Spurt
Following another spurt of enthusiasm - I so rarely feel inspired these days, I kind of have to take inspiration where I find it - I’ve officially been burning the candles at both ends and staying up late into the night, laptop braced on my knees in bed. What I’m writing is chiefly dialogue and chiefly bollocks, but I’m trying to console myself that at least I’m writing something. While the few thousand words falling from my fingers are essentially rubbish, something’s better than nothing. Just.
What seems to really be coming along is plot. Ideas how how the narrative can be taken forward, scenes and scenarios. What’s lacking is any skill in delivering this properly. I can write strings of dialogue that propel the story onwards, but nothing of the bits inbetween. It’s looking like a television script minus the stage direction - and a bad one at that.
For now, however, at least I’m writing. At least I’m thinking of the story, dreaming about it, hearing snippets of conversations and getting struck with ideas when driving or working. I love the challenge of penning occasional lyrics for Martin - my only real creative output in recent months - but this story seems desperate to be told: bollocks or not, at least my word count is rising and the story is taking shape.
Posted on 8th February, 2007 at 9:46 am | Comment (0)
Rebirth
For the first time, in a very long time, I’m looking to have a little space beyond the domain that’s been the online home of my words for the last four years. I’m getting overly superstitious that keeping a blog is leeching all of my creativity away. I’m finding it harder and harder to write without using a fucking emoticon.
And since this account was just here, idling and being wasteful, I thought that a site that wasn’t designed by me (I’m so easily distracted) or even need to be backed-up by me was perhaps the place to start over.
I need to write again. I’m so frustrated with myself. There was a time when I was good, really fucking good, and I lost it.
This is my attempt to get it back.
Posted on 4th February, 2007 at 1:06 pm | Comment (0)
Spark
For the first time in months, I’ve felt the urge to write. “Propa writin’” too - you know, in oppose to the mindless shite I tend to publish on my blog. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was actually a little hesitant in even mentioning it; it’s been so long since the desire to write has struck me - and even longer still that a reasonably solid idea partnered it - that I almost kept this to myself in case vocalising it sent it scurrying away again for another year or two.
But the itch in the centre of my brain has become harder to ignore, and thanks to several lonesome commutes to and from work, an Inkling has been fleshed out into something of an Idea and if I’m not careful, I may actually have to open MS Word for non-work purposes. *nods gravely* Yeah, I know. Scary, eh?
I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten years old and was convinced that I was categorically unable to turn It off. It was like a leaky tap . . . I either stuck a pen or keyboard in front of my fingers to catch the drips or just waited patiently for the flood to arrive. Either way, it was a constant intensity that waxed and waned over the years but never entirely went away.
I still have my first “book” - a collection of - and I use the word loosely - horror stories, written in a ten-year-old’s careful print, complete with spooky (read lameass) illustrations. Sometimes my stories seemed so real I’d be awake all night, eyes wide and clutching my duvet, convinced that a knife-touting maniac - of my own invention - was crouched behind my door.
The Truth - and by that, I probably mean real life - has never held much appeal for me; particularly as the world inside my head was always so much more entertaining than the one outside it. I was depressingly young when I realised that real life - and real people - were prone to disappoint. So, as I grew older, I begrudgingly took the path other loners before me had trampled. Few friends, little confidence and bang! - the writer in me arrived, sweaty, shouting and ready, borne from a little girl’s loneliness and imagination.
I read too much. Spend too many solitary hours in my bedroom. Eventually, the Sweet Dreams novels I pored over became stale to me. Characters acted oddly, plots took dodgy turns and many ended in disappointment. By twelve, I decided that I could do better myself. No friends? No boyfriends? Fine. I’d make up my own.
My ideas were, and remain, like granite: starting so cumbersome, thick and unyielding. But with patience and cultivation . . . slowly, they would begin to take shape. Worlds opened up before me. I could actually see the people inside. And words! So many of them! How can so many little, innocuous letters become so important when strung together in a particular order? I loved to hold them in my hands, look them over, move them around, examine above and beneath them . . . how could they be so spectacularly mundane when they affect each and every one of us so deeply? They fascinated me - they still do.
I used to think and feel so much. I’d be convinced that I would explode into a million tiny shards of words and phrases. Is what I felt normal? I hoped so, but I was so solitary, I couldn’t be sure. Would it help others if they read what I write? Possibly not. But if I stopped the words from flooding out . . . well, there was so much going on in my head that I may have just exploded anyway.
I wrote because I didn’t know how not to.
I permitted that amazing spark of a little girl’s imagination to die. It was slowly eaten alive, devoured by the humdrum of Growing Up, and it is always going to be one of the biggest regrets of my life.
Here’s hoping that this slow, steady drip signals the return of something that I’d thought I’d lost.
V xx
Posted on 23rd January, 2007 at 6:13 pm | Comment (0)
Mud
Occasionally I get to thinking that I have this motherhood thing licked; admittedly, this is usually on the days when I’m able to dress, feed and brush S’s teeth without resorting to bribery or threats or, worst yet, banishment to the Naughty Step. There’s something so fundamentally playful and curious about kids at this age, it’s nothing but a pleasure to be in his company - he’s such a beautiful, funny and generous little soul.
And then something happens to remind me that I’m still a naive rookie and that only a lunatic - or someone wading deeply in the sea of denial - would even let that thought cross their mind. No remotely switched on mother would permit their child to go out into the muddy backyard in wellies and coat and assume that they wouldn’t a) roll about in the mud; b) try to eat said mud and c) then run the mud right the way through their recently cleaned carpeting. I almost slapped my forehead when I saw what he was doing in horror at my own naivety - he was rolling around like a pot-bellied pig on crack.
So, anyway. How’s you? I know I need to update more, but I’m experiencing a real apathy towards the whole writing thing right now. But then, I’m experiencing a general apathy to life, so is it really any wonder that writing here is proving so troublesome?
What annoys me most right now is realising that my head can’t (or won’t) permit me to write in two different styles simultaneously. For years I wrote no fiction - my writer’s block more of a concrete dungeon than a small Do Not Cross barrier - but I felt like writing here at least proved that I wasn’t completely brain dead. Now that my fiction seems to be moving along nicely, my non-fiction writing’s gone to shit. It’s grossly unfair - like having to sacrifice one child to feed the other. And yes, that’s an exaggeration.
Anyway.
Maybe this weekend will pull me out of this fug. Not only do I have a wondrous four days off work, I can legitimately spend those four days stuffing my face with piles and piles of chocolate eggs (I’ve never quite lost my childlike awe for Easter Eggs - sweets wrapped in chocolate, chocolate wrapped in shiny, coloured foil - I ask you, when does that ever stop being cool?). I’ve actually started a healthier eating regime in an attempt to shake off the weight that’s been creeping on since Christmas. Only I - genius that I am - could start a diet three days before Easter. What a fuckwit.
Right. I’m off now to make Jam Roly Poly pudding with my little pot-bellied pig. By the time we finish and if we manage to create something that, you know, doesn’t poision us all (culinary skills and I parted company many, many years ago) you’ll probably have problems identifying one fat-bellied pig from the next.
Posted on 15th April, 2006 at 11:14 am | Comment (0)