Okay, who ate my scarf?

Do you ever have a day when you cannot even control your own clothes, let alone be expected to manage Life with all its whimsy? I am having such a day. It started when I woke from being semi-smothered by my pillow. You know the day bodes badly when your own bedding is conspiring to kill you.

My cardigan on the tube turned into a giant flopping beast, determined to make friends with my tube-dwelling neighbours. Somewhere under Islington my ear-phone wire (what is that called? I somehow suspect not 'ear-phone wire') did something funky with the buttons and the whole shaboodle tied me in a knot while I was trying to get off at Kings Cross. Getting off the tube in the rush hour requires nerves of steel at the best of times; let alone when I have somehow constructed a reef knot from my clothes.

My gloves fell out of my bag as I dug deep for my travel-card; my socks keep bunching down into my trainers, and my top has decided to saucily wink a small crescent of tummy just when I least expect it. Look, clothes, I have work to do today, and I cannot keep checking if you are in the same place as you were this morning. Don’t do this to me! I am supposed to be looking corporate and business-like, despite the fact a conker* dropped out of my bag as I walked in the office. Whoops.

Sometimes I wish I was a monk. They seem to be so sorted in the fashion sense of things. Just a big brown sack – what can go wrong? Although you know I’d have problems roping it in the middle. It is my dream in life to own a slanket.** Seen them yet? A giant blanket with a head hole and sleeves. If I Were an Author (sung to the tune of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof), then magazines would picture me in my gorgeous home, notebook in hand, draped in my slanket. I would be at the forefront of slovenly female author fashion. Until those heady days, however, I am stuck with the evil cardigan and the top of doom.

*A conker is a horse-chestnut. They fall from the sky! Well, trees. Children of Old (sorry, mum) used to drill a hole through them, string them up, and bash them together to see who had the strongest conker. Cheats used to bake them in the oven first so they were like little round bricks.

**This is a slanket. My continuing laughter doesn't halt my desire, strangely.

On not actually writing

Am I actually a typer rather than a writer?

I have been browsing those proper writer rooms on the Guardian online again (cannot tear myself away) and am struck at how the majority of them write in long-hand. Oh no, is this where I am going wrong?

As although I jot the initial idea down in pen, mostly I ‘write’ straight onto the computer. If an idea seems particularly sticky, or I want to see it more clearly, I do write that bit out – usually a side of A4 with my untidy sprawl will do the trick – and then it is back to the keyboard.

The main reason I type everything straight up is that my hand gets tired after only a page of writing long-hand. This is dreadful, it means my handwriting skills are slowly going down the pan, and of course, I do little to no actual writing in a day. Even ‘writing’ a letter these days is typed. But I do get a lot of comfort from typing my words – I can type pages upon pages for a start, and all I have to sacrifice is growing my nails long (you cannot type with long nails!). I also like the linear quality of it, of seeing actual words on the screen, of being able to read my own words without wincing at my untidy lettering and the fact that when actual writing I do tend to misspell words or join the wrong ones – typing is much neater. I also think it is quicker to see mistakes and edits – although you cannot see the whole big picture as easily as you can in ink. At least I can’t, for some strange reason.

But I don’t want to be a typer (she wails) I want to be a writer! Maybe if this book didn’t seem so frighteningly urgent, I’d kick back and get a quill or something. And the urgency is all of my own doing, I know. It’s like my happiness is starting to depend upon it - now that’s not scary at all, is it? And chapter ten is still causing me problems… *kicks chapter ten*

Where do you write?

There is a great special report in the Guardian online called Writers’ Rooms – a collection of photographs and thoughts on their little worlds. I am fascinated for two reasons – mostly everyone’s writing space looks like they are hugely rich (tapestries, one or two heirlooms, huge windows, two or more computers) and of course, these are real proper authors, and it is where real proper authors work. How does my space match up, I wondered…

Through the Chair

I work out of the spare bedroom, so it’s not ideal – there is a wardrobe behind me that I do my level best to ignore, and we are not allowed to put up anything on the walls unless there already is a nail there (and they check this, the pedantic so and so’s). See, ideally I would like more pictures on the wall, more colours around me, but heigh ho. This flat came with furniture, so I happily appropriated our old dining table and chair to work on – they are both made of solid wood and are huge and heavy. I cannot sit straight to save my life, so am forever twisting about forgetting the chair does not, and end up with a ton of bruises – that table is not forgiving. I have speakers, and whenever am stuck I play a range of music that I have on the computer. Next songs up are Rod Stewart (Maggie May), The Kinks (Waterloo Sunset) and various Slade tunes - I know these sort of tunes so well that they are comforting and I can work through them, as well as sing along every so often.

To the right of the computer I have my printer, on top of that is my Top Twenty book (I like to listen to music from the month I am writing about if possible), and some research books. Propped up is my Flower Fairies of the winter book, invaluable for a bit of chilly garden research. You can hardly see it, but my chapter plan is beside my mouse, I mostly resist the urge to rest my coffee cup on it, although a few tell tale circles beg a different story.

And that is all the story this picture tells us, I could widen the camera's gaze but then you would see untidy stacks of research, tons of books banked against the wall, a sort of glitter glo-lamp thing that spins around, and my collection of old annuals, books and records. See, where I actually write is sort of the boring bit...

Life Coaching

I got a free life coaching session today, with the quid pro quo that I would write about it afterwards in hopefully glossy terms, hopefully for a glossy. Before the session, my thoughts on life coaches were a bit sceptical, as it seemed to me to be a glorified form of counselling, a bit of an indulgence for people who could afford to pay. But afterwards I surprised myself by seriously thinking about going back.

It is an indulgence; there is no other way to describe it. But we indulge ourselves in so many things – cigarettes, alcohol, just ‘one’ piece of cake, those new clothes, that DVD – and none of these will make you feel as good for so long. So why not forego some other indulgences and try something that is designed to help you achieve your aims? At least, that is the way I am now thinking, which does make me wonder if there was a shiny pendulum clock within my sight line in the room...

“You will come back, you will come back…”

Of course, I talked about wanting to finish this novel, and not only finish it but to find an agent who is willing to go that extra mile for me and a publisher who will be thrilled to take on my book and get it out into the world. Scarily, we gave this ambition a date – Feb 20th 2008. Blimey…

We also talked about my confidence (lack of), which is probably something I need to address, such as when people ask me the age old question ‘so, what do you do?’ I nearly always mutter to my feet something like ‘umm, sort of write stuff, articles, that sort of thing’, which isn’t the most prepossessing way of announcing what you do for a living. Interestingly, we worked out that although I do write articles and get published, I seem to have decided a long time ago that unless I am an author with an actual book in the shops, then anything else I do is meaningless. Talk about giving yourself something hard to live up to…

It was actually quite painful in places talking about this, I do hate people suddenly seeing the ‘real me’, as I guess I keep myself quite hidden. Even here… is ‘Jayne Ferst’ my real name? Maybe… but maybe not! I remember once telling a teacher I wanted to be a writer, and he considered me thoughtfully before saying that most writers are nearly always on the outside of life looking in, and he could see that within me… do you know, I nearly cried, it was awful to hear him suddenly speak my heart. And today, even though I was not cold, I was shivering as we were speaking, which apparently was because I was talking about something that meant so much to me.

Anyway, before I waffle on into oblivion, we set targets and goals to achieve ‘for next time’ (yeah, I did notice that!), and I felt very positive, like I had just offloaded some junk that was taking up space. Is this worth swapping some pleasures for? I seem to think it probably is… let’s face it, the more people you have rooting for you, the better, right?