January
Back to awful computer problems, which resulted in the loss of 5000 words. Nothing to do but rewrite them, so I did. This is a new book, called Butterfly Winter, and is a kind of Somerset magical realism - some of Milford have seen it. I am, now, beginning to move forwards. My father's illness and death, and my mother moving in with us, took up most of last year and the process is still ongoing, as we have to clear and then sell their house. This in itself is an experience: it initially seemed a huge and daunting task, then became increasingly broken down into stages, and then slowly and now suddenly we are in the final stage, organising furniture vans and valuations. This was the house in which I grew up, happily, and it is hard to let it go, but also exciting to know that the house itself will be moving into its next incarnation with another family. It's an ordinary house, but not far off a hundred years old now (it being, alarmingly, not far off a hundred years from the 1930s) and its history is ongoing. My mother, who will be 87 on Friday, has adapted astonishingly well to moving, again slowly then suddenly, out of the house which has been the whole of her married life for 50+ years.
I don't have a publisher for Butterfly Winter, though I will be looking once it's done. I'm enjoying writing out of deadline, and taking my time with it. I'm at a point where writing it is the important thing, rather than what becomes of it; my mother stopped being published by Robert Hale in the early 80s, but is still writing. You reach a point where the internal process, and the compulsion of the world building, is more important than its external reception. Perhaps this is making the best of a bad job, but I don't think so in this instance. Maybe it's paralleling the house? One's narrative changes.
I don't have a publisher for Butterfly Winter, though I will be looking once it's done. I'm enjoying writing out of deadline, and taking my time with it. I'm at a point where writing it is the important thing, rather than what becomes of it; my mother stopped being published by Robert Hale in the early 80s, but is still writing. You reach a point where the internal process, and the compulsion of the world building, is more important than its external reception. Perhaps this is making the best of a bad job, but I don't think so in this instance. Maybe it's paralleling the house? One's narrative changes.