Day 10 of #100daysofwriting and a walk ends with me finding a hardback gem in the charity shop.
Day 11 of #100daysofwriting and I amazed that (A) I have made it this far, (B) how much work can be achieved in just 30mins or 1 hour. It’s as if the world recedes to a distant muffled fall, you know unless there is a cry out that there is no need to investigate. Today, I am thinking of willow patterns, on the plate an old woman carries in the story and how it echoes her loss, as if her dead sons are crossing the bridge to the tea house/pavilion. Then I see how a single image can foreshadow the events to come in the short story, and how animal like we all are. Stories are just swallows in the willow pattern, swooping, never touching the ground and thrilling anyone who sees them fly.
Day 12 of #100daysofwriting and I am struck by the excuse that many wannabe writers give that they don’t have time to write. It’s an excuse that many professional writers use, not enough hours in the day. I remember Stephen King’s advice on this, ‘Turn off the squawk box in the corner’ – his reference to TV – he’s right but I want to add something else. Many writers have day to day jobs, very few are lucky enough to work just at their desks each day churning out words they love. We come home exhausted, and tired people have the right to collapse, but I am struck with those tiny moments between getting changed, having a wash and then going downstairs to relax. Those moments could involve writing – but please wash first, you’ll feel better for – just 30 minutes here or 1 hour there, seven days a week and you can certainly see that in 100 days you could have done 100 hours of writing or 50 hours of writing. Writing becomes exhilarating and to some extent a way to unwind.
Ray Bradbury was right, writing is like a muscle, use or lose it. Even 1 hour makes me feel more relaxed, more together, more excited. Each day, I slip into the story easier, or in the break between sitting down to type I have considered the problems with the story, with the characters and I can solve them. At least I can try to solve them, pull one lose thread and a giant ball of wool flattens you like the scene from Indiana Jones. I can day dream about my characters whilst at work, I don’t think about paying bills or distractions like who is saying what to whom on social media, and how I should be appalled or indignant. I feel like a writer rather than a fraud, and there are many fine writers who fear this discovery. The story continues and when I think I am drying up, I sometimes stop to consider why. When I am on a roll, I sometimes stop because tomorrow I will continue with that roll.
Day 13 of #100daysofwriting and rather than a photo of me going through my notebooks tracking down sketches and ideas, which I did in the bath (avert thy eyes, poor reader), I thought I would should you the aftermath of the Open Day at college. Tired, exhausted and feeling the affects of not doing physio today but at least my cheeks are glowing.
Day 14 of #100daysofwriting and I am busy looking at the twist or reveal in writing. It seems apt to turn to this novelist.
Day 15 of #100daysofwriting and I back in the ginnels of my childhood. For the record, this is the ginnel behind my childhood home and my childhood was framed by the top, bottom and back ginnel. The bottom ginnel was full of geese, and the geese have made it into my fiction along with the bruises.
Andrew Oldham's Boneyard 