Writing Tools

I am about to sit down to work (11am, bad girl!)

I thought I'd post a picture of my tools, that I absolutely can't write without:




Tea

Biscuits

Diary in the background (I need to give myself, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly targets, not to mention, annual, and a five year plan. Therefore, my diary is my best friend. I use a paperblanks diary, I just love it.)

White Tack for sticking notes and pictures to the wall.

A desk obviously, (though some people write on their laps, I actually need a desk.)

A laptop (none of this writing it out first by hand lark)

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

My blue fluffy slippers. I cannot even begin to think without a pair of fluffy slippers. My feet must be cosy and warm for the rest of me to function. A previous pair were pink and literally fell apart before I sadly binned them.

I'm a big fan of blue... particularly this shade.

If you feel like leaving comments with details of your own OCD activities, please do.

YOU ....ouch!

I had a photo shoot for You, the Mail on Sunday supplement, last Friday. And so I thought I'd go and have my eyebrows shaped on Thursday, you know, put my best eyebrow forward and all that.

BIG MISTAKE

You hear about these horror stories where women get badly burned by the wax but you don't --- well I never did --- think it could happen.

Let me tell you, it hurts, it stings, it's really horrible and I shall be going back to threading, which is pricey but accident free. Or the lovely cream thing they do at the Estee Lauder counter at big stores like Selfridges and House of Fraser.

What baffles me is that this isn't actually my eyebrow, IT'S MY EYELID, daft beauty therapist.

The Wheel of Fortune

According to my flat mate, this is supposed to help with life planning. Shade in each segment to indicate where your priorities are, and where you'd like them to be.





I've had my head in a whirl recently because I've been thinking about leaving London for Manchester: I can't afford to live here. Just when I'd almost hauled out the cardboard boxes, booked the removal van (i.e the family) I was offered a job. My guardian angel seems to have a cheeky streak in him; he drags me by my hair through challenges, then hands me a golden egg, then does it all over again. It's not ideal, but I do have complete faith now, from experience, that nothing is ever sooooooo bad it can't be solved. With that comes contentment.

For the past six months, I've been so busy with old stuff - things associated with Single Mother on the Verge the book, which I love doing, but let's be frank here darlings -- I don't get paid for most of the chatting on radio and sitting to have my picture taken stints, and it cuts into a writing day something chronic: also whilst I'm not getting paid, I'm spending like a fiend.

Unless you are in the stratosphere of internationally successful author, one does not make a shit load of money from writing. At least, not in the beginning. The agent needs to be paid, the tax man needs to be paid, and you need to use the advance to write the book... it doesn't, well not in my case, get added to some great big saving pool reserved for shopping trips and cruises.

When I was 28, after years at university, and years of balancing work as I wrote and brought up a child, I was more than £10,000 in debt. Actually, quite a bit more than that. Yeah, loads more than that. (Which is usual for postgraduates, Mother, so don't fret.)

At the tail end of 2007, I lost a job I loved (cuts in funding), my relationship ended, and in a two-week whirlwind I sold a book, which previously I had no concept of, nor intention of writing, for a high figure. I hit 30 on December 29, 2007, with a different stride to the girl who hit twenty with a little life growing in her tum. From aged 20, everything would be about trying to provide for that little life, and not 18-30 holidays in Magaluf.

I wrote a book and managed to clear my debts. We didn't go on a luxury holiday (or even a holiday abroad), and the one thing I'd like to treat myself to, a classic navy Burberry mac, is still hanging in Selfridges on Oxford Street, and not in my wardrobe. It was scary. It was like giving birth in House of Fraser --- when you didn't know you were pregnant. But it gave me such an enormous amount of perspective, because suddenly I had choices about where I might like to live, and the person I could be, because I wasn't chasing the wolf from the door everyday. The wolf isn't at the door now, but I can hear it howling around the corner. I'm glad it's there because it keeps me hungry, and it keeps me real.

I was lucky to have the luxury of being able to write and promote my book, and be a stay-at-home mum. It is the being 'a stay-at-home mum' part which was my dream, baby. My dream. Everything before had been about managing, but now I didn't have to manage and could simply 'do' what I loved, bizarrely that was tapping away in the morning, and making dinner at a decent time in the evening, running the bath, helping with homework, and reading a bedtime story.

However, I think I'm going to join the real world of work and writing again. Is it possible?

Thoughts please....

Sleepy

Last night I just couldn't get to sleep.

I tried all the usual remedies: Valerian, reading, a banana, a meditation CD, a Radio 4 play, and still I could not nod off. My double bed bumps up against a window, which quite oddly slides open from the bottom up. It was 3am, I was too warm and so swept the latch across the window frame then pressed my hands against the glass shunting it up. Then I lay on my belly, my head resting in my palms instantly soothed by the cold air that hit my cheeks, like I was in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

I shuffled forward on my mattress, stuck my head out of the window, and looked across our yard up to the London rooftops with chimneys that touch the sky. I listened to the sounds coming from the high street: an ambulance, a bus, a cat, a baby crying, and from the flats opposite, a couple having sex.

I slid down my bed, rolled onto my back, and gazed through the darkness up to the ceiling. 'This time last year, I was in love,' I thought. And then: 'This time last year, I was in hospital, sitting on a sofa, being told I needed to have an emergency operation as he held my hand.'

I didn't like that thought and so I rolled onto my front and again looked out of the window. In the distance I could hear a plane heading somewhere, and the still wails of said couple in the final throes of (evidently) wondrous copulation.

'If we'd have lived here, in Couple Heaven, would we have split up?' I thought. 'Maybe, I'll drop him a line and see how he is.'

Then I realised what a bad idea that could be. I drove myself mad with these thoughts; some romances, that one was more fleeting than any other, can stick with you like a bunion. All that thinking really wore me out.

Did I mention...

Did I mention Penguin payed me a lovely amount of money?

Oh yes, did I mention I SPENT the lovely amount of money.... oh dear, I really truly and honestly spent it. I can't imagine I will ever be that rich again. (I wasn't even really rich. Just you know, a bit below comfortable.)

(Sorry Mum, sorry Dad, sorry everyone else, but I had to use something to pay the bills.)

So now I'm in a icky sticky situation where I need money to pay the bills, and I'm in the capital city where everything is criminally expensive.

Even tampons are expensive here. Even fresh air has a price on it.

All Over Again

Hello.

I haven't been blogging for a while here, I've been blogging over at MumsRock, a fab'n'funky site for Mums with non of the twee loveliness of various parenting sites. I've had blog block. The problem, I think, was that I had nothing to write on this site, and I reckon that was because it contained such a lot of content about the old me: a girl who lived in Manchester, on a social housing estate, with an eco-warrior, and wondered when her neighbours might next kick off, and when the bills might get paid, and her son missed his father. And of course, I had all sorts of dilemmas: blog writing probably works best when there are all sorts of dilemmas to try to figure out. I was often broken-hearted or despairing, mostly both, and poor, and forever being made redundant! The credit crunch hadn't even hit then. My blog won an award, I attracted the agent associated for making a success out of Belle de Jour and Wife in the North, Penguin paid me a lovely amount of money. I moved from the estate to London... I live in lush Nappy Valley, I moved agent, I got a job.

....I've changed, and so I want this blog to change too - I kept wanting to blog, but it didn't seem right. Then I thought of a solution, quite simply I would delete all the old content. I'm sorry if you've read the book and came here to look up the back story, it's all gone now. Delete, delete, delete.

In its place is a new Single Mother on the Verge. I'm 32 - I reckon that makes me a woman-soon. I'm completely and utterly single, if you've read my book, you'll know I had a number of romances, if you haven't read the book, buy it because it is so much better than the blog (was).

So I'm going to try to blog....

Excellent, I'm glad it's all gone: I feel like I've revamped my wardrobe, moved country, changed my hair, started all over again.....