Writing Workshop #10 – Cartoon Characters & Rose-coloured Specs

Welcome to Monday’s Writing Workshop prompts! Sorry they’re a bit late today. I definitely didn’t spend my free time snoozing in bed today. Oh no, I wouldn’t do that… *cough*

Thank you for all the wonderful entries last week, especially to all the new people joining in for the first time. It is lovely to have so many people on board all supporting each other’s efforts – thank you to everyone who takes the time to comment on other people’s posts, it really is much appreciated.

For any more newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!

Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.

So here they are:

1. Write something to say thank you to some who has made a difference to your life, whether from your past or present.
- Inspired by the Moiderer’s ‘People I’d like to thank‘

2. What cartoon character are you?
- Pinched from Mummy Pig’s, oops I mean Mummy Mania’s brilliant recent post

3. What are you guilty of viewing through rose-coloured spectacles? What may not be QUITE as good or perfect as you make it out to be? A memory? A person?
- Inspired by Maternal Tales’ conversation with her mother

4. Tell me about a time you did something yourself that may have been better done by a professional and went a bit, well, wrong…
- Inspired by Insomniac Mummy’s ‘When home hair-cuts go bad’ (although Big E really does look very cute!)

5. If you haven’t already, please please consider writing a post about the horrific loss and suffering of the Haitian people due to last week’s earthquake, encouraging people to give to disaster relief charities such as the DEC, or support campaigns such as the Bloggers for Haiti in raising money for life saving Shelter Boxes
- Inspired by the dozens and dozens of bloggers who have already done so and helped to make a real difference.

Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and Wednesday. On Wednesday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.

Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Wednesday’s round-up.

Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:

<a href=”http://sleepisfortheweak.org.uk”><img src=”http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj90/flowerfairy82/WritingWorkshopBadge.jpg”></a>

Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

See you Wednesday then!

P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.

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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.

Bloggers for Haiti – Pink Ribbons in the Dawn

I have been unborn into an under place

Shaken from my play to be buried deep.

Bright candles slowly snuffed out, crushed out.

Till all is dark and still.

There is a monster here

That growls with my stomach’s empty growl.

Its breath is hot upon my face, loud in this space.

It smells of dirt and death.

The ground still moves and trembles in my insides,

Tongue rasps on crackled lips as I call to empty air.

I search and find a hand to hold. Unfriendly, cold.

I sleep and drift away.

I dream I hear my father’s voice above

Shouts low and deep, the world shifts and moves.

Arms reach through mud and stone, they find my home.

An eye opens, all is white.

At last I am reborn, borne up and out

Delivered to my mother’s waiting breast.

Eyes burning, dust is in the air, my hair.

Pink ribbons in the dawn.

_______________________________________

I am so upset tonight. Tonight I sat and made myself look at some of the images from the Haiti earthquake. I read accounts of conditions there. I read of people’s terrible, unimaginable loss. I read of the injured and dying. The homeless, the displaced. Little or no food or water or medicine.

It is so easy to turn our backs on the horror. To figure that the tragedy has already happened and that we no longer need to think about it. It is so easy to be consumed by so much sadness and helplessness that we do nothing.

I have realised you have to look for hope. Tiny glimmers of light in so much darkness. Like a two year old girl, Mia Charlotte, pulled from the wreckage of her kindergraten virtually unscathed after being trapped for 72 hours and for whom I wrote my poem.

Hope frees us from inaction and paralysis. So many lives have been lost, but so many lives could still be saved if we act now. We can be these people’s hope if only we get off our asses and do something. NOW.

I have little money, but what I have I have given. I give my words too, and my thoughts and my prayers for what they are worth.

Give. It doesn’t need to be much, it just needs to be something.

Please.

New Year

For most of my adult life having a birthday so close to the New Year has always thrown me. The two become fundamentally connected in my mind and the two weeks between one and the other seem to always seem to prompt a rather ridiculous amount of soul searching and questioning as I wonder what the hell I’m doing, who I am, where I’m going. It’s been the same for as long as I can remember, and luckily tends to pass once birthday celebrations are out the way and Spring starts to make its first early appearances. But still, really quite irritating, or, at least, it must be for those poor sods that have to put up with me during that time.

It’s not the getting older thing. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I’m still another two years off 30 and I’m enjoying the sense of clarity and completion that each year is bringing me, like I’m growing into myself I suppose. But another year older always seems to mean, in my eyes, an increased amount of pressure to achieve something and to do something extraordinary with my life.

I am the most horrible over-achiever. In one sense this is a good thing. It gives me drive and determination. It makes me creative and imaginative and resourceful. But it also means I have an inner-benchmark set always too high and that breeds a constant feeling of failing.

I am not failing. I have a huge amount of wonderful things to be proud of. All indicators suggest that this year is going to be my most exciting yet, with a move planned and lots of potential to be explored.

So basically I need to shut the f*ck up and get on with it.

But I need to get some things straight in my head first. I need to start this New Year of my life with a plan, something to push me in the right direction and stop me spiralling my way straight into burn-out and frustration and disappointment. A way in which I can maybe try and find some sense of the balance I feel I am missing in my life and talked about earlier in the week. A lot of your wonderful comments really made me think. So thank you, your advice came at a time when I most needed to hear it and resonated very strongly for me and you may recoginise some of your perspectives in what follows.

Yesterday I made a plan. A plan for my year, my 29th year. 5 goals. And here they are:

1. I will stop trying to write

Or at least, I will stop trying to write anything that is going to achieve me recognition, acclaim, respect, a ten book publishing deal or a big fat cheque. Screw it. I am not even going to try and write anything complete this year. I hereby give myself permission to produce lots of half finished stories, scribbles, ideas and creative drivel.

2. I will write more on paper

Paper scares me. It’s so permanent somehow, so chaotic and unordered. But using the computer is just too much of a temptation for that inner-critic of mine to edit and re-edit, erasing initial thoughts and ideas and the work in progress. I have lost so much to that delete button which was probably far more worthy than I judged it to be. So paper is the way forward. And yes Josie there will be crossing out and mess and you will write horribly rubbish things that you won’t be able to erase. Deal with it.

3. I will surrender to the more powerful force (thank you Michelloui)

If on any day that means I need to abandon writing to sleep because I am so tired then so be it. If Kai is in one of his unbelievably demanding moods that requires all of my energy and attention then I will put my work on the back burner. If an idea has taken root that is screaming to be written out or made real and is eating away at my brain then I will find a way to take the time I need to feed it and make it grow. I will make the most of opportunities when they present themselves, and will ride out the times when they seem closed to me. Each day will be different, each day I will have to judge anew how to prioritise. I will roll with the tide.

4. I will gather and incubate more

I will go for long walks, and people watch, and take lots and lots of photographs. I will write down quotes that speak to me, and read more newspapers and cut out the things that catch my eye. I don’t have to DO anything with the things I accumulate apart from bury them down in my subconcious and let them sleep there.

5. I will read more

Not novels, I’m struggling with novels. I don’t seem to have the energy or time or concentration to commit to long stories right now. I think poetry may be the way forward, little snippets of literary beauty I can dip in and out of and digest, and that benefit from being read over and over, as I seem to have to do with everything I read these days to allow my brain to process it.

And that’s it. The sum total of what I aim to achieve this year.

Now I really will shut the f*ck up and get on with it. I promise.

Writing Workshop: Forgotten

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. It’s my turn first though, of course. I’ve chosen prompt #1… a lesson I never learn.

_________________________________

My panic-room mentality has kicked in. Did you notice? Of course you did.

When the chips are down the walls go up. Hardened, reinforced.

I retreat, inwards. Deep and dark where only I can go. Lights off, wrapped in my thoughts. An eiderdown of half-pursued trains of thought, laced tight with worry and doubt. And something new, a loss felt low and sharp.

Sunk deep. No return. Turn back, you’re not getting in.

But you are here. And, as always, you take no heed.

Soft hands, warm, persistent in their unfolding of me. Bringing me back, to light and warmth, your fingers in my hair, on my stomach. Filling me back up.

I need you. More than I ever knew I could need.

And yet I always forget. Always forget, till the next time that something pulls me under.

My husband, my lover, my friend.

____________________________________

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

1. What do you seem unable to learn or remember, no matter how hard you try?
- Inspired by Heather’s rather, um, *delicious* mistake when braving the delicacies of Norway.

2. Tell me about something you miss
- Inspired by Tara’s beautiful post in which she laments over time moving too fast: “The one where I learn to appreciate the little things”.

3. What steps have you taken this year so far to make a dream a reality? And if you haven’t yet? WHY NOT?! What’s stopping you?
- Inspired by Victoria at It’s a Small World After All, who is fearlessly making her family’s dreams of travelling round the world this year a reality.

4. Describe what’s out your window.
- Inspired by Amber from Strocel.com who’s been looking out her window.

5. Blog about your very own tiny acorn and the resulting mighty oak!
- Inspired by ME! and my whirlwind week.

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) andleave 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.

Balance

A while back, Kat at Slugs on the Refrigerator, unquestionably one of my most favourite blogs, posed the question ‘What is motherhood to you?

At the time I struggled to find an answer that adequately described for me what is a an incredibly varied, emotional, often ambivalent experience for me, but just recently I think I have found the answer.

Motherhood, it seems, is all about balance.

It is a constant juggling of your children’s needs and yours, a balancing act of time, priorities, energy and patience.

Kai’s needs especially have always been loud, uncompromising and intense, but so also, I am realising, are mine. He is his mother’s son, after all, and like me in more ways than I think I ever could have realised.

And then there are the wants. And as Kai grows into toddlerhood it seems his understanding of wanting something, and wanting so intensely it becomes a very real NEED for him, is growing too. He is a very inflexible little soul, with a desire for things to be just so, and mistakes or misunderstanding on my part are always met with anger and frustration as he tries to make sense of the world and work out how he can make it the way he wants it to be. He is having a hard lesson in ‘no’ at the moment, in learning that sometimes that things aren’t always going to go precisely how he wants them to, and he is finding this hard.

My wants are real too, and just like Kai seem to be clamouring to be heard right now. Like Kai, I too find it hard when something doesn’t go to plan, or doesn’t fit my frame of reference, or if it has to be compromised, or, worse, met with ‘no’. Just as Kai feels frustration at me when I act as an obstacle to something he wants, so too do I get frustrated at him when, as so frequently he does, he becomes the aspect of my day that eats all my time, attention, and energy, leaving little left for the things I want to do.

In all these things I must find balance as a mother.

In all these things I struggle immensely.

Right now, what I want more than anything is to be able to pursue my work. I want this so much that, like Kai, it is becoming a need for me, one that eats away at me and makes me short-tempered and resentful. One I can’t let go.

But I find myself in an impossible Catch 22 situation. And the fly in my ointment? Money of course. Ideally I would be enrolling Kai in nursery part-time to give me the space I need to pursue a writing career and to give my new project the time I feel it deserves and that reflects its potential. But we can’t afford it, and although I would be working far more than the required 16 hours a week that I need to be able to tick the tax credits box, it wouldn’t be PAID work to begin with.

So here I am. I can’t make any money until I have some more time. I can’t have help ensuring the time I need before I make some money. Stuck.

It’s my fault for having ambition and wanting to pursue a creative dream, of course. How very dare I.

Unless, I am once again mirroring my son. Am I perhaps misinterpreting this want as something more important than it actually is? Am I being selfish and unrealistic and wanting too much too soon? Should I, just as I teach Kai, try to be more patient? Enjoy what I have? Let go of my dreams for now and readdress the balance in favour of Kai?

Would love to know your thoughts. How do you, as mothers and fathers, achieve balance in your life, between your children’s needs and your own?

And can anyone see a solution to my situation right now? Should I just stop wanting so much?

P.S. Thank you to Kai for playing so unusually quietly and beautifully for the last half an hour as I wrote this.

Writing Workshop #9 – Missed moments & a lesson never learnt

Welcome to the first Writing Workshop of 2010!

I have a feeling that this year is going to see my Google Reader continue to bulge at the seams with some of the blogging world’s best and brightest. There is never any shortage of inspiration to draw on each week as I write my prompts, and that is thanks to all you lot who continue to move, entertain and surprise me through your words. I hope really hope to see this workshop grow over the next few months, and give us all a chance to show off our talents and discover new blogs and friends in the process.

So, without further ado, let’s get stuck back in…

For all your newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!

Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.

So here they are:

1. What do you seem unable to learn or remember, no matter how hard you try? Something about yourself? Something about the world? Or another person? Or a mistake you just find yourself making over and over again.
- Inspired by Heather’s rather, um, *delicious* mistake when braving the delicacies of Norway.

2. Tell me about something you miss – a sound, a taste, a touch… something sensual and that evokes powerful emotion.
- Inspired by Tara’s beautiful post in which she laments over time moving too fast: “The one where I learn to appreciate the little things”.

3. What steps have you taken this year so far to make a dream a reality? And if you haven’t yet? WHY NOT?! What’s stopping you?
- Inspired by Victoria at It’s a Small World After All, who is fearlessly making her family’s dreams of travelling round the world this year a reality.

4. Describe what’s out your window. Take a picture if you like (or draw one…) Tell me what about it inspires you, or depresses you, and how it makes you feel. What do you wish was there instead?
- Inspired by Amber from Strocel.com who’s been looking out her window.

5. Blog about your very own tiny acorn and the resulting mighty oak! Something that started out in your life as small and insignificant, but took on a life of its own and ended up as something exciting and spectacular.
-Inspired by ME! and my whirlwind week.

Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and Wednesday. On Wednesday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.

Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Wednesday’s round-up.

Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:

<a href=”http://sleepisfortheweak.org.uk”><img src=”http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj90/flowerfairy82/WritingWorkshopBadge.jpg”></a>

Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

See you Wednesday then!

P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.

——————————————————–

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.

From Tiny Acorns

It has been a quiet week in blog land this week with great balls of tumble weed sweeping through the Sleep is for the Weak plains. I just haven’t had a minute to spare.

I wonder if you can guess why? Maybe it has something to do with the Big Idea I mentioned on Monday… the Big Idea that turned into a Huge Idea that turned into an Unstoppable Speed Train idea.

In case you have no idea what I’m talking then I suggest you head over and have a look at Judith’s Room.

Let’s just say I’m not one to hang around.

I have been backed this week by some of the best bloggers, writers and new friends a girl could ask for, all who contacted me after my initial post, and ideas are flowing thick and fast. I feel incredibly lucky to have so much experience, wisdom and enthusiasm at my disposal and only hope that I can do them all proud.

At the time of writing, 48 hours after the site went live, we have an astounding 151 members (and I have had to change that number twice as I have been writing this post). The discussion boards and groups are alive with activity and enthusiasm and an incredible, inspirational, immensely talented group of women have assembled, all joined in a shared desire to grow and develop as writers, from humble beginners, like me, to successful, published writers. Already I am having to think about press releases, marketing, funding, sponsorship, launch parties and business issues.

My inability to find the word to describe how this is making me feel only goes to prove how far I have to go in my writing journey.

I am speechless.

I am delighted.

I am inordinately excited.

I am overwhelmed.

The small voice that likes to makes its self heard at times like this (I call him Adolf) is, of course, already asking me what the hell I’m doing. He is doing a very good job at laughing at my inadequateness, at the irony that the person heading this up is someone with virtually no writing experience and considerably less confidence.

I am doing my best to ignore him.

After all, this whole thing sprung from a tiny thought, in itself nothing much to speak of, and look at what has grown from it.

I have to believe that my growth as a writer will be the same. Being at the bottom of the pile means that the only way is up. I believe that I can achieve great things if only I can find my voice and the space in my life to commit to it. And now I have a community, of many women who feel the same, to inspire me and support me in this adventure.

I see mighty oak trees on the horizon, green and abundant, sustaining new life and new hope.

One of them is me.

Writing Workshop news and a BIG IDEA

Here’s something you maybe didn’t know about me: I have some of my best ideas when I’m up against a wall. If I’m upset, or angry, or exhausted, I find my creativity flows in a way it never usually does when I’m just feeling ok.

I have spent all day today feeling sad and confused. So I worked, I threw myself into new ideas and new thinking to distract myself, and I got a huge amount done.

I’ve finished my Big Assignment – a 2,500 word short story which I think may be one of the best things I’ve ever written, and it’s a good job too as it constitutes 30% of my coursework mark for my OU Creative Writing course.

And I spent some time thinking through a rather excellent idea.

Next Monday will see the return of the Writing Workshop and its weekly prompts to inspire your blogging/writing for the week, drawn from some of the best of the blogs in my reader, or any I may not know about that you’d like to suggest. Before Christmas this had started to prove really popular with you all which has been wonderful, and I hope all of you that enjoyed joining in last year will return to share your posts with us as we get back up and running again after the Christmas break. If you haven’t seen what this is all about yet, then check out our last workshop to find out more.

But I’ve been rolling an idea around my head to build on the workshop and perhaps set up something for people who want to pursue creative writing a little more seriously. People, like me, who are just starting out and still learning, looking for a bit of support and opportunities, perhaps, to showcase our work, open it up to critique and pursue possible avenues for getting our writing noticed and published.

So. I’m thinking of setting up a writing community, a blog definitely, which pretty much anyone can contribute to, and possibly a forum too. I’m sure something like it already exists but sod it I’m going to make my own. And make it better.

It’s a New Year, I like new projects, and this is something that I think could be of benefit to lots of us.

If you’d be interested in being involved, would like to hear more about what I have planned (I will send a round-robin email soon), or have ideas you’d like to suggest then I’d love to hear from you. You can leave your email address in the comments if you don’t mind doing that kind of thing, email me directly using my contact button in the sidebar, or DM me on Twitter.

I look forward to hearing from you x

Lost

Last week I thought I might be pregnant. Actually, I was convinced that I was pregnant.

All the signs were there, I had them really early with Kai and it felt exactly the same. That achey womb feeling, low back ache, feeling bloated and tender. I began to feel really nauseas and exhausted, falling into bed by 9pm and begging Ant to watch Kai during the day so I could sleep. I FELT pregnant.

I wasn’t, of course. Definitely not. Two tests and the beginnings of my period this morning have knocked that idea firmly on the head.

The idiotic thing is that I’m devastated.

Two weeks ago, when I first began to wonder, I would have told you I wasn’t ready to have another baby, in fact the thought terrified me. We weren’t trying, planning a bigger gap and a year to study and move house, not to increase our family.

Yet within a week, I had imagined that baby in my arms. Imagined Kai with a little brother or sister, imagined announcing it to our friends and family, imagining laughing over the huge, unexpected Christmas surprise and our hell of a start the New Year, a little scared but ready to go for it. And I had never wanted anything more.

Stupid.

I have not lost anything except an idea. I haven’t gone through the very real and horrible experience of miscarrying like so many that I know. There was no baby but in my imagination. It’s pathetic really.

So why do I feel such a horrible sense of loss this morning?

Why do I feel so lost?

I have an assignment to submit today. I have a house to clean.

I have this stupid tummy bug or whatever it is to recover from (I STILL feel sick).

I have a beautiful REAL child to hold, and we can try again if that’s really what we want.

Life moves on.

Get a grip you silly girl.

Blue Moon

I wonder what the chances are of a Blue Moon falling at the end/beginning of a brand new decade? Pretty slim I reckon.

It’s going to be a great year. I have a feeling.

Happy New Year everyone x

P.S. This is the last one Heather, I promise…

P.P.S A Blue Moon is so called when you get two full moons in a calendar month…