A Retirement Career

Thank you for visiting my website and taking an interest in my first novel! I aim to write a new blog at least once a month, to update you on my latest writing projects and also to make sure I persevere with what has now-unexpectedly- become a retirement career.

I had expected when I retired only to perfect existing skills, to become a better recorder player, try out more interesting recipes or undertake more challenging handicraft projects, with plenty of spare time to do various jobs for the church, socialise or go for a long walk. I do all these things, but with part of my brain thinking about what to add or remove from my creative writing, then heading straight for my laptop to record a change of plan. This, despite hours of careful planning.

A chance remark can set me off on an interesting train of thought which I may end up writing about. For example, someone I was talking to this morning in the Oxfam bookshop where I volunteer was saying she had no room to dry anything in this damp weather and all her radiators and the backs of her chairs are covered in various bits of clothing. This was a great illustration of cramped living conditions that I hadn’t thought of in my current work in progress, where a couple who are expecting twins share a one-bedroom apartment without a balcony.

I meet many interesting characters in the course of these activities (don’t worry, none of my protagonists are based on any one person) and they all have a story to tell that might provide inspiration. Both my books are based on other people’s stories as well as my own, and whenever I am tempted to criticise myself for borrowing them and placing them in a different context, I remind myself that it the novelist’s role to “climb into someone's skin and walk around in it” as Harper Lee so aptly put it, in other words to develop empathy for even the worst of people. After all, would I be any better behaved in their circumstances? For me, this has been a more important thing to learn than the skill of writing.

I began work on Ill Conceived as a means of getting into the skin of someone very dear to me who was going through a severe mental health crisis, as well as a therapy for myself, concentrating on descriptions and isolated dramatic scenes without much thought about the overall structure. I had taken a leap of faith, given that my previous attempt at creative writing was at least fifty years ago, and this may be why it took almost ten years in total from the initial conception (excuse the pun) to the final launch. As I developed the skill, most of what I now call “practice sections” were discarded, and the product that is available now has lost almost a quarter of its initial body weight, but I hope it is more beautiful, and I have many, many other people to thank for that.