Posts by Josie
60
My Dad turned 60 on the 21st of last month. I promised him I’d draw his portrait as a special present and here it is, before and after framing.
It was a special project this one. I’ve only ever done a couple of portraits of Kai before so this was a whole new challenge and one I lost myself in, loving working the lines and curves and soft eyes of a face I have known my whole life, and love dearly. And I loved it, because it was challenging but not too hard, and I felt like I was doing something that is becoming part of my bones and my breath and that is beginning to feel as natural as picking up my camera, or writing words on a page, or brushing the hair from Kai’s eyes with my fingers.
I think I might be becoming a proper artist, and I’m so excited by the feeling.
Read MoreWriting Workshop Prompts: Second
Hello there. Part of the reason this blog exists is to encourage my own and others’ writing and in all my distraction getting stuck into my art degree last year I managed to forget that a little. I feel strangely guilty, like the blog’s lost its way a little, and that’s no good.
So, *best commitment face*, let’s get back to it. New writing prompts every other Monday, with a chance to share your work on the Monday in between. It turns out 2012 is going to be unexpectedly full of writing for me and I’m going to really need the practice – I figure I might as well take you along for the ride. And for any of you that started the new year pledging to do more creative writing, or for those that just enjoy the excuse, hopefully our fortnightly prompts will give you a focus and a reason to sit down and try something new. You don’t need to be a writer, or even consider yourself any good. It can be a couple of hundred words or a longer piece – the important thing is just to have a go.
For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started.
Prompt
I wrote about January at the weekend and how the first month of the year is often my wash-out month, my false start, so with us moving into a more optimistic second month I thought that could be our prompt this week – second.
Write about a second something, a second anything. Does it come with the disappointment of not being a first? Or is second somehow better, without the pressure and expectation that comes with a first something? Write about yourself, an experience, something in your life, or in your past, write descriptive prose or poetry, or, (and I’d really like to see some more fiction on here), dream up a story with ‘second’ as the theme. It’s absolutely up to you how you interpret it.
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January
Although I did do a bit of a gasp today when I looked at the date of my last blog post, it’s not actually that much of a surprise that January hasn’t seen me make much of an appearance here.
January is traditionally my nemesis month. One for head down, plough through, and this one hasn’t been the exception. It’s a keep your eyes on your shoes month, where big thinking and decision-making is limited to safe choices such as whether to have another piece of toast or put an extra jumper on. Light is low, pain levels predictably high and my immune system practically non-existent (I managed THREE itis-es in the space of a fortnight. GO ME!). I forget that this strange illness of mine, along with robbing me of energy, likes to play funny with the chemicals in my head to leave me demotivated and low and devoid of confidence and it’s usually late-January by the time I remember that that’s why I’m probably feeling so crud. And Kai’s not been sleeping either, really not, which, plus pain at night makes for a stupidly little amount of sleep each night, so the whole month has passed in a foggy haze.
But there’s been little islands of awakeness: a birthday, and gifts from friends and family that gave me sudden pounding feelings of gratitude and reminded me there were people out there who thought I was okay; an unexpected, arm-pinching proposal from a publisher which is all looking very promising and I hope to tell you more about soon; and a whirlwind 48 hours where I was transported to a temporary solitary oasis of sky and flat sea and low sun.
Read MoreNew Year
Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
_____________________________________________
I’m not a fan of New Year at the best of times and I think it was fairly inevitable that I would find this one hard. The prospect of a Christmas without Kai or a significant other had left me feeling empty and vulnerable and prone to rushing into, and out of, things I probably should have been sensible enough to leave alone until I was in a slightly more together place. And so yesterday saw me a little puddly mess for most of the day, my pillows becoming a pathetically self-pitying Roshach test-like splodge of mascara on white linen, cross with myself and feeling hopeless and lost, vowing that the best thing all round would be to shut myself off from life where I couldn’t fall over any more or hurt anyone.
Until, that is, I thought, sod this. I’m not seeing in 2012, my brand new year, sniffing into my duvet feeling sorry for myself.
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