The line I keep coming back to in your original description is "Often she writes while the TV or radio is on. It's never a chore." You make it sound like a remarkably joyous exercise, I'm sure many an author would give their right arm to be able to manage that sort of productivity without even needing to shut off distractions. It really conjures a vision of the room.
There's a lovely blogpost linked from her Wikipedia page, which coupled with the replies underneath it really shows how much pleasure so many readers evidently got from her writing. It must make you proud to be associated with, even at one remove. I see, in fact, a cousin or two of yours have commented there to give their own fond recollections.
I notice there's comments also from "a very large eBook publisher" who was "very interesting in getting hold of some of Ms.Peter's children" [sic] over the possibility of reprinting some of her works, though I don't know when that was written and it seems their Endeavour Press website is no longer active alas.
[QUOTE=Various Artist ;n2430223]The line I keep coming back to in your original description is "Often she writes while the TV or radio is on. It's never a chore." You make it sound like a remarkably joyous exercise, I'm sure many an author would give their right arm to be able to manage that sort of productivity without even needing to shut off distractions. It really conjures a vision of the room.[/QUOTE]
There were several rooms, or rather several houses, for my mum had a nomadic streak and after divorcing lived in, among other places, Maghull, Bethel, Bangor, Caernarfon. Netanya, Ceret, Toul, Sudbury and Hadleigh. But yeah, the image you have is correct, a woman in an armchair surrounded by what others would deem oise
This changed slightly when she started to use a typewriter, I think at the persuasion of her bread-and-butter London publisher Robert Hale, which forced her to sit at a table. Then, the background noise would invariably be Radio 4.
I notice there's comments also from "a very large eBook publisher" who was "very interesting in getting hold of some of Ms.Peter's children" [sic] over the possibility of reprinting some of her works, though I don't know when that was written and it seems their Endeavour Press website is no longer active alas
I don't think anything came of this. For a few years after her death some payments came in from Public Lending Rights.
My mother also had somewhat eccentric beliefs. She "saw" ghosts. She "did" astral travel. One trip we did occasionally was down to Sheepwash in Devon. Now, my mother was very interested in the whole world of Qabalah, the Tree of Life and whatnot, and so we trundled down by car for “group weekends” in the house. It was surrounded by woodland and one of the favourite pastimes of the assembled odd-nobs would be to go out at night, naked, looking for manifestations of the god Pan. Unfortunately, I was deemed too young and too inexperienced in the occult arts at the time to join them in their pursuits. There were Tarot readings, rituals, automatic writing, ghost stories (all real, of course) and accounts of astral travel and reincarnation. Once, my mother “saw” a partly-formed figure in the bathroom. Evidently, this was an elemental – some kind of mythic being – that had been given the name Celery Stalk.
Good heavens, no I wasn't expecting that sort of revelation either! But thanks nonetheless for all the background Sporting, this is brilliant stuff. One small remaining query – by implication, from what you were saying, before the typewriter "persuasion" happened did your mother submit all her manuscripts handwritten? I had no idea publishers would even look at something in that form.
I suppose some poor trainee would have had to transcribe the manuscripts - though it wasn't too hard as they were legible and with strikingly few crossing -outs - before going on to the editing and proofreading phases.
I write because I can't do anything else (except edit). I wouldn't say that I especially enjoy it, or that I'd offer advice any different to Iain Banks, but I can't imagine stopping.
I used to write (short stories in German), but I stopped about ten years ago. Just decided not to do it anymore. I didn't delete the files, burn the manuscripts or take a hammer to my computer - like they always do in North American films - ; I simply stopped. I didn't like it or dislike it and I don't miss it at all.
Shortly before my wedding, I had two hardback copies of the stories made and gave one to The Lady I Walked To The Registry With (it was cheaper than getting rings done).
She had no idea that I wrote anything at all anyway, so she didn't really know what was happening. I suggested, rather old-fashionedly, that, at her leisure, she read the book, although I stressed that she didn't have to. Eight years on, I still don't know whether she has or not.
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