Frydmania

Recently, I had occasion to reinhabit some of my previous ‘worlds’, through chatting to different people at an event. Ones that currently feel very distant from life just now, but I realised I remembered them well enough when I got talking.

Linguistics world. My year learning about nationalism. My almost-decade of full-time officer worker life. I discovered I could still talk some of the talk. I remembered what I loved. What I struggled with. I connected with others in those conversations, that remembering.

It brought me to thinking that those previous selves developed writing personas for those times. Using language to write about language. Stretching my -isms in my best social sciences parlance. Emails that were about being tactful, being fair, being impartial, being enthusiastic about someone else stretching their wings.

So many forms of writing even before then. Essays. Letters. Diaries. Poems. Even a play, one time. These days, I have a PhD in writing food shopping lists, don’t forget lists, and yet more trytogetallthisdone lists. Sometimes with bullet points.

At one point, applying to do a course to teach English to speakers of other languages (another former life), I had to write an essay on ‘My experiences of language learning’. And in writing it, I suddenly discovered that there were lots of ways in which I had been experiencing language- and culture-learning, even from early on.

It was a bit of a surprise. And a bit of a confirmation as to why I was doing what I was doing. Starting to think about all those types of writing I’ve done over the years – and the others I do now (including Facebooking and blogging) – I’ve had a similar experience.

I come to realise that I am a writer, in that I am a confirmedly writing-type person. Good or bad, interesting or merely necessary, writing is what I do, time after time.

What does it feel like to realise this? To misquote Dorothy L. Sayers into another context: ‘What do all the words come to in the end but this? I love this. I am at rest with this. I have come home.’

If you want to make small people laugh, quote business parlance at them. Windows of opportunity. Blue sky thinking. Thinking out of the box. Nothing like taking down a corporation by discovering that children just laugh at all the phrases. Consistently.

Now bear in mind that kids can come up with some cracking phrases themselves, which grown-ups smile about. But theirs tend to be logical, descriptive in a more concrete way. Of course they are colding something by putting it in the snow. If you are excited by the speed of your toy car, of course it goes much more quicker…and so on.

Thinking about all this, the phrase purple prose came to mind. I don’t know the background to it – and I’m not even off to google it either, I’m trying to keep writing. But I do know it’s to do with overblown phrases, too much description. When you find yourself chewing through the lists of adjectives, time to move on.

I used to think Hemingway’s style of writing was impossible for a gabbler like me. He went fishing. He shot things. He wrote short sentences. But little by little, I am learning to cut back. Writing for the web helps, because my eyes tell me I can’t take in too much at a time.

So you end up writing short things.

Like this.

What’s the point of all this? Somewhere in the middle, between the babble and the brevity, is a writing style that will work for me. It’s good to be reminded not to be too complicated. In writing for myself, I’m equally not here to make the sale in 40 words or fewer.

Like kids, I think there’s some merit in learning by doing – and maybe inventioning some new things along the way.

Twilight. My old preferred writing time. Many of my teenage poems got written at twilight (before the word was taken over by all things vampiric). There is something about it that lends itself to musing, wistfulness, and other stuff that precedes writing.

When to write now? Weekdays, I get a little window of time in the morning, after the house empties except for me, and all the posts so far have been written then.

As I’ve been learning to justgetonandwrite, whether I’m ready or not, being prepared to get underway in the morning has been good. A little pondering, a little flexing of the writing muscles doing this blog, a little reading of someone else’s writing to set the tone for further writing (for work).

Come Saturday, and the house belongs to all of us again. Which makes it harder to find a corner to write in – and easier to get distracted into all the weekend catch-up stuff.

Back in a distant, full-time office based life, we had time management training at one point. The trainer got us to think about when were our most productive times of day, the ones where we felt really awake, and to use those for our work that needed the most concentration. Good notion, and one that I used quite a bit. Mine was, not so surprisingly, after my mid-morning coffee.

Now that I’m writing part-time – and juggling various different activities – I am, also quite helpfully, having to write when it’s ‘writing time’, rather than preparing for it. I am discovering that I can do more then than I expect. I also now have the converse – having to stop, even when the words are clacking away, because I have to move on to the next thing.

But if I want to do more writing for me – which I guess these blog posts are partly exploring – is that to be at my ‘best’ time? My ‘squeeze it in’ moments? I don’t yet know. It would be good to make it a regular time. Part of me would like to be like one of those Proper Writers, the disciplined ones, who arrive at their typewriter at X o’clock, type their required number of words, and repeat daily.

The light has almost gone behind the tall ash trees across the way. They are in full silhouette now. Is the writing to be like the light, coming and going, or like the trees, a fixed part of the view? Whichever way round, both are part of the reason to look up – and admire a different view.

Remember Tippex? That saver of misspellings – and also the chief source of gunky pens, when it hadn’t quite dried and you started writing over the top.

Someone small was describing it to me yesterday – only they called it mistake glue. They told me that that the mistake glue gathers up all the wrong words and then they all get washed down to the SEWERS! (Big emphasis on that part, of course.)

It made me think about how much writing is about overhearing wonderful turns of phrase – and nicking them. Covertly. Sometimes more obviously asking ‘Can I use that?’ But enjoying a new set of words or phrases that just turned up.

I read a couple of obituaries for Nora Ephron fairly recently – screen writer of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and more. There was evidently a phrase in her house that ‘life is copy’. And it’s true – life often throws up enough great lines that sometimes, all you have to do is reach out and grab them as they go past.

I tend to think of them in terms of blog post titles. Children’s books. I am also guilty of life as copy on Facebook – or more, walking away from work or somewhere else, reformulating an incident in my head, in language that will work on Facebook.

So are we all narcissists, as the Guardian is claiming today? Or are the best jokes on Facebook, and that’s why we’re there? (The best jokes are in fact by kids, but their parents kindly transcribe them onto Facebook.)

I love the fact that, for all of writers (and wannabee writers) searching for words, and toiling over their laptops, there are people just wandering around, living life, and minting fresh phrases as they do so.

Words can signal a different take on life. A different way of looking at things. Or a collection of sounds that strike off new chords in us, because of the other words they remind us of. All you have to do is tune in.

I’m reading more websites these days. Some for work, some for home life. For various reasons, looking at food blogs for people who have various intolerances: to dairy, to wheat, in some cases to lots more.

I’m on the hunt for recipes. (I usually am, one way or another, but I don’t usually look online.) What I find is recipes, yes, but a whole lot more that sustains me in ways beyond the food intake – including good writing.

These are often people who start off with a difficult situation. They are trying to work out what to eat, in a society that is full of the things that mess up their stomachs. Where ‘flour’ on packets is unspokenly wheat flour, where milk products are hidden in the strangest of foods.

So they don’t just write about the recipes. They blog about the products that have restored aspects of life, favoured food memories, to them. And the ones that taste like cardboard. Again. They write about how hard it is to cope with schools where it has become commonplace to hand out food – and not check if everyone can manage to eat it.

They write about going on holiday, and which airlines help, and which ones don’t. About what to put in your bag if your child can’t eat what’s available on the plane, and what to pack in addition if there’s a delay. (I mean, when.)

They proselytise about the latest restaurant they can go into where they don’t need to scrutinise the menu – they can just pick what they like, and know it’ll be OK.

We know about blogging as self-help. It’s good to talk, natch. But this is partly self-talk, on the days when it all gets too much, but hugely also talk to others who are fighting similar battles – and especially for the newbies who are just getting use to the world working differently.

And in among all these posts are others which speak of tiny successes. There are people sticking to these food restrictions in order to help health conditions. To create stability, for some children where food choices can really make a difference to behaviour and wellbeing. Either way.

These are people who are inching their way forward, and they are not going to lose an opportunity to cheer about something, because it’s huge to them.

I know, from the subject matter, that some of these posts are written through gritted teeth, as I spoke of yesterday. Through barely controlled anger. Through huge sadness and loss. But the folks out there are still writing. And new people find the blogs, and keep reading.

So here’s my new set of shoutouts to people who are doing an amazing job – online, and even more importantly, at home. Many of them love to write too – and it shows. So whatever you can eat – or not – take a look.

http://kathi-gfcf.blogspot.co.uk/ – a mum’s blog, with lots of practical recipes
http://glutenfreebay.blogspot.co.uk/ – gluten-free and Jewish. Time for noshing.
http://glutenfreegirl.com/ – lovely photography, and someone who loves writing
http://www.gfcfmommy.com/ – you’re going to want rockets behind your blog posts too.