Back to school. Hooray.

So, the children went back to school today after nearly four weeks of Easter holidays.  Home-schooling parents everywhere, I salute you; not so much for the schooling, as for the actual having them in the house part of it. 

I heaved a sigh of relief and headed straight to the gym.  I've posted on various occasions about the audio books I listen to while exercising, but I've recently hit a snag as my iPod has refused to talk to the computer and whilst I have diligently continued downloading my Audible subscription allocations, they haven't been transferring. Finally, I treated myself to a new super duper iPod (when did they get colour screens??) at duty free on the last holiday and took it for its first gym visit today.

The new 'I'm prepared to talk to your computer' iPod now has nearly 40 audio books.  So much choice!  And such a bad one I chose!  In a moment of weakness a while ago I downloaded The Shakespeare Secret after hearing an interview with the author on Radio Four (Front Row possibly?  Not sure).  Anyway, I knew at the time that anything which was being compared to The Da Vinci Code was doomed to annoy me.  And so I spent 30 minutes on the cross-trainer today almost groaning out loud at the hackneyed, clumsy, over-written, heavy-handed nonsense.  What makes it especially painful is that this is just the sort of twaddle I write.  I'm convinced that several phrases I heard are also nestling like vipers in my own botched manuscript.  Which lead to a sort of Jekyll and Hyde moment.  One voice in my head whispering 'Hey, if she can get this stuff published, so could you.  You could be published.  Imagine, published' , whilst the other voice tartly points out that the stuff is awful and that I would rather pluck out my own eyelashes than put my name to something similar.  Leaving me (the bemused onlooker) wondering really whether I shouldn't just give it up and settle down to being a reader.  And switch my gym listening to the 34 hours of Our Mutual Friend instead.

If anyone has got past The Globe Theatre burning down twice in consecutive chapters, please do leave me a comment to tell me if the book improves.

Comments

[Diana]

Oh, I so loved reading this. I have written very, very little but that which I have written surprised me with its awfulness. I read so much beautiful prose, how could I spit back out such drivel? Made me realize that there really is an art to the writing thing. :)

(I am sure, however, that your writing is not as bad as mine and that you are being too hard on yourself!)

[Sandra]

Its entirely true I have that feeling of 'but I recognise, appreciate, respond to good prose... so how come I can only babble out bad genre prose'. My writing is absolutely as bad as I've described and yet it is, as you say, incredibly valuable in making me marvel at those who can do the good stuff. My constant reading of writing manuals and author biographies is a search for that holy grail of 'how'. And like most (non genre) grail searches, doomed to failure. Sigh.

[Stefanie]

I'm certain anything you publish will be much better, giving people hours of ipod listening pleasure :)