Professional sailors are not usually romantic souls. We are practical types given to discussing weather forecasts and wondering when we’ll next be in phone range. On a clear night, officers of the watch will be thinking about getting a bearing of a celestial body and working out the compass error, not gazing skywards and hoping that loved ones are looking up at the same moon and missing us. I’m not saying there isn’t time for homesickness but it passes and then we turn back to the conversation we were having with our watchmates about rust-buckets we have worked on, bastards we’ve sailed with and pubs of the world we’ve got drunk in.
I hesitate to use the word ‘earthy’ to describe a waterborne community but that is what we are – earthy. And salty. The language is definitely salty.
Outsiders – landlubbers – have no concept of shipboard life and tend to view us through Johnny Depp/Leonardo di Caprio tinted glasses. Or, they confuse us with the grey funnel line and ask when we are being deployed to the Gulf.
‘Merchant Navy. Mer-chant. Not Royal.’
‘Oh. Is that different then?’
‘Yes. We’re like lorry drivers, only wetter. We don’t do fighting – well, not sober anyway.’
‘Right. I see,’ say the landlubbers, with truly blank expressions. They don’t understand us, but that’s OK, neither do we. Ask any sailor why they do it and the stock answer is, ‘It’s just a job, innit?’ Well yes, it is just a job, and yet. And yet…
For those of us who stick at it, those who haven’t graduated to a cushty, well paid job ashore, it’s more than just a job. Not that we’ll admit it. The most we can say is, ‘once the sea is in your blood…’ then we shrug. Nuff said. In other words, we’ve thought about giving it up, we’ve tried to give it up but we can’t. Is the sea addictive? Should there be a government health warning on every dock, pier, seaside promenade? I don’t know but it will come as no surprise that I have contemplated my navel about this. My merchant navel, of course.
There’s a saying that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and whilst this is often true, it doesn’t quite capture the mindset of seafarers. We know that just over the horizon the sea will likely be just as grey, just as rough and just as uninteresting as it is right where we are. The lure of foreign ports wears off quite quickly and we all have homes to go to but we insist on being far away and out of reach.
I once read that a lighthouse is neither of the sea nor the land but exists in the margin between them both. (I could be wrong but I remember this as something Terry Pratchett wrote) I have taken this to heart because I believe that some of us sea-going types are exactly that. We are marginal creatures. We live ashore but we do not belong there. We work at sea but we long to go home. One foot may be warming in the hearth of the family home but the other is always ankle-deep in salt water. Why? I really don’t know. Perhaps some of us are always on the way to somewhere else. Maybe that state of flux is what some of us need before we can pick up our pens. Sailor or landlubber, if you have a sense of disconnection and be both observer and participant in any situation, I’ll bet a pound to a bent hat pin that you are writer.

… but I’ve been away at sea. However I’m home now and blogs will follow shortly. I need to be writing – especially as I’ve just learned that I got my MA!!!!!

Quiet round here isn’t it?

I am at home again, recovering from a bit of a shock (see Shedward, my other blog) and wondering what to do on the writing front. A friend texted today and asked if I am writing again. Well no, I’m not. Actually, that’s not true, I write all the time but she meant, am I continuing the novel? I want to. I want to rush out to my shed and immerse myself in the world I’ve created but I won’t be home for long and I will probably have to stop, pack and push-off again before I get far. There is also the small matter of my dissertation. It hasn’t been marked yet. So, I have questions; should I wait to see what comments I get from my markers or should I just plough on? Should I cleanse my palate by turning out a shorter work or go back to pieces I’ve done and try to find homes for them? Should I write a piece and put it on here?

Decisions, decisions.

I got a Facebook message from a fellow MA student today cheering because she’d handed in her dissertation. Well done her! I know exactly how she’s feeling – total relief that it’s done, and a kind of emptiness.

Well, I can cure the emptiness. Get your a*** into gear girl and get on The Kinky Boot Collective and get blogging. Let’s face it, you’ve got a bit of spare time now.

I’ve never read any Mark Twain before. I can’t believe that!

God bless e-readers. I wasn’t sure about them at first (whilst at the same time knowing I’d end up with one because I love gadgets) but just before I joined this ship, my family gave me one as an early birthday present. Now I can travel with up to 1500 books and not go over my baggage allowance. And – as long as I can get on the internet, I can get a new read even if I’m miles from a bookshop. No more scrabbling around in the cardboard box that passes for a ship’s library. Hooray!

Hooray again for whoever decided that several classics could be downloaded free. That’s how I discovered Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of those books you should read before you die but it never got near enough to the top of my list for me to remember to buy it. Now I’ve got it for nothing and it is brilliant.

There is a dark side to Huck Finn’s story in that it deals with slavery and the n-word litters the book but Twain was an abolitionist and it shows. OK Huck feels guilty for not shopping the runaway slave, Jim, several times but once he works out that he has his own moral compass his conscience eases and he stands by Jim through thick and thin.  I love this book so much, I’m going to try to strong-arm my nephew into reading it. It has a strong moral. A moral that appeals to me; be guided by your own conscience and stuff the rules. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from or how you speak, you CAN do it your way. So there.

Now, having absorbed all that from a master, how do I translate it into my writing? the novel I’m working on is not even nearly as good as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but I do have a young main character who is struggling with moral questions. Do you think I could get away with throwing in a raft trip? Would anyone notice what I’d done?

Yes, the cloud tore apart into trailing shreds around the rising moon and I wandered up on deck just in time to see it. I tried to photograph it but on the small screen of my mobile phone, it didn’t look romantic enough. Well, not with the lights from the ferry terminal starring the picture with sodium flares.

It seems possible that on this ship I will have time to write, whether I’ll carry on with the novel or write in response to my environment, I don’t yet know. I only arrived yesterday and we haven’t left the quayside yet. But I will write. And I’ll write about the writing on here, The Kinky Boot Collective. I’ll write about being a sailor on Shedward.

If there’s a bit of a gap between posts, it’s only because I’m out of range of the internet. When I’m closer inshore, I may have saved up several posts. Who knows? Here’s hoping.

 

Most Wednesdays I go to a café in my local town. I take my large bag stuffed with notebook, pens, glasses and fully charged net book. It’s a chance to get out of the house and I reckon, if it’s good enough for JK, it’s good enough for me.

I wasn’t going to go yesterday. I can do no more to my dissertation until it comes back from the proof-reader and I’m not ready yet to push on and finish the novel. But the kids are on half-term and if there’s ever a good time to get out of the house, it’s when they’re at home. Not that I don’t love them dearly, you understand, it’s just that even the best aunties need a break from the squabbling and the constant refrain of  ’I'm bored.’

Anyway, I wandered about town, unused to not being weighed down on one side by writing paraphernalia, and ran a few errands. Then, it was time for the ritual latte. Did the café staff notice my smaller bag? Did they notice that instead of sitting, staring blankly, at a computer screen or notebook, I was sitting, staring blankly at the Telegraph crossword? Well, yes, they did. And they asked about it. I shared the great news that I had finally written my dissertation etc., etc. and went back to my crossword but I couldn’t concentrate. You know what I’m going to say don’t you?

For the last four months,  that damn dissertation has filled my mind. I have suffered chronic eye strain from working too long on the laptop and my anxiety has reached critical levels. Whatever I’ve done, I’ve thought/worried about my story. I’ve woken several times a night and laid in the dark plotting my next paragraph and felt guilty for watching Jeremy Kyle instead of working… Now, it’s done. It’s nice to have my mind back, to find space in my thoughts for other things but, guess what? It’s only been a couple of days and… I miss it! My mind is always like a rat in an exercise wheel – running, running, running and lately it’s done a marathon. You’d think it would be lying in the bottom of the wheel going ‘thank God that’s over,’ but no, its pacing round it’s cage desperate to get running again. Wish I could send it away on holiday.

At least I can look forward to when my work comes back to me for correcting and assembling for the binders. I still have to create a contents page and I can’t wait. When it’s all done, I’ll be just like Stitch. If you’ve ever seen the film, Lilo and Stitch , you’ll remember the tragic scene where a sad Stitch wanders alone into the woods, looks up at the sky and howls, ‘ LOST!’

So, between finishing my dissertation and finding the chance to write the rest of the story, I may take to stumbling around the countryside wailing like that small furry alien. If you’re in the West Country and you come across a howling middle-aged woman, don’t be afraid, just give me another deadline to focus my mind.

PS. On the positive side I received my copy of Umber when I got home. My story, The Tattooed Earl, looks very fine and I’m chuffed to bits.  Umber is available online at http://larkinpress.sanm.hull.ac.uk/index.php/wh/issue/view/22 where you can download it and read all the great pieces by us talented lot from the uni.

I should warn the sensitive that The Tattooed Earl does contain very strong language…

A light mist is smudging the edges of the valley, orange sunset is infusing the sky and I’m sitting on my bed admiring the view. In my mind, though, I’m turning cartwheels. There’s no room in here to actually do one (that’s my excuse, anyway) but if I could, I would because… I have finished writing my dissertation! Oh yeah!

Truthfully, I’ve got to do up to 500 words of a synopsis thing but all else is done. It’s like a boulder has been dragged off my chest.

I’ll knock off the 500 words tonight/tomorrow and send it off to catch up with the rest of my work at www.thewriterthebetter.co.uk. You can’t do without a good proofreader and she is a good proofreader.

Now, I may even find the time to update my blogs.

Just a quickie to say that my niece is a blogger too. She’s only just taken the plunge and will take a while to get used to doing this but take a look and see a strong talent forming before your eyes.

I am not sleeping well. Anxiety has me by the throat and slaps me if I show signs of fatigue. ‘Must work on dissertation, must increase word count,’ circles through my brain without let up.  Consequently, I don’t turn my laptop off much before 3a.m. I admit, there are a few games of Spider Solitaire thrown into the mix, but they’re to help me think. Honest.

Back at the beginning of the summer, my supervisor told me that I had a lot of good stuff but… (Oh there’s always a but) I was lacking narrative drive. Since November, I’ve been working on that and just the other day, I emailed my work to a friend for her opinion.

‘I can see what your supervisor meant,’ she replied. And that was on the re-drafted version. Sod it. Then, when I turned off Hellspawn and lay down with my book for a bit of a read, I had a Doh! moment.

I am a Stephen King fan and my current read is his latest hardback ’11.22.63′ Tell me how I could have read almost everything he’s ever written and not learned how to keep a story building towards its’ climax? Especially as I’m reading one of his novels whilst working on my story! Whether you like his stuff or not, you can’t argue that Steve has been at the top of his game for a very long time and his book ‘On Writing’ is on the uni’s recommended reading list. Unfortunately my copy is in the loft just now, so it’s not within easy reach. Never mind, I awoke this morning with a new outlook and an idea of how to solve my problem.

I was blissfully alone in the house so I reached for Hellspawn and brought him to life. Then there was a knock at the door. Someone had come to collect a wrongly delivered parcel. OK, sorted that, back to writing. Urgent email from a friend, a successful crime novelist. Could two people take a medium-sized motor yacht from northern France to the east coast of UK on their own, and how long would it take, etc? I spend next hour looking at nautical distance tables, working out the speed of said boat and probable courses for it to follow. I wasn’t sure of the cruising speed of a semi-planing hull that’s capable of  28 knots, so I texted a captain I work with. He rings me and bang goes another half hour of my morning.

Don’t think for a moment that I wasn’t enjoying these diversions, because I was, but it wasn’t moving my work along. Back to Hellspawn. Concentrate!

I did get a lot of work done, in the end. Despite the sound of gunfire and explosions on a nearby hillside as the Royal Marines practised killing each other and a low flying helicopter that swooped over the garden and frightened the bejesus out of me. I only gave up for the day when the dog jumped up and stood on my keyboard sending the cursor flying across the screen trailing a long line of gobbledygook.

The kids came home from school and I emerged, blinking, from my inner landscape to hear the news of their day. Nephew wanted to either, go out on his scooter, or play on his Xbox, so he wasn’t in the mood for a long chat. Niece, however, was happy to talk. I learned who did what to whom, who got on her nerves, who made her laugh, and so on. Then, she casually dropped into the conversation that she’d received her best-ever mark for the story she wrote at the end of the Christmas holidays.

‘What’s a normal mark?’ I asked.

‘Oh, about 5.2 or something,’ she answered.

‘What did you get?’

’6.8′

‘Wow, 6.8! That’s fantastic!’ I was thrilled. I’m still thrilled.

‘And I got two commendations,’ she added.

Two commendations! I told you she’s talented. A chip off the old block, and all that. What’s the betting that if my story ever sees the light of day and someone says, ‘Hey, I really liked that bit.’ I’ll look at where they’re pointing and discover it was the bit the dog did.