A Bit About Me
I set out to write a memoir when I was about ten and got no further than the first line which stated where I was born in - 'the bustling town of Brighton'. What could I say, aged ten, about myself? And I've found myself similiarly stumped when I set out to write this at age 65. When I can't fictionalise and it's about me I clam up however I have written, in varying numbers of drafts, four novels, quite alot of poems and the afew short story, which have produced some mild praise, enough to keep me going anyway. I had an interesting, travelling childhood, my father worked for the British Council and we lived in Afghanistan, Thailand and Tanzania (then Tanganyika). My memories are pin sharp of these places, food, colour, smells, people different to us, wonderful. Emotionally hard to be constantly uprooted and I still feel an outsider wherever I live, I stand back and watch, I observe and I think this is good for writing. Sometimes I long for home but don't know where that is, sometimes I get itchy feet and I've moved constantly all through my life. I got married young, had three children and got divorced when they were 6 and 8. When my two daughters were at junior school, way back in the eighties I compiled a book about the deaths of children. My own son had died at four and I found the literature on children dying almost non existant so wrote to the Guardian and was deluged with letters from other parents. About twenty of us wrote pieces for a book which just missed getting published when the small publisher who was interested got taken over by a bigger publisher. I went back to school in my early 40's and loved it, the routine, the structure and the access to knowledge - studied psychology and sociology then went on to work as a counsellor for several years,which I also loved and found I was suited to. It had a shelf life in my case and I gave that up when my mother died and with the small inheritance she left spent a couple of years writing. Now I fit it in with work and my grand children. I feel nervous in a positive way when I sit down to write, there's a fluttering, a stirring, a little depth charge of excitement and all being well I can write away for hours. This doesn't mean it's brilliant but it's the vital energy that carries you along – the editing, correcting and groaning can come later. My biggest wish now is that I had more time, on a daily basis, not necessarily time in life years even though I'm looking at the home run being the age I am now. Sometimes I think it's all far too late but then I think of Mary Wesley. I'm sending out my fourth novel right now and have racked up four rejections.