Writing

TEASER: Rebuilding Alexandra Small

June 12, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

With (hopefully final) edits well underway on what will become my next romantic comedy novel – Rebuilding Alexandra Small – I thought I might tease you with an extract from one of the earlier chapters. No spoilers (beyond those on the dust jacket), just a conversation with a stranger that sets Alexandra on the path to something better.

Through rusting seafront railings, I gaze down at the grey pitch roof of the Beachcomber Cafe. In its tiny backyard, a petrol generator rattles and sooty chimneys belch evil fumes.

‘Are you OK, love?’ says a woman whose dog has been sniffing at my pumps. Big brown eyes gaze up from a pointy white face.

I tell her I’m fine. Except I’m not, and my voice wobbles.

‘If those are tears over a lad, wipe them dry,’ she says. ‘None of them are worth it.’

She nods over at a bench, and we sit.

‘My best mate works down there,’ I say. ‘I’m trying to decide whether to tell her what’s happened … and she can convince me everything will be OK.’

The woman weighs my words. ‘It’s been my experience that OK is exhausting.’

I glance sideways. ‘Have you considered joining the Samaritans?’

She chuckles to herself. ‘I was someone’s wife for thirty-seven years. I spent the last eighteen months looking after a man who should have passed two years earlier. When he went, my sister took me in and made me better. She called me a shadow. I lay down in her spare bedroom and didn’t get out of that bed on my own for another two weeks. I had to learn how to do everything again for myself, I’d invested so long looking after him.’

She hesitates a minute.

‘They had to prompt me to shut the bathroom door when I used the loo. I’d become used to leaving it open in case he fell and cried my name. I’d forgotten how to sleep. All I did was doze with one ear tuned to his voice. Everyone sent cards telling me how sorry they felt about him dying. Nobody thought to ask if I minded.’

I look into bright blue eyes shaped by sadness, and my heart falls silent.

‘I was glad his suffering ended.’ Her voice becomes a whisper. ‘Not because I wished him dead. I didn’t. I just realised he didn’t want to be the husband he’d turned into, so subservient, watching me waste away.’

She wipes the back of one hand across her eyes, and her dog peers up, as if sensing tears.

‘I had been telling myself that when he died, I’d be better. I’d make myself well again. He’d be out of pain, and life would go on. Until we meet again. If that’s what transpires. I never know. I’m not a Christian or anything, but I don’t count out the afterlife.’

‘My marriage is over,’ I say.

Out loud it sounds dramatic. Diva like. Dumb.

‘There’s some who would say it’s best you learn what sort of man you’ve married now rather than later. Do you have children?’

I shake my head.

‘Then you’ve had a fortuitous escape, even if it doesn’t sound like it.’ A stiff hand finds mine. ‘When my Donald left me, that was my fresh start. This is yours.’

‘What if I don’t want a fresh start?’

‘Life decides for you.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘We don’t get any say. What counts now is what you do next. Replay the mistakes or make new ones?’

Coming soon

After losing her job, husband and home in the space of three hours, Allie takes stock. Does she want what she had or is it time to rebuild her life?

Rebuilding Alexandra Small tells the story of what happens when a have-it-all life crumbles, and a new one starts.

It’s available in early 2021.

Would you like to read all my books for free, before they even come out? All I ask for in return is that you post an honest review when each book launches on Amazon.

To be on my ‘street team’, please email mo@mofanning.com

Five lockdown whinges

May 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news … or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

Writing: it’s my job to point things out

February 10, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

A frequently quoted ‘rule’ for writing is to write something every day. No matter if it’s good. No matter if it’s bad. Set yourself a window – anything from ten minutes to every waking moment – and sit in front of a screen or an empty piece of paper and write. The idea being if you do this each day, a habit forms and something good will come. As advice goes, it sits up there with ‘sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut’.

Writing isn’t a natural thing for us as a species. For most of evolution, nobody wrote anything – fair enough there’s the odd cave drawing that historians insist are early attempts at storytelling. On that basis, bus-seat sharpie-penned pledges of Kazza luvs Jez carry equal value.

Writing for many years was the preserve of the elite. Even now, it remains a strange way to communicate.

When I stand on a stage and tell jokes, I see faces. The feedback is instant and I sense when an audience needs me to clarify or drop planned patter and jump to another topic. When I write a story, my words vanish into a void. Short of the occasional Amazon review, I don’t know who reads my books or how much they understand of the worlds I create.

Writing short set-ups

I try to find something interesting and point it out. I’ll ask you to look at someone or something and understand the flaws and persuade you that what I see is of interest. When learning the language of stand-up comedy, I picked up on how the shortest set-up works best. If a comic needs to explain the premise, chances are it’s unfamiliar.

It’s not the job of a writer or comedian to ram information into the brains of an audience.

The worst writing (and comedy) happens when those in charge abandon ‘joint attention‘ in favour of trying to sell their audience into an idea or world. It’s incredibly hard to do surreal comedy or writing and do it well.

Some of the worst writing advice is to create words for yourself and never consider the audience. For me, the audience comes first. I am part of the audience, but I’m also aware when what I find funny might be too personal. I’m not here to impress with clever plot twists or elaborate language and don’t care what you think about me. I’m not in the book. When I’m on stage telling jokes, you see a version of me.

What I aim to do is point out what’s there … if you look in the right places.

This is how we function as humans. Side-by-side we scan those around us, our landscape, the absurdity and improbability.

It’s my job to point things out.

Gloom: hope died, but it’s Christmas …

December 15, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

First up, forgive the gloom and somewhat downbeat nature of my news this month. I’ve not been well. If you need better news, skip to the end. I’m going to do the misery first. The idea being my three ghosts of Christmas are all Christmas present and at the end I’ll skip through the front door with cries of ‘God bless us everyone one’.

The first winter chill descended on the Fanning household last weekend. After days of complaining of backache and a bit of a cold, I found myself wrapped in a blanket with chattering teeth and a bucket. I want to call it flu, but these days people say this about the slightest sniffle. Over the course of a week, I threw up daily and had to be helped to a chair in Lidl. Lidl, I tell you, not even Waitrose. It didn’t help that Mr Fanning ran in my shadow, falling sick just 24 hours behind me. We sat in a grumpy bed, resenting each other and snapping at the slightest provocation. Having a dog to walk didn’t help. I woke near a bus stop with him licking my chin as concerned faces loomed to ask if they should call an ambulance. Dignity be gone.

I’m better now, thanks for asking.

And this came after a week of feeling like the world was playing a cruel trick. For almost a year, Mother Fanning has suffered with AMD and needs injections in one eye. Being a typical Fanning, she hates the idea and needs a general anaesthetic to cope. At her advanced age, this knocks her around so the doctors ration what should be a monthly treatment. Guess what. She’s gone blind, and not just in the eye that they now tell us is ulcerated beyond repair. The hurt of seeing someone you once thought of as a fighter struggle to even find her way from one room to another is enormous. Worse yet is the bond of hope she makes with me it will get better. Finding the right time to break away and head back to Brighton after putting in place care was close on impossible and I’m still not sure we did the right thing.

And finally, the triple gloom whammy. In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union. A decision I was sure we would overturn. Last week, all hope died. The election result forced me to accept that the vote wasn’t a one-off choice made on the back of misinformation. Britain wants to Brexit. For three and a half years, there’s been a small sign in the window of my neighbour, an elderly French woman who long since scored a British passport. A laminated sheet of A4 paper on which she printed ‘I demand a second vote on the terms of Brexit’. Nothing more. It never moved from the window through all the turmoil and government paralysis. She added no other poster, badge or proclamation, just this simple demand. On Friday morning, it vanished, and that caught in my throat more than any other image from that dreadful dark morning.

Right, I’m done with the gloom

Christmas lurks around the corner, and much as I’ve sulked in bed, insisting I’m cancelling the turkey, not getting a tree and looking into the return policy for a range of online stores, I’ve loosened the Scrooge switch today and we’re heading for a garden centre to buy a tree. Gloom be gone!

Look out for my many postings where I moan about needle drop, and remember, this is a sign of healing. If that’s all I can find to moan about, the Fanning life is getting better.

My short story collection, ‘Five Gold Rings‘ is the perfect companion for this time of the year – and it’s remarkably cheerful and upbeat in parts (there are dead bodies, but only what you might expect). It’s FREE for Kindle for the next week (starting late on the 15th and running for five days).

If you’re alone this Christmas

Sarah Millican does something wonderful at this time of year. The #joinin campaign is for anyone who needs to chat. Sarah encourages people to use the hashtag and link with one another so as not to feel lonely. People from around the world have already tweeted with their experiences.

“The main rule is to be kind. We’re all here for each other.”

Phoning in the dialogue

October 23, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

I’ve never claimed to be anything but an ill-informed Luddite when it comes to mobile phones. Or phones, as I believe the youngsters insist on calling them, refusing to believe there was ever a day when we tied them to a supporting wall with wires. Or that ‘the house phone’ once lived on a special table; one with space for the telephone directory … and a tin to hold coins left by neighbours when they came to borrow your ‘party line’.

But I digress.

It’s editing season on ‘The Toast of Brighton‘ and that means chapters where I skimmed scenes (in the hope inspiration might strike later). It’s later now … time to plug the gaps with sparky conflict-building dialogue.

I often find it helps me if I write any new exchange independent of the draft itself. I open a blank email and begin the exchange, leaving out dialogue tags and actions, hearing only what two (or more) people have to say. A short edit later, and it’s ready to drop in.

A hidden dialogue assistant

Well, blow me down, if I didn’t stumble on the dictation feature on my phone this week. On a wobbly bus into Brighton, my thumb bounced and a pop-up message asked if I wished to let technology do the typing.

I didn’t need asking twice.

To be clear, I waited to get home before acting out a fight between a reformed alcoholic and her cheating husband … but being able to let rip in character was amazing.

Amazingly productive.

Sure. My phone mishears the odd word. If I don’t edit right away, it’s a struggle to make sense of things. Unless in the habit of saying ‘full stop’ out loud between characters, you get one long Molly Bloom soliloquy. But the freedom of being able to play your characters and talk as they talk is so freeing. I imagine this would help any writers who get told different characters sound alike.

Maybe I’m the only one blown away by this. Has everyone else has been doing this forever?