Archive for August, 2009

Mountain Climbing is it!

Friday, August 14th, 2009

 

Mountain climbing must be my thing. I can no longer deny it. First of all there is Peirene. Setting her up, has been an experience similar to mountain-001climbing a mountain. A very slow ascent. One step after the other. Every now and again I stumble, I slide down a bit, but then I scramble back to my feet and on I march.

 

And now there is the family holiday. Back in March my husband rang me from a business trip to Delhi. Let’s go to India, he said, I’ve checked out our air miles, we have enough. The next weekend we cruised the internet wondering where exactly to go in India. By chance we came across one of these mountaineering companies offering tracking tours in the Himalayas. Bingo. Decision made.

 

“It was your stupid decision. Yours alone. I am not going. And the children neither!” On Saturday we are off and for the last few days I’ve been blaming my husband for this decision. Suddenly I would rather lie on a beach, go somewhere easy, somewhere familiar. I don’t want to worry about altitude sickness and diarrhea. Are we overdoing it with our nine-year-old? And perhaps we all might die!

 

Admittedly, I have a bizarre deal with fate. When something really good happens to me I don’t celebrate. I’m not allowed to laugh at my own luck and be thrilled that I am off to the Himalayas. Because if I do, the holiday might turn sour. So now I am stuck. I can’t even tell you how excited I am.

 

See you back here – if we survive – in the first week of September.

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Of Pictures and Monsters

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

 

Setting up a business means spending money. I’ve made my calculations, I was prepared. But every now and again I come up against an monster-smallexpenditure I am absolutely unhappy to pay. Because I feel it ought to be for free, especially for small start up businesses like me. Such as authors’ pictures. When I found out that I am expected to pay some photographer or other for an author’s portrait – a tiny picture for the website and catalogue which, in all honesty, is not going to make or break the books, I was – I am – outraged. And I aired my view to a friend at a book do.

Let me just stop here for a moment and explain about this friend. He is famous – I mean REALLY famous – for his drawings of monsters and dragons – and almost every child in this country will have a book of his on their shelf. Yeah, I might be a small unknown publisher BUT I have famous friends. Yep, celebs in fact.

So this friend said: I’ll can do the portraits for you for free.

Or at least that’s what I understood. I few days later I emailed him: Were you serious? In the meantime I had got quite excited about the idea. My authors ought to feel honoured to be sketched by such a famous monster painter. A bohemian solution fit for a small but special publisher.

My friend emailed me back. He didn’t really say that. What he said was that someone might be able to sketch them. It’s not his métier. His portraits surely would all have big round monster eyes and crooked witches noses. And that, he feared, might cause offence and angry reaction.

Ok! I guess if I truly try I can see his point of view. But only just.

 

Anyway, help arrived from a different direction. I received a couple of authors pictures for free. Only that one of them is hidden behind a microphone. It’s a beautiful shot of the mike. Now I have to ask for a replacement, which surely will come in due time. Only sadly a bit late for the autumn catalogue. So there will be no authors’ pictures in the catalogue.

But not all is lost: You will find a picture of me instead. The smile is free and no photographer owns the copyright!

 

P.S. The monster is by me too.

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Live your Fantasies!

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

 

Once a year I let rip!  For nearly two weeks I live out my fantasies to the full, only them I obey, only them I serve!

 

This year the set up looked better than ever: My neighbours have packed up their car and gone on holiday (so no one can spy on me). My children have been sent off on a two week summer camp ( so no responsibility). And my husband is away working very hard in some different country (so I am practically single again). There is the small issue of Peirene. But hey, no one is answering my e-mails anyway and if I get a reply it’s a holiday bouncer “I will be away from my desk all of July and August and won’t be checking my e-mails.” Well, ok then, I will just stop writing e-mails!

 

And NOW:  I am The Writer. And let me be even clearer: not any odd writer but a Novel Writer. We Germans have a particular Romantic idea about the novel writer. And that’s what I try to live up to during these two weeks. The Writer, who only lives for the words. I don’t cook, I don’t wash, I don’t even put the dishes in the dishwasher, I eat take-away pizzas. I’ve already come up with some spots but who cares, I am also not seeing or talking to anyone. I am all engrossed in deep thought and wonderful words.

Usually my writer-self gets three hours allocated in the morning. Before its children, afterwards it’s Peirene, then children, then household/husband/ friends/networking, then bed. Whenever I meet a writer, who only writes and thinks, I feel extremely jealous. And I ask questions like, so how many words do you write then? Only a 1000 in eight hours. I do that in two! Ha! And how many thoughts do you have, heh? And let me tell you, I’ve read the Bible, and Dante, all three parts! Yes, and the whole of Nietzsche. Jawohl!

 

So now I am a Writer 24/7. And have I produced 12 000 words? Of course not. I could explain, that I am actually right now not in word production mode, ie. writing a first draft, but rather at the revision stage, which by nature is not so word intensive. Still, nothing prevents me from engaging fully with the text all day long, does it? I stare a lot at the screen, that’s true. But I don’t really get on with it. Rather I am busy with anxiety attacks, lots of them throughout the day. I ask about my ability to write. I wonder if my story is any good. Am I a real writer? And what actually is a real writer?

I did however manage to get hold of one deep thought over the last couple of days: Perhaps the romantic idea of a lone writer 24/7 in the attic just doesn’t suit the multi-tasking geniuses that we women are. Perhaps we produce much better literature/art  when accepting that it is simply one of the things we do.

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