48 Days and Counting

 I leave for a trip to the UK in 48 days.

Can I get my longstanding Work in Progress (WIP) The Return of the Summer Fish completed in a good draft form by then? (And by longstanding, I mean I have been working in it, on and off, for about 15 years. And have many draft scenes to prove it.)

Since Creatively Human: Why We Imagine, Make and Innovate came out just two weeks ago, I have been at loose ends. I have a number of abandoned projects, and until recently little energy or motivation to get back to any of them.

But Summer Fish is close to my heart, a memoir-based midgrade novel about two sisters efforts to reconcile after almost a year apart. Set in the Middle East where and when I grew up in the late-50s.

Everyone who shared that time with me is gone - my parents and brother. And my sister, on whom the character of Lena is only very loosely based, is now living with vascular dementia in a care home in the UK.

I am the only one who remembers.

Over supper last night I decided to take this on. To see what I can come up with in 48 days. (I do love a deadline. Seriously.) To put in at least two hours a day. To turn left (towards my desk) rather than right (towards my art counter) when I come into the study. To see if I can pull it off.

Good start this am. 1,400 words of a new scene entitled 'Banisters'. Blog update. And next I plan to recruit a writer friend to be my 'Accountability Partner' - to check in with every few days to check that I am still on track.

Updates to follow. A short synopsis of the novel below.

 

A day trip into the mountains of Iraq.
Me on the left, with my mother (holding my brother Stephen), and family friend.

Back in England, ready for school. My sister Judith at centre.

 

Return of the Summer Fish - Summary

Eleven-year old Pauline (Lena) has been at boarding school in England since her eight-year-old sister Beth moved with the family to Iraq—where their father works with an oil company.

    In her letters Beth has been boasting about drinking tea with sheikhs in heir desert tents, racing camels and stowing aboard date boats.

So Lena arrives in Basra expecting an exciting summer. Instead, she finds the new culture and climate overwhelming, her younger sister unwelcoming, and her own place in the family uncertain.

Told from Lena's point of view (The 'Summer Fish' out of water), a story about sibling relationships, managing expectations and adapting and thriving in new environments.