© Warley Rossi

One of the most difficult things about being your own boss is that you have to be your own cheerleading squad, as no one else really knows what you do each day. I think most people think writers only pretend to write; really we’re busy too eating cornflakes and watching endless episodes of Lost.

Some days that may be true, but most of us are working as hard as anyone in an office, but without the benefit of a supportive boss. In fact, part of the job is to be our own supportive bosses, so here goes.

Things I have achieved this week:

Finally signed up to PayPal;

Made an appointment to have my hurty foot examined by physiotherapists - again (this was a bigger challenge than you might expect as I’ve been putting it off for weeks);

Cooked up a delicious Moroccan spiced fish dish, followed by apple flapjack pudding for my husband and parents (smiles and full bellies all round);

Secured four feature commissions;

Took several long walks in the sunshine;

Solved a problem I had with my novel (general lack of focus) by introducing a new, cantankerous character;

Came up with an idea for a new story.

And it’s only Tuesday! What a great morale-boosting exercise - I must do this more often.

© James Hainsworth

Today the sun was shining so brightly that I decided to take a day off and spend the day with my husband. We live in the fair city of Bristol, England and caught a bus up to the Downs, a vast green area favoured by birdwatchers, kite flyers, dog walkers and, um, the occasional flasher.

The Downs come to an abrupt halt at the Avon Gorge, Bristol’s very own grand canyon, across which stretches one of the world’s most beautiful feats of engineering - the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Though shorter than the Golden Bridge it shares its grandeur and elegance.

We acted like a pair of tourists, admiring the views, taking photographs, eating ice creams and exclaiming at the Samaritan signs tacked up at either end of the glorious sweep of the bridge. I must admit that I can understand the temptation. I’m a pretty happy person, but the idea of leaping out over that huge drop is strangely seductive.

We took our time strolling across, stepping aside for joggers and people in suits hurrying across for business meetings in Clifton Village. At the far side, there is a small building where we learnt the history of the bridge’s creation, and that’s when I realised that legendary engineer Isambard Kindom Brunel shared issues faced by most writers, because his design for the bridge was initially rejected.

The panel of judges believed it looked very pretty, but was utterly impractical - they thought the first gust of wind would knock it into the river Avon far below. So they turned it down, only later realising the genius of the design and commissioning Brunel to build it.

The bridge has now been standing for more than 145 years, and should remind us all that sometimes even the most forceful rejections will lead the way to success.

© Christa Richert

I saw my first flash mob event the other day. To the uninitiated, these resemble random eruptions of collective madness, but in fact they are carefully choreographed events organised via websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

They range from mass dance-offs as seen in a recent phone advert to call-outs for everyone to buy carrots on a certain date.

The event I witnessed was one of the more visually pleasing, as hordes of people headed to College Green in Bristol, armed with pillows.

As the clock struck four, the battle commenced. As the first pillow burst, losing feathers to the breeze, there was an immense cheer. Soon after that so many feathers were billowing in the air that it looked as though swarms of white butterflies were joining in the attack.

I’ve never seen so much jollity condensed in one space, but I suppose that’s the point - acts of the imagination for us all to enjoy.

© Kriss Szkurlatowski

There’s an odd kind of thirst that no amount of liquid will quench, when each sip feels slightly sticky, and tastes cloyingly sweet.

When I was eight years old, this strange thirst afflicted me, and I began downing glass after glass of juice, milk and water at every opportunity, until I should have been sloshing. I woke up three or four times each night needing the toilet and craving yet another mouthful of water to keep me going until breakfast time.

As afraid as I as to creep across the creaking landing in the dark, the lure of the tap was too much to resist, and each night turned into a torturous cycle of waking up, scurrying to the chilly bathroom, gulping handfuls of water, and rushing full-tilt back to bed before any terrifying shadowy creature could catch me.

I suspected my behaviour might be unusual, but at that age, I was used to accepting the curious things the world revealed, one after the other, from the secrets displayed by the creatures inhabiting the school pond, to the mysteries of human reproduction whispered, mostly incorrectly, in the playground. Perhaps this thirst was something that happened to all girls my age; perhaps it had happened to my older sister and I’d just been too busy playing to notice.

It was the Easter holidays, but my eggs stood untouched in a glistening row along the top of the piano. I lay on the scratchy living-room carpet, admiring the carefully balanced eggs in their brightly-coloured packaging, but long after my sister peeled the foil wrapping from her final egg, I’d done no more than nibble one creamy chocolate shard.

Though I’d never had a particularly sweet tooth, when it came to chocolate, I was as much of a fan as any kid. I was too tired to puzzle over why I didn’t want to eat them this time, and drowsily congratulated myself on my new-found willpower, assuming it was something to do with getting older, growing up. It didn’t occur to me that my lack of interest in the sugary treats was a sign of a physical condition rather than my mental maturity.

With the schools closed Mum witnessed my endless thirst firsthand, and as soon as our local health centre reopened after Easter Monday, she marched me down there to see the doctor.
He used a small lancet to draw a glowing bead from my index finger, then dabbed the crimson blood onto a plastic stick. We watched to see what colour the indicator strip would turn.

“Diabetic,” he pronounced, and my mother squeezed my hand hard. “She’ll have to learn to test her blood and urine, inject insulin and measure carbohydrates.”

I sat on the hard plastic chair, swinging my feet and wondering what all the fuss was about while he phoned the Children’s Hospital in Bristol.

None of it bothered me. The hospital ward was filled with children and toys – I thought I was in heaven. Needles had never bothered me much, and the rest of the regime, though annoying, was no more challenging, I thought, than Maths classes at school. Diabetes was going to be as easy as could be, and the attention being lavished by my anxious parents made it all worthwhile.

I changed my mind the day the little boy in the bed beside mine had a visitor. His mum had brought a plastic carrier bag bulging with fruit. When she offered me a plump, speckled green pear, I looked to the nurse for reassurance.

The nurse glanced at the clock pinned to her uniform, frowned, and went off to consult the ward sister. I began to panic. How could choosing whether or not to allow me to eat a pear be such a big deal?

At last the nurse returned and nodded. It was close to the time I was normally supposed to have a snack, and I was awarded the pear. But I no longer craved the grainy, juicy  flesh. That humble piece of fruit had given me a hint of the experiences to come, of the birthday parties where I would watch other children eat pieces of cake and then, worse than not being able to eat any myself, be given a slice to take home to my sister.

For years, I would have to measure each plateful to ensure I didn’t exceed my carbohydrate allowance. Mealtimes would be strictly adhered to, and cakes and chocolates would be off-limits unless my blood sugar dropped, when former treats would become medicine.

With so many things forbidden, my preference for savoury foods began to wane, and I developed a terrible craving for sweet things, mainly, I suspect, out of contrariness. The things you aren’t allowed are always so much more desirable.

The science of treating diabetes has changed over the years, and I’m now allowed to eat whatever I want. But thanks to those times of rigid restrictions, my chocolate addiction remains.

The sight of a row of Easter eggs on a shelf is enough to make me salivate, and it’s only the willpower that I did eventually develop that prevents me from gorging the lot in one go. That and the thought of the injection I’d have to give myself to counteract my sweet tooth.

© Gözde Otman

The sun is shining, church bells are tolling (which sounds expensive), people are frolicking in the city’s parks and I’m sitting in my living room trying to come up with 200 words about myself for a writer’s bio.

I’ve managed to write books that are more than 100,000 words long, yet it’s these measly 200 words that are causing me problems. Usually these things, requested by magazines and anthologies, are a bit less rigid in their word count. I generally waffle on about my career and aspirations, sometimes mentioning my husband for a few brownie points, and that’s it, done.

It’s surprising how big a number 200 actually is, when you have to think of a word for every one. Do I begin at the beginning and describe learning to read, or do I broaden the pool and start talking about my love of red wine and adoration of black chocolate (mmmn…)? Do I go for the ‘eccentric English writer’ persona and describe my shoes (usually trainers, sometimes satin ballet flats, and a pair of silver heels for special occasions)?

Should I get patronising and smug and start by offering writerly advice? Or should I get down to the less interesting, more factual and talk about my journalistic training and how I managed to land my first paid writing job?

The sad thing is that no one tends to read these bio’s anyway, not unless they’re another writer seeking guidelines on how to write their own. Providing I fulfil the requisite word-count, I’ll have achieved what the editor is looking for, so perhaps I should stop procrastinating by writing this blog, dash out the bio and head outside to see if the sun’s still shining…

© Jamie Brelsford

I’m very excited to be re-discovering magic realism - the kind of writing where flutters of fantasy waft in from time to time and add a delicious ripple of the unreal.

The author Kate Atkinson is very good at it, and of course Ben Okri and Salman Rushdie are renowned for it. David Almond, the author of novel, play, opera and film Skellig has introduced a whole new generation to it in most available mediums.

It’s a genre I used to write in a lot without realising when I was a teenager, but after grown ups kept telling me to bring my writing back to earth I mostly abandoned that kind of free-roaming imaginative work.

But I missed it. I missed being able to allow demons and angels to leave their footprints on my work. I think that the problem before was that sometimes there were so many magical footprints across my stories that reality was almost entirely obscured.

Now, though, I think the time is ripe for me to return to it. As a sort of test run, I wrote a short story last weekend about the meeting between a homeless man and a traveller, and there was more than a trace of the unreal around floating in the sky above their heads. It’s whetted my appetite for more magic, more hints, whispers and incantations.

The challenge will be, I think, to ensure I don’t lose every scrap of realism and get sucked into the realm of pure unadulterated fantasy – which is something I’m not ready for at all.

© www.sxc.hu

After spending the past month freelancing for a triathlon magazine, I’m back to working from home.

I’m always amazed by how quickly I adjust to working in different environments. After weeks of working in my living room, I suddenly had to catch a train each day and commute to an office, spend a set number of hours in front of a computer and head home again.

The strange thing was, I really liked it. I liked the rhythm it gave my days, I liked being surrounded by writers, editor and designers. I liked belonging to a place, if only tenuously. And when I got home, my working day was mostly finished – I could cook dinner, watch TV and spend time with my friends like a normal person.

Then on Tuesday that stint ended and my life resumed it’s normal pattern. I still get up early, but instead of rushing out of the door I have a more leisurely start before settling down to a day of writing, researching, pitching and meeting people. And I like this version of my life too.

My days are more organised, I think, then when I first became a freelancer, but they’re still more flexible than when I’m in an office, with the proviso being that if I don’t get as much done as I’d like during the week I sacrifice an hour on so on the weekend to catch up.

I still have deadlines and goals to meet, and more than ever I’m trying to keep things running smoothly so that I have a constant, comfortable flow of work rather than pockets of empty time followed by pockets where every moment is crammed to bursting.

I think working in an office from time to time is good for me – it refocuses me by giving me less time to work on my own writing, so that when I have that time handed back to me I’m keen to crack on.

This is certainly not what other people think of when you mention you work from home. Like anyone else I get up each day, get showered, dressed, and begin work. I just happen to do it in my living room, or in my bedroom, or, occasionally, sitting on the stairs between the two. If the weather’s nice, I might even head outside with my laptop.

But I do work, and longer hours than most people I know. The main difference is that I enjoy the work I do.