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Insomnia….again

5th January 2012 by Helena Leave a Comment  

There are many things you can do when you wake up in the middle of the night. You can lie there and try to get back to sleep. Sometimes that works, but not, as was the case with me just now, when there is a little person next to you who has just had a nightmare and keeps throwing her arms in your general direction while she sleeps.Or, as is also the case with me tonight, there are a million things going around in your head such as how to finish the novel, what to eat for dinner, where is above-mentioned little person’s science test and how best to deal with an extremely pesky work situation.
My friend Carla’s view on sleep is that if it doesn’t come naturally, you take drugs. I once took a sleeping pill. It was when my father was staying with us one Christmas. The next day I was like the walking dead.
“Why are you being even more stupid than usual?” he asked me. I told him about the pill. He flew into a rage such as I have never seen before. “Sleeping pills are for the mediocre,” he yelled. “You are a writer. If you can’t sleep, get up and write.”
So after an hour and a half of trying to get back to sleep I have decided to do just that. There is a novel to finish and an article to write.
And even if it doesn’t help my own insomnia, it may help someone else’s.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012


Filed Under: Life, blog -->, writing Tagged With: again, insomnia

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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