Yesterday evening I was sitting outside the front of the house and everything was coming forward.

A blackbird improvising blackbird-jazz. The large noise of the traffic. Fat deep pink peony buds hiding behind the gate. Flakes of skin in my cat’s fur. A plane’s twin trails of fluffy smoke.

For years now, I’ve made it a daily practice to notice one thing properly and write it down. I call these snippets of writing small stones and they live here.

For the past few months I’ve struggled to find my daily small stone. I’ve had to trawl through my days backwards, searching for a single something and pinning it down by force.

Yesterday evening small stones presented themselves to me wherever I looked. It wasn’t the world that had changed, it was me.

How can we move towards this clear seeing way-of-being? How can we become more engaged with the world?

I only have one answer so far. Practice. Practice noticing. Practice noticing when you’re not engaged. Sit still. Let things settle. It takes a LONG TIME for things to settle, and but if we can notice one thing properly every day, isn’t that a start?

I feel lucky. I have my small stones and my writing as a barometer, to help me keep a kind eye on myself. I have found a great deal to help me in the Zen literature. But when all is said and done, it just comes down to sitting still.

Here’s what one of those clever Zen teacher types has to say on the matter. Bayda presents several reasons for having a formal meditation practice – one of them is this.

Picture a clear glass of water with a layer of mud at the bottom. Imagine stirring up the water so it becomes muddy. This muddy water is our substitute life – swirling with anxiety and confusion. We race around trying to keep up, but with little clarity about what we’re doing. Taking this glass and setting it down is like setting ourselves down to sit. What happens? In the glass, the mud gradually settles to the bottom, and water becomes clear and still. [...] Over time, sitting fosters a settled quality, an equanimity, in the midst of the muddy turmoil of our lives.

Ezra Bayda, from At Home in the Muddy Water

Here’s to settling down, and clear seeing. ENJOY your weekends.

Today I am honoured to be welcoming the novelist and short story writer Tibor Fischer to Planting Words.

Tibor is on blog tour with his new novel, Good to Be God – a very funny book indeed. We follow middle-aged handcuffs salesman Tyndale as he leaves his mediocre life in the UK behind to start afresh in Miami, where he hits upon the idea of becoming a religious leader… I talked to Tibor about Good to Be God, and about being a writer.

Your protagonist, Tyndale, is a bit of a shambles for most of the book. How do you feel about him?
As someone fantastically impractical and unemployable, I have a great deal of sympathy for shambolic individuals. But finally what the author feels about a character doesn’t matter – it’s what the reader thinks that counts.

Good to Be God seems to teeter precariously between extreme pessimism about the human race, and something more hopeful. Did you always know how the book would end?
No. I don’t have a plan when starting a novel. I just liked the idea of the big con. Particularly a con like this, where, finally, you don’t have to prove anything, you just have to insist and convince. I liked the idea of coming in empty-handed and penniless and attempting to conquer a country.

Have you had any personal experiences of spiritual ‘organisations’ that you drew on for the book? What are your spiritual views?
Spiritual and spirituality have become rather debased words. The words, for me at least, conjure up religion without any of the hard bits – helping irritating neighbours; “spirituality” is incense, wind-chimes and bloody awful poetry, as well as a form of latter-day snobbery – I’m more spiritual than you pal (therefore superior) because I have a copy of the I-Ching.

Religion like all of man’s inventions has an up side and a down side. The dark side of religion gets a lot of press, but the small-scale stuff of offering support to those in need usually gets overlooked. God? Designing intelligence? I don’t know.

Have you found your themes changing over the course of your career as a writer so far?
Well, I don’t like to repeat myself, so at one level my novels are all different. On the other hand all novels are about human nature, and also, I’ve discovered after five novels, I’m essentially a comic novelist. My style has changed a little: I’m much plainer than I used to be. I’ve learned that simplicity is the greatest art of all.

How do you feel about your earlier books?
Certainly, I’d do some things differently, but again it doesn’t matter what I feel, it’s what the reader feels.

What’s the nicest thing a reader has ever said about one of your books?
My first novel “Under the Frog” was about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The most pleasing thing for me was that people of that generation found it so accurate they thought I was one of them (until they read my bio properly).

Do you ever make yourself laugh when you write something funny?
Yes.

Do you still get a thrill from seeing your books in bookshops, or in other people’s hands on the tube?
It’s more relief when you see that your books have made it to the shops. It’s one of the rules of the business that you never see your own books being read on the tube. Fellow writers tell me they’ve spotted people reading my books, and I’ve seen their books being read, but you’re not allowed to see anyone reading your own books.

What is your least favourite bit about being a writer? And your most favourite?
My least favourite part is the part that has nothing to do with the writing. When you’re a professional writer, the writing becomes almost incidental; you end up half-salesman, half stand-up comedian. Staying in bed as long as you like is my favourite part.

If you were God, what would be the first three things on your list?
If I were God, the first thing I’d do would be to find someone else to take on the job. The 24/7 responsibility and buck-stopping must be rather wearing.

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Thank you for your time, Tibor. We need to organise a national reading-Tibor-Fischer-on-the-tube day now…

Do check out Good to Be God (here it is on Amazon UK or get free international delivery from The Book Depository), and I can also highly recommend a couple of Tibor’s previous novels – The Thought Gang and Under The Frog.

Today Planting Words will be borrowing from my other blogs.

I listened to bird-song on a car journey yesterday, and it gave me my small stone.

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tawny owl call: a tremulous, hollow coo

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There are some damn good small stones at a handful of stones at the moment, even if I say so myself. To whet your appetite (literally) here’s one by Tim Nees:

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the moon a tethered dish of milk

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Sometimes a few words are more than enough.

Have you entered my free competition to win one of three signed hardbacks of my new novel, The Blue Handbag, yet?

If not, just email me at fiona@fionarobyn.com with ‘handbag’ as the title before Sunday the 31st of May. There, easy.

If you’ve already entered (and if you haven’t) I’ve had a bright idea. You fancy reading the story of Leonard and his dog Pickles, and I’d like as many entrants into my competition as possible. So how about you ask your friends to enter?

If you emailed twenty friends and ten entered, that makes you ten times as likely to be a winner (or a winner by proxy – only fair that you borrow it after they’ve finished if you told them about the competition in the first place…)

I’ve written something below to make it easy – just copy and paste it into an email and bob’s your uncle. I’m drawing the three names on Sunday (the 31st) so tell them they’ll have to hurry up.

In other news… it’s rainy here today, but after a glorious weekend I’m glad that my vegetable patch is getting a good soaking. I just bought my crocs online in ‘peacock’ colour. Hurrah. And there’s another interview up at 100 Readers – meet Katie. Here’s the something-I’ve-written!

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Hello – I’m Fiona Robyn, a novelist from the UK. Your friend is sending you this email as I’m running a free competition to win a signed hardback of my next novel, The Blue Handbag, and they thought you might want to enter.

After forty years of happy marriage, Leonard though he knew his wife Rose as well as he knew himself. After her death he finds a mystery in her old blue handbag, and he becomes a reluctant detective as his whole life starts to unravel…

You can find out more about the book at http://www.fionarobyn.com/thebluehandbag.htm. If you’d like to enter, just email fiona@fionarobyn.com with ‘handbag’ as the title of the email before the 31st of May. Easy. And do feel free to forward this to your friends if you’d like them to win and then you can borrow the book ; )

Thanks for listening,
Warmest,
Fiona
www.fionarobyn.com
www.plantingwords.com

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1. Crocs. I’ve known about Crocs for years, ever since they got all trendy and everyone in London started wearing them.

After seeing a friend wear some at the weekend, I suddenly decided that I NEEDED a pair. They would be perfect for schlepping about in the garden.

I want this colour. I want them today. NOW.

Funny how a yearning for something can suddenly solidify and intensify for no apparent reason. If I waited for a while without buying them then it would probably dissolve away again, or at least lose its urgency. The old acquisition disease, eh? Don’t you just love it?

2. Hooks. Pema Chodron is a Buddhist teacher from the Tibetan tradition.

I first got into Buddhism after finding a few of her wise words scattered across the web. I looked her up as I wanted to hear more, and found her books which are full of treasures. I find her incredibly warm and clever and encouraging, and although I’d identify myself more as following the Zen tradition now (whatever that means) she has been and continues to be a wonderful teacher.

Anyway, there’s an extract from one of her books here about how not to ‘bite the hook’ – good stuff. I love the idea of practising ‘staying with the itch’ rather than doing whatever it is we habitually do (check Facebook, eat cake etc.)

3. Tibor Fischer. I was very lucky to be asked to be a part of Tibor’s blog tour for his very funny new book, Good to be God.

He visited Me And My Big Mouth last week, and he’ll be visiting Planting Words to answer some interview questions on Thursday. I know you’ll make him very welcome.

Salt Publishing, a very fine global poetry and short story publisher, are having a difficult time.

They are asking everyone to buy just one of their books – either from them direct or from anywhere else.

I just bought three (naughty) – Isobel Dixon’s collection A Fold in the Map which I’ve been meaning to get for a while, and two impulse buys based on a recommendation and reading a poem by each of the poets – Andrew Grace’s A Belonging Field and Mark Waldron’s The Brand New Dark.

Do pop over to Salt and see what they have to offer – poetry needs poetry readers more than other genres need their readers. We must love it as much as we can. It will love you back.

Here’s one of Waldron’s strange and beautiful poems.

Oh, I almost forgot. Golden syrup on porridge for breakfast. Lovely shining slow golden syrup. Lucky me.

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We Think We See Richness, Said Dougal,

but it’s as thin as…
as thin as…
Paper? ventured Florence, crossing and winding
her pretty legs. Her dark eyes

are ovals of infinite charm.
And Dougal felt, as he often did,
that he might topple into them and be wholly unfound
and he’d find in there the other lost mutts
who fly and go in undulating packs,
forgetting why and longing
in a putty-coloured piece of brain,
to be owned again,
and be more than what they have become –
nothing but her foaming happiness
rising in her as a swarm of barking pooch.

No, thinner than paper, said Dougal sadly.
I’m afraid there’s nothing there at all,
we make it all up,
it forms in front of us as we go.

Mark Waldron
(with kind permission from the author)

I’m working.

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Work

Love of work. The blood singing
in that. The fine high rise
of it into the work. A man says,
I’m working. Or, I worked today.
Or, I’m trying to make it work.
Him working seven days a week.
And being awakened in the morning
by his young wife, his head on the typewriter.
The fullness before work.
The amazed understanding after.
Fastening his helmet.
Climbing onto his motorcycle
and thinking about home.
And work. Yes, work. The going
to what lasts.

Raymond Carver

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PS a handful of stones has 98 followers – let’s make it a century!
PPS if you’re in the UK I’ve still got 2 signed copies of small stones (£8 incl p&p) and 4 Living Things (£6 incl p&p) or could do one of each for a tenner. Paypal, cash or cheque – email fiona@fionarobyn.com.

How much cake is enough cake? This much? A teensy bit more?

Last week it would have felt like ‘enough’ if my novels had sold one hundred thousand copies.

Today I got the weekly sales figures for The Letters. I sold 23 and 33 came back, making a grand total of minus ten. I felt grateful for every single one of the 23 copies I’d sold.

How did I get from there to here?

By going deeper. My feelings of lack last week weren’t really much to do with my book sales at all. They might just as well have latched on to food, and made me eat too much, or to money, and make me worry about my finances all week long.

The details of what happened will stay between me and my therapist, and I don’t really understand it all yet anyway. It has made me realise afresh HOW DIFFERENT the world can look, depending on what’s going on inside our heads and bellies.

Thank you for your supportive messages last week. I’m all better now, until the next time. But that’s OK too. As my Daily Dharma email reminded me this morning, life is as it is, not how we want it to be. I wouldn’t have it any other way. How else would we learn anything?

Rather than worry or obsess about enlightenment, why not be honest and accept that we will have our good days and our bad? We will have some enlightened moments of loving-kindness, as well as some dull ones. This encourages all of us to stay real and experience the moment as it is—not how we want it to be.
–Donald Altman, from Living Kindness (Inner Ocean) (you can sign up here)

I love peonies. I’ve been hankering after a bush for a few years, and then when we moved into our new place I found one hiding behind the gate. The buds have already started – I love those packed spherical buds almost as much as the blowsy blooms.

Annie Clarkson is the fourth of our 100 readers – and wins the best photo so far. Go read her interview, and you can also see the first proper review of The Blue Handbag on her site here. Where will her book go next?

Finally I liked this quote on the wonderful whiskey river recently – reminds me a bit of my article on slowing down. Writing is my ‘one thing I ought to do’ at the moment. What’s yours?

“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else – we are the busiest people in the world.”- Eric Hoffer