And I need your help with a couple of things.

As far as Bah! 1, is concerned, everything is well underway, with the copy edited version back with my editor at Hay House, who says it’s ‘reading beautifully’. (Squeee!)  Something that I’ve been asked about, though, is some testimonials /emails/ comments about this blog, which will form part of the publicity for the book when it comes out.

Over the months and years I’ve been blogging I have had lots of emails and comments and conversations about the positive impact of this little corner of the interwebs. As my aim has always been to help others dancing with cancer, I’ve found this really encouraging, and motivating. What I’m asking now is that, if you feel the Bah! blog has helped you, would you mind dropping me a little email to say exactly how? Your comments might be used in press releases, etc, with your first name. If you feel you can do this (and only if it feels comfortable) please email me at stephaniewrites (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk.

That’s the Bah! 1 thing. The Bah! 2 thing is this:

I’m writing, as you know, about the journey  from survival to thrival. I’d like to interview some fellow thrivers about their experience. This is partly for research purposes but I may also include some quotes in the book (again, first name only). If you’d be happy to fill in a brief questionnaire via email, please email me at stephaniewrites (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk.

Thank you.

The blog post is here.

It has made me think. (I am having something of a thinky/wondery week, it seems.)

This blog has allowed me to meet new people, in real life as well as virtually. I’ve found help and support here, and been able to offer it too. I hope that who I am here, on the browser, is also who I am here, on my sofa. And because of these things, I assume that the way the cancer community uses the interwebs is a Good Thing. I guess, if you’re here, you think so too.

But am I making a big assumptions? Are there drawbacks to the way we are doing things, and what can we do to overcome them? Please leave a comment.

Which are probably not what you think.

They are the Mum And Dad Blogger awards.

My children were born in 1994 and 1996, in the days when the interwebs weren’t as widely available as they ae now. I loved (and still love) being a Mum – I remember those sleepy days of breastfeeding and walking round and round the park as some of the happiest I’ve ever had – but there were times when I was lonely and felt a little bit lost. I think one of the best things about the internet (apart from online shopping, obviously) is how easy it is now to find advice, to connect, to understand you’re not alone.

But if you’re here, you know that, because the cancer community, like the parent community, has realised just how much blogs can help us to help, reassure, and entertain each other.

You can read more about the MAD Awards here, nominate a blog here, and find out a bit about my fellow judges here – I’m in excellent company. I’ll keep you posted about how it’s going.

And while we’re talking great blogs….. why not leave a message in the comments, telling the rest of us which blogs you like?

The other 20% of emails – I’m not including in the count the ones telling me I’ve won a trillion pounds in a lottery I somehow can’t recall buying a ticket for, or offering me a Russian bride – are from people who want to start a blog, and they want my advice. Again, I’m happy to oblige, but my replies are a bit more standard. Essentially, my advice to someone who wants to start a blog is:

1. Decide what the theme of your blog is.
2. Sign up for a free blog site like  Blogger or Wordpress or Blogspot.
3. Show up and write something that you think is good and interesting, at least 5 days a week.
4. Keep on doing 3 and see what happens. The internet is a great leveller: if your blog hits a spot people will find you. And if it doesn’t and they don’t, if you are doing 3 and enjoying it then it doesn’t really matter.

Sometimes, dear reader, when I send these emails off I must admit that I feel a little bit smug. Especially when people tell me they have been considering starting a blog for 6 months or 2 years. I have a little ‘tch! why don’t people just get on with writing’ to myself. In fact, I did it just the other day. And as I returned to my inbox after pressing ‘send’, I found an email from one of the people who kindly agreed to read the first two chapters of my NaNoWriMoMoMoMo novel, demanding (nicely) to see the next chapter as they were dying to find out what happened next.

There isn’t a next chapter yet, and there isn’t a good reason why not. Yes, I’m busy, yes, it’s nearly Christmas, yes, there’s house stuff to do; but actually, if I had written only 500 words a day (and I write fast: that’s only half an hour) on only half of the days since I last did any work on this, I’d have at least another 2 chapters by now. And it’s not as though I don’t want to write it: I wake up in the morning with my characters knocking at the edges of my brain, asking to be let out.

So, I’m going to get down to it. I’m going to stop vacillating and shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying and generally faffing about. I’m going to do what I tell the would-be bloggers I hear from to do: I’m going to show up at the screen and write.

As ever, I’ll keep you posted.

(Oh, and I may also be a bit less smug next time someone asks my advice on blogging.)

(That’s not me, in the picture, in case you were wondering. Oh, and did you know that if you put ‘Happy birthday breasts’ into Google Images you get more than 431,000 hits? I didn’t. I do now. It was most – um – illuminating.)

So. 2 years and 600 posts later – yes, by a complete fluke, this is post number 600 – here I am. Thanks to Bah! to cancer, I feel as though I’ve been able to stay on top of my dance with cancer: the act of blogging is the act of processing experience. Thanks to Bah!, writing is back at the heart of my life. Thanks to Bah!, I am constantly reminded that I am a cancer survivor. (I still need to find a funkier word than ’survivor’ for it, though.)

What I like best abut the blog, though, is that it seems to help. And cancer is hard work, and we all need all of the help we can get.

Thank you for showing up here, day after day, and reading about life at Bah!. Over 1000 of you drop in every day, and I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m glad it does.

I know it’s rude to ask for birthday presents, but I would really like would be if you would leave a comment today if you are here. Nothing major, just a little ‘hello’. (You can do it anonymously if you like.) There’s a reason: I know you are all there, because of the stats, and because of the emails that I get from people who don’t want to share their very personal thoughts and feelings in the comments, but you are reading this, probably, on your own. Let’s show each other that we are here. Let’s show each other that we are not alone in all the cha-chas, pas de deux and paso dobles with cancer that are going on all over the world. Let’s hear from all of the people who read the blog but aren’t dancing with cancer, so those of us who are know that there are people out there willing us through. Let’s celebrate this birthday with a great big Bah! to cancer.

(And some cake. But you’ll have to sort that bit out for yourself.)

If you vote for me you can also win something. Dollars to dimes it will be cereal, but hey, cereal’s good. (You can also vote for other people and win cereal. I won’t be checking, and there are some really good blogs over there.)

I’ll let you know how it goes. I hope better than the whole Wikio thing. Hmph. 5th to 14th most influential UK health blogger in 3 months! With a little red downward pointing arrow next to my name in case you hadn’t realised! It’s a good job I am too well adjusted and uninterested in such lists to care….. (Sniff.)

Things changed, though. The Bah! approach to cancer crystallised into something more than doggedly keeping going and trying not to lose my sense of humour. People outside my circle started to read about my dance with cancer. People got what I was about. Somewhere along the line I became, I think, a sort of patient advocate as well as a person dancing with cancer. None of this with any special effort or design on my part: I’ve just kept showing up here, and so have you, and between us, we make Bah! to cancer happen.

Blogging has become part of my life. More than that, it has reminded me of the sense of home I find in writing: me sitting here in my PJs, weaving words in a way that might make a meaning for you, is a daily delight.

Currently, around 800-1000 people visit the blog every day, with numbers steadily rising. (When I first moved to this site in January, it was 200-300.) I’m so pleased that so many of you find enough value in what I have to say to come by, and come back.

But for the last couple of months I’ve been wondering: assuming that my daily Tamoxifen tablet is the end phase of my dance with cancer, how long can I justify keeping the blog going? I don’t want it to be like ‘Moonlighting’, limping on long after Maddie and whatsisname finally got it together, which was really the only reason any of us were watching. . Yet the thought of ending the blog doesn’t sit right. (And I have yet to have a day when there isn’t a post jumping up and down in the blog bit of my brain, waving and grinning and saying ‘Pick me! Pick me!’, which has got to be a good sign, hasn’t it?)

There’s a conundrum at the heart of Bah! these days. Every day that I have nothing to say about cancer is actually what Bah! to cancer is all about. Part of what I am trying to do here is to show people going through diagnosis and treatment, or their friends or family or colleagues, that it is possible to live through a dance with cancer. Bah! has become a blog about surviving. So I am going to write, now, about survivorship. About how life is when you have danced with cancer and lived to blog the tale – because life changes, for sure. I am going to talk to people who understand survival, and people who are involved with getting to the bottom of why cancer happens, and people who try to help and support those of us dancing with cancer. I’m going to celebrate survivorship, without forgetting how, once cancer has danced into your life, it never quite dances out.

And I will keep you posted about my hair. (Forever.)

How does that sound to you?

Obviously, the family and I have been Very Busy buying a house, and doing everything that goes with it: driving up and down to Northumberland, seeing lots of houses, talking about houses, talking about how lovely our new house is, bursting into tears in our new bedroom in our new house because it feels so utterly just us(OK, that was just me), and all that.

But I’ve mainly been busy on the book. For the last 10 days or so I’ve been in the final throes of writing ‘Thinking, Laughing, Living, Dancing: how I said Bah! to cancer’ and it’s absorbing my attention in a pretty intense way. It’s not that I’m writing 24 hours a day: it’s more that because I’m so immersed that it’s hard to make the mental leap out of cancer then (whenever ‘then’ is, depending on the chapter – editing the chemotherapy chapter was really hard going)  to life and cancer now – and so it’s hard to blog coherently or find very much to say, except ‘do you remember this….’ which seems like cheating. 

Today will be the final editing and tweaking. (I say ‘final’ although obviously a good agent and editor will have lots to suggest for my maybe-diamond.) So. Look out for the big squee when it’s done – you’ll be the second to know – and normal service will be resumed shortly afterwards.

I’ll see you when I’ve finished my book.

So I’m going to do things a bit differently.

Today is your last chance to pick a book from the current selection, here.

I’m going to sprinkle book giveaways through this blog until I’ve set up the Bah! BBB site, which should be sometime in September. The Bah! BBB site will then focus on books and reviews with the odd reference to cancer, and this site will focus on cancer with the occasional reference to books. I’m going to worry less about fundraising and more about just getting the books out there.

There are a couple of ways you can help if you want to:

1. I’ve been thinking that the Bah! BBB needs a slogan. The best I’ve come up with so far is

The Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza: a good read when you need it

Do you have any other suggestions?

2. If you’ve read a brilliant book – and it can be anything, so long as it’s ultimately uplifting – please write a short review and email it to me, so I can include it in the new site.

Thank you – and thank you for supporting that Bah! BBB so far.