You know you have those weeks where every time you feel you might just possibly be catching up with where you should be, a whole new lot of tasks drop on you and you’re back where you started? That’s me that is.
Hospital appointment, writing, paid work, attempting to de-dustmite the bedroom, general household chores, a to do list that grows longer every time I look at it, various school events, people needing to speak to me RIGHT NOW, separating bickering children, and trying to keep up with exercise, the monthly scavenger hunt and my sanity in the midst of it all.
The first couple of days it was quite energising and motivating to have to fit everything in, but I think I’ve burned out somewhat now, thanks all the same.
You very almost got a “Reasons for not blogging no 576: the dog ate my homework” post, and I don’t even OWN a dog. That’s how busy I’ve been.
And I still haven’t written my 500 words of fiction for the day yet.
It’s funny how simply making the decision to get back into fiction writing has switched my subconscious into creative mode and today inspiration has been lurking everywhere for me.
I had a hospital appointment this morning which involved a brisk walk, followed by lots of waiting around with a book I was not very interested in and a brisk walk back. It could have felt like a complete waste of several hours, but it gave me lots of time to people watch and mull plots and ideas over. I was warned that my new medication might cause nightmares and my first reaction was “great, more inspiration for book plots!” Hmm, maybe I’d better not try any children’s fiction for a while.
Time to write was limited, I was only able to snatch a few minutes here and there in between needing to be somewhere else. Still managed to get my 500 words done and quickly – I seem to be far more productive when time is in short supply, if I have a whole day I spend most of it looking out the window.
Dinner was a risotto which meant that I was stuck by the hob with only an ipod and Amanda Palmer’s album for company. Second song in I suddenly knew the theme how my current work in progress ends AND its overall theme. Thank you Amanda. Fortunately, I did manage to remember it until I could escape without burning the dinner.
So there you go. My secret to creativity: make sure you have absolutely no time to write and have lots of tedious time with nothing else to do but think.
I just have to share this TED talk with you – it’s possibly the most encouraging and helpful talk about creativity that I’ve ever heard. It should probably be required viewing for anyone who’s ever battled with getting words on a page, or struggled with any creative endeavour.
It’s also incredibly timely for me. I’d pretty much given up on the idea of fiction writing – I’ve had so many false starts and I obviously didn’t have the drive required to get anywhere with it. Far better writers than me aren’t even getting off the starting blocks, so what’s the point in trying?
Then out of the blue, I’ve had a story idea bugging me for several days. Every time my mind has gone slightly blank or relaxed I’ve ended up daydreaming the plot (with me as the heroine, of course – that’s how all the best daydreams work). Eventually, it occurred to me that I really ought to attempt to write it down, if only to exorcise it from my head so I can actually get some stuff done around here.
The funny thing is, while every single word I put down was hard going, I realised that this process was something I had been desperately missing. All of a sudden, I have a total of 1000 words on the story already and ideas for how the next two scenes are going to go – not a massive amount, but more than I’ve written in ages.
Now though, my usual road block has kicked in, my inner self-fulfilling prophet: it’s not really any good, the plot isn’t structured enough, the science isn’t convincing enough and there’s no WAY that character would do that are you INSANE, it won’t sell anyway, I don’t even want anyone else to read it why would I?, if I’m not going to do anything properly with it then what’s the point, WHAT IF I FAIL?
I have had too many writing projects fall by the wayside, I have sabotaged myself so many times.
500 words of fiction. Every weekday in term-time. Even if no-one ever gets to see it.
I have a lot of sympathy for Akra at the moment, his beloved MacBook Pro went very wrong and after crashing lots then refused to boot up. It’s not a total surprise as he’s managed to brutally murder three laptops in as many years – he is just not kind to portable technology.
The good news is, that despite the laptop being out of warranty, the Apple store we bought it from have kindly said they will repair it for free (yay, go Apple!). The bad news is that it’s going to take a whole week.
So to tide himself over and get some work done, Akra has resurrected my old Vista computer. Now, long term readers will remember that I had one or two or more issues with Vista. In fact, they were the major reason that I threw in the towel and now have my much loved iMac.
I think to a certain extent, Akra thought at the time that I was overplaying my Vista troubles a little. Suspected that I was not being suitably techy enough to cope.
Until it took him several hours just to install an IM program.
Bwahaha.
I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.
I mean, “Oh no, darling. How terribly frustrating for you.”
I’ve been kindly sent a copy of the parenting memoir Instructions Not Included to review. With a huge backlog of podcasts to listen to recently, it’s been a while since I’ve picked up a real live book, so it’s been a real luxury to have the excuse to put my feet up and read in the afternoons before school pick-up time.
The book is a light-hearted chronicle of a mother’s journey from a high-flying career (almost literally, she used to work for British Airways – admittedly in an office at Heathrow rather than 30,000 feet above ground) to the chaos of being a stay-at-home mother to three boys. The author may already be familiar to some, Charlotte Moerman is the Buggy Blogger over at Raising Kids. She’s a funny writer with a sharp wit – a great many of her observations are spot on. It’s a little UK-centric at times (cultural asides to things like certain Cbeebies presenters from a few years ago, for example) so if your children aren’t in the golden age-group then you may not recognise some of the references, but generally it has a warm ‘in the Mummy club’ feeling to it.
However, I did find the non-linear time line of the book to be a major barrier to my enjoyment of it. It jumped around alarmingly frequently, often with no discernible link to the previous scene. To me this felt disjointed and confusing, breaking up the reading flow to no real purpose and robbing it of a clear beginning/middle/end structure – I ran out of book rather than reached a satisfying conclusion. This may be a side effect of being a “book of a blog” – becoming a collection of anecdotes stuck together – however, having never followed her blog, I can’t be certain that this is the case.
To an extent, I realise that I’m not the ideal target market for this genre. With both my sons in full time education now and the fragile beginnings of getting a life back of my own, I’ve outgrown that slightly child-obsessive stage at the front-lines of early motherhood – a pre-requisite for the whole (now rather saturated) parenting memoir scene.
However, mothers who are at home with toddlers or pre-schoolers will recognise a lot of themselves in this book, and as this time of life doesn’t usually leave much time for extended reading periods, the fragmented nature of the narrative could actually be a bonus.
The big hit of the half term has been an impulse purchase of a Junior Puzzles magazine each for Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji. They have spent hours puzzling away (in pencil, I’m not that crazy) while lying on the floor.
Akra Jr, in particular, has really got into Sudoku puzzles once I sat down with him and explained how they worked. The pride when he managed to complete one entirely on his own was immense. Li’l Bhaji’s favourite is the dot-to-dot puzzles, easily completing some very complex ones with numbers over 100 (timely considering his holiday homework was to recognise all the numbers in order up to 100, don’t you think? Tick. That was painless).
However, unsurprisingly, some of the puzzles were a bit beyond Li’l Bhaji, being aimed at an age group somewhat higher than 4 years old, so building on the success of his dot-to-dotting I got them both a copy of The Greatest Dot to Dot Book in the World: Book 1 and it is awesome. It has really captured their imagination plus they’ve been great at helping each other out in order to find a particularly illusive number.
The only downside to dot-to-dots that I can see (and this is not a reflection of the book, all the others we’ve tried in the previous magazine and the freedownloads we’ve found on line (thank you @ginnikelley!)) is that the cry of “but what is it supposed to BE?” seems rather common.
Still, the abstractness…. oh… it’s an ELEPHANT… see there’s its trunk… no, that’s its ear…. doesn’t seem to have put them off too much, so that’s good.
It occurred to me this afternoon, as I cheerfully packed the kids out to play after lunch (their token “fresh air” before resigning myself to an afternoon Wii-ing), that I really love this house.
I love this neighbourhood. I have great neighbours and the boys have good friends nearby. We can all walk to the local primary school. The supermarket, pub, post office (not closed yet, thank goodness) and a great community centre are also all within walking distance.
The house is not big, but it’s not too small either – thanks to the downstairs extension we had done when Li’l Bhaji was a baby. The garden is just big enough for the kids to have a good space to run around in, but not so big that it takes real effort to maintain.
On the flip side, our living room is effectively a corridor, I can twirl round 360 degrees while standing on the landing and see the entire upstairs, the boys’ rooms need regular decluttering so we can find the floor and I’m regularly banging my thigh as I try and navigate the tiny space around our bed but at the same time I’m never too far away from anyone else in the house – it feels safe and cosy.
The house is not particularly clean at the moment (although I did give a quick swipe around of the bathrooms today to show willing), nor is it particularly tidy, but walking through it every single room is pleasant to be in and makes me smile.
Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, the house became a home.
This may seem a bit like a non-post, but it doesn’t feel all that long ago that I was devastated at moving away from Croydon, convinced I’d never like living anywhere else quite as much. Flicking through the property ads in the paper or browsing through rightmove was quite a regular pastime at one point.
A bigger house would be nice at some stage, I suppose. But for the first time this afternoon, I realised that if we never ever moved again… it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.
200 years old, today. Well, if he was still alive, of course.
In honour of his birthday, here are some silly games I found on the web for you to enjoy – all with a Darwinian theme.
Flow in Games – at least that’s what I think it’s called. Anyway, it’s a very soothing and beautiful little flash game where you have to eat and evolve.
Evolution Squared – similar idea, except this time you’re a black cartoon square with a lot of teeth! Eat, evolve, move up.
Who Wants To Live A Million Years? – a quick little game on the Science Channel featuring a mumbling and rather gruff Darwin. Primarily a teaching tool, it’s still quite entertaining.
Skeleton Jigsaws – reconstruct your own fossils on the BBC site. Levels suitable for all ages.
Devolve Me – not so much a game as a chance to see what you’d have looked like if you lived a few million years ago. Upload your photo to this Open University site and devolve…
I’ve been kindly sent a copy of the parenting memoir