In a World Gone Mad: Saturday 4th July 2020

Saturday 4 July 2020

I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve bloodywell only gone and done it. After umph years, umph days and umph hours, I’ve finished Break the Child.

I liked it and was pleased with it. I liked the voice and thought it read well—until Paul read the first chapter. After that I am full of doubt about whether it works on any level at all.

His points were valid and as much as I hated it, I had no choice but to take them onboard. I agreed with him. A book grabs a reader first by the cover.  I love my cover, I’ve only seen a rough mock-up of it with a gobbledygook blurb, but Paul has pulled it out of the bag. The bastard always does, he’s brilliant at everything he touches.

The second way a book grabs a reader is by the first sentence—it has to be strong enough to make you want that next line.

My breasts have grown is shite.  It’s twee and childish and as silly as it was meant to be.

The third reader-grab is the first chapter. If you haven’t got them by the end of that, they aren’t going to read on.

The aim of my first chapter was to set the voice and lay out the main character.  It said nothing at all. Not a bloody thing, but a load of senseless waffle. It took other eyes to see that.

I made the second chapter the first, at least is has some substance.

What he said about my genius work of art, destroyed me, but I agreed with every word. My book is written in the voice of a teenager.  It’s pants. Paul said that nobody was ever going to put up with it unless there was a reason to. He said I need a prologue, written in adult voice to warn the reader what was to come—and then he said, I might stand the remotest chance of them reading the shit.

He was rudely correct, and I’ve roughed up a pro and epilogue in Dad’s voice to frame the book. It’s sentimental blurgh that makes me want to reach for the puke bucket; but it’s an easel to build on and come up with something harder that works.

I am about to get a taste of my own medicine—and it’s going to hurt.

Every day I give my advice and tell authors to cut, cut, cut. I take their book apart and guide them to putting it back again—better.

I have the audacity to do that.

My turn.

Paul is going to edit my book with me from Monday. I don’t want him to.  He already hates it. He’s seen the first chapter and said it’s one of the worst things he’s ever read—that honest—it’s that bad.

Know your market.

I wrote this book because I was unable to write my own diary, so I decided to write somebody else’s. The idea of writing a child’s diary was brilliant. Who’s going to argue with  Anne Frank and Sue Townsend? My idea was stupendous, glorious, it was the best idea ever, and was on the same level as an Einstein invention, and it worked in my head. However, it has to be readable, and readable to people over the age of ten.

I want Paul to leave this one alone so that I can keep my idea of brilliance.

But the masochist in him wants to edit it. And the masochist in me has to let him.

I know that when we’ve finished there will be a product. Nobody will ever read it because I will not market it—been there, done that, failed. But it will be out there, and it will work, which it doesn’t as it stands.

We will argue like we’ve never argued before. I will lose the bits I love and will replace them with bits that I will come to appreciate.  And it will be better for it. But when I say I hate him, I will mean it for a day or so until I’ve got over the sulking.

He hates it, I think when it’s been done he will still hate it—but it will be a thing. And it will be a better thing than it is today.

He’s already brought up one change that he wants to make.  He says that my central character has to swear.

‘Sarah, Everybody swears.’

‘No, they don’t.’

‘Yes, they fucking do.’

‘I don’t.’

The conversation halted while he picked himself up off the floor and stopped laughing.

‘You’re a foulmouthed harridan.’

‘Rarely—I almost never swear—not out loud.’

‘True, but when emotions are high, you’re evil. My point is, that this girl needs to be real, she would swear, especially in her private diary.’

I don’t want her to swear—it lessens her.  I will listen with an open mind. Paul is a far better writer than me. His style is the polar opposite to mine. He’s descriptive and purple, I’m hard and stripped-back. Break the Child will never amount to anything and I’m long beyond the days of wanting it to. I don’t care that it won’t sell, I just want to write it and  have it out there.

Stone Heart and his latest book, Stone Forged by Peter Merrigan are as well written and as good a read as any on the bookshelves, and he deserves his chance.

I only edited Stone Forged and it’s a better book for my input. There she is the ego.

My best friend and I are going to fall out next week—but we will come back together, and I will say thank you and mean it.

And next I get to reconnect with another old one. This one is going to be more difficult because it’s nowhere near as complete. It started life at the same time as Child and  stopped dead at the same time. My plan is the same, I’ll give it an edit and just keep writing. That’s my M.O.

Teagan is going to the vets on Wednesday night. Max has given in and we are taking her. I expect they’ll want to do allergy tests on her, and I dread to think what that’s going to cost. The Leucillin is good and we’ve spent another twenty-five pounds getting more. It keeps her comfortable, but he’s agreed to take her to the vets just to shut me up. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her, I do.

The pubs open today for the first time in three months. We aren’t going, we couldn’t anyway with having Arthur but even then we have no interest. We have professional karaoke at home and there’s no live music of any kind in the pubs, so it holds nothing for us. I do miss dancing though, that’s the one thing I want back.

We are having a karaoke night tonight—it’s Saturday, yay. The gear will be out, the disco lights on and God bless my neighbours one and all.

Max made a chicken dinner last night, but I never got to eat mine.  Arthur and Max ate at the table, but I’ve taken to escaping and bringing it through to the living room so that I don’t have to watch him eat.

I have had bariatric surgery and have had most of my stomach and intestines removed. It means that I eat very slowly. A child’s portion chicken dinner takes me about four hours to eat. I’m almost vegetarian, I say almost because I can eat any mince dish, and wafer thin ham and if I’m very carful about it, I can manage a bacon butty. Until recently I could eat low meat content sausage but that isn’t going down well the last few months, so I avoid them. Max knows I won’t eat it but can’t resist putting a small piece of meat on my plate every night.

Arthur had eaten with Max and in the time it took to walk from the kitchen to the living room, he’d forgotten that he’d eaten. He sits on the sofa under the window and between his seat and mine is the cat’s climbing frame. Echo hasn’t been near it for months and it stands resplendent, a red fluffy ornament and because it’s next to my end of the sofa, I tend to put my cup and plate on it.

He shuffled in and saw my food.

‘Is that for me?’

And before I could stop him, he had his fingers in my dinner and was up to the knuckles in gravy.

‘No Arthur you’ve had yours, that was mine.’

‘Oh right. Is that rubbish?’

And he dropped a snotty tissue on my plate.  That was my dinner gone—again. Max said I shouldn’t put my plate there and that I know his dad makes a bee-line for it. He goes for it every damned night on a loop but I usually manage to stop him before he touches it. When I couldn’t eat it, Max said I was being ridiculous and that my OCD ways have to stop. I wasn’t being petty, Arthur has occasional faecal leakage and he’s always scratching his bottom, I don’t want those fingers in my food. And it’s irrelevant that the tissue didn’t touch what I was eating, it was still on the side of my plate.

And he’s a sneaky old bugger.  When Ocean was with us a few weeks ago, she was playing on the Wi and being headstrong about eating her dinner. Max had made her favourite, scampi, and chips. We have a rule that we don’t leave her alone with Arthur, but I’d left the living room for a minute. I only went to get her some ketchup.

She had her plate on the sofa and Arthur was in Max’s seat on the other end. I came back in as Arthur’s hand was on Ocean’s plate stealing her scampi. When I asked what he was doing, his hand recoiled as though he’d been shot. He knew exactly what he was doing and that the food was his great granddaughter’s. I know he has dementia, but Max said that he’d have stolen a child’s food twenty years ago and this is nothing new. Horrible old man.