Writing – Page 4

The quality of your thoughts

11th March 2015 · 7 Comments

Struck by the immediacy of the web, I scour for the perfect Spring coat. I actually get frustrated when I can’t find what I want at the right price. I marvel at this, remembering how, pre-Internet, I used to actually go on shopping trips (invariably with my friend Dawn) and choose items in situ, in an actual shop, emerging with a real, live purchase. Now the postman is a trusty and long-suffering participant in my habit.

I am stuck halfway between a great book and a gripping book. The gripping one (The Girl on the Train) won over and I have read it cover to cover in less than 24 hours. I feel slightly dazed now; words swimming before my eyes. A satisfying read though. I will now revert to the great book (The Lives of Girls and Women) which is entirely more high-brow, but slower in pace.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. After all of the fanfare last year of turning 40, what can I say a year down the line?! It’s been a funny old year! The thing I wanted the most (freedom from working and space for myself) has turned out to be a challenge. Of all the times in my life, my 40th year saw me with more time on my hands than ever before and the reckoning that life had altogether shifted and changed. There were a few factors here; having a teenage child (which serves to remind you how long ago it was since you were 13) to noticing how many of my peers have returned to paid employment after years of housewifery. I did it all the other way round. The realisation that if I spend too much time alone, at home, I get this pervading feeling of stillness/frustration/boredom – even when there are a million things that need doing. The urgency seeped out of me month to month and instead I went from day to day; opening the blinds each morning and thinking: can another day have passed?? It’s a curious thing.

So not an unhappy year exactly, but a pensive one. And I now conclude that the time is up for all that thinking and instead it’s time for doing. I know, I know, I have said this before; bear with me.

I realise (and this could be my maturing years) that in fact the quality of your life DOES indeed depend on the quality of your thoughts. It’s all about how you look at things.

I move steps closer to securing a place doing a Master’s Degree in Writing; I had an interview yesterday, waiting to hear. I realise that of those million tasks that the housewife should complete; many can wait. I can steal a dog walk or a pub lunch with my husband when he works at home and feel grateful that we have that luxury. I covet things on line and then get over myself a day later; the beauty of the ‘add to cart’ option that never progresses to ‘checkout’. I ponder whether I am too old for boyfriend jeans (I’m saying I can wear them; just). I try not to think too much about how it’s all going to feel ten years from now. Or twenty.

I guess this year has been spent carving out a place I’m comfortable in. It feels as if before now, there were a series of choices (career, marriage, home, kids) that now, at the ripe of age of nearly 41, have come home to roost. Me? Mother of a teenager and a nine year old? Married for fifteen years? Washing my kitchen floor and hoovering most days? Seeing photos of myself and thinking – where did those laughter lines come from?! Furtively wishing I had once in my life been platinum blonde and wondering if I ever will be. Genuinely and actively deciding whether to age gracefully. Having a genuine interest in face creams that promise miracles. Being outraged by things that didn’t used to outrage me. This is all part of life’s rich tapestry…happy birthday me.

Educating Rita

13th February 2015 · 5 Comments

The open day for the writing degree was last weekend; a wood-panelled room, me and three tutors well-versed in academia. I got to talk about writing. It felt like I had come home. I think this might be good for me. Now I have to apply and see if I can get a place…

I’ve spent a week being busy…with some lovely interludes, like meeting my good friend Amanda at The Pig and devouring gorgeous food and even better chat.

Then, there are the domestics. Ever present.

The not-buying-anything resolution was short-lived. As predicted by my readers.

There were morning walks, with the pup, on the beach and morning runs at the marina. And yoga and circuit training. I was meant to run a 10K race last weekend and I bailed. I keep doing this; entering and not doing. I have to conclude that competitive running is just not for me. Full stop.

I am preparing a portfolio of writing to submit for the degree course; absolutely daunting. But good.

I finished reading ‘Elizabeth is Missing‘ and worried about Dementia a little more than I did before.

Another parent’s evening (my daughter this time) and the clarity you get from good teachers who tell you like it is. She’s a good girl my daughter; she’ll do well, I hope. Turns out (in a comment from her philosophy teacher) that she can formulate an ethical argument that rocks. This pleases me. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

I saw 19 deer in the fields by my house today, in a herd. The leader has grown antlers now. I quite like that we rub along, the deer and I. They don’t scarper, they know as I approach that I don’t mean them harm.

It’s half term next week, thank goodness. The school run is killing me slowly.

I long for Spring and a semblance of good weather. The long winter is getting on my last nerve.

I watched four episodes of ‘Sex and the City’. For old time’s sake.

It’s Friday night, happy weekend!

Sleep-deprived

15th December 2014 · 5 Comments

I am not normally afflicted with insomnia; I sleep soundly, but last night…no sleep! 1.06am, 2.25am, 4.14am I saw all of these times. This happens every now and then. I just couldn’t quiet my mind. It’s in these times, obscurely, that I start constructing the book I want to write. Increasingly this mythical book exists in my mind’s eye, but I have yet to start writing it. Come on already! People say to me: ‘you know what? you should write a book!’ like I have never considered this course of action before. I consider it all the time. But characteristically of me I think about the finished product. I have this recurring dream of me opening a box of freshly printed books, pulling one out and it’s by me! How amazing would that feel?! I also watched ‘The Book Thief’ at the weekend…books are all.

The only way down this road is to start writing (along with a gazillion other would-be writers).

Get over yourself Lou!

Meanwhile I took down a blog post I wrote at the weekend, which is unlike me; I normally write and publish and don’t look back. But when I read it back the tone was off and I saw that sometimes the way I perceive the world is not the same as everyone else. I wonder if that is the whole point – people don’t come to read a blog unless it provides some perspective? But ultimately I don’t want to offend anyone.

Today is the first day of the school holidays so I have a houseful of pyjama’ed kids and the painter has arrived. Just when we thought those days were over, they have come to do the snagging list. Snagging is such a curious activity; all those little scuffs and niggles that you have when you hand over a build, pale into insignificance once family life has made its mark. Whilst I love my new white walls, I can see there will be a labour of love to keep them white. After all the procrastination that goes into design choices, I picked trade, pure, brilliant white for the walls. Now when people visit they ask ‘which white’ I selected, suspecting that I poured over a Farrow and Ball colour card. In fact I went with the most basic paint you can get! Sometimes less is more!

This time last year we were preparing to spend Christmas in Dubai with family. This year we revert to family norm and will spend Christmas Day at home, snuggled, with just my Mum to stay. Last year was so different it made quite an impression, but this year we are all looking forward to an old-fashioned British time.

Still trying to get organised…it never fails to amaze me what a performance Christmas is these days. I recall days as a child, when Christmas was something magical that happened to you, rather than being something magical that you worked to create. It can be wearying and I look back on previous years at this time and sense the same feelings of being overwhelmed by the logistics and the gift-buying. I’d like to just be.

I’ve been thinking about loneliness. The last few months have been a time of trying to turn around my mood as I have been spending a lot of time alone. I get glimpses into years and years ahead and see that keeping busy and having friends and family around you is the elixir. I feel like I am having a trial run and I am not sure I am that good at being alone. I heard loneliness defined as having people to do something with, but nobody to do nothing with.

I can’t help thinking the way we live is a flawed. We have this rural house, not that far from town but enough to need to drive there. I don’t see neighbours often. We live in splendid isolation and I see just how aspirational it was to secure a home like this. A farmhouse bordering fields of crops; frost-tinged today. Beautiful but kinda lonesome. I grapple with this fact and the how the future will play out. Are you a town-dweller? Is that what answers the loneliness question?! I still joke with my friend Natalie that living in a commune is the answer; a kibbutz?! Who knows? But at this time of year I do sometimes wonder if living amongst more people is the better choice.

You can tell I haven’t had much sleep…

On writing

27th November 2014 · 4 Comments

I have always been in awe of writers. Making a profession from that which is already in your brain seems very special to me; a club that only few can join and one that you certainly can’t buy or train your way in to. My view: writers write because they have to, words spill out as there is no room for them inside. It’s a calling. And despite that impetus, it’s an overpopulated calling. My Mum, who is a voracious reader, often despairs at the poor quality of writing in so many books (although rarely in articles, which says a lot for the journalistic profession). There are books that seem lucky to have ever been published, with flimsy story lines and flimsier characters. The lesson: being able to construct a sentence does not a good writer make. Where is the editor?

Sylvia Plath, on whom I wrote my dissertation.

And I read the daily musings of what I call ‘real’ writers, I am so consistently impressed by the quality, the depth, the sheer human feeling of the writing. Sometimes, my readers comment and say they like how I write and that I am honest and that they see themselves in what they read. To me, this is what writing is all about. The ability to transport the reader to a place they recognise but that is not their own. And to do so convincingly.

So to report on the ‘book in me’ that I have referred to since I gave up working in the corporate world, yea, well…it’s coming along, but only in my mind’s eye! Writing is a solitary activity and one that requires countless hours in front of a screen. It also requires (at least for me) absolute concentration and an immersion that is not so compatible with the stop/start of family life. I think this is why my blog has been so enduring; it can take as little as twenty minutes for me to write and decorate a blog post and so is often done in the evening as dinners simmer or homework chats ensue. It’s a download rather than a formed discipline. Nevertheless these are excuses for the fact that if I wanted to write, I would.

I started writing short stories as a novel seemed even more elusive for my amateur self. A publisher friend suggested that my writing style was more observational/conversational (hence why the blog works) rather than fictional. But at the root of it all is my need to notice life and to record its meaning. And in every thing I read, the great empathy I feel when a writer has achieved that aim is what spurs me on to write. The more I read, the more I want to write.

But I know I am not alone in wanting to write and those voices in my head (everyone has those, right?) say it’s a saturated, cerebral market and maybe I am not good enough and honestly, as my English teacher always said to me: ‘Louise, you write in a convoluted way; you can not assume that the reader is with you in your thoughts!’

But again and again as I loop around the ‘what to do?’ question in life, I come back to writing as an anchor. So I take that to be a sign.