Just a quick check in today. After discussing the joys and addictive power of Facebook and email with a friend last night, I have decided I will always (major pledge here) write for at least 20 minutes each morning. Before switching the computer on. Yes, I know. Is that even possible?
Turns out, it is. This morning I got up, made a cup of tea, went to the corner shop, listened to something about a baby mammoth on the Today programme, then spent half an hour writing about the similarity and difference between sanity and madness. (God knows why - I was planning to write a description of my kitchen.) But what I do know is that I felt much, much saner at the end of it. I think morning pages (and swimming) may well be the meaning of life.
I don't get hung up about what I write, or whether it is imaginative enough, or whether anything makes sense, just keep going on. Wonderful feeling, no pressure, only words.
Showing posts with label Today programme. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Today programme. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Saturday, 3 March 2012
JUST ANOTHER SATURDAY
Saturday. Typically, what this writer's Saturday looks like is a bit of a mess. I usually get up early, have a cup of Earl Grey tea, listen to a bit of hurly-burly on the Today programme, and do some work. This might be writing my thesis, which expands and goes sideways quite a lot, rather like a tent at the end of a camping holiday which doesn't want to go back in the bag. Or it might be some lesson prep for my lecturing. Sometimes, I write notes for new fiction ideas, or read around my big new novel concept, which I am secretly quite excited about.
Then the Actual Day starts - today it included going to a 'pre-loved fashion' sale with a friend, late breakfast in a cafe, a quick phone-row with teenage daughter who thought she should be in the cafe with us, exchanging Sim card in a new iphone, a trip to a flea market and then home again for more PhD work.
Then some Facebook and online stuff. I try and look at this as an information gathering exercise, not a social thing, as it's very easy to spend hours and hours 'liking' and 'commenting' and then hoping to be 'liked' back. I think I am a tad too sensitive for social media; it reminds me of schooldays: trying to get in with the popular girls by saying really hilarious things, or measuring my social success by the number of people who clustered round my desk. (As soon as I came up with this measurement, all clustering stopped.)
I say all this not because I think all this is interesting, but because it fairly definitively isn't. One of the things that writers should do, in my opinion, is have the courage to be a tiny bit dull. Having wild adventures is useful (though not always possible in middle life) but so is The Everyday. You can't write all the time, you can't even think all the time, and sometimes the dailyness of things is a great life-saver, and sanity preserver.
Then the Actual Day starts - today it included going to a 'pre-loved fashion' sale with a friend, late breakfast in a cafe, a quick phone-row with teenage daughter who thought she should be in the cafe with us, exchanging Sim card in a new iphone, a trip to a flea market and then home again for more PhD work.
Then some Facebook and online stuff. I try and look at this as an information gathering exercise, not a social thing, as it's very easy to spend hours and hours 'liking' and 'commenting' and then hoping to be 'liked' back. I think I am a tad too sensitive for social media; it reminds me of schooldays: trying to get in with the popular girls by saying really hilarious things, or measuring my social success by the number of people who clustered round my desk. (As soon as I came up with this measurement, all clustering stopped.)
I say all this not because I think all this is interesting, but because it fairly definitively isn't. One of the things that writers should do, in my opinion, is have the courage to be a tiny bit dull. Having wild adventures is useful (though not always possible in middle life) but so is The Everyday. You can't write all the time, you can't even think all the time, and sometimes the dailyness of things is a great life-saver, and sanity preserver.
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