My handmade cards for sale on Etsy

I've set up a little shop here for my handmade cards - I've been making them for years and find it a very therapeutic alternative to writing/being a therapist.

I can't get my photos to quite do them justice yet...

Go see!

I am a chicken (not a coward, an actual chicken)

It's possible that I've already told you that my debut novel The Letters is coming out with Snowbooks on March 2nd.

This is something I've wanted practically since I was born, and as you can imagine I've been a little pre-occupied with it.

Last night, driving home from work, I became aware of the pattern of my thoughts. What will the back cover look like? How shall I organise the blog tour? Will it sell more than ten copies? Etc. etc. etc. Busy thoughts, pointless thoughts, boring thoughts.

Book book book, I muttered to myself. And then I said it louder. Book Book. Book Book Book. BOOOK BOOK BOOK BOOK BOOOOOK. Suddenly I was a chicken.

And then I felt much better.

Are you a teensy bit controlling like me?

If so then here is some advice from Suzuki Shunryu (author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and a bit of a hero of mine).

"Even though you try and put people under some control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the best way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them."

I must tattoo the first sentence of this onto my wrists.

I love this advice - it brings to mind a mother watching her toddler get into some kind of trouble without leaping in and snatching whatever it is away, and then being there in a non-judgemental way when they hurt themselves and look round for their mum (or don't). Much harder to watch people hurt themselves, isn't it? But rescuing leaves both the rescuer and and rescued poorer. I know this, but I don't always practice it.

PS I had a lovely conversation with Beth from Cassandra Pages here as a part of my blog tour for the small stones book which included talking about ZMBM. I'm not sure I'd recommend it if you've never read a book about Zen before - his autobiography Crooked Cucumber is also pretty special and might be a more accesible place to start.

My good friends the blackcurrants (jammy breakfast)

Look at those glossy beauts.

This morning I have dark unctuous blackcurrant jam for breakfast - spread thickly on white toast from a proper bakery.

If I'd bought it from a posh deli, I imagine I'd be enjoying it very much.

As it is, I know these blackcurrants more intimately. I carried their mother home from the garden centre and dug her a hole. I covered her in mesh to keep the birds' beaks away. I picked them by the handful when they were good and black. I nicked their tops and tails off (who knew this would be such a long job! but perfectly pleasant if performed whilst sat in the sun and listening to birdsong). I boiled them up with sugar. I poured them into jars I'd washed and then baked in the oven.

How distant we have become from most of the food we eat. If you'd kneaded that bread, left it to prove, would you be gobbling that sandwich so quickly, on the run between meetings?

Here's to jam. It's nearly all gone. Here's to every mouthful.

Too much zen already? More cats?

I notice I've posted a few pieces related to my zen 'practice' (or whatever you want to call it) recently, and this morning I wondered if there might be readers out there thinking 'enough of the ZEN already' (they seem to have a Jewish accent for some reason).

It reminds me of a post at the Snowblog recently (my esteemed publishers), where Emma asked her readers what people liked and what they didn't like.

The conversation that ensued confirmed what I'd already guessed at. One person loved the politics, the next person hated it. One person wanted more of this, the next less. Most controversial of all were photos of cats. (I was on the pro-cats side, of course).

All I can do is write about what I want to write about. If this blog is about being a writer, then that means it's also about being me, as I am one of those. Writers buy too much chocolate by mistake. Writers like photos of cute bunnies. [goes off to look at ten blogs] Grr, which writer's blog did I see those bunnies on? I really wanted to show them to you...

Writers also read lots of books and think lots about words and struggle to pin the b*ggers down on the page. Speaking of which... my novel beckons... (or rather is looking at me with a pained expression on its face, like a child that really wants its mother to stop TALKING to Mrs Cobbage in the supermarket and get on with buying chocolate biscuits).

UPDATE: I found the bunnies!

Stop clenching

Here's yesterday's Daily Dharma from Tricycle (subscribe here) - copied here because it's good advice, but mainly because the word 'clench' makes me giggle a little bit.

The moment we want happiness, we start to cling to it in our mind. First, we cling to our own idea of happiness. We relate to the outside world as a source of satisfaction and look outward for the things we normally associate with happiness--accumulating wealth, success, fame or power. As soon as we become attached to any idea--happiness, success or whatever--there is already some stress. Clinging is itself a stressful state, and everything that derives from it is also stressful. For example, try to clench your hand to make a fist. As soon as you start to clench your hand, you have to use energy to keep your fingers clenched tightly. When you let go of the clenching, your hand is free again.

So it is with the mind. When it is in such a state of clenching, it can never be free. It can never experience peace or happiness, even if one has all the wealth, fame and power in the world.

-Thynn Thynn, Living Meditation, Living Insight
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Listen, I shall have to whisper it into your heart directly...

Anniversary

Suppose I took out a slender ketch from
under the spokes of Palace pier tonight to
catch a sea going fish for you

or dressed in antique goggles and wings and
flew down through sycamore leaves into the park

or luminescent through some planetary strike
put one delicate flamingo leg over the sill of your lab

Could I surprise you? Or would you insist on
keeping a pattern to link every transfiguration?

Listen, I shall have to whisper it
into your heart directly: we are all
supernatural every day
we rise new creatures cannot be predicted

Elaine Feinstein

*

One of my old favourites. Just because it's Friday. I hope you all have lovely weekends : )

UPDATE: Elaine Feinstein's son Joel has very kindly left a comment here with the link to recordings of his mother Elaine reading this poem and others - it's at http://www.elainefeinstein.com/mp3/. Do visit (I'm about to), and do buy her books!