Today I was sitting at my kitchen table (in a small cottage in a small village in the Derbyshire Dales) with my current partner in crime – two laptops open on the same side of the table, and a large plate of fresh cracked 'Tiger' bread and two cups of fragrant coffee at hand to sustain our collaborative and literary efforts. This is how I like to work best; with someone that I can have a laugh with, bounce ideas off and make plans with in the comfortable knowledge that since we are largely on the same wavelength those plans can be scratched, redrafted, altered, rescheduled and rewritten by one or both of us without causing the slightest bit of inconvenience to the other.
The project up for discussion was of course, since this blog is all about it, House In The Sky, the fun-filled account of my rather eccentric childhood. I drafted Chapters 1-9 sometime between the chilly months of the winter of 2014-15 and lost impetus sometime later that year, when my freelance proofreading business began to take over my life like one of Olaf's Incredible Machines. At the same time, I did some research through various groups on LinkedIn and other social media channels, to discover whether the book had a predecessor, what its possible target market might be and whether any interest would be displayed in the idea.
The feedback that I had was very positive. Books have, of course, already been written about a home educated upbringing, but certainly none in similar circumstances to mine, and I was reliably informed that volumes of note tend towards a dark and sinister protrayal of family instability; very far removed from the entertaining and anecdotal tale that I was planning. My Facebook page quickly gained a lot of interested traffic and I realised that there was a large potential market – not just home educators, and even interested State school educators, but anyone with a family.
As a teenager, I kept a diary fairly well, and my bedside table is stuffed with the things, so there is a lot of raw material soon to be sifted through and evaluated; a task that I look forward to with almost as much embarrassment as enjoyment. There will be things, people and events that I had forgotten all about, I just know, and reading, remembering and choosing what to include and what to disgregard will be quite as much a journey of rediscovery as a practical exercise.
Today, however, was all about reading through what I have already written, with the fresh eyes that a few months' rest always brings to a project, finding the story every bit as pleasing as I remembered it (and perhaps even a little bit more in the presence of someone else to whom it is all new and delightful), identifying gaps, planning improvements, considering scenarios. What I am really looking forward to though, is writing again, something that I knew was just not going to happen unless environmental circumstances were just right. A little more pressure here, a little less pressure there, some time in which to think uninterrupted, someone creative and enthusiastic to share the work with, and a range of other factors which may or may not include coming to the end of the first leaf on a brand new calendar...
Tuesday 19 January 2016
OK, this is serious...
Writing my own book is something that I have always wanted to do (like many people, I guess). And I have a good 9 chapters of it already well under way, but (like many other projects, I guess!) it has lain dormant for a few months while I attended to childcare, cooking, cleaning and the practical but certainly less interesting job of making a bit of money.
Now we are entering a new year, always a natural time for reflection and re-evaluation, and having had a read through those 9 chapters (and a good laugh), I feel energised and ready to carry on with my story.
The story begins when Mother and Father decide to leave the semi-suburbian and very respectable village of Prestbury where they both grew up, and make their home in a near-derelict farmhouse located on the edge of a firing range (and in the middle of MOD-owned farmland) in the Staffordshire Moorlands. They spend the next few years having their first three children, me, my sister Metia and brother Felix, and decide to educate us at home. Thus, the scene is set for a remarkable and unique upbringing for the three of us and the two little brothers who arrive a few years later.
I am going to write this blog hand-in-hand with writing the rest of the book, and hope to update it periodically as that task progresses. It is time (high time), I feel, that the project received the attention that it truly merits. And so I am setting out with enthusiasm and anticipation. With all this in mind, I am raising a glass (mug of coffee) to writing, to adventure, to home education, to freedom to think, do and be; and to us!
House In The Sky on Facebook
Melandra, Metia and Felix, Christmas card design by Irene Bethell, circa 1978
Now we are entering a new year, always a natural time for reflection and re-evaluation, and having had a read through those 9 chapters (and a good laugh), I feel energised and ready to carry on with my story.
The story begins when Mother and Father decide to leave the semi-suburbian and very respectable village of Prestbury where they both grew up, and make their home in a near-derelict farmhouse located on the edge of a firing range (and in the middle of MOD-owned farmland) in the Staffordshire Moorlands. They spend the next few years having their first three children, me, my sister Metia and brother Felix, and decide to educate us at home. Thus, the scene is set for a remarkable and unique upbringing for the three of us and the two little brothers who arrive a few years later.
I am going to write this blog hand-in-hand with writing the rest of the book, and hope to update it periodically as that task progresses. It is time (high time), I feel, that the project received the attention that it truly merits. And so I am setting out with enthusiasm and anticipation. With all this in mind, I am raising a glass (mug of coffee) to writing, to adventure, to home education, to freedom to think, do and be; and to us!
House In The Sky on Facebook
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