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Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

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COVID-19

Lockdown: The year of doing nothing

January 1, 2021 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Lockdown masks please

What did I do during lockdown? Did I learn another language, take up meditation, reorganise my life? No, actually I sat on my arse and stared at a computer screen, scrolling news site after news site hoping for something better. I took my ability to put things off to a whole new level. With a chapter to write or a short story to edit, I set aside tomorrow, and couldn’t settle to a blank page without first making sure I’d dusted shelves, peeled carrots, reorganised my spice collection or washed the bedroom windows.

My lockdown creation‘See how brilliantly this has come out,’ I said, brandishing what used to be a pickle jar at Mr Fanning. Sprayed Winter Gray and filled with dried flowers snaffled from Etsy. My creation would surely spark joy. Those were the days.

Ten months into lockdown and we’ve run out of things to say. We no longer rant and read headlines. All fight is drained. Quaint expressions like Covid Tsars, Track and Trace and I only drove to Yorkshire to test my eyes are consigned to the bin fire of recent history. Boris Johnson has copied Theresa May’s homework and passed it off as his own and dragged the country out of Europe when unity and group purchase power matters more than ever. A year ago, I’d be on a march, or demanding to talk to my local MP. Now I tut and turn the page.

I’ve lived through panic buying loo roll, tinned tomatoes and dried pasta, cut my own hair badly and refused to rattle saucepans as the NHS re-appropriated my rainbow.

Lockdown mania

Having always had an anal side (no sniggering in the cheap seats), Covid lockdown has brought out in me a new mania for cleaning products. I’ve every type of spray and pump-action refillable pouch known to man. The Fanning homestead smells of lemon, pine and honeysuckle rose. I discovered Apartment Therapy and bought into each tip and trick they sent my way. I’ve trolled Amazon for tools to clean windows, sprays to remove rust and (much to Mr Fanning’s chagrin) declared war on any item left out on a surface after use.

I’ve read many books. I tried Audible for a while, but never lasted longer than two minutes of someone’s soothing voice before losing consciousness and waking three hours later with the same voice now sixteen chapters further on. All these other stories did was make me more determined to write and finish Rebuilding Alexandra Small. And yet I still took eight months to progress from third to fourth draft.

I’ve filled many bin bags with the contents of my late Mother’s house. ‘Out with the old,’ I cried. ‘This is grief therapy.’ And then cowered out, stashing everything in a garage. I’ve made sourdough twice, a pizza once, and used hardly any of the stockpiled pasta.

2021

With 2021 barely on solids, it’s time to pretend I’ll make changes. Eat better, get fitter, spend less, write more, buy a sous-vide and never look back. Lockdown takes away any excuse about there not being enough hours in the day. With no morning or evening commute, a kitchen on hand, and zero social life, I should be laughing.

The issue here isn’t society or corona or the Tory party. It’s me. I’m lazy at heart. The only things done half well involved giving stuff up (smoking and drinking) rather than taking on new hobbies.

But come on. A sous-vide has to be worth a shot.


Coming soon ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ and if you’re up for reading advance chapters and special offers, please join my mailing list.

The first TEN people to sign up will be sent a Kindle version of ‘The Armchair Bride’ absolutely FREE.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small will be published in 2021. The Armchair Bride is now available now from all good websites and bookstores. If you’d like to support my work, consider using Patreon.

Filed Under: Diary, Modern life is heck Tagged With: Corona, COVID-19, Diary, Lockdown

Six ways for a writer to handle the Covid pandemic

October 26, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

COVID-19

I can’t be the only writer unsure how (or if) to deal with an unpredictable global pandemic. COVID-19 didn’t exist when I started work on my upcoming novel – and given a whole chunk of the action hangs off events at a seaside cafe, I could have done without it hitting. I don’t mean to demean people who lost loved ones or suffered through lockdown, just for now, this is all about me.

There’s a sound argument that books are where the reader goes to escape. The world is ugly, so why drag misery to the table? I thought the same a few months ago.  Now, I watch films, drama, and comedy on TV, and flinch as characters get too close or hug greetings. The rational me knows this isn’t an issue, but I feel like I need to make my story resonate more and mirror the time in which it’s set. And that time is ‘tomorrow’ – the immediate tomorrow, not the sci-fi future.

After scrolling many a blog and social media site, it seems there are six ways for writers to handle Coronavirus.

Ignore it

Pretend COVID never happened. Write the story you always aimed to write as if nothing in the world changed. Tell your story in a parallel universe. Most books reaching the shops were written long before the pandemic hit, so they make limited or no reference. They work. Why wouldn’t yours?

Predict how it might be

Soap operas have come back to UK TV screens. They’re filmed months in advance and handed the onerous job of having to appear current. The writers make their best guess at how things might be. And given our government’s hobby of confusing the Holy Bajesus out of everyone, that’s no straightforward task. Assuming your book comes out in six months, might there be a vaccine, might it be on ration, might more be dead, might there be an even bigger lockdown, or could everything go away … like Trump insists?

Sunny uplands

If you are as crazy as a coot and Trump’s predictions resonate, you could set your book in a time when the characters are ‘back to normal’ with the odd snippet of dialogue talking of how hard COVID life used to be. Things might be better. Lessons learnt by everybody. It might be a gentler world. I’m a natural cynic, so this isn’t the path I ever plan on taking. It sounds too much like science fiction.

Dark and desperate

I’m more prone to take this (total opposite) approach and force my characters to grapple with a post-COVID world where air is in limited supply and everybody lives in bubbles. There’s a place for this – and many TV commissioning editors are crying out for this kind of trite nonsense, but what if we move out of the shade in six months? It’s going to date your story – like that entire chapter I set in an Internet cafe in The Armchair Bride. That’s egg on my face.

Change your time

Most of us tell our stories in the here and now. With the here and now being just a tad weird, maybe we should change the timeline. If jumping into the future isn’t safe, why not skip back a year and set it in the recent past? To be fair, this is the safest bet. Although … if you gravitate towards present tense, a ‘find and replace’ exercise won’t change every ‘is’ into a ‘was’.

Write in the now

Perhaps the most straightforward way to write our stories is to react as if it’s unfolding now. Keep the references to lockdown light and universal. Stay out of places you know will be closed – don’t write scenes in nightclubs. Your characters can still meet in pubs or coffee shops by all means, but sit them at a table, not jostling for service at a bar. Romantic fiction suffers most here – how would two strangers overcome social distancing?

Whatever you choose, I wish you writing wonder.

Filed Under: Tips, Writing Tagged With: Corona, COVID-19, Story, Tips, Writing

How’s your lockdown going?

May 21, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown

How’s your lockdown going?

I’m borderline depressed. So I don’t plan on ending my lockdown life … or doing anything with it.

I haven’t learned another language or finished work on my next book.

Each day, the government issues press briefings; shit sandwiches where the bread is also made of shit.

If you go on Twitter and post something innocent like “Baking banana bread is brilliant”, within one minute a total stranger hits back with “My sister is a coeliac and this is a harmful view”, while someone else adds, “Your silence about croissants is telling”

Facebook needs a “we all know you’re not really this happy, Karen” button. Most newspaper websites feature user comments that read like Mein Kampf on shuffle.

I keep reading how the hardest part of lockdown is missing someone you saw every day. As far as I’m concerned, not having to sit opposite Pam with halitosis is more a blessing than a curse.

To keep things normal while working from home, I leave passive-aggressive notes when mugs don’t make it into the dishwasher. I’ve put all our food into sweaty plastic tubs and written my name on the outside.

I’ve never been one for sunbathing. While everyone else cultivates new moles to worry over, I’m happier indoors. My latest hobbies involve watching porn and making up dialogue, and reading reviews for places I can never go eat.

But, all of this should be over in time for Brexit, when we get to spend the next 20 years eating fox meat in an abandoned Debenhams on the outskirts of Inverness.

Filed Under: Axiety, Diary, Modern life is heck Tagged With: Corona, COVID-19, Diary

Five lockdown whinges

May 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Lockdown

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.

Filed Under: Axiety, Diary, Modern life is heck, Stress, Writing Tagged With: Corona, COVID-19, Depression, Diary

Love in the time of Corona – Chapter 3

March 26, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Closure

New readers start here
This is a short story to fill the gap between books – a love story set in the soon-to-be present time. I’m making it up as I go along, so who knows where it’s going. Read the first chapter here

Smug Ellen’s face looms enormous on the screen as Liz ducks past to take the last free boardroom chair. When she sits, a nerdy guy shakes his head.

‘That’s an isolation seat.’

‘OK,’ she whispers. ‘But I’m late. I need to sit down.’

‘You can’t. We need to stay at least one chair away from each other.’

Now might be as good a time as any to explain that she’s spent two entire weeks climbing her Farrow and Ball-painted flat walls in self-isolation. Corona holds no fear for Liz. She’s become immune.

‘You need to move,’ he says again. ‘It’s not safe.’

So much for sneaking in unseen. Her boss scribbles something on a notepad. Liz drags her isolation seat level with the boardroom door.

‘The thing to remember is take care of each other.’ Smug Ellen’s tinny voice crackles through black-grilled speakers set into a long grey table. ‘Check in and make sure we’re all doing fine.’

Eyes roll as she launches into a self-aggrandising story of how she plans to spend her evenings knocking on the doors of old folk to ask if they need emergency supplies. She’s already signed up to be an official volunteer.

‘Likely so she gets to shop in Tesco during the special hours,’ Derek from the Sales Team says, and heads nod.

Liz has no idea what he means. Derek is her work husband. One of the few people she still likes at Allied Recruitment.

Smug Ellen ends the meeting by suggesting they all say out loud the one thing they feel grateful for in what she calls ‘difficult times’.

Liz has heard that phrase too often. The words lose all impact. Like when people say sorry after letting a door slam in your face.

Difficult times.

‘I’m grateful for having lived through Corona,’ she says and looks around. ‘Now I’m immune.’

Nobody appears sure what sort of face to pull.

Liz hit a nerve.

‘So if anybody fancies going to the pub after work, I’m buying,’ she says, determined to lighten the mood. ‘First drinks only. No doubles.’

Nervous looks are exchanged.

Determined to win over the room, she claps her hand to her mouth and does comedy bug eyes. ‘I forgot, the pub’s are out of bounds.’

‘Face,’ everyone yells.

The ferocity causes Liz to startle.

‘OK,’ she says, still rattled. ‘Some other time.’

Smug Ellen’s face vanishes and people file out.

One by one.

*     *     *     *     *

‘Why did everyone shout?’ she asks Derek as they join a line to use the office kettle.

‘BoJo’s latest advice,’ he says, and when she wrinkles her nose, he explains further. ‘Boris Johnson reckons we need to learn new behaviours. Each time someone touches their nose or mouth or eyes, you yell ‘face’.’

‘Why the hell would anyone sane do that?’

‘To relearn nasty habits.’

‘Is that what’s passing for government advice?’

Out of habit Liz avoids the news. When Corona took over the headlines, she unplugged her TV, stopped going online and rediscovered the joy of a book. Let others spend their days worried where they might secure the next loo roll. When a doctor in a mask confirmed she had Corona, it came as a surprise. Fair enough, she’d refused to become a total nob-head and deny NHS workers protective clothing, but she’d used handwash and lived off Deliveroo.

‘You and me are the only ones who know,’ Derek says.

‘Know what?’

‘BoJo acts like Corona is the black death. People think if they so much as touch a door handle they’ll die in pain.’

‘Are things that bad?’

‘I went to Waitrose this morning. They’re out of olives.’

‘No.’ Liz feigns shock. ‘Tell me they’re OK for quinoa.’

She nods at Derek for his coffee cup.

‘We’re not allowed to make drinks for each other,’ he says. ‘HR policy.’

She doesn’t bother arguing.

*     *     *     *     *

Liz only spots an unfamiliar number flash up on her phone by chance. She’s listening to music on her headphones thanks to the office no talking rule. Words spread germs.

‘It’s Brett,’ a familiar voice says when she answers. ‘How’s your day going?’

She gave him her number after much pestering.

‘Full-on,’ she says. ‘We’re being made to sit two metres apart and most people are working from home.’

‘Wish we could do that.’

Brett worked in Boots, behind the pharmacy counter. His day was taken  up arguing with people determined to panic buy paracetamol. Angry customers blamed him for the lack of hand sanitiser.

‘They’ve impounded the staff kitchen.’ Brett sounds mournful. ‘We have to bring drinks from home.’

She looks up as Helen from reception walks past with a roll of yellow tape and starts to stick strips around the stationery cupboard.

‘We’re about to ration sticky notes,’ Liz says. ‘The world might as well end tomorrow.’

Derek sits down at the next desk. She turns away to stop him eavesdropping.

‘Are you getting the bus home?’ she says, part hoping they might spend more time laughing at this weird world.

‘That’s why I’m calling,’ Brett says. ‘There are no buses.’

‘OK … so, we’ll share an Uber.’

‘The app says there’s a four hour wait. I might hire a car. Do you fancy going half?’

‘I can’t drive.’

‘I can.’

A bubble of joy lifts inside. How come she never spoke to this weird guy before?

‘Is that a yes?’ he says.

What else was she going to spend her wages on? Most of the shops were closed. Cafes were shut. Pubs were now only fit for pariahs.

‘It’s a yes,’ she says.

‘OK, I’ll pick you up at six.’

Liz’s working day ended at five, but she didn’t mind hanging around. She’d find something to do.

‘Hot date?’ Derek asks when she puts down her phone. ‘Your latest boyfriend?’

‘What?’ Her skin prickles. ‘No.’

‘It’s just you did that giggle thing you always do when you talk to someone you fancy.’

‘What giggle thing?’

Derek purses his lips and skips from one foot to the other.

‘Oh, you.’ He affects a lisp. ‘You’re such a powerful man, maybe you can help me carry this big heavy box of paper.’

Liz glares. A year ago, she tried to cop off with Andy from the tech team, and still her best work friend won’t let her forget the shame of hearing about his husband and two adopted children.

‘It’s my neighbour, if you must know,’ she says. ‘And he’s most likely gay too.’

Filed Under: Love in the time of Corona, Short story Tagged With: Corona, COVID-19, Short story, Story

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About Mo Fanning

Mo Fanning

Mo Fanning (@mofanning) tells jokes on a stage and writes contemporary fiction. He’s the bestselling author of The Armchair Bride. Mo makes fabulous tea – milk in last – and is a Society of Authors member and cancer bore.

 
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The Armchair Bride by Mo Fanning
this is (not) america
Five Gold Rings by Mo Fanning
Talking Out Loud by Mo Fanning
Please Find Attached by Mo Fanning

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