New year, New Novel

Well, first of all, a very belated Happy New Year to you all!

The first couple of weeks of 2007 have been, for me, a time of contemplation, hence my absence.  I guess, for all of us, this is a time when we look ahead to all that has happened in the previous year and consider what we want from the year ahead.  At the beginning of January, I was thinking a lot about what it means to have a personal vision - a very clear sense of what we want from the year ahead.

Now I could get very side-tracked and talk about what I'd like to see happen politically in 2007, but for that I will divert you to this website. 

Instead, I will stick with the personal.  For me, this year is about facing the truth; about getting real.  As you may know, coaching has become a large part of my life; nurturing others has been immensely important to me.  I have entrepreneurial vision too and a large part of me is simply longing to launch a new business.  Doubtless, this lies in the future.  But what about the writing?

What I know is that 2007 must be the year when I get back to my roots as a writer.  At our writers' group the other evening, one of my friends quoted the author Beryl Bainbridge as saying 'you have to have a clear mind to write'.  It struck a chord.  I need to think very carefully about the my business and the balance between the business and my writing.  It is
time to be brave and get back to what matters.  The work itself.  Time to write the big one.

So you'll see some changes on the blog this year.  My plan is to get back to the eighteenth century and I have just begun research.  My first novel, 'The Temple of Hymen' was set in London in the 1780s and I have a strong inclination to return to that period.  And to find the space, once again, for my own work.

In a sense, what I want the blog to be this year, is a place where I explore my own creative impulses anew.  I want to share that with you and I hope you'll share your creative growth with me. 

Today, I sat down and read a poem that fellow author and friend Fiona Robyn sent me at Christmas.  The poem is 'What the Living Do'  by Marie Howe.  It sparked a feeling of gratitude for ordinary things; and wonder in everyday objects.  In the midst of a busy day, I found myself sitting in the quiet lounge, listening to the raging wind outside the window and in the chimney pot, the ticking of the clock, the peace (that I don't normally notice, or else I rail against it).  I watched the kittens nestling together, yin and yang, observed our painting by Rose Hilton, remembered the day we bought it, in a gallery in St. Ives, having never paid so much for a work of art in our lives.  I looked at photographs of my wedding day, my children.  I saw significance in banal objects.  I gazed at the bare trees outside the window.

That quiet moment was a gift (thank you Fiona).  It heralds a year of gifts.  A year of bravery perhaps? A year where I dare to live by the skin of my teeth.  My first plan is to design a website for my husband and to market his work rather than my own.  I trust that somehow everything will work out.  I don't have to be the main breadwinner.  I can skulk in the background again.  And I will write.  I will write marvelous things perhaps.  I'll write from the heart.  Because until I do that again, how can I expect you to do the same?