Posts Tagged "dreams"
Writing Workshop: The Fry that Flew
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. We’ve got lots of new contributors taking part this week – should be a good one!
But first, I guess it’s my turn.
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No time no time no time. Damn me and my inability to say no to any opportunity or switch off to any new idea. I should be starting to write the short story I have due in just after Christmas. But things keep cropping up. Fun things, exciting things, potential filled things. And ooh look I’ve done another 4 hours work today and no story… oops.
So I’m going to be good and keep it brief. And tell you about a dream I had last week. It was one of those dreams you just didn’t want to wake up from, it was THAT good.
You see, I was one half of a elite crime fighting duo, the other half of which was… Stephen Fry. He could fly people, the Fry could FLY! I, on the other hand, seemed to have no such exciting abilities, but my company (in a pink fluffy cat costume) seemed to be the calming influence in his life that he needed to carry out his super hero tasks without mental breakdown.
Most of the dream consisted of me curled up under a chair as Stephen did an interview, and then playing duets with him on the piano in a huge house (which was actually a shopping centre) jam packed full of people. Despite my reluctance to start thinking about Christmas, it WAS Christmas, with a huge 30ft tree in one corner and twinkly lights. We sang carols and all swayed like some kind of ‘It’s A Small World’ diorama. And then Stephen flew away… to save some animals or something I don’t know. I think I shed some tears as I banged out Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. It was all quite moving…
Now. I would like you to analyse. Get your Freudian hats on (or Jungian if that’s more your flavour) and tell me…
What the hell does this MEAN??!!
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So now it’s your turn! What prompt did you choose?
1. Write a letter to your 16-year-old self
- Inspired by NotSupermum’s beautiful and touching post this week
2.What’s your guilty pleasure?
- Suggested by Leslieanne at Life with a Little Dude
3. Write about a dream you’ve had recently
- Inspired by Tim at Bringing Up Charlie and his bizarre dream of bloggers invading his living space!
4. I want to know your claim to fame (lame or otherwise)
- Inspired by Brits in Bosnia who is achieving some notoriety in her little town.
5. What do you do or where do you go to escape the stresses of every-day life?
- Inspired by ME! and my urban sanctuary 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) 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.
Read MoreWriting Workshop #7 – Claims to Fame and Guilty Pleasures
These Monday’s roll round quickly don’t they?! You ready for this week’s prompts?
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. Write a letter to your 16-year-old self
- Inspired by NotSupermum’s beautiful and touching post this week
2.What’s your guilty pleasure?
- Suggested by Leslieanne at Life with a Little Dude
3. Write about a dream you’ve had recently
- Inspired by Tim at Bringing Up Charlie and his bizarre dream of bloggers invading his living space!
4. I want to know your claim to fame (lame or otherwise)
- Inspired by Brits in Bosnia who is achieving some notoriety in her little town.
5. What do you do or where do you go to escape the stresses of every-day life?
- Inspired by ME! and my urban sanctuary this 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:
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.
Read MoreIt is hard not to want
It is hard not to want a bigger kitchen when you only have one work surface, two drawers, three cupboards and a cooker that only works if the planets are in correct alignment.
It is hard not to want proper plumbing when a hot shower is rarely guaranteed and seemingly dependent on the washing habits of an entire street.
It is hard not to want some new clothes when the jumper you are wearing is on it’s third owner.
It is hard not to want to see the world when it is so beautiful.
It is hard not to want to be successful at something you love so much and think you maybe, MAYBE could be quite good at.
It is hard not to want that thing you love so much to make you some money when you live so close to the wire.
It is hard not to want your baby to sleep better when you are so unbelievably tired.
It is hard not to want to be more self-sufficient when you rely so much on the generosity of others.
It is hard not to want an extra couple of free hours in the day when there is so much to do.
It is hard not to want to be pain-free when you have an army of tiny microscopic beavers gnawing at your joints, crapping in the resulting orifice and then lighting that crap on fire.
It is hard not to want a peaceful neighbourhood when the soundtrack to your life is a dog’s incessant barking, idiots arguing, car stereos blaring and doors slamming.
It is hard not to want to swap the view from your son’s window from this:
to 
… or to change the first thing he sees when he steps out the front door from this:
to 
It is hard not to want
BUT
I have.
SO much.
A home, food, warmth.
More love and friendship than I know what to do with and hardly deserve.
The companionship and unconditional love of the world’s most patient man.
The soft and perfect form of my boy with his head on my lap as I type.
A bright future ahead of me, full of promise and potential, and the exhilarating feeling that the best thing about being at the bottom of the pile is that the only way is up.
My words.
These things make the universe stop spinning for one second, and the bills stop worrying, and the housework seem so unimportant.
They make me stop wanting. And just be.
For a while.
Until I find myself wanting once more.
It is hard not to want.
I wish I knew how.
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What do you find it hard not to want?
Read MoreA Leap in the Dark
(If you don’t like long stories – skip to the bottom. I won’t mind)
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Once upon a time there was a little girl. She liked to dream and imagine things and read hundreds and hundreds of books and ask pretentious questions and be in charge. She loved to write stories and imagine adventures in her head and generally preferred being in her thinking place than outside, where things tended to get a bit scary and insist on changing all the time, usually just as she thought she’d got the hang of this being alive business.
And then one day, out of no-where, and even though she REALLY didn’t want to, she Grew Up.
She still dreamed and still imagined and asked even more pretentious questions but as a Grown-Up was told she needed to be ‘responsible’ and ‘realistic’ and ‘practical’ and all of a sudden all her dreams and imaginings seemed very small and insignificant and worthless and certainly not the kind of thing that had any value in the Real World. Instead of having adventures in her head she was told she needed to do things like go to work and make enough money to keep her and the very Handsome Prince she had met in crisps and ice-cream and chocolate digestives.
She was confused. Everyone kept asking her what she was going to do with her life but she didn’t know. All the other Grown-Ups seemed to have decided and were busy getting on with life and having Real Careers and being everything confident, secure, competent Grown-Ups should be. And since their Real Careers seemed to mean they got to do fun stuff like buying houses and cars and going on holiday, and since she also wanted to feel confident and secure and competent she decided she’d give this being a Grown-Up business a go. Even though she didn’t feel the slighest bit confident, she hoped if she ran fast enough in the right direction then eventually she’d end up where everyone else was.
But try as she might things kept getting in the way. First she got ill, which was a real pain in the ass, and although it meant she could sit around in PJ’s all day which had always been in her top 5 requirements for her dream job, it wasn’t quite what she had in mind given that it was accompanied by generally feeling like crap. So getting better became top of her priority list, along with filling her long days with learning about all kind of random stuff to pass the time and distract her from the disgruntled beavers nibbling at her joints.
But she still hadn’t decided. You know, on the ‘Real Career’.
One day she got better (eventually – man alive that took a long time. Cities rose and fell in the time it took her to teach her feet to work one in front of the other. Physiotherapy definitely not for her if she couldn’t even get her own body to work properly – at least that’s one to strike off the list). Well, better enough. She managed to get a job that just happened to involve reading stories all day and teaching other children how to dream and imagine stuff all for themselves. And it was pretty cool. For a while. Not quite a Real Career (given the lack of future prospects and, well, decent pay), but it made do while the girl continued to try and figure it all out.
Then something magical happened. Her and the Handsome Prince got married and grew a whole new person. A tiny, needy, beautiful little person. And just like that things got Very Real Indeed. All of a sudden the girl found herself doing probably the most Grown-Up job you can do that, despite all pre-conceptions, just left her feeling even less confident and secure and competent than she had before. And though she loved this little person more than she ever knew it was possible to love something and not have your heart pop out of your chest and make a big mess on the floor, she also found it very, very hard and scary and found she wanted to go back to that thinking place in her head and do some imagining to recover.
So she started a blog. And wrote, and thought, and dreamt, and told jokes which made her feel better. A LOT better. And what made her feel even better still was that the people that read her random ramblings seemed to quite enjoy them, and wanted her to write more. She got the opportunity to write for a brand new Toy Review Site, and then to help out as Deputy Editor, which she kind of loved, and made lots of lovely new friends.
And sneakily, without her even realising it, the old dreams and yearnings to write came creeping back. She was that little girl again, sat surrounded by books thinking that words and pictures in your head were just about the best thing about being alive (although, she now also thought that tiny people covered in porridge and giving her big kisses were equally brilliant which shows that change is sometimes a good thing).
Oh but wait! I missed a bit out! (which coincidently is JUST the kind of thing the girl would do, given her inability to do anything in a straight line, especially walking).
Amidst her year of changing nappies, and being puked on, and getting her boobs out and traipsing up and down the stairs ten zillion times every evening, the age-old question has reared it’s ugly head. All her fellow mummy friends had gone back to work and here it was haunting her once again. What on earth was she was going to do with her life? (apart from pop out babies, which apart from the poo and the no-sleep thing was kinda fun). In an effort to make a decision once and for all, and make some money and FINALLY get herself that Real Career and the house and the car and all the rest, she signed up to do a degree in Earth Sciences. She wasn’t really sure why. She liked nature and stuff and thought, although it would be hard, would also be nice and safe. She’d probably get her essays back with big gratifying red ticks. And eventually a nice, safe job that would pay reasonably well and make her feel like a Proper Grown-Up at last.
But.
It wasn’t writing. And writing was pretty much all she wanted to do these days. The more and more she thought about it, the less sure she felt about the whole caboodle and the day all her study materials arrived she cried.
So here she was. Two paths laid out before her. On one side was a lovely safe path, with interesting things to study and A+s within her grasp, and a nice job at the end of it all.
It looked kind of dull.
On the other side was a big yawning cliff. It was a very long way down and held lots of opportunities for failure and disappointment and generally making a fool of herself. But it made her heart do a little skip with excitement when she thought about. And somewhere in the distance, there was a beautiful, alluring, dream-fullfilling place with Writer written in big letters on the sign over the entrance, and people sitting around in the PJs making up stuff and being interesting and arty and neglecting their housework. They didn’t seem to have much money, but damn, were they having fun.
So guess what she did.
She jumped.
She cancelled her place on the Earth Science degree and signed up for this course, which starts in a month and, coupled with some other equally fun writing courses over the next few years, would give her both an Open BA (Hons) Degree AND a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing . To learn about writing and give her an excuse to write all day under the guise of being a student, and generally give her the opportunity to see if she could make this writing thing stick.
She re-designed her blog as a way of increasing her audience and give her a place to showcase her writing efforts. And for the first time in a VERY long time, she felt truly happy and content. Yes she was scared. Very, very scared. Of failing, of everyone not taking her seriously, of rejection. But it was a good kind of scared. The kind of scared that might come before something really wonderful.
And in celebration of all of this she wrote a very long, convoluted story to tell you all about it.
THE END
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P.S. You got that the girl is me right? And that I’ve jacked in my Science Degree to follow my dreams of becoming a real life writer? Yes? Good, good. Just checking…
