I have had a really very lovely and magical May. I have done a lot, seen a lot, and filled my creative, social and emotional wells right up. This is good because I have two really intense months of simultaneously doing structural edits on two different books ahead of me, plus writing a third. So I will need the lovely memories of everything I’ve done and seen to tide me over while I unpick my work like a badly sewn dress and remake it into something wearable.
Editing is my favourite part of writing, but it’s also the most intense and likely part to make me cry because sometimes it’s hard to see past the story you wrote to the one you meant to.
But before that, one golden day of May is left to enjoy. Let me tell you about all the golden days that came before.
I started the month on the Continent (god, I love saying “on the Continent”; it makes me feel so chic) and had an afternoon of red wine and people-watching in Paris, followed by a train across France into Germany, then a few days later, a drive down to Lake Konstanz on the border of Germany/Austria/Switzerland. I was lucky to be invited to speak at the spring SCBWI conference for the German/Austrian SCBWI group, and it was the most gorgeous three days of walking by lakes and listening to cuckoos and eating a lot of pasta (and talking about writing, of course). Then back west to go to Colmar in France (more on that below), then east to Bavaria to a party, then west again for a few days of respite and museum-exploring and walking, and then finally home. But still fun! A trip to see Newsies with one of my best friends! Drinks and chips and gossip in town! A garden party for which I made a strawberry cake!
Make the most of it, kid. You’re in writing prison until August 1st.
I want to talk about Colmar now. You see, I have dreamed about going to Colmar for a long time. If you don’t know by now, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favourite books, and Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favourite films. Remember when I sold a kidney1 to have the Howl’s Moving Castle tea at Selfridges? Exactly.
Well, Colmar is one of the towns that Miyazaki based his design for Market Chipping on - in fact (as you can see below), some of the architecture animated in the film is taken directly from existing architecture in Colmar. And seeing as I was on the right side of Germany to get to it fairly easily, and I had the time, why not? Why not go and walk the streets of Market Chipping and buy a cake from a fancy bakery and maybe a hat? Why not see if I could get cursed by a jealous witch and fall in love with a vain, cocky, feckless wizard?
I had a croissant, not a cake, bought a skirt and a jumper instead of a hat, did not get cursed (that I know of) and did not fall in love with anything other than the town itself. But I did have three of the best meals of my life there, at some absolutely beautiful restaurants. I also had two ideas for two different books, one of which I’ve started sketching out already (as if I have time for this nonsense right now). It was a magical, impossible, beautiful two days, the kind of time that crystallises what you want from life.
And I want to live in a small town in France.
Projects I’m working on:
As previously stated, I am about to start editing two books simultaneously and finish drafting a third, all of which are due to be delivered at roughly the same time. This is going to be incredibly intense and I’m a bit scared about it, but I also feel pretty clear on what I have to do, so I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes. Still, I have decided to take August and September “off” (as far as I can) so I can go away and (finally) revise the Dark Academia and write some other original stuff too - I have two short stories I want to write, and three other books. They’re going to need to form an orderly queue.
In other personal news, I went to an incredible exhibition in Germany called Renaissance 3.0 at ZKM, which explored the junction of where art meets science and the alliances they can form. We were supposed to go and see two other exhibitions afterwards, but Renaissance was so interactive and thought-provoking that we decided to sit with our thoughts about it instead. After all, the Old Masters are probably not going anywhere for a while.
In a surprise plot twist, I started playing Legend of Zelda. No, not the new one, but Breath of the Wind. I had a go on my friend’s Switch while I was away and got really into it (mostly making dinners and hunting things, not so much finding shrines or doing actual tasks). I feel like getting into videogames just as I’m about to start this big ol’ editing phase is a stupid idea, but sometimes life throws you a curveball and my curveball is wondering how many hearts I’ll be able to replenish if I cook an egg, some raw meat, a chilli pepper and a Hylian mushroom.
Maybe I could even make some red clothes dye, according to that old Hunnic Empire recipe. I do have some keese wings and an Octorok eyeball…
In Events, I’m NOT going to be at Cymera in person anymore, but via video link, due to the train strikes. This is DEEPLY annoying for me, but not as annoying as it is not to be paid enough to survive while shareholders make record profits and the government openly does not give a shit about you. That’s properly annoying. My panel is on Sunday, June 4th at 11.45 am, with C.E. McGill and Andie Spoto. Tickets are available now!
Reading has occurred! I read Alice Slater’s DEATH OF A BOOKSELLER and Kate Sawyer’s THIS FAMILY! I read a proof of Caroline O’Donoghue’s forthcoming new adult novel, THE RACHEL INCIDENT (it’s really very good - I couldn’t stop reading it until I ran out of pages). I have just started Stephen Graham Jones’s THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS. I’m tag-teaming it with some non-fiction about Vincent Van Gogh in preparation for a post-Impressionism exhibition. It has been so nice to read. I also bought a book in France called SAUVAGINES, which will take me ages to read as my reading French es n’est pas bon. But If I’m going to move to that little French town, I must put the work in.
FOOD!
I had high hopes of recreating the pea tart I had in Colmar, and sharing that with you, but I have not had time. Instead, I’ve mostly been living on spaghetti aglio e olio because it tastes so luxurious but takes about ten minutes.
If you want to make it, you will need:
100g of spaghetti (I actually use bucatini because it’s my best long skinny pasta)
1.5 tbsps really, really, really good olive oil
Three fat garlic cloves, thinly chopped
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (less if pepper flakes are not your jam)
Reserved pasta water
(I add Grana Padano at the end, purists don’t, the world is large, and you can make up your own mind. Sorry, Italy.)
Add the bucatini to very well-salted water and let it noodleise (this is a professional chef term for becoming softer2).
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a pan, and then add the garlic and the pepper flakes. Do not let them brown, keep them lightly golden. If they start to brown, take the pan off the heat.
When the pasta has noodleised to your satisfaction (YMMV) drain it, reserving some of the pasta water (you have to eyeball this, I can’t hold your hand through it).
Add this to the oil and mix thoroughly.
Then add the pasta and mix thoroughly.
Serve on a bed of rocket (or the salad leaf of your choice) with shaved Grana Padano if you’re a massive pervert who hates Italy.
Last but not least, magic. May magic.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the magic of novelty and how being somewhere new opens up doors in my head and lets stories in and how much I value that.
It’s something I really struggled with during the first year and a half of the pandemic - as well as the trauma and relentless horror of the actual illness and the government’s useless and inadequate response (and subsequent gaslighting of an entire nation), once I’d settled into a kind of unwilling acceptance of it, I found my writing was suffering, not just because of the external awfulness of it all, but because I wasn’t being stimulated by anything new (I appreciate this is not, objectively, a real problem for anyone but me. However, for me, alone in my flat, isolated from almost everyone I loved for over a literal year, it would have been handy to throw myself into writing to at least pass the time).
The mundanity of every day; the limits placed on how long I could be outside, where I could go, who I could see, the sheer routine of it all buried my creative spark and I didn’t realise how badly until the world started to open back up and I could move around again. Not until my mind started to open back up, too, and my curiosity returned, and ideas began to emerge. Then I knew what I’d been missing.
A change is better than a rest, my nana used to say. Routine is the enemy of time.
So, following on from last month’s challenge to change something you’ve been longing to, I dare you to go somewhere you don’t know this month. Walk a path you’ve never followed before. Travel a way that’s new to you. If you can, if it’s affordable and you have time, and it’s safe, get on a bus or train to a place you’ve never visited. Go and be a tourist; see everything with new, eager eyes. Let the novelty soak into you and draw inspiration and innovation from you.
Open your mind and world to something strange to you, and see what stirs inside you. Embrace the magic of the unfamiliar and what it can give to you.
It grows because you tend it xx
I did not, in fact, sell a kidney. This is hyperbole
It isn’t. I made it up
Lake Constance!!!! One of my favourite places in the world. I spent a year as an exchange student at Uni Konstanz, eating pretzels with butter, learning to drink beer, and cycling around. I miss it all the time.