Tales from the Ghostwriter...Make hay while the sun shines.

I had waited all my life to start writing my book. I had forgotten for a lot of years who I was, and what I had planned to do. My three year old self knew precisely what the future held, but my forty year old self was absolutely clueless!

In the early months of that year something very sad happened. My Uncle Jim, who was eighty years old, and a wonderfully wise old chap (he had been very cantankerous in his younger days, but had mellowed out beautifully in his twilight years) was taken ill.

A cold night in January saw myself and my husband Mark darting about the streets of Bradford, trying to find a way through to the hospital. I had just finished work, Mark had picked me up, it was teatime, pouring with rain, and everywhere was gridlocked. Nonetheless, we were determined to get there before visiting hour was over, no-one else was available that night, and we didn't want Uncle Jim to go without visitors. Somehow we got there with half an hour left to spend with him.

Poor Uncle Jim, he was really pleased to see us, but obviously in a lot of discomfort, the conditions in the hospital were certainly not conducive to relaxing. We made small talk, as you do in these situations.
"It's no fun getting old you know," he told us, "make hay while the sun shines!"
On that note the bell rang to announce visiting time was over. I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, we smiled, and then with a wave at the door, we left.
That was the last time I saw Uncle Jim, a few weeks later he passed away.

Around summer of that year I had what could be termed a break down. It was nothing dramatic. It sort of crept up on me, an inability to focus on what I was doing, a certain forgetfulness, feeling stressed and bemused at work, with things I would have easily taken in my stride before. Sometimes, travelling home on the bus, I would find myself starting to cry, just a little bit, and I really didn't know the reason. (mind you, if you've ever travelled on a Bradford bus, you might think that was justification enough!)

"Take some time off, go and see your doctor," my friend and team leader, Jo, advised, at work one day.
So I did.
"What appears to be the matter?" the doctor asked.
"Well you see..." I began, and then burst into tears, "I seem to keep doing this all the time!"
She passed me a tissue, and wrote a note for four weeks off work.

So there I was. Four weeks off work, gloriously sunny days, nothing much to do.
For the first two weeks I did pretty much that...nothing... I still felt out of sorts with myself, not as weepy, but I found new things to get stressed at.
I had a magnificent argument with a doorknob one day.
I was walking into the dining room, when for the third time that morning it "grabbed" me by the sleeve and threw me up against the door.
I whirled on it, and in my very best John Cleese impression (except I was deadly serious) yelled at it...
"I'm warning you! One more time, and you're coming off that door!"
I was pulled up short by the sound of explosive laughter from the stairs, my eldest son, trying hard not to fall down them at the sight of his apparently insane mother ready to have a fight with a doorknob.
I started to laugh too, there's nothing like laughter for easing a tense situation... even when it's with door furniture.

I think that was the turning point, I started to feel better. I was still forgetful though, on one day a quick tour of the house revealed fifteen different jobs I had started and then abandoned. Each time I was led into a different room I had forgotten what I was doing and started something else.
Ok, for those of you who know me, I was stressed then, and nowadays we can probably chalk it up to early onset senility.
Where was I again...

Oh yes. As I started to feel my spirits lift I began to ponder what exactly was the problem? It wasn't grief exactly, it was more to do with what Uncle Jim had said. His last words to me...
"Make hay while the sun shines."
The sun was shining that day, as I sat on the garden swing, but, I realised, I certainly wasn't making hay.
I was content with my life in many respects but one. I realised I really didn't enjoy my job.
I just kept doing it, because I didn't know what else to do.
If I was good at anything I'd long since forgotten what it was.
"Well," said my mother "when are you going to write that book you were always promising me years ago!"
She had a point, I just didn't know if I was any good at writing anymore.
It had been a very long time.
Over twenty years of writers block.
Plus I didn't know what on earth to write about.
"Write about me!" my mother urged laughing.
I should point out that by this time my mother had been dead for over two decades.

When you are getting advice from your dead mother you can do one or two things.
You can call a psychiatrist, or... you can write a book about it.
I decided to try the second option first. So, I started making notes...

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

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...