Joni Mitchell and Serendipity

Joni Mitchell

A couple of weeks ago, I experienced a lovely little twist of serendipity. I've been starting to think about the next novel I'm going to write -  it's inspired by the stint my mother spent in some caves on the island of Crete, back in the late sixties. I won't go in to details about it now (you never know who may read this and want to steal my idea - tee hee), but I'm feeling very excited as the plot and characters are starting to form in my head. 

Anyway, most people are probably familiar with the iconic voice of Joni Mitchell. I first heard her album 'Blue' from 1971 whilst I was at Uni and have been hooked ever since. I love many of her songs, but there is one in particular that I have played again and again over the years, quite literally to the death! Her song 'Carey'  has remained firmly in my spotify file of favourite songs and even my kids sometimes hum little parts of it. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Joni Mitchell herself stayed in these very same caves as my mother around the same time and her song 'Carey' was inspired by her time there!!  It was so wonderful to find this out, and definitely felt like a serendipitous little nod in the direction that this is the novel I'm meant to be writing next.

Listening to the song now, the lyrics have taken on a whole new meaning, particularly as my mother remembers well the 'Mermaid cafe' she refers to.  I'm pasting some of the lyrics below, and if you want to hear the song and see the caves, watch this little video. Carey was apparently a cane-carrying chef that the young Joni had a relationship with whilst staying at the caves.

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here Carey
But it's really not my home
My fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne

Oh Carey get out your cane
And I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you fine

Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down
Let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let's have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
I'll put on some silver
Oh you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you

Wishes on the wind

'I'm making wishes on the wind....'

Yesterday my middle child said to me, completely out of nowhere, I'm making wishes on the wind, mummy. I had to stop what I was doing and ask her to say it again, just to check I'd heard right. But yes, I had. She repeated it and then proceeded to make up a song about wishing on the wind while she danced around the sitting room. Oh, to have that wonderful, uninhibited imagination of a four year old. She's not trying to be creative - she just, like all children, IS.

In the words of Pablo Picasso, Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you go grow up.

Play

My eldest daughter, lost in the moment

I read a great article in Mslexia recently about play and how vital its role is in our creative endeavours. The writer, Sarah Salway, talks about how guilty we often feel if we allow ourselves the time to 'play' as we feel it's not a good use of our time. But actually, by giving ourselves the liberty to play and experiment, a whole realm of alter personalities can be given life and new doorways opened. And of course, play doesn't just mean being pushed back and forth on a swing or engaging in a game of hide and seek. It's doing something that makes you feel good, simply for the pleasure of the activity and the sensation it creates. Play has no fixed outcome or rules and no material interest. It could be reading, running, kneading dough, travelling...

Anyway, the reason I'm talking about all this is that Sarah Salways's article (and Stuart Brown's very interesting book - Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul) got me thinking about two things: How playing relates to my writing, and how it relates to my perceived idea of the way my children play.

Firstly, with my writing, I know of course the importance of taking risks, but how often do I actually do it? It's very easy to sit at the laptop and write a scene of my novel or a short story and stick to those tried and tested default methods of writing I've built up over the years. But how often do I stretch myself out of those walls I've pencilled around myself? Not enough. As novelist Michelle Lovric states, if the writer takes themselves too seriously, they "rule out serendipitous writing discoveries." After reading the article, I saw a deadline for a short story submission and it was just two days away. I decided, crazy though it was in a way as it was such a short time, to try and write this story. But more importantly, be playful in my attitude to writing this story and see where it took me. I'm pleased to say I got the story done and sent it off and there was definitely a shift there; a small but subtle shift in the way I wrote it. A nutty female stalker jumped out of my imagination on to the page (where did she come from?) and it felt good; a little less safe, a little more from the gut. Who knows if they'll like it, but I felt good about it.

Secondly: my kids. Ok, I am going to quote Stuart Brown here because when I read this paragraph yesterday I literally wanted to hop up and down and shout 'yes! yes!' because it's something I've felt for a long time but not been able to put it into words very well.


'We may think that we are helping to prepare our kids for the future when we organise all their time, when we continually ferry them from one adult-organised, adult-regulated activity to another. And, of course, to some degree these activities do promote culturally approved behaviour as well as reinforce our role as "good" parents. But in fact we may be taking from them the time they need to discover for themselves their most vital talents and knowledge. We may be depriving them of access to an inner motivation to an activity that will later blossom into a motive force for life."


I believe he's really got something here. I want my children to have time and space for their ideas to grow. I am just as guilty of this as the next person, but this constant adult-led organisation of kids' time may be doing them more harm than good. The games that my children have utterly lost themselves in (and I mean games in terms of 'play' with no fixed outcomes, I'm not talking about snakes and ladders) are the ones they have created themselves. The imaginations of children are wild, unfettered and vast and what I've read has reinforced what I believe: provide a safe environment (but not so safe it's completely risk-free - ha!), be playful myself (because children learn more from what we do than say: my parenting blueprint) and let my kids do the rest. And while I'm at it, take a leaf out of their book. Play comes so naturally to children - not so to adults. Stuart Brown talks about adults taking their 'play histories' i.e. delving back into their memories of what you played with as a child and how you played. What did you get get excited about? It could be something as simple as collecting conkers or licking the bowl with your finger after making biscuits. And then reconnect with this play history. I haven't really sat down and thought about this yet, but I'm looking forward to doing this. Because if I can become more playful in my outlook on life, then hopefully this will show in my writing. And my children won't learn this from me, but I'll continue to learn from them, through their inherent joyfulness and playfulness.

Sending my words out to the world

Last thursday, I sent my novel (well, the first 10,000 words) off to 13 agents, yep, 13. Quite a few. As I wrote a couple of blogs ago, when I started re-sending my novel out, I sent it only to the 4 agents who were interested in it the first time round (a writer contact advised not sending it to too many first time round as it can be rather painful for the tender writer to receive a sackful of rejection letters - ouch). Anyway, I've heard back from 2 of them (no ta, we still don't want it) and the others, no word. This was at the start of the summer and I'm wondering if I'll ever hear from them at all. Another writer friend, upon completion of his novel, sent it out to 20 people, received 11 standard rejection letters and 9 of them never got back to him at all. I mean, seriously, I know literary agencies are sometimes running on a shoestring and all the rest of it but how hard can it really be to just drop an email to say they don't want it? Hurrumph. 

But back to me....as I said, last week I decided to thrown caution to the wind and send it to 13 agents. It's a good feeling. Of course I don't know what will happen, but just to be pro-active, to be sending it out to the world. Less than a week later, I have received 3 replies, all no thank you's. One was even quite complementary about my manuscript, saying what an engaging narrative style it had and how she was impressed by its originality. Why then, my mother asked the question, don't they just take it? Well, you see, therein lies the rub: you can't just impress an agent, you have to utterly bowl them over. And even if I get an agent, there is, frustratingly, no guarantee of securing publication. A third writer contact found an agent for her novel who was hugely enthused by her novel, yet simply could not find a British publisher prepared to take it on. Finally, she found a German publisher but the novel was never published in the english language. How crazy is that? But hey, I think I need to stop worrying about what happens to other people and just concentrate on my own book. I'll get there, I know I will.

Birthday Poetry

Last weekend it was my birthday and as part of the Thames Festival we went to a poetry and music festival next to the Oxo Tower called Wild Words. When I was there, I saw a little van with lots of people standing in a queue, clearly waiting for something. Intrigued, I went to investigate and it turned out that there were three poets sitting in the van doing bespoke, take-out poetry - how fabulous is that?

I waited for some time, and when it was my turn, the poet asked me what I would like a poem about. I scratched my head a little, told him it was my birthday and said I'd love a poem about a successful writing year, unsurprisingly mentioning my novel (ha!). He asked me more questions, about my family etc,  scribbled some notes and then told me to come back in about an hour  (there were some pretty ravenous poetry-seekers waiting behind me!). When I returned, the poet stepped out of the van and performed my tailor-made poem to me and it was wonderful. So personal and...well....poetic (duh). He then proceeded to fold it up and put the poem in its own little take-away bag for me to keep! Such a fantastic idea - can you imagine if there were more mobile poetry emporium's on the streets of London? LOVE it.

Hello World

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted. It's been a summer filled with weddings, festivals, picnics, ocean, sunshine and rain. What's happened to my blog? I guess it just fell by the wayside. And I was utterly wrapped up in re-writing my novel, which brings me to why I've decided to start blogging again. It's a long, lonely, painful process this road to publication and I feel now that I want to share some of this process. I feel more determined than ever to get this book published (and yes, even if that means publishing an e-book which would mean, in turn, embracing digital technology and buying a kindle - gulp).

This is where I'm at right now - I've heard back from 2 of the 4 agents who were originally interested in my work 6 years ago. The response has been a polite, firm "no". Today's task: to send my manuscript to several more agents. The picture below is my little boy, finding his independence, exploring. It reminds me of my long road I'm travelling. But at the end of the road is the sea, the destination. And in the words of my favourite poem of all time by John Masefield, I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky. Because that's where my prize is waiting, no matter what form it takes.