Claire's Brussels Blog

3BT: lattés, the West Wing, and chocolate hearts

2012-02-14T15:51:00.001-08:00

1. I finally make it to a café I've been meaning to try, and it turns out that they know how to make a latté. And they have wifi. This may be my new favourite place.

2. The student I am teaching there says something to the effect of, "well, if you're going to have a French tutor, it should probably be someone who likes The West Wing. Then we spend a good few minutes on the pavement debating Aaron Sorkin's dialogue style.

3. When I get off the train, I am handed two chocolate hearts in a small plastic wrapper and a happy Valentine's message from my town.

3BT: a smile, a laugh, and election fun

2012-02-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

1. 1. As I walk to the station, I follow a granddad carrying a toddler all wrapped up in winter clothes. She holds my gaze and smiles at me.

2. 2. I must be in a good mood, or the Bugle podcast must be funnier than usual, because I giggle to myself as I walk along with iPod on. A woman laughs with me, not at me – enjoying my enjoyment, though she can’t possibly know what I am listening to.

2. 3. It's a long story, but my weekly timetable is changing as of today – no longer do I have to make a weekly trek to the middle of nowhere on a train and a tram and a bus, come rain or shine or snow and ice. Better yet, this means a lie-in on Wednesdays, which means I get to enjoy Tuesday night American election fun.

3BT: friendship, stir fry, Scramble

2012-01-27T03:32:00.000-08:00

1. I finally get some time with a friend whose schedule rarely coincides with mine. We eat gooey chocolate cookies in Pain Quotidien.

2. I've been craving stir fry from the pre-prepared veggie packs since the beginning of the year and consequently thinking wistful thoughts about Sainsbury's Market in Pimlico... Sigh. But today I walk into my little local Delhaize and discover they've decided to honour Chinese New Year by stocking the "Wok" range, including those veggies.

3. I discover Scramble with Friends, and it's a lot of fun. I particularly like the encouraging automatic voice which ups its enthusiasm according to word length: good! Excellent! Amazing!

3BT, though today it's six

2012-01-23T16:03:00.001-08:00

(Since I haven't 3BTed in ages, I hope you'll forgive me for having six today.)

1. I feel so inspired after my dailyish writing exercise that I decide to skive work and type up chapter one of my current WIP (work in progress), Primary Season. I'm not behind on my work, so I don't even need to feel guilty.

2. My favourite thing about Twitter is being able to communicate with authors whose book I enjoy. In the last couple of days, I've tweeted with three who are important to me, because I love their books and in some ways want to write like them, and in odd ways perhaps have things in common with them too, things that make me feel a kind of kinship with them. This makes me happier than I can begin to explain.

3. I am on time to orchestra for once, and I walk in to see two teenage girls messing around on the piano, playing and singing "In the jungle, the mighty jungle", or rather "dans la jungle, la terrible jungle"... There is something of an unadulterated simple pleasure in this, of their joy in each other and in music and in being young.

4. It's long and complicated to explain, but I have hope again that Inevitable may yet be published, when yesterday I felt nothing but despair and an irresistible urge to go the Kindle route.

5. When I buy my train ticket, the lady behind the counter spots the Guernsey sticker that has been on my flute case since 1996 (!) and we agree it's a lovely place. Such great memories, too...

6. Picking out my book for tomorrow, since I've almost finished the one I'm currently reading, I spot a notebook on the shelf. And yes - it's my blue writing prompts notebook, the one with half written fan fic and scenes for the new novel and generally lots of useful, useable stuff. I thought I'd lost it. I am relieved and ecstatic that I haven't.

Book Review: Come to the Edge, by Christina Haag

2012-01-18T15:05:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, a book casts a spell on me. In 2010, it was The Song Is You, and you know that, because I still talk about it, I still recommend it, I still insist that it deserves to be better known. In 2012 - is it too soon to say? - it will be Come To The Edge.

The elegance of the writing, the beauty of the story: "haunting" is how I have seen it described, and that was the word I would have used too. I don't remember the last time a book kept me awake and away from even Twitter for two hours at a stretch.

Christina reminds me - perhaps inevitably - of Kate, the heroine in my first novel. "I did not know," she says, "how long it took to get over such a love, and that even when you did, when you loved again, you would always carry a sliver of it in your stitched-together heart".

I want this quote at the front of my book. I want to show it to people who read a chapter of Inevitable and say, "yeah, see, I just don't buy that after all these years she would still be thinking of him". I knew it! I knew that it happened like that sometimes. Because I am a hopeless romantic too. Maybe that’s why I was tempted (but only tempted) to rush past the background, the childhood, the descriptions, to get to the wooing, to get to the romance. And maybe that's why I felt something like a twinge of pain in my belly on so many pages: yes, my heart broke for Bradley Whitford when they split up. But it broke for Christina then too, and then time and time again afterwards. (And I want to call her by her first name. Although I know it’s an illusion, I feel, after she has shared her soul with me, that we are friends.)

Come To The Edge is a book full of emotion, not in a trite, schmaltzy way, but the way it's supposed to be, the way that people tell you to do it at writing workshops: show, don't tell. Christina takes us by the hand and she shows us what it means to be her, what it means to be John, what it means to be with John, what it means to no longer be with him. She makes me want to travel to places in America that I've never heard of. Her writing is quite simply superb, her vocabulary varied - it sounds like a small thing, but it's one of the small things that makes a book worth staying up until two a.m. to finish: when was the last time you came across the word "epiphyte"? On almost every page there was a turn of phrase I wish I could have written.

So, her writing: study it, aspiring authors. Particularly aspiring memoirists. Study it for colour and depth and how to bring the past back to life and how to convey the magic of childhood and of love. Study it to learn description and how to draw out character. Study it for the poetry of the language.

If you follow this blog, chances are you’ll know what led me to this book: it wasn’t the main story. It was a subplot about a man Christina dated for three years. You know the one. But I’m glad my endless fascination with him led me there. I’m glad that, after telling myself that it was a ridiculous reason to buy an overpriced hardback book and that it was probably really badly written anyway, I travelled to America when Amazon had it on special offer and I read some reviews that praised the prose. I thought, you know what, beautifully written tragic love stories set against a political backdrop are my thing. They’re what I write. I should read it for research.

But the stories I write are made up. This one, this heartbreaking one, is real. It can't have been easy to reach into the past for these memories, to draw them out and have the emotions rush back. But if I ever get to meet Christina Haag, I will thank her, because this is a story that needed to be told, and that it’s told so deftly means that it will reach the kind of people who don’t read celebrity biography. Literary snobs, if you will. People like me.

And then I will ask her to please keep writing. I’ll tell her that I go to a Monday Night Writers’ Group too. I don’t know why I’ll tell her that. Probably because I babble when I meet people I admire.

Book Review: Dirty Sexy Politics, by Meghan McCain

2012-01-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

I've seen some scathing reviews of this on Amazon, but they were really not warranted. If what you're after is in-depth analysis of policy, politics or campaign strategy, there are plenty of other books - notably The Audacity to Win, which is excellent - that will do that for you. This book does what it says on the tin: tells the story of a Presidential campaign from the point of view of an insider who also happens to be a young woman - and how many other books do you know who do that? None. Precisely none. Well, unless you're counting Sammy's House, by Kristin Gore, but that's fiction. Although, the author being who she is, there is probably a little truth in it too.

It did nothing to convince me of the appeal of the Republican Party, though I was reassured that at least one person was calling them out for their increasing radicalisation and homogenisation. But really, I'm not sure it was meant to. It was easy to read, engaging and honest - what you see is what you get with Meghan, and that is one of only a very few traits we share - and you know what? To my shame I almost welled up when John McCain lost.

And it also gave me a lot of useful background information for my second novel, Primary Season, the first draft of which I wrote for NaNoWriMo. For all its brilliance, The Audacity to Win wasn't very helpful on how tough it is to be a woman in politics, or on those authentic details - bag calls, weight gain, ephemeral relationships, the impossibility of having clean clothes - which I need to make Aaron and Louisa and their world seem real.

So thanks, Meghan. Your book was just what I needed.

Things I understand about the West Wing now: Airports, Dirksen and Valedictorians

2012-01-13T12:59:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning for ages to write a blogpost for each West Wing episode, especially for people who have as much knowledge of America and its politics as I had before I became obsessed with both. Problem is, like my other projects - the Donna Moss diary, the list of exterior locations to check out when I am next in DC - it tends to fall by the wayside as I get into the storyline, the writing, and the close-ups of Josh Lyman.

Still, though, I'm going to give it a go with tonight's episode, "Guns not Butter". I love this one, because Donna is my favourite, and she is brilliant here, when she tries - and almost succeeds - to find a Senator to whom the President urgently wants to speak.

In doing so, she walks straight into the baggage claims area of National (Washington National Airport, known by some people as Ronald Reagan Airport, though never by anyone on the West Wing, firstly because Reagan didn't exist in their world and secondly, I would guess, because Democrats only refer to it as "National"). Walk straight into baggage claim! With no passport! No flight to catch! Everywhere I've ever been you go through baggage claim before customs, and only then do you get to come out and meet your enthusiastic placard-holding greeters.

But not on American internal flights. I was very confused by this when I flew into LAX from Dulles. (Sorry, that's me showing off with my "I'm so knowledgeable about America" insider speak. LAX is Los Angeles' main airport and Dulles is one of Washington's.) Baggage claim is a bit of a free for all. Anyone can walk in. Which is one of the many things I found disorientating over there.

At one point, she also tries to call "Dirksen". This is a reference to one of the three buildings where Senators have their offices - Russell and Hart being the other one. And as for Will being an Eaton valedictorian, that means he gave the speech at high school graduation and was probably the highest ranked student in his year. And it's nothing to do with Eton College - it wouldn't have surprised me if Will had been educated there, but I'm glad Aaron Sorkin did not make the mistake of placing an American tradition in a venerable British education.

All clear now? Good.

Book Review: The Ninth Wife, by Amy Stolls

2012-01-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

I don’t really read chick lit, and I don’t much like long books. But for some reason I hadn’t quite computed that this was a long book, and it wasn’t pink and glittery, and it was set in DC, and I found it in the Lantern Bookshop in Georgetown for four dollars or so, so I went with it.

I’m glad I did.

Amy Stolls, the author, did the MFA in Creative Writing at American University that I’ve been accepted onto. I remember the piles of her book in Politics and Prose and like to imagine that a book of mine could be in that position in a few years’ time. So I feel a little bit connected to her.(My second choice pen name, which I may well still use, is also very similar to her name.)

Not only that, but it’s the kind of writing that, although it’s very different to mine, aims (I think) to do something like what mine aims to do. (Once I’d realised this, I googled agents and discovered that hers also represents Arthur Phillips – author of The Song Is You, aka the book I haven’t stopped going on about for over a year now – whose writing I am in love with and would like mine to be compared to. A dream agent, in other words, who I don’t think has rejected me yet.)

The Ninth Wife is not really chick lit – at least not the way that I think of it. It’s more in line with the kind of thing I aspire to write – intelligent fiction for women, with elegant writing. And Amy Stolls can definitely can write – there were some beautiful, beautiful turns of phrase, trudging through a swamp of disbelief, letting the whispering winds speak her concern, the route flirts with Pennsylvania all the way, it’s the part of Maryland that makes the state look greedy… There was also a lot of great insight about what it’s like to be in your thirties and single and beginning to despair as you watch everyone else around you turn into couples and then families. So, in other words, it was right up my street.

I can forgive a book for not having much of a plot if it’s well written, and this was. Although it certainly didn’t lack plot, either. (At times, I wondered if there was maybe a bit too much of it.) Yes, at its heart, it’s about a relationship – Bess is dating a guy who has been married eight times before, and wonders if she should accept his proposal – but it explores so many different facets of life, of how we relate to each other, parent to child, grandparents to grandchildren, spouse to spouse, partner to partner, of how we grieve each other and deal with the past.

The first half of the book is very different from the second. In the first half, chapters alternate between Bess’s life now and Rory telling the story of each of his previous eight wives. You’d think, wouldn’t you, how ridiculous. No one could be married eight times. And if he was, then you’d want to run. But as you read each of these stories they are (mostly) very believable, and you get to know Rory, and you know what, it’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. He had a tendency to get married a little too quickly, so really, it’s like someone having eight relationships before you. Maybe not ideal (at least in the circles that I move in), but allowable at the age of 45.

In the second half, and I won’t say much about this as it’s where a lot of the surprises and twists and unexpected directions come, there’s a road trip, and with it all the expected soul-searching and deepening of relationships and life-changing conversations and all that kind of thing. A cheesy concept, you might think, but the author does that deft thing where the character realises it’s a bit cheesy and so it works. (Not everyone can pull this off.)

What I like about this book – apart from the quality of its writing – is the realism of it. Life is messy, love is complicated, there are no easy answers, relationships don’t look like they do in Hollywood. This book feels like an exploration of what it means to trust and commit to someone given all of that.

That said, it might have been nice if there had been just one example of a happy marriage between two straight adults who loved each other and stayed together. (Bess’ friend’s Gabrielle’s parents might have been one, I can’t remember, but she doesn’t dwell on the point if they were.) Amy Stolls shows us a rich tapestry of the many different kinds of relationships that can and do exist, but that one is completely lacking – and I do believe it does exist. And the author must believe it does, too, since that is what she’s steering her character towards. Then again, it’s no wonder Bess is so tentative about marriage if she hasn’t ever seen it work out in her social circle.

Another criticism would be that there are a few too many coincidences which require a stretch to believe in them. I have to say, too, that I roll my eyes when a woman goes into labour at an inappropriate moment, nobody knows what to do about it, and then she proceeds to give birth pretty quickly afterwards.

It was also as if the author had deliberately populated the book with as wide a variety of characters possible: the black best friend, the gay best friend, the lesbian ex-wife, the special needs relative, the Jewish grandmother, the airy-fairy floaty girl pregnant by the irritating ex-boyfriend. I imagine it was a deliberate choice, but it felt a little too deliberate. I don’t know why – all those people do exist, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they all exist within one person’s social circle – but it felt a little forced. That said, these characters weren’t stereotypes – they all felt very real, in particular Bess’ gay best friend, Cricket. And, as someone has said on an Amazon review, their backstories are complex, and that give them depth. This is a great book for writers to study for hints on characterisation.

I’ve been ill this week, so lying down for stretches of time has been an ideal opportunity to get into this book. There were times when I just could not put it down: I read it in big stretches and kept thinking, “What? I can’t stop now!”. I suppose that’s the joy of a long book, but it’s also the joy of good writing, characters you get to know and love, and a story that grips you (and yes, even makes you cry a little bit). A great book with which to start my reading year.

2011: this was the year that...

2011-12-29T09:09:00.001-08:00

I remember, at the of 2010, looking back and thinking, roughly, "meh". It had not been that much of an exciting year, following as it did almost exactly the same pattern as 2009 had, but without the added challenge of moving countries and starting a business from scratch.

I thought my assessment of 2011 might be similar, but, on reflection, realised that this year has been different, in subtle but perhaps significant ways.

This was, after all, the year I met Rob Lowe, and consequently wobbled briefly in my devotion to Bradley Whitford, because when a person is that good-looking and that charming in real life, it can tend to confuse you. I quickly recovered, though.

This was, not unrelatedly, the year that I discovered the Hay Literary Festival. Okay, my meeting with a slightly-famous-author did not turn out to be the key to fame and fortune and a lifelong literary friendship, but Hay was fun, and inspiring, and educational, and there were lots of books, and I want to go again, and again, and again.

It was, however, the year in which a literary friendship did begin: my creative-non-fiction friend Sylvia is a lof of fun and hugely inspiring. And there were other new people in my life too: people like Brian and MA - both DC friends that began online and moved closer to the realm of reality this year.

This was, returning to the subject of meeting famous people (famous to me, that is - for which read people having to do with the West Wing), also the year that I met Richard Schiff, who was reasonably nice to me when you consider that I lost all power of speech and reason and the ability to form intelligent questions like "so do you prefer stage or screen?" It was the year that I failed to meet Elisabeth Moss, though (straying briefly from the West Wing for a second) I did, as a result of attempting to meet her, get Keira Knightley's autograph. It was the year that I met Melissa Fitzgerald (who plays CJ's assistant, Carol), though I hesitate to put her in the same category since meeting her felt less like star-spotting and more like making a new friend.

It was, of course, still not the year when I met either Bradley Whitford or Janel Moloney, but I'm guessing you've worked that out, since I might have mentioned it by now if I had. A lot. Loudly. With many exclamation marks.

It was also the year when I finished my first novel (although "finished" is a relative term - I'm not sure that you ever really finish - it seems you just stop). It was the year when I started my second - Primary Season is its current working title - and I will, at some point, write a blogpost that predictably will compare this experience to having a second baby - it's not that you love your first any less, but you have less time to devote to it, and less time to devote to the second because of the first, and a tiny part of you is already thinking of the third. Anyway, I digress.

It was the year that I did my first real campaigning in America (unless you're counting the few phone calls I made trying to convince people to vote for Martha Coakley way back in January 2009). I did phone banking and door to door canvassing, and I would have done voter registration if the good people of Pasadena hadn't been scared off by the prospect of drizzle (don't get me started).

it was the year I self-published my little eBook on language learning, Conquering Babel, which has sold, oh, forty copies or so, and started blogging about language learning to build a platform in my attempt to take over the world as a language-learning guru.

It was the year, for better or worse, that I discovered Authonomy, where my first novel, Inevitable, is currently in 28th place, meaning that sometime in the first half of 2012 it should land on the desk of a Harper Collins editor, who may or may not offer me a contract, which I may or may not accept.

It was the year when I did (and loved) my first Gotham Writers' Workshop course. It was the year when I was accepted to American University to study for an MFA in Creative Writing (whether or not I end up going is anothe rmatter). It was the year that I did NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month - the challenge of a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in thirty days) for the first time. So I suppose it was a year where writing featured heavily. It has so become a part of my life that I didn't even really notice. It doesn't feel shiny and new anymore, yet I keep going, and for someone who normally moves onto something new after the excitement fades, this is a good sign.

It was the year of my first internal American flight and also my first visit to Portugal, where the coffee, let me tell you, is delicious, and tastes exactly like Spanish cafe con leche, to which my mind often turns as I sip on a Belgian coffee that I wish I could enjoy.

But, wait! This was also the year when Starbucks opened in Brussels, which has considerably reduced my homesickness and irritation at missing trains, and thus my general levels of grumpiness.

It was the year of weddings, too - four, and yes there was a funeral too, and that was incredibly sad. It was the year of the last Brighton Leaders' Conference. It was the year I started swimming again. It was the year in which one of my multiple twitter accounts gained considerable momentum, hit 5,000 followers and kept going. It was the year in which for the first time an article of mine was published in a magazine you can actually buy in WHSmith - Writers' Forum.

It was another year in which I failed to keep a diary, though, so I'm forgetting a lot, no doubt. I'd like to think that next year I will be disciplined enough to fill in a few lines a day in my five-year diary thing that I bought, full of good intentions, at the beginning of 2010. I think I actually might this time, because I am expecting great things of 2012. But that's the subject of another post, another day..

3BT: countryside, communication, culinary delights

2011-12-28T14:39:00.001-08:00

1. A drive up into the Algarve moutains: amazing views. I love the orange trees.

2. Friendly people, happy to communicate with us in broken and basic Portuguese. In one random village they gleaned we spoke French and went to fetch someone who could help us out.

3. A delicious meal out: mixed fish grill and home-made local dessert, plus great service: the inspiration, finally, to come home and register niceplacestoeat.wordpress.com. Food writing and restaurant reviewing is, apparently, my latest New Thing.

3BT: a good book, sunset, politics

2011-12-27T14:50:00.001-08:00

1. I start a Visit from the Goon Squad, and, hooray, I like it.

2. We watch the sun set until it disappears behind the horizon.

3. I am, as always, moved by the story of Barack Obama when we watch a DVD about him - and excited about 2012, the first American election I will care about and understand. Thank you, again, Aaron Sorkin.

3BT: a book, surfers, a solution

2011-12-26T16:25:00.001-08:00

1. The book I am reading gets interesting, and then I finally finish it. Now to a Visit from the Goon Squad, which I've been looking forward to for ages.

2. We watch surfers catch some waves. It looks like fun out there.

3. The solution to a quandary I have been pondering for Novel Number Two - "Primary Season" is its working title - pops into my head as I walk along the beach.

3BT: a present, a pudding, the Queen

2011-12-25T15:44:00.001-08:00

1. I've been told not to expect a present, since I'm getting this holiday, and my mum usually means that when she says it. So I was excited to discover that she'd bought me a watch I'd seen in the town and commented on - I hadn't even intended it to be a hint. Its strap is made of cork - a local speciality - and I haven't had a watch in ages. Win.

2. Christmas pudding with brandy sauce. Enough said.

3. The Queen rocks her Christmas message this year, and is clear and direct about her Christian beliefs. I wonder if she's had to fight to say it unequivocally without the usual politically correct bits to water it all down. I hope she has, because then I'd be even prouder of her.

3BT: carols, nostalgia, lights

2011-12-24T15:15:00.001-08:00

1. We watch, as always, Carols from King's. There's a new and lovely descant part to Once in Royal David's City, and this year's broadcast includes two of my favourites- oh Holy Night, which naturally reminds me how much I love Aaron Sorkin, and Chilcott's Shepherds' Carol, which is beautiful amd was written for the choir while I was at King's.

2. We also watch a programme about John Craven, and it's full of heart-warming nostalgia.

3. We wander through the town, hoping to soak up some Christmas atmosphere. There's no atmosphere and nowhere open to have a drink, but there are plenty pf tasteful, pretty lights lining bridges, windows, palm trees.

2011: The year in books

2011-12-24T02:22:00.001-08:00

This blog post was originally going to be about how I had failed to be wowed by any books this year in the way that I was in 2010 by, say, Arthur Phillips' The Song Is You or Colum McCann's Let The Great World Spin. But then I looked through my list, and I remembered The Grapes of Wrath, The Audacity to Win, the American Future, The Book Thief.

Still, though, I feel disappointed about this year, perhaps because I've read a fair few books that weren't all I had hoped they would be (the subject of a future post, no doubt) and most likely because I will finish without reaching my goal of fifty books. I'll have got to about 32, which is respectable enough, but that isn't enough to appease the competitive urge in me.

There are a variety of reasons for this, chief among which has to be the iPad: long gone and almost forgotten are the days when it was too much hassle to turn on my computer for one last play on Twitter before bed. And when in combination with other addictions, like Authonomy, the online writers' community, it has eaten away many hours.

And iPad or no iPad, Authonomy must shoulder some of the blame. It may well be that I have, in fact, read fifty books' worth of first chapters: the idea is that you comment on other people's books in the hope that they will read, comment on, and vote for yours, edging you ever closer to the desk of an editor at Harper Collins. So you read many books that you would ordinarily not go anywhere near. Some of the writing wowed me, like Rena Rossner in her first novel Blown to Smithereens; some, it has be to said, did not.

Then there was NaNoWriMo. I usually read most when travelling; this year, I wrote instead. I take the train less these days, too, and when I do I sometimes use the time for emails, or Authonomy, or - ahem - Boggle. (Yes, the iPad again.) There are many excuses I could offer, some slightly more worthy than others. Perhaps the very fact of having a goal made it seem a little too much like a chore.

I wonder if there's another reason for it too, one that renders all the excuses almost irrelevant. Louis de Bernieres said that "love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision..." My love for the English language was a little like that. It came out of nowhere and blew me away, and last year's voracious reading was a symptom of that. The temporary madness might be over now. Maybe that's why I had to look at a list to remember the books that wowed me, when last year I could have named them without thinking twice, or barely even once. But, he went on to say, "... and when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part."

I suppose that's the stage I am at with my reading. There are moments of awe, of course, but they are fewer than they used to be. But it is inconceivable that books and I, words and I, the English language and I, should ever part. Even though I don't yet know what my target for next year will be, or even if if I should have one, I'll never stop reading.

3BT: reading, sunshine, fresh juice

2011-12-23T15:10:00.001-08:00

1. A lie in with a book.

2. Breakfast on the sunny balcony.

3. Freshly squeezed pineapple juice. Yes, pineapple juice. New to me too. Not pineapple juice, obviously. But the freshly squeezed part. Also, the sitting on a Portuguese beach part.

3BT: holiday pleasures

2011-12-22T15:31:00.001-08:00

1. The ocean glints in the sunlight.

2. I sink my heels into the wet sand.

3. The red wine goes perfectly with the slightly kicky goat's cheese.

4BT: coffee, tomatoes, reading and laughter

2011-12-21T15:23:00.001-08:00

1. The coffee tastes perfect, just the way cafe con leche tasted in Spain. I haven't had a coffee so good in a very long time. Afterwards, I indicate with a thumbs up that I likes it and the lady teaches me to say "o café é bom".

2. The tomatoes are bright red and full of flavour and richness. If fruit back home tasted the way it does here, I would happily eat a lot more of it.

3. I read in the sun with my feet up on the balcony edge.

4. I laugh with my mum and step dad about how everything, particularly vegetarian meals, tastes better with bacon.

Ah, Europe, how I'll miss you...

2011-12-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

Today I took a wander through my town's little Christmas market. From what I had read - and, ahem, written - it was grand and impressive. In fact, it was neither of those things, but it was sweet, and complete with quirks like a stand where you could pay €5 to have a picture of yourself taken with an owl on your shoulder. Ah, Belgium.

I was hoping for lots of this kind of thing:

But mostly it looked liked this...

... which I imagine is a huge relief in super-cold years like 2010 (the tents are slightly heated), but the smell of cheese can be a little overwhelming, and it is undeniably not as charming or picturesque as the Brussels Christmas market. Still, it's hard not to love a place where you can buy this...

And this...

(Okay, those were all the same stand, but, mmm.) There were oysters, too, for those who like that kind of thing - and because it's a traditional Christmas delicacy in these parts...

And then, there was this. No, that is not a big block of cheese, though it looks a little like a huge camembert from a distance. But any disappointment I may have felt at not being able to Facebook-tag my West Wing friends with an obscure reference to Andrew Jackson (look it up, people) was obliterated by the realisation that this was, in fact, a big block of nougat.

Not only that, but there were multiple flavours of nougat - orange, Speculoos, chocolate, you name it, and the very helpful, very nice man let me taste all of them before I bought them.

I suppose it's time I started a "things I will miss about Europe" post...

Gifts for language learners « Conquering Babel

2011-12-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

Gifts for language learners « Conquering Babel:

The nights are drawing in; the leaves are beginning to turn and fall; there’s a chill in the air. This can only mean one thing: the Christmas shopping panic is only weeks away. But fear not, dear reader: if there is a language lover in your life, panic is unnecessary. Instead, you can have a look at our suggestions and find the perfect gift.

Fridge Magnets Who can resist a bit of fridge poetry? And all the more so when it’s educational as well as fun? Go to funkyfridge.com for magnet kits in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian.

Board Games Scrabble is, of course, the quintessential word game, available in a wide variety of languages, and you don’t even need an opponent. Challenging yourself regularly is a great way to build vocabulary. Bananagrams is another good one to try, as well as other games such as Pictionary and Taboo: for learners up to intermediate level, I’d recommend the children’s version of these.

Magazine Subscriptions A specialist language-learning magazine is an invaluable tool. For French intermediates and up, there’s Bien Dire; for Spanish, you can’t do better than Punto Y Coma. Authentikalso publish a range of materials of A Level standard in German, French and Spanish. For more advanced learners, a great option is to find a mainstream magazine allied with their interest: Vogue, or National Geographic, or France Football, for example. Whatever your friend or family member is into, there’s bound to be something for them.

iTunes vouchers There’s a wealth of apps out there that can help with language learning, as can films, music and audiobooks from the country whose language they are learning. Just make sure you specify the purpose of the voucher on your Christmas card to ensure it doesn’t get used on Angry Birds or Tetris apps.

Language Lessons Maybe you know someone who would really value the occasional feedback on their language skills, or the opportunity to practice conversation or ask questions on the more tricky aspects of grammar. Some language tutors, including this one, offer gift vouchers: you can buy anything from half-hour sessions to 100 hours of hour-long lessons. The vouchers available here are valid for one year, so the recipients can take the lessons whenever is most convenient for them: in the run-up to an exam or a holiday, for example.

A Practical Guide Whether they’ve tried to learn before and got stuck, or are starting from scratch and are not sure where to begin, this eBook will help. It’s packed full of tips about strategies and resources for learning, and answers questions like “how can I stay motivated?” and “do I really have to learn grammar?”. You can snap it up on amazon.co.uk for just £1.99, or onamazon.com for $2.99, and you don’t even need a Kindle to read it – it will work on any electronic device, including PCs and iPhones.

Living the dream: in the beginning...

2011-12-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

One day there will be a new blog, and it will be called something like claireindc.wordpress.com, and it will document the beginning of the journey, and the beginning might turn out to be yesterday.

Or it might turn out to be the day I borrowed Emily's laptop to watch a Friends episode but instead ended up watching the DVD that was already in there, Season Two, Episode Five of a little TV programme called the West Wing and thinking "you know what, this is actually really good".

Or maybe the beginning was moving back to Belgium: maybe there's something in the air here, writing stardust or something Here was where I wrote my first poems, my first "novels". Here was where people began to talk about me as a writer and believe in me when I was far too young to warrant that kind of title or that kind of confidence.

Or maybe it's not the dust, or the water, or anything about my childhood. Maybe it's the chance I got to write articles that reminded me there was far more to my love of language than a passion for correct grammar in three languages.

Or maybe it's the fact that I moved here with no big agenda, had no television, and one July had no social life either, and the only two things that kept me busy were work and the West Wing, and one day, walking down the street after a lesson with a Russian diplomat I thought, "wouldn't it be fun to teach Bradley Whitford French?" and suddenly, there was my novel.

Who knows, really, where it began? But yesterday I got an email, the email I've been waiting for, except I thought I was waiting for a letter, and I thought I was waiting till March. It said, "It's the Director of the MFA program at American University. I wanted to touch base with you personally and let you know that you've been accepted into the program starting fall 2012."

At this point, I don't know much. I don't know if I will get the scholarship I need to make this feasible. I don't know if it's God opening a door, or just me shoving at it really hard.

But I reserved some blog domain names just in case. Just in case I get to write about living in DC, studying creative writing, and campaigning for the Democrats. Just in case, in other words, I get to live my dream and tell you about it.

NaNoWriMo: Where I wrote

2011-12-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

Apparently I now go to America in November; it's just what I do. (Since next year is a Presidential election year, I expect the pattern to continue.) In 2009 and 2010 I thought vaguely about NaNoWriMo and what a shame it was I wasn't going to be able to do it. In 2011, I came to my senses and realised there was no reason I couldn't write while travelling. That the writing might make the travelling both more fun and more purposeful and the travelling might make the writing more inspired, more grounded in the city where I seem to keep setting my novels.

So I went to DC, and I wrote.

I began my novel in Peregrine Expresso in Capitol Hill.

The next day, I took a train to Philadelphia, and I wrote.

I went back to DC, and I slacked off for a bit, but then I went to a Write In at Yola in Dupont Circle.

It was my first Write In, and I loved the experience, despite the two girls having a very noisy conversation, oblivious to the fact that everyone, but everyone, around them was studying or reading or trying to write a novel in a month. I met some super friendly people and scribbled for a happy hour or so before meeting a friend to go to see the Capitol Steps.

The next day, I had grand plans to write in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Penn after church, but NatWest scuppered those plans by blocking my bank card and causing me to spend hours and lots of dollars on the phone to sort it out.

But then, the day after that, I finally, finally made it to Politics and Prose, for an event with Erin Morgenstern (whose successful novel, The Night Circus, started out as a NaNoWriMo novel). It's a wonderful place - with a name like that, how could it not be - and they have a coffee shop downstairs where I sat with another WriMo and scribbled my way to a writer's high.

The next day, I went back to Peregrine Expresso to see my new friend who had offered to marry me and my cute British accent so that I could have a visa. (Note to any immigration people reading: I'm pretty sure he was kidding.) While I was there, I wrote a little more, before heading to the DNC headquarters to do some phone banking. (Because, you know, if there's one thing I love more than phones, it's cold calling complete strangers who probably won't understand my aforementioned accent.)

The day after that (we're on 9th, if anyone is following), I got a few words down in Café Milano in Georgetown before my salmon and fennel dish arrived...

... then I paid a pilgrimage to the soon-to-be defunct (sniff) Barnes and Noble and its Starbucks, where I sat at a high seat by the window...

.,. and then I walked back to the hotel, dropped off the books I had accidentally bought in Lantern Books, and popped into another Write In, this one at Panera Bread at Dupont Circle (you'll note from the fact that the trees in front are not autumn colours that I borrowed this photo from Google Images). I had trouble with the ordering system, but made it downstairs with my orange juice and my cookie eventually. It was distracting down there: there was a Spanish lesson going on right behind me - it was hard not to think, "hey! When I move here, I could do my lessons in Panera Bread!". (Immigration people, if you're still reading, I of course will only do this if I have a visa that allows me to engage in paid employment.)

The people who were writing there were of a talkative disposition, which ordinarily I wouldn't have minded, but I didn't have very long, because owing to the distractions of Georgetown I'd got there later than I'd meant to, and I had to rush off after an hour to go and hear Umberto Eco at the 6th and i Synagogue. I was glad I had some moral support around me though, to ease my distress at having penned the words "she was drowning in his blue eyes".

By 10th, I was hitting my stride, and mourning my imminent departure. After an afternoon at the Newseum and a yummy dinner at America Eats with possibly the most delicious pecan pie I will ever taste, I joined the write in at the now familiar Starbucks on 3rd and Penn. (It's close to We the Pizza and to where the Hawk and Dove - sob - used to be; i.e. it's where I would hang out all the time if I worked on the Hill.) Amazing Starbucks, complete with a real-looking open fire in the very quiet and studious upstairs part.

I was just hitting my stride after a twitter break (ahem) when they kicked us out of there, though. I wrote a little more downstairs and then headed back to my hotel...

where I made up my quota with my newfound determination, or possibly to avoid packing, and thus the thought of leaving.

The next day, I boarded a plane to LA, just like Josh Lyman did all those years ago to go and get Sam. I fell way short of my word quota that day, but I did manage a few pages up in the air.

I had ideas about writing some more after I got to my hotel - if you can call it a hotel - in Pasadena, but I was stressed and tired and tearful (perhaps at the prospect of being so close to Bradley Whitford) and so I never quite made it.

The next day was sightseeing and catching up with Brianna (yay), and the day after that when I'd had plans to go to a write in, then All Saints Church, then the mid-month NaNoWriMo celebrations in LA, instead I made a last minute decision to spend the day with her. Which was lovely, and her church was fab, and we visited a posh hotel beloved of Presidents (with good reason), and ate the first cupcakes I've actually enjoyed in America, but still, it was one of those times I wished I could have cloned myself and been in two places at once.

We rounded the day off with a delicious meal at Russell's - so that's what a hamburger ought to taste like - and then I spent a happy couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble. ("Does Bradley Whitford ever come in here?" "Who?" "He's an actor... Josh Lyman from the West Wing? He lives in Pasadena." "Oh, yes, he's a regular." You are so totally making that up, given that a minute ago you didn't know who he was, but I want to believe you, so I am going to.) Next door was a Starbucks - open till midnight, ah, civilisation, how I've missed you - and I planned to sit and make my quota if it killed me. But the seat by the window that I'd had my eye on got taken before I could get there, and the people who sat themselves next to me were very talkative, and wanted to know all about me. I have a hunch they were famous in some way - one of them was very whacky and wearing a weird hat, and the other told me her sister used to live downstairs from Allison Janney in New York, which is confusing since I thought Allison Janney lived in California, but anyway - but to cut a long story even longer, I got no writing done.

So the next day, I was determined. I wandered round Old Town Pasadena and looked round All Saints Church, then spent a happy rest of the morning in Vroman's, which is an amazing independent bookshop, where I succumbed to a Pasadena tshirt and the novel "Helen of Pasadena" (which actually was not bad, and unexpectedly made me cry. I wonder if Jane Kaczmarek has read it, and if she cried too?). It also has a café, so I sat and wrote there...

... and then, after paying a small visit to the Pasadena Playhouse and sighing over the Artists' Entrance, where, if any of you would like to donate a few hundred dollars or a couple of thousand airmiles I could potentially meet my hero in just a few months' time, I went to Sabor 2 which is where some of the write ins were held. The coffee was not that nice and the people were not that friendly, but it was a cool place.

And then I got on a plane, and then another plane, and I came home to frost on the ground, tenacious jet lag, a trip to the UK, and about 40,000 words still to write. By 19th November, I had a choice: full steam ahead or give up. I wasn't going to be half-hearted about it and get to 25,000 words. I tweeted and asked for advice, and my fellow WriMos were very encouraging, for which I am eternally grateful.

So I wrote in the spare bed at Tim and Jacqui's flat in Stockwell, and then on the train from London to Oxford for the wedding...

... and then I wrote in Giraffe in Victoria after Church...

... and then I wrote in bed, and then I wrote on the Eurostar back to Belgium...

... and then I finally stopped international travelling and wrote some of the rest of my novel on trains between Nivelles and Brussels ...

... but mostly at my desk in those final few days when I had to crank over 20,000 words in not a very long time. I could have sanitised and tidied it for you, but this, minus the tissues which I admit to throwing away, is what my writing table looks like. I am an artist. It's okay to be messy. It's part of the persona.

I know it's not pretty, but it got the job done. So maybe the moral of the story is there is no need to be somewhere interesting and different to do NaNoWriMo. Wait, no, that can't be what I was trying to say...

NaNoWriMo: how I'll do it next time

2011-12-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

1. I'll spend October getting ready.

I wanted to do that this time, too, but for the third year in a row the last couple of weeks in October were a little crazy, with translations suddenly arriving right when my pieces for the What's On section of Away Magazine were due - and there are always more of those in the run-up to Christmas anyway, what with the markets and castles and carol concerts to write about.

So yes, there was time to throw things in a suitcase for my America trip; there was time to go out and carefully select pretty notebooks for NaNoWriMo, and I fitted in reading Chris Baty's "No Plot No Problem" well in advance. But there wasn't time to do character sketches or draw up timelines or brainstorm subplots. Which, in a way, is fine. I wanted to see if NaNoWriMo worked when you do no planning whatsoever - as it is, in fact, supposed to. It's the opposite of how I wrote my first novel - carefully, deliberately, a scene when it would pop into my head, all of which after spending a long time getting to know my characters - and I was curious to see if it worked, and it kind of did, but I also kept thinking how much more productive it would be if I had a better idea of where it was going. And how much easier it would be to start each writing session if I had, as suggested my someone on I can't remember which website, written thirty index cards, each with a scene to develop.

That said, I don't know. Some of my best writing to date has been when I've started with a writing prompt and just written for thirty minutes, the aim being to keep writing, and see where it takes you. NaNoWriMo is, the way I did it, a long experiment in freewriting, and I think there is value in that.

Besides, I can do the character development and backstory and subplots and timeline now, and rewrite and add words as I need to. (And I need about an extra 50,000 words, so those things will come in handy.) Also, it's very possible that I'm remembering the process of writing Inevitable wrongly or selectively: a lot of the brainstorming and post-it note sticking was done between drafts.

Still, next time I'll do it the other way.

2. I'll start on 1st November.

I'm fortunate to live in a country which has two bank holidays during NaNoWriMo - on 1st and 11th November, and if those days fall on a Tuesday or a Thursday, you tend to get an extra day off work thrown in too. My teaching also slows down during the first week of the month because it's half term here. Which of course has been my excuse for taking that time off to go on holiday for three years in a row now. I'm glad I left on 1st November this year, because if I hadn't I may not have made it to Philadelphia to see Staging Hope and meet Melissa Fitzgerald. But another year I will make sure I spend as much of 1st November as possible writing - or doing the brainstorming that I yet again won't have had a chance to do in October. Then on 2nd, I'll take to the skies. (I assume, by the way, that my next NaNoWriMo won't be next year, because next year there is an election to win.)

I did start on 1st, and I got 1,000 words or so done, and only had to stop because the whole of Peregrine Espresso was spinning and I started to feel as if I was going to fall off my chair, what with jet lag, sleep deprivation and messed up eating patterns. And my novel starts with Aaron jiggling his leg because on the bus from Dulles to Rosslyn there was a guy jiggling his leg as he spoke very quietly into his mobile phone, and it intrigued me, because when people are stressed enough to be jiggling their legs they are normally shouting. Also, there was something nicely symbolic about beginning my NaNoWriMo novel in DC, where it is set, in a cafe of which I had thought on my last visit, "I would like to come and write here". But still, it would have been nice to have started, say, 1,000 words ahead, rather than a few hundred behind.

3. I'll travel.

Yes, it's great that Belgium gives us writing time in November. But what's less great is that, like so many things, NaNoWriMo has yet to take off here. The best thing about NaNoWriMo is the community aspect: you write together at "write-ins", you meet up for half-month parties, you send each other encouraging emails. Yes, nominally there is a NaNoWriMo "region" covering "Belgium and Holland", but it irritates me that they only send out their emails in Dutch - since just under half of this country speaks French - and there are very few Write Ins, and the ones there are tend to be in Flanders or Holland. Also, I have not found the Belgians to be super friendly when you first meet them, so the thought of walking into a coffee shop to join in with strangers and being met with a blank stare when I say "Hi, I'm Claire" is a little discouraging. In the US, everyone is super-friendly, especially WriMos. In the UK, I'm among my own kind, so I know what to expect. In other countries, there are also more Write-Ins - I love the idea of the California one that takes place on a a train. Write-Ins are a great way to meet people when you are travelling alone, too.

Plus, of course, there's the inspiration factor. I don't know if all my novels will be doomed love stories set in DC - though it's looking increasingly likely - but there is something fantastic about sitting in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Pennsylvania writing about a date in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Pennsylvania (although I didn't quite manage to be that in sync, sadly): about looking around and getting the real details from the real place, about eavesdropping on conversations and making a careful note of them. The dad who told his toddler "senate is in session" by way of explanation of something or other will almost certainly make an appearance in my novel, as will the dogs and small bilingual children in Lincoln Park. This kind of thing makes the place feel more real to the writer and therefore to the reader. Well, hopefully.

4. I'll hand write.

I almost always hand write my first drafts. Working on my writing is almost the only time that I use pen and paper now, so it signals to me and my body that I am in creative mode. I am a creature of habit, and I found my writer's voice sitting in St James' Park writing with a pen and paper, so that's the way it'll stay. It's also how I do my dailyish freewriting exercises. Fewer distractions that way. Long enough for my brain to catch up with my hand.

Maybe by next time I will have mastered the art of sitting at a computer and not flicking back and forth from my writing to Facebook to twitter to Authonomy to Blogger and back to writing. After all, I have been sitting here typing this blog post for quite q while now and resisted the temptation, so you never know. Plus, I have this funky wireless keyboard thing for my iPad now, and it's a pleasure to type on.

But still, an iPad and a keyboard, light as they are, are more hassle to carry around than a notebook and a pen. You have to remember to charge them, and hope that nothing goes wrong with them, which they rarely do, but it does happen, and if it happens, you can guarantee it will right at that breakthrough moment when you're typing a pivotal scene.

I also live in constant fear of my iPad being stolen, which is one of the reasons I don't carry it around with me everywhere when I'm going to be hanging around touristy places. And yes, okay, my whole handbag could get nicked, and if my notebook were in it that would be a real shame - particularly because I back up by taking photos of my notebook, and my camera would likely also be in my bag - but I don't furtively look around me when I get out my notebook and pen to check no one looks like the notebook and pen stealing type.

Speaking of notebooks, it's also an excuse to buy pretty notebooks and post it notes. And who doesn't need one of those from time to time?

5. I'll count my words every day.

Arguably the best reason for typing NaNoWriMo novels is that the whole point is to get to 50,000 words, and therefore you need to know when you've got to 50,000 words. I've found my estimations to be wildly inaccurate - well, not wildly, but wildly once you multiply 20 words by 90 pages, which led to a frenzied final day of NaNoWriMo and a collapse in exhaustion rather than a triumphant hooray. This was, of course, after I'd hand counted most of 50,000 words over two or three days. Try it. It's not a lot of fun. But I really did need to know if I had made it. I think I have. But then again, I might have counted completely wrong. Next time I'd like to know for sure, and I'd like to watch the little NaNoWriMo graph go up steadiliy. I'm sure I can count 1,667 words much more patiently and accurately than I can count 20,000.

I've won NaNoWriMo!

2011-11-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I did it! I wrote 50,000 words in a month. The exact official number is 50,143 words, but you can ignore that completely, because I hand wrote, and also hand counted, and given my propensity for mathematical errors the real number could be anywhere between 45,000 and 55,000 words.

Oddly, I'm not as excited as I thought be. Not even as relieved - though doubtless that will happen tomorrow when I realise I can spend train time reading and free time inanely clicking on refresh on twitter, just like before. Maybe I should have planned some kind of momentous event or at least champagne drinking to celebrate with friends. Well, there's still time, so let me know.

I'm sure I'll be musing about NaNoWriMo a fair bit in the next few weeks: why I did it (to prove to myself that I still had it in me to be self-disciplined!), whether I'd do it again (the jury is still out at this point),why I hand write, and what I learned. But for now I wanted to proudly display my winner's badge:

I even got a winner's cerificate that I could customise and print, but since I haven't decided what to call myself or what to name the novel, I won't add it here just here. It's pretty fab though - those nice people at NaNoWriMo really have thought of everything. Almost everything. If someone could please design an app to count hand written words (so that you basically just point an iPad at a page), that would be wonderful.

Techniques for upping your NaNoWriMo word count

2011-11-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

The end is in sight. 30th November draws near. How's your word count doing? Scrabbling around for those extra few words? Here's some tips I've picked up.

1. Give your character a dilemma.

That way things can keep going round in a circle, to illustrate said dilemma. Particularly if she's also indecisive. Like, she wants him but she knows she can't have him but she really does want him but she really can't have him but...

Indecisiveness in general is also good, since you can add things like "oh, I don't know, I think I'll have the cheesecake... no, the pumpkin pie. Oh, I don't know. I'm so terrible at decisions. Help me, oh my hero, to make the right choice." (You'll be glad to know nothing like that appears in my novel, but you get the point.)

2. Have your character know something else well, and quote from it frequently.

Maybe she's a Christian, and keeps using the Bible to make her arguments. Or maybe he's a West Wing fan, and borrows Aaron Sorkin's words frequently. (I resisted that particular temptation this time - in fact, it took me till page 133 to mention the West Wing at all, and that's because I wanted my character to wear a suit and backpack, and didn't feel like I could do that without a nod at Josh Lyman.)

3. Get your character to speak a foreign language from time to time.

That way, they have to saw everything twice: once in the language, and once in translation.

4. Use circumlocution.

If he says, "no", that's one word. If "he shakes his head no", that's five. If he "explains", that's one word. Have him "say by way of explanation" instead, and get yourself some extra.

5. Show, don't tell.

Yes - at last some sensible writing advice that holds even if you're not doing NaNoWriMo. What I mean here is this, though: instead of saying, "she was kissing him", make it last: "she was kissing him, kissing him, kissing him". If their arguments are going in a circle, show it by making your narration go in a circle too: "And so they were back. Not to Square One exactly, more like the "go" square on the Monopoly board, they went round and round and they kept ending up in the same places, and round and round, but each time was different as well as familiar". There's a sneak preview into mine.

Things I will miss about America

2011-11-16T00:56:00.003-08:00

In no particular order

Being complimented on my glasses

CVS

Walking where Bradley Whitford has walked

Political discussion

Campaigning

Being thought of as charming, because of the accent

Being asked if I am over 21

Flying over beautiful scenery

People on the Obama campaign loving me and giving me lots of attention because I've come all the way from Europe to help them out (and not at all for a holiday, oh no)

The convenience of everything

The speed of the internet on my mobile

The constant exciting prospect of perhaps bumping into someone famous (shame that I don't recognise anyone who a) wasn't on the West Wing and b) wasn't a pop star circa 1988-1992)

Getting to randomly speak and hear Spanish

Being asked if I am Spanish

The cheapness of electronics

Free refills

A church where you get free muffins and bagels and you can buy almond-flavoured lattes

Churches with amazing music and depth of preaching

Pizza

Starbucks - and especially their ubiquity

Being in the right time zone for reacting in real time to political news

Hanging out with other politically minded people

Getting to ask my political questions and not being thought of as stupid, since I'm British and it's therefore natural that I don't know

Being a novelty

Good-looking men

NaNoWriMo write-ins

People knowing what I'm talking about when I mention the West Wing

The friendliness of people when you meet them

Discovering new places

Wifi on trains

The gorgeous red of the sugar maples

Being offered tap water at every restaurant - sometimes having it brought to you without even having to ask

Pretzel bread

Things I won't miss about America

2011-11-16T00:56:00.001-08:00

Having to repeat everything I say because no one understands me the first time round

Having to get most people to repeat what they say because I usually don't understand them the first time round

Toilets (sorry, restrooms) in public places like restaurants and airports: why don't they build cubicles whose walls reach from floor to ceiling? What is with those huge gaps - and the one between the door and its frame?

Never being quite sure if people know where Belgium is, but not wanting to assume and patronise by explaining, and feeling awkward about that every time someone asks me where I'm from

And, erm, that's it.

Claire's big America trip - day fourteen

2011-11-16T00:54:00.001-08:00

What I learned

Pasadena really is a lovely place. I could live there. You know, if I really had to for any reason.

Where I ate

Breakfast was yet another blackberry "scone" from Starbucks - I am a convert to those - and a grande latte.

Lunch was at the California Pizza Company close to All Saints Church in Pasadena. My waitress, Maria, was super friendly and nice, and the view was beautiful, and the barbecued chicken pizza was scrumptious - I loved the addition of coriander, it added a certain je ne sais quoi, as did the applewood smoked bacon. (I've noticed that bacon in America often seems to be applewood smoked, and while I don't really know what that is, the bacon in American often seems to be delicious, so I'd say they're onto a winner there.)

Dinner at Du Bar's in Studio City (not Studio 60, haha, I get that joke now) was purely functional and a little mediocre - kind of what I had assumed American food was usually like - a cheese and bacon burger that bore no ressemblance to the similar sounding but infinitely superior meal I had yesterday

Where I wrote

Determined to make my word count today (and I think I did), and being done with all the rushing around, I spent an hour in Vroman's scribbling away, and then after lunch another hour in Sabor 2, which is a very cool and trendy place to hang out but where the water tasted of very weak lemon squash and the caffe con leche was nothing like the ones from Spain.

Vroman's, though, did not disappoint. It's an enormous and very cool independent bookshop that also sells things like bags and shoes (?), and has a posh stationery shop attached to it. What with it being the last day I bought a couple of cheesy souvenirs and caved in to buying a novel, "Helen of Pasadena", which is probably not the kind of thing I normally read, but hey, how many other novels do you know that are set there? (Yes, yes, gap in the market - maybe my next book will be about a Brit who moves there in desperate hopes of meeting her favourite actor.)

American experience of the day

I spent the evening at a political book club, where they loved me, particularly when I told them (truthfully) that I'd scheduled my flight home so that I could be there. (Thankfully, it wasn't drizzling, so it didn't get cancelled.) It was fascinating. We were discussing a book called "The Whites of their Eyes" (which I'd read a decent chunk of, and enjoyed) and the discussion was well structured and I was able to ask questions. I learned a lot and it was a great environment for me. I loved being surrounded by other politically minded people and the buzz as they were planning trips to neighbouring states to help register voters. "Shame none of us speak Spanish," one of them said, and I said that I did, and that I'd like to come and help on the campaign, at which point I was offered a spare room in Woodland Hills. The aptness of this will not be lost on you if you know who else is from Woodland Hills - if you don't, never mind.

LA experience of the day

I always find it a bit nerve-wracking using public transport for the first time in a new city, and never quite knowing how safe it is. But although I was a bit nervous on the way home (until I got back on the gold line to Pasadena, because only nice people live there, apparently) I'm very glad I did it - I feel like I had a truly Californian experience, from the man who was "moved by the Spirit" to sing to us, to the young men practising transcendental meditation and then engaging a quantum physicist in debate about which was the most appropriate belief system.

Claire's big America trip - day twelve

2011-11-13T07:32:00.001-08:00

What I learned:

- It does, in fact, sometimes rain in Southern California. Sometimes the sky is grey and you shiver your way through the Hollywood tour bus experience and try to picture how beautiful it would all look against the backdrop of the blue sky you have been promised.

- I am incredibly rubbish at making decisions. I had a whole day scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday), but once Brianna asked me if I wanted to go home with her instead and spend the day in Riverside, it threw me into complete confusion and disarray.

Where I ate:

Breakfast was partly hotel, partly Starbucks. Lunch was at the Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena - their white chicken curry was yum, but unfortunately a little too fillling so that even between us we couldn't finish a piece of cookie dough cheesecake. But wow - what a menu!

In the evening, we stopped off on the way to Riverside at an In and Out drive-thru. As fast food goes, it was really quite okay - at any rate miles ahead of anything we have in Belgium!

Tourist experiences of the day:

Yes, yes, go ahead and judge me - I did the Hollywod bus tour. It was interesting, and our guide was fun, but he did repeat himself a bit and it would have been better in the daytime. (Also, when I asked him if he'd ever met Bradley Whitford, he said, "who?", which never bodes well.) Better still would have been the option to hop on and off which is falsely advertised - having been told there was a bus every half hour, we turned up in good time for the 4 o'clock, only to be told there were only two more buses - at 4.30 and 5.30 - which severely reduced hopping potential. Also, the rate advertised online is $20, but they opened the bidding at $45 and tried to make out they were giving us an amazing deal at the original price.

Beverley Hills was amazing, though, and if I ever come back, I know where to go for star spotting. And I enjoyed feeling cool and trendy sipping a cocktail at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Standing where George Clooney has stood was also quite fun, as was spotting the various stars' names on the Walk of Fame. (Kermit the Frog being my personal favourite).

More exciting than standing where George Clooney has stood, though, was standing where Bradley Whitford has stood - and will stand in a few months' time. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't wait till January to come, so I could see him in ART at the Pasadena Playhouse. I think it had something to do with wanting to network in DC in time to come back to volunteer early in the campaign. I think it was the right decision. But what with my rubbishness at decisions, who knows?

Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda

2011-11-11T19:58:00.001-08:00

I don't watch many documentaries; the ones I do tend to be about the lives of American presidents or the development of the English language. I am afraid of pain - my own, and other people's - and what I watch tends to reflect that.

I've known about Staging Hope for some time: it's a documentary made by Melissa Fitzgerald (aka Carol from the West Wing, for those who are wondering) about a drama project in Northern Uganda. I thought it was going to be full of the kind of thing that's hard to hear and even harder to watch, the kind of thing that makes me flick channels when it's on the news because it hurts to be confronted with just how evil people can be and with my own inertia in the face of that same evil.

And there was some of that, of course. That, after all, is the reason d'être of the Voices of Uganda project and of the film which sprang from it.

But Staging Hope is warm and funny, too. It's the story of an unlikely friendship between a group of Ugandan teenagers - who have known nothing except war and poverty and the kind of suffering we would happily plug our ears with cotton wool not to have to hear about - and a group of American actors whose lives, like all of ours, are incredibly privileged by any reasonable standard.

It's the story, too, of the power of drama to connect people, to instil confidence, to help people tell about the things that they need to tell and that others need to hear. And if you're sceptical - if that sounds like Hollywood mumbo jumbo to you - then I defy you to watch this film and not change your mind.

Staging Hope is also something else, something that touched me deeply as someone who hopes one day to be recognised for her art. It's the story of one woman who used her relative fame and connections not for her own gain but for advocacy on behalf of others: to raise awareness of an issue, the war in Northern Uganda, which has been called the greatest forgotten humanitarian crisis of all time.

The children in the film repeatedly asked the Americans not to forget them; Melissa and her team have not. They are in regular contact with them, and are resourcing them to keep telling their stories and teach others to do the same. They've also been instrumental in bringing about a piece of legislation that has enjoyed unparalleled bipartisan support and that hopefully will contribute to ending the war and alleviating the suffering of the kids in the movie and thousands like them.

An issue like that one can feel dry and distant - bills debated on in Washington DC to help people we don't know in a country most of us couldn't place on a map. Staging Hope restores the human angle to the debate - more than that, it places it centre stage, no pun intended - and, rather than making me want to channel flick, it made me want to do something.

Claire's big America trip: day ten

2011-11-11T19:54:00.001-08:00

What I learned:

Californians are wimpy!

Let me explain. Right when I started planning my trip, I logged onto the barackobama.com site to see what political activities I could take part in while I'm here. I found the perfect one in Pasadena: voter registration on the farmer's market. I can do that, I thought. It's not as scary as phoning people, and there's always the chance Bradley Whitford might walk past and congratulate us on our hard work. Heck, he might even join in. It's the kind of thing he does, which is one of the reasons I love him. Anyway, I digress.

Today, I got an email. The event is cancelled, because it's going to rain. Oh, I thought, it's probably a tornado or something. Nope. Reading further in the email it turns out that drizzle is what's expected. Drizzle! Imagine if the rest of the world stopped doing things because it was drizzling!

Where I ate:

Breakfast was back at the Breadline, where I had so enjoyed my bacon and egg sandwich earlier in the week. I knew it almost certainly wouldn't be as good this time round, and it wasn't, but I was famished by the time I made it there, plus they were doing me a special favour - breakfast, they claimed, normally ends at 11, and it was well after that time - so I didn't mind too much.

Lunch was at the Newseum, and purely functional - I dived into the food court minutes before it closed (well, technically after it had already closed) so there wasn't much left. I had a small pepperoni pizza which was nothing to write home about but a little on the pricey side. Still, again, I didn't mind, or at least not too much, because it meant I only had to stop for about 15 minutes, and there was so very much to see.

Still, this left me with a quandary for dinner, because I had thought that in the absence of any blinding flashes of inspiration I might go back to We, The Pizza - partly because it's on that little stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue very close to the Capitol where I've found myself a few times this week - where the Hawk and Dove used to be and close to the Starbucks where I needed to be for the write in later on.

But leaving the Newseum and looking for a metro stop on the right line, then being distracted by some white tents on 8th Street, I came by a place called America Eats, which seemed like a fitting place for my last meal in DC. It had lots of traditional American food - including things like Clinton's gazpacho and some other president's stew. After much deliberation, I chose to have Southern Chicken alongside a waldorf salad. Now, if you think you've had Southern chicken because you've been to KFC, then let me assure you, you have not. It was delicious (though the third piece I had was a little dodgy and could perhaps have done with a minute or two more of cooking), and served alongside ketchup which is not like any ketchup I've ever tasted: blackberry rather than tomato based, with hints of Christmassy spices like nutmeg and cloves. Yum. The salad was excellent too, and I can't believe I almost didn't have the dessert: a delicious pecan pie served wtih ice cream and something called bourbon air. The combination of flavours was something else.

Where I wrote:

After my final latte at Peregrine, I walked along Pennsylvania Avenue, past We, The Pizza to the Starbucks on the corner of 3rd street (where I had popped in for a "scone" and a latte the morning I went canvassing). The upstairs was not remotely Starbucks like - it has enormous pipes on the ceiling, and a roaring fire (fake, but still) in the fireplace, and it was so very quiet as people sat and read or wrote. They kicked us out of that room at 8.30, which broke my flow a little (they are open till 9, and I moved downstairs, but it was very much not the same) and meant I had to finish off my six-page quota back in my hotel room. I may or may not have broken through the 10,000 word mark - I wish someone would invent an app where you can feed in handwritten pages and get a word count. Or maybe they have and I just don't know about it yet? Anyone?

Claire's big America trip - day nine

2011-11-10T06:03:00.001-08:00

What I learned:

Georgetown is not as far as I thought it was (and it's still gorgeous). My overwhelming memory of it last year was of sore feet, but this was chiefly because of the Sketchers Tone Ups I'd bought in New York. Bad, bad idea.

Also, if you are eating alone in a restaurant, and you want to take in the atmosphere and eavesdop on conversations for later inclusion in novels, you need to ask to be seated appropriately.

Where I ate:

Breakfast was a cupcake in Baked and Wired, a trendy, well, cupcake place on the same street as the soon-to-be-closed (sniff) Barnes and Noble. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not much of an American cupcake person - they're too, well, too something for me - too sweet seems odd to say, but maybe that's it. Or maybe it's the sheer amount of icing. After much deliberation, I opted for the Tessita - vanilla with dulce de leche filling and "satin hazelnut" icing. Exhausted from that decision, I found myself with another one to make - which coffee? So many options - even for a basic cappuccino. The problem with choices, I've realised this week, is that I invariably feel I made the wrong one. The coffee wasn't quite what I needed. But it was a nice experience nonetheless; they write your name in pink pen on the mug (cue new profile pic on Facebook) and I can tick Baked and Wired off in my guide book now. Ultimately, it's a little too trendy for me - and I like my seats to have backs - but I can certainly see the appeal, and I love the idea of having a whole wall covered with messages and drawings from previous customers, many of them on serviettes.

I splashed out on food today, all in all. Both lunch and dinner were in posh places, and oddly at both I chose some kind of fish with some kind of fennel. The first was Cafe Milano - where Anthony Wiener was spotted just the other day. The food was delicious but I made an error of judgement by asking for a table outside (the weather was gorgeous): I ended up alone on the patio like some kind of naughty schoolchild wanting to be let in to play with the grown-ups and it all got a bit awkward when I asked to move then change my mind and I'm sure the waitress rolled her eyes.

In the evening, I went to the Monocle, a classic DC establishment and worth it just for the picture of a very young and handsome Bill Clinton on the wall - along with dozens of other frames, signed pictures of important politicos past and present (most of whom, sadly, I did not recognise). Also, there were some great quotes on the wall - "if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog" and my waiter was super-friendly and very helpful with suggestions about DC sights (a little late, since tomorrow is my last day). But I had a similar experience where they put me in a corner by myself - though some of the conversations were loud enough that I could hear them anyway. They also topped up my wine glass on the house - twice - after checking I was over 21, which made my day.

Where I wrote:

I scribbled a few words down before my lunch in Cafe Milano arrived, but the bulk of today's writing was done in the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble in Georgetown. It was actually a perfect spot - I had a nice view, a comfortable chair (with a back!) and a wide surface. And of course coffee.

One of the best things about NaNoWriMo (although not in Belgium, unless you're Dutch-speaking) is the idea of write-ins: you basically let people know through the website: "I'll be in such and such a place writing, feel free to join me". It's good for moral support and also for meeting people. I've been to a couple of these now, and I went to my third in Panera Bread on Dupont Circle (where the barista and I had considerable trouble understanding each other). I got my word quota down, but I found it hard to concentrate - the people at the write-in were very chatty, and just behind us was a Spanish tutor teaching a group the basics of numbers and days of the week - always interesting to listen to. As a result, the whole Aaron/Louisa "I can't go out with you because you're not a Christian" conversation did not go well. In fact, she put it off till another day. He is very good-looking though, so I understand that.

DC experiences of the day:

Shopping for books in the Lantern in Georgetown - a second-hand bookshop that seems to be run by three elderly but very friendly ladies. I hadn't meant to buy anything (okay, I can hear you all laughing) but on the first bookshelf as you walk in they clevely put "latest books" - and they included two that I wanted to read: "Game Change" (yes, another political one) and "The Ninth Wife", which I'd looked at longingly in Politics and Prose the other day because it's set in DC, although possibly a little chick litty for me.

Attending a cultural event at the Sixth and I synagogue. Umberto Eco was speaking about his new book, and I had no idea he was so funny. More on that at some stage. I didn't buy, and, let's face it, probably won't read, "The Prague Cemetary", but I might well pick up "The Name of the Rose". A few minutes after I had this thought, he said that sales of his first book always go up when a new one comes out - presumably, he thought, because people realised "oh, but I haven't read the first one yet, and that one is cheaper". Ahem.

3BT: coffee, a small politico, and a victory

2011-11-08T20:34:00.001-08:00

1. Another day, another perfect coffee: filtro con latte seems to be what I have been waiting for all my life.

2. The cutest Obama supporter I've ever met joins us for the phone banking event: she's fifteen months and wearing a 2012 tshirt, and has the sweetest cheeky smile.

3. The Senator I canvassed for on Sunday - getting up at seven am and stepping in dog poo in the process - gets re-elected. It feels good to have played a tiny part in that.

Claire's big America trip: day eight

2011-11-08T19:59:00.001-08:00

What I learned:

DC is currently undergoing major renovation. There's netting on the ceiling of Union Station, for example, which is likely related to the recent earthquake. I'd planned my entire day around a walk by the Reflecting Pool - the favourite place of Senator Kate Leemans in my novel, and one of mine, too - and it is being totally dug up as we speak. However, once you get there, there really isn't much option other than to keep walking. Still, it was a gorgeous day, and now I have yet more photos of me by the Lincoln Memorial, in case last year's and the year before's weren't quite enough.

Where I ate:

At lunchtime, I paused my walk along the mall and jumped on the metro to the Oval Room. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but I had my mind set on it and I know me: once I get an idea in my head, the quicker I give into it the better. Anyway, it was a great decision. For a start, it's one of those quintessential DC places that I don't think they ever mention in the West Wing but they really should. It wasn't as big as I imagined, but it was funky (the good British funky, not the bad American funky) and classy all at once. The waiter was super nice and super friendly and made me feel welcome and not at all like a loser for eating alone.

And the food was good - I went for the chicken salad, which sounds dull, but once you add in avocado, and interesting dressing involving ginger it turns into something interesting. The chicken pieces were substantial, too - it wasn't one of those pathetic girlie salads consisting mostly of wilted lettuce leaves. (Though, aesthetically, I thought it could have done with a bit more green.) The desserts sounded a little fussy and complex for me - give me a brownie with ice cream and I'm a happy girl - but I was too full anyway. My one regret was that I didn't get to eavesdrop on any high-powered conversations.

Later on, I went back to We, The Pizza (there are a lot of cheesily named restaurants in DC, but I have to say that I really like this name) and discovered that - surprise, surprise - ordering pizza in a pizza place is a much better idea than ordering salad. I had the Mexian Spicy Pie (or something) - more chicken - and it was yummy. It cost $4.44 (my salad yesterday was $9.99, they seem to like those kind of numbers, which I don't think are a commentary on Herman Cane's silly tax plans) and for around $2.50 you can also get a refillable "soda".

Where I wrote:

In the morning, on my way back from Democratic Gain (where they failed to instantly offer me a job, tsk tsk), I more or less randomly found myself walking into a coffeshop simply called "caffe". It had lured me with its bright red Illy sign, and it turned out to be attached to a posh hotel, so you could sip your coffee - mine a filtro con latte, which seems to be a new thing, and is exactly what I have been looking for all these years - in an impressive lobby which is perfect for writing (or would have been if it has not been for the noisy conference guests). I wrote the first half of Aaron and Louisa's work dinner which later turns into a date.

The turning into a date part I wrote at Peregrine later that afternoon (yes, I am a creature of habit). I only meant to write a page or two, but I was putting off a decision about whether to go to a church community group or a political phone banking event, and I was in the flow, so I kept going. I've written about six pages today, which is more or less what I need to make my 1,667 daily words for NaNoWriMo. (I'm handwriting, so I have to estimate.)

DC experience of the day:

If you know me, you'll know that I hate phones with every fibre of my being, but politics is what brought me here, and I thought phone banking might be a good way to meet people. Which it was. I returned to the DNC offices for the fourth time in five days (Josh Lyman would be proud) and was directed to a room full of enthusiastic, friendly, welcoming Obama supporters, who were very patient with my stupid questions and explained to me that I was to call this list of people and ask them if they were "in for 2012". I was also meant to invite them to a few specific events, but since one of them never happens on the West Wing I was completely confused about it so I was pretty glad that I didn't get that far with anyone - I made around 30 calls, and most of those people were out. Oddly, the good-looking guy in the room seemed to get a lot of his calls answered, almost as if they knew. Go figure, as they say over here.

3BT: breakfast, coffee, and writing

2011-11-07T20:24:00.001-08:00

1. A delicious breakfast, the best I've had in a long, long time: crispy bacon and perfectly scrambled eggs on beautiful, beautiful bread.

2. Lovely coffee and fun, friendly banter in Peregrine, one of my favourite places to hang out.

3. For the first time this November, I make and exceed my NaNoWriMo word count. I am carried along by the story; I am getting to know my characters.

3BT: inspiration, a walk, a song

2011-11-07T06:46:00.001-08:00

1. At the Obama For America day of action, a young black guy speaks briefly and movingly about how the President's election showed him he too could do or be anything.

2. I walk from Union Station down First Street to Capitol South. The sun is setting; the light is almost magical; and I love DC.

2. My iPod battery runs out just as one of my favourite songs is finishing. I walk into church, and that is the song we start with.

3BT: winter, writing, and bread

2011-11-05T20:24:00.001-07:00

1. It's my favourite kind of day in DC: crisp and clear and filled with the colours of autumn.

2. Writing in a crowded cafe with three strangers, who begin to feel like friends.

3. Pretzel bread: unusual and dellcious and slightly garlicky.

3BT: luxuries, seasons, coffee

2011-11-05T06:03:00.001-07:00

1. The Washington Post is waiting for me outside my door this morning. I'm not sued to luxuries such as this one, and this is not just any paper. This is my favourite city's paper, and here I am right in the centre of that city,

2. They are cutting the grass in Washington Circle, and it smells like summer again.

3. I find somewhere that does café au lait just the way I like it. Ths is no mean achievement: I am not easy to please.

Am I crazy?

2011-10-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Until very recently, it looked as if my now yearly pilgrimage to ~~West Wing Land~~ DC was not going to happen in 2011. I consoled myself with thoughts of going for the cherry blossom festival instead, and happy if unfounded hopes of being accepted by American University this year and soon getting to live there full time.

I consoled myself too with the prospect of NaNoWriMo: every year, tens of thousands of writers worldwide indulge in (inter)National Novel Writing Month, the aim being to crank out a 50,000 word first draft in the space of a month. For the last two years, I've been on holiday and in the midst of another novel in November. Not this year. Maybe this was the year to give it a go.

When it turned out I could go to DC after all, I was not, initially, as excited as I would have expected to be. This concerned me - was it some kind of sign? It took me a little while to realise that I was, in fact, disappointed to be missing out on another NaNoWriMo.

And then it dawned on me: why are travelling and NaNo mutually exclusive? Particularly when my next novel, like my first, is going to be a doomed love story set in DC, and DC is where I am going?

This may be the best, or the worst, idea that I've ever had. But I've got a week in Washington this time, and I've taken the obligatory photos, done the obligatory tours, stood in the street where Josh threw snowballs at Donna's window (though I still don't know which house number it was - anyone?). I have time, in other words, to set aside a couple of hours a day to sit in a coffee shop and scribble in my notebooks. I also have plane journeys and train journeys.

And one of the best things about NaNo is its communalness (this is where I wish, not for the first time today, that there was a decent English translation of the word convivialité). People meet in cafés and bookshops and write together. Not much in Belgium - and the ones that do seem to be Dutch-speaking. This is one aspect where being in the US will work for me. Maybe.

NaNoWriMo requires stringent self-discipline, and I hesitate to be unrealistically harsh on myself and force myself to write 1,667 words a day on holiday - particularly in the 36 hours I have in Philadelphia and the four days I have in LA. But I have signed up to those NaNo regions just in case. The write-ins may actually be just the nudge that I need to keep me going at least every other day. And if I get ahead while I am in DC, I may not need to be too stringent.

By the time I get back from the US, I should have 25,000 words of a novel written - perhaps more, because I know from experience that jetlag makes me useless for a good few days after I get back (and to make it more complicated still, I then have a trip to the UK for a wedding.) I have no idea if it's going to work. But I'm certainly going to give it a try. I don't want to wait another year.

Quirky things about Belgium: the Atoma notebook

2011-10-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

Searching the internet for a picture to illustrate my next blogpost on essential tools for language learning, I discovered something I don't think I ever knew: the Atoma notebook is Belgian.

Not only that, but it seems difficult to purchase in other countries. Their website lists just one outlet in the UK; they are all but absent from Amazon.

I should have known this, of course. Maybe, on some level, I did once know. When I moved from Brussels to the UK in 1991, it was long before the days of Paperchase and I longed for the superior stationery of the continent. I don't know if Atoma notebooks were one of the things I'd missed. I hadn't been allowed them much, anyway, because they were expensive. And with good reason.

Here, they're everywhere. My little local supermarket has a stack of them every rentrée and sells them on a 3 for 2 deal. You can buy them in every shape and size, and they are wonderful.

For the uninitiated, what makes these notebooks so great is that you can rip out the pages and then replace them elsewhere in the same notebook, or even a different one, since their binding is identical across their range. This makes them a dream for those afflicted with OCD tendencies. It also makes them a dream for the perennially disorganised (with whom I have much more sympathy): you don't have to worry which notebook to take with you, just grab one, and you can play with the pages later.

You can buy dividers, too, and split your "learning Italian" notebook into a section for vocab, a section for grammar, and that kind of thing. They sell address books, too - no more running out of space under S, you can just steal a page from the Z section. Or how about a writer's journal? Jot down any idea, overheard dialogue, or descriptive detail on any page: no more worrying about whether it's in the right section, because that is easily fixed afterwards.

So, there you go. The Atoma notebook: just one of the things that makes this little country great.

On the birthday of a talented actor

2011-10-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

I don't know if Bradley Whitford seeks the limelight. If having legions of twitter followers is any indication of such desires, it would appear he does not.

But, you say. Hang on. Who chooses to be an actor if they don't have, somewhere inside them, this desire to be looked at, respected, recognised, admired, worshipped? Well, leaving aside the question of whether we all, to some extent, want those things, perhaps there are some who love acting for its own sake, for the sake of the art; perhaps all the baggage and the glitz that come with Hollywood is, to those people, incidental.

Those are the people with talent, or perhaps these are the people who, because of their devotion to their art, have studied and practised and read and observed: perhaps they are skilled, rather than talented. It is not the accident of birth that has made them what the are, but rather discipline, hard work, and determination.

The concept of talent is comforting to the rest of us: if some people have it, and I don't, well that's that, my bad luck. This mindset does not demand of me that I work hard, sacrifice sleep and time and money and sometimes relationships. I can leave that to the talented people. Who probably don't need to do that anyway, since they have it naturally. Right?

And so talent becomes revered, because it is almost magical. It is mysterious, after all: no one knows why some people have it and some don't.

Bradley Whitford may or may not be talented. What? I can hear the outcry from here. How could he not be talented? Have you not seen The West Wing? Do you not know that he won an Emmy or a stunning performance of a PTSD-afflicted Josh Lyman? Of course I know. And - unlike some Emmys, which are motivated by plenty of other factors beside the quality of acting, viz Best Supporting Actress, 2004) - his was wholly merited.

But here's what I also know: he studied for four years at Juilliard, where the hours are incredibly demanding - 8 am to 11 pm most days - and where they don't let even let you perform in public until your fourth year. You are not, in that time, seeking acclaim or pursuing celebrity. You are honing your art for the love of it. You are, often unglamorously, often exhaustedly, putting in a substantial proportion of those 10,000 hours widely believed to be required for becoming an expert at something.

Ah, you say. But 750 to 1,000 people apply to Juilliard each year, and they only take twenty. So there must have been something about Bradley. And you'd be right. But he had, importantly, already fallen in love with his art. He wanted to act more than he wanted to be an actor. He had fallen in love with the process, and the results would follow. He had found joy in the journey itself. Perhaps that's why he does not appear to be lured by the trappings of fame.

Is he talented? Probably. I want to say, definitely. Because I too am wowed by talent. But I'm also wowed by his devotion to his art. And I think you should be, too.

Fall in love with the process and the results will follow. You’ve got to want to act more than you want to be an actor. You’ve got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be, want to write more than you want to be a writer, want to heal more than you want to be a doctor, want to teach more than you want to be a teacher, want to serve more than you want to be a politician. Life is too challenging for external rewards to sustain us. The joy is in the journey.

- Bradley Whitford

A cure for writer's block?

2011-10-07T13:56:00.001-07:00

I know I (foolishly) claimed a while back that I don't suffer from writer's block. Turns out that I do. Only mine is not a case of sitting down and having nothing to write. I use writing prompts to get going and take it from there.

Mine is an odd internal resistance to writing. It's finding excuse after excuse, day after day, for not putting in the few minutes I promised myself I would. I don't know why I have been battling this. (Okay, not so much battling as capitulating.)

Only it turns out that I do know why - that there are lot of reasons, from being discouraged by my lack of success to being distracted by my wonderful but ubiquitous iPad and its many wonderful apps.

Actually, I think I knew about those, but I unearthed plenty more yesterday: it just so happens that I was on the chapter of The Five Minute Writer which deals with the "I am not writing because..." syndrome. You write down your reasons, then you write down positive statements to counter them. Things like, "I may not have been published yet, but plenty of people have enjoyed my work, including one or two agents." (Cheesier things were, in fact, suggested, but I didn't quite have the stomach for them.)

It sounds like a load of nonsense, doesn't it? The idea that this should somehow get me writing again? I only really did the exercise to assuage my guilt at having let yet another day go by without my daily quota.

And yet, today, I have found within myself the self- discipline to switch off the internet on my main computer while I wrote, and then agai later while I watched the West Wing and then wrote. (I have, in fact not checked Facebook for, oh, three hours now.) And lo, the West Wing inspired me again. This morning, I did a writing prompt and continued until after the timer had gone off. This evening I typed up almost 3,000 words and now I only have 12,000 to go till I can resubmit to the agent who liked me but wanted a longer book. Most of that is not new writing. But the inner resistance has gone. I want to write again. And now I feel like me again. And mightily relieved.

Now, it could be completely unrelated to the exercise I did yesterday. After all, as all West Wing fans are aware, "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after it, therefore because of it) is hardly ever true. But hardly ever is not the same as never.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Watching Castle

2011-10-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

I've finished Gilmore Girls, I'm in danger of overdosing on Friends, and I am, as always, rewatching The West Wing but only at weekends and on writing days.

So I've given in. After months of being told I really ought to watch Castle, I tried the pilot tonight.

Here's why I liked it:

The undeniable attractiveness of Nathan Fillion. (Although, I can't help thinking, perhaps predictably, that Bradley Whitford would have made a great Castle.)
The feistiness and intelligence of Kate Beckett.
The quirkiness of the secondary characters - I liked that there is a mum, and a daughter. It makes characters more rounded, somehow, when you see them interact with other people in their lives, in particular people of different generations.
The New York setting, because, you know, I can say "I've been there" every few minutes.

And, of course, the premise of the whole thing: he's a writer. He says things I want to quote, like "there's always a story" or "I never did much like reality". His motivation for doing almost everything is finding a new plot. He has writer friends who help him deepen his storyline. He gives a fan a signed advance copy of his next book. He looks right into people because he wants to find the story.

These are all things to which I can relate. Well, not the advance copy. Not yet. But I made a note to self: I can send Brad and Janel copies of Inevitable before it hits the shops, thus gaining valuable months.

Anyway, back to Richard Castle. I like him. A lot. Despite his arrogance. Or maybe because of it, a little bit. Maybe it's (still) the Josh Lyman thing.

3BT: work, work, work

2011-10-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

1. An old student of mine from London who recently returned for more French lessons via Skype never fails to make me laugh with his very British dry wit. "Well," he reponds when I apologise for the meanness of one particular exercise, "you've got to have your fun."

2. Someone buys my book. (I know, I know, but it'll be a while before the novelty wears off.)

3. My first English conversation class goes really well. I set them a pair exercise and they chat away. They're enthusiastic and have a good level of English and plenty to talk about.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: banks, lessons and a thank you

2011-09-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

1. The bank unblocks my card; I won't have to wait days for a new PIN after all. It might not be poetic, but it is a relief.

2. Equally unpoetic: the owner of the restaurant says I can use a corner of his place for my English conversation classes. I'm looking forward to planning lessons around articles in Time Magazine. Not that teaching grammar isn't fun too, in its own way.

3. I work some Twitter back channels and get a message to one of my very favourite famous people in the world. I get a "thank you" back. (If you knew me, you would understand.)

3BT: sunshine, verbs and an old friend

2011-09-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

1. I know I've said it before, but this weather... Amazing. Hard to believe it's almost October when it feels like June.

2. My student, who claims he doesn't remember anything after a three-month break, nevertheless recites almost all his verb conjugations perfectly, and remembers there is no liaison after "et". Seriously, it's the little things.

3. An old, old friend whom I have not seen for years gets in touch to say she's going to be in Brussels.

3BT: a word, sunshine, and the floor

2011-09-27T14:59:00.001-07:00

1. Somebody I have coffee with uses the word "lackadaisical" - one of my favourites, and I've only ever seen it in books.

2. I read my writing magazines in the sunshine.

3. I am tidying my flat, finding lots of Time Magazines I didn't know I had, and seeing the floor again.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My book, a new(er) oboe, and learning

2011-09-26T15:15:00.001-07:00

1. A twitter friend of mine reviews my book on his blog then spends all day tweeting that people should buy it.

2. I get to swap my old music school oboe for a newer one.

3. I start watching the History Channel DVDs I got for my birthday, and they're exactly what I wanted: fifteen minutes or so summing up the careers of each of the US Presidents.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: sun, food and Inevitable

2011-09-24T14:41:00.001-07:00

1. The sun is shining and it feels like spring.

2. I feel well enough to eat proper food - instead of the plain pasta or bread I've been mostly surviving on for the last couple of weeks - and I eat both my meals in front of the West Wing, two of my favourite episodes.

3. I've been toying with the idea of adding some words to my novel, and I find as I type up some pages that I am still in love with m characters, and in particular with Brad.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: cute toddler, good food and loo roll

2011-09-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

1. I spend almost all day with my big sister and her adorable little boy, who smiles and laughs and points at things enthusiastically, and even lets me hold him for a little while. Seriously - he is such a cutie. This, by the way, is the same toddler nephew who is soothed in the middle of the night by West Wing episodes, possibly because he heard a lot of it from the womb, or possibly because he has very discerning taste.

2. There is melon with ham at the wedding.

3. The cheap loo roll I buy from the local supermarket appears to have mathematical equations on it. Ones with Greek letters. Ah, Belgium.

Books by Belgians or Based In Brussels… Can you Help? |

2011-09-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Can anyone help out this bibliophile? And if not, you might find the comments on his post useful - there's a good list there!

Books by Belgians or Based In Brussels… Can you Help? |: Books by Belgians or Based In Brussels… Can you Help?
If all goes to plan I will be off to Brussels at the end of next week on a mini break (for work, so not so much of a break actually). That sounds more leisurely than it actually is as the itinerary will be quite full, but there is some travelling around and ‘time of my own’ to go and explore, wander the streets and find little cafes to sit and read in. And that’s where I wanted your help. What books by Belgians or based in Brussels could you recommend?

I’ve got the obligatory travel/city guides from the library…

…But I do like to have some fiction from the country with me too. Some crime might be good, so could some quirky literature, or indeed a classic. In fact any suggestions are welcome. I will be taking Daphne Du Maurier with me but have room for one more book. Can you advise?

'via Blog this'

Oh to be in a foxhole...

2011-09-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

The more observant of you, or at least those of you who have read the post I wrote in the middle of the night, will know that I have just started a wordpress blog for professional purposes. (Don't worry, this one is continuing, precisely so I can write the kind of thing I'm about to write.) Wordpress is great in lots of ways - and awful in others - but one of the things I love is its daily writing prompt. They don't call it that, but that's what it is.

I hadn't decided I was definitely going to do it, but today's question was too good not to respond to.

What person, real or fictional, living or dead, would you want to share a foxhole with if you were on a battlefield?

I know you all know who I'm going to say, so I'm not really sure there's a lot of point to this blogpost at all, except that I haven't spoken to anyone all day apart from the woman ahead of me in the queue at Delhaize, and this feels like contact with the outside world.

So, anyway. Yes, Josh Lyman. But then I thought, yes, but Josh Lyman tends to freak out a bit in these kinds of situations. Plus, you know, ideal opportunity for a romantic moment, which would be wrong, since Josh belongs to Donna. (People about to accuse me of a spoiler, please note I'm not saying he ends up with Donna. I'm just giving my opinion here.)

So, and maybe this is just because I have just watched Somebody's going to jail, or maybe it's because I've met him in person and know that he would make a pleasant visual distraction from the fighting, or maybe it's the writer thing, or the caring sensitive thing, but maybe I would go for Sam Seaborn instead. Also, I don't know - Donna is always looking after Josh. In that situation I'd want someone to look after me, not the other way round. So maybe Sam is a better bet. Especially given the whole potential for romance thing.

Stepping away from the world of fiction (or, er, not), I think we all know who I'd actually go for. Someone a lot like Josh Lyman, only not married to Donna. (Again, I'm not saying Josh and Donna get married. So we're clear.) Someone who looks a lot like Josh Lyman, whose interesting conversation (and dimples) would no doubt distract me from the whole foxhole situation. And since I've seen him handle a gun, I'd feel safe, too.

How about you? Whom would you pick?

A new muse, peut-être?

2011-09-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

... and just like that, Brad Pitt is suddenly in my life.

Now, don't get me wrong, he's very attractive and all, but I honestly hadn't given him any thought for oh, months? years? (Except, that is, for those few occasions when people in my writing group - from a young married guy to a elegant senior citizen who was once married to an Ambassador - have questioned my decision to give the name Brad to the hero of Inevitable. "I don't know," said Ann. "It just reminds of that film star, you know? It's not a name for a diplomat. He should at least be Bradley." They don't realise, of course, that he's named after an entirely different Brad - who, in fact, is a Bradley - and that his name is therefore immutable. Anyway, I digress.)

I've had the oddest of weeks. (Don't worry, I'm coming back to Brad Pitt). I've been ill in bed and yet unable - of course - to do anything sensible like sleep and read and listen to Martin Sheen's soothing voice on Desert Island Discs (well, actually, I did do that - did you know that Bill Clinton used to watch The West Wing on the plane? Anyway, focus, Claire, focus). I say "of course" because now that I have my iPad, I apparently lack the capability to be offline for more than about five minutes at a time.

I had an excuse, though. I needed to market Conquering Babel. And in so doing I came across a plethora, a multitude, a legion of expat magazines and expat blogs, and just like that, somehow, over a number of days, it came to me - the thing that should have come to me years ago, really, and kind of did, but I ignored it. The blogging thing. The blogging about languages thing.

It's not glamorous. It's not going to impress anyone at parties. It's not going to make me rich. But still, it's my thing. I've learned a lot over the last few years - a lot about languages, teaching them, learning them, and also a lot about writing and blogging and tweeting. And now all these things have come together in my shiny new blog, conqueringbabel.wordpress.com.

And of course, I need content. But one thing I've also learned a lot about these last couple of years is Google Alert. And my shiny new alert arrived a couple of nights ago with the news that Brad Pitt was learning French. (Actually, if you Google "Brad Pitt learning French", he's apparently said quite a lot about it over the years. Who knew? And yes, okay, I Googled "Bradley Whitford learning French", just to compare, and you get this, which while it is perfectly pleasant, does not actually have anything to do with learning French.)

So I blogged about him. Brad Pitt. Name dropped, if you will. Today (the very day when I happened to watch the Friends episode where he guest-stars, the coincidence of which is frankly a little spooky), I finally got wordpress sort of vaguely figured out and so I reposted the quote on that blog: the inaugural post, in fact. I added a photo of him. It didn't show up. Oh well. Wordpress is too clever for me.

And then, when I couldn't sleep at roughly 2.30 am, I opened up my iPad again, and clicked to my Wordpress blog. And there he was, right on the front page of the iPad version of the site. As though he were the theme of my blog. And let me reassure you, he is not.

But then something clicked in my sleep-deprived brain and I realised that a picture of him and the word Babel seemed to go together. And they do. Because of course, the film Babel? (Which, no, I haven't seen, since it's neither an intelligent romantic comedy nor written by Aaron Sorkin.)

I don't know. That's a lot of coincidences. Maybe he should be my mascot? Maybe I should put him on the front of my Conquering Babel book? Dedicate it to him? Too much?

Misused phrase of the week: "by definition"

2011-09-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

This, from one of my favourite political podcasts, the New York Times' Caucus.

"...these special elections where, by definition, very few people turn out to vote..."

Really? That's the definition of a special election? That very few people turn out to vote?

I thought the definition of a special election was an election to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections. (Well, in truth, I have just checked on Wikipedia in order not to make an idiot of myself, because, although my knowledge of American politics is significantly better than it was in my pre-West Wing days, it's still far from complete.)

Anyway, back to the point at hand. The definition of a special election is not one in which few people turn out to vote. Therefore, the phrase "by definition" is not correct here. It would work in a phrase like this one:

"... these special elections, which by definition are not held in November..."

or even "... these special elections, which by definition are usually unexpected..." That is stretching it somewhat, but we can surmise that if they are not "regularly scheduled" it's because something has happened out of the blue. It's shaky ground, but you could just about argue it still stems from definition.

But low turnout? Of course, that's part of the nature of special elections. (Or by-elections, as we Brits call them.) So the phrase they wanted was by their very nature, not by definition.

Why does this matter? I was going to say, it doesn't really, so you can all stop listening to me now. And you can, but it does: precision in language is important. For accurate communication. For mutual understanding. And also, most importantly of all, just because.

All the cool kids are doing it...

2011-09-16T05:49:00.000-07:00

Brad Pitt, on learning French:

“All our kids are speaking French, so now we have that second language infused into our home. Everyone is learning another language. I’ve got the Rosetta Stone for French sitting right on the table in the bedroom, and it’s going to be loaded into my brain. I know there are certain synapses in my brain that just freeze dead at French, but I have to learn it because our kids are speaking it. Even the twins as babies were saying certain things in French.”

(source: icydk.com)

Readable French books - yes, they really exist.

2011-09-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Are you learning French? Ready for the challenge of reading a whole book?

Stop! Don't pick just any book. You may be feeling it now, but three pages into the latest translated Sophie Kinsella, your dictionary will be soaked with tears of frustration. (You do have a dictionary, don't you?)

And let's take chick lit as an example. It feels easy to read in our language. But it's full of slang, in-fashion vocabulary, and the kind of words you probably aren't learning at your intensive EU course. It's hard. So you will feel stupid, and you feel doubly stupid because you will (wrongly) think that the thing you are finding difficult is in fact really easy.

Here are a few you can start with instead.

I grew up reading Le Petit Nicolas, and he is ace. His adventures in a classic old-fashioned French primary school will raise a smile.

Not only that, but it's written in the passé composé - ie, not in that odd tense we inexplicably call the passé simple, which makes it much easier to understand - and will painlessly reinforce all those past participles your French teacher has been trying to get you to learn.

Also, it's not a novel, but rather a series of stand-alone adventures: much more manageable to tell yourself you will read one story this week than, say, one novel in three months.

Another childhood classic is the adventure of this little boy who finds headlice in his hair, and befriends them. It's short, and funny, and full of word play (nothing too complicated, though), and the illustrations alone make it a worthwhile purchase.

Another oldie but goodie (okay, so I grew up in the 80s, and I'm not going to apologise for that) is Astérix. There is, of course, plenty of word play in this too, which makes it not the easiest of reads - though it also makes it fun once you work out what all the names are supposed to mean. My all-time, hands-down favourite is Astérix chez les Bretons, in which very British expressions are translated verbatim into French - so don't base your colloquial language on it, it's roughly as reliable as Google Translate - but it will make you smile. Plus, you'll discover some things about British history that I'll bet you never knew...

If you're more advanced, you might - might - want to try Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan. It is as French as French gets - deeply philosophical musings on the inner life of a French teenager during her stifling hot summer in the South of France. It's also beautifully written and - again - short. Honestly, you cannot underestimate the feeling of achievement that comes with finishing a novel - and those feelings fuel further learning.

Have you discovered any good French reads?

The books mentioned here, and others like them, can be found here if you're in the UK or Belgium, and here if you're in the US.

3BT: carrot soup, another review, and a new website

2011-09-13T16:22:00.001-07:00

1. A lovely friend brings me home-made carrot soup and freshly squeezed oranges, and sympathy for my being ill at home.

2. I spend a few hours contacting expat magazines to see if they want to review Conquering Babel. The best-selling UK-based mag for Francophiles says yes. Potentially, this could mean a boost in sales, and it gives me confidence that I have a marketable product.

3. Having struggled with Wordpress, I've found a website designing and hosting service that does exactly what I wanted and is easy to use: weebly.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Language learning in Belgium: where to start

2011-09-13T03:32:00.000-07:00

Are you an expat in Belgium? Wondering what your options are for learning French or Dutch?

Wonder no more - my piece in the Bulletin is here.

3BT: work, a review, and my favourite actor

2011-09-12T14:48:00.001-07:00

1. I have not one but two emails from people enquiring about lessons. I can't remember the last time this happened.

2. A twitter friend of mine whose blog has a large following agrees to review my book, Conquering Babel.

3. I watch Bradley Whitford give an interview about his forthcoming event, fundraising for a cancer charity that sounds like it's doing fantastic work. It makes me smile when celebs I love use their fame for good.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: delayed trains, compassionate moments and community

2011-09-11T14:48:00.001-07:00

1. The train is delayed, by just long enough for me to catch it. That is what's called grace: wholly undeserved favour.

2. I spend the afternoon remembering 9 11 with expat Americans. I am deeply moved by stories of heroism, of compassion, of selfless courage, like the firefighters in the documentary, but also like the two men who picked up a lady in a wheelchair on the 58th floor and carried her down.

3. I sign off from the weekly twitter #writechat and mention I have a cold. Strangers I will likely never meet wish me well. I am appreciating the writing community more and more.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Hooray for second babies!

2011-09-11T00:58:00.001-07:00

Congratulations Janel Moloney!

Not only is she on Broadway this month (well, technically, off Broadway), she's pregnant again - and looking amazing.

As an only child with strong views on the desirability of siblings, I'm always doubly excited about second babies. Am I allowed to hope it's a girl, for thr matching set?

Women's Fiction: an insulting term?

2011-09-08T04:23:00.001-07:00

I thought I was going to be irritated by the Women's Hour piece on women's fiction. I thought it was going to be one of those tired and tiresome discussions about how we don't use the term "men's fiction", and how women's fiction is what we would call literary fiction if it were written by men.

But I found myself agreeing.

For context: some customers complained to WHSmith about their shelving only fluffly, light, pink novels under "women's fiction", which seemed to imply that women only like that kind of writing. WHSmith responded by removing the label. Great customer service?

Maybe.

There is no doubt that a market for those novels exists, and those people, shopping in a hurry, want to be pointed to the kind of books they like. So removing the signpost is not particularly good customer service.

The thing is, though, that we have a label for the kind of book that the customers were referring t0: "chick lit". Some women like those books, some women don't.

"Women's fiction", however, is much broader than that. I think it's a useful term. Where would you put The Time Traveler's Wife if not there? I am a woman, and I like to read books like that. I have no problem with grouping them together so that I can find them.

But The Time Traveler's Wife doesn't belong in "chick lit". Nor, for that matter, does Inevitable, but since Authonomy don't have a "women's fiction" section, I had to use the "chick lit" label and couple it, slightly oddly, with "literary fiction". If it were marketed to be pink and fluffy and placed alongside Sophie Kinsella's novels, I would be mortified. Or at least as mortified as I could be if my book were actually being published.

My plea is this: call chick lit "chick lit", or "light romantic reads" if "chick lit" is going to offend some people, but please use "women's fiction" for something broader than that. The label is useful, but only if applied correctly.

Conquering Babel: A Practical Guide to Learning a Language

2011-09-06T04:07:00.000-07:00

Yes - it's out. It feels good to have my name come up on an Amazon search!

So far, I've sold eight copies - fame and fortune are still a way off, but now that my Authonomy ranking seems to have plateaued, it's fun to watch another little number go up.

My first comment on amazon.co.uk read as follows:

As a French person who had to learn English, I know first hand the challenge of learning another language! I love this book, it is easy to read, full of practical tips, highly motivating and also full of fun comments from the author. Definitely great for any beginners and also people who shy from difficult academic books. There are also a simple glossary that helps to understand grammar and some recommended websites. Get it! It is a bargain!

On amazon.com, it was this:

Ever catch yourself in Ignorant status? Have you ever felt misunderstood or you don't understand? Do you want to raise the chances of avoiding alzheimers? Do you just want to look cool sometimes in front of colleagues and peers or impress that hot date?
If you said yes to any of those question above then you need to LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

SILLY! I recommend this book, its inexpensive, it'll give you good praticals.

On (probably) not meeting Janel Moloney

2011-09-01T03:47:00.000-07:00

This morning, I woke up disorientated. My alarm clock was ringing and I wasn't sure why. Or what day of the week it was.

Then I remembered, and all was briefly well with the world, until I recalled that Janel is going to be on Broadway this month, and I didn't know about this until two days ago, and it's too late to do anything about it, even if I did have any money, which I don't.

You have to understand, I have been waiting two years for this. I have Google Alerts set up solely for this purpose. (They were useless, by the way, since the correct time to tell me about her appearance would have been roughly six months ago, not the day after Twitter had already informed me.) It worked for Stockard Channing a while back - and off I went to Dublin.

Which was disappointing. The play was great - The Importance of Being Earnest, one of my favourites - but, frankly, the other actors were stronger. She needed to work on her voice projection and her British accent. All of which I'd have overlooked if she'd been nice to me at Stage Door.

She wasn't. She made it clear she couldn't be bothered to be there and would much rather be inside with the other stars. She dutifully posed for a photo, though, and signed a couple of things. And it was my first West Wing actor sighting, so I still walked away excited and - yes, I'm slightly ashamed of this - shaking.

Then it turned out that not only Richard Schiff but also Elisabeth Moss were going to be in the UK earlier this year. Well, I wasn't going to miss out on that.

For Richard Schiff's play, Smash, we headed down a busy street to a theatre whose existence could easily pass unnoticed. It was old and smelled musty the way that a favourite book passed down the generations might.

We had astonishingly good seats - right in the front row - in a small, intimate theatre, for a play that sounded like - and was - my kind of thing: fun, not too emotionally intense, and featuring a young, slightly insecure writer. Richard Schiff was great - though I'll never get used to seeing him smiling - and so was the rest of the cast. After it was over, my friend abandoned me to my fate when I said I couldn't promise not to embarrass myself or her when I met him.

As it turned out, she would have been, not proud exactly, but not mortified, either. I couldn't think of a single intelligent thing to ask him and stood there looking slightly starstruck and wishing the other people hadn't asked him about the West Wing, because (being a true fan) I knew that was the last thing he wanted to talk about, and it had put him in a bad mood. But I did not say or do anything of which I am ashamed. But he, too, was dutiful - I have a great picture of the two of us and a signed something or other.

A few days later, we went to say Elisabeth Moss in The Children's Hour. The two experiences could not have been more different. We paid four times the price for a ticket right at the back of an enormous theatre. This play was emotionally intense, though I was very distracted by the fake and wobbly American accents. And then, afterwards, we waited.

There were barriers set up and all that stuff. Eventually, eventually, the actors all came out, including Keira Knightley, who was gracious and kind. Now, I know, in my head I know, that Elisabeth Moss doesn't owe me anything. That acting night after night must be exhausting. That maybe she was tired or ill or just needed to get home. That having to smile for cameras all the time must be irritating.

But she didn't come out at stage door, and let's face it, I was cross.

And the thing is, what happens if I fly to New York (which I wasn't going to bother with at all this year) and go to Broadway and wait for ages and Janel doesn't come out at stage door?

Or what if she comes out and I don't get to speak to her?

Or what if I get to speak to her and she is less than lovely?I have no reason to imagine she would be. But wouldn't it be devastating if she were?

What if she speaks to other people more and I get jealous as an only child is prone to - doesn't she know who I am, my addled brain will scream, and the extent of my loyalty?

Or what if she does know, and it freaks her out?

Or what if I do get to speak to her, and she is patient and gracious and kind, and all I can do is babble incoherently about the West Wing and how beautiful she is in real life and how much I want to be Donna Moss and what was it like to kiss Bradley Whitford and can I please have his phone number? And then kick myself afterwards for not being the sophisticated, intelligent writerly type I want to project?

So much potential for disaster. Maybe it's actually a blessing that I'm so far away from New York.

You get what you pay for... don't you?

2011-08-21T04:46:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking, recently, about self-publishing for Kindle. Not for Inevitable - I'm not yet ready to give up on the traditional publishing route, and I maintain that if a novel is not picked up by a publisher, there is usually a reason, hard as it is for me to feel my baby is unloved in the world.

But I've been writing a book about learning languages - I'm actually more comfortable calling it an eBook, since apart from anything else it will be short, and of course because I'm planning to e-publish.

The received wisdom about becoming a bestseller on Kindle is this: price it as cheaply as possible.

I don't like this. I don't like it at all.

Doesn't it ever cross your mind, when you are buying something - is there a reason why this is so cheap? It's one of the arguments I make in my book, in fact - if a tutor's prices seem to be too good to be true, be wary - they may not think of themselves as a professional. So, by the same token, if you are putting out your book for next to nothing, are you not sending out the message that it's, well, not very good?

According to this month's Writing Magazine, "In the US, people do seem to equate price with quality and many refuse to buy books at 99 cents as they assume they aren't very good. The market in the UK definitely seems to be different on that score, with readers seemingly happy to snap up a bargain".

I love bargains as much as the next person - hence my obsession with second handbookshops and inability to come out of them empty-handed, even when I have a Eurostar to catch and already far too much to carry - but I am siding with the Yanks on this one.

3BT: writing, coffee, and summer

2011-08-20T15:04:00.001-07:00

1. I lie in bed, wishing I weren't awake, and inspiration strikes for the article I've been simultaneously excited about and terrified of writing. Three hours later, it's done, and I'm pleased with it, and excited that my name (albeit my pen name) is hopefully, for the first time, going to be in at the bottom of an article in a magazine that can be bought at WHSmith.

2. My new coffee machine gurgles and gargles and splutters, and makes me the perfect, grain-free coffee.

3. I put on suncream for the first time this year. It smells of holidays. After half an hour's swimming and thinking about my writing, I sit in the sunshine sipping at Schwepps Agrum', reading Mslexia (which, coincidentally, also has my name in this month). I feel tired and relaxed, almost as if I'd spent the day on the beach. I love the summer - better late than never.

3BT: books, the West Wing, and a nice famous person

2011-07-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

1. Time to read. Not just on trains, and not even just in bed last thing, but curled up on the sofa in the middle of the day, too. Reading a chunk in one day is just great for really getting into a book like the Finkler Question. It's also great research for my next novel - I've got itchy fingers...

2. I re-watch what might be my favourite West Wing episode ever, or rather episodes, plural, because they're a part 1 and 2, at the beginning of season 2. I do this with a glass of wine and some actual real home-cooked food. I just don't think any TV will ever compare to this, so it's bittersweet, but it's certainly easy on the eyes. Unless you count the tears.

3. A Hollywood star does a really nice thing for a friend of mine, and I'm partly involved. He does it in a very understated way (and he is not normally understated), but that doesn't stop the few of us who know about it squeeing that he's amazing and we love him.

3BT: coffee, books and birthdays

2011-07-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

1. I meet my friend for coffee at 6 pm. After about an hour, I check my watch for the time: 8.20. Now that's quality conversation (and a comfortable Starbucks chair).

2. A book comes in the post; not just any book. This is a sample copy of a friend's novel - self-published for now, but I am looking forward to the day when we are both properly published and hanging out in literary circles together.

3. Plans are coming together for my birthday. Hooray!

3BT: a story, a baby, more stories

2011-07-23T15:11:00.001-07:00

1. After four hours' sleep, even a breathless gallop up the hill to the station by no means ensures that I will make this train. But I do, and unable to keep my bleary eyes open I turn to my iPod and listen to Joshua Ferris reading out a chilling and cleverly allegorical story by George Saunders. I love these New Yorker Fiction podcasts: they feel like bite-sized pieces of an MFA in Creative Writing.

2. Across from us on the train, a blond, blue-eyed baby boy gurgles and giggles in the arms of his attentive father.

3. Books, books, books: Amsterdam is full of bookshops. I come home laden down with American magazines and new stories to sink into over this quiet part of my year.

3BT: Authonomy, magazines and toothpaste

2011-07-07T17:24:00.001-07:00

1. I spend most of today on Authonomy. I didn't mean to; it just happened. I find some great books, and am buzzing with my new backings. It's a lot of fun, in a nerdy kind of way.

2. The magazine I write for comes, complete with my article on learning a language. They've called me a 'language tutor and writer'. They've highlighted my favourite sentence - something about not doing your homework between lessons being like not cleaning your teeth between dentist appointments. And they've called it 'Speaking in Tongues', which amuses me.

3. Speaking of teeth, I have a new type of toothpaste today. Its colour reminds me of Blue Minty Gel, which I loved in my childhood and have missed: one of my earliest memories is trying to dilute it in water so that I could drink it. Well, this new toothpaste tastes very similar. Thank you, Colgate.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Belgian taxis...

2011-07-07T03:50:00.000-07:00

Note: this was an assignment for my fantastic Gotham Writers course, in which I had to write about something I hate. Hence the negativity.

I know I should be grateful that the company where I teach twice a week pays for a taxi home. And I am. Really I am. There’d be no other way of getting there otherwise – public transport in these parts being what it is – and I’d be missing out on a lot of easyish money.

But oh, Belgian taxis. Firstly, they are never on time. Well, not never, not exactly, but when they are late, they are properly late. And there is never an apology. We Brits are compulsive apologisers, and it grates to live in a country where saying you’re sorry is optional at best. Like the woman at the taxi firm’s office who stated that she took no responsibility for the mix-up which had caused her to cancel a taxi which we had not asked for her to cancel. That it was actually her fault entirely is almost insignificant: in England I like to think she would have said “I’m sorry about the inconvenience” or at least “I’m sorry, but it really isn’t my fault”, even if she hadn’t meant it. And not hearing “sorry” makes me cross, even crosser than I already am when I’ve waited forty-five minutes for a taxi.

And then when it arrives, you ought to be grateful, or at least relieved, and you try to be, you try to tell yourself that you are imagining the smell of stale cigarettes impregnating every fibre of the car. But you are not imagining it: it is every bit as real as the no smoking stickers on every door. At least today they haven’t sprayed the odour-eating chemical which only serves to increase the nausea and headache brought on by residual cigarette smoke.

But even without all that, you’d still feel nauseous: there’s the stop-start driving, the swerving round corners, the fear when the driver keeps turns most of his attention to the form he is filling in. (“Don’t be so nervous, Madam, I do this all the time,” he says when you ask him if he wouldn’t mind waiting until the car has stopped.) There’s the screeching to an abrupt stop a few metres past the red traffic light then reversing back up the main road to rectify his position. (Again, of course, no apology; no acknowledgement that any of this is anything other than a mundane everyday occurrence.)

It’s only a ten-minute drive, but it’s the most stressful minutes of my week, and it takes a little while to shake off the nausea. I’d complain if I thought it would make any difference. Instead, I update my Facebook status accordingly and vow to blog about it someday.

3BT: encouragement, taxi drivers, and friendship

2011-07-05T15:53:00.001-07:00

1. I wake up still smiling from all the encouragement I got from my writers's group yesterday.

2. A different taxi driver picks me up. He hasn't smoked in his car and he doesn't drive jerkily, and this plus the sunshine puts me in a good mood. We chat, and he tells me he's not a true 'aclo' - the word for a purebread Nivellian. He was born in this town and one of his parents is from here, but that's not enough to count. When I tell him I'm Enlish, he says I have no accent (which I don't, being half-French, but Belgians often like to tell me they can hear one). If every taxi driver were like him, I'd have chosen a different topic for my Gotham Writers Workshop assignment on 'something I hate'.

3. A friend is having a tough day, and I'm there for her at just the right time.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: an early Saturday, writing, and reading

2011-07-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

1. I make it out of bed well before 9 am on a Saturday, and discover it's actually quite a nice time of day to be out.

2. It would be too hard to choose one moment of the "One Day I Wrote" workshop - the reason for my early departure from home - so here is a sample: discovering a fab new place to hang out in Brussels, meeting great new people, writing a story in 45 minutes, talking to a Real Live Author, and hearing nice comments about it ("you can tell you're a professional", says one new friend when I tell her I do some journalism).

3. Part of the day is a book swap. Since I took two along, I come away with "Nocturnes" and "Bel Canto", both of which have been on my to-read list for a very long time. "Nocturnes" will be next - i needed a shortish book to counterbalance the long, long reads I've embarked on lately.

3BT: geekery, writing, and newish friends

2011-06-30T15:58:00.001-07:00

1. Tomorrow's first lesson is cancelled. Not only does this mean a lie-in, it means I can watch the numbers change on Authonomy at the stroke of midnight - a momentous monthly event. And if that weren't enough, there's also a by-election to geek out over.

2. I sit down to do my fifteen minute daily writing prompt exercise, and thirty minutes later I'm still writing what might turn out to be a short story; better yet, it even ends with a line that has inexplicably been in my head for the last year or so.

3. I'm walking back from the station, and a car pulls up alongside me: it's a friend from the Saturday Bible studies. She gives me lift home, with her two daughters, whom it's a pleasure to meet. I feel good about my little town and the people I am getting to know here.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3BT: time, stories, and a refreshing breeze

2011-06-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

1. I'm told that over the summer there will be no Tuesday or Friday lessons. I have been given the gift of time, and I don't intend to squander it.

2. At my writers' group, inspiration strikes for stories and novels: I want my friends to hurry up and write them so I can read them. Marie mentions a photocopier, and this, for some reason, is the trigger. I begin to write. It seems my worries about life post-Inevitable were unfounded. There are stories in me yet.

3. The oppressive heat breaks at last, and I watch the rain flow down the train windows. If I'd caught the one before, as I wanted to, I would have had to walk home from the station in the downpour. Instead of which, I let a welcome breeze refresh me and read The Grapes of Wrath as the occasional lightning bolt lights up the sky.

Please allow me a tiny bit of bragging...

2011-06-23T09:42:00.001-07:00

I've been kicking around the addictive world of Authonomy for a couple of months now, and my book is currently hovering at number 101. People seem to like it, even guys, and here's an eloquent, thoughtful and positive comment I got today, from someone whose book is highly ranked, and deservedly so.

Pretty chuffed!

What initially attracted me to this was the languages aspect, and the teaching thereof. Being a language teacher myself and an avid learner, I have a soft spot for any book that deals with foreign tongues. Inevitable certainly doesn’t disappoint on that front. Not only is there an entertaining representation of the language learning process but there is also an exploration of that sometimes strangely intimate relationship that develops between teacher and student during one to one lessons, where the teacher veers unexpectedly into the waters of friend and psychologist. It’s an idea I’ve often thought about exploring in a novel myself so it’s both interesting and satisfying to see it so well realized here with Kate and Brad.

That being said, this is not something I would necessarily read were I to find it in a book shop, the chick lit tag marking it as something outside of my usual comfort zone. That I enjoyed reading this as much as I did then speaks to the quality of the writing and the story. This is very ambitious storytelling, moving as it does from past to future, from relative obscurity in Belgium to the corridors of power in Washington. From the pitch, I might have thought this too ambitious but any such fears are quickly allayed by the very authentic feel that the future political aspect has. The relationships between Kate the politician and her aides feels well researched yet natural and her recounting of her political career is incredibly interesting. And I very much enjoyed the idea of looking back from the future to the present. It gives an interesting slant to the POV. Given that The West Wing features in the story I had to wonder whether another US TV show, How I met Your Mother, was at all an influence in this particular regard.

What else? This very up-to-date in a way that I can’t remember many other books feeling. Ipods, The West Wing, Obama etc. This definitely struck me as a keen use of observation. It may not seem a particularly remarkable achievement at first but I’m often irritated by TV shows and books that seem to ignore the contemporary world to suit their storylines, e.g., a set of characters tries desperately to get hold of another character but not a one of them has a mobile phone for some reason. So the contemporary observations were something I enjoyed. My only slight worry for the book as a whole, however, stems from the same issue. Will setting a lot of it so much in the here and now, with contemporary references, make it date quicker than most books? I hope not and it’s certainly not a major fear since so much of the story takes place in the future. This is more just me thinking aloud and nitpicking at something since there seems nothing else for me to crit.
Hmm, so not much useful in this here comment I imagine. If this is chick-lit then the sometimes snidey pronunciation utilized when invoking the genre should be removed for Inevitable is a very classy, innovative and mature piece of work.

Snapshots of Starbucks

2011-06-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

The muffins taste the same, the coffee tastes the same. A little piece of America, or London, depending on my mood. No purple sofas, but the chairs are so comfortable, the décor so tasteful with its as yet untarnished wood flooring, that I can let that go.

American kids take pictures of themselves and their frappuccinos, high-fiving each other, exclaiming loudly about how great it all is.

Good-looking guys who would not look out of place in DC have what I presume to be an intelligent conversation, just within my eyesight.

The barista thanks me for being a good customer when I don't express the depths of my disappointment at the lack of wifi. (It helps that I've been prewarned.)

My friend Kyle and his wife Amy come over and say hi. "I'll be spending some time here," he says, and I wonder if I'll be bumping into him a lot, if I will become friends with "regulars", if it might be time to bring out the "I <3 Democrat Boys" tshirt, just in case one of those regulars turns out to be a Josh Lyman far away from home.

The staff are polite, smiling, efficient. They greet each of us in three languages, including British English: I'm asked if I want my coffee "to take away". It's the little things.

At 9.25 they cheer together at a job well done, the first successful day over.

They kick us out, still polite, still smiling, at 9.30.

3BT: coffee, opinions, and the nicest ever rejection

2011-06-20T14:26:00.001-07:00

1. The Starbucks sign is up at Gare Centrale, and I see a man in a green apron. Two more sleeps until my next latté.

2. At my writers' group, I am, as so often, confidenty advancing a strong opinion. 'You should write for the Guardian,' says my friend.

3. I get a personalised rejection from a well-known agent. She says there is a lot to like about my book - a controlled tone and an ability to captivate the reader. I've had, I think, my first 'near miss', and it feels good.

A damsel in distress..

2011-06-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Anyone out there know the Voice Recorder app for iPad?

I recorded something for work the other week, and didn't touch it for a couple of weeks - in part, I think, because I was worried I might accidentally delete it. When I could no longer avoid opening the app, I did so - and my recording had disappeared. I know I took it because I played it straight afterwards. I didn't delete it - certainly not knowingly.

Does anyone know where this file might be hiding, or how I could find it?

It's pretty urgent and fairly desperate so I would be forever grateful!

Anthony Weiner and the Evil American Press

2011-06-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Well, American press, you have what you wanted.

You did want Anthony Weiner to resign, didn't you? Because the way you hounded him certainly didn't indicate otherwise.

Yes, what he did was pretty terrible. But you know what was also terrible, and possibly even worse? Your treatment of him. Your revealing to the world that his wife is pregnant, a private detail that should have remained private until she chose to tell people, probably in about six weeks. Your insistence that he should continue to be ridiculed and embarrassed, when he was clearly contrite and ready to move on and keep serving his country.

Right-wing American press, of course you wanted his resignation. But Democrats? This guy has fought hard for the liberal cause; yet you too got you wanted, by ensuring he remain in the news: every day a different prominent Party member calling for his resignation. This was certainly not the way to get the focus back onto the President's agenda.

You left him, in the end, with no choice. I hope you don't regret this decision. I suspect, though, that you will.

A West Wing wedding...

2011-06-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

For those of us who follow the West Wing characters on twitter, yesterday was a lot of fun.

Charlie and Zoey got married in Manchester, New Hampshire. There was much merriment, despite the drama when Donna thought she was going into labour eight weeks early. Overcome with the excitement of it all, Josh forgot about his sensitive system and thought it would be fun to ride one of the Bartlet horses. Not having any clue how to make a horse stop, he then had to be rescued by secret service agents. Meanwhile, Gail the Fish stayed behind in DC and amused herself by swapping round the letters on the keyboards.

They also took the opportunity to highlight a couple of charities that people might want to donate to, in honour of Charlie and Zoey: the National MS Society and Missing Kids.

This morning, they are all hungover and perhaps a little grumpy.

Check out the #bartletyoung2011 hashtag. For those who doubt the reality of it all, there's a photo of Zoey in her wedding dress, and another of CJ and Danny arriving together.

Makes you wonder who these people are, running these accounts, though. Do they not have lives? Are they all separate people? Did they coordinate beforehand? Will Aaron Sorkin give them all jobs in his next show? We can but hope.

Happy birthday Aaron Sorkin!

2011-06-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just pausing to reflect on the impact Aaron Sorkin has had on my life.

Without him, I might never have...

- known or cared about American politics

- known much or cared much about America, full stop (sorry, guys)

- visited DC

- been introduced to my very favourite actor

- been inspired to write the book I have just finished

- fallen in love with the English language

- known who Rob Lowe was (yes, I'm that culturally inept)

- gone to Hay to meet Rob Lowe, and ended up meeting another author who inspired me, listened to me, and may well be helpful to me later down the line...

- met Rebecca, who's now one of my best friends, and made countless other friends online

I realise I'm repeating the word "inspired". Which, when you come to think of it, is quite apt.

Aaron Sorkin, you can be my three beautiful things for today.

3BT: the BBC, Inevitable, and Starbucks

2011-06-06T12:21:00.001-07:00

1. I log into the BBC website during my lunchbreak. A banner informs me that it wasn't a vicious rumour: soon we foreigners will be able to access iplayer. Hooray: no more kicking myself because I forgot to record Question Time.

2. Many unexpected backings and kind comments on my book. I even get an email back from an agent saying she 'likes the tone'. It's still a no, but it makes my day.

3. Another tweet, another happy shriek: the Gare Centrale Starbucks is apparently not just a rumour either. It's going to open on 22nd June. I'd been looking for something to use my countdown app on.

3BT: journalism, writers, and good food

2011-06-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

1. I do my first ever interview as a freelance journalist. I'm not quite ready to be the next Mariella Frostrup - maybe in time for Rob Lowe's next book - but it goes well, with no need for prodding or artificial sounding questions. I've chosen my subject carefully; I knew this lady would have fascinating stories, and I am happy to be proved right.

2. At my writers' group, a newish member reads out her story and beams when we all (deservedly) congratulate her on her excellent writing. I recognise that smile, and it feels good even to see its reflection on someone else's face.

3. Honey-glazed duck, accompanied by a glass of red wine.

3BT: Rob Lowe, encouraging writers, and more on my book

2011-05-29T16:54:00.001-07:00

1. I wake up still grinning about my Rob Lowe encounter yesterday. The buzz lasts all day, and is rekindled when I see that the Telegraph quoted him answering my question.

2. I wanted to go to a talk by a certain author; it's sold out, but turns out she is doing another one, straight afterwards. It's free, and much more relaxed, with far fewer people there. She's metres away and answers my questions. When I ask her to sign my book, she asks me why I have been taking notes. I explain I've just finished a novel of my own. She takes the time to ask me how it feels and ask me to email her. I don't know if she has any idea how exciting that is for me, especially given that hers is a book I've wanted to read since it came out last summer.

3. My book continues to climb the Authonomy chart; I'm now safely inside the top 250.

Rob Lowe: so much more than a pretty face

2011-05-28T16:11:00.001-07:00

After I have stopped grinning, after the buzz of today has waned, here's, I think, what I will remember about Rob Lowe at Hay. Yes, the blue eyes. Of course. But it was the honesty that I didn't expect.

'I walk out and you guys laugh and I feel great, and I don't know what that's about,' he said.

I don't know either, but there was something winsome about his admitting that, straight up. It made me sit up and listen. (Okay, I was already sitting up and listening pretty closely.) It made me identify with him on some level: I was also the equivalent of the nerdy kid in school who didn't get picked for the soccer team.

He talked about how his fame gives him a sense of communicating, of being heard, of control, all of which were lacking from his childhood. He talked, too, about the freedom of being sober and how he no longer worries what other people think of him, and that freedom is what enables him to be funny.

He mentioned his love of literature and language, passed on to him by his mother; he talked too of his crafting his book. I was a little skeptical about his having written it himself, but I no longer am, and now I get to feel a kinship with him as I do with all other authors. Oh, to be in a room with him and get to chat about all of this stuff at length.

He talked, too, about the hurt he felt as a young man when he saw a star he admired throw away a lollipop he had passed on to him - the contempt it showed. I knew then that I would see a different attitude, a willingness to engage with his fans, that I haven't really seen in any of the four other West Wingers that I've met (or failed to meet) so far. I was right: he was gracious, and fun. He posed for cameras; at the book signing, he joked, he winked, he made eye contact.

And he was also realistic about what adulation often is: he knows somewhere deep inside him that that adulation can't be all about him, or who he is, or his work. Often it's objectification - young people, especially, using him, in some way, to work through their own issues. Things like that show a depth of thought that I hadn't necessarily expected to see in him.

Predictably, I also loved what he said about us West Wing fans: he said that in the end, the actors were just in it, but the show belongs to us now, that it's part of us. I think on some level that shows a special kind of humility, of being willing to give a gift and let go of it. I was suitably impressed.

3BT: happy Hay moments

2011-05-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

1. 'No, you can't meet him,' says the well-spoken young man at the registration desk as I glide into my question about whether or not speaking to Rob Lowe was going to be a possibility. He's smiling. 'I know he has an army of hard core fans...'

'But at something like Hay, I mean surely...'

'You'd be surprised.' He rolls his eyes. 'People lose all sense of decorum.'

'But,' I persist, not one to be deterred so easily, 'some of those people might have come all the way from other countries to meet him.'

'Then ' he says, 'I suggest those people take a long, hard look at what they're reading.'

I redeem myself with a not entirely true claim that it's really just the West Wing that I'm obsessed with, and he just happens to be a West Winger, and I walk away happy, having enjoyed the banter.

2. Books and board games: two of my favourite things. Turns out the two have been combined into one - kind of a cross between Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, incredibly clever, and a lot of fun.Turns out, too, that the guy I spend a contented half hour playing it with invented the whole thing, and is the designer behind those funky Penguin mugs and notebooks. I come over all starstruck, not for the last time this weekend, and full of admiration. I even consider appointing myself his assistant, Donna Moss style. I really do think he may find me valuable.

3. The talk on the making of the King James Bible is fascinating, inspiring, and unexpectedly funny. Since Adam Nicolson is signing his book afterwards, I decide to buy two copies - one for me, and one for my step dad, who's interested in this kind of issue. We have a brief exchange about how mystery and simplicity meet in the King James, and how important that is to understanding the character of God.

I'm holding Rob Lowe's book, too, as well as my Hay programme with a rather dashing picture of him. Adam Nicholson asks me how Rob was.

'Not till this afternoon,' I say.

He signs my book, then the other one.

'To Roger,' I say, 'he's my stepdad.'

'Not your boyfriend, 'because obviously that's Rob Lowe.'

He writes 'to Roger,' then pretends to add, 'you're no Rob Lowe.'

I walk away smiling again after more enjoyable banter, and of course anticipation. Which, as it turns out, was well-founded.

Mission accomplished: on meeting Rob Lowe...

2011-05-28T11:30:00.001-07:00

I'm not proud of it, but I should probably feel worse about it than I do. Which is, let's face it, not even a little bit. Although I do feel a little bad about not feeling bad, if that means anything at all.

Yes. I queue jumped.

Rob Lowe's talk had just ended; I had been one of the lucky few endowed with a microphone and had asked him a relatively coherent question, without breaking into a fake American accent. Then, like all the other hundreds of people, I pegged it to the bookshop to get his autobiography signed. I snaked in and out of courtyards, though I don't think I elbowed or pushed anyone. In the meantime, I made a new friend, who was doing the same.

But oh, the size of the queue.

You have to understand, I had come all the way from Belgium for this.

I had also almost lost my chance to seize the microphone, out of uncharacteristic graciousness, when I let someone else go first, and then it was taken from me and I had to fight to get it back.

My new friend said, 'I'm here with someone who's disabled, and I'm going to ask if we can go to the front. Come with us.' I found out both their names and, feeling like a fraud, I followed them to the front. Someone saw, and told me off, and I am still British enough for that to fill me with shame. I hung back. I gave my book to my new friends. But, bless them, they persuaded me they needed me. And then took pictures of Rob signing me book.

I did not lose all sense of propriety, and stammer 'I loved you in the West Wing' as I had with Stockard Channing (which is not, in fact, strictly true, though I do love the West Wing, and she was in it). I was not momentarily paralysed as I had been with Richard Schiff. In fact, I think it's fair to say I have nothing to be embarrassed about at all, though in the photographs ot does look, inexplicably, as though his publicist is trying to restrain me. He looked straight at me - and oh, those eyes - and he winked at one friend and joked with the other.

And, my word, the man is beautiful.

Location:Hay Literary Festival

3BT: technology, rain, and more technology

2011-05-26T14:08:00.001-07:00

1. Breaking news: the UK based Writing Magazine that I've been dithering about subscribing to has just launched an app for iPad, less than a week after the arrival of mine. It's almost as if they knew.

2. The smell of the pavement after springtime rain.

3. "This train is really quick," says the well-dressed youngish man in the seat across from me on the Eurostar. He's right, of course, and in a time where we have lost our capacity to be wowed, it's refreshing to hear someone pause and acknowledge techonology.

3BT: a friend, a park, and sleep

2011-05-25T09:16:00.001-07:00

1. I have lunch with a friend I haven't seen in far too long.

2. My friend tells me about a little park I didn't know existed. It's noisy because of the busy road running alongside it, but some of that is masked by the fountain, and it's a great place to sit in the sunshine and finish my book.

3. My early(ish) lesson tomorrow is cancelled. After twitter-induced silliness and ensuing sleep deprivation last night, I badly need the lie-in.

3BT: a squirming toddler, an unexpected gift, and the return of an essential website

2011-05-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

1. "Mikael," I say to my toddler nephew, "look at me". But I'm hiding behind my iPad to take the photo and he wriggles and squirms to see me and giggles when my head pops out from behind the camera.

2. "I have something for you," says my sister. It's not my birthday or Christmas so I'm not expecting anything. It's a mug with a scrabbler's player: God grant me the serenity to accept the words I cannot change, courage to play the tiles I can, and the wisdom to use the triple word score.

3. The much-missed westwingtranscripts.com is back up online after a sudden, mysterious absences of a few weeks. This may not sounds noteworthy, but in the world of Claire, these things matter.

Life after the novel

2011-05-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

Nobody prepares you for life after the novel.

Nobody prepares you for the emptiness.

I have an idea for my next one. That's all it is for now: a gem of an idea. But that's all Inevitable was until I sat down with exercises from the Five Minute Writer and my characters leapt to life. I could do it again. I could sit down and flesh them out.

But I'm not ready.

I'm not ready, partly, because I'm scared.

What if the next one isn't as good?

What if the voice I found for Kate only works for Kate, and I can't find a different one which is also still me?

What if all my characters are carbon copies of Kate, with her love of books and coffee and grammar and politics?

What if I don't know enough about the themes I want to explore, and I make a fool of myself, or worse, offend people?

But those aren't the main reasons. The main reason is that I can't let go of my first novel.

And that is partly a good thing. Although I have proclaimed it finished, posted it on Authonomy, drank numerous glasses of pinot grigio blush in its honour, I know it is not, actually, finished. There is tweaking to be done. There may be scenes to rewrite, or - oh, the pain - to delete.

And how can I immerse myself in that world again to make those changes if part of me has moved on to another one already?

I may be walking down the street or listening to a political podcast or reading a book, and a new idea may present itself that would work well as a sub-plot or an extra scene. Granted, this hasn't happened in a while, which was one of the signs to me that it was, in fact, finished. But I don't know how to have an idea and not make it part of Inevitable.

And I miss it.

I miss looking forward to a Saturday which starts with coffee and a writing prompt and ends in new pages or better sentences.

I miss the process, and I miss the writer's high.

I miss hanging out with my characters, and I am afraid of being unfaithful to them if - as I must - I fall in love with a new cast.

But how to move on? And how to keep writing? And what to keep writing, when I'm not ready to let go of my first novel?

Nobody prepares you for this. I really wish they would.

Ah, Belgium.

2011-05-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who finds this a little ironic?

3BT: novels and iPods and magazines

2011-05-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

1. In my inbox sit four versions of the cover for my novel. I love them, and I'm so grateful to a Twitter friend whom I've never met, who took the time to design them.

2. I ask another taxi driver if he's found an iPod. It's the fourth time I've mentioned it since I remembered leaving it in his car this time last week, but I wasn't ready to give up. "No," he says, "we've checked." Then, "hang on, what does it look like exactly? It is a thing with earphones?" He pulls out my little pink nano from his glove compartment. Hooray! I can now catch up on political geekery to my heart's content.

3. My Writing Magazine awaits me in my postbox. The May issue took forever to arrive, so I'm delighted to be receiving this one just a few days after it comes out: the same day, in fact, that it arrives in American "stores". Three cheers for globalisation.

A survey on books and personality types...

2011-05-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

I would like to conduct my own little non-scientific survey.

Well, actually, if we're talking wishes, I'd like to spend three years being funded to study this scientifically, but since that is -sigh - unlikely, I'm going to need you to help me out by answering the following questions:

1. Do you know your Myers Briggs personality type? What is it?

2. What are five books that you really, really like?

3. Do you have a favourite "genre" of books?

4. What do you think of the idea of someone never quite getting over someone, to the point where they are never able to be happy in any other relationship? Is it unrealistic?

I'll outline my theories in a later post...

3BT: a Belgian supermarket, spring, and a two-year-old.

2011-05-09T11:28:00.001-07:00

1. The local supermarket (think Tesco Metro) is celebrating its third birthday. There is cake laid out on the table: individual slices on paper plates, with plastic spoons, all free for customers so they can share in the celebrations.

2. I do a French lesson on Skype, with a guy whom I started teaching as winter was arriving. Now, it's spring; he's sitting on his balcony and the birds are singing at me through the computer screen.

3. He tells me his two-year-old has been picking up some French: "oh la la," she says, and "je ne suis pas contente". I imagine that's unbelievably cute.

3BT: an unexpected pleasure, reading in the sunshine, and a train journey

2011-05-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

1. Shaving my legs is pure pleasure with my new Venus Breeze razor. (And no, they are not sponsoring my blog.) It's purple, and it smells nice, and my legs are soft and uncut.

2. I sit in the sunshine, all stillness aside from the birdsongs, reading The Book Thief.

3. Just enough time on the train journey for an unexpected Scrabble game.

3BT: old friends, and a new friend, and magazines

2011-05-05T07:34:00.001-07:00

1. Two emails from ex-students -both very excited to hear from me - and with them memories: of Costa Coffee on Thursday mornings with one, of posh meeting rooms with beautiful views over the river in Canary Wharf with the other, and of good times together, learning, laughing, being friends.

2. Clare from the original 3BT website follows me on twitter. She's inspired me, made my life better in a small but not insignificant way. Plus, with the name thing, I feel a kinship.

3. My back issues of the Writer Magazine arrive from America. A writing magazine. From America. Really, that should be two beautiful things.

3BT: the book, unexpected music, and my fantastic job

2011-05-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

1. Oh, so many wonderful comments about my novel, and the admittedly ephemeral pleasure of being Number One on the Authonomy site... "I want another chapter... I need another chapter!" says one guy - yes, a guy - and then four hours later he reiterates, "I need another chapter! I want to know what happens next!"

2. On Avenue Louise, a man in a dinner jacket plays the trumpet from the inside of a car, with the window wound down. He addresses his music to a woman walking along the street. She laughs in flattered pleasure.

3. I spend part of a lesson flicking through OK! and discussing Kate Middleton's wedding dress in a mixture of French and English. Sometimes I can't believe my job isn't a hobby.

How you can help me get published...

2011-05-02T15:13:00.001-07:00

You know the novel I've been yabbering on about for months? Well, a sneak preview of is now available!

If you wanted to drop by and read anything from a paragraph to 15,000 words - please feel free!

If you want to comment, back, or rate me, it could help me get published too, so needless to say I'd really appreciate that... and if you're feeling like you want to be super helpful you could post the link to your Facebook wall too.

The site is run by publishers HarperCollins, so it's totally legit - no worries there! They ask you to register but it only takes a minute, and you don't get spam.

Advert over!