Moved

http://kmlockwood.com/

Gone here now!

...suffer a sea change

Be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.

I had wanted the freedom to write: time to call my own - and now I've got it.

I am surprised by how much I miss the routine of the school day now that I'm not teaching, There are no bells to tell me when break is, when to change subject or when to eat lunch (though we do tend to go by Radio 4 and listen to the Archers). I am on my own.

The muse should find me busy . I strive to write - easiest in the first draft where the word count rises. Echoes of s.m.a.r.t. targets. I pummel the writing into shape, scan it for every last redundant adverb, any hint of the passive voice and make marks appear on the screen. So much extracting of teeth.

House elf duties mute my jabbering conscience. I should be this, I should be that. Tutoring gives me some structure and cash. Crutches, the both of them.

Thalia stands behind my shoulder and sings the phrase I need when I  water the strawberries. She drops a tern's feather for a quill into my lap while I'm on the bus. She leaves messages on the strand-line for me to find when I'm  picking up sea glass. She won't be ordered.

She chooses to come and inspire when I'm just being.

It's all a bit Buddhist for a lass from the West Riding, a scholarship girl . I feel like the third little pig finding out his brother's hut of living willow is the one to have in an earthquake zone. How do I find that shy dreamy girl, the one I had to outgrow, and tell her she's needed?

Self-discipline and creativity - what a pairing . For me, trying to nurture these two dizygotic twins is like coming to terms with drift diving.   You have to be organised. There are rules: depth, air, time. Yet it is letting the current take you that leads to the freedom and the fun. You can't control it.

I pray that in time this new way of life produces something rich and strange in my work.

Seven Stories - and other Northern inspirations

1...of rain and racing

A downpour pocks on the gravelly concrete slabs of Elvington Airfield. Arias from the Ferraris and Lamborghinis belt out over the generators and thrumming marquees. I smell the testosterone over the chargrills. Did a Brylcreem Boy in the old control tower watch the Hamster's crash or Stephen's jaunt in an Aston Martin?

2 Stone circle at Stoke Flatt

On Frogatt Edge, gritstone frowns over rumpled Derbyshire. Climbers' carabiners jangle and cottongrass bobs like rabbit scuts over the peatbrown bogs. In a wiry huddle of birch trees I find a small stone circle carpeted with green tussocks. Old bracken like bad thatch besieges it. I smell the campfire, the rocks for backrests. The branch-built stockade digs into Bronze Age ribs.One stone stands taller - the story teller's place.

3 Lastingham - ancient crypt and carvings

Four saintly brothers settled in some high and remote hills says The Venerable Bede.Sculptured stone and candles shimmer in this thin and holy place. Who was the Viking buried beneath the hogsback tomb? And what of the Curate, his Violin and The Blacksmith's Arms?

4 Falling Foss

If you cannot find a story sung by the cascading waters, or whispered in the Hermitage hewn from a single rock; if there are none buried in the shale-backed cave, then clamber up and sit in the wishing chairs.Or try Midge Hall. Tea and cake should do it.


5 Azaleas and Knights Templar

Temple Newsam with my dear old dad. The scent of yellow azaleas pinches at my nose with nostalgia. Christopher's face when he saw the Steam Rally - eyes stretched wide to pull the spectacle in, too happy to smile.

We swirl sagging icecream dangling in swags from our cornets in the Stable Courtyard. I read servants lived in the 'Dark Rooms' above. What did they see, what did they hear from those small square windows?

6 Alnwick Castle

When would you light a lantern spikier than a verdigris dragon? What would you chain up to wyvern shaped rings? I wonder at the lion on the bridge with an antenna for a tail; and the rocklobbers -oversized statues ready to chuck boulders from the ramparts. They have cousins on York's City Walls. There are caged plants in the Poison Garden, little gates in little keeps for hobs and starsprinkled pavements. I come upon a boat of candles and books abandoned in a twilit wood.


7 A Piratical Pairing
A buccaneering bride and potent punch all by the sea at St. Abbs. Plastic parrots and skull-and-crossbones bunting beat limp roses anyday. Cute little corsairs rampage amongst the wenches and curly wigged captains - two policemen arrive astonished.
Beneath the waves dead men's fingers, fangtoothed wolf fish and brittle stars congregate. The night sky rains fireworks and lanterns. 
 
And I haven't even got to Seven Stories yet!
A former flourmill with a licence to moor ships of dreams. Children's drawings - a zombie scarecrow in a medieval frame, a five eyed purple flying space-elephant creature ( with a timid alien tucked inside) - demand the tale to be told. The roaring shark beast and the bubble blowing mermaid peek at me through portholes and future authors' work is trapped in Perspex boxes.

A breath of Northern air and my notebook bulges with bits - please help yourself.

Titivullus the word snatcher and other demons.

I am besieged.
I am irritated by the tiny ambush predator that is Titivullus the Wordsnatcher. I search. I know I had the perfect word for that simile - now where has it gone? Whipped away.

I hunt round - where is that enthralling action verb? Gone.

At least that nasty little sneaker-away-with-half-remembered-words can be fought off with the trusty Thesaurus. How do I combat Belphegor who leads me astray with useless but fascinating inventions? I have great difficulty blocking my ears against the Procastination Imps - they speak in the voices of Facebook friends,then lead me off on will o'the wisp tours of Blogland to 'inspire' my writing. I see them wave the highlighter over the how-to books. It is a magic wand and I am enchanted.

But these are the minor citizens of the encircling Pandemonium; the boys at the back of the class. There are far worse.

One she-devil, soft and yielding as a bog, undermines my defences. In my ear she whispers, insinuates, plays on my guilt. She poisons my well: no good as a teacher; no good as a mother; no good as a writer.

These are the heads of my companions catapulted over the battlements. The Spirit of Self-pity wraps her sodden sleeves around me in a familiar embrace.

Despair and her minder Lethargy now lurk behind my shoulders. They offer me their counsel: I don't know what children want to read anymore; I am out of touch; I am too weird.

It is like sand trickling from a drying dune.

But still I stay at my desk and will not surrender.

The first cut should be the deepest.

First of all, apologies to the poor guinea pigs who suffered the first draft of the Thirteenth Pharaoh. Honestly I did think it was quite good.I'd tried really hard and there really wouldn't be that much to sort out.

Mmm.

Well, the feedback was salutary - conducive to health. I asked for tough love and I got it.

I cannot thank you enough, you know who you are.  If you want name checks -I'm more than happy to say how brill you were. In the same way that we need our surgeons to be callous, I need my writing friends to incise and remove all the necrotic tissue which spoils a good piece of work.

Now, me being me, I veered madly in the opposite direction: avoiding one problem area I ran straight into another. Too terse, too unexpressive became flabby and overblown. Draft 2 grew to be a monster (or at least the embryonic first chapters). More healthy advice was given.

Things I have learnt:

• rewriting is not little cosmetic touches  
• it is not fleshing out with great globs of silicon gel 
• it is more like a heart bypass.

Draft No. 3 has its drips and life support in situ.

Dear colleagues - will you help me save the patient?

What a difference a day makes ...and an evening.

Thursday afternoon

I pick up the post on my way out to work. Something from Winchester and something from West Dean: Writers' Conference  and short course details, I assume. Hop on the bus, settle down to read. Terry Pratchett - very tempting. Oopsy, a Saturday, can't take any more time off work. Catherine McNaughton at Kip McGrath has been pretty tolerant of my periodic jaunts to conferences, workshops and the like.

OK short courses - would like to get guitar session organised for very supportive and over-worked husband Stephen. Some concerts are in the church at West Dean. Envelope taped down- they must have the same useless gum we do.Tear it open, the raggedy edge irritates.

Gasp. I've been accepted, Was Greg playing with me when he said it could be a fortnight or more? This letter must have been sent immediately, perhaps even already drafted whilst I was there, hanging about for the No. 60 bus. Well - I do make a good 'straight-man'- Alan Davies to other people's Stephen Fry. My smile won't stop curling up at the edges like a damp paperback.

Once home straight off to email Ellen Renner and Julia Churchill of the Greenhouse Literary Agency. Have to thank them for the references- what chutzpah to ask them! I wish I knew what they had written.Then on to Facebook - post for all my friends to see, especially the wonderful MA Mavens. Comments bounce back: joyous, supportive, immediate. I delight in the writers' community.

I work on draft 2 of The Thirteenth Pharaoh, responding to Mike Turner's critique among others. Why would I not listen to a guy who got 94 % in an OU piece? He is on the collaborative writing weekend at West Dean. Patricia (his lovely Austrian wife) is coming too. The bar is a must-do, then.

Saturday Night

I allow myself a small sense of belonging as Stephen drives down the sweeping drive. We park, almost bump into Greg Mosse as he is leaving. He is pleasant as ever. My edgy little hopes have hatched.

Off inside the grand house.Smile at the security man, hope he recognises me: a little unsure about this bit. On the way to the bar, we find alternative Mike by the coats. He is in a fetching leather hat, and rather chirpy -has found his metier with play-writing, it seems. It would be hard not to enjoy his happy litle jig.

Into the bar now. I spot a wave. The wave means so much, the wave which says come over here, join in, be one of us. We sit and chat and drink. Here's Sid as well, and new to me, David, still labelled from the workshop. I am in this warmth, this loose circle, We disagree, we dispute, yet the elastic camaraderie holds. Politics, gender, taste in reading; genre we write in; all colour the glow in different hues. We are sat round a hearth, putting the world to rights, and I am included..

The security guard calls me' madam' - we have to go, as non-residents, On the way to the car, the clouds part a little. I look up.A single star shines through the cedar.With a smile hidden in my heart I say:  'Star light, Star bright...'  

Result -and it's far more important than the election.

I have been accepted by West Dean to start my MA in September.

MA interview at West Dean May 2010

West Dean College

I take a rather childish pleasure in walking through the "staff and students only "section. I revel in a guilty sense of privilege. Cowslips spangle the darker longer grass where the daffodils have flowered and the vista in front is pure classical English country house. I breathe in.

Happy times on the writing courses have attached themselves like the climbers on the knapped flint walls. Part of me dreams that the MA will be like short courses-only more so. Is it the glamour of West Dean that attracts me? The spring wind is cold and my new shoes chafe. I go inside - early because of the bus.

I sign in, receive a dispiritingly corporate Vistor Badge . I come over all fingers and thumbs trying to fix it on my new linen jacket .

I recall almost running away from the grand Oak Hall and the glorious chandeliers and the people who seemed to know each other and not me at the Writing Festival. I gather the memory of Kate Mosse's gentleness round me like a comfort blanket. I sit down, under the light chequered window. And there is Greg Mosse , greeting me with unexpected warmth, perhaps affection.

So positive and so kind - he renders me desperate to be teacher's pet.

In the interview, he bewilders me speaking highly of me. He is embarrassing, no, flustering me with praise. I am uncomfortable with praise. I demur. It is not sham.

I am conscious of my hesitancy. He looks at me so encouragingly - asking me, giving me space to shrine and I am muffled inside my own little cloud of fear. Fear that I'm just not up to it. He asks a subtle dever question. I think it may be about being too self critical, too analytical. I wheel out my longhand equals creative hat, pc equals editing hat idea - again. I sense he is disappointed.

I am too timid to ask for clarification. Roger Bown is quiet, thoughtful, attentive: I am aware that I am tilted toward Greg. I am leaning against a windscreen, peering for a landmark in the fog. Politeness demands I give respect to my other interviewer. I still find myself swivelling back to the familiar, the known.

Everyone I care about tells me I will be fine: I'll be accepted, So why will my guts not stop gurgling, my imagination not stop rerunning the interview, pausing at my failings, until the end of this month?

By the end even I realise that I'm flagging, spluttering like the last blasts from a dying Catherine Wheel.  I ask a question I know the answer to just because I had prepared it. Greg gently heads me off at the pass.

He is kind enough to have coffee with me, he tells me stories - interesting set-ups. I am too fluttery to grasp what is going on, He must feel like a winchman trying to get a dazed angler to take the hoist off the rocks. He has, of course, other things to do than distract me from my terror. He leaves. I hang about waiting for the bus.

Why could I not ask what I really want to know? It is the fear, the fear of any of the possible answers.