Before I go much further with this I suppose I’d better explain that I’m currently posting all this onto my blog as is. I’m not editig except where I miss out a space between words (because that reduces my daily count) so it’s very, very poorly written. The sentiment is there but it’ll be full of typos and spelling erors and repetitions and all the other stuff I would normally remove before my text sees daylight. But I don’t have time on the NaNo scale to do all that. This is true stream of consciousness stuff. Beat generation eat your heart out. So onward to the next bit. If the mistakes bother you, just edit them in your mind.
If I'm going to turn this writing exercise into a NaNo project I might have to give a thought to what headings I should use to complete it. If I use these words as part of today's total it'll mean I have to edit more heavily at a later date. As if I'm ever going to try to publish my memoirs. I mean, who'd want to read them?
I suppose that depends on what I actually write about. I could probably create something to rival 50 Shades of Grey if I gave it a go, though punishment has never been my bag. But a lady doesn't kiss and tell, at least in print! So I won't be discussing my love life except when it becomes absolutely essential. (That's called a teaser. Now anyone who's reading this is going to continue in the hope of some juicy bits further down the line.)
I plan to write about my Writing Life and that means I need to discuss all the times it's been relevant. Such as:
- at primary school when I used to get top marks for my words. I could read well and write creatively and so my stories would earn praise from teachers, and sometimes even outside bodies. Cadbury (or was it Rowntree's? I forget)
- at secondary school, when my style was less than popular and I was forced into doing science that I didn't want to.
- The Sheffield year, when I learned to hone my skills and spent an evening in a bus station feeling homesick.
- The Lincoln years. Spectacular they called it and spectacular it really was.
- Durham and the great freeze. Is that a relevant chapter? I guess the Elton John episode would earn a place in teh greater story.
- Have you ever met anyone famous? Well of course I have. I was a journalist.
- Court reporting and the case of the Bald Barrister. Le Petit Prince and cups of coffee.
- Council meetings and the phantom planning report.
- Poetry. Oh yes. I write poetry too. Badly.
- Diaries.
- Blogs.
- I forgot Mr Wilson. How could I forget Mr Wilson? The way he'd read half stories or poems to us then make us write the endings. Oh Young Lochinvar is come out of the West and all that. And he were 'ung by a thread of scarlet! The Monkey's Paw.
- There's Dad, of course. I could hardly miss him out because he developed my love of books and that fuels my writing.
- I haven't got to Wellingborough yet. Although the phantom planning application was there. But there must be other things from nine years working my way up the ranks.
- The pub. Did I write at the pub? Or was that where my inspiration took its first knock? I could write about teh pub. But then I'd be off topic rather. So I probably won't. Except that was my letter writing phase. So I ought to mention Dougie and the place where Annethology first appeared.
- The post-pub years took me to University and the serious business of getting a degree. There was a lot of essay writing there. And 'let's go beat up the Iceni'.
- Sent to Coventry and the great Midlands canal survey. Learning about the gentle art of storytelling and weaving a few of my own.
- Derby and case studies. Marketing is not journalism.
There must be more. But my half hour is up and I have to go at the moment.
Can I really write 600 words in a half hour? That’s a rate of 20 a minute, or one every three seconds. So I probably can, as long as I know what I want to say. The journalist in me says of course I can, but the human being suggests I might not. And that implies that journalists are not human beigs, which they are, even if some of them are cynical hacks. I don’t think I ever became really cynical while I was a journalist. No, that was reseved for the post newspaper days when I was a pub landlady. That made me realise what a horrible bunch of slime some people can be. The liars and cheats and bullies and arrogant bastards. All life eventually passes through a bar.
No, while I was a journalist I was still driven by an innocent dream of helping the underdog. That’s why I joined up in the first place. I remember I had to write an essay about why I wanted to be a journalist before they would accept me on the training course in Sheffield. I wrote a glowing piece of prose about how the pen is mightier than the sword and I wanted to help poor embattled Joe and Josephine Public cut through the maze of red tape and officialdom. At the interview they called me a naive kid, or something along those lines, but decided that the newspaper world could handle a few more like me, and they let me in.
Of course I didn’t always want to be a journalist. I wanted to be a science writer. I saw myself as a permanent feature producer for New Scientist or Scientific American and felt I would have been good at it. My teachers, however, thought I should do science first and writing afterwards. I was shoe horned into a practical microbiology and entomology course that was no use for anything I wanted to do. Half way through I realised I was being trained to wash test tubes and would never be a proper scientist who dreamed up the research. I’d just be the over-educated charwoman who cleared away the mess and wiped the work benches down after the brains finished their work. Not for me buster! I quit cold at the end of year one and vowed never to go back.
I had no idea what I wanted to do next. My dream of being a professional writer seemed to have gone out of the window. I didn’t know how to retrieve it and looked around for just any old job to fill in the time while I thought about life, the universe and everything. (which, as far as I remember, was published round about the same time. Or at least broadcast. Maybe I need to look that fact up to be sure.)
So I spent a summer selling shoes and serving coffees and clearing tables in a nightclub and washing glasses and generally having a good time. I worked as a waitress in a local pub and met a ghost from my past who ultimately saved me from a fate worse than death but also taught me to like Scotch, so I guess that’s evens then. Scotch is a vicious drink and I know why a lot of sots people are punchy. Whisky does that to me. I’ll hit anyone if I get drunk on whisky. I even nicked a policeman’s helmet once but that’s a whole other story. On the other hand, whiskey (with an e) from the Emerald Isle is a different thing altogether. They triple distil it, so it removes some of the junk that makes the other stuff so harsh and presumably makes the scots angry. In Ireland they sip it, wth plenty of water, and sing amiably until they slide not so gracefully under the table and snore gently till morning. Some bitter Irish widows might disagree about all that, but I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, the dream of being a writer.
One morning I was most surprised to find a cutting from a newspaper on the table in the lounge. I was back living at hme, of course, and having difficulty adjusting to the fact that parents expect you to tell them where you’re going and what time you’ll be back and all that other rigmarole. I’d had a year of being my own boss so I wasn’t happy about it, but give Mother her due (not something I do often) she seemed to understand what was actually missing from my life. The press cutting was an advert for a course in journalism: 12 months of learning how to write for newspapers with a fair chance of finding a job on one at the end. I applied. Mother was deeply surprised that something she suggested had gone down so well and told me the tale of the gypsy fortune teller who said she would one day have a child who worked in the newspaper world. Mind you, the woman also told her that one day she’d live in a cottage with roses round the door but she never did. I’m not sure what else was in the tea leaves but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say two out of three ain’t bad!
It was a great course. There was law and public administration which I enjoyed immensely and even considered giving up on journalism to become a solicitor, but I stuck with the Sheffield year and never really regretted it. Particularly when I found myself becoming a court reporter and writing about the law, rather than practising it. I was good at law, and even remembered enough of it years later to upset a fellow student because I could have done her case law exam and she couldn’t. I’d been a court reporter for more than a decade by then and she was on her first year of lawyer learning. And so the dream came true, albeit a long way round. Eventually I even wrote about science. But first and foremost I was a journalist and that taught me a whole raft of skills that I’ve put to good use ever since.
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