Posts made in October, 2009

Homeward Bound

Posted by Josie on Oct 24, 2009 in Creative Writing, Writing | 12 comments

I sit, in the almost-black. Head nestled deep into my pillow, positioned carefully between the edge of my seat and the window, periodically turned to transfer the cool window’s freshness to my rosy face. I am, perhaps, six years old, and we are in the car, cruising through the night at a steady seventy. I don’t know where we have been but I know where we are going – home. Back to familiarity and light and solid ground, my inner compass pulling us along the motorway to my waiting bed.

My body is warm under its duvet cocoon, my bed-from-bed. The close, womb-like feeling of the car heavy around my body; its thick air in my hair and permeating my skin. The only light comes from the glow of the dashboard, the comforting silent figures of my parents looming large in their seats. My mother nods sleepily in the passenger seat, her hands lying gently on her lap, my brother’s still form, huddled and soft at my side. If it wasn’t for the appearance of my father’s hand from time to time as it reaches into my field of vision to change gears I would think that I was the only one awake. My limbs are heavy, lulled by the momentum of the travelling car, but my eyes, my eyes are wide, every sense on fire.

Outside my window I watch the laser display of the passing cars. Twin star-flares fly past in the opposite direction, floating in inky black, dazzling and bright. The glare from their lights shoot up and out into the night in thin, sharp pencil lines; the silhouette of their propelling vehicles vague and gray. Motorway signs loom dimly and then are gone, their blue and white flashing in my vision with only seconds to register unfamiliar sounding names and places. The trees alongside, ghostly and dark with only the occasional flicker of a streetlamp on an adjacent road or the sudden view of tiny square lights in distant towering flats to hint at humanity outside of this long, gushing river of light and not-light and heat and sound. The noise of the engine is strong and steady. A hum that fills my ears and my head, punctuated with the sudden rush of the cars approaching, crescendo to sudden diminuendo. Sound with pressure somehow, pushing on my ears with heavy enveloping force.

The fact that we are moving at such high speed, so vulnerable in our fragile shell of metal and glass never occurs to me. I feel so safe, so warm, held safe by the close feel and smell of my duvet, by my unflinching certainty and faith in the man behind the wheel. I know I should sleep and yet I can’t close my eyes, transfixed by the sights and the sound and intoxicating sense of being an invulnerable spectator in this intergalactic light show, although I would never be able to verbalise this feeling as such. And yet I know, I plan in fact, that once our journey has come to a gentle, halting stop on our drive way I will pretend to have been asleep all along. Faking heavy, mouldable limbs and closed eyes to ascertain my transfer from one carrier to another. To my father’s strong and gentle arms, to bed and inevitable sleep, lights still flashing under my eyelids.

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There’s going to be a bit more of this creative stuff coming your way in the future I think. Hope that’s ok with you reader. Let me know your thoughts… Are you happy with my creative spewing in with the main feed? Or should I just hide them on a page somewhere for you to find in the menu bar…

Holy Crap

Posted by Josie on Oct 23, 2009 in Creative Writing, Writing | 7 comments

I sat down to do some study tonight.

Text books opened, pen dutifully poised. I worked out my study plan for the weak – writing exercises, reading and an assignment to do by the end of the week. Not a difficult one, but still… going to require some effort. And some time. This week’s focus has been on sensory perception, observational writing and being inspired by the everyday – developing the regular, often mundane but persistent habit of writing, writing, writing. About everything you see and feel and taste and hear. Building up a store house of images and metaphors and observations to draw on in your more formal writing endeavours.

And as I was reading and thinking I had a Holy Crap moment. It went like this:

“Holy Crap. If I want to be a writer I’m going to have to fricking well write aren’t I.”

and then

“I mean (holy crap) that I’m going to have to develop a lifestyle of writing. Of having a pen surgically attached to my fingers and scribbling my flawless and whimsical observations of life, it’s people and all it’s many colours and flavours at every given opportunity”.

and then

“How the Holy Crap am I supposed to do that with Kai???! He doesn’t even let me do a wee in peace!”

There then proceeded a period of general wailing and “Holy Crap”s and “I’m never going to be good enough”s which I won’t bore you with…

But the point stands. I am going to have to write aren’t I? Or at least, write more.

I am not ashamed to admit it. There is a teeny (ok, not so teeny) part of me that is so in love with the idea of writing, of filling notebook after notebook with long, sweeping prose, that I would happily wish for all the housework to disappear, for Kai to suddenly become completely self-sufficiant and start sleeping 12 hour stints, for Ant to not need me in any way shape or form and for the rest of my friends and family to make no demands on whatsoever. Ever again. Just so I can write. Write with no constraints and no obstacles.

I imagine that that must be what ‘real’ writers lives must be like.

Which is stupid. Obviously.

Because writer’s are people. With lives and responsibilities and a demanding toddlers who spend most of their day either posting things, or trying to insert themselves, through the cat flap and screaming loudly and persistently when you refuse to hold them up to play the ‘light switch game’ for the millionth time that day (On! Off! On! Off!). At least, I assume ‘real’ writers have all these things to contend with… or some of them in any case.

Writer’s must have other jobs and families and small kitchens that are impossible to clean. And they still manage to write somehow, and, more importantly, to have successful writing careers.

So I’m just going to have to find a way. A way to free up more time and space for committing to the one thing that finally feels completely right to me, and is what I KNOW I need to be doing right now. I think it’s going to take some compromise and so creative thinking (and possibly some kind of Dictaphone) but dammit I am going to figure this out.

I have to.

Footnote: I was watching Tim Minchin in between writing this post. He seemed like an appropriate Holy Crap image. Love you Tim.

What’s your angle?

Posted by Josie on Oct 22, 2009 in Writing | 49 comments

Well this is all very exciting – my first post on my spangly new laptop! (yes, I know spangly isn’t a word but it should be and I’m a writer now so can make up new ones whenever I like…)

I NEVER get new toys so this is a bit of a treat. Me and the husband have been having a bit of an issue over laptop usage – since most of my evenings are now spent doing one bit of writing or another, the poor love doesn’t get a look in, looking at movie geek sites or whatever the hell it is he does (most likely playing Football Manager – ahem. Did I mention he was 31 in a couple of weeks?) . Despite the fact that he’s been his usual exceedingly patient and understanding self and not uttered one word of a moan about me forever tap tapping away, it does seem a bit unfair. So when I got some grant money through from the OU we decided to get me a ‘work’ laptop. Partly as a kind of investment in this writing adventure I think. I kind of  ’I can do it (because I have a spangly new laptop)’ self-belief present.

In fact, in honour of my new self-belief ‘I can do it’ laptop I am going to make a promise…

I am going to write my first book on this baby. Oh yes I am.

I have no idea what about yet, but that’s a minor point…

Anyway. That’s not what this post is about. Well, it’s kind of what the post is about but only in a very long winded god-are-you-ever-going-to-get-to-the-point kind of way.

I shall get to the point.

The other day sweetie pie Karin at Cafe Bebe wrote about having a blogging confidence crisis – wondering why she was blogging, what did it all mean, whether it was it worth it, worrying that she wasn’t popular, and so on. Now, I think we’ve all been there. In fact, those that know me will know it’s a regular occurrence for me (having had to be dissuaded from deleting half my blog posts just the other day). Blogger’s Wobble is soon going to have to recognised as a certifiable mental affliction amongst the blogging community.

Obviously we all (recognising the symptoms) jumped to Karin’s reassurance that she was doing just fine, to forget the stats and get back to blogging basics – doing it cause you love and it and have something to say.

But some of the (very helpful) comments got me thinking. They echoed what I have heard said time after time about blogging – the importance of voice. Of having a unique personality and selling point for your blog, that ultimately THAT is what makes a blog successful and stand out from it’s ‘competitors’ (and I use that word loosely as that’s SO not what blogging should be about).

Now generally I do OK at keeping the Blogger’s Wobble at bay. I don’t spend TOO much time thinking about stats and ratings, only occasionally stressing over silly things like why I haven’t got many subscribers when I get lots of hits (*sob*). Mostly I’m just so in love with the whole thing that I don’t really stop to think about it.

But this thing about voice, that really struck a cord. You see, the ‘popularity’ thing I can let go, but I do really, really want to stand out from the crowd in terms of most definitely not being ‘just another mummy blog’ and instead having something different and interesting to say. And what I love is that I think I’m finding mine. It’s taken a while to evolve but I’m beginning to get the sense that this blog has a ‘something’ that is mine and unique to me.

So. Here’s my angle.

I am a mummy. I am an aspiring writer. I find motherhood hard and I am honest about that. I blog because I love to connect and to write and play with words and thoughts and ideas.

What’s your angle? Or what would you like it to be?

Or if you don’t know, maybe you should think about it? WHY do you blog? What do you hope to achieve?

I’d really love to know x

Writing Workshop: Back Room Ramblings

Posted by Josie on Oct 21, 2009 in Creative Writing, Writing, Writing Workshop | 33 comments

Welcome back to the Wednesday Writing Workshop link-up! At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to post the link to your workshop posts. But first? Well I guess it’s my turn! I’ve chose prompt #5 (since that was kind of my homework this week anyway… two birds, one stone and all that…)

The following is a description of my back room. Tiny, cluttered, scene of many a thrown sippy cup and forgotten and later trodden-upon rogue Cheerio. It’s funny isn’t it, but when you spend a lot of time somewhere, after a while you just stop looking. Well tonight, I made myself sit, and I looked. I’m not in a very eloquent or witty mood so forgive the ramble…

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I wouldn’t call my back room a dining room. It seems too, well, pretentious, for a room that measures 10ft square and contains more clutter than dining space. The dining table is pushed to one wall with only two chairs free for sitting on, one sporting an attractive graffiti biro scribble on the seat from a certain young Banksy. In fact, for a number of months when Kai was first born we didn’t use the table at all, other than for piling things on that we couldn’t find homes for elsewhere – even now it’s sporting a Nodding Homer Simpson dashboard figure, my pencil case and text books and a pile of Ant’s folded boxer shorts. In our ramshackle two bedroom we have significantly more stuff than space so life becomes one long jigsaw puzzle game of moving stuff from one place to the next into some kind of semblance of order, that actually, no matter how hard we try and when you do get all the pieces vaguely fitting? Still just ends up looking like a small house filled with crap.

Our back room is the room that houses all the things we don’t know where else to put. So we have a dresser filled with stationary and printer cables and washing powder on one wall, Kai’s tricycle parked in front, next to the chalk board easel and the sand pit table and the big bag of plastic multi-coloured balls. (Actually thinking about it, the ‘stuff to space’ ratio has become increasingly weighted towards ‘stuff’ in the last 15 months… fancy that). There is the skateboard Ant was bought as joke for his 30th but that Kai likes to push his toys around on; there is the pushchair folded up under the radiator, next to Kai’s (disinfected) potty currently housing one lone shoe. There is the ironing board and the shredder and the travel cot in it’s bag and svivel chair that we don’t know what to do with but keep in the vague sensibility that it’ll be an extra chair for when next throw a dinner party (we never throw dinner parties).

On the wall above the dining table is our house’s biggest mystery. A square mirror set into the wall, like a window. Why it is there we have never figured out. On my wilder days I like to imagine it holds a whole other world. One with a more capable, together Josie who has a habit of scowling at me. Whatever it’s supposed to be however, Kai loves it – eating his dinner grinning at the plump, sauce covered baby that seems to like sharing his lunch times. The other walls look a little tired, the wallpaper peeling slightly at the seams, and in need of a fresh coat of paint. The line of dust along the skirting boards betrays my cursory and infrequent cleaning habits. The cobwebs in the corners quite embarrassing now I come to notice them…

But the thing that there are most of in my back room? Books. Books upon books, piled on top of books. Books filling three bookshelves and squeezed into the spaces on top and around, or just piled high at the side. It’s mostly non-fiction apart from a small corner, the beautiful floor-to-ceiling shelves in the front room reserved for the fiction section of my library.

You could write a biography of my life by these books. Each marking a time in my life, a specific interest or the latest obsession, most (ashamedly) past-by in favour of the next one before the spines are even creased, apart from the odd one where the well-thumbed pages portray a more lingering interest or significance in my life.

There are the books on alternative medicine, and healing and natural pain relieving techniques, from my days as a sick person. Books on meditation and mindfulness and mysticism from my days of soul searching. Books on mythology and Ancient Britain and esoteric mysteries from my days as a spiritual explorer. And books about creativity and writing and self-expression from my days as writer, artist and free spirit.

I am still all of these things of course, although to a greater and lesser degree than perhaps I once was. The books on healing are looking a little dusty and neglected while the books on creativity are rarely in their place on the shelves, instead lying in hopeful, easily grabbed piles round my living spaces.

I wouldn’t part with a single one. Pieces of me as they are. Pieces of my life, my own story.

Maybe I’ll add to their number one day with one authored by my hand, about a world I have created or a story I have told.

Who knows.

One thing I do know? Sitting here in my little backroom looking hard at every detail it is evident that book writing and wild imaginings should really take a back seat to the far more pressing need for some Mr Sheen and a bit of elbow grease… oh and perhaps a visit from Kim and Aggie.

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So now it’s your turn! What prompt did you choose?

1. You get a day off. Where would you go? What would you do? - Inspired by Metropolitan Mum’s Mummy Needs a Break

2. Write your house rules… your DREAM house rules, that is – Inspired by Potty Mummy’s own House Rules this week.

3. Take a well-loved bedtime story then re-write yourself and/or an episode of your day into the story – Inspired by April’s Tribute to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”

4. Tell us about a close-call, a miracle, or a lucky escape - Inspired by the terrifying story of the baby falling under the train this week.

5. Sit in a room of your house you spend a lot of time in. And really LOOK. Notice all the details you usually miss, and describe them with all the creativity you can muster. Let the every-day inspire you – Inspired by ME!

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here!

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got today! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.

This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.