Day Five – Family Voices, or, Today We Will Be Mostly Saying, “Argh!”

Today I’m participating in a mass blogging! WOW! Women on Writing has gathered a group of blogging buddies to write about family relationships. Why family relationships? We’re celebrating the release of Therese Walsh’s debut novel today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Random House, October 13, 2009) is about a mysterious journey that helps a woman learn more about herself and her twin, whom she lost they were teenagers. Visit the Muffin (on the 13th) to read what Therese has to say about family relationships and view the list of all my blogging buddies. And make sure you visit www.theresewalsh.com to find out more about the author.

Day Five:-  Logan Botanic Garden

Hobble:-  2 miles
Words:- 4,386
Food:-  jacket tattie and beans
Soundtrack:-  Moby again.

Today is a day of screams and grunts.  I am very stiff, and very tired.  I thought it would be my ankles and knees that were protesting today, afterall, my left knee felt like a spit-roasted melon last night: hot, swollen and knifed.

But no.  No, today it’s all about the big muscles in the front of the thighs.  Crouching down to pick something up requires a handhold.  There is a distinct delay between the nervous impulse to stand, and the actual movement of muscle to obey….

I am blistered, too, sadly.  I always think of a blister on a hill walk as a sign that I’ve failed, somehow, that my boot-and-foot management didn’t pass muster.  Dad would be tutting and shaking his head.  But the sad fact is I have lovely feet, tractable, behaving themselves, reasonably attractive, reliable feet – right up to the point I put them in walking boots.  Walking sandals, yes.  Approach shoes (fusion boot/trainer footwear) definitely.  Boots, oh no.  I have this recurrent problem of the tendons under my left toes cramping.  It’s agonising and really difficult to manage or prevent. 

I’ve found that if I use good quality (sorbothane, how we love thee) insoles, and DON’T use thick socks, this is minimised, and only really turns up when I start to get dehydrated.  BUT the thinner socks don’t provide enough protection for my heels and I get blisters.  Compeed is good, and keeps me going a few more miles, but Compeed does not like, no sireee, he does not like, the soaking the feet in peat bogs approach.  Alas.

So, stiffness, a blister or two, and a couple of bruises.  Not bad, really.  Considering.*

The thought of staying in the cottage and slowly sitffening up all day had me out and on the road shortly after breakfast.  I’ve headed for the Logan Botanic Garden, one of the most important gardens in the UK.

And, even thought I’m holidaying alone, I’ve brought my family with me.

Yesterday I had Dad on my shoulder whispering encouragement and instruction.  He taught me about walking (and running – he used to do fell running, jogging up and down mountains we’d struggle to walk up and down) and climbing in the hills.  He taught me how to pick my footing, to take little, fast steps on ascent, and know where my feet would land two or three steps ahead on descent.  He taught me to place my foot sideways on steep, uncertain terrain, how to recognise the safe and the unsafe.  It was Dad showed me how to read a map and use a compass – when I refresh myself on these skills before a walk, I can almost see his hands in front of me, smoothing the map and following the contour lines.  Dad’s voice, and his teachings, are with me every day in the mountains, even though he can’t be with us anymore in the flesh. 

But that was yesterday.  And today the voice on my shoulder is Mum’s.

Dad taught me to walk safely.  Mum told me it was the little yellow blooms of tormentil and the fire spikes of bog asphodel I was treading on.  Dad showed me where bogs were treacherous, Mum showed me the insect eating plants that grew there – the little green fly-papers of butterwort, the misty red tentacles of the tiny sundew.  I give my respects to the birch and the rowan, the sedge and the lady’s smock, calling them by name because Mum introduced us.

Now, today, I’m conscious that I’m in a place that would give Mum as much pleasure as it’s giving me.  I’ve only been as far as the entrance, the ticket office, and the coffee shop (hazelnut cappuccino!  And it’s good!) but already I’ve had three, “oooh, Mum you have to see this moments.”  I don’t have Mum’s botanic knowledge.  I only know that she’d be intrigued by the double nasturtiums, awed by the flowering cordeline, and knocked out by the big house-leek-on-stalk-type things in purple.  (Mum?  What are they called again?)

EDIT – Mum says they’re eoniums!  Thanks Mum!

See, I said I didn’t have the botanic knowledge….

I’m taking lots of pictures, and thinking about how to get them to her.

I like holidaying alone, just once in a while.  But I love that my family comes too, all the time. 

*Actually, pretty awful.  By the evening I was snivelling.  It never ceases to amaze me how far we can actually make a body perform beyond its comfort zone.  Ow.

By Therese Walsh

A LOST SHADOW
Moira Leahy struggled growing up in her prodigious twin’s shadow; Maeve was always more talented, more daring, more fun. In the autumn of the girls’ sixteenth year, a secret love tempted Moira, allowing her to have her own taste of adventure, but it also damaged the intimate, intuitive relationship she’d always shared with her sister. Though Moira’s adolescent struggles came to a tragic end nearly a decade ago, her brief flirtation with independence will haunt her sister for years to come.

A LONE WOMAN
When Maeve Leahy lost her twin, she left home and buried her fun-loving spirit to become a workaholic professor of languages at a small college in upstate New York. She lives a solitary life now, controlling what she can and ignoring the rest–the recurring nightmares, hallucinations about a child with red hair, the unquiet sounds in her mind, her reflection in the mirror. It doesn’t help that her mother avoids her, her best friend questions her sanity, and her not-quite boyfriend has left the country. But at least her life is ordered. Exactly how she wants it.

A SHARED PAST
Until one night at an auction when Maeve wins a keris, a Javanese dagger that reminds her of her lost youth, and happier days playing pirates with Moira in their father’s boat. Days later, a book on weaponry is nailed to her office door, followed by anonymous notes, including one that invites her to Rome to learn more about the blade and its legendary properties. Opening her heart and mind to possibility, Maeve accepts the invitation, and with it, a window into her past. Ultimately she will revisit the tragic November night that shaped her and Moira’s destinies, and learn that nothing can be taken at face value, as one sister emerges whole and the other’s score is finally settled.

Note: To read reviews about The Last Will of Moira Leahy, please visit Therese’s website: http://theresewalsh.com/News_Reviews/news_reviews.html

 About the author, Therese Walsh:

Therese is the co-founder of Writer Unboxed, a blog for writers about the craft and business of genre fiction. Before turning to fiction, she was a researcher and writer for Prevention magazine, and then a freelance writer. She’s had hundreds of articles on nutrition and fitness published in consumer magazines and online.

She has a master’s degree in psychology.

Aside from writing, Therese’s favorite things include music, art, crab legs, Whose Line is it Anyway?, dark chocolate, photography, unique movies and novels, people watching, strong Irish tea, and spending time with her husband, two kids and their bouncy Jack Russell.

Therese’s website: http://theresewalsh.com
Therese’s blog: http://theresewalsh.com/blog.html
Writer Unboxed: http://www.writerunboxed.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ThereseWalsh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/therese.walsh  

THERESE!  Many, many congratulations on the release of your debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy!  It’s been a honour seeing its journey. 

Day Two:-  Loch Trool to Loch Dee
Walk:-  9 miles
Words:-  1,000
Research:-  Timeline of two historical characters
Food:-  Chicken and veg stir fry, oyster sauce, brown rice.
Soundtrack:- Moby

 
I’m an addictive kind of person.  I know that about myself.  Currently, I’m trying not to think about the fact that work kept me for several weeks in Penrith, a lovely market town, with many, many things going for it, but WITHOUT either Costa Coffee or Starbucks.

*whimper*

On the way to the cottage, rushing from a Saturday day job appointment to the holiday, I gleefully stopped at the one service station between me and my destination which I knew sold Costa Coffee. 

They were closed. 

I may have uttered obscenities, but in my defence, I did have the restraint to NOT take the half hour detour into Carlisle and Starbucks (blessed, blessed Starbucks, of the lovely, recognise-me staff, and the blissful hazelnut latte).

SO.  The POINT is.  I haven’t had what I’d call a decent coffee for…. A month. 

Help me.

Anyway.  Today I planned a good, longish walk, with enough distance and ascent to warm me up for The Big One (more later).  Everywhere I go, I have to bear in mind I’m walking solo, in quiet, sometimes remote surroundings.  Risks have to take that in mind, so walks which would be fairly innocuous in friendly, populous, well-remembered Lake District, here have to be taken a bit more seriously.

I drove to the car park at the far end of Loch Trool and, simply put, walked to Loch Dee and back again.  A good half the distance I took the Southern Upland Way, which strove to be interesting by taking the unsuspecting walker through bogs, tussocky marshes and some steep (if short) climbs. 

Oh, and by the Highland Cattle.  You know, the ones with the big horns.  I’d sat down for a break before I spotted them, but they’d already spotted me from a couple hundred yards away.  Head cow wandered in my direction, stared menacingly, and went, “mooo!” in a distinctly warning manner.  I said, “um, hi there, ” in a faint, wobbly voice, and clocked the steep jumble of rocks behind me that might be a safe haven should I have to run for it. 

I shouldn’t have worried.  After watching for ten minutes while I tried not to attract their eye, or look threatening, edible or interesting, they decided I was boring and kept grazing.

After lunch, on the shores of Loch Dee, I started back, this time taking the more straightforward cycle path route.  At which point, the patchy drizzle that hadn’t prevented me from stripping down to t-shirt and STILL feeling too hot on the way up, decided to take things seriously.

HOW is it possible for all the rain hitting your body, to concentrate on the two-inch space in front of your eyes, formed by your hood drawn as tightly as it will go???

This was, however, encouraging, as I’d decided at lunchtime I hadn’t brought enough water… Whoops.

The kit report is good:  new Sprayway trousers (which fit!  Hallelujah!  Walking trousers that fit women with curves!) were, indeed, water resistant, except when the wind really got behind the downpour, and even then were damp not sodden.  The ancient Berghaus jacket, still going strong after its third re-proofing, did its job well, in spite of never having fitted me.  No water in anywhere.  My boots (are they Berghaus or Karrimor?  I forget.) did their usual trick of proving utterly waterproof when I was up to my ankles in peaty water, but as waterproof as a sieve when walking through dewy grass.  HOW does that happen?  The aged, bloke’s The North Face fleece performed perfectly, as did Rohan base layer and socks.

I stupidly forgot my Fat Face hat and Rohan buff.

Yes, okay, I’ll admit I’m a label addict, too.  But ONLY in outdoor kit….  You can keep your Gucci and Prada.  But I’ll fight you for my Sprayway and The North Face…   I do love my kit.

So why did I start talking about coffee?

Because when I got back to the car, dripping, getting a little cold, with fingers wrinkled from the rain and hips in imminent danger of going on strike in protest, I immediately drove to the local visitor centre, little more than a friendly-staffed hut on the banks of the river at Stroan Bridge, and had a HUGE cappuccino. Okay, so it was from a machine.  And more like a latte.  And not very nice.  But, oh, the caffeine.  Made so many of those little aches and pains and protesting joints just… Go away.

Yeah, I know, but the same still applies:-  sorry for absence, but in a good cause.  The WIP that stood at 25,000 words at the beginning of Aug now is 55,000 words long.

Cool.

I’ve been away this last week, writing and walking in Scotland again.  I made an attempt at journalling my time away, so I’ll share that with you in the days to come…

The bridge is still there….

Day one:-  Bridge of Minnoch.
Walk:-  4 miles
Words:-  0
Research:-  0
Food:-  Fresh tuna and veg in oyster sauce stir fry.  Stewed apple and mincemeat and custard.
Soundtrack:-  Kate Rusby

It’s not so much of a given as you might think.  It’s an old bridge – the map calls it Old Bridge of Minnoch, and the sign for the nearby fishing spot says, “Roman bridge” which is what the locals call it. 

I’m tempted to believe it, although it’s more likely it’s a 17th century construction.  The high, round arch leaps from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop at a point where the Water of Minnoch narrows.  It’s broad, steep, and completely parapet-less.  At the top, standing looking over the wide pool downstream and the foaming, peat-stained rapids upstream, you are standing on a single thickness of rough-hewn stone blocks.  A single, perfect, arch.

And, apart from a narrow, half-invisible footpath winding through the bracken, it is a bridge with no road.

Which, to me, is a permanently, deliciously, unsolveable puzzle.  I’ve stared at the map for hours, stood on the bridge and looked for clues, laid flat on my back on the apex of the arch, cushioned on wild thyme, scented in the sunshine, but I still can’t find the all important links, the a and the b that the bridge must once have stood between.  Possibly an old quarry and the road.  Two farmsteads.  One small croft and it’s upland summer pastures…  Who knows?  The bridge stands like a memory, one of those flashes of recollection that give you a taste, a feel, a single visual, but which you can’t place in a context.  It’s tantalising.

And it’s still there.  Thank heaven.

Well, I’m not too surprised. 

After the week before last’s mammoth progress, this last week wasn’t as great.

It happens sometimes.  Maybe I’m spending the creativity too fast, maybe I’m running ahead of the ‘percolation time’ required by the writing brain before actual written sceneage will be allowed onto the page.  Feels like I’m writing through sludge, and writing something that closely resembles sludge, too.

At this point, someone usually says, “ah, but you can’t edit a blank page,” meaning to say I should just keep writing and trust to the editing process. 

Uh-huh. 

There is only so much you can achieve with the editing process.  I always come back to the same thought – polishing crap only results in shiny crap.  And a stink.

But I AM still writing.  About a thousand words shy of the weekly target last week, but that’s okay.  I’m starting to think now about tricks to play with to unpick the story more.  Is it time for the scary spaghetti diagrams on used flipchart paper?  Coloured post its?  Index cards and GMC charts?

Big cross-tabulations and getting the cats to run through ink pads onto the paper???

I’m very aware I have *counts on fingers* at least five story threads in this book, one of them set in the past.  At least one (probably two) of those are begging to be written all at once, rather than in bits and pieces dotted through the story as a whole.  With one of the antagonists’ thread, that might be quite good to do.  With the set-in-the-past one it could be disastrous.

Hmmmm.

When you write out of sequence, as I do, there’s usually a queue at the back of your head of scenes to be written.  They’re all waving and going, “pick me!  Pick me!  Pick me!”

It’s a bit disconcerting when those scenes are all trying to shuffle behind one another like a bunch of kids asked to volunteer for kitty litter duty.

The time for extra coffee, in a bid to kick start the scene enthusiasm, has passed.

Maybe I need a swim…

Well, well, well. 

No, not three wells, as Husband would usually respond.  I’m just having a, “well, waddya know” moment from my writing week.

Monday 27th July: A Thousand Secrets stood at 14,522 words.

Sunday, 2nd August:  25,925

I’ve written 11,403 words in a week.  And not in great chunks of time, either.  I’ve used maybe four hours today, half a day yesterday.  The rest was in lunch breaks and a few hours in an evening here and there.  I’m trying to think when I last did this much in a rush, but I’m really not sure I ever have…. It’s good.  There are doubts and concerns, and I know I’ll have a lot of work to do.  I seem to be writing out all the ‘relationship’ stuff first, so there’ll be a lot of action to do later (goody) and some of what I’ve done will certainly hit the cutting room floor.

But I’m pleased with it.  The fact that it runs like this suggests I’m on the right track, and this is the right book, right now.

Nice feeling.

We had a lovely holiday.    Relaxing, exciting, fun, thick with reading and books, and some added research.

Which is a good because now I’m going into overdrive.

I’m determined to a) finish my new WIP as soon as possible and b) do a DAMN fine job on it.  The new WIP is called A Thousand Secrets, and the story is…. a secret.  *g*.  it’s a contemporary thriller/romantic suspense with historical vignettes (assuming that’s the right word!) set in some fascinating historical sites in the north-east. 

It had zero words in June, 10,000 by the time I went on holiday, and now it stands at just over 17,000.  It’s b****y, b******** complex (will I never learn?) and I think I’m about to write a GMC/Hero’s Journey chart for a dead person.  Whoop de do.

I’m trying to be disciplined (okay, who just yelled, “Ha!”??) and I’m updating progress on Twitter, so you can follow things there, if you dare!  I’m @AnnaLouiseLucia on Twitter.

Writing overdrive is kinda fun in short bursts.  But soon I’m going to have to come off the caffeine as it doesn’t agree with me after a while.  So the caffeine-free overdrive should be interesting…

Spare a thought for my long-suffering Husband.  It’s no fun being married to a writer. 

I’m going through a delicious plot-fizzing stage with Danger: Deep Water.  What ifs are bursting in my head like fireworks.

I’m particularly interested in the sub plot of this one. Sitting in a coffee shop this afternoon I was mulling through ways for the villain and young sub plot characters to interact, muttering to myself.

If I do that, then that changes the girl’s character this way and I can do that…. And that way I don’t have to kill the interpol guy.

Nah, I thought quite clearly.  I really want people to die in this one. . .

Hmmmm.

I can only be thankful I didn’t say it out loud… 

For any internet police types wandering through, I am PLOTTING a BOOK.  Okay?

EDIT:-  I’ve just updated my home page… and there are some rather hot hero pictures to be found there!  Go see!