Friday 28 January 2011

Tales from the Ghostwriter...Once upon a time.

I was three, which some of you might recall is a wonderful age to be.
No worries, no hang ups, completely self absorbed and self satisfied, just content to be the centre of your own universe. (Well, that's how it should be for all children, and I feel desperately sorry for those where it is not}.
It's that surreal time of life when anything is possible, and the real world hardly ever intrudes, apart from when someone deems you need to eat, sleep or bathe... no wonder small children rebel!
I was an unusual child, at least I'm led to believe I was. I'm a fairly unusual adult, it's not too large a stretch of the imagination to suppose I was already showing signs of eccentricity back then.

Let me ask you something...did you ever feel like you were here with a mission of some sort to fulfill?
When you were three, did you have the slightest inkling of "what you were going to be when you grew up?"
Some of us do you know.
This forms part of the basis for the second book I am currently working on. The idea that before birth, we map out our lives with lessons to be learned, and themes to follow, karmic patterns to overcome, soulmates to meet. I'm gathering some very interesting stories together!

So,to reiterate, I was three, and I was obsessed with drawing, Couldn't get enough paper to satisfy my addiction, I would draw compulsively on anything I was let loose on.
Not that my drawing was amazingly good or anything...blobby people with rudimentary bodies, legs but no arms, eyes and mouth but no nose, and hair so long it ran off the page. Around every head was a strange goldfish bowl shape. Aunty Mary thought they were space helmets! Actually I was depicting what I could see...aura's, shining brightly around all my loved ones, if I had had crayons I would have shown them in all their rainbow colours. But, I only had a pen.

"What are you doing Jane?" my Nana asked one day.
"I'm writing a book" I replied in a self confident, no-nonsense sort of way, "it's what I'm going to do when I grow up".
I knew you see, forty-two years ago, I had an unshakeable vision of what I was here to do.
Eventually of course the drawing of stories became the writing of them. I spent half my life penning works no-one would ever get to see.

Sometimes life gets in the way of our dreams, but sooner or later, we all become what we planned long ago.

Maybe you should take out some of those childhood ambitions and dust them down a bit. If you're an accountant, but have always wanted to be a lion tamer (for more advice see Monty Python), take it in small easy steps at first.
Maybe try banking?...No, on second thoughts, perhaps not!

Anyway, I didn't stay three forever.
Here I was, a fully grown woman, about to get a wake up call.

It was pretty alarming at first...
I'll tell you next blog x

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Tales from the Ghostwriter: So just who is JLCGhostwriter?

Tales from the Ghostwriter: So just who is JLCGhostwriter?: "Well, whether you're interested or not... that is the question I have been asking myself for a long time! Who is this audacious woman, who d..."

So just who is JLCGhostwriter?

Well, whether you're interested or not... that is the question I have been asking myself for a long time! Who is this audacious woman, who dares to think she might have something to say to you, dear reader, that hasn't already been said a thousand times before, by people more literate, more intelligent, and with far more clarity and wit?
Where has this upstart been hiding for the past forty years, you may well ask?
Well, I asked anyway.

I woke up one morning at the age of forty and decided it was time to have a mid-life crisis. I was getting dressed, preparing to go my job with a mortgage company, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror (never a good thing to do first thing in the morning, caught off guard without make-up, and before you've had chance to heft things up and suck everything in...urgh), I recoiled a bit, naturally, and then, feeling a bit braver than usual, I decided to have a good look after all.
I didn't recognise the woman who was there. It wasn't just that the first flush of youthful beauty had vanished (I've always been a bit delusional), or that I seemed to have changed from a tall, svelte figure, to a short, round, slightly hunched one... no, what was really missing was gone from behind the eyes.
This woman had got so used to living her daily grind of pointless routines, that she was virtually dead from the neck up, the lights were still on (well, just), but there wasn't really anyone home anymore. Certainly no-one worth mentioning anyway.
What a shame.

When you have a revelation like that it's generally time to take action.
So I did, I went to work, and I proceeded to do my useful-but-oh-so-dull-job, because I still needed to pay the bills... and I made a point of not looking in mirrors again, naturally. No-one wants to be shocked twice in one day do they?

But somewhere something had changed. The clock that marked the moments off my ever decreasing life cycle was ticking away. Somewhere, someone or possibly something, had set an alarm.
Perhaps you might say it was to be a wake up call...
For Jane Cranmer, the one day soon to be Ghostwriter, the clock had started to tick... at first the hands began to go backwards.

Once upon a time...