tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43068399047751627402024-02-19T05:38:14.942+00:00Butterflies - Rachael Dunlop's blogRachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-47359003845104255802015-01-02T19:39:00.000+00:002015-01-05T11:08:39.787+00:00Blog Tour: My Writing ProcessBack in September, I was tagged by <a href="http://vanisreading.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/my-writing-process/">Van Demal</a> as part of the My Writing Process Blog Tour. I was excited to be asked, and headed off to the <a href="http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/index.html">Writers' Workshop</a> Festival of Writing fully intending to pick up the blog baton when I returned. Then promptly forgot.<br />
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I was reminded by <a href="http://www.claire-king.com/2015/01/01/book-news-or-how-my-writing-process-is-like-monty-python/">Claire King</a>'s excellent contribution to the tour - one of those head-slapping moments where you remember something you can't quite believe you forgot. I'd like to use her experience of being 'silenced' by the current project as an excuse, but y'all know me too well to believe that. So, in the spirit of a new year, new me, here goes:<br />
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<b>What am I working on?</b><br />
Still the damned book.<br />
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Okay, in case you've forgotten, I spent the second half of 2013 and first half of 2014 writing the first draft of my novel. I proudly tidied up the spelling and more glaring mistakes in continuity and called that the second draft (yes, I was that naive), and sent it out for critique. No awakening was more rude.<br />
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I took my bruised ego and heavily revised first chapter to the Festival of Writing where I got lots of positive feedback and inspiration for rewriting the book. That was September. It's now January and I've only done about 7,000 words of the rewrite. I let life get in the way, made excuses, procrastinated like a pro, mainly because I was daunted by the size of the task ahead. More than once, I wondered if this was the book I should be writing. Given that I was pretty much starting over from scratch, maybe I should take the opportunity to write something else entirely. I'd lost the passion for my book, and I didn't know whether that was because it wasn't the book I should be writing, or just that I'd got too close to it to see its potential anymore.<br />
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In any case, I made a positive decision to NOT write for a few months, just to see what happened. And what happened was that the book kept working on itself in my subconscious. Chapters have been insistently rewriting themselves in my head while I'm doing the dishes, or taking a shower, or sweeping leaves. Though not consciously looking for it, I've found inspiration in the books I've been reading - inspiration to widen the themes I'm exploring in my own, to engage with the time and place my book is set in, as well as with the characters that inhabit it. I can't let go of this story, because it won't let go of me.<br />
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So, yes, I'm still working on the book, and this non-writing work feels just as important as racking up the words did in the first draft stage.<br />
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<b>How does my work differ from others of its genre?</b><br />
I don't think I can answer that question. My writing doesn't really fit into a particular genre. And if it did, would I want it to be different? I want it to be distinctive, and to be good, but difference may be overrated. Anyway, I leave that one for other writers to answer better!<br />
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<b>Why do I write what I do?</b><br />
It's a cliche, but I write the sort of things I like to read. Sadly, that's not the most commercial of choices. At the Festival of Writing, one of the agents I saw suggested that my book would work well as a psychological thriller. She's right. It would. I watched her face fall as I explained that I don't like thrillers, and very rarely read them, so really, really couldn't write one. I write about what interests me, and that's people, and why they do what they do.<br />
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<b>How does my writing process work?</b><br />
I'm a target-driven person, and a goody-two shoes. I ALWAYS hand my homework in on time and I hate myself for missing even self-imposed deadlines. So my process is focused around meeting daily goals, in terms of either time spent or words written. I don't mind when I do the work, as long as it's not first thing in the morning. I admire those who rise pre-dawn to write. I can write nothing intelligible before 9am. I schedule my writing time depending on what other commitments I have that day, but I make it non-negotiable, once it's in the diary.<br />
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I can write anywhere once I'm in my stride, often the noisier the better. I find it best to get started on the day's work away from home - in the lounge at the gym, in a local cafe, even in the car while waiting to pick up a child. Once I've got a bit of work going I can carry on once I get home, but I find it hard to get started when conditions are ostensibly perfect - sitting in a warm, quiet house with a good cup of coffee and all the time in the world. Perverse, I know, but I also know I'm not the only one.<br />
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<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-881100241128978182014-09-10T13:40:00.000+01:002014-09-10T13:40:37.927+01:00On Crap First Drafts and Listening to Your Inner CriticI'm off to the Festival of Writing at York this weekend, which is both exciting and a little terrifying. Part of the package is two one-to-one meetings with agents (or book doctors, but I've plumped for the agents). When I originally booked to go to the Festival, I was hoping to have a polished draft of my novel in something close to its finished form. As it turns out, this was wildly optimistic of me. But that's okay, because being wildly optimistic is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going with this book-writing malarkey.<br />
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The changes I need to make to my book are so profound that I need to rewrite it. I can't edit my first draft into shape, I need to start over. Luckily, the opening chapter is one of the few that survived the cull, and this has been sent off, along with a brief synopsis, to the agents I am seeing at the weekend. The synopsis reflects the changes I intend to make in the next draft, which I've had a few months to think about, so that's okay too. And in the event that either of the agents wants to see more, I'll be honest and tell them how long I think it will take me to get the next draft whipped into shape. It's not like they'll be twiddling their thumbs waiting for my masterpiece.<br />
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Apart from planning the new and improved version of my book, I've been pondering how I got myself into this mess in the first place. We are told to allow our first drafts to be crap, but surely ending up with something that is un-editable is not the goal? So, where did it all go wrong?<br />
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First and foremost, I was too fixated on my word count. Not the daily word count, but the final one. Daily word counts are good. You need to be doing the work. But keeping a running total of those words, watching the total climb towards something vaguely book-length, can be a very bad idea. Some of those words belong in your draft, some don't. It becomes tempting to think of them as the essential building blocks of your book, and a such, you can't delete them. You just can't. It feels like pulling a block out from the bottom of a Jenga tower. And the longer you leave that brick in, the harder it is to pull it out. Eventually you can't even see it anymore, but it's in there, making your whole edifice unsound.<br />
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And that was the other thing I got wrong: being afraid to delete things, to change direction, to see that something wasn't working and to junk it. Time and again I was told: don't delete anything. Just write. For many people that is probably good advice. For me, it was disastrous. There were several points where I had moments of epiphany, better ideas that meant junking weeks or months of writing to make them work. I should have done it. None of the work was wasted - I had to go the wrong way to be able to recognise the right way when I saw it. But I was afraid to do it, afraid that I would lose the momentum, never finish that first draft if I kept second-guessing myself.<br />
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There is a big difference, though, between dithering over your first draft because you lack confidence and experience, and ditching a draft or part of a draft that you know is not working and is not going to work, especially when you have an inkling of what would work better.<br />
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I think this is especially true for me as I'm a panster, not a plotter. If you are writing to see where it takes you, you have to be prepared to recognise when you've got yourself down a blind alley. And it's not just about the plot. Quite early on, I started wondering if I should be writing this book in the present tense. Now I'm about to start the rewrite, it's blindingly obvious that I should have listened to myself. It's not just a matter of going through and changing the verbs. Using a different tense would have led to a different voice as well, maybe the voice I was looking for but never found in the whole of my first draft (apart from that one chapter I still like, that is written, surprise surprise, in the present tense).<br />
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So why did I stick so doggedly to a method that wasn't right for me? Mostly because it's only with hindsight that I can see the problems. And I do understand the rational behind the advice to just write it and let it be crap. I can see how constantly second-guessing yourself and trying to making everything right will stop you getting the first draft finished at all. Maybe if I had started making drastic changes, and cutting out big chunks, I would have started to lose confidence and momentum. It's impossible to know. But I do know that, for me, some courageous editing as I went along would have been entirely preferable to where I've ended up.<br />
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I'm still in a better place than I was a year ago. I'll be starting this second draft with much more courage and conviction. I'll write it the way I know best. I'll remember what's good about my short fiction and I'll bring that to my novel. I can't write a book I think people might want to read. I have to write the book I can write best.<br />
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So, here's a great big hug for all of you who cheered me on as I roared through that first draft. For a while there, I thought your faith in me had been misplaced. But remember that wildly optimistic streak of mine? It's back.<br />
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NOTE: Next up will be my contribution to the Writing Process blog tour. If ever there was an opportune moment to examine my writing process, it is now.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-82148639356255360022014-06-05T15:58:00.002+01:002014-06-05T15:58:41.783+01:00Where am I? Over Here!I'm guest blogging on Isabel Costello's excellent <a href="http://isabelcostelloliterarysofa.com/2014/06/05/guest-author-rachael-dunlop-an-unpublished-novelist-faces-reality/#comments">Literary Sofa</a> today. It's a rather brutal (and exposing) examination of my journey from naive hopeful to hardened, cynical but still determined unpublished novelist.<br />
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As well as guest bloggers, Isabel has great book reviews. Have a look at her <a href="http://isabelcostelloliterarysofa.com/2014/05/21/summer-reads-2014/">Summer Reads</a> list for inspiration for your holiday reading.<br />
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Well, what are you waiting for? Get over there!Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-6629457473481039832014-04-22T12:20:00.000+01:002014-04-22T12:20:03.934+01:00Later is Now.<br />
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I'm writing a novel. You know this already, especially if you follow me on Twitter. I never let a WIP crisis go untweeted. It's coming up to a year since I started (properly) working on the book, so it seemed like a good time to look back at what I've learned. There were two big lessons for me, one at the beginning of the process of writing the first draft, and one at the end.<br />
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<b>1. Writing a Novel is a Very Much Like Eating an Elephant.</b><br />
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Which is to say, one bite at a time. As a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool short story and flash fiction writer, the idea of writing a book seemed not so much daunting as unsurmountable. I struggled with anything over 2,000 words. How could I write something at least forty times longer?<br />
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The answer was not to look the whole thing in the eye, just at what was on my plate at any given moment (I'm not sure how much longer I can sustain this eating metaphor. For one thing, it's making me hungry). My eureka moment came when I decided for the umpteenth time to get to grips with Scrivener. I'd had it on my laptop for years. I had various first chapters written in Word. I didn't see how the two things worked together.<br />
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So I set the false-start chapters to one side and started over, this time using Scrivener. And the thing about Scrivener is that each scene is a separate document. Each scene. Each. Scene. Light bulb moment. I needed to write this book one scene at a time. I didn't need to think about whole chapters, let alone the whole book. Just one scene at a time.<br />
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This is perfect for me, because I'm a pantser, not a plotter. I had the vaguest idea of what I wanted my book to be about, but I knew the story and the characters would evolve in the writing. I had a clear idea what my opening scene would be, so I just sat down and wrote it. Then I asked myself what the next scene needed to do. Did it need to advance the story? Introduce more characters? Backstory? Flashback? Develop existing characters? Set up upcoming key scenes that I already had in mind?<br />
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In this way, the novel grew, in bites of between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Sometimes I'd be in the middle of writing a scene and realise it wouldn't work unless I added another scene earlier in the novel. The beauty of Scrivener is that you can skip back and slide in the bits you are missing. Or move scenes around when you realise they are in the wrong place. The key for me was knowing exactly what each scene was<i> for </i>before I wrote it. All those years of short story writing taught me that every word has to earn its keep. That's true whether there are 2,000 words or 80,000 words.<br />
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However, the more words there are, the harder it is to know which ones are really pulling their weight, which brings me on to:<br />
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<b>2. What Do You Mean It's Crap?</b><br />
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The oft repeated advice about writing a first draft is to just get it done. And to get it done, you have to allow it to be crap.<br />
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Now, at first this made no sense to me. Why would I want to write something crap? When I write short stories, they don't differ much from first to final draft. Everything that is good about them is there in the first draft. Everything after that is polishing and perfecting.<br />
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Pfft, I thought. The first draft of my novel is not going to be crap. It's going to be refined, exquisitely written, needing but the lightest of editing touches.<br />
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Ladies and gentlemen, it's crap. Or rather, it's the kernel of a good book wrapped in crap (I'm liking this metaphor even less than the elephant one. Moving on…)<br />
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My characters are underdeveloped. Many scenes are underwritten, while in other places the prose is overwrought. Exposition has snuck in while my back was turned. At least 10 per cent of the words are superfluous.<br />
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Am I downcast? Not a bit (well, okay, maybe a little bit). The analogy I like best is this: when you're writing a first draft, you're just pouring sand into a box, to shape into castles later.<br />
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There are good things about editing, like stumbling across bits of writing that are really quite good. Like finding out how clever my subconscious is, making connections, echoing themes throughout the book without me even realising it. Like allowing myself to spend an hour or more on one small passage, staring out the window, writing, deleting, writing again, not worrying about clocking up the word count but making every word the right one.<br />
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Because that's the key difference between writing and editing. When you're writing, you can always come back and fix it up later. When you're editing, later is now.<br />
<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-39828414977875465812014-02-24T14:25:00.001+00:002014-02-24T14:25:41.343+00:00The First Draft BluesWhen I was about 11 or 12 years old, someone told me they believed I'd one day be a writer. I believed it too. That fact that the person who told me this went on to be a successful and award-nominated novelist and screen-writer themselves only reinforced my confidence that one day I too would be a published novelist.<br />
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Gradually, though, it dawned on me, that I'd have to actually write a book to make that happen.<br />
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And then followed years and years of not writing a book and hating myself for it, of waking up every January 1st and thinking: 'Here I go again, not writing my book for another year'.<br />
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I did eventually start writing, of course, but it was short fiction. The shorter the better. I had some success and thought, okay, this is what I'm good at, this is okay, I'm still a writer. I told anyone who would listen (or asked) that I was pretty sure I'd never write a novel, because it just wasn't where my talents lay.<br />
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And then I had an idea for a book. Still I procrastinated, but the idea wouldn't go away.<br />
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Last April, my husband bought me a new laptop and gave me a deadline: 20,000 words by the end of the summer, or the laptop went to my teenage daughter. Ah, he knows me so well. I exceeded his target a month early and I was on my way. Writing a book.<br />
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Some ten months after starting, I've nearly finished the first draft of my novel. I should be cock-a-hoop, right? Punching the air, typing THE END in the biggest, boldest, most italic-y font I can find.<br />
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But I'm not. And that's okay.<br />
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The thing is, I have a lot of words, but they don't feel like a book yet.<br />
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I have a sort-of story, my protagonist goes on a journey, but I know it needs more narrative drive.<br />
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I've discovered what my book is about in the process of writing it, but I know I need to draw out the themes, strengthen them, weave them through the fabric of my book so it's less like crochet and more like a tightly-woven damask that shows different colours and patterns depending on how you turn it in the light.<br />
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I have characters, quite a few of them. Most of them are engaging and interesting. Almost all of them are more engaging and interesting than my protagonist. I need to make her more than just a sounding board, less reactive and more proactive in her own life. I need to find out what is unique about her AND what makes her like everyone else.<br />
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I have important scenes that are woefully underwritten and less important scenes that go on and on and on. I need to look at the balance of my book, the rhythm, the pace.<br />
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I need to do all these things, and more, before the big heap of words I've put together resembles anything like a book. And I'm itching to get on with it. Getting to the end of the first draft is a notable achievement, but it feels more like a mid-point than anything else. Hence the lack of air-punching.<br />
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My aim is to have a solid second draft done by the summer. If you hear whooping across the internet sometime in late June or early July, it'll probably be me, typing THE END.<br />
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And then, following feedback, I'll get cracking with the third draft. And maybe, just maybe, by then I'll have written a book.<br />
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<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-21255410369961129262013-12-11T08:47:00.001+00:002013-12-11T08:47:05.032+00:00Do Not Be Afraid: When Self-publishing Turns Good<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Two things I heard on the radio yesterday made me think of the <a href="http://storiesforhomes.wordpress.com/"><b>Stories for Homes</b></a> short story anthology. One was a feature about the potential shift in power in publishing from the established publishing houses to agents and, ultimately, authors. With the rise of self-publishing, the question of who judges what is fit to be published has become a vexed one.<br />
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The other thing I heard was a review of this year's batch of Christmas singles. The reviewer all but apologised for reviewing the charity singles in terms of their musical worth, as if anything done for charity should be above criticism for quality.<br />
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Which brings me to <b>Stories for Homes</b>. It is a bumper anthology, with more than sixty stories, all donated by the authors, all on the theme of 'home'. All the profits from this book go directly to support the homeless charity, <a href="http://www.shelter.org.uk/">Shelter</a>. I was one of the proof-readers for the book (as well as having a story included) and one of the things that struck me was the sheer quality of the writing. A book that is the result of an open call for submissions via Twitter and Facebook, produced in a matter of months by passionate volunteers - surely it can't be a good read, can it? And yet it is full of powerful, poignant, funny, clever, and moving writing.<br />
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One of the secrets to this quality is the fact that the book has two editors, <a href="http://storiesforhomes.wordpress.com/about-sally/">Sally Swingewood</a> and <a href="http://www.debialper.co.uk/">Debi Alper</a>, who read all, yes all, the submissions. After many hours, cigarettes, cups of coffee, and a few cakes, they selected the best stories. There were a lot of them. And time was short. So (and this is the genius part), every writer was paired up with another writer to peer-review and edit each other's stories.<br />
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This is another feature of the new world of self-publishing and social media - the rise of the 'reader', by which I mean the trusted people who get to read and comment on my writing before I unleash it on the world. Thanks to the internet, I have a bunch of fabulous writers that I turn to when I need a properly critical eye turned on my words. And I do the same for them. I've had the pleasure of reading several novels recently pre-submission to agents. Writers, it turns out, are generous people. Generous with their time, their support, their skills.<br />
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And so it proved with <b>Stories for Homes</b>. Some people were new to the idea of peer-editing and were probably quite nervous. Others, like me, were old hands. We got stuck in, the stories were edited and polished and then they were sent back to Sally and Debi. Then began the Herculean task of deciding the running order, designing the cover and getting it ready for publishing on Kindle. The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/454745561280266/">Facebook</a> group was (and still is) alive with discussion - finessing the design and blurb, devising marketing strategies, exchanging skills and expertise.<br />
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It was at this point I offered to proof-read the ebook version. I didn't have very high expectations, to be honest. I've been involved in anthologies before. The quality of the stories is sometimes, well, 'variable' would be the polite way to put it. Sometimes I wonder what on earth the editors were thinking. Obviously my story would be top notch, but some of the others? Sheesh. Not so with <b>Stories for Homes</b>. As I read Mandy Berriman's exquisite opening story 'A Home Without Moles', I knew this would be a charity anthology with a difference.<br />
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A few years ago, people would have turned their noses up at a self-published book, even if it was for charity. But I'm sitting at my kitchen table looking at a fat paperback book, with a gorgeous cover and even more gorgeous content, and I'm thoroughly proud to be a part of it.<br />
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Oh, yes, did I mention? <b>Stories for Homes</b> is now available in paperback. You can buy it from <a href="https://www.createspace.com/4489757">Createspace</a> or <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1493534246">Amazon</a>. Every single penny of profit is paid directly to Shelter. Every. Penny.<br />
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<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-50303119929413023552013-11-10T17:14:00.000+00:002013-11-10T17:44:38.742+00:00Am I too old to be a new novelist?So, I'm finally writing THAT novel. The one I said I'd never write, then said I might write, then decided I really ought to write. I'm approaching half-way through the first draft and the thing is taking on a life of its own. It feels like I'm about to start a down-hill gallop through the second half and towards the end. Even so, there's probably at least another year's worth of work to get it to a submittable standard. And then, imagining I got an agent and publisher IMMEDIATELY (because life totally works like that, right?), another eighteen months or so after that before I can realistically expect to see an actual book with my name on it in a bookshop. Being hugely optimistic (if not deluded), we are talking two, maybe three years before I become a debut published novelist.<br />
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I'll be in my late-forties by then. And this is something that has given me much pause for thought recently.<br />
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The internet is awash with opportunities for 'new' writers. What is a 'new' writer? Is it someone who has just started writing? Or someone who has just started submitting and getting published? You'll also see plenty of references to 'aspiring' writers. FYI, I'm not 'aspiring' to write - I actually do it. I'm 'aspiring' to be published. Quite different. Another favourite soubriquet (sick bags at the ready) is the 'budding' writer. Pur-lease. Why don't you just say 'nubile' and be done with it?<br />
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Because my suspicion is that all these terms - new, budding, aspiring - are really euphemisms for 'young'. A new 'young' writer with talent must be a more enticing prospect to a publisher than an older one, by sheer dint of the fact that they have all those writing years ahead of them. More books, more money for everyone.<br />
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And yet, how many people beavering away at their first novels are in their forties, their fifties, and beyond, into retirement age? The writer <a href="http://alisonwells.wordpress.com/">Alison Wells</a> suggested the need for a writing competition for older writers, the entry requirement being that: '<a href="https://twitter.com/alisonwells/status/399105706457985024">We were doing other things</a>'. She was joking - sort of. I've seen plenty of writing competitions open to people under a certain age. I've never seen one where you have to be OVER a certain age to enter. Why not? Is it just the economics of publishing? Or is it the assumption that young writers have talent but no gumption and need help to get started? We wrinklies can fend for ourselves. And anyway, we probably have jobs and partners that mean we don't need to write for a living, we're just hobbyists. Some of us might get lucky and get our little pet projects published, but really, if we were serious about being writers, shouldn't we have started sooner?<br />
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Now, I know all the stories about writers who started late (such as Mary Wesley) or had late resurgences (Barbara Pym), but I wonder if they would have been given a chance today. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if agents and publishers really care about how old a writer is when they take them on, and I'd love to hear that they don't.<br />
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Meanwhile, I do have regrets about not starting sooner. And yet the things I was doing while I wasn't discovering that I was a writer are the things that make me a writer now: living, loving, grieving, make new people inside my own body, laughing, crying, fighting, watching, wondering, regretting, and above all, wondering what it's all about. The first novel I'm writing now is not the first novel I would have written in my twenties, or my thirties. I can't change that, and I really hope that it won't count against me as and when I start sending it out into the world.<br />
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At least I can be sure that by then no one would dare describe me as 'budding'.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-17465564199230061322013-10-03T11:04:00.000+01:002013-10-03T11:04:11.128+01:00Magnolia Drifts - A PoemIn honour of National Poetry Day, I thought I'd post my one and only poem. It's a bit lonely all by itself on my hard drive.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Magnolia Drifts</span></b></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Magnolia drifts</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
on an Easterly breeze.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Nestled up to creamy lilac,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
it is coconut ice.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
East meets West in the suburbs.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I go West and wake to darkness.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There are deeper rhythms that will not be reset.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I am adrift.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My magnolia waits, blooms, fades and waits again.</div>
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Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-12671652763736960882013-04-25T13:59:00.000+01:002013-04-27T13:02:12.991+01:00The Long and Short of Longlists<i>Long lists, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing...</i><br />
<br />
This was the rather tongue-in-cheek comment I made as part of <a href="http://rachaeldunlop.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-writer-worms-have-turned.html">The Writing Competition Entrants' Manifesto</a>, a plea to writing competition organisers to make entering their competitions just a little less stressful for us poor writers. It was a throw-away comment, just putting it out there that I don't like long lists. Little did I know that it would be the part of the Manifesto that attracted most debate.<br />
<br />
There are two types of long list: those that appear before the final results are announced, and those that appear after. To be clear, it is the first that I really object to. Waiting for results of competitions can be stressful. Some people get positively obsessed, checking their email, stalking the organisers on Twitter and Facebook. Personally, I like to enter a competition and, as much as possible, forget about it. It helps that I enter a lot of competitions, so there is always the next one to think about. I keep a spreadsheet to track entries and make a note on there when the results are expected, just so I can double check. But generally I try not to think about it too much.<br />
<br />
However, if I find out a few weeks before the results come out that I am on the long list, it's so much harder to forget about it. Knowing I've crossed that first hurdle makes it all but impossible not to indulge in those little daydreams where I am the awards ceremony, designer be-frocked, perfectly coiffed and shod, on the arm of Ryan Gosling - oh, sorry, that's my Oscar ceremony fantasy. Moving on...<br />
<br />
I find the disappointment of not making the short list or the winner's enclosure worse if I know I'm on the long list. The punch feels a little harder. This may not be entirely logical, but it's the way it feels to me. And the agony of waiting is ratcheted up, another tightening of the ropes on the rack.<br />
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For media-savvy competition organisers, publishing a long list before the final results is a great way to get people talking. It's a smart move, even if it does add to the agony of those waiting. The inaugural <a href="http://bathshortstoryaward.co.uk/">Bath Short Story Award</a> has been notable for its great use of Twitter. Friendly, approachable, happy to answer random writerly questions, they have ensured that people are talking about them for the right reasons. And with their long list due to be published in a few days time, they have got us all talking about it, even me, a long list refusenik. So the pre-results long list is here to stay. I just have to find a way of dealing with it.<br />
<br />
Finding myself on the other sort of long list, the one that is published after all the winners, runners-up etc have been announced, is a different experience altogether. In the past, I've regarded it as a consolation prize. I've had the burn of disappointment, but there is the balm. I recently found myself on the long list for the <a href="http://www.fishpublishing.com/2013-short-long-lists.php#llff13">Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize 2013</a>. Fish are famed for their looooong long lists. In this case, it was a list of 348. I was pleased to be there, of course, but when lovely writerly tweeps tweeted to congratulate me, I was a bit dismissive. It's such a long list, where's the achievement in that?<br />
<br />
As it turns out, getting on the long list, any long list, is a bigger achievement than I ever realised. Writers who have been on the other side of the judging table tweeted to tell me that the cut from the entire field to the long list is the hardest for judges, and any story that ends up on the long list is a potential winner. As <a href="http://traceyupchurch.com/2011/04/22/words-for-breakfast/">Tracey Upchurch</a> recounts on her blog, she used to think being long listed was like being called someone's 'third favourite girlfriend', but Tania Hershman put her right, pointing out that the long list separates the great stories from the not-so-great. Who wouldn't want to be on a list like that? According to <a href="http://www.vanessagebbie.com/welcome/">Vanessa Gebbie</a>, getting on the long list means a story 'has legs', one of the most encouraging things you can hear about your work.<br />
<br />
So the next time I find myself on a long list, I won't look on it as a consolation prize. Being on the list means that someone, somewhere, read my story amongst many, many others and thought it might possibly be a winner. That's quite an achievement.<br />
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<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-64374235165283427492013-03-20T18:11:00.000+00:002013-03-25T17:52:01.342+00:00The Writer Worms Have Turned<i>Today's blog post is brought to you in collaboration with <a href="http://guylejeune.com/">Guy Le Jeune</a>. It is essential reading for all writing competition organisers. Writers are invited to add their own amendments to the manifesto via the comments box below. Too long have writers suffered under the tyranny of unclear, confusing or inadequate competition rules. We have lost too many brain cells banging our heads on our desks trying to fathom where to put our names on our entries, too many nights' sleep wondering if we should have sent that attachment in docx format.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you:</i><br />
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<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>THE WRITING COMPETITION ENTRANTS' MANIFESTO</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We are writers: entrants into many competitions, winners of too few (runner-up is nice and all </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">that, but let’s not kid ourselves, it’s the winning that matters. Oh, okay, and the writing. But </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">mostly the winning).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We are also neurotic. It’s part of the job spec. That’s why we are writing in the pluralis</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">modestiae. (We had to look that up on Wiki: modesty is the sister of our particular neurosis)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spend hours and days sitting in front of glowing screens or scribbling on scraps of paper, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">crafting, shaping, honing. Our stories are our babies, we love them (even the ugly ones, though </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sometimes they have to sit on the naughty step).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, there we are, neurotic parents of babies that only a parent could love, and what do we do? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We send those babies out into the world to be judged. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Give us a set of rules and we will agonise over every single, insignificant detail, worried that one </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">misstep will send our beloved creation straight into the recycling bin, unread. Entry deadlines, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">shortlist dates and prize money pots are scribbled on sticky notes. Fridges, notice boards and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">laptop screens are covered in the yellow slips of potentiality and hopeful dreams. We study </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">eligibility criteria and submission guidelines. We lick stamps, reformat entire manuscripts and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">pluck sentences of outstanding beauty and genius out of finished pieces, just to fit the word-limits. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We trudge to the Post Office with our brown envelopes stuffed and sealed, or hit the 'submit' </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">button on the keyboard five minutes before the deadline, our eyes swimming with word counts, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">font mandates, file type restrictions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, fellow writers, stop and think. Where would these competitions be without us and our</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">stories? Where would they get their entry fees, their publicity, their sponsorship? That’s right, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">without us, they are nothing! And it’s about time they listened to OUR rules.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so we present to you: The Writers’ Manifesto for Consistency and Clarity in Competition </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Guidelines. Each and every writing competition should adhere to these guidelines or WE </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">WON’T SUBMIT (that’ll show ‘em).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Writing Competition Entrants’ Manifesto</b></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Word Count. Pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. Different software counts words in</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">different ways – and some programmes count things as words that clearly aren’t (an asterisk is not a </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">word, Word. Asterix was a Gaul, but that’s another story). Tell us which software is your gold</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">standard for word-count. And tell us if the title is included (here’s a hint: it isn’t).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Deadline. Now we can submit electronically, a date is not enough. We need a time as well. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Midnight is always a good choice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. Filename. Just make it the title of the story. It’s how we’ve saved it anyway, but tell us too </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">whether we need to add or omit our name. And as far as unique identifiers go, there isn’t a literary</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">award in the world that requires 16bit encryption so keep it short.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. Format. Doc, docx, pdf, rtf, blt, whatever. Just be specific. Pick one and stick with it. And if you </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">are going to upload any of the entries anonymously, please ensure that you check the properties </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">tab to make sure that any inquisitive right-clickers can’t see our name, address, email and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">telephone number.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5. Cover sheets: if you must insist on us having a cover sheet, does it go in the story document or is </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">it a separate attachment? No, seriously, we can lose a good half-hour worrying about things like </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">this. If you want it in the one document and you want the pages numbered, do we really have to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">wrestle with trying to take the number off the cover sheet and get the numbers to start at number 1 </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the second page when computer says no? *contemplates applying Tippex to computer screen </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">because that would totally solve the problem*</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">6. Exactly where can we put our names? Polite answers only, please.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7. Long-lists, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8. Short-lists. Okay, we like short-lists, that’s a credit we can take to bank. But here’s the thing: </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sometimes a short-list is a list of people who might still win; sometimes it’s a list of people who </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">nearly won, but here’s the names of the people who already did. Sometimes the people on the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">short-list are told before it’s published, sometimes seeing their name on the screen is the first they </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">know about it. Follow a few writers on Twitter and you will see how we agonise about short-lists. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Has anybody heard anything yet? Will the short-listed people get an email first? Anyone stalking </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the judges on Facebook? Has the deadline been extended? HAS ANYBODY HEARD </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ANYTHING YET?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the sake of our sanity, state when the short-list will be published, and tell us if the writers on </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the list will be emailed first. Simple. Of course, that won’t stop us believing the email got lost in the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ether, and scanning the lists just in case. But that’s our problem, not yours.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">9. Each and every competition shall submit the rules and guidelines to a consultant writer before </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">advertising the competition. That writer shall go through the process as if they were submitting. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nine of ten times they’ll ask you for clarification. Better one writer emailing you before the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">competition starts than hundreds a day before the deadline.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">10. And remember, always, that without us, there is no competition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you for your attention and we hope we can assume that all competitions will one day</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">abide by these simple suggestions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You can view this manifesto in spiffy pdf format by clicking <a href="http://freepdfhosting.com/594a684100.pdf">here</a>.</span>Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-69257902090302776432013-01-10T11:53:00.000+00:002014-06-04T14:05:46.833+01:00Losing is Not the Same as FailingIn 2012, I made twenty-four entries to sixteen writing competitions. I tried to be targeted and strategic with my entries, to maximise my chances of success. The net result was <a href="http://www.balsallwriters.org.uk/comp-results.shtml">one win</a>, one <a href="http://www.fivestopstory.com/read/latest.php?category[]=competition&category[]=2068">runner-up place</a>, one fifth place and one honourable mention. The prize money from the win just about covered my outlay on entry fees for the year.<br />
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One of the competitions I entered was the newly founded <a href="http://www.costabookawards.com/short-stories/shortlist.aspx">Costa Short Story Competition</a>, run by the <a href="http://www.costabookawards.com/">Costa Book Awards</a>. This competition was exciting because it was open to all writers, whether they had been previously published or not, had a substantial prize pot and was associated with Costa's very high-profile book awards. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=costabookawards&src=savs">Twitter</a> and other social media meant that we hopefuls knew a lot more than usual about what was going on behind the scenes: we knew that several hundred stories had been reduced to a short list of sixty. We knew when the celebrity judges were reading these stories, when they were meeting to decide the shortlist of six, when the decision had been made. We just needed the official announcement. And then the wave of disappointment hit. We didn't (still don't) know who those shortlisted writers were, but we knew it wasn't us.</div>
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Reactions varied according to the experience of the writers involved. The comments of some of the competition 'newbies' reminded me of myself when I first started entering writing competitions and made me realise how much I have learned about the process, and about myself as a writer over the years. So I decided take all my experience to date and offer it as a guide to understanding what failing to win a writing competition really means. Here it is.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Why Losing is Not the Same as Failing</b></div>
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So, you’ve written a kick-ass short
story and you decide to enter it into a writing competition. It’s your best
work ever, and while you don’t exactly expect to win, you feel there’s a good
chance of getting on the short list, or the long list at the very least. You
watch the competition’s website, follow them on Twitter, start checking your
inbox every five minutes as the deadline for the announcement approaches.
Finally, finally, the shortlist or winners are announced, and your name’s not
there. Not anywhere. </div>
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This leads you to one of two
conclusions: either your story was rubbish and you are no judge of your own
work, or the judges are idiots. Right? </div>
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Wrong. Here’s why:</div>
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<b>But I wrote such a good story!<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Yes, you probably did. But so did
many, many of the other entrants. A small-scale competition will attract maybe
150 to 200 entries. Larger competitions will get thousands. Say, for example, in
a small-scale competition, half of the entries are just not up to scratch –
poorly written, ungrammatical, or disqualified for not adhering to the entry
guidelines. If your story is still in the competition after those have been
eliminated, you’ll still be up against at least fifty other stories and
probably many more. The judges can
award prizes to maybe three of those stories. Does that automatically mean the
other forty-seven or so stories were no good? Of course not. </div>
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<b>The best story always wins, right?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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No, the story the judges like best
will win. What judges are asked to do is rank stories in order of preference,
and ultimately that is a matter of opinion. This became apparent to me when I
entered a competition where the entrants posted their stories online while
waiting for the judging to take place. We were able to read and critique many
of the other entries, so when the results came in, we could compare the peer-reviews
to the judges’ rankings. Needless to say, they didn’t always concur. </div>
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The competition involved some 500
writers, placed into groups of twenty, competing over several rounds, with
competitors progressing according to how many points they accumulated. In the
first round, the top ten stories in each group of twenty writers were awarded
points. If you didn’t make the top ten, you got no points. Now, many of the writers
on the online forum felt that big fat zero against their entry meant the judges
had read their story and thought it was worth... well, nothing. Zero. Nada.
Zilch. But of course, that’s not what a score of zero meant. It just meant that
in that group, there were ten stories that the judges preferred. It’s the same
in any writing competition, although not always as transparent as in this
example. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The crucial lesson is that while
winning a writing competition means you’re doing it right, not winning doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re doing it wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b>It’s a numbers game<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
So, how do the judges really decide
who wins? Understanding how writing competitions are judged can help get both
your wins and your losses into perspective.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
In smaller competitions, the named
judge or judges will probably read all the entries, but in larger competitions,
the entries will be read first by ‘slush’ readers. The first job of these
readers is to weed out the stories that are ineligible for any reason (word
count too long, requested format not adhered to, theme not followed, etc). Don’t underestimate how important these
details are. Plenty of stories are not even read the whole way through before
being eliminated. An experienced slush reader told me:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">‘I reject any that are littered with typos, grammar
or spelling mistakes. If the author can't be bothered</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"> to
polish and perfect their story, why should I spend my time reading it?’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Even if your
grammar and punctuation are impeccable and you have adhered to the required
font and formatting, your entry might still end up in the reject heap without
the slush reader making it to the end of the story:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">‘An experienced reader can tell very quickly if the
story might be a contender. It needs to grab my attention straight away and
that's largely down to whether there's an engaging voice in the opening
sentences.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
So the first cull can be brutal,
and you really need to be at the top of your game to survive it. Even so, each slush
reader will still have a big stack of stories to read in full and winnow down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
How do slush readers decide which
stories to put forward to the ‘named’ judges? Most commonly, they will use a
score sheet. The slush readers will score the stories, and put forward the top
scoring ones for the next stage of judging. The score sheet will list a variety
of qualities that the story should be judged on, and a maximum score available
for each criterion. Points can be awarded for voice, tone, characterisation,
engagement of the reader, plot development, how satisfied the story leaves the
reader, and many other qualities. The balance of these scores is often
reflected in judges feedback, where it is available: stories that fail to make
the grade may be praised for a ‘lovely voice’ but lose out on character or plot
development. Or a story may have a great story arc, but the main characters
feel wooden or lacking. Or the writing might be just sublime, but the story
underdeveloped. In other words, if any crucial element leaves the slush reader
feeling ‘meh’, no matter how strong other elements may be, the story is
unlikely to make it to the next round.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
These readers will be well
qualified for the job – they are often writers and editors in their own right.
They will know ‘good’ writing when they see it, and will have the experience to
analyse and score the stories fairly and knowledgably. But, even bringing all
that experience to bear, there is no empirical way of measuring which story is
‘the best’. Judges are readers with opinions and personal taste, just like
anyone else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The same applies all the way
through the judging process. In a larger competition, there will often be a
panel of ‘high profile’ judges and the final selection will be made by these
judges coming together and discussing their favourite entries until they arrive
a consensus. And consensus can sometimes mean compromise. It is safe to say
that all the stories being considered at this point will be ‘good’ stories.
Yours might well be one of them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b>So what do I do with that ‘failed’ story now?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
It’s always disappointing when you
send your beloved story out into the world and the result is a resounding
silence. Just bear in mind everything I’ve said above, and remember, it’s not
that your story was no good, it’s just that there were three, or five or
whatever number of stories that the judges liked better. That’s all you can
really infer from ‘losing’ a writing competition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
So what now? Enter your story in
another competition, if you know in your heart it’s a good story. I won a
competition recently with a story that had been entered into at least half a
dozen other competitions over several years and had never so much as been long
listed before. Another story that had been doing the rounds for a while finally
got shortlisted in a competition where the winning and shortlisted stories
(including mine) were subsequently published in an anthology. In that case, the
judge was looking for stories that would work well together as a collection.
Many an excellent story may have not made the cut because it didn’t fit that
theme. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
If you are suddenly doubting
whether the story is any good, get other writers to read it and get their
opinion. Don’t ask your mother or your best friend. Join a writing group or
online writers’ forum and get honest feedback. It’s hard to maintain faith in
your writing if you are working in a vacuum, and failure to win competitions is
no way to accurately judge the value of your work. Some competitions will
provide feedback on your story for an extra fee, and this might be worth
considering.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
Finally, bear this in mind (and
this applies to all sorts of submissions, be they to competitions, magazines or
publishers): your work is not judged in isolation, but in relation to all the
other entries. The judges may want the winning and short listed entries to contrast
with or compliment each other, to work together in an anthology or to reflect
the style of the sponsoring body. It’s as if they are putting together an
outfit and what they really need to complete it is a nice pair of black boots.
But you’ve sent them a red dress. They already have some red dresses, and one
in particular suits them better than yours. So they politely decline your offer
of a red dress. Does that mean your red dress is any less lovely? </div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<b>Further reading:</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
Since I first posted this, I've found or been directed to some other great posts on the subject. I'll add them here as I go along.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 200%;">A great post </span><a href="http://traceyupchurch.com/2013/02/15/one-mans-meat-which-writing-competitions-should-you-enter/" style="line-height: 200%;">here</a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> by </span><a href="http://traceyupchurch.com/" style="line-height: 200%;">Tracey Upchurch</a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> on why you are never too small for the 'big' competitions.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 200%;">Two fabulous accounts of what it is really like to be a slush reader: Susannah Rickards on</span><span style="line-height: 200%;"> Emma Darwin's blog </span><a href="http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/11/the-hoops-you-must-jump-through-an-insiders-view-of-fiction-awards-part-1.html" style="line-height: 200%;">here</a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> and </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">Dexter Petley recounting his experience </span><a href="http://lesleymcdowellwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/confessions-of-literary-judge-dexter.html" style="line-height: 200%;">here</a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> on </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">Lesley McDowell</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">'s blog.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 200%;">Feel like giving up after five rejections? Ten? You'll never give up again on a story you believe in after reading <a href="http://www.sfwa.org/2013/04/rejection-and-reinvention/">this article</a> on submitting to magazines. Success is like getting all the numbers right in a combination lock. Rejection might mean only one number was wrong.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-87018159958529717752012-11-06T11:36:00.000+00:002012-11-06T11:37:42.473+00:00Stuck at Stage Three<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnIRHPr03OF2qYf8rqQFFItjSa4pGJQzKacXuxy52I_9k-GXMtap0poXscVMpE7MMP1j28tne2kDWLaC5EyCuJ3prMEUOuRTjfgPJ9sY3Uk-hzyBNJALz1a8-CjgOdA2noGqOYUy9Tmc/s1600/Warren+Photos+2_0011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnIRHPr03OF2qYf8rqQFFItjSa4pGJQzKacXuxy52I_9k-GXMtap0poXscVMpE7MMP1j28tne2kDWLaC5EyCuJ3prMEUOuRTjfgPJ9sY3Uk-hzyBNJALz1a8-CjgOdA2noGqOYUy9Tmc/s400/Warren+Photos+2_0011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
A short piece on the radio this morning in reaction to <a href="http://www.bryanappleyard.com/close-to-madness-the-grief-of-maurice-saatchi/">this article</a> about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Saatchi,_Baron_Saatchi#References">Maurice Saatchi</a> had me furiously nodding my head in agreement. Actual air-punching would have been inappropriate, as the discussion was about grief. Specifically, about how you don't 'get over it' or 'move on'. You learn to live with it, but one of the great lies about the <a href="http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-stages-of-grief.html">seven stages of grief</a> is that everyone moves through them to arrive at 'acceptance'. Me, I'm pretty much still going with anger (stage three, apparently). And you know what? That's okay. I'm okay.<br />
<br />
It's nineteen years since my mother died, followed by my father less than a year later. I was in my mid-twenties, newly-married, younger than I knew. Raw grief is a devilishly difficult emotion to live with. It takes your guts and twists them so you can barely stand. It fills your head with the incomprehensible that makes your brain buck and reel away from believing something that Just Cannot Be. And that's when you cry - you howl out loud so you can't hear the howling in your head.<br />
<br />
But you can't live like that for long - it's exhausting and debilitating. So you learn to quiet that part of your mind, you fill your time with the relentless stuff of life that insists on being attended to, even when all you want to do is live under your duvet. Until you appear almost normal again. But you have a secret, a dirty little secret - the grief is still there. Always there.<br />
<br />
It doesn't take much, nearly two decades later, to bring my grief back to the fore. I'm not good with funerals, either real or fictional. An unexpected glimpse of my father in a family video, a photograph of my mother that I haven't seen before spied on a mantlepiece, the opening bars of the Schubert Cello Quintet in C Major that I played over and over at a deafening volume on the day I heard that my mother's illness was terminal, these things remind me that I haven't 'dealt' with my grief, if dealing with it means neutralising it. I still feel it, and what I mostly feel, still, is angry at the unfairness of it all. But anger is not a productive emotion, so I feel it, and then I put it away.<br />
<br />
It's not something I talk about much these days, partly because I don't think people want to hear that it never goes away, that the 'seven stages of grief' are a fallacy. So I was pleased to hear Matthew Parris talking on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z/episodes/player">Today programme on Radio 4</a> this morning about how he still grieves for his father five years after his death, and how he thinks that is perfectly okay. To paraphrase, he said that when someone you love dies, they leave a space that cannot be filled, and that's as it should be. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes you have to look into the hole, into the blackness, acknowledge it, give it the respect it deserves, then continue your life walking around its edges.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZB0UPCDNIY8fzmGBa1P5Wlk2U04eNyeKlxeH0sziYOSPH98Ewm8Yb4HT0rV8mUwEq5RcBLnYX5idbBpkEvZEAgoc1vehW18AhHA5TBJbFItTZItW6EmK_3rhxl7G_W6q2hwNY58KFEbU/s1600/Warren+Photos+2_0047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZB0UPCDNIY8fzmGBa1P5Wlk2U04eNyeKlxeH0sziYOSPH98Ewm8Yb4HT0rV8mUwEq5RcBLnYX5idbBpkEvZEAgoc1vehW18AhHA5TBJbFItTZItW6EmK_3rhxl7G_W6q2hwNY58KFEbU/s320/Warren+Photos+2_0047.jpg" width="231" /></a></div>
<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-14181422908414303292012-10-25T11:32:00.000+01:002012-10-25T12:54:20.391+01:00Something in the EtherThis is a slightly unusual blog post for me as it is about self-promotion. But bear with me, I hope you'll find it's worth it.<br />
<br />
I started this year determined not just to write more, but to get that writing out into the world. One of my best discoveries has been the Ether app on the iPhone. Ether specialise in quick reads and have a mix of free and paid downloads. They curate all the content - this is not self-publishing. So if you pay for a story on the app, you know you'll get something good. Even better, we writers get a cut of the download fees too. I have six stories on the app now and am really happy to reach be reaching a new audience. In many ways, writers are taking back the means of distribution for the work in this new digital age - there is as much opportunity as there is threat and we have to get out there and sell our wares.<br />
<br />
So...<br />
<br />
For one week only, Ether are running a Halloween competition - there are sixty new halloween-themed stories on the app and they are all free to download. Now, here comes the pitch: the writer that gets their story downloaded the most between now and Halloween wins a rather splendid prize. And I would like to be that writer. So, if you haven't discovered the Ether app yet, go to www.etherbooks.com or search for Ether Books in the App Store. Then download this:<br />
<br />
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<br />
And while you're at it, have a look at some my other stories. Oh, okay, there are other good writers on the app too (anyone heard of Hilary Mantel?)<br />
<br />
Scan this QR code on your iPhone for a shortcut to the Ether app:<br />
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<br />Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-72371779019987680012012-03-26T17:56:00.001+01:002012-03-26T19:35:38.643+01:00My war with books, or how I have come to love my Kindle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Do you have a favourite book? I'm not talking about the content here, but the actual thing. The cover, the pages, the feel and heft of the thing. My favourite book (the physical thing) happens to also be my favourite book (the words bit). It is a 1952 Collins hardback edition of Pride and Prejudice that belonged to my father. It's a slim volume, just the right size to hold and carry. It is bound in blue cloth, the spine now faded to grey and the cover mottled with water marks and embedded chocolate crumbs (because reading and chocolate go together like Fred and Ginger). The pages are thin but creamily sturdy and the print stands just a little proud of paper - I like to run my fingers down the age-rippled pages and feel the words. Properly stitch-bound, the pages are as secure now as the day the book was made, and fall open easily, allowing me to hold the book comfortably in one hand (the other hand being needed for eating chocolate, obviously).<br />
<br />
This is one of many books I purloined from my parents' shelves. I grew up in a house full of books. Novels, picture books, reference books for all the hobbies and distractions my father indulged in instead of writing, cookery books, how-to book, and a gorgeous, glorious collection of <a href="http://www.foliosociety.com/?gclid=CPKqvMr3hK8CFaImtAodFUnW0w">Folio Society</a> books that I happily inherited (and continue to add to). However, I don't remember my parents buying books (apart from the Folios). Most of the novels, plays and books of poetry were bought individually by my parents before they were married. Books after marriage, with a mortgage and a family, were a luxury. We got fiction books as presents. The reference books came in as piece-works, paid for bit-by-bit, or as part of special offers from the Readers' Digest. Voracious readers as we were, books were borrowed, not bought.<br />
<br />
We were luck enough to have the <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lisburn_Road_Library_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1119508.jpg">Lisburn Road Library</a> no more than five minutes from our house. Converted from a large Victorian villa and with a huge Monkey Puzzle tree outside, it was a home-from-home - two floors of books, a whole room of children's books. Long walls just crammed, end-to-end, floor-to-ceiling, with books. I still dream quite regularly that I am in that library, looking for a book. We visited the library probably every other week, and when my mother had read all the books the Northern Ireland Library Service had to offer, she joined the private <a href="http://www.linenhall.com/">Linen Hall Library</a> and started working her way through their slightly loftier collections as well. The last time I visited my <a href="http://popupforesthill.wordpress.com/venues/forest-hill-library/">local library</a> here in SE23, in another fine Victorian building, I kept looking for other rooms, the rooms where the books must be. I never found them<br />
<br />
As readers, I don't think my family did much to economically support writers. Buying books was a luxury - and wasteful, because a lifetime is too short to read all the books out there. Who has time to re-read a book? Only the very best, the favourites, were bought. A bad book (by which I mean a badly written book) is a waste of time and paper. If you borrow a book and you don't like it, no harm done. If you buy a book and you don't like it, it sits there on your shelf, mocking you, because it is a Book, and Books are Sacred Things, so you can't just throw it away, much as you'd love to.<br />
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I didn't start buying books until I was earning my own money (or living off my husband's) and had bookshelves of my own. Books became cheaper, both relative to my income, and as book price-fixing by publishers was abolished in the 1990s. Over the years, I have acquired many, many books that I have read once and will never read again. I give a lot away to charity, but there are still books under the bed, and double-shelved in the guest room. And I resent it. Some of them are Very Bad Books Indeed. All of them collect dust. I don't want them any more.<br />
<br />
Which is why I love my Kindle. I know as a writer I should be concerned about electronic books - about protecting my intellectual property and getting paid for it. But as a reader, my Kindle frees me up to try all sorts of different books. If I don't like it, I delete it. Gone. Poof. If I really love it, I go out and buy the book. I would rather buy an e-book version of a book than borrow the real book from a friend, and I have added e-book versions of my old favourites to my Kindle, so in those ways I have paid the author twice. I have become a much more experimental reader since I got my Kindle - it's like having the Lisburn Road Library in my pocket.<br />
<br />
And best of all, when I am reading Julian Barnes, I can click on the words I don't understand and look them up in the dictionary. I hated <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sense-Ending-Julian-Barnes/dp/0224094157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332779591&sr=1-1">Barnes' Booker</a> winning book, but boy did I expand my vocabulary.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-45285084041792667642011-04-25T18:39:00.000+01:002011-04-25T18:39:50.586+01:00How does my garden grow?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0-kbFHRxw-KdUeOJoT79Tb9jzdcOnU8OmE6lHS9p1hu5Cx-b87Fz4IiB8rybEHVo8eJBMZwZHhQ_mvB4cNqQj-icheeANbUjrRxpZr7EbZMIUVhkTrIisYZLt0lFqTK6ycTjf2I3Y-wY/s1600/Garden+1+April+2011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0-kbFHRxw-KdUeOJoT79Tb9jzdcOnU8OmE6lHS9p1hu5Cx-b87Fz4IiB8rybEHVo8eJBMZwZHhQ_mvB4cNqQj-icheeANbUjrRxpZr7EbZMIUVhkTrIisYZLt0lFqTK6ycTjf2I3Y-wY/s320/Garden+1+April+2011.JPG" width="240" /></a></div> My name is Rachael and I am a garden bore. There. I've said it. I love my garden. I love getting dirt under my fingernails and leaves in my hair. I carefully pick up freshly dug worms and put them back in the soil, tossing the odd one to the robin who always appears as soon as I have a spade or fork in my hand. From April to October, I have to spend at least five minutes every day checking what's blooming, what's fading and what's downright surprising.<br />
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What's most surprising is that I have become a gardener at all. I used to be the girl that not only killed all her own house plants, but also transferred the kiss of death to any plant I bought as a gift. The first two gardens we owned I viewed with suspicion and tried to keep under control, but no more than that. When a Japanese Maple tree started throwing up suckers in the grass and then, even worse, under our kitchen floor in our last house, all my suspicions were confirmed - nature was the enemy.<br />
<br />
All that changed when we bought our current, beloved, house. It came with a mature and extremely well-loved garden. On our second viewing, the then owner, Angela, made coffee and confided that they had just turned down an asking-price offer on the house from a man who wanted to dig up the lawn and put in a swimming pool. When we moved in, the neighbours told me how Angela would stand on the terrace every morning with a cup of coffee, just looking at the garden. I felt an immediate responsibility. This garden I had to look after.<br />
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As it turned out, in the first few years there wasn't much to do except keep things ticking over. With a toddler and then a new baby, I was glad to let the garden do its own thing. Every year things grew, things flowered. Throughout the summer the garden was filled with colour - purple and pink hardy geraniums, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/12843.shtml">sky blue lupins</a>, sweet lavenders, blousey pink roses, creamy-white and fragrant <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/636.shtml">mock orange.</a> The pear tree dripped with big-bottomed fruit. The cherry tree flowered twice a year, spotting the tips of its brittle branches with puffs of blossom. I watered and feed and tidied and continued to think of it as Angela's garden.<br />
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I knew when we decided to moved to New York for a few years that leaving the garden would be hard. One warm sunny day in early-June, we sat on the patio eating take-out chicken and thinking just how beautiful it was, while the men inside packed up the house and the children ran around on the grass. It seemed cruel that we had to leave just when the garden was at its very best, but leave we did.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTMqL2RsAJKNhyphenhyphenyc51HWR7xakWEd5F-bC-4g9ds0vaL1ztpkMLz_0nf6miP5ekoR9UMxmoAx9qPIHS7u7eHazNQ9LjVjzAZx4FZpHEKQF3vsT41CcdDuWHxsE-UZQKfR-0_u88-aa_w/s1600/51+Mayow+1+2007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfTMqL2RsAJKNhyphenhyphenyc51HWR7xakWEd5F-bC-4g9ds0vaL1ztpkMLz_0nf6miP5ekoR9UMxmoAx9qPIHS7u7eHazNQ9LjVjzAZx4FZpHEKQF3vsT41CcdDuWHxsE-UZQKfR-0_u88-aa_w/s320/51+Mayow+1+2007.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>We returned three years later to one of the worst summers in London for many a year. Cold and wet. The tenants had moved out six weeks previously and the grass was knee-deep. Three trees had been lost to the January storms earlier in the year. But, much worse, the ivy had run amok. It covered the deep flower beds, all but meeting the grass. It had grown right over the top of the pear and apple trees, and even the tall cherry tree was bowed under the weight of an ivy canopy. The letting agents argued that this had all happened within the six weeks the property had been empty. I knew this was three years of neglect.<br />
<br />
I cleared as much of the ivy as I could, rediscovering the old paths and border boundaries, pulling and teasing lengths and lengths of the stuff out of the trees. For every foot of ivy there were two of bramble, lashing cuts up and down my arms. There is only so much one small woman with a pair of secateurs can do and the final hacking back took two men and a chainsaw the best part of a day.<br />
<br />
And then we waited. And waited. Surely some of the old perennials were still alive under there? The <a href="http://www.gardenersworld.com/plant-detail/PL00002793/6488/hardy-geranium">hardy geraniums</a> earned their name and dutifully came back. A nameless silvery shrub thrust out soft spears of purple flowers - it may be a Salvia, I'm still not sure. The evergreen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/6407.shtml">Euonymus</a> shrubs still marched down the shady side of the garden. A woody <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/4251.shtml">rosemary bush</a> was alive but in danger of being pushed out by one of the many ant hills. Little else survived.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6uDawDQSPXCLrqaZd9Pyv0PigftXQDKV9srlwWiucdr2DpBiHbdpAvJj44aMPsE76GokxgxTXb4ig7Et_4fPPyD_2UJFuE0zaTvExyWyZZEgm7U9jJVnT6CGFN2pAckkeSrhZOxZqg0U/s1600/Garden+2+April+2011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6uDawDQSPXCLrqaZd9Pyv0PigftXQDKV9srlwWiucdr2DpBiHbdpAvJj44aMPsE76GokxgxTXb4ig7Et_4fPPyD_2UJFuE0zaTvExyWyZZEgm7U9jJVnT6CGFN2pAckkeSrhZOxZqg0U/s320/Garden+2+April+2011.JPG" width="240" /></a>Angela's garden had gone and I had never taken the time to find out what all those wonderful plants were. So I started again. It's taken me three years, but I now know (more or less) what I have in my garden. As I sit here in late April, I can see bluebells and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/5168.shtml">grape hyacinth</a>s, just passing their prime. The hardy geraniums are lush with leaf and in a few weeks will be smothered with both flowers and busy-bottomed honey bees. The lime green leaves and stems of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/5168.shtml">purple alliums</a> stud the length of the beds, some already in full bloom, others with their buds still closed in tight green bullets. Self-seeding <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/1773.shtml">aquilegias </a>are already sporting their pretty pink bonnets and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/1773.shtml">sea holly</a> and hostas are in full leaf, with the promise of colour to come. The wisteria is dropping its pale purple confetti on the lawn with every gentle breeze. From behind me comes the thick scent of lilacs, shortly to be replaced by the equally lovely fragrance of the mock orange tree.<br />
<br />
And, happily, after years of hiding and sulking, some of Angela's plants have come back. There is a peony I forgot we had that has suddenly come into leaf. The smaller trees have recovered from their tussle with the ivy, and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/705.shtml">firethorn tree</a> is especially grateful for its release, with blossom in the spring and masses of hot red berries in the autumn and winter. The roses and flowering shrubs that had become woody and barren have been hard pruned and fed and left be and are now happily flowering again. Last year, a small grey nub of a stub that I decided against digging out for no better reason than laziness suddenly sprouted new branches, then leaves, then beautiful white flowers with blood-red hearts. It's a <a href="http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/plant/hibiscus-syriacus-red-heart">hibiscus</a>. The ants have been evicted and the rosemary bush is happy. Even the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/5991.shtml">hostas</a> have been spared by the slugs this year, possibly because some hedgehogs have moved in and they love a nice juicy slug.<br />
<br />
I don't kill things anymore, I grow them. A garden, a family, a home. All built on solid foundations and thriving.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-91388422799030716282011-03-04T20:39:00.000+00:002011-03-04T20:39:28.342+00:00The love of a child<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8fk6jgxrblEnzMYqnMIxD-IHb_T8GEQex_ZrusqzD8qnrvjulx7kaKsZI7dtKvXAdnuXaUGd9BflF1ZyWeTYytRtE8sQnEDMA6iGPnKTOeC5CG-blrm1uiIoVOhT-V57KZYt7aQgoMA/s1600/Warren+Photos+2_0067.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8fk6jgxrblEnzMYqnMIxD-IHb_T8GEQex_ZrusqzD8qnrvjulx7kaKsZI7dtKvXAdnuXaUGd9BflF1ZyWeTYytRtE8sQnEDMA6iGPnKTOeC5CG-blrm1uiIoVOhT-V57KZYt7aQgoMA/s320/Warren+Photos+2_0067.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When I was very little, the person I loved most in the world was Nanny. Nanny wasn't a proper fancy nanny, she was my Grandma Smyth's next door neighbour and she used to look after me and do a little light housework for my mother. I don't know where my mother was - I can only assume she had a job. My mother was a remote figure in my early years, but I remember Nanny very well.<br />
<br />
Nanny used to bring me red grapes because they were the only type of fruit I would eat. When I had one of my frequent ear-aches, she would pack my ear with cotton-wool and let me rest my head in her lap. When Nanny babysat for me in the evenings, she would run me a deep, warm bubble bath and let me play in it until the water went cold. Then she would bring me downstairs and set me in front of the old fan heater, which she used in lieu of a hairdryer. I would sit with my back to the heater and she would gently brush my thick, thick hair until it had dried, smooth and glossy and so blond it was almost white. Sometimes I stayed the night at Nanny's house. She would feed me sausages and baked beans that came from the same tin, and raspberry ripple ice-cream. In the house next door, my grandparents would be sitting either side of the fireplace smoking unfiltered Gallaher's cigarettes and not talking. Nanny was the warm, loving constant in my life.<br />
<br />
<br />
And then, one day, Nanny told me that she was going away and was never coming back. She was going to live in a place called New Zealand that was so far away, she would probably never come back to Belfast again. She was going to live with her daughter. I begged her not to go. I cried and cried. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from beneath my little feet, my life turned upside down. When she was gone, I thought my heart would break. I didn't know it at the time, but I recognise now what that feeling was: it was grief.<br />
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<br />
Suddenly my mother and I were thrown together. I didn't care for her cooking - she never did things the way Nanny did. When she ran me a bath, she only filled it a few inches, and with tepid water. She neglected to brush my hair after it had been washed, with the result that it became as matted as a bird's nest. She would roughly brush the front of it, leave a heaving mass of tats at the back. She never bought red grapes or raspberry ripple ice-cream.<br />
<br />
<br />
Gradually I got over my grief at losing Nanny and my mother and I became closer, although it took many years. I have often wondered what was going on with her during my early years. She was a naturally warm and loving person, but I don't remember much of that being directed my way back then. I wonder was she depressed, post-natally or otherwise? Did she find it hard having a baby in the house again, when my sister and brother were older and already at school? Did she find she only had enough mothering in her for two and there was just nothing left for me? And is that why I was so sure I didn't want another child after The Boy was born? I never want a child of mine to feel like an also-ran, an after-thought, an inconvenience.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'll never get to ask my mother now, and even if she were still alive, I'm not sure I'd know how to ask. But for all the love I feel I missed out on then, there was much love from her later, so much so that when my mother died, the grief I felt then outstripped any I felt before, or have since. Turns out there is always enough love to go around.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-81372279619639600122010-10-20T15:11:00.001+01:002010-12-05T20:43:55.115+00:00Rock and troll<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfmOdIjDGgQOhRSzxDxUPgPiI-qzDP8K5H9ccmSQXm8SUMzTJ0uL1S2IR5p6hnX_xi76cMO6frYWHetcgHGFquD_UE2qZ1wt7Z2uzKmSUaKFWLm1ljDykM_LJnXMjxUnmBR7T2RnyjADA/s1600/Bricks.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfmOdIjDGgQOhRSzxDxUPgPiI-qzDP8K5H9ccmSQXm8SUMzTJ0uL1S2IR5p6hnX_xi76cMO6frYWHetcgHGFquD_UE2qZ1wt7Z2uzKmSUaKFWLm1ljDykM_LJnXMjxUnmBR7T2RnyjADA/s320/Bricks.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Am I the only middle-class London mother to have never been on Mumsnet? I was tempted to take a look around the time of the General Election, when the talk was all about the party leaders' favourite biscuits. I wanted to know how such stuff gets to be news. I understand why the politicians did it (they were courting the female floating vote). But why have the media suddenly decided that Mums are important, powerful, taste-makers, arbiters of justice and imbued with some sort of special every-woman wisdom?<br />
<br />
I might find the answer to these questions if I just went and had a look at the website, but I really don't want to. I've dipped my toe in the online forum world over the past year and, with a few notable exceptions, I've pulled my toe right back out again.<br />
<br />
Here are the exceptions: I use my local forums to get dull but essential information (roadworks, train cancellations, local campaigns). I am a member of a writing forum that is supportive, engaging and informative, and blessedly <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling">troll-free</a>. And that's about it. On the local forums, there are places for people to discuss 'wider issues'. It hasn't taken me long to realise that I'm not really interested in the opinions of people I don't know, much less getting into an argument with them. And it almost always does degenerate into an argument. There is an inverse proportion between the length of a discussion thread and the quality of its content. Once a general discussion has reached its second or third page, I can almost guarantee that the conversation will have boiled down to 'You are a racist.' 'No, you are.' 'No, <i>you</i> are.' Ultimately, it all: Me, me me!<br />
<br />
The thing is, no matter how reasonable or even-handed you try to be, no one is going to change their opinions because of what you write on a forum. And no-one actually cares what you think, they just want to say what they think (and I'm as guilty of that as anyone, see above). And whatever you say can be twisted in any direction by people who are Professional Offence Takers.<br />
<br />
Of course, I didn't know this at first. I went looking for the message board of a national radio station because I had heard something on the radio I wanted to know more about. I thought this might be a place where I would find like-minded people. I posted a few comments. Someone misinterpreted something I said. I tried to clarify. I was called uncultured and uneducated. I sighed and bowed out. Every now and then I look in on that message board. The same handful of people (maybe ten or fifteen regular contributors, no more) are still going at it, staggering around the ring, punch-drunk but unwilling to give up their stated (and indeed mis-stated) positions. This a radio station that averages ten million listeners, but with a message board dominated by a tiny number of people. Don't get me wrong, many people post perfectly sensible things on that board, but the common sense is drowned out by the baying and braying of the moaners and trolls.<br />
<br />
I have a feeling that the general message board / forum will die a natural death as media outlets become more and more tailored to the individual. For now, though, I'm steering clear of Mumsnet. I parent the way I parent, and I'm not about to tell anyone else how to do it. And I'm a little scared I'll find out that I've been doing it all wrong. Ignorance is bliss (at least until the kids are all grown up and can sue me for the cost of their therapy).<br />
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(Note: When I do post on forums, I do it under my real name. It helps me think before I flame, and it means that anyone who has seen me on a forum can also find me here slagging off the forums. Oh well.)Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-55272035505894497972010-10-13T13:49:00.000+01:002010-10-13T13:49:30.400+01:00Jack<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7nuqfZkkJ_yL0w5475S0xP_KHiBmztvJaN5u9-yk13Bt32mY3kfjy45LyucLqxcx_25KdPqB_IxR-3PjdWSsiSLgIm6Ke7Vzjt0H8BbvpRxZAQhcyReb1hOL4ehbXUzlOc36xA5R_qWw/s1600/Autumn+blossom.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7nuqfZkkJ_yL0w5475S0xP_KHiBmztvJaN5u9-yk13Bt32mY3kfjy45LyucLqxcx_25KdPqB_IxR-3PjdWSsiSLgIm6Ke7Vzjt0H8BbvpRxZAQhcyReb1hOL4ehbXUzlOc36xA5R_qWw/s320/Autumn+blossom.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>I went to the post office last week to send a parcel. Once the package had been weighed, measured and the value of its contents quantified, I handed over my money, got the stamps and expected to be on my way.<br />
'Is that everything?' the man behind the counter asked.<br />
'Yes,' I said, waiting for my change.<br />
'Do you need to top up your mobile phone?'<br />
'No.'<br />
'Can I interest you in a personal loan?'<br />
'No.'<br />
'Open a National Savings account?'<br />
At this point I said nothing, giving the ten pound note I had proffered an extra shove in his direction. He took the hint and gave me my change.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, different post office, different staff. I'm sending off the Boy's passport application.<br />
'Do you know we offer a "Check and Send" service for passport applications?' the lady says, eyeing up the envelope.<br />
I smile and nod and put the envelope on the scales. 'Just the stamps please.'<br />
'Can I interest you in a Post Office credit card?'<br />
'No'<br />
'Travel insurance? Currency exchange?'<br />
'No.'<br />
Silence. I'm not biting. Finally she hands over my change. I give her a breezy smile, but inside I am sighing.<br />
<br />
There was a phrase my mother and teachers were fond of using: <i>Jack of all trades, master of none</i>. I wonder when this piece of folk wisdom went out of fashion.<br />
<br />
Many years ago, before Children, when I worked as a researcher in arts and media, there was a lot of talk about 'convergence' in the media industries. I didn't really understand then what that meant but, some fifteen years later, I see it every day. I surf the web on my phone, I watch TV on my computer. With all the data coming down the phone line, it sort of makes sense for BT to want to sell me TV data, and Sky to sell me telephony.<br />
<br />
But elsewhere in the marketplace, it's all gone a little mad. I get my pet insurance from the supermarket. British Gas fix my electrics. Blockbuster are going to start selling the TVs and DVD players we need to watch their movies (although what you are doing in Blockbuster if you haven't got a TV in the first place is beyond me).<br />
<br />
What I really want is people who know what they are doing, know their product, and don't have to send me to a call centre to answer every question. I had a problem with our new Sky box a few weeks ago. I've learned by experience that their technical support staff are charming, eager, and clueless. I know what they are going to suggest before they say it, and I will invariably have tried it already. This time, I went online first, found a Sky user forum where my problem was discussed, found the solution, called Sky and asked them to implement the suggested solution. They refused, had to go through their checklist. We did the checklist - and thirty minutes later, still not fixed. Then they tried my way - two minutes later, ta da. Problem solved. Yet I bet the next person who calls in with the same problem will get no joy. They won't make a note of my solution - it doesn't appear on the list therefore it doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
But the backlash has started. We have a new fishmonger on our high street. The guy who runs it is pleasant and knowledgable. He provides recipes according to the fish he has got in that day, and sells all the ingredients too, getting the neighbouring greengrocers to supply the veg. Give him enough notice and he'll get you whatever fish you want, and tell you how to cook it. Perfect. I want fish - he sells me fish. Job done.<br />
<br />
If he ever tries to sell me car insurance, though, I shall despair.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-54975145778967350622010-10-05T14:04:00.000+01:002010-10-05T14:04:00.778+01:00Blinking into the light<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPPDd3sF1Hd8IuheuwY_y2T6WSGRX6qQ9vQwG-FJWKDbjsUxMu2eCUfwVJYYXa9s-cCvtKC8vpuHHc2sL0OyBZEDrIcdfKXiX4QULVCVzpZF4y_Hs6U_a3pRGpa2XPu6t5l3fjgGSJ1M/s1600/Autumn+tiles.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPPDd3sF1Hd8IuheuwY_y2T6WSGRX6qQ9vQwG-FJWKDbjsUxMu2eCUfwVJYYXa9s-cCvtKC8vpuHHc2sL0OyBZEDrIcdfKXiX4QULVCVzpZF4y_Hs6U_a3pRGpa2XPu6t5l3fjgGSJ1M/s320/Autumn+tiles.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Your blogger will be out and about this week, reading from <i>33 West </i>at Hammersmith Library on Thursday evening, as part of the <a href="http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/art-culture/storyoflondon/events/33-boroughs-33-shorts-1-london-hammersmith-fulham">Story of London Festival</a>. Come along if you are in the vicinity - I'm up first, so make sure you are early!<br />
<br />
In other news, <i>Hoovering the Roof </i> has been a major success for the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/eastdulwichwritersgroup/">East Dulwich Writers' Group</a>. The first print run sold out, and it was a runner-up in the <a href="http://www.nawg.co.uk/">National Association of Writers' Groups</a> <i>Annual Writing Awards.</i><br />
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Not ones to rest on our laurels, we have been beavering away for the past several months, and <i>Hoovering the Roof 2</i> will hit the shops in late November, just in time for your last minute Christmas shopping. Look out for promotional events in late November and throughout December.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-60503035145906980832010-09-07T09:36:00.000+01:002010-09-07T09:36:10.135+01:00Teen Queens and Strong Thumbs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBcvsri3cG3uxs6Qj4Sg-YhY60LdYNAcX729zlGrstwiKpHre8HsuDpV57uNvGFQ-Ig3OvZk7Ui1y9MOQBSx5_oWLjlLCShiTpromrtHSVjI3u4T6lBopoMKBOtoYlQKT_osxypFY8W8Q/s1600/Fallen+pomegranates.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBcvsri3cG3uxs6Qj4Sg-YhY60LdYNAcX729zlGrstwiKpHre8HsuDpV57uNvGFQ-Ig3OvZk7Ui1y9MOQBSx5_oWLjlLCShiTpromrtHSVjI3u4T6lBopoMKBOtoYlQKT_osxypFY8W8Q/s320/Fallen+pomegranates.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>So there it goes. Summer 2010. On warmer afternoons I can almost imagine it is still summer, but in the mornings the grass is heavy with dew, and the early evening sun now slides behind the house rather than sailing above it, casting longer shadows over the garden. Both kids are back to school now (after a false start for The Girl, who has been suffering with a Mystery Ailment for a few weeks now). A mixed bag of a summer, but I'm sorry to see it go.<br />
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The Girl's transition to Teen Queen continues, although not at a steady pace. As she spent more of the summer with us than with her friends, she gradually reverted to something more like the girl she was a year ago. Not that there is anything wrong with the girl she has become, it's just that there is a slightly harder edge to her when she is with her secondary school friends. By the time we went on holiday, she had been hanging out with me and the Boy for a few weeks, so was ready to enjoy herself Old School - playing with inflatables in the pool, diving to find fish in the sea, building sand castles (and digging wells - it's clearly <a href="http://rachaeldunlop.blogspot.com/2010/07/four-wheels-good-but-mostly-bad.html">genetic</a>).<br />
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The Boy has a very peculiar inner alarm clock. On school days, he has to be dug out of bed with a crow bar at seven a.m. On the weekend and holidays, he wakes bright-eyed and bushy tailed at six-thirty. He says it's all to do with having something worth waking up for. Given that he is allowed to play his DS before breakfast during the holidays, I can see where his priorities lie. It has been nice for Hubby, though, that the Boy has been waking early all summer - it is lonely for him, setting off for work while we all slumber on. Now the Boy is back at school, I will miss his Random Daily Statement, the best of which was: 'I've just noticed, I have very strong thumbs.'<br />
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And now we are back in the thick of it and it seems like I am always doing six things at once, none of them very effectively. But it's not quite time to put away the flip flops yet - at least not until the clocks go back.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-14114765605018901292010-07-25T18:18:00.001+01:002010-07-25T18:20:52.811+01:00Four wheels bad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhljt39D0uUooavB8_w4C0PZ431h84LqjzlVLcDt6ZPnxoOmnQpay0DByyFGWpY-n7NrAF10F0UBS1pa00gceNw6Y0DHKk8pqGAIcyDIskhN00khZrwtV5xCisswlOS5n8POUL0DghlI/s1600/Land+Rover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhljt39D0uUooavB8_w4C0PZ431h84LqjzlVLcDt6ZPnxoOmnQpay0DByyFGWpY-n7NrAF10F0UBS1pa00gceNw6Y0DHKk8pqGAIcyDIskhN00khZrwtV5xCisswlOS5n8POUL0DghlI/s320/Land+Rover.jpg" /></a></div>When I was growing up, our family car was a Land Rover. That Land Rover there on the left.<br />
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Sounds okay, right? Very nice, in fact, four-wheel drive cars being the vehicle of choice for many a suburban family these days. Well, no. Not okay at all, for two reasons. One, this was in the 1970s, and two, this was Belfast.<br />
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In the 1970s, the only people who drove Land Rovers were farmers and soldiers. They were utility vehicles, not family cars. Our Land Rover was undercoat-grey (come to think of it, it may indeed have been painted just with undercoat, and remained unfinished, a bit like the house). The interior was finished in a fetching combination of rivets and bare metal. The seats were upholstered in bum-numbingly hard plastic. In lieu of a boot there was a loading area with a handy integrated folding shovel. Just what every family needs.<br />
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Being driven about in this grey tin box was mortifying. My friends' dads drove proper cars, with velour upholstery and radio-cassette players and windows that wound down with a handle, not ones that slid down with an alarming crash when you released the catch. One of the back windows had been replaced with clear plastic sheeting, the glass having been broken long ago. I occasionally got a lift to school with a friend whose dad wore leather driving gloves while driving their Ford Grenada, the executive car of the day. I say they were friends, but actually, these girls just happened to go to the same school as me. They spotted me at the bus stop one day, pointed out to their dad that we went to the same school, and he stopped to offer me a lift. And there was another difference between my father and other people's fathers. He never, ever, once, drove me to school. I don't think he ever just gave me a lift somewhere, anywhere. Given how much I hated the Land Rover, I should have been grateful for that, but of course, it was just another point of difference between me and everyone else in the world.<br />
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Of course, it wasn't just social embarrassment that was wrought on us by the Land Rover. Like I said, only farmers and soldiers drove Land Rovers in the 1970s. In Belfast, the only other Land Rovers on the road were painted camouflage green and driven by British soldiers. So there I was, a Catholic girl in a sectarian city with an English, Protestant father who drove a Land Rover but who wasn't a soldier, who was in fact a university professor with middle-class tastes without the middle-class income. In a city where your cultural identity was everything, I didn't have a clue who I was.<br />
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There were times, however, when the Land Rover came into its own, never more so than when we went on holiday to Donegal. With its four-wheel drive, the Land Rover happy trundled down onto the beach. On more than one occasion my father helpfully towed away other cars that had foolishly followed him onto the sand and promptly got stuck. With its back door swung open, the Land Rover provided a changing room, a place to make sand-free sandwiches and a spacious shelter from the rain. The folding shovel was often used to dig sand wells - my father would dig holes in the sand so deep and wide that he had to cut in steps to climb back out again, after digging down and down until he hit water. The plastic spades other families bought from the harbour gift shop were no match for my father and his proper, made-for-emergencies shovel. Other fathers tried to dig similar wells, perhaps driven by spade-envy, but they never made better than ours.<br />
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One year, finally, the Land Rover failed its MOT so comprehensively there was no saving it. It was so dilapidated and full of rust that it could only be sold for scrap. And that was when I discovered that there was one thing more socially damning that a Bad Car, and that is No Car. For a while (I don't know how long, but it felt like forever) we had No Car. I didn't know anyone else with No Car.<br />
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Luckily, the only way you can go from No Car is up. One day, on the back of an advance from his publishers (I think) my father proudly brought home the Princess. That wasn't some sickly pet moniker we gave the new car, that was the actual name of the model. The Austin Princess. It was royal blue and had proper windows and a boot. And a few years after that, oh joy, the Audi Quattro. White with those three distinctive black rings emblazoned on the side. Not only did we have a car, it was a Cool Car. Change came to my family in what felt like an avalanche in the 1980s. My mother started a new career in financial services and all of a sudden money was something that came out of the hole-in-the-wall on demand, not a scarce commodity carefully counted out from my mother's black cash tin. Cars came and went - company cars changed on a whim. But the funny thing is, I hardly remember those cars. But the Land Rover, much as I loathed it, was a member of our family, and being eccentric and awkward and downright bonkers, it fitted right in.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-38769880884339572922010-06-18T13:21:00.001+01:002010-06-18T16:07:33.363+01:00Deliver unto us our daily bread<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqO2StFGmG5EawXwcMmBHxeOu6drwXH-afCSItR0uiMthHH9rAgUykn6Il2k9czKYGlqiUsEVVUc5qdAmwyZKEd2Y7SbyAQx_DFoZfg5ySl9UDc9AXQemAaEaQUQlPN9i6jQLJhfNLZBU/s1600/Alium+seed+head.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqO2StFGmG5EawXwcMmBHxeOu6drwXH-afCSItR0uiMthHH9rAgUykn6Il2k9czKYGlqiUsEVVUc5qdAmwyZKEd2Y7SbyAQx_DFoZfg5ySl9UDc9AXQemAaEaQUQlPN9i6jQLJhfNLZBU/s320/Alium+seed+head.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Watching the supermarket vans pootling around South London, I am reminded that there is nothing new under the sun. Ordering online may be very 21st century, but having your groceries delivered was the norm for most of the 20th century. Only in the last few decades of the last century, when cars and supermarkets became ubiquitous, did we take it for granted that we had to go to the shop, the shop couldn't come to us.<br />
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When I was little, my mother didn't drive (she <i>could</i> drive, but it was generally considered better that she <i>didn't,</i> more of which later). So my father was sent off on a Saturday morning with a list to do The Big Shop. My father liked the list to be written in the right order, according to the layout of the shop. He even went as far as to type out a master list that my mother could consult when compiling the weekly list, so she could select the items she wanted and write them down in the right order. It is to my mother's eternal credit that not only did she use this master list, but she seemed to do it with a good grace too.<br />
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During the week, supplies were topped up by the delivery men. My personal favourite was the bread man. He would pull into our drive in his little Ormo Bakery truck, white with a large purple butterfly painted on the side. I would hop in the back with my mother's list and inhale deeply. If you think the bread section of the supermarket smells good, you would think you had died and gone to heaven in the back of that van. Along with all the usual bread, there were the local specialities: soda bread, potato bread, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veda_bread">Veda</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmbrack">barmbrack</a>, and muffins. These weren't savoury 'English' muffins or sweet American muffins (which are cakes, let's face it). These muffins were small, round, slightly flattened bready rolls that were a little bit sweet, with a smooth, thin, glossy and buttery crust. They were delicious fresh out of the packet or split, toasted or buttered. There was nothing else like them - it was only much later in life that I discovered they were a local variation on the most delicious bread of all - brioche.<br />
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We had lots of other things delivered directly to the house. I remember getting packets of sausages and bacon from the back of a van as well (may have been the bread man branching out, I can't remember). We had sack loads of coal and 'slack' (smaller pieces of coal good for damping down the fire without putting it out) delivered too. The coal man brought the coal round to the back of the house where we had two huge wooden coal bunkers. The coal man filled the bunkers from the top, while we got our daily supply by opening a little hatch at the bottom and poking at the compacted pile with a small shovel until a little avalanche trickled out into a waiting bucket.<br />
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Other fuels were delivered by Mr Munn. We had paraffin lamps and heaters that came in very handy when the Unionists called General Strikes in the 1970s and you could never be sure when the electricity would be on. Later we also had gas heaters that ran from bottled gas and had to be lit by flooding the front panels with gas then firing the pilot light. The result was a small, but none the less alarming explosion. Once the pilot lights had inevitably failed and we had to use matches to light the gas, it got hairier still. But it was worth it to be warm. Mr Munn ran a hardware shop and delivered clear plastic cans of pink, oily paraffin and the gas canisters. He wore a brown shopkeepers coat and a flat cap, was a thin as a whippet and taciturn to the point where you could complete an entire transaction without him saying a word.<br />
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And when all these methods of procurement failed and my mother found she had run out of something essential, she did what any sensible woman would do. She sent a small child off to 'run a message' to the corner shop. I would do the same, if only we still had such a thing as a corner shop.<br />
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Coming up next: my family and cars. A source of embarrassment, identity confusion, and fear for one's life (and not just because of my mother's driving).Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-86672646225687672732010-06-08T17:06:00.000+01:002010-06-08T17:06:39.839+01:00Banana Phone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsENBQiDwnIEGhIbbQP6n4HyXaYD3EBuc6RDwHoVOZa-bViVYzkPTrCX3H5wZuk0tT3TuZVS8hWHKGRVrAdV7jAUAyB8yDuLfCsImKJQYHcNfF7eegJneYrXrCH2aYwpo_wpIy2Ezw8vA/s1600/Honesty.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsENBQiDwnIEGhIbbQP6n4HyXaYD3EBuc6RDwHoVOZa-bViVYzkPTrCX3H5wZuk0tT3TuZVS8hWHKGRVrAdV7jAUAyB8yDuLfCsImKJQYHcNfF7eegJneYrXrCH2aYwpo_wpIy2Ezw8vA/s320/Honesty.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>The phone doesn't ring much in this house, especially during the day. Hubby rings in the morning to let me know he hasn't fallen off his bike or under a bus, and again at lunchtime because, well just because. He calls me when he is leaving work so that a) if he is getting the train I can go pick him up from the station, b) if he's on his bike I know when to start panicking and calling local hospital and c) under either scenario, I can get the dinner on.<br />
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Lately, however, I've been getting lots of scam phone calls. At least once a day. We have caller id on our phone so I can usually see the number of the person calling. When the number is listed as 'International', I know what's coming next. First it was the people telling me they were calling from the UK government and I had been awarded a grant for something or other. Purr-lease. Do these people not see the news? The UK government ain't giving no money to no one right now, or for the foreseeable future. They certainly aren't going to be chasing me to make sure I get what I'm owed (which is, of course, precisely nothing).<br />
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And then today there was the call apparently from Sky. 'Can you confirm that you are a Sky customer?' the lady asked. Well yeah, along with about half the population. 'What type of Sky box do you have?' Okay, these scammers really aren't trying hard enough. Sky know what boxes I have, they know which rooms they are in, hell, they probably know what I ate for dinner last night while goggling at their box. Note to scammers: not good enough. I hung up.<br />
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The other calls I get regularly aren't really scams, but they aren't quite kosher either. I have debt collection agencies calling me looking for a Jenny Someone-or-Other. I know the names of everyone who has lived in this house for the past twenty five years and there has never been a Jenny Anyone. So I tell them that, and then they want to know who I am and what the address is, which I tell them is none of their beeswax. What confuses me about this is that the calls keep coming, no matter how many times I tell them they have the wrong number. Are these people not working on commission? Why are they wasting their time calling numbers they know are wrong? Probably because the computer dials for them and they, the poor hapless souls, just get on with reading the script, their will to live diminishing just a little with every uttered syllable.<br />
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So if you are going to call me any time soon, make sure I know it's you, because otherwise I'm not picking up. Or send me a text. I haven't had a scam text for, oh, at least a month.<br />
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Oh yeah, and the plant in the picture? It's called Honesty.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-70283792859928539052010-05-17T19:18:00.000+01:002010-05-17T19:18:54.786+01:00Measuring Perfection<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDH81ll6s8Sdx_0S331h-xHUdxpzwRB3bBPahx94L4omDVp8ZZkyKLmhyphenhyphenLHCah0ZxZT5nzXANtS-F3KSOxwhmuGONK3U6LN0Bp-U-tDYnsED0Ly_n2rhx_4jNEbWbuaVibg2hnC3_Ux7g/s1600/Bangor+rocks.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDH81ll6s8Sdx_0S331h-xHUdxpzwRB3bBPahx94L4omDVp8ZZkyKLmhyphenhyphenLHCah0ZxZT5nzXANtS-F3KSOxwhmuGONK3U6LN0Bp-U-tDYnsED0Ly_n2rhx_4jNEbWbuaVibg2hnC3_Ux7g/s320/Bangor+rocks.JPG" width="320" /></a>The Boy is a worrier. Has been since his early days at school. He worries about letting people down. He worries about not living up to expectations. He worries about things he has done in the past, things he might have to do in the future. He has asked me several times over the past year if the credit crunch is going to affect us. When I stayed in bed with the flu, he was so tense with worry, he could barely speak. We are working on the worrying, but you can only do so much with what you've got.<br />
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So the Boy is not best suited to the current environment in primary schools, where every breath is bench-marked. I didn't really worry about SATs and testing with the Girl, because they didn't bother her. She is the perfect example of a good all-rounder. Always met her targets. So while I disagree with the SATs in principle, on a personal level I found them hard to get worked up about. But now the Boy is finishing Year 4 and preparing for Year 5, the requirements of the SATs are looming larger in his life, because he has Failed to Make Progress.<br />
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It's like a label hanging around his neck. He is achieving well above average in all his subjects, but his literacy score has not improved over the course of this academic year. I talked to his teacher about it - he is not scoring as well as he should in comprehension. This surprises me. I read with him often, and his comprehension seems fine to me. Okay, so he sometimes gets things ass-backwards, but don't we all? So I dig deeper, and it seems the problem is not his comprehension, but his ability to demonstrate it in written work.<br />
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He dislikes writing. Always has. Unlike the Girl, who would sit and scribble down stories for hours, he has always been more interested in other forms of expression. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he can talk for his country, and hold his own in pretty much any conversation. His curiosity and thirst for knowledge about the world know no bounds. But ask him to write down what he did yesterday, or to put into his own words something he has just read, and he freezes.<br />
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When the Boy first started school in New York, he was a full year younger than the oldest kids in his class. He was four, but expected to read and write like a five year-old. The teachers put pressure on me to get him tutoring. I resisted. Within a year he was reading well above his age level. The brain develops at its own pace. The same applies to his written work. Okay, he's struggling now, but does it help that he knows his current score according to the National Curriculum, and knows what he 'should' be achieving? I seriously doubt it.<br />
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I will give him as much extra help with his writing as I can, not because I think he has a problem, but because it will make his life much easier if he can conform to expectations. But I've also made it clear to him that I think he is perfect the way he is and that SATs are not the be-all and end-all of measuring a child's worth.Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4306839904775162740.post-36879723725114863852010-05-03T14:05:00.004+01:002011-03-11T15:08:35.471+00:00The Boy Speaks and Feminists Weep<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PwDvmFO5l-nQhcrFkrlfMOCGuK3LAwnRbYNLHK8rDNwPe5MDHVNIGUsMIsspnGySHbyUMXwMWW8mpD_2PM6rbdboulXzWE8EvtHRvFsNWHQKgi0PsIZSrM0Spqmxz-aXxOZjU9P4a_8/s1600/Bangor+reflection.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PwDvmFO5l-nQhcrFkrlfMOCGuK3LAwnRbYNLHK8rDNwPe5MDHVNIGUsMIsspnGySHbyUMXwMWW8mpD_2PM6rbdboulXzWE8EvtHRvFsNWHQKgi0PsIZSrM0Spqmxz-aXxOZjU9P4a_8/s320/Bangor+reflection.JPG" width="320" /></a>There are times when raising a boy is like wrangling with an alien. No matter how much I try to humanise him, he remains obdurately Boy. One afternoon last week he dealt me a double whammy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is starting to rain when we get home from school so I enlist his help to bring in the washing. As we start unpegging the washing, the following conversation takes place:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Boy: I'm not touching anyone's underwear.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Me: It's clean. And anyway, what about me? I have to touch <i>everyone's</i> underwear. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Boy: Well, I'm definitely not touching your bras.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Me: Whatever.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Boy: Actually, no, you know what, I am going to touch your bras! And then when I am older, I can boast to my friends that I have touched a woman's bra. Because it's every boy's dream, right?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">At which point he starts racing around the washing line looking for bras. I say nothing but think it's quite sweet that he still thinks it's the bra that's the thing, not what goes into the bra. Later that afternoon, we are watching TV and an ad for Pampers comes on. As the young mother is shown leaning over her baby, changing it's nappy, the Boy exclaims:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">'Yuck, I hate this ad!'</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">'Why?' I ask, 'it's just a baby's bottom.'</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">'No, it's that woman's boobies. They are <i>way </i>too big! It's disgusting!'</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I have no response. I am literally slack jawed with speechlessness. On seeing my expression, the boy says:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">'What? I'm a nine year-old-boy!' </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">As if that explains everything.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Where did I go wrong?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I've tried to bring up my kids to be relaxed about their bodies, and the human body in general. My mother was taught by the nuns at her boarding school that she should never be completely naked, unless she was in the bath. There was an elaborate system for getting dressed and undressed that kept the optimal amount of flesh covered at all times. I don't know if my mother stuck to this regime religiously (pardon the pun), but she was certainly very modest, and very fond of wearing layers of undergarments. Slips and half-slips, camisoles and petticoats were all part of her moral armour. She would even wear a vest under a sundress.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">She could never bring herself to talk to about sex. My sister had to tell me about 'the facts of life'. My mother was educated, confident, out-going. She hated the repression her upbringing had left her with, but she couldn't break the cycle.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">So, naturally, I don't want my kids to have any of those hangups. I've tried to engender a nonchalant attitude to the human body. Up until recently I thought I'd been reasonably successful. But I'm beginning to realise that are two things I just can't fight: he's Nine and he's a Boy.</div>Rachael Dunlophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01867623861097641597noreply@blogger.com3