Oh god, we’re that guy
On being the worst person at the party (and some writing news)
Just a quick preliminary note to say I’ll be busy being KJ Lyttleton at the Crime Writers’ Day at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 9th August. If you’d like to come along and get your books signed, I’d love to see some friendly faces!
Remember how I told you I went to the Laugharne Weekend back in March? Well, the people I went with were mostly strangers and partial acquaintances. We were there because our friend Emma Anderson (buy her album!) invited us to make up the numbers in a shared house with her gang of 90s music industry movers and shakers.
The WhatsApp group was set up a few weeks before the festival so we could all say hello and plan the trip. Everyone was so friendly in the group that by the time we were on our way to Wales, I felt able to bemoan our packing failure.
‘We forgot to bring the guitar,’ I messaged everyone.
This cri du coeur was met with total silence. Absolute crickets. Tumbleweed motoring across a Kansan prairie.
The conversation swiftly moved onto other topics.
OK, so they’re not sit around singing songs people, I realised. Not a problem. What they were, it turned out, were 24-hour party people. And even though many of them had existed for at least a decade longer than either of us, they made reminded me what a sleep-loving party pooper I am.1
A few weeks later, thanks to a positive review by Lucy Mangan, we found ourselves watching Tina Fey’s comedy drama The Four Seasons. As well as being a useful reminder that Lucy Mangan and I seem to agree on very little when it comes to TV (The Four Seasons was… fine…She hated Patriot, one of my favourite series), it gave me a stark insight into how we might be perceived by others.
[And I guess if you’re EXTREMELY averse to any kind of spoiler, this sort of counts as one, so maybe skip the next paragraph. But I’ll keep it vague.]
In the final “season” of The Four Seasons one of the main characters invites a newbie into the group who makes the faux pas of bringing his guitar with him. The protags all stare at the instrument in mute horror, each one wordlessly signalling that this interloper has brought something unspeakably awful to their nice middle class mini-break.
I laughed a lot at this moment. It was brilliantly done. But then I turned to Alex and said, “Oh god, we’re that guy.”
So maybe it was just as well we forgot the guitar and didn’t spoil everyone else’s nice middle class mini-break in Laugharne.
But there’s a neat little post script to this tale because shortly afterwards I discovered that the Laugharne crew know the amazing woman who runs our “sit in an empty pub singing folk songs” night (which regular readers might have heard me mention previously). Not only do they know her, she’s also one of their oldest buddies and a fellow 90s music industry mover and shaker. Even better, she’s considering coming next time. So maybe by the time Laugharne comes around again, we’ll have been relegated to our own hut where we can all be that annoying guy with the guitar.
What happens when you can’t get out of your internet rabbit hole?
The Writers’ Café group thingy I co-host is going so well we decided to run it twice a week. The space we use – upstairs at Barnaby’s Lounge in Hastings – is small enough for it to feel the right kind of busy with five to ten people, and we all seem to get a lot done in that two hour silent working session.
There’s something about the collective energy of everyone sitting to write that stops me wandering off onto the internet or pausing my Pomodoro timer fifteen minutes in. This has been especially needed lately because despite my many mitigation tactics, I have had a bad case of dopamine/phone addiction recently.
At the Café I reliably get 1200-1500 words written, which makes me a bit frustrated that I haven’t been able to nail that on other days. So, a few weeks ago, when things had reached a nadir with my online article reading habit, I took out my notebook and wrote myself a little statement of intent, which included the reminder that “you are a grown woman” and also included instructions that if I wasn’t going to sit and achieve anything useful, my time would be better spent doing something more wholesome, including reading a novel, exercising, gardening or walking.
And you know what? It worked!
This pull your socks up method is one that my friend, Susan Smith likes to recommend. Reminding yourself you are an adult, mentioning your age along with it, can often work a strange kind of miracle. It’s not about being unkind to yourself, it’s about reminding yourself that you’ve got this – you are an adult, not a child. And just like that, I managed to clamber out of my rabbit hole.
So now, what with the note to self and the blocking of even more apps (using Jomo) during work hours, I’m actually getting somewhere with book 3 in the Aldhill Mystery series and my edits for Maz Star book one are going great guns.
Still, I’m scared to put either one up for pre-order yet because of what happened with A Star is Dead (did I ever tell you about that? I think I supressed it), but hopefully Maz Star will be available for ARC copies in a few weeks and then out before the end of August and I’ll get the first draft of this as yet untitled first draft of Aldhill Book 3 written by the end of July.
Have a lovely weekend!
K
PS. I’m on Facebook and Instagram now if you’d like to like/follow. Turns out, having a pen name doubles all your internet admin.
And always have been, if I’m honest. The one consolation I have with ageing is that I have stayed the same and my friends have become as dull as – or even duller than – I am.
People that bring guitars to a party are my favourite! But only if they play songs i know😀
Course, what you both need to do is revisit Presteigne, guitars very much welcome.