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On feeling a bit crotchety July 29, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 15 comments

Hey diddly dee, a kitchen of widdle for me…

Ahem. I have a few concerns, Doctor. Let me explain:

Now that I am officially non-working, my self-imposed confinement and daily doings of all things domestically un-goddesslike are possibly not going to provide the stimulation I require to become a sort-of writer. Today’s examples:

I get up early to write. Discover my very own Windermere in the kitchen, created by stinking hound. Swear a bit. Drink tea to make eyes open. Think that I have been up for 40 minutes but still not written any words but am too busy thinking up swear words and mean thoughts about the dog. Clean up puddle of piddle. Feel peckish. Consider whether to have toasted muffin with sardines (fishy fun to fend off mental incapacity) or croissant (happiness inducing and bloody well deserved after aforementioned wee-based mopping but a bit fattening). Eat muffin with squashed fish. Then eat two croissants with kids. Feel fat and consider that I may have to go on Jonathon Ross instead of Porky Parky when I am a bestselling novelist as he has a big settee that will accommodate my mysteriously-increasing arse. Think that getting wedged into Parky’s chrome and leather chair and having to be winched out by firemen will not be a good start to my life as a glam but rather slightly lardy writer.

Hardly sparkling, is it? The kitchen floor is though. Perhaps I will write about that… no? Really??

Of tea-based nonsense July 26, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 24 comments

It’s Thursday: the first day of a four-month stint of being a non-working, sort-of writer. I got up early today so that I could get on with being a writer. It’s really quite exciting! I’ve had a quick peep in the mirror to see if I look any different but, no, I don’t look any more like a writer than I did yesterday.

At work, people asked me what I was going to do. I confessed, cringing and blushing, that ‘I’m going to finish my novel.’ I waited for them to snigger, to snort with laughter. But they didn’t. ‘Hey, that’s cool’ and ‘Will it be saucy?’ were the typical reponses.

I check the mirror again. I am neither cool nor saucy. I am wearing lilac tartan pyjama bottoms, a non-matching black t-shirt and a fluffy navy dressing gown that is about six sizes too big for me. I have a hangover. It’s 7.00am and I’m clutching my 4th cup of Extra-Strong Tetleys. Maybe I look a bit like a writer after all…

Am determined to hit the 30,000 word mark today, in between tea-drinking and weeing. Hopefully, having a thimble-sized bladder will not preclude my ability to become a bestselling novelist…

 

 

 


 

A New Chapter July 20, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 16 comments

Well, that’s it. As from next Wednesday, I will officially be non-working. Aaaarrrghhh!! My diet as a poverty-stricken writer will consist largely of fluff, Marmite and the odd snifter of sweet sherry. Other than that, I have only one major concern: What if I have to fill in a form asking my occupation? Or if someone asks me ‘what do you do?’

I can’t very well go round telling people I’m a writer; it doesn’t seem right. It’s not what people like me do. Maybe, if I were a braver me, I would just say it. Maybe, by saying it, I would become it. Perhaps I will avoid talking to people and filling in forms until I’ve got the hang of it.

Lovely bf is, as you can imagine, devastated that I will no longer be able to regale him with daily tales of the Retail Hell car park machine and the gormless goings-on of the users thereof.

And for you, dear reader, I will have only snippets of my domestic doings to jollify you in between accounts of what a rubbish writer I might be. Ah, why wait? I hear you cry. Oh, ok then…

There’s a mouse in my garage. A dead mouse, to be precise. I don’t know what it died of - performing little rodent autopsies is NOT what I will be doing as a sort-of writer. (Hmmm, ’sort-of writer’. That could work.) But, if there’s a dead mouse, it is likely that there are rather more lively ones in residence too. Gulp.

Me: ‘Number 1 Son, please come and stand in the rain and hold the garage door open while I put this washing into the tumble drier.’

Number 1 Son: ‘Can’t you just use the hook to hook it open? It’s raining!’

Me: ‘No, because if a mouse runs up my pyjama bottoms and I faint, you will have to save me.’

Note to self: During time as a non-working sort-of writer, be sure to wear elastic bands around the bottom of jim-jams to guard against miscellaneous mouse antics.


Dastardly Decisions July 16, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 26 comments

Now, though this may come as an awful shock to you, I have a confession:

I am terrible at making decisions. No, seriously, I mean proper terrible. Rubbish. Useless. Impractical, ineffectual and utterly, utterly crap. Sigh.

I’m fed up with my job. I have the school hols looming. I can’t book any time off work. I have an itsy bitsy, teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini bit of money in my bank account for the first time in seven billion years.

So. Do I:-

Carry on toiling in Retail Hell, cursing myself as I’m suckered into more and more responsibility and gruesome work-related misery?

OR

Give a week’s notice, run away and spend the summer in the garden with the boys, getting fit, healthy (I’m thinking figs, nectarines and jogging. What?? Oh, shut up!! I bloomin’ well would!) and really ploughing into the novel and bandying myself about with some short stories? You know, really being a writer. For 6 weeks. After which I would be buggered. Which would clearly be a pain in the arse. (Oh dear. Sorry about that. It’s not my joke!)

Oh, Gawd, I just don’t know. What happens mid-September when I’m jobless and penniless? Oh yeah, I could temp. But, what if nobody wants me? Oh, I can’t decide…

(Sorry about the cartoon too. I’m a bit stressed. Can you tell?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hairy Scary July 12, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Novel , 14 comments

Oh dear. I have lost the plot. Or, to be more precise, I have come to the conclusion that I didn’t have a plot to start with and am now doing unspeakable things with colour-coded record cards and a massive pin board in order to construct a plot.

I don’t lurch often onto the road of sensible thinking.

My novel has had a life of its own so far. I’ve taken an ‘organic instinctive’ approach to the whole thing, i.e. making it up as I go along. But. I came down early to write this morning. And below, dear reader, is the total crap that crept from my (character’s) mind…

Of course, there are lots of good reasons not to be entangled with a bloke. Leg hair, for starters. Mine had got so long at one point that I’d contemplated plaiting it. There’s something really sigh-inducing about doing your legs, knowing that nobody cares what’s going on underneath your trousers. Armpit hair, however, is another matter entirely. At the beginning of the man-drought, I had let my armpit hair grow long for the first time since I was about 14. Soft armpits instead of scrapy ones were quite nice until I woke up one morning with a start, leaping out of bed with a screech. For some reason, as I’d opened my eyes, my brain had insisted that there was a massive spider on my pillow. Right near my mouth, which rested on my arm as it curled around my head. Yes, I know. It wasn’t a whopping spider, obviously. But waking up terrified by your own armpit hair isn’t good and back to prickly I went.

 

 

WTF?

 

 


 

What’s in a Name? July 10, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Novel , 15 comments

Prompted by the ridiculously excellent See Jane Write, I have been giving thoughts aplenty to what the title of my novel will be. Yes, I realise that writing the bloomin thing would be much more productive but hey ho. It’s irritating me, having a file name that sounds trite and dull: the working title of Perfect Lives is definitely a bit yawn-inducing. But how to come up with a Devil Wears Prada-esque title?

And, on the matter of names, I accidentally ‘outed’ myself in my last post. Excellent. Mind you, I’d already cocked up by listing my blog somewhere bizarre with my full name. Sodding Google is so clever it can, apparently, put two and two together and come up with a smug way of obliterating all pretence of anonymity. Sigh.

So. Now I’m thinking that ‘Maltby’ doesn’t look too thrilling in print. Perhaps I will use my maiden name for writing. Hmmmmm. ‘Grihault’, I think, might look a bit more interesting on a book cover. But when people see it written down, they can’t say it. And if they can say it, they don’t know how to spell it. Could be a bit of a drawback.

But. If I use my unpronounceable surname and also give the novel an indecipherable title, it will explain why it hasn’t sold in its millions. Nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t written it yet. No, nothing to do with that at all.

Oh dear. Life is a tortuous conundrum, no?

Of Obsessive Compulsion July 6, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 12 comments

Number 2 son. Induction Day at Secondary School. Number 2 son has a few questions and concerns.

‘It says to meet in the hall. Do I actually go into the hall or do I stand outside the hall until someone comes along and tells me to go into the hall?’

‘It says take one pound sixty-five for lunch. I don’t think I’ll like any of their lunch so what will happen if I just take a packed lunch as usual and not take the one pound sixty-five they say I have to take to buy lunch?’

‘What if I am separated from the crowd and left alone by accident and accidentally spend the whole day in the car park eating my packed lunch instead of school dinners because nobody has noticed I’m lost?’

That was yesterday. Today? Nice and easy, back at primary school.

‘Are you sure it’s a non-uniform day? What if I get there and everyone is wearing uniform?’

‘It’s a non-uniform day. I put it in Outlook. See? Stop asking me!’

I drop him off in his jeans and footie top. I drive to work. I see all the other children walking to school. In their uniform.

I phone the school. ‘Hello, I just wanted to check that it’s a non-uniform day today?’

‘Um, can I ask who’s calling?’ asks the school secretary cruelly.

‘I am an anonymous but disorganised caller,’ I reply, cunningly.

‘Oh, hello Mrs Maltby. Your son is actually standing right in front of me, looking rather distraught. Perhaps you might pop his uniform in for him?’

I drive home. I drive back to school to ‘pop’ the uniform in. There is nowhere to park. The road is all clogged up with cars. Cars belonging to the bastard parents who have remembered that it is the class assembly I have been reminded about approximately seventeen times. I am late for work. I am due to run a training session for a bunch of Retail Hell oddbods in 15 minutes. It’s a half hour drive.

I scowl.

I swear. I swear quite a lot, actually.

I must make a decision.

I am a rubbish mother.

I Have Writted Some Words July 2, 2007

Posted by Jen in : Journal , 18 comments

“Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.”

Carol Burnett

Hmmmm… now that’s an interesting concept. It does make sense, kind of. When I write, I know what I mean (usually). But I guess things are filtered through other people’s perceptions which alters them.

Believe it or not, I have actually had a writing weekend. I’ve been spurred on by having some of my words set free in public. Nothing much, just a CD review. But this has led to me being given the go-ahead to write a 500-word feature. Eeeek! Real writing, how utterly scary. Maybe even an interview – with a real person - double eeeek! The odd thing is that, ok, it’s only an album review but it has made me think that I might actually be able to write proper ’stuff’.

So I have!

I toiled away yesterday and finished a piece which I have submitted to the Guardian – serious writing. It might just be self-indulgent, wrist-slashingly miserable twaddle but I did it! I am so brave and grown-up!!

I signed up (and paid for) the dreaded Writers Bureau course about ten gazillion years ago and barely looked at it. But now I’m thinking of Actually Doing It. I have six months to get cracking and get somewhere with this writing lark before I start slaving on my degree again.

Focus. That’s what I need. I’m feeling all serious today, can you tell?

There’s always the possibility, of course, that I actually am crap… Oh, God…