Tag: life

Categories
jaguar's realm other books writing

Day in the Life of a Writer Close To Finishing A First Draft

1. Woken up wayyyy too early by BlackBerry flashing with the message “Write 1000 words of Jaguar – NOW!” Lie awake for ages, unable to stir from bed.

2. Oldest daughter invades to fleece me of what little shrapnel I have. “I haven’t got my PIN yet!” is the usual excuse for the ongoing cash drain. Youngest daughter is sleepy and wants cuddles. How can I resist? Husband prepares packed lunch and breakfast for little ‘un, then takes her to school, all to leave me free to write. But I just stare in fascination at FaceBook. There’s a MyFlickr app! Cool; install it. Apparently apps could be the death of Facebook – people are getting cross with all the zombies and jedi vs sith silliness. I say: if you don’t want the app, Dile que no.

3. Check out all my friends blogs and post comments. Email a dear friend who’s back in touch via LinkedIn. Check my favourite writer’s websites. Read short stories on fiction website. Finally shower, dress and look at the chunk of writing I have to do today. It’s a foot chase through Old Havana. Rooftops will feature, because hey, it’s Havana! So will the Malecon, because, well, IT’S HAVANA.

4. Read some of Alejo Carpentier’s ‘The Chase’ to get in the mood. Browse my photos from Cuba, to get in the mood. (There aren’t enough of rooftops. I looked down over rootops every day in Havana – what was wrong with me – why didn’t I take more of rooftops?) Watch the rooftop party scene from Habana Blues, to get in the mood.

5. Finally in the mood, write the Old Havana chase scene; 800 words. That’ll do – half a chapter and I left at a good place – the rooftop chase begins.

6. Pick up littlest daughter from school, acquire 3-year old neighbour boy on the way. Pick apples from our tree. Bake a pie together. Make pesto for tea. Experiment with a new daiquiri that uses fresh pink grapefruit juice and just a hint of coriander. (gently, gently bruise about five coriander leaves in the glass part of a shaker, add 1/2 shot freshly squeezed lime juice, 1/2 shot of gomme, 1 shot freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, 2 shots light rum, shake in Boston shaker with plenty ice, fine strain into a chilled martini glass.)

7. Discuss my teenager’s complex love life with her and reluctantly help her to plan a strategy with latest love interest. (It was that or talk all night long.)

8. Laundry. Who doesn’t love laundry? NOT! I read in some newspaper article that Mrs Thatcher admitted that getting the fluff out of the dryer was one of the small pleasures of her life. I try it. It’s surprisingly satisfying – comes off in three nice clean layers.

7. Eat pie whilst reading today’s 800 words. Polish. Write this blog entry.

5000 words to go, by my estimate, until I finish the first draft of ‘Jaguar’s Realm’. I planned this ending ONE YEAR ago, but last week I thought of a major tweak that has allowed me to keep the pace and drama going strong all the way through Act 3. At least that’s the plan, and that’s why I plan. Things can only get better from a strong plan.

Writing the first draft, truly, is so much fun. I even enjoyed first drafts when I had no agent and no publisher. The story is all yours then and you’re the first one to read it.

And look…only 8pm. Still time to go salsa dancing at Freuds…

But I’m too tired.

Categories
getting published writing

Introspective, moi?

I don’t usually turn to introspection on this blog because well, basically, it’s not very fun is it? It gets awfully close to that writer’s angst I try to avoid.

But today, just now in fact I had a moment of clarity in which I realised that being a published author is going to make me not more interesting as my teenage daughter imagines, but less.

(My teenage daughter observed recently, “I’m looking forward to your book being published. Then maybe your life will finally become interesting. And you’ll have things to tell me. Instead of it being the other way round.”)

I read an article about something, can’t remember what, and was just starting to form a theory, synthesize a thought, who knows it might even have been interesting…when a very strict part of my brain cut in and said NO.

NO. You can’t think about that. It might be interesting but NO. It’s not relevant to the books you write. It’s potentially too interesting to think about as a leisure activity. It’s not comforting enough to justify as a daydream. So: simply NO.

That strict part of my brain has a propensity to let me think all I like about the stuff that it deems relevant to my job and hardly at all about anything else. There were times when I was a scientist that I literally turned up at parties unable to speak. I forgot how to make small talk. I didn’t want to talk about anything but molecular biology, and no-one at the party wanted to hear about that so…I said nothing.

So I can imagine that what will happen in the next few years is that I will think more and more about my books. At the moment I can count on the fingers of a hand the number of people who have ever wanted to have any discussion with me about my books that goes beyond “You’re writing a book, really, what’s it about?”…my reply and then, end of discussion.

What if it were lots of people, though? What if that becomes all people ever want to talk to me about?

Then I’ll be back where I was in the old days, when I was mad keen to talk about subcloning DNA or whatever part of my research I was up to…and good for little else. Except now the only thing I’ll be capable of talking about is a bunch of stuff I made up once.

I’ll be back to being a nerd.

Actually I’m being daft. I could right now make a list of 10 friends who will NEVER want to hear about my books. They should help to save me from becoming a total bore.

Categories
mexico

Forever Mexican – Chiiidoooo

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon recently said “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

Well hurray for that! Because apparently the cost of being naturalized as a British citizen has roughly tripled since last year, when I last filled in the forms and didn’t get round to sending them, and at around £655 I’m not quite sure it’s in my range anymore. Priced out of the market! It’s probably a quite sensible ploy to avoid undesirables like me becoming British. Quite right too. What Groucho Marx said.

So I’m to be forever Mexican and only Mexican. Which means that there’s a little bit of Mexico right here in Oxford.

PUES ME PARECE BIEN CHIDO.

Categories
raves

Difford rules! More mixology…

cocktails1.jpg

Noam and Patrick, two young student lads came round for cocktails last night. I’ve known them both since they were little boys aged 9. It was great to have some guests who could go through lots of cocktails without passing out, like our usual crowd of friends (and me), who stop at two. Gave me a chance to try out some more recipes.

Last night’s discoveries of yumminess included:

Pineapple Daiquiri (cold and refreshing)

2 shots light rum, 1/2 shot gomme, 3/4 shot fresh lime juice, 1 shot pressed pineapple juice.

Shake with ice and then pour over ice-filled old-fashioned glass.

Havanatheone (Rose variant improvised by me)

10 mint leaves, 2 shots light rum, 2 spoonfuls rose-infused syrup, 1 shot pressed apple juice

Muddle mint leaves just enough to bruise, add other ingredients and stir until syrup dissolves, then shake with ice and fine strain into chilled martini glass.

(NB the original recipe calls for runny clear honey)

We also tried old classics like Mint Julep, Caipiroska, Mojito, Cosmopolitan, Gimlet and some of Difford’s own recipes. All fantastically good.

I felt fine until they left. I’d had two-and-a-half, including a Grand Margarita which has 3 shots of alcohol. But I’d also had a sip of every other cocktail I’d made. The room began to swim. I just managed to force a large glass of water down before I collapsed onto my bed.

I wasn’t drunk! Just sleepy.

Categories
nostalgia

MG and DB

Here’s my good friend DB, who I inherited from the one time in my life that I was ever in a Clique. It was at St Cross College, Oxford and for some reason the cool American grad students welcomed me into their urbane little set, who would always sit at the same table for lunch and watch as the Goddess Hoku opened her mail (often actually addressed to her as that…), and have cool nicknames for some of the more distinctive dons (we had a Panzer Fuhrer, a Yoda, Obi-Wan, and a Dingleberry). I’d always kind of admired the group from afar; when I eavesdropped their conversation it sounded like the Algonquin Round Table meets the Star Wars Fan Club.

I first got an ‘in’ with them when I overheard Hoku talking about my beloved PJ O’Rourke, whose book “Republican Party Reptile” I owned and loved, and whose new book “Holidays in Hell” was just out. Hoku and I became life-long friends following our walk to the bookstore to each buy a copy of HIH.

The group would meet in someone’s college room for video evenings to watch shows like “Sledge Hammer!” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle”, which were all new to me. We’d eat pizza and play with Legos. These were the type of people I’d never come across before at Oxford – right-leaning, funny, educated, witty and cosmopolitan American liberal-arts students. I was totally smitten.

This was back when there was still an Evil Empire and we had a gazillion Soviet nukes aimed at our heads, when the GDR was still cool in a grimly-socialist-black-and-white-movie sort of way – it wasn’t like being a neocon or anything. One of the group, Peter Schweizer, had spent time with Washington bigshots and had published a book entitled “Grinning with the Gipper: The Wit, Wisdom, and Wisecracks of Ronald Reagan”

But as people invariably do in Oxford, they left. Eventually only two local hangers-on were left: me and DB.

We didn’t really know each other at first. The group was big enough that we’d only chatted at the periphery. When we exchanged phone numbers at the farewell party of the last of the group to leave, I wondered vaguely if we’d ever meet again.

We did though, and I’m glad because DB has been one of my best friends for years, through thick and thin. She wrote weekly limericks to cheer me up through one gloomy bit of my life, I stripped wall-paper with her when she bought a cottage that needed EVERYTHING doing. I introduced DB to the concept of Murder Mystery parties and then DB expanded and improved upon the concept until they were a thing of minor legend, at least in Hertford College MCR.

DB tempted me out for tapas, cocktails and a movie last night. We saw “The Lives Of Others”, the winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar. I haven’t seen such a touching, beautifully constructed and performed film for a long time. Everything about the film is just brilliant.

Fundamentally it’s a story of unrequited love and how a dutiful state security official metamorphoses into a Good Man when he falls in love with someone who he can never have, but who through her plight opens his eyes to the wrongdoing in his own occupation. It’s a film which sticks rigidly to Robert McKee’s stern advice to screenwriters that MEANING produces EMOTION. (As opposed to loud explosions and car chases…)

Great movie – thanks DB!