Only Connect Part Two - Miracles and Music with Sheena Wilkinson

 Earlier this month Sheena Wilkinson wrote a lovely post about working with other writers, and mentioned that we were going to do an event together at the Belfast Book Festival. 

I am so grateful to Sheena for generously  suggesting that we do this event together , and for pitching it to The Belfast Book Festival, who were SO lovely to work with. Other Festivals should take note!  They paid for my travel, put me up in a hotel, AND paid us for doing the event, which, I am relieved to say, went well, and was actually fun to do. The writer and journalist Sue Leonard, who is very well known in the Irish press for her literary interviews,  was wonderful - she was very encouraging and calming and had really done her preparation - she really knew our books and asked really thoughtful and good questions about our stories and our writing practice, and the audience were great - very smiley and engaged, and also willing to ask questions at the end.

It really struck me how much we, as writers for children, loved each other's first book for adults, and how we had similar 'voices' - we both wrote our books to give comfort and create a safe space for the reader, and whilst both of us were keen to be true to difficult aspects of our stories, and not be twee, as writers for children, we also knew the importance of giving the reader hope.  Here is a picture of us on stage, having  a lovely time answering Sue's brilliant questions. I hope it wasn't too hard for Sue to get a word in edgeways - luckily she is a very experienced interviewer!

Our festival event was to be on a Saturday, and paid for a double room in a hotel, so I was able to invite my husband to join me, and we paid his travel and breakfast etc. After Sheena and I had zoomed and chatted together, Sheena invited me and my husband to come and stay with her and her husband the night before. This was very brave and generous of her, as we had never met in real life, and also very kind, as she herself was only returning from England the same day herself. We couldn't get on the same flight as her, so on the Friday we caught an earlier one, the Festival paid for a taxi to pick us up and take us straight to the Crescent Arts Centre, where we left our luggage, and we had a lovely pub lunch and then went to two fascinating Festival events about translating poetry and then about translating two novels, and a launch of an exhibition, then we caught the bus, and after half an hour arrived at the park and ride where Sheena was there to welcome us and drive us to her home. We arrived to a delicious home made meal by her very kind husband, and started to chat, and discovered that we were all very keen on folk music.

Now this is where the miracle happens. I always have loved folk music, and used to sing lots, to the extent that I have sung at friends' weddings and at church. But sometime during the emotionally stressful period where I was looking after my elderly Irish parents, and for the years after their deaths in 2014 and 2017, up to now, I became unable to sing. It physically hurt my throat to try, and if I managed  a verse I would peter out very soon, and I had to stay silent, and I felt very very sad but resigned. In the past month I had felt a change - I had been at a Catholic Mass and an Anglican Eucharist and had managed to sing part of a hymn at each service, but my voice had quickly tired. So I told Sheena and her husband about this, and said that I would love it if we had a music session, my husband and Sheena's husband  could play guitars and Sheena could sing, but I would only listen.

Only a miracle happened. Something about Sheena and her husband's Irish kindness and welcome  relaxed something deep in me. Sheena herself has a beautiful voice, and it was so gorgeous hearing her sing, and both the men sang and played the guitar so well. Very tentatively, I started to join in the odd word or phrase, and Sheena smiled at me and encouraged me. I had started to find my voice coming back before, but it always faded away,  but this was deeper,   before I knew what was happening, I was properly singing again, first quietly and then more confidently, and we found that Sheena's and my voices went really well together. The next thing was they were encouraging me to sing on my own, and I did. After that we stayed up late and took turns to sing, and it was wonderful. Our husbands really got on, and it was just such a great evening.

It is hard for me to put into words how much it means to me that Sheena, in appreciating my voice in 'Small Miracles', and inviting me to do an event with her about her wonderful book, also somehow enabled me to be able to sing, and love singing again. This is not a small miracle, it is a big one. Thank you so much, Sheena!  I am so glad, as you put it, that our books became friends first, and I really want to continue to read your books and sing with you! Thank you to the Scattered Authors Society for enabling such life-giving connections to take place - and here's to many more creative collaborations for us all!

Dear and Sweet by Sheena Wilkinson

This will be a short post today because I am getting married ONE WEEK TODAY.  Words I never imagined I would be writing, certainly not at the age of 53. So really, this month’s reflection has to have a nuptial theme.

Children’s books, for obvious reasons, aren’t awash with weddings, but today I’m going to look at few of my favourites. In no particular order…

 

These Happy Golden Years (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

I always loved the romance of Almanzo driving his sledge through the snow to pick teenage Laura up from her horrible lodgings to take her home across the prairie for precious family weekends. But it’s their proposal I like best. When Almanzo asks if she’d like an engagement ring, Laura says it would depend on who gave it to her. ‘If I should?’ Almanzo asks. ‘Then it would depend on the ring,’ Laura responds.

 

Pennington’s Heir (K.M.Peyton)

Another not so romantic one: Ruth is pregnant and Pat just out of prison, then ‘bang: they were married. He liked it. It was interesting, finding her out.’ Like Laura and Almanzo, they have hardships to face, but the end of the book finds them still married, with the future looking brighter. As a teen I had a huge crush on Pat; at 53 I’m very relieved to be marrying someone as unlike him as possible.

 

The Ready-Made Family (Antonia Forest)

 

Here, unlike in Pennington’s Heir, we actually see the wedding in some detail. The church and ceremony are described with Forest’s trademark lyrical precision, but the reader agrees with Lawrie that it was ‘the dullest wedding I’ve ever seen.’ Karen, like Ruth and Laura, is still a teenager, and like me is marrying a widower (though I’m happy to say mine isn’t 22 years older than me because that would make him geriatric). 

 

 

The Chalet School Goes To It (Elinor M. Brent-Dyer)

 

Because the Chalet School is a soap opera, it has its fair share of weddings, including some exotic 1920s Tyrolean ones. But the one I like best is the wartime wedding of founder-pupil Simone. Now a teacher, Simone is the last of her chums to marry, which everyone is jolly pleased about as she is ‘too dear and sweet to spend all her life teaching’. Bossy Jo takes control and supplies three pages and five bridesmaids (the day before the wedding). All the chums set to with ‘odd pieces of lace and the precious white silk’ to deck Simone out in style, making a wedding dress in a day. You will be relieved to know that, wartime restrictions notwithstanding, Simone has ‘a new set of undies’ too. 

 

And now, gentle reader, I must get back to being dear and sweet. See you on the other side! 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Friends by Sheena Wilkinson

My books and I have, as you will know if you tune in regularly on the 13^th of the month, moved house. As well as a drastic cull, there’s been a big rearranging. The large bookcase in my sitting room, which once housed adult novels (E-S) has, for various reasons which even I consider too dull to share, been relocated in my bedroom and now houses some of my children’s books. These books used to be in various small bookcases around my old house – pony books in one, paperbacks in one, slightly more collectables in another. It’s surreal to see them all making friends in one place, and even stranger to have them in my bedroom where, in a new environment, they surround me like the old friends they are.  

 

I got a gorgeous hardback of The Mirror and the Light for my birthday last month, and I’m really looking forward to it, but so far it’s been too easy, in the tired half-hour before sleep, to reach for I Wanted a Pony or What Katy Did or First Term at Malory Towers.  What with moving house, wedding preparations, and trying to finish my current novel, I’ve been grateful for these easy pleasures. 

 

After the wedding next month, my bedroom will become the guest room. First Term at Malory Towers will not make it across the landing to the master bedroom, but I do hope it and its friends will sweeten the repose of any guests who chance our way.  

Blurring Boundaries by Sheena Wilkinson

Daisy supervising the writing of this post 

I’ve always been spoilt. When others complained about fitting in work around partners and children, and struggling to find physical space, I could look smugly at my study, which was solely for my writing. Even back in the days when I had a teaching day job, I never sullied my sacred space with the sordid trappings of marking and report writing. My boundaries were non-negotiable. I knew I could never share. 

As you may know if you’ve followed my fortunes in this blog, I’ve recently moved in with my fiancé, and am getting married in October. Taking the contents of two houses – one small writer’s house full of books and paintings, one large family home full of old PlayStations and twenty-five-year-old wedding presents (my fiancé is a widower with a teenage son), and editing 

them into one home to suit us all has been a challenge to one unused to compromise. (You can keep that lamp I suppose,  but yes, I do need to have six bookcases on the landing.)

 

This house is over twice the size of the one I’ve just sold, but there isn’t a study or an unused room I could turn into one. How would I cope? I was used to spending hours every day upstairs in my special writing space. The dining room? A large, bright room formerly almost empty and little used, could I make it multi-task? Could I swap my antique oak desk (wobbly and not as good as I’ve made it sound) for the dining room table? Could I possibly work next door to the kitchen? 

Well, it seems I can. The room is set up mostly as my study, with my laptop at one end of the table, bookcases, and one small cupboard which doesn’t seem to mind multi-tasking either, managing to bear having placemats and napkins in one drawer, notebooks and stationery in another. It seems it can blur its boundaries pretty well. 

 

And I can too. I’ve left the kitchen door open so the dog can come in and keep an eye on me when she needs to; I can hear my partner pounding away on the treadmill across the hall; pretty soon the teenager may surface too. I could close the door, and keep those boundaries safe, and if I were working on a novel rather than a chatty blog post, I might well do so. But for now, this space, connected, multi-purpose and open, feels right. 

And if the novelty wears off, I can always close the door. 

The ABBA Twitch -- An Apology by Sheena Wilkinson

Every month, about the 8th, I get a twitch. I know I have something to do. Not unpleasant but pressing. I worry and fret -- ABBA Day is coming on the 13th. What can I write about? Sometimes I have to think and think for ages; often it's obvious what I need or want to say. By the 10th, I usually know what I'm writing about; on the 11th I write and schedule it. If I'm doing that on the 12th, I get worried. What if the internet breaks? In fact I sort of pretend the 11th is my deadline, because giving myself a trick deadline is something I've always done to make sure I don't miss real ones.

Last month, sure enough, I got my twitch. It woke me at four. It's a while since your ABBA post, it said. You must find something to write, it said. Bookish and witty. It must be nearly that time of the month. Well, gentle reader, it was not nearly that time at all. It was about the 17th. I had, for the first time ever, forgotten about ABBA.

This month I have not forgotten but I am incapable of bookish and witty. I have not written a word for weeks. The book that kept me sane during lockdown has been discarded -- for now -- like an old toy. 

In fairness to me, I am moving house next week, and am surrounded by boxes. Boxes to keep, boxes to take, boxes for the charity shop; boxes for the friend's daughter who's conveniently moving into her first home and is proving an excellent repository of extra curtains and toasters; boxes for Freecyle. 

The only remotely bookish -- though sadly unoriginal thing I can say is that It's like a great big edit, except that I'm working on several manuscripts at once. I empty cupboards in my house and fill cupboards at my fiancé's house, which is to be my new home.  Only I have to empty them first. Well, not quite -- ruthless as I can be about my darlings, I can't murder all his without at least asking if he minds. (Note to self: be as kind about other people's vases as you would be about their characters.) 

By the 13th of next month, I am hoping to be unpacked. I am hoping to have got back to my poor neglected characters, last seen in 1933 in some distress. And I will have something bookish and witty to say about it all, I promise. 

The Girl Who Ate Books Sheena Wilkinson

I'm on the move. I don't know exactly when -- it depends on when my house sells, but it's the first time I've moved in nearly 20 years and there seem, despite many clear outs over the years, to be rather more books than there used to be. 

Half my library has gone on in advance to my fiancé's house, where I'll be moving to, which means my  house now contains only six bookcases. (Down from 17 three years ago.) I'm being quite ruthless -- some pony books etc have found new homes through various enthusiasts' groups, and the local charity shops are getting an influx, but there are some books that it's hard to justify keeping, and moving sixty miles, but that I can't in all conscience expect anyone else to want.

Part of my library in its new home -- the posh part.

For a start, there are the books I have eaten. No photo -- it's too disgusting. But yes, gentle reader, there was a time when it would have been literally, and not merely metaphorically true to say that I devoured books. Many of my childhood favourites have neat little strips torn from the bottoms of the pages. I'd forgotten that I used to chew these strips, but when I found the torn pages it came back to me, like Proust's madeleine, the taste of those bits of paper. The difference in taste between an old book and a new, between an Armada paperback and a Puffin. What a revolting child I must have been. I can't expect anyone to want a half-eaten book. 

some old friends (not eaten)

I also illustrated my books. Or defaced, as some would say. I don't remember much about Heidi, and I wouldn't have said it was an especial favourite, but here it is with my drawings showing that I knew the story well. I can't expect anyone to pay for that.

I don't think Heidi spent all her time sitting at people's feet, but there seems to be a theme here...

And then that old Golden Book. The cover is coming off; I've no interest in the stories, but how can I get rid fo something with this dedication? I don't know who 1920s Sheena was, but I feel I should keep her book (even though she didn't). 

As for these three old Ladybirds -- there was a time when I knew no story so tragic as Ned the Lonely Donkey. How can I not cherish him?

And after all, the house I'm moving to is bigger than mine. Luckily. 

Grand! by Sheena Wilkinson

On Saturday 10th April 2021, Irish jockey Rachael Blackmore made history by becoming the first female rider to win the English Grand National. As a racing fan, I've followed Rachael's career ever since watching her ride at Ballinrobe in County Mayo, one August evening. Last Saturday  I watched her ride a beautiful race on Minella Times, with the sensitivity, courage and judgement that are so characteristic of her style.  It's a race where anything can happen, and though it was looking increasingly positive for Minella Times and Rachael, I hardly dared breathe until they were over the last, and even then it was a long run to the line. I've often screamed a horse home, but never as fervently as I did on Saturday; I don't mind admitting that I was ugly-crying and hyperventilating. Rachael plays down her gender, but in that moment she crossed the line, she must have known that she was carrying the dreams and beliefs of so many pony-mad girls.

I'm no longer a pony-mad girl. I'm 51; it's eight years since I've owned a horse, and about the same time since my last horse-themed book (Too Many Ponies) was published. But as I screamed for Rachael I was eleven again, scraping up pocket money to pay for occasional riding lessons and covering exercise book after exercise book with blue-inked pony stories. Because my two dreams were to have a pony and to be a writer. The girls in my stories had everything I didn't -- houses in the country, knowledgeable parents, and ponies, ponies, ponies. When I did come to have pony books published they were very much at the gritty, rescued-horse and modest dreams end of the spectrum: nobody in my books wins the Grand National.

Of course I'd ridden the National many times, in my reading. And won it too, thanks to Enid Bagnold and K. M. Peyton. Most of the pony books I read were set in the more prosaic worlds of county shows and village gymkhanas, but to eleven-year-old me, stuck in a Belfast housing estate, these were as out of reach and exotic as Aintree. More so in fact: the racing was on TV in my granda's house every Saturday; in a way, Becher's Brook and the Canal Turn were more part of our lives than Chatton Show where Jill's ambition was to win the Grade C jumping or Finmory, where Jinny rode her chestnut Arab over the Scottish moors.

National Velvet  I found an eccentric, challenging read -- I wanted to love it more than I did, and came to appreciate it more as an adult.

I was an adult too when K. M. Peyton's Blind Beauty, the ultimate rags-to-riches, heartbreaking horse story, was published; that book too climaxes in a (spoiler alert) Grand National win. 

But the ultimate Grand National novel for me is K.M. Peyton's The Last Ditch which came out when I was sixteen. The premise is, on the surface, as preposterous as most racing stories -- but then the sport, in real life, is full of such stories too -- two eighteen-year-old boys, Jonathan and Peter, are drifting/ running away with nothing more than an old hearse and a racehorse that's in training for the Grand National. There's a love triangle, a baby and a lot of drama, and the story culminates in -- but that's a spoiler I'd never share. Enough to say that when you think K.M. Peyton has wrung the last bit of emotion out of her readers, she hits you with more. 

I still reread these books, fence by fence, even though I know what's going to happen. When I watched the Grand National on Saturday I had no idea what would happen, and though I've already watched the replay several times, I know that nothing will ever compare to the moment when I -- a 51-year-old author, but also an eleven-year-old pony-mad kid, roared for Rachael and Minella Times. 

Longing for lockdown by Sheena Wilkinson

 So it’s been a year now. A year of lockdowns and anxiety. We all miss something.

The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, County Monaghan

One of my friends, a globe-trotting sophisticate, has been missing travel – she pops over to Colombia the way I go to Cork – and I said that wasn’t really an issue for me. Living in Northern Ireland and doing a lot of work – pre-Covid – on mainland GB, I’d had enough of airports and planes and trains. 

The Clockhouse at the Hurst, Arvon (Shropshire) 

But just this last week I’ve been starting to fantasise about getting away. Not too far; not too exotic. I don’t especially want to see a bustling foreign city or lie on a beach. I just want to go on a writing retreat. 

Gladstone's Library, Flintshire

It started with an email from one of my favourite places, Gladstone’s Library, where I’ve been lucky enough to stay several times. Gladstone’s, like everywhere else, has had to close, and is making tentative and hopeful plans for re-opening. I remembered wistfully the days I had spent there, writing all day, walking in the local countryside, breathing in its calm, scholarly welcome. Those long days of quiet busy-ness when nothing matters but your story. When will I have them again? I mean, I write much of the day here anyway, and walk in my beautiful local countryside, but as any writer who’s been on retreat knows, it’s just Not The Same. 

Gladstone's Library, Flintshire

I hadn’t realised how I missed retreats, how much they were part of my routine, until these places were forbidden me (and everyone else of course.) Somehow, just knowing I could book a few days away, and concentrate on nothing but a manuscript was a sort of sanity-saver. 

Charney Manor, Oxfordshire 

In case you’re feeling the same way, I’m illustrating this post with my favourite retreats. Let’s look forward to when we can be locked down in a different way – tucked away in a library in a bubble with our writing. Maybe I'll see you there. 

The River Mill, County Down

On not getting ahead of the season by Sheena Wilkinson

We’re all tired, aren’t we? Locked down and fed up. February teases, as always, with birdsong in the mornings and a grand stretch in the evenings, only to blast us with bitter easterlies and remind us not to get ahead of ourselves, or the season. Covid does the same, with new variants, and new fears daily. 

I am planning an October wedding, with a great deal of disbelief – I am fifty-two and had not so much resigned myself to eternal spinsterhood as embraced it years ago. The fact that we must consider several different scenarios from no guests to a hundred, none of them possible to foresee with accuracy, adds to the sense of the surreal. It’s exciting but exhausting. We can’t not plan – we’d like a jolly nice party, thank you very much, and so will everyone else by October – and yet it seems like tempting fate, like flying too close to the sun or getting above ourselves with the gods. Like welcoming spring in February before waking up to blizzards.

 

I’m sorry, this isn’t really about books, is it? Except that, among everything else, I am trying, like many of you, to write one. With no knowledge of what state the publishing industry will be in by the time I finish, or what people might want to read. Writing a novel without a contract always feels bold, but in 2021, is it crazy? I swither between thinking it’s a great triumph of hope and optimism and that it’s the equivalent of taking my coat off in February. 

 

But my heroine is called April; maybe that’s a sign that spring isn’t as far away as I fear. 

Whoops - I did it again! Sheena Wilkinson

I don't seem to learn. Eight books published and it doesn't get easier. What am I moaning about this month? About myself and how s-l-o-w I seem to be to catch on. 

Back in June I talked to Sophia Bennett for her wonderful podcast Prepublished (and if you like Awfully Big Blog Adventure you're pretty much guaranteed to love Prepublished). I was being terribly frank about the big mistake I'd made when writing my novel Hope against Hope, which was published last year. Can you believe it, I told Sophia and all the listeners - because one thing about me, I do own my mistakes -- I wrote the whole book -- four drafts of it! -- from a completely wrong point of view! The story was there, the setting was there -- but the main character was all wrong. I had to rewrite the book from scratch, from a completely new point of view. What an eejit I was!

Well, I remember thinking at the time, I won't make THAT mistake again. 

Except I did. Exactly the same mistake. I wrote a book. I thought it was pretty good. I sent it to my agent. She disagreed. I was upset. I showed it to a trusted writer friend (Thank you, Keren David, I owe you!). She said ... your agent was right. And she told me why. She didn't say You've written it from the wrong point of view, but she helped me see that my main character wasn't doing the book any favours. As soon as I imagined a new heroine  I could see at once how much better the book could be. 

The thing was, I was using a character I knew and loved, Stella, the heroine of Star by Star and a character in Hope against Hope. I had this idea for what she might do in the 1930s. And it was a good idea, but it wasn't for her.  I was trying to make her fit a world that wasn't right for her. And she became grumpy and twisted and lost all the characteristics that made me love her as a heroine. It wasn't her fault; it was mine. 

I started this book back in April 2020. I hadn't written since the start of the pandemic. I was blocked and scared and aimless -- like pretty much everyone I knew. Writing a new book seemed to ground me. This was something I could control; this was something I could do. The words mounted up giving me a sense of achievement and relief -- the world had become unfamiliar, but this, this making up stories, this was an old friend; this was what I did. Except, in literally using an old friend, Stella -- which, I can see now, I might have done because I was too anxious (or lazy?) to make up a new one, I scuppered my book. 

It's OK. I have a new heroine. I took my time getting to know her and I'm confident this time that she's the right person in the right story. She's new and shiny and doesn't trail backstory with her. A new heroine for a new year. 

You'd think I'd learn. 

(If you want to hear me talking about this and other stuff, or hear other writers talking about their processes, do check out https://www.prepublished.net)

As for me, I'm getting back to my new heroine. See you next month. 

Thank you, Scattered Authors! by Sheena Wilkinson

I'm a weirdo; all writers are to some extent. I can't expect non-writer friends to understand the weirdness -- I've given up trying. 

So thank God for the Scattered Authors! This is more than just a blog. It's a community. Every month when I log on to make my contribution, and glance over the recent or scheduled posts, the authors' names jump out with the familiarity of the roll call of my class at school forty years ago.  Some I know fairly well in real life, mostly from the annual retreat at Charney Manor, which I've been lucky enough to attend for the last seven years. Some I know from posting in the Scattered Authors group on Facebook. Some I have met at author events over the years. Many I know only from their insightful, warm, funny or learned posts on here. But none feel like strangers, even if we haven't met.

I don't know, dear reader, if you are a Scattered Author or just a fan of the blog. But I do know this: that at the end of a year when we have been more scattered than usual, when this author, for the first time ever, has not crossed the Irish Sea, I have been more than ever thankful for this writing community. An appreciative comment on a post; the sharing of a writerly joke on a tough day; the offer to critique a manuscript (and then showing me EXACTLY what was wrong with it); the little gift to thank me for an introduction to an editor; the phone call that made me feel like I wasn't the strangest person in the world...

Sometimes I don't know what to write on the 13th of every month. But on this last month of an extraordinary year, it was easy. Thank you, Scattered Authors. Let's hope we are together again soon, but in the meantime...

Phew and Gulp by Sheena Wilkinson

 I have just this minute typed the last word of my novel.

Phew.

That's not the last word of the book; that's how I feel after months of writing and as many months of editing. Of course it's still not really the end. Just the end of the beginning. This is draft 3, and I think this is the version I'm prepared to let my agent see. I'll reread it in a day or two to make sure it makes sense, and then press send. Which will be another Phew. A very brief one until the anxiety sets in (about half a minute later),  and then Phew gives way to Gulp. Will she like it? Can she sell it? Is it terrible?

Alternating Phew and Gulp seems to be what we're all doing a lot right now.  Like many people I felt a big Phew at the results of the American election, and then at the positive news about a Covid-19 Vaccine. But the Gulps are never far behind, are they? I think writers get a lot of practice at living with a high degree of anxiety, at dealing with ups and downs. And in 2020 the Gulps are myriad and the Phews are, well, few. 

That's really all I have to say this month. So I'm sharing some pictures of a beautiful Northern Irish autumn, and a small happy dog. I hope they give readers a little Phew too. 

Too Much Choice by Sheena Wilkinson

  

I don’t have a TBR pile. I don’t like piles of stuff, not even of books. The problem with this is, as any fule kno, one can sometimes buy a book but not be ready to read it at once. In my case it would be shelved (in alphabetical order, natch) and sometimes forgotten, or at least swallowed up by its neighbours. You can have too much choice. 

 

About two years ago I rationalised the bookcases in my house: from seventeen to fourteen. It was a relief to rid myself of books I would never reread, many of which – mostly lit crit – were only there to impress (whom? I can safely say there is no visitor to my house whose opinion of me would be improved by seeing that I owned Hard Pretentious Theory*.)

 

And then there were those books I had bought with good intentions, and possibly started, but would never finish – no longer would they sit there accusing me, daring me. And the books by friends, mostly YA novels I had enjoyed but would not reread: they have all had new lives in school libraries, making new friends and new readers. Yes, fourteen bookcases was the right number; I couldn’t possibly go down any more. 

 

During lockdown, like most people I spent more time home alone than usual, and I began to feel crowded out by books. Don’t get me wrong, I love books, and I have spent part of each day of my life in reading since I was five, but those long hours in the living room forced me to realise that there were novels I had owned for years and would never, ever reread. And maybe it would be nice to have a little more, well, space. And so fourteen bookcases became ten. Which is the perfect number. 

 

Some of the books were easy to get rid of; others I wasn’t so sure about. That novel I knew I'd enjoyed but didn’t remember clearly – would I reread it? That book a friend had given me, promising I would love it – I’d never been in the mood yet; would I ever be? That 40^th birthday present – why hadn’t I read it? Those lovely new hardbacks – I had been too impatient to wait for the paperback, but not actually got round to reading it yet. I ended up with a sort of TBR pile. 

 

I spend about 40% of my time in my partner’s house. It’s not exactly a bookless zone, but there are nine fewer bookcases than there are in my house now, i.e. one, and half the books are about sport, and the other half seem to have been written by someone called Sheena Wilkinson. (Oh yes, and there are some David Walliams, but we don’t talk about those). For a long time, every weekend I would pack carefully, to ensure I had enough reading material with me. I was terrified of Abibliophobia: I didn’t really want to read Long-Distance Cycling or and there isn’t a bookshop in the local town. Bringing my kindle wasn’t always the answer; I had to remember the charger too. 

 

So I had a brainwave. I installed one of my small, unwanted bookcases in my room at his house. I packed up the sort of TBR pile, and, just to keep the books company, some new books and some old friends – because you never know what mood you’ll be in, especially in these anxious times. Sometimes you can have exactly the right amount of choice. 

 

 

 

 

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* There is no such book.

Ten Years On by Sheena Wilkinson

It’s the tenth anniversary of my first novel being published. Taking Flight was launched in September 2010, one of the first novels from a brand-new publisher, Little Island. And, like its title, it really did take flight, winning me several national and international awards, and setting me off on the adventure of being first a published, and eventually a fulltime writer.

Taking Flight, where it all started

 

Eight novels later, I am still surviving. And so is my wonderful publisher: Little Island just celebrated its tenth anniversary with its one hundredth book, the stunning Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan, illustrated by Karen Vaughan. Along the way it’s won many, many awards and continues to be a significant force for good in Irish publishing. I’m very proud to have had seven of my eight novels published by them.  

In 2010, only two years after the 2008 economic downturn, we all thought times were tough. Probably because they were. It’s just as well we couldn’t see into the future. But I’m not going to make this a state-of-the-world or even a state-of-publishing post. To be honest I mostly go to blogs for comfort and distraction these days, so that’s what I try to give on here. 

A nice sky in my village, for those who also like comfort and distraction 

Instead I’m just going to compare 2010 and 2020 from a personal point of view. In 2010 I had a fulltime teaching job, and a horse, but no real emotional ties. Writing was the biggest thing in my life. I wrote in cafes, making the most of my limited weekend free time, and had enough money to go on retreats when I needed a more sustained focus. I went on Arvon courses, because I recognised that being published certainly didn’t mean knowing it all. I said yes to the events I was offered, even though taking unpaid leave from work meant I sometimes worked at a loss. I was exhausted most of the time, but my debut book got a lot of attention.  

 

In 2020 I have been freelance for seven and a half years. I have no horse, but I do have a human partner. I love writing but it’s not the biggest thing in my life. I write at home in the study and take weekends off. I haven’t been on a retreat for a couple of years, because it’s harder now to justify the expense, and also I’m less inclined towards going away. I teach Arvon courses when I’m invited, and still enjoy learning from other writers. I say yes to online events even though they are not my preferred way of working, because I need to eat. I am older, but no longer exhausted. My most recent book – Hope against Hope – has, beyond excellent reviews, received little attention. This bothers me less than it would have done because I know so many others are in the same boat. 

I have no idea what the next ten years will bring, and I don’t want to know. I hope – against hope – still to be happy, and writing books, and blogging for ABBA. 

I hope the next ten years brings more books.