The best short stories around

I came across this link today from One Story Blog in which a list of top short stories has been compiled. Now of course this is subjective and one of many different top ten lists that could exist, but even so I'm ashamed to say I've not read a single story from their top ten (though I think I've read a few from the long list). Sigh. I love short stories, and love writing them, so I know how important it is to read as widely as I can. Think I've got some catching up to do. But whilst I'm talking about short stories, I'm surprised Alice Munro didn't make it on to their top list. She is a Canadian writer, little read over here which is a shame in my opinion as I think she's a fantastic writer. Here's one of my favourite Alice Munro stories - it's called 'Tricks' and is in her collection 'Runaway' - I only read this story once over two years ago but it has really stayed with me and surely, for anyone who writes short fiction, this is what we aspire to.

Any of this ring true?

An excerpt from 'The hand that first held mine' by Maggie O'Farrell. She blatantly nicked Elizabeth Stone's wonderful words: "Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone. But still, there's a great deal of truth here!


The women we become after children


We change shape, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair. We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and - look! - they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch the knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above'. We give up smoking, we colour our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming pools, libraries for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their smooth, washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.




Shit, what are the four indicators of meningitis??!!!

Springtime at Chalet Brio

A couple of weeks ago we returned from two amazing weeks staying at my aunt and uncle's chalet in the mountains in France. Here's a little poem I wrote about it...

Listen.

A stream trips over rocks as it follows its course downwards,

downwards from icy peaks to its valley cradle.

The forest is alive with the sounds of winged creatures – drilling and calling, soaring and seeking.

Distant bells sound from around the necks of cows, their craggy hulks weighted and framed against green slopes.

A child laughs, a swing creaks, a car roars, a lamb bleats,

a hammer pounds against nail,

then all is silent again.

Smell.

The secrets from the wood, curling into the dusky air.

Smoke, mingling with the earth’s scent, damp after a downpour.

The beefy, dungy, grassy smell that hangs itself stubbornly from mountain top to toe.

Wafts of culinary magic escaping from beneath a lid and tiptoeing down the stairs.

Smell the coffee brewing and the wet grass stewing in the evening rain.

Taste.

The green slice and crunch of teeth cutting through fresh market lettuce.

The creamy decadence of comté cheese and the know-you-shouldn’t-but-just-can’t-resist-spreading-it-thicker butter, pale as ivory.

The tenderness of lamb, tang of apples, sweetness of pears,

The lightness of the baguette beneath its hard, crispy shell

And the wine that slips gracefully, gratefully down.

Feel.

Put your hand against the sun-mellowed, rain-brushed wood of the chalet.

Turn your face to the expanding light that seeps over the mountain tops and slowly floods the garden, holding you in its brisk, bright clutches as a new day dawns.

Look.

The ark of a parapente appears, a bright scrap of fabric curved against the blue sky.

The breeze carries delicate white hands of dandelion clocks, tick-tocking down the peaceful hours.

Carry walking up the slope into L’Etelley, past the carpet of yellow dandelions and buttercups spread in thick clumps,

Past the tiny chapel, locked and frozen,

Keep walking, keep walking and here, Chalet Brio appears, a slice of paradise carved into the mountainside.

The Go Between

I've just read an wonderful book - it's such a joy to discover some of the older classics. It's called 'The Go-Between' and is by LP Hartley and the first line is the famous and true words: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.


It's written from the perspective of a man in his sixties looking back to the events of what happened in the hot summer of 1900 when he was twelve years old. I found Hartley's portrayal of a young boy's innocence snatched away from him by the surrounding adults who use him for their own gain extremely moving.

Definitely one to read!

Meet the children

I've posted pictures of my children before, but I'd like to introduce them properly.

Here's Maya, my first born, age 4 ("almost five", I hear her say)

This cheeky little lady is Lily, age 2

And here's the little man, Benjamin, eight and a half bonny, bouncy months.

I don't want this blog to be about my insomnia, the fact that since I had children I stopped sleeping (yes, even those nights when there's not a peek out of any of them), but I'm afraid sometimes it seeps so deeply into my existence that it will be impossible not to mention it here. I know that being creative, doing things I truly value like writing, provide a lifeline for me and it's a way to lift myself out of the blues that I sometimes grapple with.

But looking at these pictures of my kids, I know how very, very lucky I am to have three such happy, healthy little people in my life.

Diamonds in my diary

Where does my creative life fit around perpetually-knackered-mother-of-three-under-five? Sleep has the habit of eluding me (I've charted this ad nauseum in Notes of an Insomniac mother) and I often wonder how? where? when? can I write. I got so excited about going back to work on my novel, but realistically, here I am grabbing five minutes to blog, standing up to type whilst the children are munching their way through snacks (like an egg-timer, the second the final crumb is gobbled up, my peace will evaporate)....so when will I really be able to spend the time I need to work on my novel? And even if I do find the time, will I have enough energy?

And I know, I know, this time will come. And I need to just remain in the present and enjoy my gorgeous children. But sometimes it all just feels overwhelming when I'm so exhausted and sleep-deprived and I feel like I'd like to go into hibernation for a year or twenty.

BUT, here's the good news. Over the past week or so I have unexpectedly reconnected with diary writing. I have kept a diary for almost thirty years (blimey) but it has always been sporadic, depending on what's happening in my life and how much time I'm spending blogging, for example. But last week I started a new diary and hit upon a different approach: rather than my normal recording of events and feelings, I decided to write three things each day that made me smile, or that I felt proud of myself about, or that I felt really positive about. It may sound like a strange thing to do, but on the days I feel low and exhausted (not to mention frustrated at my perceived lack of creativity meted out to my children and myself), it's helpful to remind myself that I can always find small diamonds of laughter, happiness and creativity, even on the toughest and roughest of days.

Friction Magazine

Click here to see the short piece I had accepted by Friction Magazine recently. I wrote this story for a creative writing evening class a few years back in which we had to write a piece from two differing viewpoints. Reading back over it now, there are several things I'd change, including the title! But still, it feels great to have something published.

Is today nearly over yet?

Here is a small snapshot out of my day:

8pm and 2 of my 3 children are screaming. My two year old is screaming because she had a half hour nap in the buggy earlier and is wide awake, unhappy that I keep asking her to go back to bed and I think she is quite enjoying the level of noise she is making and is experimenting with different screaming tones. My baby is screaming because his teeth are hurting (this is the default explanation for pretty much all unhappiness these days but it could just as easily be that he is unimpressed with some of the weird concoctions I feed him and has tummy ache). My husband is away on a 3 day conference, I've had horribly little sleep over the past two nights and all I want to do is collapse into the sofa with a very large thud. It's been one of those days: locked out of the house, pouring rain, library shut because of a freak fire alarm...But no, the screaming continues and you know when you get that tightness around your chest and you feel on the verge of throwing something very large and heavy through the window, just for the pleasure of hearing and seeing shattering glass? (Or is that just me??!!!!) Well, I resisted because I knew how long that would then to clear up and sort out, so instead had a good old wail along with my screaming children and now, one hour later - thank the Lord - all is quiet upstairs. I almost feel like I'm whispering this as I type, for fear of jinxing my words!

BUT. On a much happier note, a short story has just been accepted for Friction, an online journal for creative writing - yay! I'll post the link to the story when it's live.

Essential Writers

I have just stumbled upon a website which looks like a good resource for writers:

Essential Writers

The web never fails to amaze me. There is SO much out there (too much??)

Anyway, I am writing this site down as a reminder to myself to come back to this great site. My memory is worse than a sieve these days, it is like a sieve with holes in it. But now that my eight month old is finally sleeping through the night, that is a vast improvement on recent months when - forget about the seive - I had no memory at all!

Nature Deficit Disorder?

I remember blogging about Nature Deficit Disorder in my Adventuring Maya blog here and Richard Louv's book 'Last child in the woods.' Well, fast forward a year and a half and now I feel sure that not only are my children suffering from this, but their mama is too. We are living in - I must confess - a green, leafy and pleasant corner of London. However, I don't come into enough contact with open space. None of us do in our family, and I know that when I tell my kids we're heading for a park (ie parkland) and they ask where the swings are, it should hardly come as a surprise.

It is really, really important to me that my children grow up with a love of nature and the natural world, but how can I expect this if we stay ensconced in the suburbs of London? And as for me, this is what I need as regularly as I can to be creative, to feel alive, to be energised:
I need to stand in a space and close my eyes and hear birdsong, not just the rush of cars.
I need to be able to look up and see a canopy of leaves and wide open sky, not just tall buildings.
And I need to feel grass and earth and sand under my feet.

These needs often feel physical, starting as a dull throb and building up to a tightening around the chest. When I think about how much time I spent as a child in fields, letting my imagination run free, sometimes alone, sometimes with others and sometimes with a book, I occasionally feel gripped with a guilt of sorts that my own children don't have that same opportunity here in London. I am certain that these countless hours spent in nature helped to stoke my creativity. But I know that it is pointless and unhelpful feeling bad just because for my children, a 'park' contains swings and slides and a roundabout. We are urban dwellers right now, what can I expect? I need to just take every opportunity that presents itself to explore nature with my children, whether it takes the form of the allotment, a walk along the river or pointing out all the signs of spring as we walk to school. Because it is here, all around us, even in London. In the words of Rahima Baldwin who wrote a book called 'You are your child's first teacher', 'Nature is all around us, even in the city. If you can't exercise your powers of observation on a Sunday walk in the local park, you won't experience anything by the sea or in the mountains.' So maybe it's time for me to start appreciating what we have here, right under our noses.