On Writing

I’m trying not to blog at the moment, or at least not so often, so as to leave space for other writing projects.

In the meantime, here are the concluding paragraphs from On Writing by Stephen King, which I’ve been reading recently. 

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up. Getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book – perhaps too much – has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it – is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.
    Drink and be filled up.

Thanks to the delightful Jon from EE for recommending the book.

(We* rang EE to transfer our broadband to them. At the end of a long conversation about houses, dogs, interests, family and occasionally broadband, Jon said that we'd made his day. He certainly made ours.)

*Frog and I make admin phone calls together as I'm the admin person of the family but he hears better than me.

Autumn feasts

A couple of miles from home is a National Trust park. I used to walk there at least once a week, knowing that at worst I would only come across a handful of people, mostly local and people I’d seen before, and that I would almost always find space in the tiny carpark.

    At the start of Lockdown however, people began to swarm to the park, their cars filling the carpark, lining the road and taking over a small wood opposite.

    I didn’t begrudge people the space (much). It’s good that people enjoy nature – good for them and good for the environment - in that the more we appreciate it the more we’ll work to preserve it. But I did stop going there myself both because I like solitude on my walks and because I didn’t want to put myself in the way of infection unnecessarily.

    Numbers have hardly diminished since, but on Wednesday I decided that I would give the place a try. I desperately needed to walk somewhere different. It was part of my new resolve.

I found a parking space without trouble in the small wood but as we walked across the road to the main gate two dogs on leads tried to kill Ellie and then three wildly excited Labradors tried to bowl us over. (Their human companions behaved perfectly.) I soon left the main path therefore and headed for the woods and the network of tiny secret paths I’d mentally mapped over the years.

It was a beautiful still day and I had no goal in mind except to put as much distance as possible between me and the entrance and to spend as long as I could away from home. I was feeling fractured and directionless, and being inside made it worse. 

Out of the woods I passed this peaceful herd.

In spite of what they say about bulls, and cows with calves, in my experience it’s the bullocks you have to watch out for. They career around aimlessly, one minute ignoring you and the next galloping in your direction. It’s as if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re off their heads, they have no one to tell them how to behave. (Like students, I suppose.) And I feel sorry for them. Groups of mixed ages and sexes are what nature intended, and what works.

A couple of miles further on and I was at the other side of the park. I decided to stop for lunch at this tiny disused chapel which I hadn’t visited for years.

I propped myself against a tomb and took out my tahini sandwich. Ellie busied herself investigating the rough grass for rabbits . . .

and snapping at flies . . .

. . .  before eventually settling down next to me.

As I ate, I thought of the Acland family who once owned the park, whose chapel this had been and whose gravestones were keeping me company. They put their Socialist principles into action and donated their grand house, gardens, parkland and hundreds of acres of farmland to the National Trust, moving to live in a small cottage in a nearby village.

The sun was almost shining, I was utterly alone and all sounds had died away. For some reason I remembered another time nearly fifty years earlier when I was sitting alone in the sun in a peaceful place. I was in the garden of my hall of residence at the end of my first year at university, and frantic with boredom. How different I felt now.

On the way out of the graveyard I passed this ivy, buzzing with wasps and flies. Only ivy produces flowers in quantity at this time of year and it’s a vital source of food for insects, while the black berries feed birds over the winter. I thought of the farmers round home who’ve taken to scalping the hedges in autumn, destroying hips and haws, berries and nuts. No wonder animal species are vanishing. How can farmers be so blind? One day not too far away, humans too might be glad of this wild larder.

The graveyard had been full of toadstools . . .

. . . and now they lined the path as well, hiding in the grass and watching me like gnomes.

Fat shiny acorns littered the ground. It seemed to be a good year for acorns and I hoped the wildlife (dormice? squirrels?) was taking advantaged of them and growing fat and healthy.

I paused at the edge of a field and took yet another photograph of ploughed red soil. I love ploughed fields. I think it's because they remind me of the sea.

We crossed a road and took other paths I vaguely remembered from way back. I had no map with me and wandered free. Ellie however – usually so bossy – was spooked by some frisky cattle, not realising that there was a fence between us and them, so we returned to the road. We crossed the estate drive and saw people queuing (2 metres apart) to get into the house. Poor sods, I thought. I’m not one for stately homes. White elephants more like.

We’d been out for three hours and I was ready to return. I spent the rest of the afternoon in calm, purposeful activity. I hadn’t felt like that for months.

The next day, as I sat in a field recovering from a trip to Sainsbury’s, I realised that what the walk had done was feed my soul. I must do it more often. Thank you National Trust. Thank you Aclands.

Turning something old into something new: a to-do list for October

I am a workaholic. I was brought up to think that the day must be filled with ‘useful’ activities. This of course is anathema to creativity as the best ideas come (to me) when I’m doing something ‘useless’, like lying on the bed resting, walking aimlessly, sitting in the car, watching television.

Recently however I’ve run out of ‘useful’ things to do. I think I might have created this situation deliberately, in an attempt to leave space for new things. That doesn’t however make it any less painful and, as I said to Frog yesterday morning, I feel like I’m stumbling round a dark house.

‘Life’s catching up with you,’ he said.

I liked that. It made sense.

In the meantime, before I regain my sense of direction, I have to fill my days somehow. (Don’t I?) So when I read Kate’s ‘To-do list for October’ (see her blog 'I live, I love, I craft, I am me' ) I thought I’d compile one of my own. I didn’t intend to publish it, but Kate – who’s done so much to keep us all going, through the lockdown - suggested I did ‘so that we can all support each other as we go along’.

So here it is.

Garden/pool

I started off by listing all the jobs that needed doing (eg clear and clean the greenhouse, fetch manure, put winter cover on pool, put garden furniture away) and then I decided that was against the whole spirit of the exercise and nothing like Kate’s inspiring list. So I decided instead to say:

Bed garden and pool down for the winter – lovingly.

Sewing

By now I was better at the exercise so, instead of listing jobs, I decided that for me the purpose of sewing was to have fun. 

Even though I do occasionally follow patterns, like this new one that I’m turning into a purple shirt for Frog . . .

. . . they’re only starting points. I need to remember my first love – making do and mending – turning something old into something new.

I’m also at the moment craving a sewing room – something light and spacious, instead of a darkish corner of my study. Even though I can’t imagine where we’d put one or when we’ll ever be able to afford to build one, there’s no harm in starting to plan what I’d like.

 

Writing

Here, I listed my aims, which are:

-To change the direction of this blog. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I want to dig deeper.

-To continue with my Secret Blog. This is something I’m writing just for me. At the moment it’s what you could call a ‘stream of negative consciousness’ but I’m letting it go where it will in the hope that it turns into something.

-To keep alert to stories, so that I can start a New Novel.

In my experience stories come to you; you can’t go looking for them. As Stephen King says in his hilarious On Writing which I’m reading at the moment (more about that another time, perhaps):

‘There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun.’

-To build my confidence. Confidence creates ideas. Lack of confidence kills them.

For the last two years I’ve been working hard with affirmations, under the guidance of the wonderful Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

But, as Frog pointed out recently, affirmations are just a starting point. You have to then put them into practice as this makes them real and proves them and gives you confidence in them, and creates a benign circle so that you carry on healing. So between us we decided that I could do something every day that’s new or scares me. Hence this post, I suppose!

 

Dog-walking

Because I do the main dog-walk mid-morning, I’m usually hungry and longing to get back for my lunch. Consequently I don’t always walk as far as both Ellie and I might like. I could change this routine.

Even though Frog and I have been adventurous recently, trying new walks when we go out, at home (when it’s just me and Ellie) I’m limited, but perhaps I could make small changes, such as doing walks backwards.

In other words, I can turn dogwalking from a chore to something new and confidence-boosting.

 

Cooking

I used to enjoy cooking supper because I combined it with my daily glass of wine. Since early August however I’ve cut alcohol out of my life, partly because it just wasn’t agreeing with me (however little I had) and I was feeling slightly jaded all the time (not to mention getting far too many migraines) and partly because I decided that blurring the edges of my life wasn’t helpful at the moment. I was following the ethos of my parents – work hard, drink hard and don’t think too much – but it wasn’t mine.

Now, I have to enjoy cooking for itself which I don’t particularly but I do enjoy eating and creating healthy food for Frog and me, so I decided to see cooking as time filled with something productive (I’m trying not to say ‘useful’) instead of time wasted. Another chore that I can turn into a pleasure.

 

Sorry about all this woffle. This post is something new for me, and I’ve let my thoughts and feelings run instead of marshalling them with my usual rigour. Thank you for reading it, and I hope that in some tiny way it might have helped you, or at least echoed something you feel yourself.

I realise too that I haven’t mentioned anything about autumn or the Lockdown (which featured in Kate’s list). But they do come into it. Another time perhaps.