Reading Joanna Trollope’s The Soldier’s Wife I come across this passage early on, which had me leaping out of bed
‘….Dan had said that deployment on active service made you long for extremes, either the supreme domesticity of home when you were away from it or the violence of action and danger when you were back. You couldn’t halt the pendulum, he said, you couldn’t stop it crashing from side to side, often out of control. Even if it sometimes hit her – or the children – as it swung….’
Something about this passage resonates with me.
I habitually spend time waiting around – still waiting – for others to come back, for life to tell me what to do, for the push that I need to venture forth. And I have always blamed that particular passivity – shyness, failure, fear – on disability.
But perhaps it has more to do with an abiding sense that my life, the patterns of it and the way the weave and weft wraps itself around me, has been defined by what other people need and decide: the parent who works abroad; the partner who cannot make up their mind whether to leave or stay; the children who have to fit in with patterns set up by others – the need for continuity which boils down to a choice of boarding school, where patterns are set in stone…. but which haemorrhages a domesticity that my husband, for example, can take more for granted.
I suspect that one of hubby’s templates says to him, ‘Parents are here and will always be here, so you may venture – go!’ but my templates tend to suggest to me that I should wait and see what happens, what others decide, because their choices will define what I can do.
But none of us can live our lives like that, not really, not always. We have to jump, and hope that we have a good landing. We have to dive in and see what happens, experiment and hope for the best. Otherwise, what happens to the quality of our lives?
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May 26, 2017
Publishing step by step
Fran Macilvey Fran Macilvey, Happiness Matters, Path To Publication 2 Comments
Publishing step by step
My main aim, with publishing step by step, is to acquire some basic knowledge about how self-publishing works, with all the details included and ticked off from an incredibly long list, one at a time. Do one thing, and two more beg to be taken care of…
Not so very long ago, undertaking a task of this web-like intricacy would have given me nightmares; and I take it as a sign of real progress that these days, I am happy to plod on, meeting and dealing with first this stepping stone, then that one, until completion of this set of tasks morphs from a possibility into a probability.
To start a task and finish it properly becomes a valuable lesson, and I am pleased to see real progress in that.
I have read some excellent books on the subject of self-publication, one of which has now become my go-to bible. But no book can give us all the answers, so I have to select the most motivating and meaningful bits from a range of different sources and then make decisions which have unknowable consequences: still a novice, but catching on fast.
Happiness Matters is now available on Kindle, and as soon as I can agree the proof, will be available in paperback on Amazon and on many other outlets through Ingram Spark: I have opted for wider paperback and e-book distribution through Ingram Spark’s channels.
I am very grateful for the encouragement and help that I have received thus far, particularly from my darling husband, from my wonderful editor Claire Wingfield, and from Jane Dixon-Smith who has done such an amazing job with cover design and formatting. Having such amazing and friendly help to get this far is incredibly precious.
Thanks for reading.
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