In a World Gone Mad: Sunday 17 May 2020...2

Unbeknown to me and without any discussion between us, he’s spoken to Kevin and asked for three thousand pounds out of Arthur’s account to buy it.  

He knows my feelings from Archie taking a gift of Arthur’s money. I am disgusted. That money is nothing to do with me, it’s their deal with their family’s finance. If Max wants to buy a guitar costing three grand when he already has five expensive guitars in the house, it’s none of my business—but we’re supposed to be a partnership.

I’m glad it’s for a guitar and not something that I would have any use for—but what I’m so annoyed about is that I feel that it sullies our intentions. And I’m peeved because it wasn’t discussed with me.

 No amount of money would be enough to take on Arthur for what might amount to ten years or more. After he goes, Max and I may not have many years left. That time can’t be bought.

 I’m getting that I can’t stand him, but Max loves his dad and we did what we thought was best for Arthur at the time by bringing him to end his days with us. I said from day one that my primary objective was keeping him out of a care home. I’ve run one and I wouldn’t want a relative of mine in them. Some facilities with EMI units are good, but they will always be a facility. Arthur is outdoorsy, he comes out with us most days to run the dog, and if we go anywhere else, he tends to come with us. He’d hate living in a home.

That is the reason that I insisted if we had him, that we wouldn’t control his finances. I feel what Max has done has cheapened our intentions. We’ll never hear about it if they do, but I would hate for anybody to suggest, or even think, that we have Arthur for what we can get out of it  

Max talked a good talk and said the money would be his one day anyway. His father hasn’t bought them a birthday or Christmas present for fifty years and hasn’t bought anything for his grandchildren, ever. Max said it would make up for all the birthdays where he’s had nothing. He said that this way, Arthur would have the pleasure of hearing him play it—he loves music and always enjoys him playing.

I think it’s sickening and I’m strongly against what he’s done.

I spoke to Marty and he told me to chill and not get so wound up about it. He said if it makes Max happy and makes Arthur happy and Kevin was okay about releasing it, and Archie agrees, where’s the harm? Marty said it’s a classic example of me being too ridged about things and to leave them to it.

The guitar is ordered and paid for and will be here in time for his birthday on Friday.

Max asked me if it made me think any less of him.  I said no and I think that was a truthful answer. Although I hate what he’s done, it hasn’t changed the way I feel about him and it’s none of my business anyway.

The other thing that’s irritated me is although he wouldn’t remember five minutes after agreeing, his dad has bought him a three-thousand-pound guitar. Any crappy little thing I buy him is going to mean nothing.

After editing with Paul this morning, we came to a stop because he has some rewriting to do before we can go any further. He offered to give the first chapter of my book; Break the Child an edit. I was loath to let him read it because I knew he’d hate it— but I didn’t know how much.

Paul is a scholarly type bloke. His writing is highbrow and serious and his recent four book series in based two thousand years ago with the Celts in Ireland. I can’t pronounce half the words in the bloody thing. His writing is excellent. His style is purple, proper, verbose, and heavy. It’s a very different style to my conversational writing at the best of times. I knew his feelings about Child were going to be deep. We did Chapter One and from the first sentence he made his feelings clear.

I’m doubting myself. I’ve never written anything like this before and I’m not sure that it even works. It’s the dairy of a thirteen-year-old girl but written for an adult market. To understand it—and for it to work—you have to be able to put yourself into a teenager’s head. And maybe I’m way up my arse there. There might be nothing to understand. There’s a strong possibility that it doesn’t work on any level and I’m the only fool that thinks it does.

It’s been a challenge getting the balance of having it grammatically acceptable and getting the child’s voice across without being too irritating for the reader.

Paul is forty. He doesn’t know much about teenage girls and has no desire to get into the head of one. I was going to write that he missed the point, but I think it might be me who’s missing it. He reckons I’ve not only missed the point but the whole bloody spear.

He read the first chapter and the first paragraph of the second and the conversation went something like this—

‘Sarah, it’s awful.’

‘I knew you’d say that.’

‘No, I mean it’s really awful.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s shit.’

‘Okay, care to elaborate?’

‘For sure, you’ve written some crap, but this is the worst thing you’ve ever done. It’s drivel, garbage. What the hell.’

‘Dickhead, don’t hold back, will you.’

‘I’m not joking. I mean it.’

‘I know you do.’

‘Okay, forgetting for a minute the awful, writing, it doesn’t say anything. It’s just about bras and some fucker’s ironing. Who the hell’s going to read that?’

‘I was trying to set the character and get the reader used to her.’

‘They won’t have time to get used to anything, one page and they’ll be setting the book down. What’s your target reader? Is it for ten to thirteen-year-old girls, because they won’t be interested in ironing?’

‘No. It’s for adult readers, but when you put it like that. Was there anything at all that you liked about it?’

‘Yes, I liked it when I got to the end of the chapter. I honestly hate it, Sarah.’

I laughed because I’d been telling him how pleased I am with it.

Paul and I have no filters. We say what we feel and can talk to each other in a way that neither of us would talk to anybody else, including our partners. A newbie writer being told that, would either hang themselves or never dare write so much as a shopping list again. I thought it was funny because I knew his rection was going to be a strong one. However, if he thinks that, anybody else reading it may feel the same. Which means, I have a problem. And it makes me very determined to make it work.

I am a vanity publisher in the true sense of the word. I had my time trying to make it as a writer, I spent years at it and now, I have no interest. I like writing but I couldn’t care less about selling books.  I tried and it didn’t work, I’m not prepared to waste more time on it. It’s left me with seventeen books published in various guises and another five that had to be pulled and de-published. I think all but half a dozen are obsolete. Paul is an excellent design artist and has done some amazing covers for me and he publishes my books through Amazon or whatever it is. They don’t sell, partly because I don’t market and mainly because most people’s don’t.

However, I like to have my story’s made into books. Over the years, I’ve given thousands of pounds worth away, and in the main to people who don’t bother to read them. I’ve lent dozens of books and rarely, if ever get them back.  I’ve had jobs in various towns and if I can con a colleague into taking a book, I’m eager to give them one. People are never prepared to buy them.

Allowing for the percentage that have been destroyed, those books are out there. Some of them may be read by somebody sometime.  This sounds bitter, but I’m not. I’m just resigned to the way it is.

When I say it makes me determined to make it work—I don’t mean as a best seller, I’m way past that, I mean as a book that somebody could pick up at random and enjoy.

Paul helped me. He’s right, nobody is going to get beyond the first page. The first thing I did was changed it. I swapped the first and second chapters. The language is the same, but the second chapter has something happening in it other than bras and ironing.

It’s a start, but it’s not enough. It’s written through the eyes and brain of a little girl and it’s no, Mister God, this is Anna, an excellent book written in child’s voice.

The book is in diary format.

‘Nobody reads diaries anymore, Sarah.’

‘Bridget jones did all right out of it.’

‘Bridget Jones is a character. Does anybody read this diary in the book?’

‘No.’

‘So, what’s the point of writing it in diary format. Why not write it properly as a novel?’

That kills the idea of the book. We decided it needs a prologue, written retrospectively by somebody who has read the diary and is a narrator talking to the reader to give them a head’s up what to expect.

Max expanded on the theme and I’m going to give it a new ending, in epilogue by the same narrator. Max hates the title. It came from a Crystal Gayle song: The Woman in Me. You’ll never break the woman in me, but you might hurt the child.

Oh well `tis what it is.