Thursday last ...

... on Thursday last I gave my second novel, whose working title is Hope Remains, to my agent.

And now I feel oddly bereft.

I have become so used to spending my days immersed in the sadnesses and joys of the characters, in watching them move about in my head, in omitting long passages that I had planned for them and in discovering the things that they led me to ... that now my days feel empty.

The original idea for the novel came from the fact that my great-grandmother survived the sinking of the Titanic ... but facts do not a novel make and so I invented a life and a love for her. What she realises about herself in her lifeboat in the cold lonely mid-Atlantic is at the heart of the novel both emotionally and actually (there's a pleasing symmetry in that).

I hope the language serves the characters and their stories well but now, until my agent has had time to read the book and tell me where she thinks it needs work, I have to leave the characters and their stories alone.

And I find that I miss them.

In the nursery rhyme Monday's Child, Thursday's child 'Has far to go ... '. I hope that Hope Remains and its characters won't have too far to go before a publisher provides them with a home. (And I find a better title!)

And it's been odd, but since October last I have never once felt like MATing ... perhaps I've kicked the habit?

In the blink of an eye

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Jean-Do to his friends) wrote a whole book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by the arduous process of one blink for each letter. In French it's called La Scaphandre et le Papillon. (I tried to upload a video clip of the film - which the boyf and I saw last night - but utterly failed: technology impossible to grasp.)

I love the word scaphandre and, with the help of my (English) dictionary I make the direct English translation manboat (or boatman) from the Greek andro (man) and scaphe (boat).

But, heavens, I MAT by dreaming and procrastinating and putting off writing by going for a walk and making cups of tea (herbal, natch) and wandering round my house and answering and sending emails and and and ... and so many of these MATs are physical. Then, eventually, I sit down and type or handwrite sentences that have been building themselves in my head while I did everything else except write them down. How simple (and taken-for-granted) is that?

Bauby blinked his way from letter to letter to make the sentences that eventually made his book. He prepared the sentences early in the morning so that when Claude Mendibil arrived, and began reciting from a list of letters, he could blink when she reached the right letter and then again and then again until she said a word back to him. And so on and on and on. What extraordinary courage, tenacity, clarity, imagination and sheer human spirit. 'The blink of an eye' took Bauby months.

Go and see the film ... or, if you've missed it - we nearly did - buy the book. Bauby's beautiful, moving story of courage in the face of impossible odds, deserves our unblinking attention.

Procrastination

A friend of mine, a wonderful artist who works in all kinds of media (mediums?) told me about the Jerwood Moving image award winners.

I highly recommend Johnny Kelly's (which is called PROCRASTINATION). It'll take you about 5 minutes to watch and it's the perfect MAT.

So perfect that I've just watched it twice ... .

Monet and painting, MATing and writing

Today MATing translates as 'writing this before I begin to stare through the window'. Sometimes it takes much staring before I can write.

This story knows what I mean:

One day Monet was sitting on the bench in his garden at Giverny staring at the waterlily pond. His neighbour walked by, poked his nose over the hedge and said, 'Bonjour Monsieur Monet, I see you are not working today. There are many things I'd like to talk to you about.' And he opened the gate and walked in. But Monet didn't look at him, nor did he speak to him, and after a while the neighbour left in a huff.

The next day Monet's neighbour poked his nose over the hedge and quickly ducked back down again because Monet was at his easel, painting, by the waterlily pond. But Monet called out, 'It's all right, Monsieur le Voisin, come in. I'm not working today. Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?'

Need cheering up?

I have just been to The Big Green Blookshop blog - which I found on Fidra's blog. I've been MATing all morning and I really MUST get down to some writing, but if you need cheering up (I don't this morning, but it happened anyway, if you see what I mean) read this post by one of the owners' sons. It's heaven.

The Big Green Bookshop blog has also got a wonderful song called 'Keep on Smiling' on it which bursts from the blog when you log on ... or soon after, and it really does make you smile. So I defy anyone out there with the blues today not to have them changed to whatever the opposite of the blues are. The reds? The rainbows?

And may the Big Green Bookshop open soon. If they can run a blog like this at a time like the one they're going through, then we can all find something to smile about when we're blue.