Life On The Cobbles

One of my guilty passions is – Coronation Street.  I was brought up on Corrie, and the opening soundtrack to each episode evokes such a sense of pleasure, I fear that I have turned into one of Pavlov’s dogs. 

OK, as it’s a soap, I have to admit that it can be a bit far-fetched – I mean, just how unlucky can some characters be?  But it also brings some massive issues into the forefront of people’s minds – ie how men can be the victims of domestic abuse (Tyrone), euthanasia (Hayley), depression (Steve), alcoholism (probably several characters here – I mean, how can you drink in the pub at lunchtime and then go back to the factory and sew knickers or mend cars in Kevin’s garage?) and one of the current storylines of an adult being abused by her teenage step-son. As the mother on one teenage son and one soon to be teenage son, this is particularly scary.

But sometimes the smaller stories can also resonate.  The developing relationship between Roy and Cathy is one that springs to mind.  Both of them have recently lost their spouses and both are trying to move on with their lives but are struggling in different ways.  They have feelings for each other but both feel guilty about still being alive when their partners can’t be with them anymore.

Cathy is a hoarder, her house has become her own death-trap and Roy has been trying to persuade her to clear the clutter.  Cathy has admitted that the amount of possessions she has are diminishing her, but they also provide her with a comfort blanket.

In response to her admission, Roy replied with something that I found particularly profound.  He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that he liked to anchor his life in predictability but that the one predictable thing in life is that it has to change.  As I heard him say these words I felt something really connect.  My husband tells me that “it’s not real you know”, but hey, I write fiction and good fiction is about making a connection. 

Perhaps it’s because my own life is about to go through a period of change that this touched a nerve, who knows?  But one thing it did for me was to encourage me to embrace that change.

My children are growing up and need me less (unless they want a lift or money) and although a period in my life has passed, I’m looking for the positives.

Perhaps that has been behind my current need to declutter.  Now, I’m nowhere near the hoarder that Cathy is, but I’m ashamed to say that I have found a stack of magazines which are older than my marriage and therefore older than my teenage son, need I say more?  However, I haven’t been able to throw them out without reading them once more, after all, something in them might be a trigger for a new story.

So, I’m slowly working my way through them and yes, I have to admit, there are things in there that have triggered some writing ideas. And now that I have harvested them, I simply must recycle!!!

Exercising the Writing Muscle

I’m not a big fan of exercise but sometimes I force myself to do it out of sheer necessity.  Mostly I try to find excuses or rather find other things to do as a means to avoid it.  To my shame, I feel as though I have been doing the same thing with my writing recently.  Is it sheer madness that the very thing I say I love to do, I find 101 excuses not to?

I’ve just been away for a week in the sun and lovely it was too.  As a family, we don’t tend to do highbrow or exotic holidays.  My husband is busiest at work during the summer so whilst everyone else is jetting off to luxurious destinations, I’m usually pet sitting and wondering how to juggle work with entertaining the boys during the long summer break.

So by October half term we are more than ready to get away.  Destinations are fairly limited; we don’t want to travel too far as we only have a week but we do want it to be hot. We usually plump for one of the Canary Islands as the weather there is pretty much guaranteed.

My husband loves the sun.  He rarely sits down at home but give him sunshine and he does a pretty good impression of being comatose.  The boys of course need to be occupied so instead of going exclusive we go cattle market (sorry, slip of the tongue there, I meant to say all-inclusive).

Now, all-inclusive I think, is a bit of a mixed blessing, especially at half-term.  It’s crowded, noisy and there’s usually a fight for the sunbeds each morning – more of that another time.  But the facilities are great for the boys. They have plenty to do, make lots of new friends in a relatively safe environment, eat what they want when they want, and only sulk when we insist on taking them for a walk.

So that’s the other half and the kids taken care of which leaves me plenty of time to read and write.  It’s the closest I get to a writing retreat without abandoning everyone (oh what bliss that would be!)

And yet at the beginning of the holiday I struggled to think of anything to write.  Life has been so hectic that I haven’t had the time or the headspace recently.  But before I came away I emailed some of my ideas files and half written stories to my kindle and I forced myself to write.  Just a little, but I set myself a goal of 500 words a day.  Not a great deal, I know, but it was achievable and as soon as I got into the habit, the writing and ideas started to flow.  As well as finishing some stories which had been languishing in a folder on my computer for too long, I made a list of projects to complete post-holiday, read some writing reference books and even toyed with an idea for a new novel. 

Now I have something to aim for and I just need to keep up the momentum now that I’m back (even if I am drowning under washing and ironing).

So I’ve learnt that writing is like exercise, the more you do it the easier it gets.  I wonder if I’ll be fit by Christmas?