Category: Updates and information

TBRYear 10 – 1. The Children of Men by P. D. James

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Genre: Dystopia

Narrative style: Chronological, shifts between first and third person.

Rating: 2/5

Published: 1992

Format: Kindle

Synopsis: Babies are no longer being born anywhere around the world. This has been so for over 20 years. Theo Faron is merely getting through his days with no hope for the future – either his own or that of civilisation. Then he meets Julian who is part of an activist group. Theo is immediately attracted to her and agrees – against his better judgement – to help the group out.

Time on shelf: I’ve wanted to read this for a long time. I bought this copy about three or four years ago but I kept overlooking it.

Reading challenges: TBR Challenge

I really wanted to enjoy this. I’m a big fan of dystopias (The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Brave New World are some of my favourite books) but I couldn’t get to grips with this one. It’s a shame as James clearly had some interesting things to say about power and its abuses. The things she describes happening are apt and I could imagine that would be how things would go if such a dreadful thing were to occur. Unfortunately the plot and characterisation didn’t live up to that promise.

My first problem was with Theo’s first person narration – written as diary entries. I know that he was a historian and also bored with his existence but did his voice have to be so dull and plodding? He is also an unpleasant person with barely a thought for anyone else. He accidentally ran over and killed his daughter but shows little feeling for the child or for her mother when she is grieving. Don’t get me wrong, I love a less than perfect hero as much as the next person but Theo was almost impossible to like. There was no way to root for him.

James switches from Theo’s diary entries to third person narration from Theo’s point of view every couple of chapters. I wasn’t really sure why she used this device as it didn’t allow the reader access to anyone else’s thoughts. It did at least save the reader from the tedium of Theo’s first person voice. About halfway through the novel, Theo throws away his diary and the novel from then on is in third person. Fair enough but there were third person chapters before that happened.

The plot is very slow moving. It feels like a long time before anything happens. Even once Theo has met Julian, things don’t speed up. He agrees to help her and the other members of the ‘five fishes’ group after seeing the horror of a ‘quietus’ – the government’s way of dealing with the immense number of elderly people – where the elderly are expected to ‘voluntarily’ commit suicide when they reach a certain age. (This was one of the better parts of the book. Theo is forced to think for himself and to realise that the Government are actually not as good as he thought.) This is further brought home to him when he naively goes to visit Xan, the Warden of England, who also happens to be his cousin and finds he cannot persuade him to change any of his ideals.

I felt that James could have picked any issue to write this dystopia. While there are details of women christening their pets or pushing around dolls in prams because the focus is on Theo (who didn’t even love the child he had) we don’t see much of the emotion of the situation. There is no longing for a younger generation from him. He is only concerned for himself. At the end of the novel, Theo shoots the Warden and takes the ring that symbolises his power. It seems that he will be the next leader of England – especially as he can now introduce the first baby born since 1995 to the world. Given Theo’s lack of feeling for others, it is doubtful he will make a better leader than Xan. The novel ends with him baptising the new baby suggesting his new sense of power and Julian (the baby’s mother) can only look on, pushed aside as surely as she would have been if Xan had still been in charge. James makes a strong point about power and the way men push women aside even when they are needed for the most important job in the world. I just wish that the story that brought us to this point have been better.

Round up of last year

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I lost my blogging mojo in the middle of last year. I’m not sure why. I was a little busy but no more than usual. I could have done it but I just couldn’t bring myself to write them. In the end, I wrote the blogs for TBR Challenge 2022 (hosted by Roof Beam Reader) but even then I only just managed to finish by the end of the year. I read the last book – The Princess Bride – by the start of December but didn’t manage to write the review until the end of the month. I’ve been meaning to write this round up for days. I had to make myself sit down and do it.

It isn’t general apathy. I’m reading and writing as much as I can. I haven’t read as many books as previously (33) because I am commuting less and I don’t have a lunch break where I can just sit and read anymore but I’m still enthusiastic about reading. I’m hoping that I’ll get back into it this year as it is something I do enjoy. I’m not going to try to review every book I read – although it is my intention to do the TBR Challenge again because it is enjoyable and helps me read books that have been hanging around on my shelves for ages.

As for reading. it was generally quite a good year. Quite a few of the books I read for the TBR Challenge were very good – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt and Ananci Boys by Neil Gaiman were all excellent and I would thoroughly recommend. Other favourites of the year were Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead. I didn’t manage to finish Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky which was disappointing but I made a decision a few years ago that I wasn’t going to struggle on with a book that was annoying me and I found I had little care about the narrator and his plans. Life’s too short to read a book that isn’t pleasing.

List of what I hope to read this year:

  1. The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimananda Ngozi Adiche
  2. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
  3. The Man in the Red Coat – Julian Barnes – Finished 28/1/23
  4. The Tennant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
  5. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – Currently Reading
  6. The City and the Stars – Arthur C. CLarke – Finished 8/1/23
  7. Invisible Women – Caroline Craido-Perez
  8. The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
  9. I, Claudius – Robert Graves
  10. Munich – Robert Harris – Finished 7/3/23
  11. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A Heinlein – Currently Reading
  12. A Widow for One Year – John Irving
  13. The Children of Men – P. D. James -Finished 20/1/23
  14. Fludd – Hilary Mantel
  15. No One Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  16. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
  17. Big Little Lies – Lianne Moriaty
  18. Me Before You – Jojo Moyes
  19. Hamnet – Maggie O’Farell
  20. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
  21. Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Edgar Allen Poe
  22. The Ministry of the Future – Kim Stanley Robinson
  23. Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
  24. The Accidental – Ali Smith
  25. N-W – Zadie Smith
  26. No one Here Gets Out Alive – Danny Sugarman and Jerry Hopkins
  27. The Magician – Colm Toibin – Finished 17/3/23
  28. The Return of the King – J R R Tolkien
  29. Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh
  30. The Golem and the Djinn – Helene Wecker
  31. Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead

The long road to being published

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I’d forgotten how soul destroying this process can be. And I’m not even up to submitting my work yet. Nowhere near. For the last few weeks, I’ve been hunched over The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, looking up publisheers on the internet, making notes. I’ve a long list of publishers and information. But I’m still no nearer sending my work out then I was when I wrote the last blog post saying I was starting on this road. I know this is why people decide to self publish. It’s why I did all those years ago when I published Shattered Reflections.

One of the main problems is that anyone who looks remotely like they might suit me and my work is currently not open to submissions. It may be that this is not the best time to be trying to submit work. This may be due to lockdown and not working in the office. Or it may be (as someone suggested on Twitter) that they are snowed under with all the people who started writing during lockdown. Either way it is incredibly frustrating.

There are also a lot of publishers who, while claiming not to be vanity publishers, expect the writer to pay towards publication. I can’t afford to do this anyway but even if I could, I’d be dubious. The whole idea makes me feel uneasy. At least part of the point of publishing in a more traditional way is so that I don’t have to take the risk of potentially losing any money.

Another issue is the length of my manuscript. A lot of publishers set maximum length at 120000 words and Choose Yr Future is 158000 words. Quite a lot to lose. I’m not sure that I could make those sort of cuts even if I wanted to. I’ve already done what seems like a lot of hard work, getting it to where it is now. I don’t really want to start messing around with it again. It’s worth noting for the future though. I have a lot of half spun tales hanging waiting to be chosen for the next project.

So, the upshot is I’m no further forward but I’m not giving up. I’m determined not to go the self publishing route this time. I’m starting to look at agents instead of contacting publishers direct. I’m still searching for publishers which fit and are open for submissions. I must confess that patience isn’t really a virtue I possess but, for the minute, I’m sticking to this path.

Next Steps – Publishing quandries.

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Well, I’m finally ready to publish Choose Yr Future. It’s taken about six years but I’m happy with it – with the storyline, the characters, the style. I don’t think there is anything else I can do with it. I have sent things off to publishers when the writing is still in too raw a state before and it didn’t get me anywhere but I’m fairly certain that this is a lot more polished.

In fact, I had started to prepare it to be self-published via Amazon like I did with Shattered Reflections. However, there are a number of things that are making me pause and think about other avenues.

The first – and probably the most important – reason for not self-publishing is the fact that I proved to be really bad at marketing last time so I didn’t sell many books. I’m quite a shy person, at least in terms of putting myself forward for things. Not a good thing when you are trying to promote yourself. I don’t really have the time either. Not to do it properly. And I don’t want to sacrifice the spare time I do have after work to marketing. That’s when I write normally. It helps me relax. Marketing is the opposite of relaxing and not something I want to do when I’ve already been at work all day. Of course, the dream would be not to have to work but that would come after successfully marketing my book, not before.

Then there is the fact that a lot of self-published books are genre fiction. Not that there is anything wrong with that but while Choose Yr Future is a dystopia, it doesn’t really fit completely in that genre and it is more literary than popular fiction. On top of this, I am broke so I can’t afford a cover designer or an editor. The more and more I think about it, the more I think that traditional publishing is a better idea.

So I’m once again considering more traditional routes. I’ve been pouring over The Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook trying to decide whether I need an agent or am going to go with a publishing house who take unsolicited manuscripts. And then there are all the Indie publishers who have sprung up over the last few years. Of course, a lot can be dismissed immediately as not quite the right thing but it is a time consuming nonetheless.

Maybe I’m a snob (not maybe, not really) but I must admit I’d like the kudos of being published by a recognised publisher, to be able to say someone thought this worthy of publication. Other than me, of course.

We’ll see what happens. The whole process takes a long time so I may run out of patience and find myself back at Amazon. Of course, there are a lot more places for self publishing now as well and I’d welcome any advice from anyone who has done it recently.

2021 Reading List

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As mentioned in my last blog, I am not doing an online reading challenge this year. The main reason is I really want to clear my TBR pile and most challenges seem to require me to buy at least one or two new books. I usually buy any such books on my Kindle because at least they don’t take up physical space but I have a ridiculous amount of unread books on there now so I really need to reign it in a bit.

Last year, I attempted an alphabetical challenge and while I didn’t quite manage it (I missed Y) I did enjoy it and was tempted to do it again. However, that would require me buying a book for Q, X and Y and I don’t want to have to do that. While I was bemoaning the fact that I like to have a list of what I will read for the year but I couldn’t find challenge I wanted to do – and probably to shut me up – my husband suggested that I let him choose a list of possible books to read this year – from our shelves and my kindle. I agreed. Possibly foolishly as he seemed to get a lot of glee out of putting things on the list that he knows I’ve been avoiding.

Anyway, here is my list. Although there are no requirements, I’m going to try to write a review for each one. I want to blog more this year anyway so it will help with that as well. There are a lot more classics here then I would normally read so we’ll have to see how it goes. As I don’t usually make a list of all the books I will read and as I am terribly bad at sticking to a list, there may be additions over the year.

  1. The Girl in a Swing – Richard Adams
  2. The Testaments – Margaret Atwood Finished 8/1/21
  3. Emma – Jane Austen
  4. Jews Don’t Count – David Baddiel Finished 7/10/21
  5. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin Finished 9/6/21
  6. The Coral Island – R. M. Ballantyne
  7. Peter Pan – J. M. Barrie Finished 4/8/21
  8. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
  9. The Killing Habit – Mark Billingham Finished 28/6/21
  10. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
  11. Kindred – Octavia E. Butler Finished 12/6/21
  12. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John le Carre Finished 2/4/21
  13. My Antonia – Willa Cather
  14. The Long Call – Anne Cleeves
  15. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
  16. The Burning Page – Genevieve Cogman Finished 16/5/21
  17. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
  18. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
  19. All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr Finished 2/8/21
  20. Lake of Dreams – Kim Edwards
  21. Middlemarch – George Eliot Finished 9/3/21
  22. Engleby – Sebastian Faulks 30/11/21
  23. A Passage to India – E. M. Forster
  24. The Collector – John Fowles – 13/11/21
  25. Take Nothing With You – Patrick Gale – Finished 11/2/21
  26. Pincher Martin – William Golding
  27. England Made Me – Graham Greene
  28. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy – Finished 29/7/21
  29. Mysterious Skin – Scott Heim Finished 14/12/21
  30. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway Finished 19/2/21
  31. The Problem with Men – Richard Herring – Finished 7/4/21
  32. Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith Finished 27/9/21
  33. The Aspern Papers / Turn of the Screw – Henry James
  34. The Institute – Stephen King
  35. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi Finished 22/3/21
  36. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D. H. Lawrence Finished 31/12/21
  37. Tishomingo Blues – Elmore Leonard
  38. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
  39. No one Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  40. I am Legend – Richard Matheson Finished 16/8/21
  41. Machines Like Me – Ian McEwan – Finished 19/4/21
  42. Moby Dick – Herman Melville Finished 15/5/21
  43. Utopia Avenue – David Mitchell -finished 3/3/21
  44. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng – finished 9/5/21
  45. How to be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind – James O’Brien Finished 24/5/21
  46. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman Finished 15/9/21
  47. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens Finished 13/3/21
  48. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
  49. Bleeding Hearts – Ian Rankin
  50. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque Finished 28/4/21
  51. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth Finished 17/1/21
  52. Austerlitz – W. G. Sebald
  53. Autumn – Ali Smith Finished 25/1/21
  54. On Beauty – Zadie Smith Finished 26/10/21
  55. Here We Are _ Graham Swift Finished 11/8/21
  56. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
  57. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
  58. The Fellowship of the Rings – JRR Tolkien Finished 24/8/21
  59. Bech at Bay – John Updike
  60. Candide – Voltaire
  61. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead Finished 4/2/21
  62. A Streetcar named Desire – Tennessee Williams
  63. Green River Rising – Tim Willocks
  64. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham – Finished 2/6/21
  65. I am the Messenger – Markus Zusak – Finished 31/8/21

2020 Reading Catch Up 2021 Reading Plans

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One of the good things that 2020 has been is a good reading year for me. I met my target of reading 40 books on Goodreads. While this might sound like very many, some of them were quite difficult – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, for example or John Updike’s Rabbit Run. However, I didn’t quite manage to read an author for every letter of the alphabet for my reading challenge, having mistaken Shakey as a Neil Young autobiography rather than a biography. Having no unread Y authors in the house and this being mid december, I decided that I didn’t have time to try and procure another Y and read The Book of Evidence by John Banville as my last book of 2020 instead.

Top Five Reads of 2020

  1. Bridge of Clay – Markus Zusak – This was one of the first books I read last year and I could not put it down. I was worried it might not live up to The Book Thief but, in fact, I enjoyed it more. It was the story of Clay and his brothers, their relationship with each other and with their father. It was emotional without being sentimental. The storyline was non-chronological and needed some unpicking but I like to have to work a bit and not have the answers handed to me on a plate. Definitely recommended.
  2. Born a Crime – Trevor Noah – I’ve always admired Noah. He has a reasonable and sensible view on things that always just seems to cut through the bullshit. This memoir about his South African childhood is both tragic and comic and never less than enthralling. Noah was a naughty child and he starts by telling about his mother chasing him and how he learned to run so fast. Pretty quickly we are into more serious territory, given that Noah’s very existence was considered a crime. Noah’s mother came across as a fantastically strong woman who has clearly been a huge influence on him and seems to be responsible for his attitude to life.
  3. The Hand That First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell – There are two main storylines in this novel – Ted and his wife, Elina, in the present day, and the story of Lexi Sinclair set some time in the past. I admit I did manage to work out some of the twists to this one but it was beautifully written and I still felt compelled to read on.
  4. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro – I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this or not. I’d read Ishiguro before and I hadn’t been massively impressed but this was so different to the other two, I was quickly taken with it. The story of Stephens, the butler at Darlington Hall and his unrealised love for Miss Kenton, the housekeeper is a subtle and clever joy from start to finish.
  5. No is not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need – Naomi Klein – This is a call to arms. Klein’s political observations were on the money as were her solutions to the current political situation in the US. Klein argues that Trump is not an aberration but the logical conclusion of recent policies on both the left and the right. She then suggests ways of working together in order to make sure it never happens again. Even with Biden now about to take over the white house, we shouldn’t be complacent and allow the same issues that caused it to happen before to resurface so it happens again.

Of course, there were also less good reads although none warranted a one star on Goodreads. The three I liked the least, I expected to like better – No Surrender by Constance Maud was recommended by a BBC program on women’s fiction and I thought it sounded interesting, being about the fight for suffrage but it was tediously dogmatic. P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley was also tedious. James never managed to quite pull off her imitation of Austen and the style spoiled the story for me. Finally, Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain was not the first world war memoir I was expecting and I felt that it talked too much of things outside of her nursing career and I did not find that particularly interesting. (I just realised that all of these were by women. I’m not sure whether that is important but I do often find it hard to bond with female authors.)

And for next year, well, I’m not yet sure what my reading list will look like. I’m not following a online challenge because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. My husband has volunteered to give me a list of books and I have agreed to this although I admit that I’m feeling a little worried. There are certain books on our shelves that he feels I should have read and I think there is a good reason why I haven’t. The Lord of the Rings is one, anything by Hemingway is another. So we shall see. I’ve started reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood just to ensure that I’ve at least one good read over the next twelve months.

Alphabet Soup Author Edition – Rabbit, Run – John Updike.

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Genre: American, Anti-heroes,

Narrative Style: Chronological, third person from various points of view

Rating: 4/5

Published: 1960

Format: Hardback

Synopsis: Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom’s best days are behind him. He was the star basketball player when he was at school. Since then, he has married and has a child. His wife is pregnant again. But he doesn’t love his wife and he hates his job demonstrating a gadget in a store. He is dissatisfied and fed up so, on impulse, he deserts his wife and son and embarks on a journey to find something more satisfying.

Writing Challenges: Alphabet Soup – Author Challenge.

This was a hard book to read. Not because of the prose. Updike’s style is easy enough to read. It was the characters. I expected that I would probably have difficulty with Rabbit Angstrom. And he was unpleasantly sure of himself, always convinced he was on the right path simply because he had chosen it. But I had expected that there would have been some way of empathising with him. This was not the case. Nor was it any easier to empathise with his wife who was also an unpleasant drunk. I have no doubt that this is an accurate representation of a certain type of American masculinity and the havoc it can wreak but I didn’t feel drawn into the story. I was like an observer watching the decay of society from a distance.

At first, Rabbit just drives off, wanting to be far away from his wife and son. He gets lost and ends up driving back to his hometown. He doesn’t want to go home and admit defeat so he goes to see his old basketball coach who is full of Rabbit’s past glories – perhaps the only person to still see Harry as if he was a sporting hero. They go to dinner and Rabbit meets Ruth, a part time prostitute.

Rabbit forces himself into her life. He has soon set up a alternative domestic arrangement for himself. Out of everyone, Ruth is perhaps the easiest to have some sympathy for. She tries not to let Rabbit into her life but he just doesn’t give up. He is unable to see her as anything other than a means to sex. Rabbit is obsessed with sex perhpas because he thinks he is good at it and so it gives him the same sense of worth that BAsketball used to. Indeed, his sexual obsession is a facet of his relationship with his wife also. When he returns to her, after their second child is born, he is unable to leave her alone even though she has so recently given birth. When she refuses him, he walks out the door again.

This is also a book about religion. Rabbit is unable to completely escape his marriage as he meets priest, Jack Eccles who sees it as his duty to bring Rabbit and his wife back together. Rabbit’s conversations with Jack prove how far he is from God. Like his marriage, Rabbit finds the current framework of religious beliefs unsatisfactory. He is looking for something more, something spiritual but he doesn’t have the intelligence to really understand what it is.

This novel has a tragic ending. When Rabbit deserts his wife for the second time, she gets drunk and accidentally drowns their baby while trying to clean her up in the bath. This was the only time I felt any real emotions during the reading of this book. I couldn’t quite believe Updike was going to let it happen. It was heartbreaking, both for the reader and for Rabbit and his wife. However, any sympathy for Rabbit quickly disappears as he is soon back to his old tricks and is off out the door again.

I’m in two minds as to whether I will read anymore of this series. I’m not really sure that there could be anything new to say really. A part of me is curious to see where Updike will take the narrative but perhaps that isn’t enough to carry on with a series that will undoubtedly be a bit of a slog.

Strange Days Indeed

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It seems like the world as we know it has ground to a halt. It is strange to think of everyone, all in their houses, streets empty (largely) and shops and pubs closed. It is three weeks now since I have been into the middle of Sheffield. Normally, I’d pass through most days.

I was on long term cover before but that is not continuing. So I’m at home with everyone else, trying to work out what being furloughed really means. My husband is also not working. No pubs means no beer needs to be brewed. Luckily, our house is big enough that if we get sick of each other or just want some quiet time then we can sit at opposite ends and not see each other for hours.

I’ve been trying to keep to a routine. To be honest, at the moment it just feels like an extended school holiday. As my husband isn’t a teacher, I would spend most of that time entertaining myself and keeping busy. I’m very much a creature of habit, even down to eating when I’d normally have my lunch at school so at the moment, I’m relatively content.

I have a lot of things to do. Editing, writing, reading are all being caught up on. It’s nice to have an unlimited time to read instead of the rushed 15 minutes or so I’d have while eating my breakfast. Having said that, I’d normally read on my kindle on my commute and I am kind of missing that. (Fancy missing being able to get on the bus – not something I ever thought I’d say.) Catching up with a lot of watching as well – Good Omens at the minute which is really enjoyable. If only the apocalypse was really so much fun.

Not to mention all the household jobs that need to be done and now we have the time to do them. I’m trying to vary my days so I do a little bit of everything each day so I don’t get bored and all the jobs aren’t done immediately.

The worst thing is the unknowable elements but at the minute I am able to ignore them quite successfully. I’m imagining it will be at least June before this is over. Worrying about further into the future will have to wait until then.

No more neglecting my blog: A reflection on where it went wrong this year.

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I feel a bit sorry for my blog. It must have been wondering what it had done to cause such neglect. The last time I blogged was in October. I’ve never had such a large gaps between blogs before. The main reason is that wage paying work has been incredibly busy. I haven’t even had time to edit Choose Yr Future. Exam work, steady teaching work and the run up to Christmas conspired to make it impossible for me to get anything that wasn’t strictly (financially) necessary done.

Of course, I used to be able to write whenever I had a minute. These days whenever I have a minute I fall asleep. That is one of the most annoying things about getting older; I just can’t burn the midnight oil anymore.

I failed once again to finish this years Full House Reading Challenge. My error was to ask my husband to help me pick a book at random. His throwing a paper ball at the bookshelves resulted in me having to read Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Which I started in September and have not yet finished. (Although only about 10 pages left!) I might have abandoned it if he had not watched me very closely to see if I stuck with it. I am very much looking forward to reading a different book.

I’m not sure about doing any reading challenges this year. It might be time for a year off. A year of reading what I want to read sounds appealing but I will probably get sucked into something. I usually do.

Now the worst of the busyness over. Exams are done with until the summer. Supply work is back to day to day and no responsibilities. So hopefully back to blogging regularly and editing every day. It’s exciting. One thing to be said for this prolonged absence, I’m raring to get going again.

The Red Pen Treatment

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So currently, I am looking over the proofs for Choose Yr Future. In between being back at school and writing new things that is. Theoretically, it should have been finished over the summer. But of course, it isn’t just reading through. It’s more like a massacre with the slashing of the red pen taking out all that annoys it.

I’m not sure if it is the fact that it now looks like a book which makes it easier spot what needs to go but I definitely feel I’m reading it in a different way. As if I were a reader rather than a writer and that is definitely making me ruthless. I’ve been slashing out words like I’m lost in the forest and they are branches stopping me from returning to the sunlight.

If all this sounds like a miserable job, strangely it’s not. Maybe it is the closeness to  completion. Maybe it is satisfying to be able to look at your own work and go ‘yeah, that stinks’. I trust my judgement. There are no qualms. Not at this stage.

The big question is when will this be finished. Well, hopefully soon. There should be a cover soon too. There should be an end to all this slashing. But by the time that Shattered Reflections was published, I nearly knew it by heart, I had read it so many times. I’m not there yet. Nowhere near.