There's an article in this month's hagsharlotsheroines that addresses a really important issue and I'm urging everyone to read it. Please register on the site if you're not already a member, (it's free and takes just a minute) or read it on the hagsharlotsheroines myspace.

From Herstory to Ourstory: the Feminist Library by Anne Welsh, with thanks to Gail Chester
"Every female writer or aspiring writer should visit the Women's Library and the Feminist Library for the inspiration to be found there. And yet, these guardians of our heritage have suffered very different fates."

Thanks!

Ye Gods did you ever see such a load of old tripe? I was extremely knackered last night and by 9pm wanted to do nothing more than vegetate in front of the telly. There was the usual sorry lot on offer so I thought, "What the hell, I'll watch Greatest Britons 2007. I'm sure it'll be mildly amusing and I may even learn about someone who's done something marvellous."

How wrong I was. I turned off after half an hour in a minor fit of stroppy rage. Is that honestly the best we've got to offer? I've got nothing per sey against the Queen, Mrs Thatcher, Maccers, Robbie Williams and so on but what on earth did they DO that was especially great this year?  As far as I can tell they did their (mostly chosen) jobs and were bloody handsomely paid for it to boot. It was good, if predictable, to see Helen Mirren get an award and those juice guys are pretty cool, though it was very embarrassing to see Gordon attempting to up his popular appeal. Politicians should never, ever appear on such shows. Plain squirmy.

So I'd like to hear who you think should have been nominated as Greatest Briton 2007? I'll kick off by suggesting Russell T Davies for the national treasure that is Dr Who...

I was jolted out of some detailed editing/reworking of a short story of mine yesterday by a shy rap at the door. I figured it was probably some bloke wanting to read one of the meters – don't think they've been done since we moved in here almost two years ago (blimey… time to roll out a cliché methinks).

It was indeed a bloke but not a meter man. A fair, youngish (30 something) man, casually dressed, a faintly nervous smile brushing his features. After the usual hello, good afternoons etc he asked if I was aware that local elections were taking place on Thursday.

"Blimely," I replied, "Yes and no. I retrieved the polling cards from the mound of rubbish on the kitchen work surface just last week and stuck them on the notice board. Clean forgot about it since then. Glad you reminded me."

I then went on to say, "I expect you're wanting to know who I'm going to vote for," – my parents were very active politically when I was a gal and I spent many hours pounding the streets, dropping leaflets, getting 'safe' voters out to vote on the day and so on, so I thought I knew the political drill – "Well, I'm not sure," I added. He laughed and said that was what most people had said. He went on to say that I'd probably had loads of leaflets pushed through the door, when in fact I hadn't and told him so.

The truth is that round here – Brighton – it's generally always a Labour or Lib controlled council – and they're so pigging lazy and complacent about it  that they don't even bother to drop information, let alone do old fashioned house-to-house canvassing. I've never voted Conservative in my life but I was tempted to tell the delightful chap standing in front of me that they had my vote. Old habits die very hard, especially when you've grown up in a family of die hard socialists, so I'll vote Green but I did wonder what it's like in the rest of the country.

I'm not a political animal but I do maintain that it's very important to vote and exercise our democratic right. Even in local elections which are on the whole extremely, mind numbingly dull.

After all, it's not THAT long ago that us girls couldn't vote at all and some of our 'sisters' (God, yuck, I hate that word… makes me think of your stereotypical 80s feminist) fought bloody hard for our right to do so. Hells bells, we've not yet celebrated the centenary of universal female suffrage.

So VOTE. Go on. I dare you!

Laura xxx

a deeply unhappy bunny! I've been so busy this week with 'real' work that I've simply not had the time to write a blog. This is bloody annoying. I hate it when work takes over my life, even when it's nice work which it has been most of the time, and I work hard to ensure that this doesn't happen very often. But no-one's perfect, least of all moi, and I do get caught out from time to time. I am astonished by the number of people who say that they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they didn't work (even those who loathe what they do for dosh) - Good Lord, I would be in seventh heaven if I were a 'poor' little rich girl with a private income from Daddy, or anyone else come to that. There's the writing (obviously), the reading, the shopping, the therapies (beauty and others), the movies, the holiday planning, the theatre, the telly, the dining out, the just lolling around doing bugger all. I'm sure I'd still be complaining that there's never enough time to do everything I'd like to.

So this will be short and sweet (ahem!) and is mostly a call for help on behalf of a friend of mine who is doing a Creative Writing MA at City University, the novel pathway. She is working on a time-slip novel - an ambitious undertaking by anyone's standards and is looking for recommendations of great time-slip novels to read and learn from.  Her time frames are present day and late Victorian but any versions would do. I've suggested Possession (AS Byatt), Labyrinth (Kate Mosse), The French Lieutenant's Woman (Fowles), Slaughter House 5 (Vonnegut), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), The Blind Assassin maybe (Atwood), Daughters of Fire (Barbara Erskine).

Are there any others you could recommend?  Many thanks for the help and have a great weekend everyone!

Laura xx

Well, the Easter hols are over, the kids are back at school and nursery and I can relax. Sort of… Looking after children is undoubtedly much harder than most other, paid, forms of work. More physically demanding (unless you're a professional cross-country runner, boxer etc, etc), more draining and much, much more repetitive.  Anyway, I'm not here to bang on about childcare...

I was away last week and when I returned my monthly copies of Writer's News and Writing Magazine were waiting for me, along with a mound of other, less enticing, mail. I put them to one side for the moment when I could sit down and have a butchers.  Two days passed before that golden time and even then I had to scan read large sections – I did see a piece on Anne Brooke's A Dangerous Man btw, well done again Anne. This time delay (sounds like an anti-ageing cream, doesn't it? Another current obsession of mine) got me thinking. I subscribe to Mslexia, am a member of WiJ and WWN and have been toying with the idea of subscribing to The New Writer. But I also subscribe to a plethora of online e-zines – from the fantastic Pulp.net to literaturetraining and some independent publishers like Cinnamon Press (I grew up in Wales so like to support them) – a crazy 20 or so in total.  I have to scan read them all to keep up and, of course, there's my own work and creative writing to do. I've blogged about the desire to read other authors' works in the past and the tension created by the need to get the balance between reading and writing correct. I'm now questioning the value of professional magazines and networks – just how many can one person belong to?  It's easy to imagine oneself spending all day and night devouring information and advice on the craft of writing and never, ever putting pen to paper, fingers to laptop and so on. Which publications are the most valuable?  It's obviously personal to an extent but how many mags etc do you read?  And which would you recommend?

I am finding the MySpace network absolutely brilliant and would whole heartedly recommend it to other writers but like so many of these things I can see how it could become a monster of ones own making which then needs feeding. It's all about management I guess. Never one of my strong points.  All advice welcome and MUCH appreciated. Have a great day!

Well, how much did I enjoy Life on Mars last night!  Bloody marvellous telly, it will be sorely missed… I especially loved the scene when Sam is up on the roof considering his future (past?), Bowie's classic song is blaring out… oooh spine tingling stuff.  I read on MSN today that the big cheeses at the beeb are following Gene Hunt into the 80s and taking him down to the (Poncy? Fairy-filled?) south, along with a female colleague… That'll be interesting. It'll no doubt be billed as a kind of British Moonlighting… Remember that one?  Bruce Willis and whatshername.

It also got me thinking about whether or not we're about to enter a phase of reviving all things 80sish. It's not a decade I care too much for to be honest… perhaps because it's when I finally grew up… or maybe it's simply the horrible clothes, dodgy music and ruthless politics. I know they've been trying on planet fashion but puff ball skirts didn't really take off last year (praise be), though I have seen an alarming rise in the incidence of leggings of late.  Only for the extremely skinny and Kate Moss I fear. And all sorts of dodgy 80s bands are reforming: Duran Duran, Culture Club and so on. Perhaps its started already and I'm running a bit late as usual.  From such whimsies I started to think about literature set in the 80s… Well, obviously there's 1984 and In the Line of Beauty and I recently read Camilla Way's brilliant debut The Dead of Summer, which is set in South East London during the mid-80s but I am struggling to come up with many more. Are there any out there worth reading? Let me know.

I've got the mean reds today… a bit of a cold coming (diddums) but it's mostly to do with the emotional exhaustion that comes following a bout of rage or frustration. And the knowledge that I'm only part way through the battle. And that it really shouldn't be a battle at all...

To explain, briefly, because God knows it bores me sometimes so I'm assuming it might bore you dear reader. My eldest son has Special Educational Needs and for the past two years I have been trying to get 'the authorities' to investigate exactly what those special needs are. As far as I'm concerned it's simply not good enough to say that he is bright and creative but his literacy skills (in particular) are delayed, put him on the School Action Plus register and provide one-on-one tuition for a grand total of 20 minutes a week.  Yes, you got that right – 20 minutes a week.  At 7½ years old he had a reading age of less than 5 and a writing age of 5¼. He is now 8½ and no-one will tell me where he's at now – I'm guessing because they haven't measured it or they don't want to upset me further.

Every time I see the school and/or the experts I end up in tears and then later, at home when I'm more rational and have had time to think things through, raging like a mad cow.  Buggering hell, I even get angry because I don't get angry when I need to (i.e. at the school/medical centre/educational psychologists) because I'm so bloody emotional!

We are locked in a cycle of being referred to various specialists (though none claim to be exactly the right specialist at the time of meeting I hasten to add) with a number of 'conditions' being bandied around – dyspraxia (DCD), dyslexia and ADD. Frankly, I don't give a damn what he's diagnosed with because what counts is the help that's offered as a result. And there's the rub.  For should he be diagnosed with say, dyslexia, the school/local authority will be obliged to provide statutory assistance and this, as you'll have guessed, costs money.  While he remains unlabelled no-one has to do anything at all. It's so bloody infuriating. I am now at the point of investigating paying for these various tests, if nothing else so that we can rule certain things out. If we wait for the system to drag its sorry ass out of the slow lane he'll be old enough to vote before anything is resolved – though unable to read the ballot paper.

The worst thing is that I feel so fearful that if we don't get to him soon, it will be too late.  At the moment his self esteem is just about in tact but it won't be long before the teasing starts and he starts to cover up and give up altogether.  Everything I've read about the sorts of conditions mentioned stresses that it's important to get to kids like Morgan before they hit 9ish.  Another reason why the pace (or non-pace) is driving me nuts.

And another thing that gets me is that he is missing out on so much because he can't read. Of course, I read to him every evening before lights out and we work at literacy more generally at home, but reading in bed under the duvet with my torch at around the same age as him is one of my fondest childhood memories. I fell in love with so many characters and as I've said before my eyes were opened to all sorts of wonderful worlds. If Morgan could read he may not choose to do this but at least he'd have the flamin'choice.  GRRRRRR! It makes me mad and it makes me sad.

I'm involved in a creative writing project for young women in the East End of London run by My Heroines (www.myheroines.com).

It's been looking at 'bad girls': wayward women from the past and present; how they live, love and work. Were they really 'bad' and what makes a 'bad girl' today? Novelist Tina Biswas came to talk to the group, about her experience and influences and about 'bad girls' in fiction.  We had an interesting conversation about the treatment of women who transgress in literature, and in popular culture more generally too. First off, they're not all that easy to find… and those that we did identify in this (albeit) short conversation tended to get their comeuppance in some way or other. We're talking about the likes of Curly's wife in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan from Lear, even Juliet.  Those women who do break the rules, the social and moral codes of the day, often end up reformed, saved by a good man, or worse, dead.

Tina and I were exploring the anti-heroines within the confines of the national curriculum but even when you broaden out the search it's not much easier.  Who are your favourite anti-heroines and why?  And are enough women getting away with murder (metaphorically and otherwise) in literature?