31 days: found items as writing prompts

And…we’re back.

It’s been a while.

Trouble with not writing is, of course, it gets harder to write the longer you don’t write. Vicious circle, and all that.

But a year ago today, I started writing seriously again – a.k.a. blog phase 2.

And of all the days I needed to kick start myself into writing regularly again, today seemed to be a good one.

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I wrote before about blog phase 2.5 – gearing up for writing more seriously.

You’ll be pleased to know that, so far,  this has consisted of lots of reading, a bit of writing that was about me or family…but not blog writing and putting it live.

This means I’ve had a good time over the summer, and I’ve learned a lot. But I am no further forward in terms of what ‘seriously’ means, and I find I haven’t written much new for the blog.

All writing is writing though, right?

I think that’s what I’ve been telling myself, along with ‘I don’t know what writing seriously looks like’.

But what I did learn, through all the reading, was the importance of just putting one word after another. Getting it done, making a start, doing it regularly. All the things I was learning when I started with my 31 days last year.

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So what to do?

Start writing daily again. Revisit the craft of it. Stretch myself a bit by trying something new – using prompts for each day.

Yesterday I was in the library, where they had a nice set of postcards out, produced by the Scottish Poetry Library. And all of a sudden, I found something that I thought would do for this month’s theme: using found objects as prompts for writing.

Found objects (i.e. things you find, in daily life) have a noble tradition in art – so why not use them for writing? There’s a chance element that I like (easier to get myself writing when it’s ‘new’ each time), as well as the opportunity for the writing to take different forms, according to the prompt itself.

To offer a little bit of a thread between the items, I’m going for an alphabet element: each item will start with a different letter of the alphabet. But not in order: just that, when it’s all done, I’ll have done the alphabet.

(I hope. I don’t know whether I’m going to come across x-rays, xylophones, or other x-otica.)

The astute reader will have worked out that October has 31 days, and the (Roman) alphabet has 26. So I’m fudging it by adding today’s intro, probably an end piece…and there’ll be three left over. I’ll come up with something. Fingers crossed.

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I may also end up doing some extra writing prompts, based on the daily prompts from a writing group on Facebook. That way, I don’t pick the prompt, I just turn up and write.
That also sounds good. I’m not forcing myself to, I’m just aware of the option.

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With me so far? First prompt goes up tomorrow. P is for…

 

I am not safe in second-hand bookshops

I’m sure it comes as no surprise. I just realised it again today when I went to my favourite local second-hand book shop. Books donated: 2. Books bought: 8. Hmm.

While I can tell myself that three of them were for a friend who is looking for children’s books about Scottish history (score! had seen some in there before), that still leaves 5.

OK. One’s a classic: Make Way for Ducklings. Read it, love the pics, nice intro to Boston if we finally make our way across the pond (yes, pun intended) to see family.

One’s an extra one in a series. The Roman Mysteries: look good. Kids solve crimes in the ancient world. Junior Reader is well-acquainted with Roman stuff now via lots of Asterix (and some Cows in Action) and likes history.

So, it’s a ‘not to give yet, but I’ll build up the series by buying second hand while waiting for the right point when they’re ready for the books’. This is an Ongoing Habit. (See also: Horrid Henry, Mr Gum, Just William, and a few others. No, they’re not all villains, honest.)

One’s an ‘ooh, library book that we really liked, would like a copy of this’. In this case, The Princess and the Wizard, by Julia Donaldson (of Gruffalo fame). I first came across it when I was doing weekly read to kids at nursery, some time back.

Yes, it’s quite pink and sparkly (run your finger over the pictures sparkly, if you must know). But the princess is a good heroine who is not scared of the wizard, needs a little time to work out how to outwit him – and doesn’t miss out on her birthday cake. (I wish to reassure you while trying not give the plot away).

What’s really good is the way that Donaldson uses her device to spin out the story and then weave it back to a conclusion through the same device. (Still trying very hard not to give it away. Go and read it.)

One’s a ‘can’t remember if we’ve got it but it’s in good condition and could go in the present box if needed’. Yes, I am cheap. But I like giving books – and why not give a book (or more than one) if the price second-hand means I can give more books?

In this case, it’s Marcia Williams‘ Canterbury Tales. Williams makes pretty much anything come to life through witty strip cartoons – but still gets plenty of the original in, whether it’s Sinbad, Shakespeare or plenty of other classic tales.

In this case, yes, the stories are made accessible, but she still adds in some of the Old English on every page. (Takes me back to A Level English. Yes, I was the boring one who thought that reading Old English aloud in class was cool. It was – but it probably didn’t do my class popularity much good.)

And the last is a ‘shouldn’t be in the children’s section but I know this is good and I’ll nab it’. It’s the wonderfully titled Sleeping With Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.

If I’m honest, sleeping with bread pretty much sounds like an untold companion to In the Night Kitchen. In fact, it’s a very positive take on looking at what’s been good, and bad, in your day, as a daily discipline.

I can see why it went into the children’s picture book box. The illustrations are much more kids’ books style. But the content is, while grown up, also simple – with the profound simplicity in many of the best children’s books.

And so, in the spirit of the book, today’s summary:

What takes life: buying things in second-hand shops for the sake of it.

What gives life: buying books that you love; finding things ‘on the list’ and extra surprises; the anticipation of sharing them with Junior Reader, and with others.

Oh…and writing about books. And discovering you’ve written another blog post.

And the quiet after Junior Reader’s bedtime. And the way the clouds are lying outside the window as I write.

That’s a good amount of daily bread for today.

 

Replying, not writing

Hello. I thought I’d make sure it didn’t drift to a month since last writing. School summer holidays can do that to you, you know.

Because I have been writing – but other stuff. The ecourse turned out to be brilliant – lots of food for thought, and some writing tasks within that.

There’s been a whole heap of Officially Required writing too, though that is coming to an end. Supervising the odd holiday postcard. Getting underway with some writing for work.

What’s shifted is that I’ve finally started putting comments on other people’s blogs. For ages, I did the whole thing of reading, nodding, reading bits aloud to Dan at times, bookmarking some pages…but not actually letting the writer know.

How to begin? Some of the blogs I read get upwards of 50 comments a post – one can get double or even triple that.

I feel a bit shy in large numbers of commenters. When bloggers write well, it is a conversation that they are having with you, face to face, as it were. Then feeling like you have to shout to be heard in the comments doesn’t seem right.

I’ve come up with my own rationale for comments: where the post moves me. Where I am genuinely excited for the writer. Where I really love the way they’ve put something. Where there is a connection: they love something that I happen to love too.

It does mean that I am overcoming my shyness, and actually building a little dialogue with some of the bloggers I follow. It may be mostly one-sided, for now, but that’s OK. I’ve not exactly been writing much for anyone to have a dialogue about.

Except, it turns out, I got a face to face dialogue with a family member who has been reading the blog. And liked it. And decided to tell me so. Which was a real encouragement, I have to say.

I am still feeling my way on the writing. I keep telling people it’s what I need to do. Then I get anxious about the gap in writing and go off and write something elsewhere. Usually something Useful, Practical and so on.

I don’t mean to say that the blog is therefore to be silly, or kick up your heels impractical, or…anything that sounds like the opposite of Useful and Practical.

Don’t get me wrong, Useful and Practical is fine, and necessary, and I do a lot of it in different ways. But not everything has to be functional, shall we say.

How to balance a sense of ‘have to’ without it seeming like a ‘should‘? The main trick, as ever with writing, is once more to begin. (Cutting stuff out in everyday life, so there is more time to write,  is an additional tactic I’m working on.)

After all, someone else may be reading, and not replying. But I hope that, some day, they might write back.

Writing in the wee sma’s

Rather too much of my writing is happening after midnight at the moment. But as I’m not getting a lot of time to write in general, better now than not.

Equally, better something productive and hopefully sleep inducing. I’m not planning to write put myself to sleep – or you, gentle reader, for that matter – but to calm the overactive synapses.

I used to love being awake at night after the rest of the household had gone to sleep. It’s easier as a teen, when you naturally want to sleep long and stay up late. (And when your mother is still doing the chores, I might add.)

As a parent, it’s harder. I still have to get up in the morning, and that includes morning chores. Harder to duck out, and harder to get back to sleep when the ‘to do’ list starts playing on auto, after you’ve just woken up a fraction.

I’m finding that I really need to hit that first wave of ‘I’m tired now’ and try to sleep then. Otherwise, I wake up again, and then it’s harder to go to sleep later.

My mother has an occasional not-sleeping habit: she loves parties and get togethers with others, but she usually finds it hard to sleep afterwards because the conversations are still going round her head.

In my case, it happens when there’s been a good day. When things have gone right. When life is in alignment, and I’m excited about having a tiny amount more energy at the end of the day.

Brain and body seem to pick up on that and – ding! – my brain is back on, whether it’s a sensible time or not. Grateful for the good day – less grateful for not being able to get to sleep.

On the plus side, it’s the school holidays. Slightly easier to attempt the crafty post-lunch nap if I run out of steam later on in the day.

I’m trying hard not to get into nocturnal habits – too easy, as I’ve discovered. Great for the ‘I’ve finally got space to read! And write! And (possibly) think!’ moments. Not so good for managing a peaceable mood all through the next day.

The wee sma’s, for those unsure, are otherwise known as ‘the small hours’: those hours after midnight when the clock is in ‘small; numbers. But for now, I think it’s time to try again on sleep, before the no so sma’ one decides it’s time to get up.

Writing in the wee sma’s – asserting night owl behaviour. The morning lark still gets up in the holidays and needs to be fed cereal at the usual time, but every now and then, I pretend I am back in my teenage writing years. With no cereal dispensing duties.

 

 

Some days, I’m just packed

Down day. Family are off on separate excursions. I’m home, resting. That’s the plan.

Except. It’s harder to rest. I’m not at home, so it should be easier – fewer ‘to dos’ that I can find. But I find some anyway – packing for going home (two and a bit days still here!), washing, catching up online.

That creative e-course I mentioned a while back? It didn’t happen – but I found another. The emails seem to be coming through thick and fast – let alone all the traffic on the message boards. Feelings of ‘can’t keep up’.

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I did create a category for ‘challenge’. I know I did. Here’s one already, and I didn’t even plan for it: learning in a new way.

Funny, really, because the course is partly about supporting others to learn in a certain way – and doing the same myself, as part of the support. So I shouldn’t really be surprised about new ways of learning for me.

But I am. Because, the thing is, I’m good at learning. I did it for a long time. I did it so I got bits of paper with my name on.

After a while, I even got brave enough to do learning with practical application! Twice. So there. (Yes, I did write ‘so there’. I’ll go and think about why I needed to do that. In a bit.)

Now, there’s no one making me do the course – except me. No one will actually know exactly how much of the material I read – except me.

But the way I’ve learned in the past is a lot about reading all of what I’ve been given – and already, what I have to read is spiralling, every time I go back to my inbox.

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This is my holiday week. The one where we all go on holiday together. As opposed to the other ‘it’s the school holidays but I’m working’ weeks. So it ought to be a good time to do some reading.

It was, a day or so ago. I had three books on the go at the same time. A chapter or so per book, then on to a different one. All interesting.

The difference seems to be when it crosses over from ‘want to’ to ‘should’.

Right now, it’s feeling like a should, rather than a want to, even though I know I am really interested in the course, the whole approach, and so on. I should do the reading… because I paid for the course.

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When I started off writing today, I had that Calvin and Hobbes book title in my head: ‘The Days Are Just Packed’. The thing is, they are. Pretty much every day. (All without me spending time going downhill in my magical go-kart.)

So I get to the holidays, and the days are still packed with washing, cooking, packing – and I don’t want to do another thing that feels like a ‘should’. (Even when it is really a want to.)

Some days, I’m just packed. Only just. The morning we were due to set off, I sent the others off on an errand to the supermarket so I could finally pack. That morning. (Those who know me well will know This Does Not Normally Happen.)

Trying to decide how to do the reading in a full week, with lots of time with other people, is causing another should to emerge when it’s not about shoulds. Particularly on holiday.

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The challenge is not the reading. The challenge is prioritising my own interests over the every day.

Part of the reason I wanted an e-course to do was to do just that: make this writing thing important enough to push (a few) other things out of the picture.

Right now, that feels selfish. Impractical. Unrealistic. And any of those other words mothers use, when they justify why they don’t spend time (or money, or other things) on themselves.

The challenge is behaving differently. The big challenge to add to that is asking those around me to help me behave differently – by giving me time to myself. And helping me protect it too.

But firstly, I need to show what that looks like. Why it matters to protect some time to myself. And why I can choose to sit and write, just now, instead of running around doing the household things that are there, whether it’s holiday time or not.

Here I am. Writing.

Hello.