Creativity and confidence

When I look back at my life so far, it always strikes me that the only person really holding me back has ever been myself. When we are in the midst of the everyday events, we find so many things to blame for our insecurities. Lack of time, too much work, the necessity to earn one's living, family responsibilities, location, politics, lack of support from family and friends - I doubt that any of that has had a real, tangible impact on my creativity, at least not in a negative way. If anything, those experiences tend to provide us with the very material for our art. Limitations are what forces artists - and humans in general - to create, and to create better, more intricate art.
I haven't lived in an environment that forbids creativity. I have never been tortured, threatened, beaten or worse for my art. All I have ever had to do was to create and then to let it out into the world, and that's the part that I have often found tricky.
I have always wondered at those lucky artists who seem to have unlimited supplies of confidence. Where do they get it from? Why aren't they being eaten alive by self-doubt? It doesn't have anything to do with age, or success, or the way they were brought up - some of them are young, at the very beginning stage of their creative journey, and have had as many or as few knockbacks as the rest of us. It isn't about self-belief either. Maybe it has something to do with the fear of being - judged? no, that wouldn't be too bad - but faced with indifference? They say that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference.
Whenever I have taken a step towards what they call engaging with my audience, I have had a positive experience. And sometimes I do get into this amazing, very Russian, state of 'to hell with it, come what may' when I feel that no matter what feedback I may get, I would still retain my self-belief and a sense of identity. In those moments I wonder why I have held myself back for so long. Maybe it's a positive thing after all. Maybe some part of me senses when the time is right, when my skin is thick and my creativity is ripe. Maybe I can relax into this desire to be a hermit for a while, until the next time I feel ready to open up.

Creativity

I've been working on a new book these last couple of months, a book on discovering and developing creativity. It should be published in 2012 - first in Russian, then, hopefully, in English.
So many people I speak to are absolutely sure they are not creative in the slightest. It's strange how easily they forget all the truly creative things they do on a daily basis. I am convinced that every one of us is creative at the very core of our beings, and that developing this magical ability can lead us to amazing, exciting lives.
In the last few years, Creativity has been on my mind constantly, relentlessly. I've been trying various new arts, crafts and other creative pursuits just because the flow of this fascinating energy has been expanding so rapidly. I've always been artistic, but as I have learnt to allow myself the right to be creative, the way I harness my creativity has changed. I don't have to chase, or force it now. I don't get writer's block anymore. Instead, creativity flows through me and I feel that all I need to do is cup my hands together to catch the magic.
I've been recording my experiences and the more I write, the more I have to say. Hopefully, once the book is published, it will help others be creative too.
If you have any experiences that you would like to share, contact me on maia.nikitina@hotmail.co.uk

Landfall, by Helen Gordon - a review

You can read my review of Helen Gordon's first novel here on Bookmunch: Landfall.

Next To Love by Ellen Feldman - a review

Read my review of Ellen Feldman's novel about life in post-war America on Bookmunch: Next to Love by Ellen Feldman

Name Your Inner Critic

Since my last post, I have been feeling inspired to write. The thing is, there is a big difference between feeling the inspiration and actually getting the words out onto the page. But the fact that I have at least acknowledged my Inner Critic seems to have silenced it a bit. Maybe that's all it needed - a little respect. I'm thinking of giving it - her? him? - a name. After all, it does help me a lot when it comes to editing what I've written. I think it's definitely a female. It's quite ruthless, so it must be a woman. I see her as a strong older woman. Think Lockhart from The Good Wife. She sits at her expensive desk somewhere on the sixteenth floor of a New York apartment, and sometimes at her studio in Paris, she looks out of the window into the darkness of the night, the tip of her pen between her teeth, and she thinks about my writing. I can see her make some changes from time to time, and sometimes she smiles as she reads.
A strange thing is happening as I'm making my Inner Critic into a person. I now don't feel that intimidated by her. Instead, I feel inspired and I want to impress her. I still have not given her a name, so I will think about what names suit her over the next few days.
If you write, try this with me. Give your inner editor a name, a personality, a story. Make them into a mentor of sorts. Like me, you will instantly feel an incredible shift in your perspective. Let me know how it works for you.

On my Inner Critic

It has been a while since I posted something other than a book review. Indeed, it has been a while since I've written anything other than a book review. The reasons are many - I've been very busy, I've had a lot of work, this and that - but the real reason is that my inner Editor has been awaken, and that isn't always a good thing for a writer.
We live at the age of reviews. We like to read reviews - they give us quick information, they save us time by recommending or not recommending books, restaurants, even energy companies or television sets. They also turn us into constant critics. Even TV programmes are full of criticism - everything is a competition and everything is open to comment. So when the inner Critic has raised its head and is on the lookout for something to review, suddenly even considering writing is slightly scary. And the strangest part is that the fear is not of being critisised by others but of being slagged off by my very own self.
To be able to finish a piece, whether it is a full-length novel or a short story, a writer needs to lock their Critic up in some cage and not let it out until the whole thing is done. A bit difficult when every now and then I need my lovely Critic to come out and help me review a book or a venue. Maybe it needs a new job description. A new contract that says: 'Inner Critic is contracted to review other people's books only.' I'll try that. In fact, I'll type that up and print it out right away. Or is that procrastination?

The Forty Rules Of Love, by Elif Shafak

My review of this book is up on Bookmunch. Check it out: The Forty Rules Of Love

Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck

I loved this amazing book, and I think it's one of those that I will be re-reading again and again to uncover its many layers. Read my review on Bookmunch, read the book and let me know what you think.

The Storm At The Door, by Stefan Merrill Block

My review is up on Bookmuch, have a read.

Review of The Storm At The Door

The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro, a review by Maia Nikitina

When The Unconsoled first came out in 1995, it was met with a mixed but passionate reaction. Some called it a masterpiece while others  - the worst book ever written. That confusion among the critics is a characteristic of the novel as a whole, both in the reader’s mind as the story develops, and in the protagonist’s life itself. Those who love neatly tied ends and explanations would probably find this a challenging read. But this neatness is not what happens in real life, to real people, and the fact that the novel offers no Hollywood-style explanation is what makes it all the more powerful.

Ryder is an accomplished pianist who, it seems at first, has just arrived in a small town somewhere in Central Europe. He has a performance to give and as the evening of the recital approaches, it becomes clear that a lot depends on this performance. The townsfolk are obsessed with music in a comical, exaggerated way. To them, the evening is about finding a new talent upon which to place their hopes of becoming an extraordinary, art-focused town. Unfortunately for them, the only person they can think of, now that their previous idol has lost their confidence, is Mr Brodsky, an old miserable drunk who used to be an orchestra conductor in his home country some years ago. In their blindness, the town’s most proactive, led by the hotel manager Hoffman, completely ignore the real talent, a young pianist Stefan, who happens to be Hoffman’s son, and they focus instead on helping Brodsky to reconcile – but only as far as they feel is appropriate – with his wife Miss Collins. This reconciliation, they hope, would stop Brodsky from drinking and turn him into a viable candidate.

At the same time, for Ryder this recital would be the apogee of his career, and something that he hopes would so impress his parents - who until now have never seen him perform - that they would finally get back together.

The dream-like quality of the novel is brilliantly created through the various altered states that Ryder experiences as he prepares for the recital. There’s his strange ability to hear and see what goes on inside other people’s homes. There are the bizarre location switches when after a long drive out of town Ryder suddenly finds himself in the back room of the café that he had left an hour ago. There are the long ramblings of the people he meets that somehow become their thoughts as if Ryder was inside their minds.

At first, the reader waits for an explanation. Is Ryder dreaming? Is he in some kind of comatose state? Or maybe he is dying and looking back at his life? Does he have dementia or is this a surrealist book like Kafka’s Trial? There would be no answer to these questions so the reader has to pick the version they like best.

The theme of families and their little ‘understandings’, as one of the characters puts it, pierces through the novel. Sons and daughters devote their lives to pleasing their parents. Fathers and mothers behave in a cold, distant way, not realising what effect that has on their children. Husbands and wives don’t talk, relying instead on subtle signals to work out what the other is thinking. Some if it is bizarre and absurd and all of it is painfully real, despite the unreal feel of the book. There are two relationships in particular that evoke a sense of reality through the sheer stupidity of the characters’ behaviour. One is the understanding that Gustav, a hotel porter, has with his daughter Sophie. They never talk. They love each other very much but they only communicate through other people, mostly through Sophie’s son Boris. This understanding, which started when Sophie was a young girl, and which troubles them both immensely, only gets resolved as Gustav is dying.  The other one is that of Hoffman and his wife. Hoffman decided years ago that his wife was about to leave him. Now, over twenty years later, they are still together, and he is still convinced that it is about to happen, and that the only way to prevent it is to really impress his wife. Frustratingly, the couple never discuss their issue.

Ryder is constantly on the go, trying to fulfil the numerous requests and obligations that keep distracting him from his real goal, and this state of constant availability is very similar to how we live now, with our mobile phones, internet and social networking. As the book was written in mid-nineties, it is amazing to see how accurately Ishiguro predicted what our lives were to become. The Unconsoled is full of signs and metaphors. The symbolic meanings of the novel will keep coming back long after the reader has finished the book, and the realisations that stem from them will be as unusually lucid as can only be possible in dreams.

I've always done my best to avoid spoilers whenever I watch a new programme or read a new book. I like to discover things in my own time, and to be surprised when unexpected events happen in the book instead of waiting for something that I already know would happen.
So whatever made me go and search for reviews of the book I'm currently reading, The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, is beyond me. Maybe I just wanted to find out more about the author himself.
I'm right at the end of this brilliant book and I have been guessing like crazy what it is that is actually happening to the protagonist, Mr Ryder. Of course, now I have spotted in one of the articles about Ishiguro that Ryder has dementia and I have had to re-adjust all my ideas and possible scenarios. By the way, if you are halfway through this book and I have just spoilt it for you, sorry! There is still a chance that it isn't true...

I'll keep reading and will stay away from Google for the next few hours. I don't think I'll be able to go on with my day until I finish it now so I'm going to take the kids to our fitness club where they can swim and I can read. Keep checking this space for a review.

According to new research, three children out of ten don't own any books. And I think that it is likely to get worse. I'm not a pessimist as anyone who knows me will tell you, but on this particular issue I think that we have to start being realistic. The same survey, conducted by the National Literacy Trust, says that four in ten boys, compared to three in ten girls, do not have a single book of their own.
Considering how much we depend on the written word - anything from Twitter to text messaging is now word-based - those children who read less would not only be at a disadvantage, they are likely to seriously lag behind as new technology continues to develop.
As a book lover, I would choose a good book over a TV programme every time but I can see the attraction TV holds for many people, with its already half chewed information nicely packaged and ready to be swallowed as we relax after a hard day at work. So we need to make time for books. We need to remember how different a reading experience can be when we have a real book to hold, smell, leaf through. When we develop a real attachment to a beautiful object called a book, with its illustrations, its front cover, its tea stain on one of the pages that reminds us of the day we read it while enjoying a cup of tea, we enhance the experience of reading. When we make time to sit and read quietly, we start to associate reading with positive emotions. And our children will follow.
Of course, those of us who worry about this are probably exactly the parents whose children already read and have their own books. And those who don't are likely to be the kind of people who wouldn't even notice that there is a problem because how would they come across it? And what we will soon have is a social divide that has on one side those who read, and can afford to read, and on the other side those who don't. Those from the poorer background, with less opportunities to get a good education.
According to Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, it shouldn't be up to schools to get children reading. But in the real world, if the parents don't read, the only chance their children have of developing a love of books is precisely through schools. However difficult the task, schools would have to continue or even increase their efforts because those parents would not care.

How to people watch without getting caught

Admit it, sometimes listening to some couple’s private conversation or watching an old lady who screams randomly at the other bus passengers is too good to miss. It’s the kind of reality show that we can indulge in all the time and then feel all smug about it because we are not wasting our lives being couch potatoes but furthering our life education. Getting caught is not so much fun though, so here are some tips on not getting busted.

Carry a cover with you at all times
A book, a magazine, even a leaflet will do. If the subject of your mission looks at you, just pretend to read.  Of course you’ll have to be quick to lower your head but if you do get caught in the process, you can always compose an air of intellectual thought. Stare into your cup and move your lips a little, as if muttering wisdoms about the world.

Play the role of a writer
This is one of the best devices for people watching. You can get away with staring directly at almost anyone as long as you assume the vacant air of a writer deep in thought about their book and then jot down a few things in your notebook. The laptop doesn’t work as well in this case and would probably make you look like a nerdy freak.

Pretend to be blind
For the really determined and shameless the ultimate props would be a white stick and a large pair of sun glasses. Or you could try wearing sunglasses and facing another way while observing your subject with just your eyes. Keep switching sides though unless you want a headache afterwards.

Be yourself
Reflective surfaces and peripheral vision are good if you are a bit of a chicken and are prepared to sacrifice the image quality for that extra bit of safety. And the risk takers would do well staring openly and unashamedly. If you do get caught, smile and start a conversation. That always works. Almost.




First published on Itchyliverpool.co.uk 
How to people watch without getting caught 

To all parents

Do you remember ever being embarassed by your parents as you were growing up? Maybe they were uncool, or too old, or too young, not beautiful or rich enough, or too posh and too cool? It was important, because people judged you based on your parents. Or that's what it felt like.

Now that you are also a parent, you have joined the most discriminatory society in the world. Whatever you do, you will be judged. By other parents, first and foremost. By your yet childless friends who probably secretly think that they will be much better than you. By your own children, as they reach their teenage years and realise that they can blame most of their issues on you. By your children's new partners when your kids start their own adult relationships and make their own mistakes. And to add to that, now your own children are probably embarassed about you.

You try to control their lives by being strict and teaching them how to tidy their rooms. Or you let them grow like weeds in the back garden, with the freedom you never had. You read books like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua who demands that you become tough and pushy and you feel bad about letting your son give up gymnastics because he thought it was boring (read too structured and why can't he do as many headstands as he like?). You read Dr Bryan Caplan's Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun than You Think and you congratulate yourself on that weekend when you let them have pizza and watch TV for hours - of course, the real reason for that was that you were too bloody knackered to cook and play Scrabble. But there is still a tiny niggling thought at the back of your mind, that maybe if you relax too much, they will grow up fat, lazy, stupid and poor and it will all be your fault.

The thing is, books about parenting sell. And if the author has a Dr in front of their name and a couple of normal kids without any obvious issues, then many parents would buy it. They would probably even read it, some would try the techniques and then most would revert to their natural ways of bringing up children.

I am envious and always slightly puzzled by those parents who seem to have it all figured out. Where do they get that confidence from? How do they know that what they are doing will definitely be the right thing? Until their children are adults, and well into their adulthood, how can those confident freaks know? And how great their lives must be, without all that fretting and worrying that the rest of us go through!

To all you normal parents - you are doing the right thing. As long as you are not abusing your kids, you are doing the right thing. If you are strict, your child might grow up a high achiever because of it, or an ordinary person with a messy house in spite of it. If you are of the laisser-faire society, your child might become a chilled-out well balanced human being because of it, or have extreme OCD in spite of it. No matter what you do, you can't control it. Not really. And I am talking to myself now. You need to relax. Not about your children. About you. No matter what you do, everyone will still judge. That's part of being a parent.

Are we too concerned with gender equality in literature?

An article in the Guardian this week talks about a group of Australian women writers and publishers who are setting up an equivalent to the Orange Prize which promotes writing by women. As a woman writer, I should be supportive. 

But something bothers me about this whole 'positive discrimination' culture. Maybe it's the fact that as a reader, I don't choose books based on their authors' gender. If a book is good, what do I care whether it was written by a man or a woman? I may be very naive but I sincerely doubt that an average reader picks their books by looking at the name and checking the writer's gender. Besides, if we go down this road a little further, we will soon be setting up initiatives to promote writing by male writers, trans gender writers, young women writers, old men writers, beautiful people writers, ugly people writers, fat or skinny writers... Okay, maybe I am going a bit too far but so does this obsession with numbers that we all seem to have.

So what that Australia's top book prize, The Miles Franklin, has only been won twice by a woman in the last decade? Did that affect the readers' enjoyment as they read the shortlisted books? I doubt it. The truth is, until recently women have been involved in completely different activities than men. Of course, there were exceptions, but generally speaking, women had to concern themselves with slightly less exciting things, such as children, cooking, mending etc, while men went out and explored the world. It may seem as if this situation has long since changed, but anthropologically speaking, it hasn't been that long since we have started to live similar lives to men. So it shouldn't be surprising that the catching up process might take a long time, maybe decades, maybe even centuries. Do we need to force it?

Or maybe women would never be able to have the same opportunities as men just because we tend to want a family as well as a career and having a family for a woman often means spending less time and energy on her own pursuits. Just like a man would often happily relax in front of the telly while the house is so messy it is about to crash on his head, whilst a woman would most probably do the tidying up first, it is often easier for a man to just go and write and for a woman to sort out the kids' dinner first.

I am probably going to get  feminists all wound up now, but my question is - do we actually need the positive discrimination? Do we have to ensure that fifty percent of the top writers are women? Can writing not be just that - writing? We can go on for hours about the gender equality and I will be the first to defend women's rights but it does sometimes seem that the numbers dominate our lives nowadays and we forget about the more important issues.

When I was a kid, most boys I knew wanted to be like Yuri Gagarin. I was a girl, so I wanted to be like Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. I imagined myself going through vigorous training and then finally going on a mission that would seem like a year to me but would last three hundred years on Earth. I saw myself shaking hands with an alien and eating borsht out of a tube. Of course, adults made sure that I understood all the difficulties of my future profession as soon as they found out about my dream. 'You might end up training all your life and never going into space. Ever,' some said. 'Or you'll come back to a planet that is so different that you wouldn't want to be on it.' I am not a cosmonaut now, so their warnings must have had some effect on my five-year-old self. Instead, I have become a writer. And it has now occured to me that these two professions are very similar. You might write all your life and never get published. Ever. Although in our age of self-publishing that's becoming increasingly unlikely. And just like a cosmonaut, you lose track of time and sometimes come back after a particularly intensive period of work on a story to a planet that seems so different to the one you've just been on that you don't always want to stay. You get to meet strange aliens that populate your imagination. And you have to be as brave, if not more, as a cosmonaut, to resolve to write no matter what. Whether you ever get to go on a real mission or not. You just do it. You just write.

I was very happy when I read in today's Guardian that a statue of Yuri Gagarin is to be placed in London opposite the statue of Captain Cook. Gagarin is a symbol of aspiration, courage and success in Russia, and it's great that our kids in the UK will have a reason to find out more about this great man and maybe to be inspired to be brave when it comes to following a dream.

At the beginning of March I challenged myself to two tasks. One was to read one short story a day and the other - to write one story a day. The reading challenge seemed easy. I read a lot, and it doesn't seem to require quite as much preparation as writing. I can read anywhere, and if I can't read, for example when I am at the gym, I have been listening to short stories on my i-pod instead (check out these lovely podcasts from The Guardian, The New Yorker and The BBC World Book Club). But writing is different. For the first week, I wrote one short story a day. They were all quite short even for a short story, but given the time frame, I felt very excited to be able to finish something every day. Then an idea came for a story that was to be slightly longer. I still wrote every day, but I was writing the same story. And that's where the complications began. My Internal Critic (IC), a very nasty, unpleasant person, appeared. 'Does that really count as one story per day challenge?' he kept enquiring in a sickly sweet voice. 'Let's say that it does,' I told him, and then sent him far far away where birds don't sing. He didn't want to leave. 'Does writing in Russian count?' he wanted to know. To add to that, I started to lose momentum. Like an inexperienced runner who shoots off at the start only to be overtaken a few hundred metres later by those who pace themselves, I was struggling for breath. And to make matters even worse, I was getting distracted on the way. Other things had to become priority (after all, I am a mother of two boys, but that's probably just an excuse). Eventually, I took a break. Not literally, because I still had all my other work to do - the one that pays the bills right now. But I took a break from the challenge.
Now, week 3, and I count myself still in the game. Of course, my IC thinks I have failed miserably. But I choose to ignore him and I continue on. I have hope. If I write two short stories per day on the good days, surely that will allow me to catch up? Hang on, I am doing it again. Pace yourself, Maia, haven't you learnt anything from your school PE lessons?
I think we as writers tend to be very unfair both to ourselves and other writers. We suffer from the Impostor Syndrom, we imagine that other, Real Writers, never ever miss a day, or struggle with the plot, or just lose momentum. I was talking to my dad today, who has been writing for decades, and to his question about my novel I complained that I seem to run out of steam, and that as soon as I stop for a breather, my internal critic ruins the whole thing until I lose any desire to continue. My dad laughed and said that he and probably everyone else has exactly the same problem. It makes sense. But I can almost quarantee that I will forget that again the next time that I am lost.

We are fascinated by lies, aren't we? We even have a whole day when we are expected to lie! But the best thing about lying seems to be telling the truth afterwards. We are compelled to lie, and then we are compelled to come clean.
I tend to be honest most of the time. Maybe I'm missing out on all the fun. I wonder how I would feel if I lied more. Probably very tired - the reason I don't lie is because I just can't be bothered. Once you make something up, you have to maintain that further and that's tiring. I do remember one time when I was probably five or six when I made something up. I really wanted a Barbie doll but at that point in Russia not everyone had them. And there was one girl that I played with at the time who kept showing off all her dolls and generally being very annoying. So I told her, never thinking that she would believe me, that I had several Barbies at home, complete with a huge doll house and lots of other doll accessories that I can't remember now. To my shock, she took me seriously, and for the rest of the week I had to make up more and more stories to fit with the original one. Eventually I stopped playing with her because the pressure of constant lying was getting to me.
And that's another thing about lies that I find very curious. It seems that the more unlikely the lie, the easier people believe it. Try it yourself. Just not today. Have a great April's Fool day and tell me about your best lies afterwards.

Do bad reviews make us better writers?

The big gossip story today is the review of Jacqueline Howett's book on Big Al's Books and Pals. Well, not the review itself - which was not very favourable, by the way - but the author's reaction to it. She didn't take too well to the review, and I can understand her very well. Anyone who writes has at some point felt upset by feedback. But it got me thinking: why do we feel so angry at bad writing? What is it about writing that makes us so upset if what's written is not to our taste? (I rush to add that I have not read Jacqueline's book and in no way can I comment on her writing in particular at this moment.)
It isn't about the money because I have also felt angry at books I hadn't had to pay for. Is it about the time? Do I feel angry to have wasted my time reading something that wasn't worth it? Probably not. I have been known to waste my time on less important things than reading bad books. I think one of the issues here is the high expectation we place on a Writer, with a capital W, and the disappointment we feel when that expectation is not fulfilled. Maybe subconsiously we feel that the fact of writing somehow elevates the writer over the rest of us and that it is similar to a sacred ritual. Especially when it comes to published books. Self-publishing is quite a recent phenomenon and a lot of readers still feel that if something is published, it definitely deserves to be, if so many people who are involved in the process and who are specialists in their area all agreed that it does. Maybe we need to get used to the idea that not everything that gets to be in print is guaranteed to be good, just like not every TV programme is worth watching, and not every garment in the shops is of good quality.

Or is it about the service? The modern way of living is based around providing a service. When we don't get good service, say in a restaurant, or a shop, we get angry. We have hundreds of TV shows all based around the concept of being judged, or reviewed. Come Dine With Me, The X Factor, America's Next Top Model, to name just a few. So when we read a book that we think is substandard, we get upset and we voice our anger. I wonder whether this is the right way of encouraging anyone to get better at what they do. The contestants in any of the above mentioned shows don't seem to get any better after they have been 'reviewed' and who is to say that the writers that get bad reviews would get better at writing? On the other hand, in the world where anyone can now publish anything, how else would we separate the good from the bad?

The Education Secretary Michael Gove thinks children should be reading 50 books a year. Nothing wrong with that in principle. There have been heated discussions about library cuts, quality v quantity and and the danger of turning books into numbers. As a mother of two boys, I think maybe we should all just relax and allow our children to develop their love for books naturally. Well, maybe with a tiny nudge when required. As a challenge, Gove's idea might work for some. Kids do love a challenge and a game. But with the whole 'should' attitude we run the risk of putting our children off books for a very long time, if not for life.
I have always read a lot and this year I have challenged myself to read one short story a day. But there have been years when I read less than usual. I spent more time thinking, or writing, or just watching the telly. There was one Chrismas that my fiance and I spent on the sofa, watching five or six seasons of 24 all at once.
Some people will always read. Others will prefer sports, or films, or the new popular hobby of socialising. And no amount of challenges will make them love books. Our job as parents and teachers is to make literature available, whether it's in the libraries, at school, at home or on the Internet. If we enjoy books, our children probably will.

A great life

Every day I watched them from the cafe. The chair creaked whenever I shifted around, always the same chair, at the same table. The owner, Manuel, recognised me on the second day and on the third I stopped telling him what I wanted. The coffee in tiny cups appeared as if by magic as soon as I finished the cup before.

There were three of them, two taller boys, tanned and dark, and a shorter younger boy of about six who always had a toy with him. He reminded me of someone but I could never work out of whom. Sometimes they played in the waves, on some days the older boys carried a tray of sweets around and the shorter boy dragged his feet behind, bored.  It seemed that instead of burning his skin, the scorching heat only made him lighter, as if soon he would just vanish in the yellowness of the day.

I watched them as I read my book, as I wrote in my journal, as I chatted to other holidaymakers. It was too late for me, I kept thinking, and besides, I had a great life. I had my company that by now could function almost without me. I had a big house, two cars, friends, a string of affairs that didn't require too much commitment. A villa here, in Spain, and another one in Australia. I had a great life.

One day the boys approached me with their tray. I bought a lollypop and I offered it to the blond boy. He accepted timidly, staring at me with his light eyes that looked yellow in the sun. After that, he came every day. We didn’t talk. My Spanish was basic; he didn’t speak English. He sat at the table and played with his car and I bought him ice cream and juice, and sometimes food. Then I wrote or read, and all the time I watched him, raking my brains for a face that would explain who the boy reminded me of. I still couldn’t tell. All I knew was that when I looked at him, I felt as if I’d known him for years.

Manuel told me that the boy’s name was Michael, that he was an orphan, and that the parents of the other two boys had taken him in. ‘English name?’ I was surprised. ‘His mother. American. Dead now,’ was the reply. I called a local solicitor I knew, an Englishman who had been living here for over a decade. It wouldn’t be hard to get it all sorted as long as the family agreed. They were poor, he said, and he’d have a much better life with me. I wasn’t so sure. I was too old to change now, too old to care for somebody else.

Michael came every day now and watched me as I pretended to read. His yellow eyes seemed to be asking me something, what, I couldn’t tell. On my last day I told him I was leaving. Manuel had written the Spanish words down for me on a napkin and I read them slowly, pronouncing every letter. The boy looked at me for a minute, then he got up and left. I watched him join his brothers on the beach.

Two hours later, I knocked on a shabby brown door with a broken handle.

Another best friend

I meet her by accident. I’m buying a new lamp, she helps me choose. Her colleague tries to sell me an ugly expensive model but I stick to the one I like. It happens to be the one my new friend likes too. She doesn’t know it yet. She thinks I’m just a customer. I invite her for a coffee and she stares at me suspiciously. I can’t work out why. I leave my number scribbled on a tiny piece of paper. She looks as if she’ll throw it away the minute I’m gone.

She calls in a week. We get a coffee at the café next to her work. She apologies for being rude last time. I laugh. Did you think I was hitting on you? She smiles shyly. I’m a bit offended. I don’t like her that much today. I won’t call again.

We go shopping the week after. Two girls, similar age, different tastes. I’ve never had a proper best friend, I realise. I’ve had best friends, of course. But not a real one. She is a possibility. We laugh at her reaction when I asked her for a coffee that first time. I do it all the time if I like someone, I say. Don’t you? Especially since we are both foreign here. How else would you make friends? She looks at me as if checking that I’m not making it up.

We now call each other every day. I’ve heard of this before. I remember a friend telling me how she met her best friend. We just clicked, she said. We shop, we drink coffee. We talk about our boyfriends. She splits up from hers and has nowhere to live. I offer her my place and she stays over until she finds a new one. We never argue.

I draw her face and tell her how beautiful she is. We write letters to the Universe ordering a new man for her. We talk about her ex and I tell her she deserves better. She lives on the other side of town and I give her a lift every time we meet for a coffee. She brings me an amber necklace from her holiday and I wear it every day. I’ve always wanted a best friend.

She gets back with her boyfriend. She stops calling. She denies it, but I sense a change. I stop calling too. When I go past her shop one day, I discover that it’s been shut for weeks. The builders that are making it into a café whistle as I leave.

Published in Russian - hurrah!

Got a short story, 'Halva', published in a newspaper in Krasnodar, a beautiful city in the South of Russia. I grew up there and I consider it to be my hometown, even though I was born in a place called Rostov, and moved to Krasnodar when I was four. I still remember the train journey and our cat Foka  - don't laugh, that really was his name! - who had to travel in a bag. Krasnodar is hot in the summer, and gets snow in the winter. It was nicknamed Our Little Paris by a famous Russian writer Viktor Lihonosov and the tale goes that when the cossacks were first building the city, they based it on Paris, with its Champs Elysees.

The story is about homecoming, which is, I have realised, one of the main themes of my writing. I have always had to settle in a new city. First when I moved to Krasnodar and even at such a young age already felt foreign. Then when I moved to London for a few years and eventually to Manchester. So I am always curious about the process of coming home. About the people we leave behind, about our old selves that we abandon, about the barely noticeable changes in us as we start a new life somewhere else that accumulate and eventually make us into a completely different person. I always wonder what my life would have been like, had I not moved from one place to the next.

A couple of years ago I went to Krasnodar for the first time in ten years. There were many things that I discovered, many things that I had wanted to see and that had disappeared. I saw a few friends, walked a few streets I'd missed. I realised how different I had become, how English, in a way. Having spent ten years feeling homesick for Krasnodar, I was now longing to come home to Manchester. And then it struck me that what I was looking for wasn't there anymore, but that it had always been inside me and I could take it anywhere with me. So now when I feel nostalgia, I go to a middle eastern shop which reminds me of the markets in Krasnodar, or I buy some Halva or I make some Armenian style dish, or I just put on some music like Zemfira and I feel happy, not sad.

Am I commitment phobic when it comes to novels?

I've been thinking about the novel I'm supposed to be writing for my MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. I say 'supposed to be' because for the last few weeks I've been writing a lot of short stories and flash fiction, but no novel. I can't say I'm blocked, quite the opposite - I'm writing more than ever and I've been asked a lot why I look so glowing. But the novel has been resting. The last time I worked on it I realised that every time I write it for a period of time and then leave it, the next time I come back to it I sound different. As if the protagonist has multiple personalities. Which might be the solution. You might say, don't leave it, keep writing it every day. But that's the thing - I write and then I feel as if I have emptied my tank of thoughts and sentences and I have to leave it while I re-fill.
With my self-imposed One Story A Day challenge I don't feel the need to not write. I like the freedom of short stories, so that must make me commitment phobic when it comes to novels. To make matters even more complicated, I've been avoiding reading novels too. I just don't want to commit. What if that writer's style influences my thoughts too much! And now the guilt feelings come flooding in: does that all make me a bad person? A bad reader? A bad writer?!
It is as if being just a short story writer - at least for now - makes us somehow worse than 'real writers' - the novel writers. The fear that publishers would not want to take me on without a promise of the real thing in the future. That writing short stories is just a preliminary step, sort of like being a trainee writer. That's quite similar to relationships, I think. If you only have flings and one night stands, society would generally think worse of you than if you are in a committed relationship. And if I am in a commited long term relationship (engaged, as it is), then why can't I commit to a novel? And should I?
In the meantime, I've been reading short stories and my favourite for this morning is World Enough and Time by Linda Mccullough Moore (The Sun Magazine).

Day 1 of the Write One Story A Day challenge

Well, it's Monday! I have just listened to the New Yorker podcast with Daniel Alarcon reading a short story by Roberto Bolano called Gomez Palacio. I loved it and I plan to find his other stories and novels and read them. So that's part one of my challenge done for the day. Although I will probably end up reading a few more today. And as for part two, well, I was already reminded this morning - thanks Steve Galbraith! - to write a story today, so I wrote a flash. I'll leave it to rest for a few hours so that I can re-read it and edit it with fresh eyes tonight.
I've been feeling slightly nervous at the challenge I've set myself. What if one day I'm not well? What if my mind is blank? What if the kids have one activity after another and I don't get a chance to write? What if... The one thing I know about myself is that I am very competitive. In a good way. So if anyone wants to take up the challenge with me, I will be very happy. Any takers? Come on Steve, I know you want to!

Obsessed with short stories

I really am. I have even started downloading podcasts from places like the Guardian short story podcast and the New Yorker onto my i-pod and then taking it to the gym to listen to while I'm pushing weights.

What I love about short stories, both writing and reading, is how sneaky they can be. They don't require the same long-term committment as a novel, but once they grab you, that's it. The strength of their punch knocks you out. The images stay with you forever, often even the ones you didn't like that much.

It's a bit like agreeing to have a coffee with an ordinary guy, thinking that it would never lead to anything and not even bothering to dress up or wash your hair, and then boom, and he somehow turns out to be your guy. Although of course I always wash my hair. Every day.

As you know, I get bored easily. I get passionate about things, I fall in love with places, people, bright colours, new ideas. And then I often burn out and change focus and all my opinions. And that's where the short stories are great. I have read about the one short story a day challenge for a year on Dan Powell's blog and I think I'll try that starting from tomorrow. It's a good time to start, a Monday. I will probably end up reading ten on one day and just one on another.

And to be particularly cruel to myself, I'll make my challenge harder: I dare myself to read AND write one short story every day for a year. I'll keep you updated so that you don't let me give up.