Mathematical Abundance - Alice Rosewell

 

I have suffered from an abundance of… wait for it… maths teaching materials!

 

Back in my thirties I retrained as a maths teacher. I thought I could make a difference; I love maths. Turns out I was not so keen on kids, so although I got my teaching degree, I walked out of the classroom on the final day of my teaching practice vowing never to set foot in a school again.  I have the utmost admiration for those who teach in overfilled classrooms with little support and a huge burden of admin, but it was not for me. I didn’t completely give up though, I did some freelance tutoring and spent a year teaching maths to new university students for a couple of hours a week.

A huge amount of preparation goes into even a single hour of teaching, and I accumulated a mass of handwritten lesson plans, handouts, worksheets and I’ve forgotten what else.

 

When I downsized from my large family house to my ‘suitable for a single lady writer’ home I had to bite the bullet and say good bye to an awful lot of stuff.  At least three quarters of my books went to the charity shop - that was a wrench; and most of my quilting stash - a whole trunkful of material - went to a local school. But when it came to products of my mental effort, I hit a wall.

I have always been proud (too proud perhaps) of my intellectual abilities, but I don’t have much in the way of physical evidence to show for it. My piles of paper reminded me of how hard I worked (another value metric), and just how much of a smart arse I was.

Now that I was semi-retired, I had to think carefully about how I wanted to spend the years of creativity I had left. Did I ever want to teach maths to bored teenagers again? NO!  Did I want to spend my time curating cupboards full of papers covered in maths that I don’t even understand anymore? Again, no!

It had to go. I set some time aside to go through it all and say goodbye.

I took a breath.

Enjoyed the feeling of space.

 Then started to fill that space with my increasing piles of old manuscripts!

 Some of us just never learn the important stuff!

 

My name is Alice Rosewell and I live in the city of Bristol in the South West of England (UK), the city where I was born.  I write in British English, so I hope that American readers will not be put off by British spelling of some words.

The first story I remember writing was at primary school, about the age of 7. This was followed by a dry spell which lasted about 50 years during which I got through University, brought up a couple of kids, and had a successful career in IT.

I had the outline of a story which I’d dreamed up one evening in the pub, but that sat in a folder for about a decade until I got made redundant for the 2nd time in one year! This event coincided with the Kindle becoming mainstream, and Indie publishing an option. I dusted off my few pages of ideas and got to work. For the last few years, I have been writing contemporary women’s fiction, publishing three novels: Irrelevant Women, The Kite Makers, and my latest, An End to Dreaming.  A good friend described my writing as intriguing, uplifting, and will not give you nightmares!  I think that about sums it up.