Lego Lady

So, hair. At my age it's probably the single most important aspect of grooming. Get it wrong and the rest of you looks wrong, too, either in the mutton sense or in the old hag sense. Get it right and you can shave years off with no invasiveness whatsoever.
    As a child I dreamed of having long flowing locks, in line with my general princess fantasy, but was repeatedly subject to the pudding bowl treatment either from my mother's visiting hairdresser or my older sister's scissorial experiments, which included an unintentional Vidal Sassoon assymetrical chop which caused hilarity when I returned to boarding school after the holidays.
    When I was about 14 I discovered henna, and started growing it, and lo, it looked fab. Pre-raphaelite, in line with my angular face, and it grew right down to my bra strap. My mates and I used to plait each other's hair to make it kinky and frizzy - again, how to fill the long winter nights at boarding school. So apart from a disastrous perm in my third year at university, and it falling out when I had my first son, my look was long auburn hair. At last I was a princess. I made a secret vow to myself that I would keep it long until I got married, so that I could wear it down, and what did I do? Wait until I was 38 to get married, and allowed the hairdressers to put it up. Why do they always make you look like Princess Margaret on your wedding day? Why did I let them? I pulled some tendrils out, but looking back at the pictures I wish I'd had the nerve to let it all hang out.
   But I was, at last, a princess.
   So what now, at 51? Well, it won't do now to keep it long. There are some quite funky stripes of grey there which I might keep, though not 50 shades of it, but it is getting thinner and since also losing 3 stone last year it makes my face look even thinner. For my 50th birthday party I had it cut into a just below chin length bob, and got the hairdresser to tong it for the party. Cute, and cool. But it grows quickly, and I decided to give it one last blast until last week, when he cut it off again to a bob. So long as I keep it tousled, I think that'll do.
     Now it's the colour. I also decided to grow out the red colour, which inevitably turns rusty orange if I don't take care of it, and see what it's like au naturel. And emerging from the roots is the dirty mouse colour of my childhood, but highlighted with grey. When it all grows out, if it isn't too witchy, I think I'll get them to put silver highlights in. If you can't beat it, join it.  But how exactly would that look?
    And then Dommie, my 9 year old, gave me a Lego lady to look after. 'This is you, Mummy,' he said. And she was! She had kind of Veronica Lake hair with a side parting and a lovely wave down her cheeks to her neck, but it was russet with two glorious grey streaks on either side of her face. Cool, funky, age-appropriate.
    What will my hairdresser say when I go in with my Lego lady and ask him 'I want that one?' Watch this space to find out his reaction!

 

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is the hardest aspect of fiction to get right, realistic and relevant. Yet it's the pivotal mechanism that gives life to characters and drives along the narrative and plot. It's essential in a compelling, attention-grabbing novel to avoid producing wooden, pompous or dull conversations which jar on the reader, argue with the character's personality, and contribute nothing to the development of the tale.

One key task for any aspiring writer is to read how other writers successfully reproduce dialogue in their novels. I would add a second task. I find, as a TV and movie buff, that listening to dialogue particularly in soap operas is incredibly enlightening. I have no truck with critics who claim that soaps are trash. They are a tremendeous, fun example both of great acting and of great script writing, and the spring board for some very successful TV and movie writers.

In a soap the action is brought to us entirely through the reactions and words of a cast of characters. The drama, arguments, fights, accidents, love affairs, tragedies, comedic moments, have all come through those characters' personae and through their mouths. If you listen carefully there are rare occasions when the script writers don't get it entirely right and you are entitled to criticise and to learn from that. One example that always strikes me is how many dramatised mothers call their children by their name, instead of say 'darling' or 'honey'. I'm not talking about soppiness. I'm talking about natural affection. It's rare in my life to hear kids addressed without some kind of endearment. My own kids have all manner of names, some of which I'm trying to shed now that they're pushing teenage-hood. My sisters and I were only addressed by our full names when our parents were angry. The rest of the time we were known as The Buns or The Pickles which in itself is a long story..

Ditto couples and lovers. Watch how they address each other on screen, and ask yourself if that's realistic. ~Why not be an armchair critic!

Sometimes after watching a film or programme I have been particularly moved by I find myself writing dialogue like charactersI have just been watching. If I was teaching a creative writing course, I would perhaps get my students to write a scene in the manner of say EastEnders or Silent Witness or Mad Men, or Downton Abbey.

So, back to the writing. The fourth exercise I recommend to writers is to read out loud the dialogue they've written - or with a very patient friend - so as to see if it's realistic. But the final exercise for writing dialogue came to me today as a brain wave after my nine year old son described his English test. It occurred to me that it would be a brilliant exercise to give aspiring writers in a workshop scenario, where there's a classroom feeling and also the opportunity to see how others achieve it and what they think of your efforts.

Basically take the outline of a story or a play, a film, perhaps a newspaper article. It doesn't have to be particularly dramatic or interesting or creative or artistic. In fact the challenge would lie in taking one that wasn't obviously fascinating, such as a financial report or a scientific discovery. Because the exercise is then to bring that piece of writing, that chunk of information, to life. Using only dialogue. This could be done as an interview, say a radio interview, but that risks coming across as too stilted or formal. Nevertheless, it would be a good vehicle for regurgitating the information in a different format. Another way would be to have two or three characters talking about the incident/contents of the report/scientific discovery, telling each other what it involves, what they think of it, what it might mean. They could be personally involved, or they could be observers.

Either way the challenge is to take a story or factual report written as prose, and turn it into a conversation.

See my own short stories 'Stabbing the Rain' on Amazon. Short stories are often thought of as more musing, introspective prose pieces, but perhaps because of my love of televised drama, I tend to use dialogue a lot because I can hear the characters. I can also see them on screen, perhaps in a Hollywood version of my work. With Julianne Moore playing me!

Well, we can always dream! Here is the link to my stories:

http://tiny.cc/rkqaow

New Year Resolutions Part Deux

To make it onto supermarket shelves firstly with my latest erotic work which I won't name until it's accepted and paid for by Harper Collins. Then to finish the literary novel I started last year and persuade my agent to read it and submit it. To see my short stories 'Stabbing the Rain' do well on Amazon or even in America.
  Not to shout, especially at the kids. Maybe at the telly occasionally, like a Grumpy Old Woman.
  To get to France.
  To sort out my hair. Am growing out the colour to see how grey it is. I haven't seen my natural colour all over since I started henna'ing it (is that a verb) when I was about 14. To remain grey if elegant and cool in the manner of that French woman who runs the IMF - Christiane Lagarde? Otherwise to dye it again, brazen harlot colour or claret colour, or silver streaks. Work out if I want it long enough to wear up or cut it in bob, again in maner of Christiane Lagarde.
  To keep the weight off and remain around 9 stone 8 ish.
  But to eat out more.
  To have more interesting resolutions next year.
  To write my blog more regularly.