Book 2 of 2024 read...

Book two of 2024 read, and, bloody hell, that was shattering ☹️

I thought I had a pretty good idea what had gone on with @britneyspears but how this woman survived everything she was put through after having a breakdown and managed to come out of the other side as well as she did is extraordinary. 

🎶 Stronger than yesterday

Now it's nothing but my way

My loneliness ain't killing me no more

I, I'm stronger 🎶

My 2023 reads

I thought I'd read more, to be honest, but they were all unique and extraordinary in their own ways.

#aspoolofbluethread Anne Tyler, #TheHaunting @alantitchmarshmbe #TheRisingTide @anncleeves9aa7 #TheEdibleWoman @therealmargaretatwood #Reservoir13 & #TheReservoirTapes @jon_mcgregor #TheLovelyBones Alice Sebold #ChillTidings edited by Tanya Kirk #girlwomanother @bernardineevaristo ineevaristo #ATaleForTheTimeBeing @ozekiland #BigSky Kate Atkinson #ChristmasInWales edited by Dewi Roberts #ChristmasAtColdComfortFarm Stella Gibbons.

These aren't in order of reading, just how they fell on the floor from the book cases!

#fiction #writing #author #creative

*all names are Instagram handles

I Wish

 Do you remember that wicked song by Skee-Lo, ‘I Wish’? The one that went,

Hello
I wish I was little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good
I would call her
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat
And a six four Impala

Remember that? Here it is https://youtu.be/ryDOy3AosBw I remember it, and it dawned on me the other day, that me and Skee-Lo have something in common.

I too spend far too much time wishing for stuff, when my time would be far better served actually doing stuff instead!!! How obvious is that? It’s not like I’m thick, but really, this shouldn’t be the revelation it has been to my 44-year-old self ☹

I thought I’d quickly rewrite ‘I Wish’, and make it more me. I suspect the refrain will get a bit longer, as I am keen on wishes (having used eleven years of birthday wishes/ shooting stars/ wishing wells/etc on wishing for a baby), and also fairly greedy. Also, songs are like poems, and needn’t rhyme. This probably isn’t going to rhyme…

‘I Wish’, by Beck C.

Hello
I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish that I was stronger
I wish I had Reece Witherspoon/ Michael Sheen/ Charlie Brooker fighting to buy the film rights of my work (too long, sorry!)
I would call her/ him
I wish I had money that I earned from my words
And a publishing deal’a

The last line is a tad ropey, I know, but I mean it. I was going to write that I wished I was published – but I am. I am there, on various writing sites on the internet (and we all know once you end up on the internet you can’t ever erase it!) and in print. I am available to buy in a wonderful anthology on Amazon for fricks sake! A paper copy you can hold in your hand, and smell!!! Look here Anthology ONE: Amazon.co.uk: Makarelle: 9798499762516: Books

And my writing is good now, better than it’s ever been. I write more than ever, just not profitable stuff.
‘Oh, you’re a writer? Writing your great novel, eh?’
I’ve been asked this once or twice, and the answer is no. No, I’m not writing a novel. No. My brain, my wonderful, wacky brain will not allow me to write a novel. It works well on short stories, flash fiction, novella length stuff at a push. None of it profitable or attractive for a publishing house to take a punt on, what with me not being famous in the least. So, no, I’m not writing a novel. And that’s when I see people lose interest, and file me under A for amateur. Which is correct, I guess, but still a bit patronising no?

I should really blow my own trumpet more, tell the world about each little win, but unfortunately, I attended a school which only taught violin or recorder; and blowing my on recorder isn’t going to win anyone over anymore. If that’s not a tragic backstory, I don’t know what is.

Sympathy for the Devil

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a woman of little wealth and questionable taste. Aah, Mick Jagger wishes he could write something like that, but he'd have to pay me to borrow it. Approximately 8,000,000 years ago, I had a little WordPress site. That was back in the day when it was free to use, and you didn't need to commit to pay a monthly fee. (Wtf?) I used to post pretty frequently, mostly in response to things happening to me or the world in general. I never - that I can recall - used it to share my actual creative outpourings. So why now? Well, to be imperfectly honest with you all, it's because hardly anyone reads my work anymore. * Insert sad emoji of choice here * 

    I completed my Masters degree last year in Creative Writing, and then found to my horror that as a non-Facebook person, I had zero people on tap to view my very particular brand of factional nonsense. What are the odds? 

So this is where Blogger comes in. I'm forcing myself upon you in a way that's frankly a death wish in 2021. Sorry, but you did come here of your own accord, and, though I hope you stay, you are free to leave and never return should you so wish. Some of my stories may well enrage you, some upset you, and some downright horrify you, but they all have one foot in a very personal reality. And I need to share them, because the library in my mind is full to burst of tripe and treasures, eager to be sifted through. View this blog as one of those fabulously dingy literature sections you occasionally happen across; upstairs in an animal charity shop with a carpet that smells of sick, and cobwebs that were there three years ago. I'm hoping to be the blog equivalent of that book you read when you were fourteen, and you've just found it for 25p, upside-down in a bog of old jigsaws.

'So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politnesse' (???)
Or I'll start crying and have to block you.