Take two: give us this day our daily post

The story so far…

I wrote.

I stopped.

I began again.

(I wrote about the first phase of writing here.)

—

I’d spent much of September last year writing daily anyway, for a charity event I was involved in.

And round about that time, I started reading others’ blog posts too. One of them had a challenge: to write every day during October.

I was ready for a change of scene, after the event. I figured I’d got going on writing, I could keep going.

This time, I was also reading what others were writing on their blogs. Some of that helped – and some of that made things a bit confusing.

—

What to write about? Lots of others writing in October had their themes. That felt like a pressure – so I chose not to have one. But writing emerged as a theme in its own right, over October.

I reached the end of October, and it had felt good. Writing brought a transition between super-busy, ill, and then some steadier times that month. That helped too.

So I moved to a new challenge for myself: to write every day. And keep going.

—

How many blogs have new posts every day? Over time, I realised, not that many (personal ones, anyway).

Some do more, but they may also have more of a ‘product’, like a business that the blog promotes. Or they have advertising on the blog, and feature those businesses that support them. (This is also fair enough. Blogs serve many purposes.)

That makes a difference between ‘content-heavy’ posts, that match the flow of life at the time of writing, and ones that can be pre-written.

Over time, I saw a few other ways of easing the blogging load – and ones that encouraged others to respond.

Putting up a photo on a given day, and asking others to do the same. Or setting a short weekly writing challenge, and opening it up.

—

I decided to keep writing, with a different theme a month. That gave me a focus – but it also meant that the theme would change after a while.

Writing moved on to moments…food…books…and more. Many of these were topics I’d written about on the blog in take one, so it felt OK.

A few things changed after I started doing this:

– Some months I had plenty to say. Other times, I had a few posts ready, but not enough to fill a month. But as I kept writing, new ideas for posts came. Some were better than others, true, but some wouldn’t have emerged otherwise.

– Some months, I tied things to the actual time of year: writing about food in the run up to Christmas felt natural. Other times, it was more a case of what felt right next.

I actually had a plan of 6 themes, but then I found that I got interested in other things through the blogs I was reading. So the eco theme emerged – partly also through doing some tidying up of old posts, and realising it had been a theme in the past too.

The downside: some months, I had a theme planned, but then I wasn’t interested in writing about it. So I wrote about something else – games, for example.

I realised that that too is OK. There is a balance of what is current, and what starts to feel like it’s being cranked out.

As this process went on, I also realised that there were other things that felt important about the writing. It was about the writing discipline, yes, but also about honesty – something I realised I valued a lot in other people’s blogs.

I got to April, and I had run out of writing. For then, anyway. And actually, that too was OK.

Life entered a busy season at home, and some nights, it helped that writing was a choice – rather than another obligation to add to the rest. Because while I wanted the discipline of regular writing, I also wanted to enjoy it still.

—

There is an immediacy when it comes to writing. Some days, it’s harder to find – or it slinks in a few paragraphs down.

But when it’s there, you know it. The words flow, and you can think of few better ways to spend your time.

That was my early experience of writing for myself: being in the moment of writing, and loving it. I didn’t want to lose that in the process of writing regularly.

This writing is not a job as such – so it needs to work for me, as well as for me to work at it.

At the same time, I’ve come to a point where I’m choosing again to commit to writing regularly. What that looks like…that’s the bit I’m still trying to work out.

 

 

Take one: hello world

I’m going to tell you a story. I only know a bit of it so far, but maybe you can help me with it as I go along.

—

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, there was a couple. Like others, around Christmas time, they wanted to let relatives know what they had been doing over that year, without rewriting it every time in each card they sent.

For a while, they did the Christmas newsletter. (Sometimes it even had pictures.)

After a while, they realised that this could be done just as well online for family and friends we could email. Save time, save paper, etc.

Enter phase one of the blog: the newsletter.

—

This is where many blogs start. No harm in that.

At that time, we were both working full-time, I got to travel a bit, we both did some outings we wanted to write about. (We even still read the Saturday papers, and commented on things we read about.)

Over time, we got a bit more journalistic about what we wrote about. Sometimes reministic (I’m coining that now, for the rhyme, at least).

Fairly quickly, it also emerged that I wanted to do a lot of the writing – and did. Dan has his blog posts too, but most of them are mine.

I learned (as many do) that blogging is another of those forms of writing – like diaries, like letters – that allow you to process how you’re feeling. In the writing, you realise what’s happening – make new connections, and so on.

I didn’t particularly plan posts – they mostly went along with things we were doing/reading/thinking about, or chance moments.

Chapter 1 went on for some time, until family stuff beckoned. Blogging ground to a halt.

—

This too is fair enough. Plenty of blogs out there that are still available, but that have stopped, for lots of different reasons.

What matters is whether you start again – and who you are when you do.

Rather than write one massive post, I’m going to split this up, and write about phase 2 a bit more next time.

—

What matters is that you write because you enjoy it. That you have fun putting your spin on what you write.

It helps, too, if you get comments. Encouragement is always welcome, particularly when you’re putting your words out there for all to see.

When I went back to look at those posts, I liked some – and I got rid of some. I think that’s OK too. We don’t always keep all our letters either – life moves on.

But I found enough that I liked, both when I wrote it, and when I came back to it.

And that is often enough. To begin with, anyway.

Write now. Write away.

Lately, not much writing. At least, not here.

Elsewhere, it’s a different story. Writing goes on all the time – which is probably why I think I’m writing the same as ever, even if it’s not appearing online.

Once upon a time, a friend asked what I read – and I found it hard to answer at the time. Then I went away and thought about and realised – a lot. It’s just all spread out.

Same with the writing, it seems, just now.

—

Emails. Shopping lists. Signing homework reading books. Reminder notes. (The stuff of daily life.)

Form-filling. Messages to extricate myself from commitments here and there. (The season we’re in just now.)

Copious amounts of cut and paste, noting, commenting. (Working my way through other people’s blogs. Hanging on to web addresses, quotations and so on – a digital commonplace book, if you will.)

—

Through the reading, and the writing (of the third kind), I am trying to work my way towards something – I just don’t know quite what it is yet.

Wandering around the blogosphere, there are people out there who have found their niche – and are finding that others appreciate it. Which is great – I know that myself, when I’m hunting for things on a particular topic, and find what I need.

I salute this. And yet, I find myself looking on, not sure how to get there.

Back in the days of academic writing, or even school essays, that would be the kind of person who could find ‘their’ subject – and nail it. Why Churchill lost the ’45 election; or a clearly defined area of linguistics.

Turns out I don’t work like that. (At least, not yet. It may come in time.) I’m too taken up with lots of different ideas, angles, hopefully ways of tying it all in.

The kind of essays I liked were the ones which had titles like ‘Death is a frequent element in the play Macbeth. Discuss.’ Not because I was particularly into death, you understand. (I’m sure there are other essay titles that might convey that a bit better.)

Just that I love working on things that are big. Open-ended. The stuff that academic writing becomes less keen on (unless you’re in the ‘life’s work’ category), because there’s too many avenues of enquiry.

But that’s the stuff I love to ponder. And the more I read online, the more it seems that that’s where things are going now anyway. It’s not just the facts. It’s the putting the different threads together, and weaving something new out of them.

What does that mean for writing on the blog? Still don’t know.

That is terrifying – and OK.

I think there may be a few threads that are in there enough: reading, writing, moments (my ‘something that stops me and helps me think’ category).

There’s others that pop up often enough too, when I bring past experience or interests to bear on it (food and travel come along quickly enough when I start reminiscing).

Once upon a time, I sat in a church service where a couple were being commissioned to take up a new role. They spoke about why they were doing what they were doing, how it had happened.

I’ll never forget what the man said (the gist at least, if not the actual words):

‘This new role: it’s using everything that we are, and everything we’ve done now ties in to this.’

That’s the kind of writing I want to do. So forgive me if I’m sidling around a bit (or not here at times).

There’s a big picture out there, and I’m walking round it, trying to work out the size of it. There may be a few sections I already have ideas for.

But there is actually an awful lot of blank space on the canvas. I don’t know what’s going on there – I genuinely don’t.

The trick, then, is to begin, again. Write now. Write away.

Blog hopping: A Formal Feeling

My first go at a blog hop…I hope I get it right. And what better topic to begin on than children’s books.

My ongoing sorting out of the books, post-building work, means that I seem to have filled one of these, top to bottom, just with children’s books. (Plus two extra shelves added in.)

So you can kind of guess that I like them – we all do really, including Junior Reader, whose independent book reading is gathering pace.

My link is one for a post I wrote a while ago, but a book I love, and return regularly to. Ostensibly a book for teens, there’s plenty of wisdom there for adults too.

Click here to start hopping…to see which children’s books other readers enjoy.

For anyone reading here for the first time, you can click the Reading link on the top right of the screen to see other book-related posts.

There’s also a series on reading that I wrote over January this year, Everything I Know I Learned From Books. Some other children’s books, some for adults, and a whole mix of other reads.

I can’t finish without a thought in the direction of A A Milne, who had plenty to say about hopping:

“If he stopped hopping

He couldn’t go anywhere

Poor little Christopher

Couldn’t go anywhere

That’s why he always goes

Hoppity, hoppity

Hoppity

Hoppity

Hop.”

Evening spread out against the sky

I kneel down to hang the washing up. It’s a change in routine.

Gone are the days of hanging washing over the bannisters – now it’s a couple of free-standing clothes dryers, near the windows at the front.

Not the stuff of excitement. (Not yet. Keep going.)

I don’t do loads of kneeling down, I have to say. Bending down to pick up random items from the carpet – yes. But there is something faith-related that stirs when I kneel down.

I don’t do lots of praying kneeling down either. Praying, yes, different places, often when I’m walking along. Kneeling to pray – it’s less familiar.

But here I am, most days, kneeling down before the two new windows, hanging up the washing. Bending over my family, as it were, as I hang out the clothes.

One clothes airer has low rungs. That’s why I kneel. Plus it’s easier for getting clothes out of the washing bag to hang up. And while I’m there, I can gaze up at the sky too, through those skylight windows.

I’ve read a few blog posts, off and on, about the place of motherhood as one where your home is your church – or perhaps your monastery. Day by day, you do your tasks, often bound by time if not by chapel bells.

(Getting tea on the table for half-five. That’s one of them. Some days, I’d rather like a peal of bells to signal the achievement.)

So far, I’ve nodded, thought about it for a bit, moved on to the next item on the to do list.

Tonight, it hits me. Hanging up the washing is mundane, thankless, not worthy of mention – however you term it. But a family doesn’t keep going that long without some clean clothes. (Feel free to write in and say if you do, though.)

But hanging up the washing – here is where I kneel. I can be in the moment. I can look at the sky, the light, the seagulls overhead.

I can look at the clothes, the big, the medium and the small, and realise that I will not always be hanging up clothes in these sizes.

I can kneel, too, and wonder about the combination of T S Eliot, and a post about the everyday tasks of life. There is plenty of everyday in his poem – and plenty of wonder too.

I kneel down to hang up the washing, and discover them both there – the everyday, and the wonder, wrapped around each other like the clothes in the washing bag.