Maggie May...

Some months ago, I posted off for a free offer in  the Telegraph for a magnolia.  Sounded good.  It arrived a few days ago, in a packet 3 foot long!  We can't think where to put it.  It's been put in a pot this morning while we think about it.  I'm in favour of hacking down an evergreen thing by our front door, which is getting a bit long in the tooth, and putting it there.  More light in the living room and lots of sunshine for magnolia.  I feel very silly, though, signing up to a magnolia without realising how big it was!

Writing as Therapy

I've never been one of those people who could write to sublimate.  Normally when I'm having a bad time in real life, I dry up.  However, over the last week, I've had an exceptionally bad time at work, very stressed, panicky, going-to-the-doctor level depressed, but the only thing that has helped me calm down is writing.  I've amazed myself by writing with a focus I haven't had for months. 

I've subbed two stories this week and I'm three-quarters of the way through re-editing 'Anna the Dissident', a story I've struggled to get a handle on for years.  You have this character and she's quite clear in your mind but can you tie up a short story plot?  Only a few days ago did I realise that her hang-up was being called a 'dissident' and only as I write this am I working out why. 

Oh, and some acceptances would be nice as well. 

The Hardness of Writing

Not having much luck at the moment.

One story in particular is proving 'hard to place' and I really don't understand why as it is set in a colourful location (Mexico City), and, imo, it's better written than many of my others which have been accepted.  The last ezine rejected it same day, the day before Christmas Eve. I don't think she liked it much.  The temptation is to lob it straight back out again, just to have it 'subbed', out there in cyberspace, but my more boring, sober, self tells me to look at it again beforehand.  Hey ho, dear Reader, ho hum.

I have also been reading Mslexia (British printed magazine for women who write), where I once had a competition success.  Why should that make you depressed, you might ask.  Last August, I entered their 'Motherhood' competition, which was for a piece (of fiction, non-fiction or poetry) not exceeding 2200 words.  Dear Reader, I gave it my best shot, editing and re-editing and tweaking.  I knew it wasn't perfect but I did think I had got an unusual angle and a strong and distinctive mc. I didn't expect to win, but I felt I'd made a respectable attempt.  Then I read the winners in Mslexia Dec/Jan/Feb.  What a revelation, Dear Reader.  What a revelation.  Am I going to whinge, say the judges got it mistaken or are biased, or that they wrongfully passed over my little effort?  Nope.  Nope.  Nope. 

What depresses me is not that the winning entries were so much better than mine - good luck to them.  They produced some interesting, funny and emotive writing, some so moving that I could hardly bear to read them.  (Squeamish, me.)  What depresses me is how pathetic mine was in comparison and how much more I have to learn. 

The more I write, the harder it gets.  When I used to write for myself and show virtually nobody, I thought I was quite good at it.  When I joined a couple of online writing communities over 4 years ago, other members told me (some of) the areas where I fell short.  They were too tactful to point out all my faults at once, so they're still doing it.  Their comments have also enabled me to see weaknesses in my writing for myself in glorious technicolour.  If I look at my work objectively, I believe I must be producing a higher standard of work than I was 4 years ago, but at the moment it doesn't feel like it.  I know I have a very long way to go.

TEA, TEXAN STYLE

We love to visit the US and we'd been wanting to see our friends in Houston for a very long time, so, last week - half term week - off we went.  One of the things you accept, however, is that you can't get a decent cup of tea in America.  On our first evening we were offered iced tea in a glass, but that tasted like, er, cold tea.  However, we'd been before, we knew the score, so we comforted ourselves with American coffee.   Americans do coffee much better than we do.  (Yes, they really do, even though my husband does a mean cafetiere at home at weekends.)

However, by the time we got back to George Bush Intercontinental for our return journey, our throats were dry and tickly and we were both suffering from periodic paroxyms of coughing.  Lee Marvin, in 'Painted Waggon', sang that 'the plains will make you dry', but I can assure him that air conditioning makes you dry as well.  Houstonians are addicted to air conditioning, ... in shops, restaurants, homes, the Johnson Space Center, even churches.  It was explained to us that, with their hot humid climate, air conditioning was not only what made Houston great, but possible at all.  But, really, in late October?  I was getting into the habit of taking a cardigan, not for outside, Dear Reader, but for indoors.

Picture us at the airport, with our tongues hanging out.  We needed tea.  We sat down at the cafe in Terminal E.  'Tea?  No problem.' 

'Hot tea,' my husband added.

The waitress shook her head.  Iced tea, yes, but not hot.   She didn't have any tea bags.

We trundled over to Terminal B, were seated by the hostess and made our request again.  'Hot tea?  OK, y'all.'

She returned a few minutes later with two cups of hot water with teabags brewing nicely at the bottom, although there were sliced lemons over the rims.  She was about to disappear when my husband uttered the word 'Milk'.

'OK, y'all.'

She served another customer.  She seated a couple at a table.  She did various other things... all the while our tea was going cold.  She did produce the milk eventually - horrible creamy full milk - but it was too late by then.

Is making a good cup of tea so difficult?  As was explained by the elderly concierge at the hotel we visited in Prague last Easter, 'In England you drink tea strong so you need milk.  In rest of world we drink it weak so we don't.'

Driving home from Heathrow, we stopped at the local Coop to buy some fresh skimmed milk, and, as soon as we got inside our own front door we switched on the kettle.  Then, Dear Reader, we made a Proper Cup of Tea. Heaven.

Writers' Block

I never thought I would suffer in this way,  but it's been coming on for a long time.  Writing just gets harder every day.

I used to be able to roll off a chapter of a novel, 2000 words or so, in one day, with enormous enthusiasm.  I used to feel a thrill of excitement every time I sat down at the computer and tear myself away with enormous reluctance when I had to go and pick up children from school or whatever.  So what's changed?  And what's happened to all those novels I wrote?  They're gathering dust on floppy discs, on top of the filing cabinet, in what used to be the computer room in the days when we used to have a desktop computer, in the spare bedroom, you know, in the way people used to.  Underneath them are two ring binders contained about 100,000 words of a novel about space exploration which I inscribed in pencil on A4 pads (when there wasn't really any viable alternative).  I wrote that novel with passion too.

So, let's ask the question again.  What happened to all these novels?  Not a lot. 

A few were sent to publishers, three word processed chapters and a synopsis.  Every few months, when the family were out, I would have a cull of these sad self-addressed envelopes, their contents pinned together with the publisher's standard rejection slip.   Most of them didn't even get that far, although my novel for teenagers about football was recorded on cassette tape by a fellow writer in Scotland - Alex Frew, bless him - and played to blind kids in Scotland.  The sequel was not so fortunate as the Wee Frees objected on moral grounds to mc sleeping with steady girlfriend before marriage... er, once.

Over the past three years, I have been writing flash and short stories, with a moderate degree of success.  The quality of my writing has matured in many ways, because I have posted my work on Writers Dock and Chapter SeventyNine and received a great deal of valuable feedback from members, whereas previously no one was reading my work at all, let alone reviewing and suggesting edits.  I now have a much lower opinion of myself as a writer, but I know I'm writing better. 

I've also been writing a novel about the Cold War since 2008 and I'm only midway through.  It's been stop-start, two steps forward and one step back ever since, short stories, several OU courses and a lot of handouts on how to use various IT applications.  Back in 2007-8, the story coursed through my head night and day, actually keeping me awake for whole nights, and I was desperate to get it down... without doing the necessary research, or developing the whole of the plot, or thinking through the characters.  Now I understand the characters very well and the plot has remained the same for a long time... in my head.  But I'm doing well if I write a chapter about every month.

So Dear Reader (and Allie assures me there is at least one), my plan now is to concentrate on The Novel and forget about writing shorts until I've finished.  I belong to something called Five Outstanding on Chapter Seventy-Nine in which you commit to having five subs on the go at any one time, but I think I can continue to keep that up by recycling rejections - unless I suddenly get a rash of acceptances.

No more excuses then.  I just wish I could write with abandon and absorption like before.

Scatological continued

My beloved daughter will get married tomorrow, and guess what?  I was clearning the loo in our bathroom when the fittings on the seat brackets snapped. 

Husband was furious and told me to wait until Monday before even thinking of trying to fix it, but what he forgot was that, when we got married - way, way, way back - I didn't promise to 'obey'.  So what did I do, dear Reader (if there is one)?  I drove to the nearest town, bought a loo seat the right size for the pan, came home and fitted it. 

Now feeling very pleased with myself.

Scatological or what?

My beloved uncle, now sadly 'late' in the Mma Ramotswe sense and whose name was 'Brown', used to say that 'Browns' weather' plagued his every holiday.  He went to Greece, Pakistan, just down the road to Hastings, and you could guarantee that it would be cold and wet, not just for him but for us at home too.

Husband and I, however, have been pursued by toilets.  Things started the way they meant to go on at our flat in Sutton where we lived immediately after our wedding; a toilet with a pathetic, 'can't be bothered' flush was kicked into action suddenly and literally when Husband got frustrated with it one Sunday afternoon.  I can't remember the details now - too long ago.

Next we went to live in a commuter village east of Guildford, where our daughter and son were born.  With a two week old baby and tearful through lack of sleep, we managed to block the system in the whole road by putting nappy liners down the loo, as it said you could do on the packet.  Our very nice neighbours rodded the drain for us, as we were in no fit state to do it.

At least in these last two places we had mains drainage.  Over twenty years ago now, we moved to our present house where we don't.  The septic tank has, over the years, caused us hours of amusement, embarrassment and expense, especially on Saturday evenings and Sunday evenings, the normal times for crises to occur.  But you came to hold it cheap and love the slurry wagon when it turns up, our visitors too, because septic tank would always hold out until we had company.  Do you suppose that, when you get a group of countrymen together, they discuss crops, nature or the weather, or even incursions from Tesco?  No, they talk about the merits of soak aways and filtration and how putting the village on to the mains would definitely be a BAD THING.

We can't escape, even on holiday.  In Brittany, where our toilette flushed continuously, all day and all night, Madame's response was always 'Demain', and probably still is.  Staying in Tenerife we managed to work our magic on the bathroom facilities in mother-in-law's apartment and had to call out the English-Speaking Plumber from Playa De Los Cristianos.  (He was quite used to people like us.)  Worst of all was southern Italy where the big tank in the basement of our holiday-let for 6 people ran dry, because we had... er, six people... in the property.  The only person from the holiday company who was on site was Mario who only spoke Italian and Husband who spoke none.  They got it fixed though; some basic concepts are international.

Pity most ezines don't do scatological, isn't it?  I think I might just have a bit of material there.  

Things I Should've Known Years Ago...

I've just had a long Eureka moment, lasting for several days.  It's rather embarrassing actually because I've found out something I should've known ages ago.

I've been subbing for about two years and I've been moderately successful, using Duotrope to find ezines to sub to, largely American ones, which take stories featuring very American subject-matter.  I know several British writers who write very specifically for this market, even using Webster spellings.  No one is a bigger fan of Duotrope than I am, but it does tend to represent what American writers want to write - scifi, fantasy, zombies, vampires. 

At the same time... well, over the last few months... I've become a bit of a writing mag junkie ('Writers Forum', 'Mslexia', 'Writers Monthly', 'Leaf Books' although I was just reading the articles - until the last few days.   Dear Reader (if there is one), I have come to love the classifieds at the end, you know, the ones where they list all the competitions.  They're all British and most of them are open genre, so I've been whacking my British-based mainstream stories in there.  It may be that they too favour scifi and fantasy etc and I'm going to be terribly disappointed, but they're not saying so.

SUBBING THE OLD FASHIONED WAY

I normally sub stories electronically.  In fact, I've got to the point where, if I see a zine will only accept 'postal subs', I move on.  But sometimes you have to.  For womag, for instance.

The first problem is the printer.  At home I have a 'networked' printer, which purrs like a contented cat when my husband clicks 'print', but will only cooperate for me if I climb the stairs with my laptop and plug in the usb cable.  As Sunday night was somewhat fraught and me exhausted, I couldn't be bothered.  I backed up the story on my hard drive and printed it at work, which meant standing around the shared printer in a very guilty manner while it printed so as to avoid my colleagues' possible questions.

Sunday night having been, as I mentioned, fraught, I forgot the envelopes.  Never mind, I thought; I'll pick some up at the Post Office. I set off for my lunch time walk, carrying the story in a plastic polypocket inside a Body Shop carrier bag. I even remembered the paper clip which all womags demand.

Ten minutes later, I arrived at the main Post Office in the town where I work.  I tried to ignore the Communist era queue snaking around the shop and the robotic announcements - 'Checkout Number Six, please'.  I wandered around the wall displays of padded envelopes, old fashioned brown wrapping paper, sturdy cardboard boxes, bubble wrap... everything but normal envelopes.  After pacing around like a lost soul for several minutes, I found someone to ask.  "Oh no," she said.  "We've only got what you can see there.  We're reorganising our displays."  Post Office?  No envelopes?  Use it or lose it?  Right!

Five minutes walk to W H Smith's, who did sell envelopes, stand in their lunchtime queue, then five minutes back to the Post Office.  Time was running out now, and, not having time for the long and winding line, I used the automated facility instead.  And, dear reader, it worked, first time, weighing my package and discharging the correct stamps.  Hurray!

I did a final check: typescript, SAE, paperclip...  Where was that paper clip?  I did put one inside the polypocket.  Really.  Honestly.  I turned the polypocket upside down and even the Body Shop bag, but it wasn't there now.  And you've guessed it!   The Post Office didn't appear to sell paper clips.

I began to trudge back to work, out of the main shopping area, past the theatre and the pub, and on to the walkway across the main road.  And there, dear reader, lying on the concrete path, was a solitary paper clip.

Well, I'm not proud.  I stooped.  I picked it up.  I pressed the pages of my typescript between the paper clip's claws and stuck down the envelope, which I slipped into an adjacent letterbox.

Time taken to sub postally:  60 minutes.
Time normally taken to sub electronically:  1 minute.

The womag I've subbed to had better accept it.

Equality and Diversity - College Style

It had been a hard week at college, with a lot of discipline problems, so it was good to get to Friday afternoon.  C Group were working on an assignment, supposedly completing it by the end of the lesson, but, on the first proper sunny day of the year, we were aware of the burble-burble of conversation and laughter outside, and cars roaring off and away as people left as early as they dared.

Jake was like a duck on a butty, chatting, sitting on the desk, looking out the window.   "You've got to see this," he cried.

Daniel, sitting right next to him, jumped to his feet.  "Heeeyy!  Look at that!"

"Two lessies holding hands," Jake said, pushing the casement open.

"What?  What?"  Pushing back their chairs, the rest of the class stampeded to the back of the class to see for themselves.

"Come back and do your work," I said, realising how feeble this sounded even as the words left my mouth.

"But Miss.  They've got to be lessies."

"Well, you know," I said, "when you go abroad, you often see women walking along arm-in-arm."

"That's abroad, though, innit?  That sort of thing don't happen here."

CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD TIME FOR SUBBING

College is off for a whole fortnight and I'm trying to make good use of the time.  Two flash pieces subbed so far and another on the cusp.  One of them, 'The Doctor's Receptionist', has already been accepted by the Short Humour Site.  Having worked hard on that, I'm well-chuffed.  Here it is:

http://www.short-humour.org.uk/3writersshowcase/3writersshowcase.htm#CHB

I enjoy appearing in the Short Humour Site. It's very much my sort of place, down to earth, pithy and, like it says on the tin, FUNNY.

Can I have now have a rant about Christmas.  I spent most of last week preparing for it!  Seeing family, including daughter, son-in-law to be and son was terrific.  Seeing other friends and relatives throughout this week is also great.  But do we need ALL the razzmatazz?  It's all becoming too much, imo.  We - all of us - spend far too much on presents, on things the recipients don't want or need, just because we feel we should give them something up to a certain price.  I enjoy cooking the traditional Christmas stuff - Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, mincepies, trifle etc - but again, a bit of moderation is required.  Do we need all the trimmings, every year? 

As for Christmas TV... don't get me started.  I personally have only watched one thing, 'The Murder on the Orient Express' with David Suchet on Christmas night and it was RUBBISH!

And white Christmasses?  No, I really don't want 'all my Christmasses to be white'.

So, on with the subs!

Success... and Failure

Sounds like a Russian novel.  Or a Woody Allen spoof.

"A Family Day Out' has been accepted by 'Pig in a Poke'.  Hurray!  Always one of my favourite stories and featuring my favourite muse (who I hope doesn't recognise himself), it will appear in the January issue.

Got feedback from 'Writers Forum' on 'The Internet Bride'.   They were generally quite positive, although I never thought it was good enough to appear in the mag.  I'm glad I got the professional feedback.  It doesn't hurt to punch above your weight sometimes.

Bit fed up with mags which don't bother to reply.  Two stories in particular are going begging:  a story about a computer who talks and a children's story about two cats.  I am considering resubbing in the next day or two.

My favourite muse has gone on the student demos and come out unscathed.  I'm so cross with him for putting himself in danger and yet I'm writing my novel about people who put themselves in much greater danger.  I'm trying to tap into my feelings of anxiety as a protester's mother and his frustration at me for being that way.

Charlie Britten... About Me

I don't often get a chance to write about me...  I'm not interesting.   That's what my writing's for.

So what do I write?  Fiction almost always.  I used to think of myself just as a novelist, and that's still what I enjoy doing most.  Like most hopeful novelists I have loads of dusty, and pretty awful, manuscripts stuffed in obscure drawers of unused cupboards, growing more yellow and more dog-eared with each year, floppy discs too.  More later works (recent enough to be stored on memory stick) include a novel about growing up in middle-England in the 1970s.  My current novel, 'And the Wall Came Tumbling Down' (which has been in progressed for far too long and still nowhere near finished) has a Cold War theme.

One of the reasons 'The Wall' has been so slow is that common sense prevailed and I started writing shorts as well.  (How was I going to have any cred with a book publisher if I had no backline in short stories?)  I particularly enjoy flash fiction, making a point or someone laugh in 200 or 300 words or less.  Although I have had mainstream work accepted, I seem to have most success with humorous fiction, and all my work has a funny vein, even when I'm writing something deadly serious.

I've had work published on Fictionatwork, The Short Humour Site, The Linnet's Wings, Delivered (print magazine), Hobo Pancakes and Mslexia.

I belong to two writing groups:  Chapter 79 and Writers Dock.  The members of these groups, and of Great Writing and the old More Writing site, have taught me a lot.

In the real world, I'm an IT tutor at a college of further education in England.  I live with my husband, son and cat, and my daughter lives with her husband to be on the south coast.  Other interests are all a bit random: web design, cats, travelling in eastern Europe.

What else do you need to know?  Not a lot.  Read my work instead.