Always in my heart

I recently finished my latest book, Always in my Heart, which I am especially happy with.  It was an intense and emotional experience and in the first draft , one of  my main, and most loveable, characters (Alice) is killed in a tragic accident.  Both my editor and publisher loved the book but they also loved the character and didn’t want her to die.  They thought it would have an adverse effect on the other characters and my readers.  So I was asked to rewrite the ending so that she lives. 

This was not a situation I had found myself in before.   At first, I wasn’t too sure about changing anything.   I was pleased with my original ending and reluctant to alter it.  Then I did some soul searching and examined my motives for killing off Alice.  They weren’t good.  Events in my personal life had caused me to feel cynical.  By having my character die it was like saying, “Life can be hard, and bad things happen to good people.  Get used to it.”  I was trying to push a harsh message through, but for the wrong reasons.

After a lot of consideration, I found a way to rewrite my story.  I’m really pleased I did. Alice lives, and my agent and publisher were happy too.  I have a new perspective on the story and am bubbling with ideas for the sequels.

A further reflection: writers can play god,  deciding the fate of their characters.  It’s a fantasy role, but maybe it’s part of why we write, some quirk of our psychological make-up;  that power, that control, which we lack in everyday events.  If only real life were life that.  If only we could rewrite real life, so we can bring back the people we love and have lost forever.  

But they are always in my heart. 

Related posts:

http://www.janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/art-of-storytelling.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/once-upon-time.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/that-other-place.html
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/models-playing-god-and-storytelling.html

Running, writing and living

Running is great for writing.  It gives the head space to breath and reflect, and for ideas to germinate and evolve.  I love to observe the birds and squirrels when I’m running and often stop to talk to them.  Part of the human need to commune with other living creatures, I imagine, and to feel a connection with the world.

Sometimes I will do a familiar run in reverse and it’s fascinating how it can feel like a new route when you do that.  The other day, I decided to deviate from my usual route and follow a path that went somewhere I had not been before.  I never find it easy to go into unfamiliar territory, but the path did, strangely, and after some time, take me back onto my usual route but from a different direction.  At first I didn’t recognise where I was, even though it was a path I run frequently, and I reflected on how new everything can look from a different angle.  

Related posts:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/connectivity-and-communion.html

http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/on-connections.html

Tales from a nervous rider - Part 2

GUEST BLOGGER: Vicky Smith

TALES FROM A NERVOUS RIDER PART 2

For anyone who's ever had a bad experience whilst riding, here's the 2nd part of my story, demonstrating how I overcame my fears & anxiety using NLP and hypnotherapy. Yes, that stuff really works!

I always believed I was a rubbish rider and that something bad would happen every time I went riding. I only had to think about riding - I didn’t need to be anywhere near a horse - to feel the fear! Weird, huh? 

Through lots of training, I understood why I was nervous, but what I wanted to know was how could I stop it. How could I go from ‘Nervous Nellie’ to ‘Valiant Vicky’? 

I’d created a niggling voice in my head that said ‘the horse will bolt’ or ‘something will go wrong’. You know that voice, we all have it! The voice was linked to the limiting beliefs my brain had created and was almost paralysing me with fear. 

How did I turn that around?

 Using a variety of powerful and effective NLP tools & techniques, I was finally able shut that voice up once and for all. I went from being a nervous wreck, to someone who would gallop across fields, enter competitions, explore the countryside for hours on horseback - there was no stopping me. NLP cleared those limiting beliefs and gave me new strategies for dealing with negative emotions. It wasn't that I was never going to feel fear or anxiety again (that wouldn't be safe), but I was able to deal with it realistically - to see it for what it really was and not allow it to change my behaviour and stop me doing what I loved - horse riding.

 After owning Ted for 6 years, we were finally having some real fun together. I freed him from the doldrums of the indoor school and started doing things we both loved. We had an amazing couple of years, then sadly Ted's back gave in and he had to be put to sleep, at the grand old age of 21. He was an amazing character & a real gent, everyone loved him.

I'm back in the saddle now riding a beautiful 17.2 dressage horse. I use my experience to help other nervous riders overcome their fears. You can get lots of free riding/coaching tips to help you overcome your fears at: http://www.inspirationalridingsolutions.com/ or on: facebook.com/InspirationalRidingSolutions

Related post:
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/tales-from-nervous-rider-part-1.html

Tales from a nervous rider - Part 1

Fear and anxiety - unfortunately these feelings have played far too large a part in my life so far, and I know I am not alone in this.  Although I have always loved horses, I have always been a nervous rider.  So I was delighted to make contact with Vicky Smith, a UKCP registered NLP Psychotherapist and a qualified Coach. Combining her NLP expertise and love of horses, she set up Inspirational Riding Solutions in 2006 and has been successfully helping horse lovers to rebuild their confidence ever since, working with 'happy hackers', semi-professionals and professional riders.

I am delighted that Vicky has written the first of a 2 part guest blog for me and I am sure that many of us will identify with what Vicky says.  

GUEST BLOG  by Vicky Smith, Inspirational Riding Solutions

TALES FROM A NERVOUS RIDER  -  PART 1

For all you nervous equestrians out there, here's a tale from an ex nervous rider of 20+ years. This is me jumping my first ever x-country course after dreaming about it forever!

I was always a nervous rider, even as a child, so I can’t tell you how amazing it felt to finally jump my first x-country course at the ripe old age of 34 after a lifetime of dreaming about it.

After several terrifying incidents riding as a child, I finally gave up in my teens. Years later, having never lost my love of riding, I decided to ‘do things properly’. I finally bought Ted off the internet (argh I hear you cry – definitely not doing things properly). I had weekly lessons – for years, with different trainers, yet nothing could shake the fear and anxiety I felt inside. I had to psyche myself up for days if I was going hacking and always felt relief as soon as it was over. I eventually became too frightened to hack out, too nervous to compete and even at times too scared to canter.

At that time in my career as Head of T&D at KCC, I heard about NLP. I thought I was going to learn new skills, however, I ended up changing so many things in my life for the better – one of them being my riding. I was gobsmacked at how much change was possible, and how quickly.

I learned that traumatic events create emotional memories, which create certain automatic responses and behaviours. I’d had lots of traumatic events as a child: horses bolting, being thrown off, throwing myself off, to name a few! After things like this, the brain is on constant alert for similar situations that might mean danger. In my brain anything associated with riding meant danger – even though at one level I knew I was perfectly safe, I still felt scared inside. This was completely irrational – why did this keep happening? 

NLP taught me that my mind had created limiting beliefs and negative emotions inside me that made me behave in certain [irrational] ways every time I went riding, or – and this is even more weird – every time I thought about riding. My brain was making me so scared that I virtually stopped riding – confining myself to the indoor school.  

Part 2 will show you how I managed to turn things around.  If you can’t wait, take a look at my website to see how I overcame my fears: http://www.inspirationalridingsolutions.com/

Related posts:
http://www.janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/tales-from-nervous-rider-continued.html

Time to write

When I was a child, writing and reading was a form of escapism for me.  I was quite shy and insular and lacked confidence in social situations.  I enjoyed making up stories and writing them down.  Aside from school work, I also wrote poems and prose for my own pleasure, entered a few competitions and won a few prizes.  So I decided from an early age I wanted to be a writer - probably a journalist.  In my teens, I sent stories to magazines and got published .  I expanded stories into serials and attempted to write a short novel, which I never finished.  I discovered that I could earn bit of extra money from my stories, which, when I left home, was needed to pay bills.  In parallel with this, I have always worked for an employer.  From the age of 13, I had a variety of part time jobs and as life went on, and relationships and mortgages followed, I continued to work full time and my dreams of being a full time writer remained dreams.

When I reached my twenties, I got an agent and produced 2 pony novels a year whilst continuing in salaried employment. To meet the publishers deadlines, weekends and holidays were spent writing.  I worked very hard for very many years and was probably more productive than at any time since.  I continued to envy those who could afford to write full time, who maybe had the luxury of a partner who supported them to pursue their ambitions.


As I reached my thirties and forties I found ways to reorganise my working hours to build in more time to write.  This involved some very early mornings, and, for a year, I managed to persuade one employer that I could squeeze my 37 hours a week into 4 longer days and do the job just as well.  Eventually, I came to a point some years ago when I juggled several part time jobs to create more time to write but even then it was a struggle.  The self discipline that had been a major part of my twenties was now lacking, and writing seemed to come harder to me. I moaned and whinged to anyone who would listen that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

When, for a brief period of time, I did actually have some free time, how ironic that I was unable to motivate myself to produce anything worthwhile.

Next month I will be fifty and over the years I have realised that I no longer want to be a full time writer.  The dream that sustained me throughout years of commuting and jobs that I usually got bored with, had gradually faded.  I need to interact with people, to learn new things and share experiences.  All of this feeds my writing and makes life richer.  What works best for me is to have some flexibility, some control, even if this is only 1 or 2 days a week, to organise how I use that time.  I write in blocks, intense bursts of activity that can take me weeks or longer to gear up to.  I really admire writers who have the discipline to write something every day.  I remember once reading about a successful author who still retained her 9-5 office job, writing in the evenings and weekends.  I felt resentful when I had to do this for years, but she actively chooses to structure her life in this way.  That’s the key element in all this - choice.  If you feel trapped and constrained, you end up being frustrated and constantly telling yourself, “If only I had more time to write I could achieve X, Y and Z.”    “If” can be a very damaging word.

I have learned that on the rare occasions I have an unexpected expanse of “free” time I am very good at wasting it.  (Although John Lennon apparently said, “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted.”  I like this.)

What I enjoy most about writing is playing with ideas.  Writing is about ideas and language.  Whether you are chained to a desk in a boring office job or stuck on a packed commuter train, your mind is still free to play and explore and for me that is the real fun.  The physical act of translating those ideas onto a computer screen or notebook - that’s the graft.  That’s the hardest bit.                                                                                                            

Equestrian Ink Guest Blog

I'm really thrilled to be guest blogger today on the wonderful Equestrian Ink site.  You can read "Sharing the Journey" here.

http://equestrianink.blogspot.com/2012/02/meet-jane-ayres-guest-blog.html

Thinking....

I’ve been thinking a lot about the human brain.  I recently thoroughly enjoyed watching the BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for 2011, a very entertaining and informative 3 parter that sought to explain and explore the mechanisms and processes of thinking, learning and being.  Apparently we are born with 100 billion neurons (brain cells), which then have to connect up.  Each experience we have forms the connections (dendrites).  The brain seeks out patterns.  Who we are - our identity - is a sum of our memories.  Fascinating stuff.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018l6vy