Message from Africa
This diary entry is being typed in darkest Africa – well pretty dark anyway. I am staying at Balule in South Africa’s Kruger Park, which is one of the rest camps that has no electricity. So it’s the moon, the light from my lap top and a paraffin light.
This is our third week in South Africa, a trip that started with the luxury of Cape Town, continued to the beaches of Kwa Zulu Natal, with a quick stop in Jo’burg before heading for Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the north, which is where we are now.
We are staying in rondawels, little huts with no windows and thatched roofs. We have just finished eating and are now sitting outside, reluctant to go into the heat (it has been about 36 degrees today) and we are watching the hyaena which is pacing up and down on the other side of the fence, just a few feet away.
Having my laptop with me means that I’ve been trying to catch up with some writing, ready for September. I’ve been asked to take part in a National Poetry Day event at Newcastle’s Lit and Phil, with the theme of food, so am working on two poems. Also managed to finish some radio play treatments for the BBC Ignite programme, but still have a second draft of a play to finish when I get home.
I am still working on short stories. To read one with a South African theme, visit www.pulp.net where my short story Not the English Margate is one of August’s stories (by the time I find a network connection to submit this diary entry it will probably be in the archive!)
I have started working on a short story set in Balule, but I don't think I'll finish it before we leave. We are up at about 5am, when it is still dark, to get ready to head out of the camp at 6am when the gates open. By the time we get back, it’s almost dark, so there’s not much time for writing. Also, I love sitting listening to the animals and enjoying the night, so it seems a shame to waste these evenings when we’ll soon be moving to a very modern camp for our last two nights in the park.
So, it’s time to transfer this to my memory stick, close down the computer and enjoy the sounds and smells of the African night.
Surprise, surprise
I was delighted to discover that I was one of the ten runners up in the Mslexia Poetry competition, with my poem, That Country, along with other Diamond Twiggers Lisa Matthews, who won third prize, and Fiona Ritchie Walker, another runner up. We were all commended for other poems we’d submitted too. And to think that I nearly didn’t submit at all.
Since I’ve come back from West Yorkshire Playhouse, I’ve been taking myself in hand. Nothing comes of nothing, so I’d decided to be more pro-active, submit more work to magazines and competitions, and to try and find myself an agent.
In the same week that I heard about Mslexia, I also received a letter telling me I was Highly Commended in the Biscuit Short Story competition for my story Mobile ; that was another competition that I nearly didn’t enter, but made myself do it in my new positive drive. If ever there's a moral in a story, this is it. Neither of the two pieces of work were new, so it wasn’t just a question of, 'At last my work is ready to move out into the world', it was more a lesson in having confidence to send work out, and also in learning not to feel rejection is a reflection on the quality of my writing. That's the nature of the literary world, many have to be rejected for the few to be picked; sometimes it just isn’t your turn. But the way to respond to rejection is to address another envelope and send it out again somewhere else. It is also good to have friends to share critical reading sessions with, because there’s nothing like the supportive comments and the urgings of other writers to encourage that decision to submit work. So thank you to all my fellow writers who have helped me with advice, criticism and information about potential opportunities.
But of course, that is what Mslexia is all about, a magazine that gives useful information and helpful advice to new ( and in my case not so new) writers, we all need it wherever we’re at with our work.
It is also what we try to do with The Blue Room, giving opportunities to new writers to read their work for the first time, and giving information on events and opportunities with the e-mailing list. Unfortunately, my new found drive to concentrate on my own work means that other things that I do with my time have to give. I’ve made the decision to drop out of organising the Blue Room for the present, in an effort to be more concentrated about my own writing. It was a difficult decision, because I got a lot of pleasure from doing it, and also because I was afraid that it would fail to carry on if I left. Of course it will carry on, with a very able and committed team, and I was foolish to feel guilty or worried.
[Note (2010): The Blue Room continued in operation through till 2008, but has now closed.]
That was me deluding myself, thinking that I was crucial to the success of the blue room. I have to learn to let go, and trust that it will thrive, and may well be better off without my input. The world won’t collapse if I stop running around making it spin. It is something writers have to learn, maybe particularly women writers: using the excuse that we are too busy with non-writing commitments maybe a way of not giving ourselves time or permission to concentrate on our own work, or even actually avoiding the scary step of the ruthless hard work entailed in taking your writing seriously. No luck with the agent yet, but.
Of course, at the moment, I have the perfect excuse not to write, as I’m sitting in a dinky little caravan in a field in Cornwall, with my boys on holiday. The sun is glowing, it is a still day and I can see pink lilies, yellow budlea, spiky fronds of flax and feathery green tamarisk, all planted to make this corner a floral heaven, there’s a faint hum of bees. It’s going to be a perfect beach day. It would be heaven if it wasn’t for the fact that I appear to have a stomach bug and I feel nauseous, get terrible cramps in waves, and I don’t think I can go far from a loo. Maybe it is an opportune attack of the runs, as my proofs to correct for the story to go in the Biscuit anthology arrived this morning. Someone else will have to take the kids to the beach, I can’t possibly go anywhere today, I’m forced to stay here all on my own with my laptop. Ah well.
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