Even my fridge is neglected
You may or may not have noticed the tag line for this blog. I am a fraud on both levels. I am not writing and I am not cleaning my fridge. My fridge contains:
- One almost-empty bottle of milk
- One shrivelled romana lettuce
- Four bottles of vodka ice - mmmmmm
- One bottle of pinot grigio
- Boursin cheese
- Houmus (is that spelt right? it looks wrong)
So, it’s not exactly a FULL fridge in need of reorganisatioin, but it could probably do with a clean. Apathy is my middle name. I have no excuses for apathy because I have something so amazing to help me write now that I know the only thing stopping me is me. I can’t write about what that thing is yet because it is too lovely and deserves more attention than I can give it now, while watching Desperate Housewives.
Bow and I are in Lothlorien. She is curled up on the desk right beneath the anglepoise lamp - in other words, she is slowly cooking herself. Bow is my cat (not the one featured elsewhere on this blog). I don’t know how she knows when I’m in Lothlorien, but she always does. Lothlorien is the name of my office, which is a glorified shed in the garden - I will post some pictures one of these days.
I think Bow must listen for me to leave the house and then she trots out and scratches the door of Lothlorien so I let her in. So I’m thinking that maybe she does that every time I go out. What if she spends entire days scratching at the door while I am at work? That would be too sad! Maybe I need to fit a cat flap for Lothlorien. That would solve the problem.
I will write when I have one of these…
Last year I attempted the Open University A215 Creative Writing course. My motivation for doing it was to try to kickstart my writing, and to develop a writing habit. Did it work? Well, I’m still un-decided. To be fair, I don’t think that I gave the course the commitment that it needed. At the time it began, I’d just started a new job and, let’s face it, I was in a state of apathy with my writing. In the end, I just didn’t give it the time that it deserved - I turned in the assignments (usually right up to the wire) but I really didn’t do any of the background reading or exercises inbetween. So, I didn’t help myself.
Obviously, your own commitment to a course like that is key, but I also think that a lot depends on your tutor and their ability to inspire people in the group. When you start, you’re divided into tutor groups and allocated a chatroom - the theory being that you develop a little community and provide encouragement and support, led by the tutor. In my case, that didn’t happen. I was disheartened by the lack of engagement from the tutor and it rather set the tone for my approach to the course. However, I heard that other people in other tutor groups had good experiences, so I guess it’s the luck of the draw. And I did get some things from the course. I got:
- a respectable tranche of short stories that I can edit and submit to magazines or competitions.
- a little more belief in my writing ability.
- a few ideas for writing practice.
Now, I’ve never been a big fan of writing practice, but the A215 course spends a lot of time encouraging practices like freewriting and clustering, and I did find them to be useful techniques. Setting yourself a time limit for freewriting can be liberating - it’s OK to write rubbish and you haven’t got to write for hours and at the end of the exercise, you’ve often got the germ of an idea for a story or a poem, or whatever you want to write.
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Anyway, the point of this post was to talk about the lovely timer that I bought, in a bid to start freewriting again.What a splendid illustration this is of my shameless procrastination…Amazon can’t deliver it for another week and so OBVIOUSLY I can’t begin my writing practice until it arrives. |
I wish I was Carrie Bradshaw
And yes, the more perceptive reader will now realise that I have spent an entire afternoon immersed in Manhattan culture, otherwise known as DVD box sets.
As of today, I have a new dining table and chairs. The entire room smells of wood and my MacBook looks rather splendid against the grain. I think my new table will be a good place to write. Carrie Bradshaw writes late at night at a desk in her window, overlooking the city. But I bet her desk doesn’t smell like mine. How could it? It’s not real.
How come the couch is always free in Central Perk?
When did you ever walk into Starbucks (other coffee chains are available) and find that it was free? The place is crowded, people are sat at tables but for some reason, nobody has bothered with the super-comfy couch. Hmmmm. Let me think. That would be NEVER. Obtaining the couch in a coffee shop always calls for stealth manoevures. You go in, and you check who’s on it, then you check how full their cups are…anything less than half and there’s a chance it will be free before you finally get served so you keep watching, slipping your coat off so you can bagsy the couch if the lazy gits ever move. Which of course they don’t so then you reach the counter and your purse is on your bag but you can’t look properly because you’re holding your coat and the girl serving tuts and rolls her eyes, meanwhile the bastards on the sofa look like they’re falling into a coma.
You never get the couch in coffee shops. It’s the law.
Unless your name happens to be Monica, Rachel, Chandler, Joey or Ross.