An ambulance and A&E

This is cold season and Meredith is participating with gusto. One cold rolls into another and Meredith has been a snotty mess for a few weeks. This week, however, things got more serious. I noticed that she wasn't breathing well on Monday. We phoned NHS Direct for advice and they called an ambulance. Two trips to the GP and an evening in paediatric Accident and Emergency later she is much the same but David and I are shattered.

Meredith has bronchiolitis, for which time and patience are the only treatments. While mostly happy, she is panting like a dog straining at its lead and coughing like an old smoker. We were told in hospital that her symptoms could last for another two weeks, which when you’re only twenty six weeks old is a long time.

All the medical to and fro means that the already slow work on preparation for the EBook came to a halt this week. But I need to get going again if I am going to get Wild Rose out for Christmas. On the one hand I am more than usually exhausted by sleepless nights waiting to hear her breathe again after a coughing fit, on the other she is sleeping more during the day. So while I should perhaps be sleeping, I am (still) reading through the manuscript for one final time.

Reading a novel would be a glorious luxury at the moment. Somewhat like GCSE or A Level texts, however, when you’re reading under pressure the enjoyment is less. It will be a relief to finish and get the manuscript sent off. At that point, I think I’ll have a nap.

Related posts: Putting the baby to bed 

Putting the baby to bed

I still don’t know how I did it but as I made a tiptoed retreat from the side of Meredith’s cot, I managed to catch my elbow on the headboard. Crash: Meredith awake and crying.

As far as following parenting advice goes, we have followed some zealously, ignored some and with the rest wondered what species of baby they were raising. In terms of sleep, we have probably done almost all of the things that are warned against for fear of getting your baby into bad habits: cuddling, feeding, rocking, bringing them into bed, walking them…

Meredith’s eyes were open as she was passed to me at birth. She has remained wakeful and alert since. Getting her to sleep during the day has been a recurrent challenge of the past six months. And while neither fireworks, dogs barking, rubbish lorries, nor children playing seem to wake her, put your cutlery too loudly into the drawer and her eyes snap open upstairs. After watching her eyes droop millimetre by millimetre it’s frustrating to be sent straight back to the beginning to start the process again.

Having finished the final corrections on Wild Rose, I have persuaded myself to read through the manuscript one last time. I want to pick up any more errors I can spot, see that some additions I made make sense and just check one last time that it’s in a good state to publish. Going back to the beginning again is hard work. It means another long stretch of scrutiny for the manuscript. If I still read with my finger on the page, it would be worn thin by now. I am also impatient to get the EBook conversion process started and the novel onto the virtual shelves.

Related posts: An ambulance and A&E Some things you have to learn to love Preparation vs Inspiration

Handstand on the edge of a precipice

Some of the most impressive feats of athleticism I saw during London 2012 were the handstands in the diving competitions. For someone who can’t do a forward roll, the perfectly controlled handstands were a revelation. That they were performed on the edge of a ten metre high drop in front of millions of spectators all over the world was miraculous. What if, after all that effort and a beautiful handstand, the diver belly flopped into the pool? The failure would seem worse for the elaborate overture.  

As I prepare to release Wild Rose as an Ebook I feel like the diver in a handstand on the edge of the precipice. I started writing the novel in 2008; coincidentally, it was in America just as Barack Obama was campaigning for his first term. At first I didn’t talk about it because I wasn’t sure I could do it. Once the book was written and I began making decisions based on pursuing a career as a writer, I had to own up. Between that moment and now there has been a lot of talk about Wild Rose. After the long build up I am aware of the drop into the pool and the danger of a belly flop.

Another extraordinary dive was that of Felix Baumgartner who last month fell to earth from thirty nine kilometres up, breaking the sound barrier on his way down. I have no idea how he could bring himself to step off the platform and just drop: I can’t watch it without feeling sick.

However, there’s no point in the build up without the jump. I am standing on the platform. (If I could do a handstand I would.) It’s taken me a long time and a lot of effort to get there. Now I just have to summon up the courage to fall off.

Related posts: Bad news

Are you a perfectionist?

Before I started writing, I read several articles by writers complaining about their own perfectionism. One advised that when you were worrying about which word was exactly right and whether a comma should go here or there then you were ready to submit your manuscript. I was sceptical. If I ever got to that stage, I thought, I really wouldn’t care about a comma here or there.

 

I’ve always resisted proof reading. It is meticulous, which I am not. I’m much happier to have a go and live with the consequences. All through school I rarely read my work through before submitting it – much to the frustration of my teachers. Being critical so soon after I had invested that much effort into something was dispiriting: I wanted to tick it off the list, tell myself ‘well done’ and move on. Only after being a teacher myself and experiencing the frustration of marking ‘almost there’ work have I come round to the idea of proof reading. Now that I am trying to make a career of writing I am forcing myself to do it. 

Preparing Wild Rose to be made into an EBook, I am reading the manuscript more closely than I ever have before. It’s a new level of scrutiny. Now that I’m not reading for the story I see errors all over the place: sentences starting without capital letters, speech left lingering without closing speech marks, remnants of old characters long deleted. Then there are those pesky commas – here, there or not at all? The closer the manuscript gets to an audience outside my family, my agent or someone I’ve paid for critique, the more paranoid I become about leaving errors for critical eyes to find.

 In a sleep deprived state I also doubt myself. Late last night I spent longer than should have been necessary wondering whether it should be ‘pulled the door close’, or ‘pulled the door closed’. After repeating them too many times both options sounded like nonsense, like repeating ‘pyjamas’ over and over. But with limited time you just have to make a decision. Having few perfectionist tendencies makes this easier. I have to be pragmatic; there’s no point having a perfect manuscript that no one will ever see.

 I often wonder how perfectionists cope as parents. I try my best to work out what our daughter needs and how to balance cuddles with the washing up. But there’s a lot that slides by in the passing day. When bedtime comes and it’s shortly about to begin all over again there’s little time or inclination to review what’s already been done.

 

Which is just as well: there’s only so much perfectionism I can muster and it’s almost entirely devoted to commas at the moment.

The Fog

David and I are discovering the full range of fatigue associated with being parents. So far we’ve made it through the sleepless nights of a newborn. We’re getting used to long days of work for him and solo parenting for me. Now we have a new kind of tiredness to contend with. Meredith seems to be at a dreadful tipping point; we have lost settled sleep at night but we haven’t quite made it to longer naps in the day.

 

The result is a mental fog. It’s not a picturesque cosy-making Cornish fog. It’s a thick and cold wall of white East Anglia fog. Tasks that I might have been able to achieve in half an hour in the past stretch out endlessly and impossibly. Before much ground can be made they are inevitably interrupted by the little coughs and whimpers of a stirring baby.

 

My main task for this week is to proof-read the manuscript for Wild Rose one final time before sending it off to be converted into EBook format. I have to be certain that there are no mistakes and that I am completely happy with every word. Self publishing means that those final decisions and touches are mine alone.

 

Finding time to work is challenging. The fog of exhaustion makes me work slowly, doubt what I’m doing and forget what I’ve already done. If I am going to get Wild Rose published as an EBook and A New World finished before Meredith is doing her GCSEs I will have to find a new way of working.

 

I read that we all have sleep cues – those things that tell us that we are comfortable and it is safe to go to sleep. Meredith is developing her own sleep cues. Lying next to Daddy is great, but not being rocked in his arms. Being rocked by Mummy is perfect, but not whilst cuddling Bunny. Trucks rumbling past the buggy are fine, but the dishwasher being emptied is absolutely not.

 

I need to retrain my work cues. Before having a baby I created a nest around my desk: a cup of tea, a glass of water, an apple, my notebook, the laptop, something to look at out of the window, Post-It notes, fountain pen, appropriate music. My new work cues need to be expediency and opportunity: in my pyjamas, late at night, early in the morning, on walks, in the moments she is napping and in the moments, such as this one, where she has just woken up and is still happy with just Bunny for company.

 

With a notebook in my changing bag and a grandparent to push her out in the buggy I will gradually get the work done. When the fog lifts I hope to find it was also of reasonable quality.

 

 

Bad news

The first part of a trilogy needs to end with some satisfaction but enough suspense to keep the story moving. Accordingly, The Book and the Baby concluded with the birth of our daughter, Meredith, but my first novel, Wild Rose, was still on submission and waiting for someone to publish it.

 

This second blog needs to start with a twist in the tale – something to get the story started again. And life has obliged. My agent emailed me this week to say that unfortunately the final round of submissions was unsuccessful and that there is nothing more she can do for Wild Rose at the moment.

 

So, it’s over to me. Whilst I finish writing A New World, I want Wild Rose to be working its way toward publication, which means self publishing as an eBook is the next step. Self publishing means self financing, self promoting and self publicising – all of which are a challenge.

 

But the biggest challenge of all is to do any work whilst taking care of our beautiful baby. As well as being the ultimate distraction, at only four and a half months she needs a great deal of my time and energy. Even as I write this Merry’s Granny is pushing her back up the garden in tears (Merry’s not Granny’s) and work will be paused until the next free moment.

 

The path the publication will be trod with baby steps for the time being.

Welcome

Welcome to The Book and the Buggy: a sequel to The Book and the Baby. After nine months of testing the idea that writing a book is like having a baby the baby has arrived but the book hasn’t. The Book and the Buggy continues the story of the book now that the baby is here.