Zen and the art of novel writing (and quilt making)

How is your bank holiday weekend going? Mine is nice and quiet. Was going to see the quilts exhibition at the V&A on Friday night, but ended up going for dinner in the Wine Factory instead. Yes, it's true, the white wine is warm, but the food was very good, I thought. The service isn't rude - just sweetly laid-back, and the waiters all look like Botticelli angels which doesn't hurt. Last night I had a little Eurovision soiree - I was quite shocked that Cyprus and Azerbaijan didn't do better. And why Germany? I don't get it.

So as you may or may not have noticed, posting here has been sporadic of late. The reason being that I've been working a lot on a novel. I finished it in February and have been rewriting it ever since. Last week I sent it out, or the first three chapters, to two agents I used to work with in my previous incarnation as an editor, and I was lucky enough to get pretty immediate and very sweet nos, saying they enjoyed the material but they didn't think it could work in a crowded market - exactly the kind of phrases I used to use - with some very useful constructive advice subtly thrown in. I feel incredibly grateful to have such feedback, because I know most aspiring writers don't. Of course, it would be great if got published, but if it isn't, that's ok.

I really mean that. The thing is that I had fun writing it - a lot of fun, as well as lots of angst - and I've given it to some friends who genuinely enjoyed it. (Or at least they said they did. Hello friends, I believed you!) And ... although this might sound hard to believe, I feel that's reward enough. If everyone who had read it hated it, or if I hadn't been able to finish it, that would be sad. But as it is, I think I wrote a story that hangs together, that has a life about it and that entertained the people who read it - and I'm happy about that.

I know, from working in publishing, that choosing what books to publish - especially in the genre I've chosen, commercial fiction/chick lit/rom coms - is a commercial decision (the clue's in the name) and one that's very difficult. A debut novel has to be the beginning of a brand that will repay the (massive) effort that you put into launching it. When things get published, it's because the creative decisions of the author have meshed with the commercial imperatives of the publisher.

Does that sound sad? It's not meant to. I've made a conscious decision not to be a miserable aspiring writer: not to stress about things not working out, but to have fun with it, working hard on what I do but letting go of the outcome. I feel like I've learned to make a quilt, and can make more, if I put the time and effort in. It would be great to be able to sell them in a shop, but even if I don't, I can still have fun making them. I also think that happiness is a decision. Why not decide to be deliriously happy, with summer (sort of) coming in, and new quilts to make?

In any case - I promise I'll post more regularly. So watch this space ...

Girl flu

I am sick. Sick, sick and more sick. I have a cold. I know, only a cold. But I forgot how bad a cold can make you feel. I bought a box of tissues last night and took it with me instead of the traditional bottle of wine to L's for dinner, where a little mound of tissues grew higher beside me as the night went on (L is a kind and tolerant hostess). I finished the entire box about 12 hours later. This morning I awoke at around 4.30 am because I needed to blow my nose. I also took some generic Maximum Strength Cold and Flu stuff for my fever and congestion. It didn't seem to do anything much for my fever or congestion, but it did succeed in keeping me awake (now I see that it also contains caffeine). I lay there feeling truly miserable, until around 9 am I felt marginally better. I felt a bit like Beth in Little Women, lying awake with the fever, and I could imagine that Hannah the nurse/cook was beside me saying, 'The fever's turned. She's sleeping aisy. Praise the Lord!'

I don't think I am an especially good patient. I can manage serious things, such as I've had once or twice, with relative equanimity, but when it comes to a bad cold, I don't really suffer in silence. I also like to use as many remedies as possible: Lemsip, hot honey and lemon drinks, paracetemol, Lockets, vitamin C, echinacea etc etc. Being sick can be quite an expensive business. But I think the worst is over. Tonight I'm going to employ the final weapon in my armoury: very hot Indian food. I can just about breathe through my nose again, so the signs are good.

Wolf Hall

Have you been on the edge of your seats waiting to see if I've been keeping up the resolutions?

I have! Perhaps not surprisingly the most successful one has been the reading better books. Just before Christmas I bought Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning novel about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor. I read it all through Christmas and New Year, and I loved it. I do think you need to have some sort of nodding acquantance with Henry's reign and some of the characters involved to get the most out of it - eg when you meet a sly, eavesdropping page called Mark Smeaton, it adds something if you recognise the name as one of the men who was tortured and later executed for his alleged affair with Anne Boleyn. It's also told in a very clipped, elliptical way which could be a little impenetrable if you didn't know anything at all about the period. That's not to say that you couldn't read it without any prior knowledge: just that the more you know, the more you would enjoy, I think.

It was interesting for me since it completely counters the Catholic perspective of Cromwell as the evil fixer who made Henry divorce Katherine of Aragon, set him up with the strumpet Anne Boleyn and burned the saintly More. This Cromwell is a very attractive, even lovable, character who's risen to power from sheer ability rather than aristocratic lineage - an unprecedented way of doing things. In contrast, More is seen as well-meaning and principled, but relishes his self-mortification (and mortifying others - he supervised a lot of torture of heretics) a bit too much - there's a real dark side and osbstinacy to his character that makes total sense here.

The way the author thinks herself into the period is pretty extraordinary, in fact I would almost call it mediumistic. There are details there that just have the utter ring of truth: people being short-tempered during Lent because of the fasting; a character playing idly with the ruffles in his doublet, pushing them in and out of the silk lining. It's also frequently very funny: when Henry demands, 'You want a king who doesn't fight? You want me to huddle indoors like a sick girl?' Cromwell replies, 'That would be ideal, for fiscal purposes.'

Two quibbles: I'm not sure that anyone as powerful and ruthless as Cromwell was could have been as totally likeable a character as he is made to be here - and I think it was a shame that she ended it so many years before his death (executed, of course, by the then paranoid and crazy Henry, on the same day that Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard). But, apparently a sequel is in the works, and if it is anything like Wolf Hall I can't wait.

Chick lit

I live in Queen's Park, in north-west London. It is a nice neighbourhood (or 'area' is probably a better word). It's full of affluent young families on their first or second kid, who can't afford Notting Hill but are damned if they're moving to Ealing or Acton. There is a park and a farmer's market on Sundays. There is a branch of the absurdly expensive Baker & Spice (actually, watch this space, it's being renovated/closing down, hurray). There is a gastropub and a very good bookshop, and a good curry takeaway and several great Lebanese grocers.

Queen's Park is also the spiritual home of chick lit - that is, the new, grown-up chick lit (hen lit?) The novels The Rise and Fall of a Slummy Mummy and Mrs Zhivago of Queen's Park are set here (neither of which I liked, but anyway). Chick lit is a genre that arouses a lot of ire among people, many of whom have never read any. Jackie Collins brilliantly dismissed the entire genre as 'some girl in a bedsit, moaning about some guy' and it must be said there is some truth in this description. They are quite different from Jackie C's novels, and it's interesting to examine why. Here's my theory:

The 1980s blockbusters - sex and shopping novels - were written at a time when people were, in general, less affluent, and certainly nobody was jetting off to St Kitts in a Katherine Hamnett dress to sleep with a cruel millionaire or whatever. So these novels were total escapism, allowing readers a glimpse into an undreamably glamorous lifestyle.

In contrast, chick lit happened in the 1990s, at a time when everybody had more money than during the 1980s heyday of the bonkbuster. With that increased affluence came a pressure to live up to a certain type of lifestyle. Chick lit was about the contrast between that ideal lifestyle (perfect flat, ideal career, great man and designer wardrobe) and most ordinary women's lives (queuing for cappucinos, getting squashed on the tube, buying the wrong dress and leaving it too late to take it back). The best chick lit, ie Bridget Jones, parodied the perfect lifestyle. So you have Bridget fantasising about 'mini breaks' spent 'maybe even in a small boat, with Daniel rowing and me in a long dress possibly from Ghost.'

It's the 'possibly from Ghost' that makes that line so funny - how Bridget can't quite separate her romantic dreams of Daniel and her consumer vision of herself in a Ghost dress. The fact that it's such a 90s label makes it all the more priceless, I think ... That's why it's annoying when people think chick lit is all about shopping, as Bridget never goes shopping except on a couple of disastrous occasions. I suppose I'm trying to say that Bridget Jones is as much a satire on consumer values as anything else. So is Confessions of a Shopaholic (the novel) but I know you won't believe me so I won't bother expanding on that.

Many people who disapprove of chick lit think that it's anti-feminist to have women reading novels that are all about romance/men. But chick lit novels aren't just about men - they're about careers (The Devil Wears Prada) addiction (Rachel's Holiday) music (The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets) and lots of other things besides. Chick lit is just commercial fiction aimed at women. Some of it is rubbish and some of it is very good. I see men reading thrillers about things exploding and people being shot, which are aimed squarely at men, but nobody worries about that.

One predicted outcome of the recession is that the big bonkbuster novel is back. I met someone recently who is having one published - I forget her name, but I think the novel is called Glamour or Glitter or Gilt or something similar. I'm sure it's very good, but I think I probably prefer the kitchen-sink realism (so to speak) of chick lit.