I’m back! It’s been a while since I wrote anything for my own blog. I’ve been busy writing the three Isabella M Smugge books, my first collection of Jane Austen short stories (I’ll tell you about that in the next blog) and generally throwing myself headfirst into the life of a full time writer. Back at the end of 2021 when I considered what that would look like, I visualised days full of ideas and creativity, books selling in huge numbers, people coming up to me in the street and murmuring, “Aren’t you – Ruth Leigh?” Lots of fun stuff has happened and it’s been great, but glamorous it ain’t.
Writers need distraction. They also need peace and quiet and noise and cake and tea and chocolate. Most writers share several similar traits. Which are:
1. Insatiable curiosity (you could call it nosiness if you liked). I’ve often told the story of the time I was on a plane and overheard a mother and her teenage son arguing. Him: “But why can’t I have an iPhone 12? It’s so unfair!” Her: “I’ve told you, you’re not having one.” Him: “You’re so mean.” Her: “Too bad.” Him: “But Elliott’s got an iPhone 12.” Pause. Significant look between the two of them. Her: “And we all know why that is, don’t we?” I was desperate to know why and I still am. Whenever I’m out and about, my ears are always flapping. Snippets of conversation, strange remarks, funny names – they’re all grist to my mill and I think many writers feel the same.
2. Apparent absent-mindedness. Now I’ve created a world of my own, I spend quite a lot of time in it. I’ll often be found staring out of the window as I ponder whether Isabella should have a love interest in book four (people keep suggesting it), what I should do about Johnnie and Paige, what’s going to happen at Mummy’s wedding and so on and so forth.
3. The inability to own enough books. Writers refer to buying books as, “research.” Because it is. Honest. You never know when you might have to look something up or be inspired by another author. I’ve been forced to buy two books this week (second-hand) for my current Work In Process, the aforementioned Pride and Prejudice short stories. I didn’t want to do it[1] but I had to force myself.
Sometimes people say, “How do you find enough stuff to write about?” I don’t know what it is about my life, but I can honestly say it’s never dull. Without really wanting to, I’ve had enough go on in the last month to inspire at least a couple more Smugge novels and any number of blogs.
We were meant to be going on holiday straight after school broke up, driving through the Channel Tunnel and on to our destination. We had to take the van because there were six of us (our eldest son’s girlfriend was coming too). The van had its MOT and passed. Excellent. But it broke down on the way back from the garage. Not so good. The diagnosis was that the turbo had gone, which roughly equates to a broken leg and tummy trouble in human terms. However you want to put it, it wasn’t going anywhere.
For two weeks, our lovely mechanic battled with the internal workings of the darn thing. He found lots of other things wrong with it along the way. We spent the week working out other ways we might be able to get there, but by Friday, we’d accepted it wasn’t happening. We bumped our Channel Tunnel tickets and got some money back then spent it on cheapie plane tickets on Monday. A great (shorter) holiday was had by all and it really woke up my creative brain. I also took lots of photos of snowy mountains and green pastures which I think have enlivened this blog up no end.
We returned on Monday evening. At 3.00 on Wednesday morning, my son woke me up with the words no mother wants to hear. “Mum, there’s water coming through my ceiling and the plaster’s falling down.” Outside in the rain, clad in our dressing gowns and slippers, we turned the water off and then flushed the loo and ran the taps until the dripping stopped.
The next morning, driving together down the A12 en route to Belgium, the gearbox on my new old car broke. We limped home, the said gearbox making alarming noises all the way. Back on the drive, now a graveyard of non-working vehicles, our lovely mechanic was waiting with an anxious expression and another old car which he kindly lent me. That night I came down with a cold and earache.
The next day, my husband got an eye infection. On Friday night, he rang me at 9.00 to tell me the thrilling news that his front tyre had exploded and he was therefore stuck at a garage in Ipswich waiting for the AA. Returning home at 1.30, the combination of his eye infection and the many black bags full of stuff retrieved from the loft culminated in him losing his balance and falling straight on to his sleeping wife.
Since then nothing else has broken. You could say it’s been a rough few weeks. Being relentlessly positive, however, we’re looking at it like this.
Thank goodness the leak didn’t start while we were away. And what if the car had broken on the way to the airport or in the fast lane of the M25?
And as I often say, life is copy. Mine certainly is. I’m starting to note up Isabella M Smugge book four and some of this stuff might be happening to her. How would she cope with a catastrophic leak, or all her cars breaking down? Only one way to find out.
[1] I did, obviously
