Debbie Robson's Blog - Posts Tagged "family"
It's All Getting So Much Closer
The final proofs are done and I can't wait to hold the book in my hands. What a month it has been! My asthma has given me heaps of trouble but that is mainly the time of year and I know fellow sufferers are up against it too.
I have a book about to come out! Yay! A new fella in my life. My family is well. My dogs too! And I have another book waiting quietly and very patiently in the wings. What more could I ask?
Here are the details of my brand new book.
http://marycelestepress.com/books_Pro...
I have a book about to come out! Yay! A new fella in my life. My family is well. My dogs too! And I have another book waiting quietly and very patiently in the wings. What more could I ask?
Here are the details of my brand new book.
http://marycelestepress.com/books_Pro...
My twitter community and why they are so important to me.
This post was originally blogged at wordpress on 15/12/12.
I went to the #NewyTwistmas party at Honeysuckle Thursday night attended by 60 plus and had a wonderful time meeting fellow peeps, most for the first time. I chatted to so many interesting people, including @CCLETS a dedicated potter, @whereismymuse a poet and @kimcoo and her husband who are relationship counsellors. It is a community that know me as a writer. That’s who I am – @lakelady2282, BookCrosser, author, amateur photographer. I tweet photos and the progress of my WWI novel The Grey Silk Purse. I also tweet/retweet about books, writing and history. That’s me!
To my friends and family, I am something else. With my family I’m mum and grandma. With my girlfriends I’m just a single woman in my fifties complaining about the lack of interesting men. (I have this theory that 75% of the single male population in their forties and fifties have been beamed to another planet and nobody’s noticed. But that’s another story.) My friends know I write but I don’t think they are aware of how much my writing means to me and in that sense they don’t know me.
My twitter people do. My wonderful Crossing Paths publisher @SkiveMagazine knows how important writing is to me and I love tweeting about his mag. The latest edition is an erotica collection so peeps get out there and buy it. Also @drdrdr09 knows. He became aware of how much I was agonising over finding an historically accurate way to get my main character from Le Havre to Salonika, late 1917 (avoiding submarines and nasty Germans). I tweeted in frustration to my twitter community and he stepped into the breach (WWI speak) and we had a fun time tweeting back and forth.
In my “normal” life, I mentioned to my friends the other day that I was having trouble with my epilogue. There was dead silence and then a change of conversation. In all fairness what can most non-writers say to such a statement? Some people would suggest a writing group. After all you get to sit down with “real” people and discuss writing problems but I’ve tried a few groups and they weren’t for me. (I once joined a screenplay writing group and one of the participants said, “I hate writing dialogue. Do you think that will be a problem for me?” She was serious). I didn’t go back.
For me twitter is my writing group, my photography group, my friends group, my “did you hear they found the cave from Island of the Blue Dolphins?” group. It is my arts world in a way that Facebook (that funny other social media with all the thumbs up things) has never been. It is where I’m lakelady2282 and it's where on Friday morning I tweeted I had lost my job. I didn’t message my friends. I still – as of writing this article - haven’t posted it to Facebook. Without thinking I just tweeted. It was the community that I wanted to tell.
I went to the #NewyTwistmas party at Honeysuckle Thursday night attended by 60 plus and had a wonderful time meeting fellow peeps, most for the first time. I chatted to so many interesting people, including @CCLETS a dedicated potter, @whereismymuse a poet and @kimcoo and her husband who are relationship counsellors. It is a community that know me as a writer. That’s who I am – @lakelady2282, BookCrosser, author, amateur photographer. I tweet photos and the progress of my WWI novel The Grey Silk Purse. I also tweet/retweet about books, writing and history. That’s me!
To my friends and family, I am something else. With my family I’m mum and grandma. With my girlfriends I’m just a single woman in my fifties complaining about the lack of interesting men. (I have this theory that 75% of the single male population in their forties and fifties have been beamed to another planet and nobody’s noticed. But that’s another story.) My friends know I write but I don’t think they are aware of how much my writing means to me and in that sense they don’t know me.
My twitter people do. My wonderful Crossing Paths publisher @SkiveMagazine knows how important writing is to me and I love tweeting about his mag. The latest edition is an erotica collection so peeps get out there and buy it. Also @drdrdr09 knows. He became aware of how much I was agonising over finding an historically accurate way to get my main character from Le Havre to Salonika, late 1917 (avoiding submarines and nasty Germans). I tweeted in frustration to my twitter community and he stepped into the breach (WWI speak) and we had a fun time tweeting back and forth.
In my “normal” life, I mentioned to my friends the other day that I was having trouble with my epilogue. There was dead silence and then a change of conversation. In all fairness what can most non-writers say to such a statement? Some people would suggest a writing group. After all you get to sit down with “real” people and discuss writing problems but I’ve tried a few groups and they weren’t for me. (I once joined a screenplay writing group and one of the participants said, “I hate writing dialogue. Do you think that will be a problem for me?” She was serious). I didn’t go back.
For me twitter is my writing group, my photography group, my friends group, my “did you hear they found the cave from Island of the Blue Dolphins?” group. It is my arts world in a way that Facebook (that funny other social media with all the thumbs up things) has never been. It is where I’m lakelady2282 and it's where on Friday morning I tweeted I had lost my job. I didn’t message my friends. I still – as of writing this article - haven’t posted it to Facebook. Without thinking I just tweeted. It was the community that I wanted to tell.
The Cats Will Come, my grandmother and her diary
Originally published 2nd June.
Timing really is everything. Not just in what we read - the right book at the right time - but also when we discover or rediscover something. At the age of twelve or thirteen I inherited my grandmother’s beautiful carved chest. I can’t remember what was it in. Papers I think that my family removed but somehow I also inherited some books of hers, a teddy and what I thought was a very small gardening journal. I put the tiny notebook in the carved chest which now contains, photos, children’s schoolwork, music sheets, treasured newspaper clippings and at one stage my first completed manuscript.
Just recently my online friend Eva Lomski was enquiring about a WH Davies quote that I used in my first unpublished manuscript. I promised I would hunt it down expecting to find the two light purple manilla folders containing “A Strange Peace” in the chest. The folders weren’t there but I dislodged the tiny beige notebook and put it aside. I finally found the manuscript the other day and I’m glad that I now have stored it safely where I can find it.
Back to the notebook. I read through it last week and discovered that it is actually a diary not a gardening journal and that my grandmother was very clearly not well during much of 1968. What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself there - a young granddaughter Debby (spelt incorrectly) who frequently visited on a Sunday with her parents Nan and Jimmy.
I might have even seen my name there years ago when I first came across the notebook but probably didn’t think much of it. This time things were different. In the notebook I can imagine myself as I was, a little girl whose place as an only child was secure. Visits to her grandmother were seen in the light of her parents’ behaviour and reactions - her mother’s lack of interest in the garden; her father’s love of cats. But on Friday 27th December the diary entry reads: “Debby came home for 2 nights and day.”
I only remember staying with my grandmother once and I have never been able to remember if it was only for one night but here it is in my grandmother’s spidery writing. I was eleven years old and alone with her in the old house and garden. I remember waking up and she wasn’t there. She was out in the garden. She was old but she was up before me, digging and stooping over flowers.
I look back now and realise that it was up to me to decide what to think about my grandmother. It was my opinion of who she was and mine alone. Mad gardener and lover of cats. I was finally seeing her, really seeing her for the first time. Years later, not surprisingly, the poem came very quickly.
*THE CATS WILL COME
The cats come to her alone
except for grandmother
stooped, whispering their names
and when they come they form
an avalanche of fur
against the wire screen door
collapsing in a tangle of tails
a swish of slick coats
then slink to bowls of milk
lapping the evening away.
A lace curtain flutters
in the chequered sun
while grandmother cossets
roses, chrysanthemums
and hydrangeas heavy
with dew in the early light
orange in the old kitchen
that greets her grandchild
just roused from sleep
waking to a world slipping away.
*First published in Westerly Magazine
Timing really is everything. Not just in what we read - the right book at the right time - but also when we discover or rediscover something. At the age of twelve or thirteen I inherited my grandmother’s beautiful carved chest. I can’t remember what was it in. Papers I think that my family removed but somehow I also inherited some books of hers, a teddy and what I thought was a very small gardening journal. I put the tiny notebook in the carved chest which now contains, photos, children’s schoolwork, music sheets, treasured newspaper clippings and at one stage my first completed manuscript.
Just recently my online friend Eva Lomski was enquiring about a WH Davies quote that I used in my first unpublished manuscript. I promised I would hunt it down expecting to find the two light purple manilla folders containing “A Strange Peace” in the chest. The folders weren’t there but I dislodged the tiny beige notebook and put it aside. I finally found the manuscript the other day and I’m glad that I now have stored it safely where I can find it.
Back to the notebook. I read through it last week and discovered that it is actually a diary not a gardening journal and that my grandmother was very clearly not well during much of 1968. What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself there - a young granddaughter Debby (spelt incorrectly) who frequently visited on a Sunday with her parents Nan and Jimmy.
I might have even seen my name there years ago when I first came across the notebook but probably didn’t think much of it. This time things were different. In the notebook I can imagine myself as I was, a little girl whose place as an only child was secure. Visits to her grandmother were seen in the light of her parents’ behaviour and reactions - her mother’s lack of interest in the garden; her father’s love of cats. But on Friday 27th December the diary entry reads: “Debby came home for 2 nights and day.”
I only remember staying with my grandmother once and I have never been able to remember if it was only for one night but here it is in my grandmother’s spidery writing. I was eleven years old and alone with her in the old house and garden. I remember waking up and she wasn’t there. She was out in the garden. She was old but she was up before me, digging and stooping over flowers.
I look back now and realise that it was up to me to decide what to think about my grandmother. It was my opinion of who she was and mine alone. Mad gardener and lover of cats. I was finally seeing her, really seeing her for the first time. Years later, not surprisingly, the poem came very quickly.
*THE CATS WILL COME
The cats come to her alone
except for grandmother
stooped, whispering their names
and when they come they form
an avalanche of fur
against the wire screen door
collapsing in a tangle of tails
a swish of slick coats
then slink to bowls of milk
lapping the evening away.
A lace curtain flutters
in the chequered sun
while grandmother cossets
roses, chrysanthemums
and hydrangeas heavy
with dew in the early light
orange in the old kitchen
that greets her grandchild
just roused from sleep
waking to a world slipping away.
*First published in Westerly Magazine
