The gym is as boring as I thought it would be

Sport is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. I won a running race at primary school once and reached the heady heights of the netball team a few times but that’s the extent of my sporting prowess. Until recently, that is. My teenage daughter suddenly decided to join the local gym – run by the council, incidentally, and far better value than a posh one. After a few sessions though, she declared it would be much more fun if we went together. I was horrified and refused point-blank - except that she went on and on about it so much that eventually I gave in.

The gym staff insisted I had an induction session to discuss what I wanted to achieve (their words not mine). “Not that much” was my response. As they explained the minutiae of the treadmill, exercise bike, cross-trainer and other scary-looking machines, I glanced around at the other members, all honed and bronzed and with legs up to their armpits. “I’m worried that I’m going to be the oldest person here,” I told the instructor, who looked about twelve. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said airily. “Our oldest member is eighty-five.”

What to wear was the next problem. I picked out an old T-shirt, some £5 jogging bottoms from Sainsbury’s that I bought for my son years ago and he refused to wear - and a pair of plimsolls that had seen better days. “You look completely ridiculous,” said my daughter. She was so embarrassed to be seen with me that she frogmarched me straight to a sports shop and made me buy some proper trainers. Next she persuaded me to order some chic Sweaty Betty trousers. The only trouble is that the dreadful joggers are far more comfy.

So what have I learned after two weeks of my new keep-fit regime? Mainly that the gym is just as boring as I thought it would be. In fact it is so tedious that I’ve resorted to planning it around TV programmes I want to watch. The upshot is that I’m no fitter than when I started (mainly, says my daughter, because, I don’t “push myself enough”), but I’m very well up on the news.

PS: I haven’t spotted any eighty-five year olds pounding away on the treadmill. Either the instructor was fibbing or the gym has had such a stupendous effect that the eighty-five year old looks twenty-five.

PPS: COMING SOON - Starting this week, I’m featuring a book review on House With No Name every Friday. So if you love books and are looking for new reads – or if you’ve read something fantastic and want to recommend it – I’d love to hear from you.

How to write a novel - tips from Daisy Goodwin

“If you want to write a novel, it’s never too late...”

Those were the inspiring words from TV producer and novelist Daisy Goodwin when she gave the annual (and free) creative writing lecture at Oxford Brookes University last night (September 22). It was the first day of term for the university's new creative writing students, who scribbled frantically in their notebooks and tapped away on laptops as she spoke.

Over the next hour Daisy proceeded to give such great advice to the scores of would-be novelists in the audience that she should probably turn it into a book. Or, considering she’s the creative genius behind a string of hit TV shows (from Grand Designs to The Nation’s Favourite Poems), make it into a TV series.

Daisy started her writing career at the age of 43 with Silver River, a family memoir, before turning out her bestselling novel, My Last Duchess. She’s now in the throes of writing her second novel and admitted she feels “very much a novice” in the writing stakes. But many of the lessons she learned from working in TV are applicable to the art of novel writing too. She’s learned, for instance, that “the audience is king. You have to grab them and make sure they don’t go anywhere else. Your first chapter is all-important and you have to sell your book on the quality of your prose.”

She also reckoned that series like Grand Designs have a “novelistic format,” which she gleaned a lot from. The Grand Designs programmes start in a muddy field with people talking about their hopes and dreams. Midway through, the protagonists are still standing in a muddy field and at each other’s throats, but by the end of it all they have a wonderful house. “Along the way they have risk, drama, jeopardy, caravans and screaming kids,” she said, “but people watch the programme for the fairy tale ending, the moment when it’s clear that all the suffering has been worthwhile.”

At the end of the talk, Daisy, resplendent in a scarlet dress and mostly speaking without notes, reeled off a list of valuable tips on writing fiction.

1. Read, read, read. You can’t read too much.

2. Find a subject that fascinates you and that you are excited about.

3. Hard work and stamina are essential. Write 1,000 words a day. “That is the minimum,” she said. “If I can do it, you can. It’s tough but it’s true.”

4. Don’t give up the day job (or certainly not until you’ve had at least three books published.)

5. Don’t immediately show what you’ve written to “your partner, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or dog.”

6. Don’t worry that your novel isn’t all plotted out. Just keep going. Get to the end - and then go back and write a second draft.

7. Remember a book is never going to be perfect or finished. Even now, she said, when she gives readings, she pulls out adverbs and tightens up construction as she goes along.

8. Most importantly, she concluded, “if you want to do something, you can. You can realise your creative dreams.”

The day my daughter admired Cheryl Cole's shoes

“Good for Cheryl.” That was my instant reaction to the news that TV critics have given Cheryl Cole’s fleeting performance in The X Factor USA the thumbs-up.

US reviewers saw previews of the opening episode before it aired this week and reckoned she was a better judge than her replacement, Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger.

After her bout of malaria, her marriage break-up and then her ignominious exit from the American version of the X Factor, it’s about time something went right for Cheryl. The US critics’ verdict might be small comfort but at least their reviews show Simon Cowell was wrong to ditch her. And definitely wrong to ditch her in such a humiliatingly public way.

Here in the UK, Cheryl always seemed the most genuine X Factor judge – the only one who knew what it was like to go from Geordie wannabe to global superstar in the space of a few years. My daughter queued for two hours in the rain to be in the X Factor audience last year and said that Cheryl was by far the nicest judge. When the judging panel swept out of the tiny studio during the ad breaks, it was Cheryl who smiled and bantered with the audience. “Dannii and Louis completely ignored us,” my young mole told me. “Simon winked at us and when my friend said to Cheryl ‘I love your shoes,’ Cheryl stopped and said ‘thank you.’”

PS: I still haven't recovered from the excitement of being shortlisted for the Cosmo Blog Awards (please vote for House With No Name!) I had a fantastic evening last night reading lots of the other contenders and thanks to Miss Thrifty’s blog discovered that George at ASDA has a new Barbara Hulanicki collection. The clothes look great and made me reminisce about my childhood, when no trip to London was complete without a trip to Biba, Barbara Hulanicki’s amazing shop in Kensington. Stepping inside Biba was like being transported into an Aladdin’s cave full of sludgy-coloured T-shirts, suede over-the-knee boots, little cloche hats and tiny pots of eye shadow stamped with Barbara Hulanicki’s swirly gold logo. It was my favourite shop ever.

PPS: Twitter is brilliant for seeking expert advice. I’m the world’s worst photographer and needed to buy a camera that was good value and idiot-proof. When I appealed for help on Twitter, several people recommended the Nikon Coolpix S3100. I headed straight round to Curry’s and da-da, the picture above, taken on a walk in the Oxfordshire countryside, is my first effort.

Book review - The Ugly Sister by Jane Fallon

If you haven’t discovered Jane Fallon’s books yet, then trust me, you’re in for a treat.

Her first, Getting Rid of Matthew, was touching, pacy and made me laugh out loud. While many heroines have a burning ambition to find a man, this one featured a woman who is desperate to ditch hers. She tries everything to convince her married lover that she’s had enough of him and his dirty laundry, from not brushing her teeth (eek!) to (double eek!) leaving incontinence pads scattered around the bathroom.

Fallon’s fourth novel, The Ugly Sister, is out next week and tackles the thorny issues of beauty and ageing. It tells the tale of two sisters who were once close but have drifted apart. Cleo, the elder, is one of those annoying women who seems to have it all. She’s a stunning supermodel who was spotted by a model agency scout at the age of 16 and has never looked back. She’s got a lovely husband, two daughters and a luxurious, four-storey house in Primrose Hill.

Younger sister Abi, on the other hand, has spent her entire life in Cleo’s shadow. A single mum who works as a librarian and struggles to make ends meet, she’s astonished when out of the blue Cleo invites her to stay for the summer. The sisters have led separate lives for 20 years and Abi, whose daughter has just set off on her gap year, reckons this may be the chance to rebuild their once close relationship.

But as Fallon reveals, Cleo’s life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Her career’s on the slide, her marriage is far from love’s young dream and her children are spoiled rotten. So much so that the ten year old refuses to travel on the tube and expects to be waited on hand and foot.

Jane Fallon's partner is Ricky Gervais, and before turning to novels, she was the award-winning producer behind TV shows like This Life, Teachers and 20 Things To Do Before You’re 30. The Ugly Sister isn’t quite as sharp and witty as her first novel, but it’s an entertaining read all the same. It zips along and has some perceptive insights into sibling rivalry. As Fallon herself says: "Sibling rivalry is a classic forum for drama and storytelling. We all have such conflicted and complex feelings about our families, even those of us who have grown up in a happy, loving nuclear set-up."

The Ugly Sister by Jane Fallon is published by Penguin at £7.99

PS: The film of I Don’t Know How She Does It has managed to irritate virtually every woman I know. Stay-at-home mums are furious at being portrayed as smug know-it-alls who bake cakes and spend their days at the gym. Working mums are livid at the way Sarah Jessica Parker (aka hot-shot financier Kate Reddy) arrives at the office with porridge on her lapel, nits in her hair and reminders for her son’s birthday party scrawled across her hand. And career women are fed up at being stereotyped as humourless workaholics who insist they don’t want children. In fact the only thing I liked about the adaptation of Allison Pearson’s 2002 novel was SJP’s divine Mulberry handbag.

Cosmo Blog Awards 2011 - House With No Name is shortlisted!

Today started off like any other day. Morning traffic trundling past the window at a snail’s pace. Son crunching his way through a bowl of Golden Grahams before school. Me trying to think of 101 reasons not to go to the gym – I signed up at a new one last week, nodded enthusiastically through my induction session and, er, haven’t set foot in the place since.

Then something brilliant happened. I discovered that House With No Name has been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2011!

I’m still in shock but thank you so much to everyone who nominated me. I love blogging and am completely over the moon to have been shortlisted.

House With No Name is in the Lifestyle category – alongside some fantastic blogs. If you’d like to vote for me, I’d be very thrilled and incredibly grateful. To vote please click here. You need to enter your email address, then select the Lifestyle Blog with Handpicked Media category. Click on House With No Name and then on Vote.

A big thank you again – and good luck to all the shortlisted blogs!

Romantic novelists Katie Fforde and Kate Lace at the Chiswick Book Festival

I adore literary festivals. So I was over the moon when the organisers of the Chiswick Book Festival asked me to chair a talk on romantic fiction by bestselling writers Katie Fforde and Kate Lace. The session was called My Big Fat Summer of Love (an amalgam of their two latest titles – Summer of Love by Katie Fforde and Gypsy Wedding by Kate Lace) and covered everything from how they began their illustrious careers to their own favourite romantic novels.

The pair, who are great friends, were fun, informative and inspiring. They’ve both chaired the Romantic Novelists’ Association in the past (indeed, Katie is now president), and several members of the audience were so enthused that they came up at the end and asked how they could join.

The writers began the afternoon by telling the audience about their roads to publication. Kate Fforde said that when her children were little she had a “serious Mills & Boon addiction" – one book a day in fact – and decided to have a go at writing one herself. In the end she wasn’t published by Mills & Boon but it was a fantastic way to learn her craft. She hasn’t looked back since her first novel, Living Dangerously, was published in 1995. She also praised the “hugely supportive” RNA. Meanwhile Kate Lace began writing as a young army wife with three small children, first writing for an magazine for army wives, then non-fiction, including Gumboots and Pearls about life as an army wife, before turning to fiction.

They also discussed exactly what makes a good romantic novel. Katie reckons that the key is to create “a believable love story,” and stressed that the happy ending must be “credible,” while Kate said that there must be some “grit in the oyster.” When it comes to planning novels, Kate said she knows where her books are going to start and finish, but doesn’t tend to plot everything in advance. Katie reckoned that if you plan too much, you’ve already told the story and “sort of lose interest.”

They both start work early – Katie is on Twitter at the crack of dawn but then concentrates on writing for the rest of the day. Kate works from 9am till The Archers starts at five past seven. Kate said that “scary deadlines” keep her nose to the grindstone, but Katie emphasised that it's important to take time to think about her characters and where they are going. Sometimes her best ideas emerge when she’s gardening or cooking.

They’re both voracious readers, but asked about their own favourite romantic novels, chose utterly different titles. Katie adores Georgette Heyer while Kate reckons Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the “absolute best love story” she’s ever read.

Finally, the two writers gave us a tantalising hint of the treats we’ve got in store. Katie’s next book is called Recipe for Love and is set in a TV cookery competition (it will be out next year) and she’s currently researching another one set in the world of antiques. Meanwhile Kate is busy writing about the glamorous world of rowing. Watching handsome, Lycra-clad rowers in action, she added, is no hardship at all.

PS: Actress Isla Blair is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever interviewed. I spent a day at her house years ago with a stylist and photographer for a Country Homes & Interiors profile. The following session at the Chiswick Book Festival featured Isla talking to her son Jamie Glover, the actor and director, about her new book. A Tiger’s Wedding tells of her childhood in India during the last days of the Raj and I can’t wait to read it.