23.06 and all's well

For the first time since I started Big Words and Made Up Stories, I gave myself a day off last week. Sorry about that. I’ve been inundated with phone calls, texts, WhatsApps and hand-written notes shoved through the door pleading with me to fill in that missing week.[1]

I did have a very good reason. My first ever novel, the Diary of Isabella M Smugge, is being published by Instant Apostle next March. I started writing it just after 10.30 in the morning on 7^th May and my deadline was 30^th September. I took a fairly relaxed attitude throughout the sunny months of lock down. Some days, I’d write nearly a whole chapter, others, I’d allow my ideas to marinate before the next burst of activity. It was fun, making someone up. My heroine is a snob, quite selfish, looks down her nose at people and has little if no self-awareness. She and her family (banker husband, three children, Latvian au pair) have just moved from London to Suffolk, and she thinks that everyone will be delighted to see her. However, her perfect life is about to unravel.

Writing her story, I found that she’d had a pretty grim childhood, lots of abandonment issues and was a child of divorce. One of my favourite sayings is, “Everyone’s got a story” and Isabella certainly does. It was fun to write it, albeit a bit weird. Who was this woman? How come I was suddenly making up hashtags and writing authoritatively about Instagram? I found myself trawling through Pinterest for annoying quotes (I found plenty).

Along the way, I made up a whole cast of supporting characters. For some reason, I really enjoyed writing the horrible ones. I suppose because my entire writing career has been about interviewing people who are good, generous, philanthropic and compassionate, I never get to talk to the villains. Ex-cons, yes. Unreconstructed bad folk, no. So, it was fun to create a hideous agent called Mimi Stanhope, married four times, smokes like a chimney and is rumoured to sleep in a banana leaf coffin. She drinks coffee constantly, has blood-red nails and her third husband ran off with a traffic warden. She’s a great agent but not a very nice person.

Isabella’s mother is also a bit of a moo. We don’t find out about her background until the end of the novel and it goes some way towards explaining why she’s been such a hands-off mother. I wrote a fight scene which erupted over some value sausage rolls. Someone microwaved a Girls’ World head. I made up some imaginary bloggers.

As I may have mentioned on a number of occasions, all I’ve ever wanted to do is write. And now I am and it feels amazing. Writing fiction is a new departure for me, however, and I’m surprised how exhausting it can be. You wouldn’t think that tapping away on a laptop while sipping tea and gazing out of the window would be that onerous. But you’re going to have to take my word for it. It is.

Last Wednesday I should have written my blog. I spent the entire day writing the final chapter and sent it off to the publisher at 23.06 pm. I was drained, a limp rag, worn to a frazzle. I thought to myself, “Ruth, will the world stop spinning if you don’t write your blog tonight?” I decided it wouldn’t and fell into an exhausted slumber.

So, now, we’re at the editing stage. This is about as much fun as cutting your own toenails with a blunt pair of shears, but it must be done. I suspect that chocolate will help a lot. Also tea. The fun bits, like talking to the publisher about the cover design and writing the blurb are yet to come. 

Isabella and her world have become very real to me. I don’t want to leave her, so I have already written the first page of the sequel. The last four and a half months have been wonderful, a chance to do what I always dreamed of doing, creating a world and peopling it with characters. You could say I’ve come full circle since I created this blog. The novel has quite a few big words and it’s one giant made up story. I like it and I hope you will.

If you want to pre-order a signed copy, please let me know via Instagram or Twitter (ruththewriter1), in the comments on this blog or in any other way you can think of. Only another six months and my self-centred aspirational blogger will be launched upon the world. #livingmybestlife.

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[1] I haven’t. This is all made up.