Billygean.co.uk

“The tele looks shit,” MindReader says as we lower our fish tank onto the table and survey the room.

“Yep,” I say, “undoubtedly.”

“Did you look at the TV on amazon?”

“The flat screen?” I say, “Yes, but 19 inches… it’s not very big – it would look like a computer monitor!”

“I know,” MindReader says. “I’ve looked a bit more and Argos seems much better. You can get a big 22 inch Bush one for £150.”

“Ooh,” I say, “ooh that is tempting.”

“Not a TV,” MindReader says. “Just a big bush.”

“That would look even better.”

Ah suburbia, a nice distraction from the evil non-novelling voices in my head.

Couple of photos here. Flickr isn’t playing – for some reason I can’t find the ‘view picture’ button to get the url to paste in here…

Everything is prepared for me to write. Washing on, dishwasher done, coffee made, desk tidied, my list of what I like in a novel pinned definantly to my wall.

I am behind on my wordcount.

And I have reached the end of the bits I’d planned out. Now, I only really know some vague notions of what I want to show before about December in my novel, which is about 10,000 words away.

My characters are in Birmingham – much easier ot write about, and as my fingers skim the keys I briefly describe the canal, easily; the description reads well.

I try some dialogue. If I know what I want to say dialogue is fine as I am sure you have seen.

I don’t know what to say.

My characters ask each other about their days.

I delete it.

What do MindReader and I talk about?

I suddenly have no idea, and my cheeks and the bridge of my nose heat up quickly as I step briefly away from the laptop.

What if – genetically, truthfully – I just don’t have the talent?

I giggle as I slide into our living room. “The rug stops me now!” I say.

We have been to Ikea and the bank is broken as predicted.

“It smells of new carpet,” MindReader says, screwing the legs onto our new end table.

“Mmm,” I say.

He sets the end table upright and we admire it briefly.

“Ooh, I forgot,” MindReader says. “Present time.”

“Ooooh,” I say.

He comes back in with his suit jacket in one hand, the other digging in it. “Here,” he says.

He hands me a box of posh teabags. “Winter spice flavour!” I say excitedly.

“And caffeine free,” he smiles.

“Ooh, oooooh,” I say.

“Right,” he says as I head off to the kettle. I hear him getting our TV unit out of the box and the sprinkling sound of screws on our wooden floor.

I make drinks, and he builds it for a while. I don’t pretend I can help: flatpacking is not my scene for about a hundred reasons.

I write my novel for a while, focussed in my own world and him in his. Our eyes meet occasionally as I stop and scrutinise the air in front of me and he sighs and reaches for the instructions once again.

I close my word document as he stands the TV unit upright. Together we lift the TV onto it.

It doesn’t fit. It hangs off.

Neither of us says anything. We stare at it for a while.

“It doesn’t fit,” I say.

“No,” MindReader says.

His face crakcs into a smile. “It’s ridiculous,” he says, flopping back onto the rug. I join him on my hands and knees.

“Completely,” I say smiling.

So yes.

Moving house and working from home and writing a novel is tiring. I don’t yet know if it’s TOO tiring but it is rather nice to be busy.

Life in suburbia is blissful. We continue to slide around the wooden floors in our socks, discuss what to keep in our pantry and hide things in our built-in safe. Tonight we are off to Ikea to buy various things that I’m sure we didn’t realise we needed. Then we shall have fireworks and hot cups of coffee in the garden.

The novel writing is a strange process: my previous novel was set in London and difficult to write because it was a retrospective narrative (meaning “she said” with some “I didn’t know then that…” bits) which I am not used to. Plus, it was about an 18 year-old and I confess I have forgotten what that’s like.

This novel is different and more adult and a bit more like the kind of novel I would pick off the bookshelf – at least it wants to be. I can only bemoan that On Beauty got written first. In week one the self-doubt demons are being kept at bay even though I confess to MUCH prefer writing about one character more than all the others and so those bits are stronger writing.

On day one, the day of Moving Day, I wrote 2000 words lying down amidst the packing chaos. On the second day, I wrote 2000 words lying down at 9 at night, and on the third day I hadn’t written a word by midnight, but a thousand by one in the morning. It does concern me that I write so quickly – especially because pricks like T S Eliot say things like no good writing comes easily or some such nonsense – but hey ho.

Sorry I do hate entries that are ‘this is what’s going on in my life and it’s crap’ – especially as objectively my life really IS quite crap – more on the health later.

I will post photos of the new house soon!

“Radishes?” I say.

I am at a Halloween party, pretending to be a normal person. The Illness, this time around, does allow me to do so some evenings although my joints often ache in the process.

“I thought that was just a made up word…”

MindReader’s arm immediately comes around me protectively while a group of friends burst out laughing.

“They’re a root vegetable,” he murmurs in my ear.

Stranger wanders over at this moment.

“Hello,” he says, gently. Not the kind “how are you feeling?” headtilts or the uneasy proffering of chairs and holding my arm as I walk even though I can actually walk just fine, but the gentle hello of someone who has been there before.

I avoid his gaze. It is one thing to reminisce about being sick in the smug way of people who got better and another thing entirely to discuss it while it is still rearing its acute ugliness day in day out.

(Yes, I’m in a novel writing mode).

“My housemate’s in Tesco,” Stranger says, “I’m going to ask him to get you some radishes!”

I laugh, presuming he’s joking although he does step out onto the balcony with his phone to his ear.

I turn, and MindReader is talking about law to a social worker friend of ours (um, when did we grow up?). I lean into his arm as I offer an anecdote about a client I’m dealing with. It is acceptable, my life in miniature, at this moment in time.

MindReader taps me on the arm. “Our car parking is about to run out,” he says. I shrug. We have £2.20 between us because we are both too disorganised to remember to get cash out. “We’d better go,” I say, standing. It is 11pm anyway, and we do not want to anger my body.

I tap Stranger’s arm. “Bye,” I say, “we’re off.”

Another friend hugs me as Stranger replies and I see his mouth form a word through a cloud of her blonde hair. “Stay well,” he says.

I give him a Look over my friend’s shoulder, a cross between a smile and an eye roll. “Well, baby steps,” he says, “again.”

I try to convey my thanks with my eyes.

A man walks in and hands me some radishes, and we leave.

“Look at my friend’s baby,” I say to MindReader.

“Aaah,” he says.

“Can we have babies?” I say, despite more than half the time not being sure I want them. But that is a whole other blog, but in short, expressed very well here.

“Of course,” MindReader says. “They might be ginger though.”

He turns and the light from the lamp catches his strawberry-blond hair.

“Mmm,” I say.

He wraps his arms around me and abentmindedly strokes my mane of unkempt hair, the downy hair that covers my arms that I was so selfconscious of, until him.

“What will they look like, otherwise?” I say.

“Monkeys,” he sighs.

So. National Novel Writing Month starts in two days and I am beginning to wonder what I have signed myself up for.

We are moving to suburbia on NOVEMBER THE FIRST so I will:

1. Pack.
2. Move house.
3. Unpack.
4. Write 1,667 words.

Don’t even get me started on not having the energy to pack/unpack/sit in the car and THE GUILT that MindReader will have to do it all himself.

So. Yes. And also, sometimes I think, well I have a plot, so I will just write it.

And then my inner-angster says WRITING A NOVEL? MAKING THINGS UP AND NOT JUST MOANING ABOUT YOUR LIFE ON YOUR BLOG?

And then I remember that I once wrote a story about a girl who got locked in a room and then remember she had the key. THE END. Yes!

But THEN, I read crap chick lit like this:

“Who the hell knows?”
“Who the hell cares?” and they both smile at one another, somehow each knowing that this is more than just coincidence, that they were somehow fated to meet this afternoon, and that this will be the start of an important friendship.

… And I think, if bloody Jane Green can be published, then so can I.

“Now now, it’s my turn,” MindReader says to me. “You’ve had enough!”

We are rather geekily addicted to Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. Yes. I know.

“Oh I’m sorry,” I say, “I didn’t know about your predilection for moving gems around…”

MindReader stares at me and leans against the radiator.

“I’m sorry?” He says.

I smirk. “It means -”

“I know what it means,” he says.

He continues looking at me.

“Okay,” I say, moving away from the computer. “Yes, before novel writing month I’ve been… using a word a day application on my iphone.”

I hang my head.

“Oh Billygean,” he says and I rest my head on his shoulder. “That’s cute.”

“I feel a bit meek,” I say.

“Did you learn that too today?” He says.

“Meek. M-E-E-K,” I say.

“I finished that book last night,” I say to MindReader.

“Oh yes?” he says.

“Yeah it was really weird…”

“Mmm,” he says, chopping parsnips.

“Like, it was not of a genre at all. Like she crammed together several different genres and left all of the unpacking to the reader. I feel like I have lots of thinking to do.”

MindReader gives me a Look. One which says, we are very different.

I lean against the counter. “Plus she was writing consciously within a tradition. She set it in Highgate Cemetry so she was following those before her – you know, Dickens – but in doing so she made you expect a ghost story and then she wrote something more approximating to a weird kind of dark rom com!”

MindReader stops chopping. “I’m sorry, I have NO idea what you’re talking about.”