gambia. I’ve sucked green oranges with a group of village women in Njawara and got sick drinking tap water in Banjul.

I’ve had an African  prince to tea.

I’ve been on an anti fox hunting rally.  I’ve lobbied my MP and had a warning from a policeman for demonstrating outside the Houses of Parliament.  I’ve been a guest at the House of Lords.

At 17 my heart was broken. My first love left me for a beautiful boy called Mark, one of my best friends. I behaved quite badly after that until, at 19, I fell in love again and stayed that way.

I’ve had two stalkers, one more scary than the other.

I am sometimes too nice for my own good.

I spent a decade living in a caravan. I have been cold and hungry. I know what it’s like to risk losing everything you own to make a better life.

I’ve built a business. I’ve built a house. I’ve held down three jobs at once, one of which involved dressing up as an octopus.

I’ve dropped pizza in the lap of a man in white trousers.

I lost my mother in  Singapore and my camera by a hot spring in Borneo.  I got another mother and, less painfully, another camera.

I had one childbirth that, 50 years ago,  would have killed me and my daughter. When it was over, I had a bitch of a midwife who was cruel and  stupid. I had extensive repair surgery. The surgeon had hepatitis C.  I  had another child by c-section thus curing my terror of the whole process – then I had a haemorrhage in the school playground because I thought I was invincible when, in fact, I was an idiot.

I’ve paddled beside a manatee in Mexico;  ridden a horse in Cuba;  found a stash of petrol bombs in my flat in North Wales;  belly danced at one of The Earl of March’s infamous parties and toured a play to the south of France.

I’ve let down a friend who never forgave me.

I’ve been to a muddy Glastonbury Festival, a sunny Glastonbury Festival and I’ve seen Leonard Cohen through a haze of dope smoke. I’ve had an argument with a woman snorting cocaine over her child’s pram.

I  had a bare knuckle fight with the bane of my life at St. Luke’s Comprehensive School. I was molested on my paper round and never told a soul.

I’ve been in two tornadoes in the South of England and a violent storm in Sarawak.  I’ve rescued my daughter’s bag from a warthog and my son’s fingers from a monitor lizard.

I’ve nursed a sick hamster back to life, had my fingers sucked by a calf and said goodbye to countless beloved pets. I’ve twice removed a wild owl from my sitting room.

I’ve written a lot of words and I’m writing some more but these one’s are by kind permission of                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Meg :

All my life I despaired at being a jack of all trades and master of none, but it all proved fantastically useful when I started writing.

This is by way of saying that when I suggest people not be in a hurry to write a book, I mean it. Because the more you live, the more you’ll know — in your head and in your heart. And the more you know, the more your book will come from a deep place of real resonance — in other words, not wikipedia.

Reading Meg’s blog made me realise everything we do in life is important. It all adds up to who we are.

It all goes in to the stories we tell.  Even the stuff we failed at. Especially the stuff we failed at.

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Ipad, it’ll steal your mind.

It’s my agent’s fault, she first showed me Ipad’s lovely features: the bookshelf, the possibilities of easy editing, the ever-so-neat- general-gadgetiness of it.  She fanned the embers of a quietly smouldering interest into a full-on burning passion. There were, however, one or two things  she neglected to mention, that she might have pointed out before  I went full steam ahead and married my own Ipad.

A mild-mannered notebook....

Is Super Ipad!

In the beginning it was wonderful. Ipad turned those spare minutes sitting around at swimming/ballet/cricket/fencing/other myriad things my children require collecting from, into something useful.

When the child bell rang, I could easily transfer my manuscript from PC to Ipad and take it with me. I could write and edit everywhere without having to lug my laptop around. And the battery life, Oh the battery life was fantastic. We were so compatible,  I was getting heaps of writing done in previously wasted time:

At last small hands are an advantage, I can't play piano but the Ipad keyboard is made to measure.

I could catch up on reading:

You can down load sample chapters before you order the whole book...

For two weeks we had a wonderful working honeymoon. I cancelled my micro-sim so I we could be alone together, we didn’t need the internet when we were out, we just needed each other.

And then came the changes.

It started to control me.  I found myself unable to leave the house without it – a new routine was established – Keys, Phone, Purse, Ipad…I had to have it with me at all times.

It started watching what I drink:

Fascist Drinks Monitor

Keeping records of my thoughts:

Wait, let me write that down....

It informed my daily take on the news:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/

And then it came, the ultimate betrayal.

I was lost.

My good intentions shattered.

Ipad gave me Angry Birds.

Aaaaarghhhhhhhh......

Our once perfect relationship  spiralled into a downturn of game playing, of obsession.

Our time together became a sordid thing. Oh,  I can’t deny there was a thrill to be had, but afterwards, the shame, the shame….

I briefly considered re-installing the micro-sim, so we could go out together and watch the stars, but I could see it was just a pathetic attempt to rekindle the clean living of our early days.

I want our relationship  to be healthy again.  I want us to be writing,  editing, but Ipad’s heart isn’t in it and I’m not sure I have the strength to do it alone…some of the bad green piggies on Angry Birds have got orange moustaches… some one needs to deal with them…help me someone….help me…

Pure Evil in Pig Form

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People holes.

This is me, I hope you know who you are...

A friend has been mourning the loss of someone important in her life – first by his insistence that his new wife would not cope with their friendship and now, by the threat of terminal cancer. My friend is hoping she’ll get a chance to say goodbye. I hope she does too, though I’d infinitely prefer the cancer to be cured and the friendship repaired and happy ever after music to crash around all involved.

Life isn’t like that though, is it?

10 years ago a similar thing happened to me.

I met Y at university. Beautiful, outrageous, filled with sadness that lurked beneath a giggling surface, Y enchanted me. I became privy to some of  her secrets: she used sunbeds to maintain the illusion of an exotic heritage;  she undertook hypnosis to help in her exams; she never stopped mourning her 4 year old nephew who died shockingly of meningitis the year before I met her.

Then there were secrets I was not supposed to know –  her long curly hair was a blue black  that had to be dyed – but  I never saw her do it and we lived together for 3 years;  she had dreadful food issues, I’d often find an apologetic note replacing my nutloaf, yet I wasn’t supposed to know about her binges on chocolate hobnobs dipped in chocolate spread;  she hated me being the centre of attention for my wild dancing and ridiculous clothes (in my defence, it wasn’t deliberate.)

Y looked after me when we went out drinking; she encouraged me to spend money I didn’t have; she made me laugh ’til I nearly wet myself and she made me think about things.  I was studying drama, she was a psychology student studying real life drama.  She made me feel clever, she made me feel more than myself.

When I first met Beloved he was standing outside the student union singing to every girl  that stopped to listen. Nobody did, except me – Y dragged me away:

‘No’ she said, ‘mistake.’

And maybe it would have been , maybe if we’d got together then, it would never have worked. Y made me take a step back and the slow burn of my attraction to Beloved has lasted all this while.

Y  left college and, despite living at opposite ends of the country and having no internet or texting, we stayed friends.  We wrote old fashioned letters. Exchanged pictures of our cats. She visited Beloved and I when we were living in our first leaky caravan. . When Beloved and I got married, she came to celebrate with us. She was there in Daughter’s early years, reading Thomas the tank engine , snuggled with her on the sofa. And then, wonderful news, Y met someone.

She was so happy and I was thrilled when she said they were getting married. Admittedly, I was a little distracted, I had a farm, a five year old and a new baby to manage but I was so very happy for her:

‘You will come won’t you?’

‘Of course I’ll come!’

‘You can’t bring the children though, we haven’t the room.’

My heart sank. Firstly, I was breastfeeding my 2 month old son, secondly, I never left my children.  In those days I hadn’t an army of other mums to help out and my family weren’t that sort of family…Beloved couldn’t manage with them and the farm, he’d leave them in fields and forget to feed them.

It was a kind of insanity I suppose.

‘Oh Y,’  I said,’I'm so sorry, I can’t leave Son, I’d have to teach him to take a bottle and there isn’t time and and and…’

‘Ok, you can bring the baby.’

How could I leave Daughter and just take Son? Daughter who’d had me to herself for 5 years and now had a small interloper to adjust to. I know how pathetic it sounds but I couldn’t begin to think how I’d explain it to her, the child  I never left.

‘I can’t do that Y, I’m sorry, I don’t want Daughter to feel pushed out.’

She hung up on me and hasn’t spoken to me since.

I sent a present to the hotel, I don’t know if she ever got it. I wrote letters that were unanswered, I made phone calls that were ignored. I turned over what happened again and again and I can see how she was hurt by the decision I made.

I put my children  before her feelings.

Of course, Daughter would have got over it and I’d have forgotten any dilemma  had I gone to the wedding. I made a mistake, but if I’m honest,  I’d do the same thing again.

It might be wrong, it might be clingy  but my children are the most important thing in my life and doing right by them will always be my priority.

I’m sorry I let you down Y, I am,  I miss you, you’ve left a Y-shaped hole in my life that has never healed.  And I’m sorry for anyone else with people shaped holes in their lives.  It’s horrible and it hurts, especially when, deep down, you know it’s your own fault.

Are happy endings possible before it’s too late?  Before terminal illness forces the issue? Not for me I fear, for I don’t know where Y is. I googled her and, for  a brief thrilling moment, I thought I’d found her,  but it was a different Y, not my Y at all.

Maybe she has a K shaped hole in her life, and one day, maybe, she’ll google me.

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