Always my problem – I have too many projects going on at the same time, round which I have to fit living, breathing, having time for people and family and walking the dog. The latter at least means that I have half an eye on breathtaking nature, the water birds on my next-door reservoir and avoiding the mud after weeks of rain. Oh, and that’s another problem I have – needing frequent changes of vista. Thus, though I do live next door to a reservoir – well, a row of three actually – I also travel near and far to find interesting walks. Of course, I live half a mile from the sea, so bits of the coastal path also serve.
At present, I have a poetry book in the offing. It’s being illustrated at the moment, by an old friend who is also a talented and creative artist. He’s sent me a few pages already, and the images are stunning and certainly enhance the poems. Then I need to find a publisher for it.
I’ve been writing a book about stalking, based on my own experiences of being stalked for two of my University years. I’d buried this deep because it had been so frightening, but, after more than 20,000 words written, I’m not enjoying doing it nor do I think it’s up to scratch. Maybe at some point I’ll turn it into a short story.
I wrote many short stories in my thirties and forties, when children and work prevented me from immersing myself in larger projects. Some of these did well in competitions back then. I may brush them off and make them into a collection – with the stalking one too.
Creation and Destruction, as the novel around Hades and Persephone is now called, has been languishing with a publisher for a few months. Hope I’ll hear something soon.
I want to write a memoir about my mother’s Alzheimer’s, which will include many poems I wrote about that experience. Perhaps I’ll turn to that and give stalking a rest.
The novel I began about another ancestor of mine, Caroline Herschel, has stopped at about a third of the way through. I need to do some research in Hanover, where she was both born and spent her last years. She was treated like a returning film star when she returned [unlike in this country where her work was ignored, despite her brother William insisting to the Royal Society that much of the work was her own]. Because Hanover valued her so much, I know there will be priceless information in the museums there. I need to go there [when I can afford it], spend some time trying to find remnants of the town as it had been in the eighteenth century and talk to the museum curators, so that I can finish the book.
Then there is the story of my Dad’s parents, sketchily mentioned in my novel The Courage Game. That clamours for my attention, especially as my sister went out to Nakusp and took more than eighty photos on her phone of the court records from my grandfather’s trial. Such wonderful fodder for the book.
But meanwhile, until my mortgage finishes [soon] I have to make a living, so am also still writing new resources for Drama Teachers!
You see what I mean?! When will I learn to prioritise and not try to do everything at once!