From stay-at-home mother to working mother

After six years at home full-time with children, including a year and a half home educating, I have now shot to the other end of the spectrum as a pretty much full-time working mother.

I will post about work itself another day, because that’s enough to warrant an entirely separate blogpost. Today I wanted to talk about the transition from stay-at-home to working mother.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked since having children, but it’s the first time I’ve been away from them for more than the odd meeting here and there. I do two days a week in town in an office, and three from home. I spend four days a week consulting for a NGO, and the final day is devoted to other clients, book promotion and outdoors journalism.

The main change from how I worked in the past is that I don’t fit work around the children. I have had varying degrees of success juggling work and children in the past but overall I don’t find it a good solution.

I can’t stand being glued to a computer or phone while they ask me for snacks and attention. But avoiding this scenario is easier said than done, because it means I have to take complete responsibility for my time. I can’t expect my children to prioritise my work and I can’t expect my clients to prioritise my family. Therefore I have to choose what I prioritise and when. My way of doing this is to only work when my children are physically not with me. This is new to me, and new to them, as they have been physically with me every single day for the last six years.

Emotionally it has been something of a journey. It’s been hard for the children as they miss me, of course, and they have had to get used to firstly school and nursery, and secondly a childminder. On the plus side Noel is at home three days a week so they are spending a lot more time with him, which makes all of us very happy. But it’s not really my place to discuss my children’s emotional journey so I’m going to focus just on mine.

The main issue has been guilt. I know, major shocker right?

There was the obvious guilt of leaving my children to go to work.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself I wasn’t leaving them, they were with their father most of the time and with a qualified professional who I know and trust the rest of the time.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself that regardless of whether they were with their father or a qualified professional, I am entitled to pursue my own career.

Followed swiftly by being annoyed with myself for the entire thought process because did that mean I judged other mothers who worked and labelled them as ‘leaving’, read ‘neglecting’ their children?

Exhausting.

Then came the guilt that I whisper it love my job and am ambitious for my career and personal development. One day, after dropping Cherry and Violet off and heading back to crack on, I was seized with an overwhelming compulsion to jack in a new client right now, shelve my future books, park the journalism (my profession of 15 years, no less) and find something locally based, in an industry I do not enjoy, that would pay the bills.

In that moment I genuinely felt it would only be acceptable for me to be away from my children if I was doing a job I don't like. That should be my natural punishment for leaving my children to work. You can't, went the silent internal judgement, expect to 'have it all'.

I’m so thankful for the school run, because I find thinking while walking so much more productive than thinking while sitting at the table at home. It’s a powerful metaphor. You genuinely move through your thought processes, one foot in front of the other, always forwards. You don’t get a chance to get stuck in your head.

By the time I got home I had seen the compulsion for what it was, a toxic combination of my guilt and self-doubt talking. A strange hash of learned beliefs about the role of women, and mothers, contrasted with my true values which have not always been supported by rhetoric or experience. 

And then there was the guilt when my children asked me why I had to work. It’s so tempting to fob them off with the standard ‘to make money so we can buy nice things’ response, and reassure them I’d much rather be with them all the time and life is just unfair and I am at the mercy of 'the man' and dragged away from them against my will.

But this is not true. I don't just work for money and while it might be harder for my children to hear the truth, I trust them to be able to handle it. I told them I worked because I enjoyed having a purpose and being of service, and I love to write and make people happy by telling stories and this was what I wanted to do with my life.

The hardest part of all is not saying that I wish I didn’t have to work and could still be at home with them all day. Because while I do miss them and think about them, and look forward to the times when I can be at home with them, I don’t wish I was back at home full-time.

The time had come for all of us, for our worlds to get bigger. 

The children were ready for more and it was Cherry starting school that prompted a chain-reaction of events. I’m not saying for a second we could not have met her changing and developing needs home educating, but school was our solution and a choice in which she participated fully. With Cherry at school, Violet's circumstances also changed and home educating was no longer meeting her needs, and so we agreed she would start at school nursery. Noel was also ready for things to change, for more time at home and with the children and less time in the office. And I was ready for the exact opposite. Less time at home, more time out in the world again. This was the solution that worked for all four of us, together.

It’s also not necessarily a permanent fixture. We adapt to change as our needs change. Noel and I are adjusting and adapting our work schedules and at times he will be at home and me at work more more, at other times, I will once again be the 'default parent'.

At some point in future school may no longer be the right thing for either or both of the children. The great thing about having home educated is that you know what’s possible, and you know school is optional. If school isn’t working for us, we will remove the factor of school.

It’s not just our worlds that have got bigger, our minds have too. We have stepped out of the mindset of following the paths dictated to us – school! Office job! Full time work! Money for nice things! And instead we’re putting ourselves at the centre of the equation and asking, what do we want, and how can we make these things happen, for all of us? There are no right or wrong answers either. There's no shame if the priorities switch, if earning money becomes more imperative, or if  we decide to jack everything in temporarily and road-trip for a year. (I would quite like to do this at some point, wouldn't you?!)

If there’s one thing our family is learning to be, it’s adaptable. That’s what our species does, after all, and it’s what makes homo sapiens so incredibly successful. We adapt.

Reading, synchronicity and the shadow

Synchronicity: ‘A coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning’. Jung.

The Surface Breaks, Louise O'Neill; Mind of a Survivor, Megan Hine; Owl Sense, Miriam Darlington

I often find themes emerging in my reading, where unrelated books come together into one particular area of inquiry. I love these happy little coincidences that I see as synchronicity in action because they remind me of the profound magic of books and reading, and how truly powerful books are.

My latest bout of unwittingly thematic reading has concerned another Jungian phenomenon, that of the shadow.

The shadow is the unknown dark side of our personality and it exists just beyond our consciousness. It’s where we tend to hoard our more base and less Instagrammable urges – greed, anger, selfishness, sexual longings, power cravings. I like to think of my shadow as the world’s most debauched party taking place just where I can’t get to it, which is probably just as well, because the hangover afterwards would be off the chart.

The shadow is in my view essentially a structure created by fear of the true nature of ourselves. The parts of my nature I fear the most are my imagination, and my emotions.  And the reality of my shadow is that I do everything in my power not to come across it, which means severely tempering both of the above.

But the student must have been ready, because along came three books that opened the door to that debauched party in my psyche.

I went to an evening with bestselling author Louise O’Neill to listen to her talk about The Surface Breaks and from the second she came into the room I could feel I was in the presence of somebody unafraid of the shadow.

She’s open about her goals for writing, as she said, she doesn’t care if her characters are likeable, she cares that they are honest. They are. And how. Raw and brutal. I admire her more than I can possibly express for her comfort with discomfort, or rather her willingness to endure discomfort.

And when I read The Surface Breaks, which I did in one sitting like a woman possessed, what stayed with me afterwards was how incredibly uncomfortable it was. The main character is in permanent discomfort at best, excruciating pain at worst.

The book, a feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid, is beautiful, and powerful, and thoughtful, and brave, but it’s also really uncomfortable. The antithesis of my happily-ever-afters with their quaint teashops, cosy nights in front of a roaring fire with hot chocolate, and other simple pleasures.

Life, after all, involves both.

O’Neill inspired me to think about my own shadow in my writing, and reminded me that writing is a journey. It’s a lifetime’s work to get to know oneself, especially when we change all the time, and I see all creative endeavour as a product of deep self-knowledge that allows the truest expression.

If we don’t explore the whole – the bad side, the shadow, the darkness – how can we express the real?

After The Surface Breaks I picked up Mind of a Survivor by Megan Hine, which has been on my TBR for ages and of which I was reminded after listening to The Wild Show.

This is nothing like gritty fantasy-based YA. This is nonfiction, part memoir and part guide, a deep look at the mindset of survival and examples of that mindset in practice. 

And while some of the incidents Hine describes seem carved from fantasy – a night in the middle of the Nairobi desert warding off a pride of hungry lions armed with nothing but a small campfire, for example – this book is no less real. No less aggressive in its shattering of some pretty little myths we’ve long carried around with us.

Hine reminds us that survival can be as much about self-preservation and caution as it is about heroism and courage. And she also reminds us that the wild is neither nurturing and protective, nor hostile and unforgiving, but utterly indifferent. It does not care if we live or die.

I think that indifference, that truly bleak knowledge that somebody or something just does not care, is worse even than the darkest parts of the shadow. It’s the least human characteristic of all. Even a desire to cause harm, is generally rooted in a universally shared human experience like pain or fear. Simply not caring, is non-human to a terrifying degree.

Much of our relationship with nature relies upon us humanising it, controlling it and cutifying it to better cope with this vast indifference. I thought of this often as I read Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington, one of the most psychologically aware pieces of nature writing I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.

Her study of the native owl species of Europe takes her on a journey of inner and outer knowledge and progress and Owl Sense is as much a personal development book as it is a study of nature and wildlife, in my view.

She talks often about how we both mystify owls, using them to inform legends, and attempt to bring them under our control by turning them into cute must-have fashion accessories. She talks about her discomfort with the growing pile of owl memorabilia she accumulates during her quest, the piles of knick-knacks, bags, cushions and other accessories with cute owl prints and motifs.

Through nature, she draws attention to human nature. How fragile our perceptions can be, how easy it is to ride roughshod over the true nature of a thing in our attempt to reduce it to something within our understanding and ultimately, control.

In her tale of the Exeter eagle owl, she demonstrates how even the most awe-inspiring predator and creature of legend can be reduced to a pathetic joke if it exists out of time, and out of place.

I think we can do similar for the shadow. Not mock it or dismiss it like Darlington’s poor eagle owl, but simply accept it. Acceptance of a thing removes its power over us.

Funny, how we try so hard to humanise nature to remove its power, projecting onto the great outdoors what we’re afraid to apply to the microfacets of our own selves.

Stop everything! You can now pre-order my novel!

I’m UTTERLY ECSTATIC to let you know that Summer at Hollyhock House will be published on Thursday August 2 2018.

And as if that weren’t enough, it’s now available for pre-order. 

Even more excitingly, if you think you can handle any more excitement (not sure I can tbh) at the time of writing it was only 99p so please HOTFOOT IT OVER TO AMAZON RIGHT NOW to snap it up at this most bargainous of bargain prices.

But what’s it all about? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s the blurb, just for you.

An uplifting romantic comedy from a new voice in women’s fiction! Perfect for fans of Trisha Ashley, Debbie Johnson, Jenny Colgan and Holly Martin.

 Wow, am I in esteemed company or what? I adore all those authors from the bottom of my romantic little heart and to be compared with any, let alone all, of them, is just beyond flattering. What do you mean you didn’t ask for a running commentary? Point taken. On with the blurb.

One long summer changed Faith forever….

 Faith Coombes should have been over the moon when her long-term boyfriend proposed to her. But instead, she broke up with him. Rob was safe, reliable, nice and…boring. Nothing like the only person who had ever broken her heart…

 Unable to afford the rent on another flat and desperate for a new start, Faith takes the plunge and moves back to the village she grew up in, returning to the house that holds so many memories for her.

 Hollyhock House, the family home of her best friend Minel, also belongs to the boy who meant so much to her all those years ago.

 As Faith falls back in love with the sprawling surroundings at Hollyhocks she also finds herself falling all over again for the only person who has truly hurt her.

 Can Faith come to terms with her past? Did she make the wrong decision in breaking up with Rob?

 Or does her heart really lie at Hollyhock House?

 Summer at Hollyhock House is a charming romantic comedy full of lost loves, missed opportunities and second chances. This summer read, perfect for the holidays, will have you laughing out loud in parts, close to tears in others, and above all, championing Faith as she searches for what is most important to her.

So there it is, my debut novel, summarised in 219 words. I can’t tell you how truly, madly, deeply in love with this book I am. I honestly poured my heart and soul into it, and I am so beyond grateful to now be able to share it with you.

The fear of promoting my work

Yesterday I posted on Instagram about how hard I find it to promote myself and my work, and why that's going to change. It seemed to really resonate with a lot of people so I thought I’d go into a bit more depth about it here.

On the surface I don’t promote myself for one major reason. Time. I don’t have a great deal of it, to put it mildly.  I have kids, a business, a marriage, a house, a dog, a life. Promoting myself and my work feels like one more thing on the endless to-do list. Time and again it slips to the bottom, then falls off completely, because I just don’t have time.

It genuinely makes me laugh that I still use that tired old excuse, the same excuse I used to use for not having written the novel I always wanted to write. Time. Oh, that old chestnut. Who has the time? Who?

Nobody has the time. You have to find it. Make it. Beg, borrow or steal it if you have to, but don’t assume that there’s a ‘them’ and ‘us’, and the ‘them’ are sitting on great swathes of free time not available to the rest of us. We all have the same 24 hours, how we differ is in what we choose to do with them.

Once we move past that great red herring, we start to see a truer picture.

What if people don't like my work? Think it's rubbish? What if I get awful reviews, what if I get great reviews and go to pieces under the pressure of living up to expectations with my next book, what if I get no reviews at all? This last scenario actually worries me the most. And in a twist worthy of a murder mystery, it's also the most likely scenario, if I don't promote myself. 

These are genuine reasons why I have to force myself to promote my work. But they're still only scratching the surface.

Underneath these semi-logical worries is a boiling mass of far less coherent and rational fear. 

Fear of being seen to try, lest I fail. A big part of me would prefer to just shrug and say 'well I didn't really bother promoting it in the first place' if the book doesn't sell well. A big part of me would like to look as if I achieve effortlessly, rather than admit to the graft. 

Fear about the true nature of creativity and talent. The pernicious belief that talent is something bestowed only upon the worthy few, who never need lower themselves to anything as base as promotion because they are simply destined for greatness. It's like I've got a Conservative politician trapped inside my head, convinced that abundance and plenty should only be gifted to those already born into it.

Fear to learn more about myself. To find out if my hopes, dreams and expectations are realistic, or if they need adjusting. Fear of finding my limits. If I refuse to try and fulfil it, my potential can remain limitless forever.

Fear to expose myself through my creative work, which is uninhibitedly of me. Today my publishers sent me their proposed blurb for the back cover. It took me 20 minutes to work up the courage to read it, and I did so from behind my hands, peeking through my fingers as if I were sitting next to my dad watching a graphic sex scene on TV. It’s that excruciating, that squirmy, that exposing. Somebody else’s interpretation of my creative work. 

Fear of being 'found out', that dreaded imposter syndrome that assures me each and every professional achievement of my life to date was a gigantic fluke. Fear that the dissenting voice is right, that vicious, manipulative and destructive criticism is simply 'honest'. 

It all comes down to fear. That's the very heart of it. And I know I'm not alone in this. That it never gets easier, I know no matter how many books they write, no matter how well they sell, I know authors all struggle with this each and every time they begin the journey all over again with a new book. I know all creatives struggle with it, whatever their form of expression. 

I understand the purpose of fear. I know it's my beautiful, brilliant brain's way of trying to protect me. I know it's essential. If I had no fear about how my work would be received, it would mean I hadn't invested anything of myself within it. 

But I’m also bigger than my fear. I'm ambitious, and a grown woman, and I really, really want this. I believe in my book. I believe in myself, not completely but enough, just enough to keep me going when the self-doubt is at its very strongest.

I'm going to put self-promotion in its rightful place, at the top of my list. Not just for my book, but also for my journalism and my creative business.

I'm going to own the fact that I'm working hard on my social media, admit that I want to grow my following and engage with people who like my work and the things I am doing in the world. I'm going to make connections with my tribe, and seek inspiration from creatives I admire around the world. I'm not going to feel ashamed of being seen to try. 

I'm going to ignore that voice that tells me it's self-indulgent and vain to talk about my work, that it's vulgar to be seen to endorse myself in any way, that it's just not British to be proud of what you do, that I'm only setting myself up to be knocked down.

I'm going to recognise that's just another way my fear is trying to help me, by stopping me trying, so it can negate any possibility of me failing.

And I’m going to take my fear by the hand and say thank you very much for looking out for me for so long, but it’s OK. You can go. I’ve got this now.

I’ve got this.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? How do you approach and manage your own self promotion? I’d love to know!

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How to be a writer: Write the book you love

I saw one of those posts on Twitter a while back. It was two pictures, the first captioned ‘drafting my debut novel’ was of a beautifully iced and decorated cake, gleaming white and sparkling with edible glitz, resplendent in its sweet perfection.

The second was captioned  ‘drafting my second novel’ and depicted a cake-shaped inferno.

I was experiencing the very same phenomenon at that precise moment. My second novel was rapidly turning into my own version of the difficult second album.

Somehow I was struggling more than ever to connect with the work, to really lose myself in the story I was trying to tell. The plot and characters felt vague and undefined, and I wrote myself round in circles, always coming back to the same point and deciding to begin again with a different premise, a slightly different treatment, hoping this time it would stick.

It did not.

Somewhere along the line I’d stopped writing the best book I could. The task at hand became more effort than enjoyment and this is always a very bad sign.

If I don’t enjoy and immerse myself writing a book I can hardly expect anybody else to enjoy and immerse themselves reading it.

I know that my creativity is fuelled by me doing other things, by periods of me not actively working on a novel. I know that scheduling does not work for me. But I was increasingly forcing myself to sit down with my laptop and write to a schedule.

And so I asked myself, if I know what I need to do to create, when did I stop doing it?

I stopped the exact moment I began to pressure myself that this book ‘had to be’. It had to be written as quickly as possible so I had a follow-up in the bag once Summer At Hollyhock House was published! It had to be every bit as enchanting and magical to me as that first novel, but better! It had to be finished as soon as possible so I could begin to churn out books and establish an income stream and eventually, a career! It had to be created and put out in the world before everybody read my debut then promptly went away and forgot all about me….

In amongst all that pressure I was putting on myself, and on this poor book which is still yet to be brought into the world, I had totally forgotten the reasons why I write in the first place.

I don’t write for money, or fame, or to please anybody or so my mum and dad will be proud of me or so I can boast on social.

I write because I love and need to write. I tell stories because storytelling is a fundamental part of the human condition and it’s one that’s particularly pronounced within me. I write because the words form in my brain and press physically against the inside of my skull until I release them via the channels of my arms and hands.

I write because I love and need it, and therefore I only want to write books that I love and need to write.

It really is as simple as that.

So write the book that you love. Write the book you wish somebody else had written, so that you could read it. That’s the book you were born to write. That’s the book you need to write.

Not the book that ‘is bound to sell’ or ‘the market is crying out for’ or  ‘is just like (famous author’s) book that sold really well’ or ‘that will establish me as….’ All of these are great to have, but they’re unreliable. The market will shift and change, demands rise and fall, trends come and go, fashions change like the seasons and pass by like the wind.

By the time you’re halfway through the book that’s ‘totally right for the market’, the market will have moved on.

Write the book that is pressing insistently into the inside of your skull. Write it because you can’t not.  Trust that the process will be enough, that the journey will be reward, and that if it’s meant to be, the market will make itself known when the time comes.

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Why I set my novel in summer

As you’ve probably guessed from the title, Summer At Hollyhock House is set in summer. I started writing it in earnest about this time last year, as gunmetal-grey skies rolled over bleak, spindly silhouettes of bare trees and the only sign of colour and warmer days to come was the crocuses and narcissi poking their cheery little heads through the relentless gloom. Maybe I was just craving some warmth and life and colour but it wasn’t so much the imagery of summer I had in mind when I was writing, as the feeling.

I grew up in a small village in rural Sussex that does summer very well. The village green, its crowning glory, is always packed in the warmer months, surrounded by majestic horse chestnut trees and playing host to cricket, football, rowdy mobs of children and families enjoying picnics and games of rounders. A walk around the outer rural lanes is like a stroll through the Chelsea Flower Show, magnificent gardens heavy with high-summer blooms sending sweet, heady scent wafting into the air. It’s always lively and busy, there’s always something going on, everybody’s out and about and full of chatter and activity and the odd inevitable complaint about how hot it is.

It’s impossible not to feel happy on these heady summer days, happy and hopeful and like you belong. That’s one of the feelings I was looking to capture with my novel, the sense of belonging.

But when I really think about summer, and what it means to me, and what it was I wanted the book to capture and reflect, I think about the mornings.

Now first things first. I am not a morning person. I drag myself protesting out of bed every. Single. Day without fail and while yes it’s easier in summer when there’s soft light pouring in through the windows and the air is balmy, I’d probably still rather just roll over and go back to sleep. I’ve always been this way, since I was a young child my mother had to shake me complaining out of bed every morning. In fact there was only one thing that could stir me into action voluntarily, and that was if I was going out to ride horses.

Horsey people start their days early, some yards get cracking at 6am. I worked for several such yards in my formative years and the prospect of a day of the irresistible combination of manual labour, the company of animals and time outdoors was enough to boot me out of bed and get me moving. Up, get dressed, eat breakfast half-asleep then out of the door and onto my bike. Even then I’d be half wishing I was still in bed.

Outside the sun would already have risen in the sky and the air would be fresh, not yet warmed up after the cool night. The dawn chorus would be in full swing and the village green would be basking in the early morning rays. On these mornings, there was rarely another soul to be seen, the odd solitary dog-walker maybe, making the most of the peace and quiet before the serious business of the day began. But usually I was alone. Just me and my bike and wherever it was I had to be. Whizzing past those gardens as their glorious displays began to unfurl themselves, ready for another day of basking in the sun. There were hardly any cars on the roads at such an early hour. At dawn the village didn’t belong to people. It was its own world, private, secretive and busy with the movement of insects and birds and foxes returning home after a night of pillaging, but devoid of human activity.

Despite the aloneness I never felt lonely. I felt infused and imbibed with the magic that surrounded me and it really was magic, not hocus-pocus but true and deep earthy magic. The dew on the grass, the fat, pale droplets gleaming irrediscent on the petals of roses. My favourites were the peachy-yellow ones that turned pink at the edges. I wondered if fairies drank that dew from the petals every morning, before the world awoke. If the sun was already heating up, mist would rise from fields behind thick hedges over which I could just see, from my vantage point on my two-wheeled steed. Rabbits often frolicked in the morning rays, even the odd deer, enchanting looking creatures of fable who would be alerted by the noise of my tyres on the road and raise their heads, startled, ready to run lest I pose a threat.

No, not lonely, I’ve always enjoyed solitude since I was very young, and the whimsical thoughts in my head seemed too uncool to consider voicing out loud. But it did often occur to me how much I would have liked to share this with somebody or something. If instead of the bike, I was riding along on my own pony, a chestnut Arab with a gleaming coat and pluming tail, skittering and darting at the shadows cast onto the road. Or a dog, trotting along faithfully at my heels, occasionally breaking away to bounce into one of the fields and pursue the unfortunate rabbits.

And then when I got older I would sometimes wonder what it would be like if that person was with me. That person, the one who saw right into my fanciful heart and didn’t scorn my notion that the world of the morning was a bridge between two realities, the one of people, and the one that lies beyond most of us. The world of my favourite childhood authors, where trees have spirits and animals can talk and there is magic and mystery beyond the human eye, visible only to those who really want to see it.

Sometimes, I wondered if I let my eyes lose focus and let the landscape around me meld into a blurry mass, radiant with colour and texture and scent, I would be able to see it. And then if I turned my head I would find beside me that person, they would have materialised next to me, and they would be able to see it, because they could see me too.

Ways to overcome creative block

If you're in any way creative you'll be familiar with block. It's the moment when you sit staring at a blank screen, unable to type a single word. When you look at the scene in front of you and the image on your camera and the difference between the two feels insurmountable, and the disappointment washes over you.

It's that voice whispering in your head 'what are you doing? You're not a writer/photographer/artist/maker and you never will be. Who do you think you are, nurturing your grand ambitions? You'll never do it. Just do us all a favour and stop trying.'

It could be a lack of inspiration, or it could be that the inspiration is clearly formed in your head, you have a vision of how you want your creation to look, how you want it to make people feel - and the reality is you have blankness. A nothing. An empty space. 

For me, and I suspect for many of us, there is nothing more intimidating than empty space. 

There are entire books and courses devoted to overcoming block and I thoroughly recommend checking them out, and finding what works for you. But at the end of the day it's unlikely anybody else can solve the conundrum for you. Nobody can unblock you. You have to eventually work out how to do it yourself. It can be with the help of others, but the final push always has to come from you.

Here are some ways I overcome block. I'd love to hear your strategies so please do leave your insights in the comments below.

1. Go for a walk. Yes, that old cliche, but for me it truly works on two levels. The regular experience of being in nature fuels my creativity, in ways I don't fully understand yet. Truthfully I don't know why it works, I just know that it does. I take in much of what I see on an unconscious level and store it somewhere in my mind, waiting for it to become relevant. A walk is also hugely helpful for smaller blocks - struggling with plotholes, connecting scenes or even just working out what relevance that isolated chapter I wrote has, and where it fit into the overall story. The physical act of walking and the immersion in nature occupies the body and the senses and leaves the mind free to find the answers.

2. Talk to somebody. And choose them carefully. Last year I met an amazing woman, the very wonderful Sas Petherick, at Sisterhood and something about her really stuck with me. When I was wrestling with a block and all my usual strategies had failed, her presence crept into my head and I reached out to her.  She didn't tell me how to overcome the block, because that's not something somebody else can do. But she helped me see how I could overcome it myself. Her warmth and wisdom and aura of complete belief in me was the real gift, this is what helped to thaw out whatever icy armour I had constructed around myself. I highly recommend checking out Sas's work - her fantastic podcast Courage and Spice is a great place to start.

3. Sit with the feelings. When block hits often what I am truly afraid of is exposing parts of myself, because creativity is such an expression of self. Let yourself feel the shame and doubt and mortification and fear, let yourself feel whatever it is you have to feel without distraction. For me there can be guilt too, about devoting so much time and energy to a creative endeavour for which there is no guarantee of any monetary return. I 'could' have spent all that time doing paid work, or tidying my house - no sorry, that one isn't going to fly - but the point is, I 'could' have been doing something more worthwhile. But then what's more worthwhile than your creative work? 

4. Search for inspiration. Look at the work of others in your field and allow yourself to reflect on what you admire about them. Don't try and copy them - trying to do somebody else's work will never produce anything as valuable as the work you alone are meant to do. But look to them for inspiration and remind yourself that others have walked this path, and you can too. Chances are that person you are so admiring suffers from block too. The only difference between you and them is they found a way to overcome it. 

5. Switch off and sleep. Don't consciously continue to ponder the dilemma but don't push it away either if it continues to prey on your mind. Watch your thoughts and let them float up and away. The ones you need will always stick around. Don't leap out of bed to scribble down flashes of inspiration - trust that what you need, will still be there in the morning.

6. Alter your expectations. While you should never compromise your creativity and devalue your work 'to get it done', accept that all work is essentially work in progress and will never be perfect. There are times when you will have to make creative decisions that will cause you a great deal more work than you initially anticipated and if your gut tells you this is what has to be done, you've just got to suck it up and do it. But other times, anything is better than nothing. I struggled massively with writing a synopsis for my novel. I was putting unbearable pressure on that short document. It had to sum up the plot, introduce the characters, reflect the style and setting of the novel, encapsulate my personality, and be written in the tone and feel of the novel. In 500 words. And it was vital I got it 100% perfect because if nobody read my manuscript because the synopsis didn't sell it in the right way, that was me screwed. Yeah, not going to happen. So I wrote a basic plot summary and sent it off before I could question myself. It did not reflect my unique style and introduce every character and showcase the setting and it was not written in the tone and feel of the novel. It was, however, 500 words of plot summary. That, I hoped, would be enough. It was. 

7. Love the pain. Once shouted at me by a seriously fierce personal trainer who wanted me to hold a squat position plus two 8kg kettlebells for two minutes. LOVE THE PAIN, CATHY! Yeah my butt did NOT love the pain. But I did it anyway and my butt is off the scale KAPOW/vaguely toned. Sometimes things are going to hurt but there's beauty in all human emotion, pain included. If you're creative this pretty much comes as standard. Fierce weeping is part of the process whether that's tears of relief, joy, sadness or just downright frustration. Love it. Embrace it. It won't last forever. And if you are feeling the pain it's a sign that you're in touch with your true self, and that's where creativity comes from. Yourself. 

How I wrote a novel

This year I achieved a lifelong ambition. I wrote a novel.

I've wanted to write a novel since I was about six years old. I have multiple unfinished drafts saved on this computer, on previous computers, on computers lost to time, on computers that probably predate time (BBC Micro, anybody?). Until this year, I never managed to finish one.

I would begin and I would know how it ended. I could never do the middle bit, connecting the dots, getting the characters from A to B. Slowly my interest and motivation would slip away, or I would start afresh, try again only to find the same cycle repeating itself.

This year, that changed. I wrote an entire novel from start to finish, sent it to my agent, she got me a book deal and I will be a published novelist in 2018. The whole process was breathtakingly quick. I began in January. I had a deal by July.

In fact the whole process was breathtaking, full stop. It was fascinating. If you search online for 'how to write a novel' you'll come across many well-thought out blogs and articles and tips and exercises all designed to help. Most of them involve things like, planning and writing out the story structure, getting the plot outline completed, developing your characters, going through various creative exercises on paper (if your character went out for lunch, what would they order?) and other very sensible and helpful tips. It's all highly organised and linear. 

I did none of the above. I have no Instagrammable notebooks filled with spider diagrams, scribbled notes and sketches. The process of writing my novel was as far removed from a planned and organised creative exercise as it's possible to be. It was completely unlinear - it was cyclical. Here's how it all worked, and what I learned.

1. I got depressed. I began the year in a pretty bad place in terms of my self-image and general mood, and it got worse as I approached my 36th birthday. I felt impossibly low, stuck, drained, self-defeating and had no idea how to get myself out of it. On a surface level I continued 'as normal' but inside me everything was on hold. I had literally nothing inside me other than empty space and lack. 

2. I got reflective. Through a series of events and happenings my personal history became pressing in my mind and I became fixated upon my teenage years. I listened to music from the era on loop, remembered the people I knew, the places I went and the emotions I felt, and I played it all through as frequently as I played The Prodigy and Utah Saints. At first I wondered if I was experiencing a period of mourning, having entered my late mid-thirties, for times long gone and emotions and experiences I would and could never repeat. But then the internal processes began to change - again - and I started to wonder what might have happened if I'd made different choices or decisions, if I'd avoided certain people or become close to others - I began to play with my own history.

3. I got inspired. I began to write a story that was in no way based upon my own personal life or experience, but was definitely informed and inspired by the process I'd been through above. I have had this happen before - a creative surge, out comes between 15,000 and 40,000 words, and then it stops. I ride the wave and then lose it and have no way of getting it back. I assumed this would be the case, and I wrote anyway. 

4. I dug in. Parts of the book were excruciating to write, for reasons that would make no sense to anybody but me. Although not autobiographical this book was a creation of mine, something generated and put into the world by me alone. This meant exposing the parts of myself about which I feel most vulnerable. At times I literally could not type the words, I knew what I had to write and I could feel the words in my head, waiting to flow down my arms and onto the page, and I could feel resistance and blockage along with shame and humiliation. I could sit for hours staring at the screen, waiting to be ready, waiting for the excruciating feelings to pass. I believed enough in the outcome to override the fear, and so eventually, I wrote what I had to write. This was the first time I had found the courage to write what I needed to write and not duck out.

5. I couldn't let go. When the first roadblock happened, the first indication that this was not going to work, I was running out of steam and losing the creative flow, I expected I would just stop. I didn't. I kept going. I started again, a different iteration of the same story. I did this several times. I wrote chapters that kept to a chronological order and chapters that didn't fit anywhere but I felt that they would do at some point, and I felt I was writing them for a reason, so I did.

6. I went to the other side. I put all other aspects of my life on hold (as far as this is possible) and wrote. I wrote from the second I woke up until I was needed elsewhere, and until the second I went to bed, usually at about 1 or 2am. I was bursting with energy. I didn't need much sleep, I had to force myself to remember to eat, I lost a ton of weight and I felt a true vibrance within me, a genuine connection to the flow of creativity, that I hadn't ever really allowed myself to experience before. I'd skirted around it, had moments of inspiration, days here and there when the words wouldn't stop coming, but I never let myself really lean into it. This time I went all the way. I dived in and let it swallow me whole.

7. I began to trust the process. I saw that I went through cycles of intense creativity and productivity, and that these would slowly tail off and I would need to rest, get a few early nights, stop trying to force it and wait for the inspiration to return, trusting that it would - and it did. Every time. I wrote whatever I felt I had to write in that moment to keep the flow going. I wrote entire vehicles and characters into the story that I would later remove, but I wrote them anyway because I felt I had to at the time. I didn't really know why, nor did I question it. I wrote whatever my brain, or my heart, told me to write. I surrendered.

8. I abandoned all goals other than finishing. It became clear to me that if I kept trusting the process - trusting myself - I was going to finish this book. I put all thoughts of publication out of my mind, stopped worrying about whether my agent would want to read it and whether she would consider it worthy of submission. I didn't have to encourage myself or 'fake it til I made it'. I genuinely wanted to finish the book, to finish the book. That was the only goal. I retained of course an inkling that this could become something big for me if I did finish it and if my agent liked it and if somebody picked it up - but at this stage that was too many 'ifs' and all were out of my control. The only thing in my control was whether or not I would finish the book, so that became the goal, and that's what I did.

9. Once I'd finished, I started at the beginning all over again. I read and re-read and re-read and made change after change. Some small, some big - some so big they entailed almost a complete re-writing of vast parts of the book. I continued to trust the process. If my instincts told me something had to go, it went. If my heart said 'this isn't working,' I stopped trying to make it work. When I saw I needed to make changes that would mean yet more hours upon hours of writing and rewriting and would be difficult and an effort, I made every single one anyway. I trusted that it would all make sense in the end, and I kept going. I also trusted that I would know when I was done, when it was ready, when it was time to stop tinkering and go on to the next stage. 

10. I sent it to my agent. This was a HUGE step. This was the start of me stating my intention to put my work out there in the world. I was terrified and the 'what ifs' were off the scale. I've been working with my agent Isy since 2009, but only on non-fiction. This was something entirely new and different. We hadn't worked together since The Girl's Guide to Life on Two Wheels was published in 2013 - this felt as scary as starting from scratch, but with the added fear of losing the respect of somebody I value. What if she came back saying 'no this is just not going to work, please stick to non-fic in future'? I believed in the book 100% and I felt magic in it. If she didn't get it and feel it too, would that invalidate everything I'd worked towards?

11. She loved it and asked me to prepare it for submission. I froze up temporarily and struggled to rework certain parts based on her feedback. Then I struggled to create a synopsis - I think I spent about three weeks staring at a blank screen, completely unable to even start. The prospect of falling at the final hurdle loomed large in my mind. I tried various strategies, and they all failed. I wanted my synopsis to be PERFECT. What I finally sent was not perfect. It would do. That was all I was capable of, and it would do.

12. Feedback took a while to come in and the first couple were rejections, but still positive and encouraging. Then the offer came in and I basically didn't tell anybody other than Noel and my mother and one close friend. I had thought I would be screaming it from the rooftops. Instead I said nothing. Eventually I put something on Instagram. I've struggled to refer to it much since. Too many what-ifs again. What if they change their minds? What if they're not happy with the final edit? What if it doesn't happen, after all? What if it's a spectacular failure and everybody laughs at me and I get review after review saying 'this is shit'? WHAT IF?

The process is ongoing, in a cyclical way. At the moment the second edit is with my publishers, and soon there will be more editing, refining, tinkering, titles, cover designs and all the exciting stuff. But all cycles come back to the beginning and right now that's where I am - almost back at the beginning, one cycle has ended and I'm waiting for the next one to start.

Throughout this process there have been standout moments. Finishing, getting good feedback from my agent, getting a deal - they were all huge. But the real standout moment happened much earlier. It happened after those awkward, difficult times when I sat staring at a blank screen knowing what I had to write and feeling unable to write it, waiting to be ready to break through the block, refusing to shut down my computer and let the novel slip away as all its predecessors have done, because I couldn't find the courage to do what I had to do.

The standout moment was when I realised I was going to finish. That I was not going to stop and I was going to do whatever it took to finish the book. Not in a half-assed 'well I'll just put up with some parts that don't really work for me just to get it done', but finish truly, with the knowledge deep inside me that I'd done the absolute best I could. I hadn't shirked or taken the easy way out.

That was when I realised that the hard part - the middle bit, the connecting chapters, keeping the story going, retaining the flow - wasn't hard at all. In fact it was the easiest part of all. 

That was the moment I chose to trust the process, while realising that the process isn't really a 'process' at all.

The process is me. When I chose to trust the process I chose to trust myself. I chose to believe in myself. That was the moment it all changed. That was the magic.