Writing Workshop #29 – Emotions
So. You know how in Glee they do those brilliant mash-ups of two genius songs?
Well, that’s what this is.
Because this week the brilliant photography Gallery over at Sticky Fingers is joining forces with our Writing Workshop here to do something a bit special. Lots of you do both every week, words and pictures in separate posts, but this week we’d like you to try and combine the two. And for those of you that haven’t discovered the Gallery yet, well it’s a good chance for you to branch out and do something fun, and maybe find some lovely new blogs to read on the way.
Just one prompt this week, one theme: EMOTIONS
Take, or find, a photo that represents and emotion and then write creatively on that theme. It’s doesn’t have to be ground breaking, just something a bit different. It could be something descriptive, or a story (real or made-up). It could be a poem, or just a sentence or two. We’re not looking for award-winning photography OR writing here. Just something that tells us something about you, or your life. Who you are. Something that gives you a chance to express yourself.
We”ll be linking up on WEDNESDAY this week, both here and on Tara’s blog, so feel free to add the link to your post to one or the other, or both, to give as many people as possible the chance to read your post.
If you’re new to our Writing Workshop, come and have a look at last week’s to get a sense of how it works. We’d love to have you join us.
See you Wednesday! I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Getting to know yoooooou – Cybermummy
I’ve loved seeing these Cybermummy meet-and-greets popping up all over the place thanks to a great idea by Carly at Mummy’s Shoes.
So the idea is that all of us going to Cybermummy next week post a short bio so you know who to avoid who everyone is. And I am going! I’m quite ridiculously excited about it too. I’ll be talking on the first panel of the day all about about how to create good content for your blog, along with some names that make me feel a little dizzy to look at, which is a little, wow, *insert nervous twitching here*, but there you go. Really quite hugely honoured to have been asked and shall be attempting to rise to the challenge no doubt rather awkwardly but with flair. You can be expecting a lot of rather impassioned talk about ‘soul’ and ‘authenticity’. Just to warn you, like. I will probably fall over at some point, too. I do that a lot.
Anyway.
As usual I’m all late joining in, but, you know, I did at least manage BEFORE the conference. It could of been worse.
So here’s me:
Name: Josie George
Blog: This one
Twitter ID: @porridgebrain
Height: 5ft 2 and half inches
Hair: Very short, brown.
Eyes: Dark brown. Probably looking at the floor or out the window.
Likes: Words, light, cake, painting, singing, trees, wine, daydreaming, Twitter, yoga, being weird.
Most likely to say: “Yes, I ate your biscuit”,”oops”, “Sorry”, “Where are my shoes?”, “It’s all about SOUL, and AUTHENTICITY”.
Will be wearing: Something fabulous. A slightly bewildered air.
Ways to be my best friend forever: Bring me chocolate. Make me laugh. Come and hide under the buffet table with me when it all gets too much.
What NOT to do: Dare me to do something stupid. PLEASE.
Will be the person at Cybermummy most likely to: Spill something on somebody important. Forget to print their ticket off.
I am quite friendly though. And I would, genuinely, really love to meet you. So please come say hello.
I may hug you though. Just saying…
Writing Workshop: Light
Welcome back to your Writing Workshop.
At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to link up your posts. I hope you found a prompt to inspire you this week and help you create something new, a new piece of you.
I’ve chosen prompts number 5 – light. There was a reason I chose this word this week, for light has been all around me.
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I am addicted to light.
The heavy, hot kind. The kind that covers you like a blanket. Fire on your limbs and on your eyelids. The burning kind.
I am addicted to that sticky light, that comes just before the sunset. Coating everything in thick, syrupy honey-light. Sticking to leaves and branches as it drips through like liquid gold. I want to drink it, to smother myself in it and glow like it does.
That half-light, that filters through the curtains at sunrise, when I often seem to wake, if only for a moment or two. That light that comes threaded with solitary bird song, and long shadows that make my legs look long. It is the kind of light you would like for looking at someone beautiful, mouth slightly open as they sleep. The light mingling with their breath and kissing their face with soft shafts.
I am addicted to that last light. Hanging in the air like a grapefruit. I want to stretch up and pluck it from the purple clouds and eat it down until there is only darkness and I can sleep.
And I am addicted to moonlight, too. When gold turns to silver and my mind wakes up. When dreams mingle with reality and my thoughts and body are moved by a force that is not my own. It is a light of fantasy, and submission, and deep water that stirs and swirls.
It is like love, light, as a particularly lovely sunbeam said. It IS love. Bringing with it synthesis, a knitting together, recombining of parts of self to create something new. It feeds growth, pulling me in new directions like a climbing rose.
I turn to face it, running towards it arms, open wide, and I breathe it in. I let it fill me up and surrender to it, until it is I and I am it.
I will let it take me to wherever it leads.
Solstice Sunset
So now it’s your turn. What prompt did you choose?
1. Tell me about a time you felt sexy, completely comfortable in your own skin. Or if you struggle to feel like that, write a story in which you do. What would make you feel sexy?
- Inspired by Catherine at ‘How to laugh in the face of it all’ and her BRILLIANT short story about a Denise who dared to bare.
2. Many, many people have or do suffer with depression at one point or another, myself including. What does depression feel like to you? Find words, descriptions, poems, stories, to give shape to that dark place that so many of us share.
- Inspired by Holly’s moving post: ‘Anatomy of depression’.
3. Write about a time you put yourself first. How did it feel? Or if you end up feeling an eternal ‘second’, what about yourself and your life would you like to be made more of a priority? Time to be a little selfish!
- Inspired by Sarah at ‘A Life More Lived’ who’s been brave enough to say no.
4. “It’s your fault!”. Time to write about a time when you felt the blame was firmly with another person. Absolve yourself from responsibility!
- Inspired by A Modern Military Mother’s musings about blame and original sin, which made me smile.
And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Your word for the week is: Light
- Suggested by @amylane from Cooking, Cakes and Children, and in honour of the longest day.
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 till Sunday to enter your link! 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.
The Gallery: Creatures
This post was written for Week 16 of Tara’s Gallery.
The theme this week was Creatures.
I chose my favourite bird and a piece of my soul. The Owl.
Words by Laurie. Photos by me.
Torn Owl
by Laurie Lee
On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in fur.
Some secret lure of time it seems
has called him from his country wastes
to hunt a newer wasteland here.
And where the candlabra swung
bright with the dancers’ thousand eyes,
now his black, hooded pupils stare,
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing,
And, like a stroke of doom, drops down,
and swoops across the empty hall,
and plucks a quick mouse off the stair…
Down to the woods (part 2)
Yesterday was trees, but Weston Park, where we visited on Sunday, has gardens too. I was on a review trip there on behalf of Have a Lovely Time and you will be able to read all about it there later this week.
In the mean time though, here are flowers, for you.
Breathe deep. They smelt WONDERFUL.
You can view the whole set of photographs from my day here
It’s a week of pictures this week, hope that’s ok. Gallery post tomorrow and then some words for you on Thursday.
Thanks for looking x
Down to the woods (part 1)
Yesterday was a near perfect day. Sunshine, laughter, a solitary walk through the woods while Ant kept Kai occupied.
Mesmerising light flickering through the trees, the shape of the leaves’ shadows on my face. The sound of the bees and bird song in the quiet afternoon.
Like I said. Perfect.
Part two with some more about the day and where we were to follow tomorrow…
Or if you can’t wait you can view the whole set of photographs here
Writing Workshop #28 – Sex, depression and putting yourself first.
Welcome back to your weekly Writing Workshop. Sorry they’re a bit late today, but I have been making the most of the sunshine!
For any 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 enjoy writing your post and get something out of the process.
Prompts each week 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 for a future workshop then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
So here’s this week’s prompts!
1. Tell me about a time you felt sexy, completely comfortable in your own skin. Or if you struggle to feel like that, write a story in which you do. What would make you feel sexy?
- Inspired by Catherine at ‘How to laugh in the face of it all’ and her BRILLIANT short story about a Denise who dared to bare.
2. Many, many people have or do suffer with depression at one point or another, myself including. What does depression feel like to you? Find words, descriptions, poems, stories, to give shape to that dark place that so many of us share.
- Inspired by Holly’s moving post: ‘Anatomy of depression’.
3. Write about a time you put yourself first. How did it feel? Or if you end up feeling an eternal ‘second’, what about yourself and your life would you like to be made more of a priority? Time to be a little selfish!
- Inspired by Sarah at ‘A Life More Lived’ who’s been brave enough to say no.
4. “It’s your fault!”. Time to write about a time when you felt the blame was firmly with another person. Absolve yourself from responsibility!
- Inspired by A Modern Military Mother’s musings about blame and original sin, which made me smile.
And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Your word for the week is: Light
- Suggested by @amylane from Cooking, Cakes and Children, and in honour of the longest day today.
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday 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 Thursday’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:
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 Thursday then!
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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.
I wish
I wish, just once, I could see what you see.
You tell me I am talented, that you like what I do. But I struggle to believe it. It is a fight to believe it.
I’m not looking for validation here, comments are off, I just need to say it.
I wish I could see what you see.
Occasionally it comes. In bright flashes, when the layers and layers of self-doubt and carefully applied filter of self-critique, of ‘not good enough’ fall away for a while. It is happening more and more, and I love that. It is freeing me. I know I am loved, and the special connection I feel right now, to life, to love, to that creative spirit that is so much a part of me: those things are helping me to see what I am doing without judgement. It helps me to see the goodness in what I do, not perfect but still worthy. The fact that I am writing at all, painting at all, shows me that this is changing. That I am shaking off these heavy restraints.
It feels wonderful, those moments of release. Pure being where I don’t think, I just do and words and lines and colours flow out like blood from a vein, life onto the page. I just live it and I look and see with clear eyes that I have created something beautiful.
I am getting there.
But it is a reflex. To hate. To fall back into patterns of thinking where that quiet, persistent, nasty voice that lives deep down and hidden finds a way to make itself heard.
It whispers failure, whispers defeat, whispers what a disappointment I am, what a fraud.
Perhaps I am just tired tonight. I am just tired.
_
I want to believe. In me.
I want to switch that voice off, once and for all. I want to be free of it. Especially now, on the threshold of so much. When it is all beginning, FINALLY getting exciting.
I don’t have time for it. It is holding me back and I despise myself for it. I am irritated by it’s incessant yapping.
I am trying so hard. Why can’t I just let go?
_
I give it voice here, the fear. I release it here.
You will not control me any more.
_
Image: stock.xchange
Writing Workshop: Found
Welcome back to your Writing Workshop!
At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to link up your posts and always I can’t wait to read as many as I can. Thank you to everyone taking part.
First of all though, it’s my turn. I’ve chosen prompts number 2 – an event that restored my faith in something. I don’t want to explain this one too much though, it would spoil it. I want it just to be. It is about inspiration, and faith, and connection. Let’s leave it at that…
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Found
I lie covered in leaves in muddy dark.
Two jagged sprays of oaks for eyes, one bright
and oval, gently rippled beech for mouth.
My heartbeat pulsing with the ground beneath,
an echo of the life below and in
and all around. In branching, sucking root,
and creeping vine, burrowing worm and
dormant seed. Hidden, like me, from light but not
from life, connected to that tangled web.
So safe and warm it is, my peaty bed,
but lonely too, with only whispers soft
of secret, scuttling things to share my dreams.
A sense of something missing, felt, but still
unseen: a longing for a kindred soul.
And yearning fingers start to creep and crawl
their way through dirt and stone, in hope of reaching
something living feeling breathing, just like me,
to cling to in the dark, to take root in.
Surprise. As rough and hard transforms to smooth
and soft, yielding to my fingers with their own.
I turning comprehend our bed was laid
for two, companions in our solitude.
A face, as soft as rain with eyes as blue
as stars meets mine, with lips of apple leaves
to press to mine, just for a moment, till
we deem to rise, up and out, into the sun.
Our roots still joined together, intertwined.
~~
Photo Credit: futureancient ‘Sensitive Space’
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So now it’s your turn. What prompt did you choose?
1. What qualities or traits do you think your children have inherited from you, you partner, or even from your extended family?
- Inspired by this gorgeous photo taken by Mummy Musings: Like Father, Like Daughter.
2. Write about an event that restored your faith in something.
- Inspired by From Marketing to Milk and a dream that restored her belief (just a little bit).
3. What’s your magical power? Or what would you like it to be?
- Inspired by the Moiderer and her lovely post about being a magic mummy.
4. Tell us about a time when you didn’t feel welcome.
- Inspired by Notes from Lapland and her reflections on whether England is Child Unfriendly.
And finally, the last prompt now is going to be just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.
5. Your word for the week is: She
- Inspired by the beautiful poem on Life Slightly Used’s blog this 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) 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 till Sunday to enter your link! 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.
Lottie Loves Finishing School – A is for ATTITUDE (and I have plenty of that)
So a while back I wrote a post about feeling sexy. In it I talked about feeling like I was emerging from the fog of early motherhood, feeling like I was reclaiming my body and my confidence. I lamented about how HARD the daily grind, and just the image of being ‘Mum’ made it to feel sexy sometimes, but how determined I was not disappear. I would find a way to still feel young and sexy and attractive AND be a mother. Being one did not mean you couldn’t be the other.
And you know what? I have. I feel great. Not everyday, but generally, yes.
And do you know why? Because I am TRYING to. I’m making an effort.
Not for anyone else, not because women ‘should’ look a certain way, but because it makes ME feel good. I always thought that worrying about your appearance was a step away from feminism, but what I’m learning is that, actually, doing what makes you feel good is empowering. And if that means buying a new dress and getting my hair done, then so be it. Not all feminists have to wear track suits bottoms and scowls. Wanting to look good and feel good, whatever your shape or size, feeling happy in your own skin, is a pretty fundamental need in a lot of women. And one we should be OWNING.
My lovely (and gorgeous, but we won’t hold it against her) friend Lottie is recognising and supporting this need in her new blog workshop – Lottie Loves Finishing School.
This is not about conforming to an ‘ideal’ kind of beauty. This is about embracing everything you are. It is about positivity, and confidence and about how you THINK as much as it is about how you look.
I think it’s bloody brilliant.
Week One’s challenge was A for Attitude – Lottie has challenged us to put aside our self doubt and negativity and think about what makes us happy about ourselves.
I have battled with self doubt and negativity my whole life. I have spent a great deal of time hating myself and not liking who I am. And do you know what? It’s such a fricking waste of energy. I am who I am. And, I’m realising, I am LOVED for who I am.
It’s about time I was proud of that, embraced that. Because the people that love me think I’m worth something, and for the first time I believe that they might actually be right.
So. For them, and for me. Here’s my list of things about myself that make me happy. These are the things I like:
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- A is for ATTITUDE
I like that I am complicated, and spirited, and emotional. I like that I FEEL. It makes life fun and exciting and challenging. And I think it makes me fun person to know, not always an easy person to know, but worth it.
- I like my creativity and all the ways in which it finds its expression. I like that it is as fundamental to my existence as breathing and water. It defines who I am and how I relate to the world. It is going to be the thing that people remember about me most.
- I like my eyes. I think I have nice eyes. And pretty feet. I like that my lips are pink enough not to have to wear lipstick. And I have good shoulders. I think they’re my best feature actually.
- I like my sense of humour. I think, when I don’t try too hard, I can be pretty funny.
- I like my short hair. I like that it requires practically no effort and that it suits me. I like the way that it makes me look a little boyish and means I can pull off being edgy with scruffy jeans as well as I can a pretty dress. I think that’s pretty sexy.
- I have good skin. I’m grateful for good skin.
- I think I have a nice singing voice. It’s not going to win X-factor any time soon but it makes a nice sound and that makes me happy.
- I like that I am fearless, or, at least, that I’m getting there. My history has made me not afraid of pain or change. I can do anything, cope with anything. I like feeling brave.
- I like that absolutely none of the above are affected by how much weight I may or may not be carrying.
So there you go.
If you’re feeling a bit blah and in need of a confidence injection I would suggest you go and check out Lotties Loves blog for ways to start feeling fabulous again. This week’s challenge is all about boobs which makes me extra happy.
And if you’re leaving a comment I would LOVE for you to tell me at least one thing that you like about yourself. Men too please, you are just as entitled to feel fabulous as the rest of us…
