Back to Writing after a Year of Art

After a couple of years of exhaustion and disenchantment with the whole publishing journey, I decided to relax and find the creativity and joy again. Of course I did - basically anything creative I do circles back to story and writing and novels. My lockdown novel, Northern Penguins has been on a journey. It started out as a heap of barely related scenes written compulsively and sorted itself into a book by May this year. I sent it off to a few agents and one gave me some invaluable advice - write the backstory as a historical strand about a baby in a carpet bag. I wrote and wrote all through the summer and completed and edited the book by September. I mocked up this cover so I could print off a few draft copies for the Appledore Book Festival. 

Feedback from readers was encouraging so I sent it out to Bookouture, which had been recommended by my last agent. They liked it and now it's travelling on its journey. I'm waiting to see if the book (and a couple of sequels) are needed. It's women's fiction (I think, I'm never really sure where to put a book in a genre) but has a male protagonist trying to rediscover his mother's history through doing up the house she grew up in. The historical strand tells the story of her mother Patience, and how she tried to have her cake and eat it, bringing home an 'orphan' baby and adopting it, keeping her job as a teacher. The whole book is set on an island (a lot like the Scillies) because my village felt like an island during lockdown! It feels like going back to writing is fun again, and I know better than to put my head in a creative head collar again. Ideas for books 2 and 3 are piling up in my journal, and I have basic outlines. If Bookouture don't want the books, I'm going to have a go at sending to big publishers, then some smaller ones. Ready to go!

Writing and Painting

So, I'm still writing but I'm now spending time on art! It feels very self-indulgent, and given my depressed state of mind, very therapeutic. What do I like? Why? I'm one of those people that could make a good guess at what all the family would choose in a restaurant but then have no idea when it comes to me. It turns out I love words in paintings and loads of turquoise. 

I started out with some new brushes, a box of elderly acrylic paints and paper and about a thousand YouTube videos watched over Christmas. With many thanks to all the generous artists who create tutorials online, like Louise Fletcher, Nicholas Wilton, Alice Sheridan, Lewis Noble and Pauline Jans. I signed up for a free workshop by Art2Life and was hooked. I'm now doing a 12 week course with Art2Life and it's a massive challenge, but hugely enjoyable. When it's all too stressful I remind myself that a) I teach creative writing and everyone who comes to the workshops has the same fears and b) I wander off and do some writing. My paintings are shit, but I think of them as early drafts since I work over them anyway. 

Northern Penguins is almost finished, slowed down by a general depression and lockdown but now coming to a lovely finale. I've really enjoyed being the with characters, many of whom (with their consent) are based on my actual friends. No wonder I like them. I'm going to have to find a new agent though - it's nothing like the genres I've written before. No murders, no supernatural, just a man discovering his own past in renovating a house in a friendly and small community. There's a proper love story and everything. But I'm able to write at my own pace before worrying about what someone else thinks.

Now I'm balancing writing with painting and my imagination is getting a proper run out. I hope my mental health will improve in the better weather, longer days and time taken for myself. This was my first week's homework, a collage of things that inspires me (it's not supposed to be art, just to remind me). It was terrifying to do and I kept adding to it. Roll on week 2's tutorials and homework, I loved week 1! PS I intend to blog a lot more!