Well-being and a busy week

 I've read lots about what you should and shouldn't write in a blog post as a writer, but I have always tried to be honest about my journey and in the last few days I have been taking care of myself. I've felt a lack of energy and tired for a week or so, and then yesterday I realised that I'd finally hit a low spot when I got angry with some flowerpots! I can laugh about it now, which means I'm feeling better.

Being outside is usually conducive to my well-being, and eventually it was. I've spent the last couple of days in the garden and not on my laptop. I cut the grass yesterday. My last chance before 'no mow May'. I also potted up my tomato plants and today I planted out the peas and pulled up a plant (no idea of its name) encroaching along the flower beds and stifling my other plants. I had Rue as my 'helper', so there was a lot of stick and ball throwing in between. 

My 'helper'

Peas

It's all been too much!

This afternoon I sat outside with the latest book I'm reading. Reading has also been my life-saver. It's important to listen to your body and find ways to lift the mood. Finding what works is half the battle. For me, it is being outside. Just sitting in the garden creates a peace inside of me, though sometimes I do have to go further afield.

Our weather hasn't helped. We've had so much rain and cold. I thrive in sunshine and warm days. I can't believe we are in May already with only the odd good day. What has this to do with writing, I hear you cry. Well, I stopped writing. I decided writing wasn't helping. I had a very busy week last week, and while it was interesting and fruitful, I think it also sapped my energy levels.

About a week ago I joined ASPA, the Association for Self-Published Authors. Having let my membership to another self-published organisation lapse last year, I have found one I feel I fit in with. They are friendly and I don't feel I'm the struggling poor cousin while everyone else is making mega bucks from their books. With the other organisation I felt a failure because I wasn't producing three books a year, have millions of followers and top Amazon ratings. Does any of this sound familiar? 

Anyway, I attended my first webinar with ASPA looking at book reviews and how to deal with them, how some trolls give one star ratings with no comment, how to take some encouragement from even two or three star reviews. We had a chance to talk about our books and what we were working on at present. All this was new to me. I was actually asked questions and everyone was friendly.

The second webinar was with The Phare (an indie magazine who I have submitted to in the past). The subject was how to market yourself as a writer. This mostly consisted of having a good website and social media presence. This was a most interesting talk and I made tons of notes. Having a proper website is something I've thought about in the past and was on my to do list. Yet here I am two years later not having done it. The webinar made me think about two things, 1) whether I take my writing seriously enough and 2) whether others think I do! What I have done is update my profile photo and bio on both this blog and my Facebook Author page. It's a start.

My final writerly thing came on Sunday. I took my laptop along with me to the London Writers' Support Group meet-up (which came out of the course I took with Indie Novella). We were a small group this time, just three of us and we met in the bar/cafe in BFI. We spent half an hour chatting about what we were working on, what we were going to do that day, and anything we had attended lately. Afterwards, we wrote for an hour, each working on our individual goal. I worked on the next scene of The Island. Later,  we chatted about what we had done and whether we achieved what we had set out to do in the session. It was a successful meet up and we hope to get together again in a few weeks time.

So, there we are. I haven't yet decided when I shall return to The Island. Maybe I need more time away from it. It is quite a dark place and maybe that has been playing on my mind. Perhaps I should write something totally silly. I do write that sort of thing too.

There is, of course, more gardening to do, if the weather holds. But for now, I'm just taking things slowly and being kind to myself. 

Doing things, but not writing

It has been a tough month and I can't wait for it to go. I'm not a winter person, and what with lockdown I have been struggling. I have no motivation to write, though I have submitted a handful of pieces over January and February. A piece of flash fiction was published by Visual Verse in January, one of only two new pieces I've written this year.

I find concentration hard these days. I flit from one thing to another, but nothing holds me. Even reading has been a struggle, but maybe I chose the wrong book for my mood; I firmly believe in the right book at the right time. I find non-fiction works slightly better, and am reading a very interesting book called Square Haunting at the moment. The book by Francesca Wade, is set around Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury and follows five women who struggled to be who they wanted to be - independent, and follow their own career paths. It features H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Dorothy L Sayers, Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf, who all lived in the square, though not necessarily at the same time. There are appearances by others, men who were lovers and friends, including Ezra Pound and D H Lawrence. As a Bloomsbury group fan, this book widens my horizons in that era of art and literature that broke moulds.

I was intrigued by Robert Harris's book Second Sleep. A post-apocalyptical story of a young parson sent a village to sort out the affairs of the parish priest who had died. He finds amongst the priest's things banned books and items from the past deemed heretical. Before long the young parson is caught up in things that go against his teachings, but is drawn in bit by bit by curiosity. Well worth a read.

What I am reading now is a collection of small press magazines. Popshot and Dreamscape are magazines I subscribe to. I love the mix of short stories, flash and poetry. I've bought a one-off copy of Butcher's Dog to try it out. 

So, if I am not writing, what am I doing? Well, in January we had a new garden shed which is rather nice! It is to be a for multiple uses. Last year I worked on the garden more than I ever have in the past. This year I want to really begin to understand how to do it properly! I've been seed sowing already, though I've had to move them indoors because it has been bitterly cold even my new insulated shed! When the weather is warmer, it will be a space for me to work in too. I have two fold-up garden chairs there and a large fleece to wrap myself up in. There is even a solar light, and I have bought a solar/wind-up radio!

Walking still keeps me sane, and I go out when I can. My last walk was on a bitterly cold day. My fingers ached from the cold. I had to take my gloves off every time I took a photo. Taking photos is my other obsession. It always has been, but since the pandemic I've taken way many more than I would usually.

This morning I booked for my first Covid vaccine. Perhaps there is a small glimmer of hope back to a semi-normal life. Warm weather would also help. I long to be in the sunshine and feel its warmth again. Meanwhile I shall keep reading, walking and gardening when I can.

Satellites, flames and the aroma of art materials

Ah, the whiff of paper and charcoal

Some surprising things this week - the excitement of watching Starlink Satellites moving through the sky over our house one night, the aroma of new art materials, and finding a spark has ignited the flame in writing.

Yes, this is the week when we were to see meteor showers in the night sky. Well, never saw those (though a friend north of London says she saw them on Monday night), but the experience of seeing the Satellites was wired and awesome. They came over our roof top in a line, a tiny light each like high flying planes. They were spaced out in equal distance, and there were masses of them coming one by one moving at a steady pace. It was fascinating. My son tells me these are to do with the internet. I wonder if our signal was stronger as they came over our house! As for the meteor showers, I did spend a good deal of time looking for them to no avail, but Venus has been so bright these nights and seems closer. I'm no astronomer, so I have no idea if it is any closer.

Venus (taken with my mobile)

This morning my art supplies have arrived. Now that is exciting too. I had not noticed before (or have forgotten) the aroma of art material. Books, yes. I am a sniffer of books, a toucher of books. Books are seductive. But paper and charcoal? Well, yes. Mmm. With the good weather holding it might be a few days before I get down to any real art. My attempts at watercolour last week were laughable. Now with the right paper....well I'm not holding my breath. I seem to either produce something good or very, very bad. We shall have to see.

I made tentative connections with my novella and everything was painfully slow and painful to write. I felt nothing in particular. I tried working out next scenes in my head and lost a lot of sleep one night over it, but in the morning I reeled off over 2,000 words. When I read it back I was surprised to find I quite liked it, despite having changed the tense a few times and even the POV. But I could rectify that straightaway. I seem to have found a way forward, though no ending as such - I hope that will sort itself out in the same way as this part of the story unravels. But I noticed that I was excited by what I was writing and I've written something for the last three mornings. I am back to my mulling between writes. When that works and the ideas come then I can't get the words down fast enough. I'm trying not to think far ahead and writing for myself. This began as a dystopian story and I thought it was for adult readers, but now I'm wondering if it falls in with young adult as the main character is a thirteen year old boy. I do read young adult myself sometimes if the story appeals, like Seeker by William Nicholson and Half Bad by Sally Green. For now I just want to finish it and then maybe I'll be able to finish the other novella I started several years ago.

One sad thing happened at the weekend. The tree in the alleyway was butchered by the guys from the garage because the branches hung over their garage roof. Technically the tree probably doesn't belong to anyone, though my neighbour had a tree surgeon in a few years ago to cut it back as it was overhanging her garden and house so much. But she lives in South Korea and only comes home once a year. The garage guys just used a hacksaw and made a terrible job of it. I felt bereft as that tree, which I consider 'my tree' because its the first thing I see from my lounge window, brings me so much joy as I watch it change through the seasons. All kinds of birds visit it too. I thought they were going to cut the whole thing down but they have left some of it and I am grateful for that, though it looks how I feel.

What's left of 'my' tree

In my own garden I have installed a tiny fountain in my tiny pond. This pond is only an old pet carrier which arrived without a lid. The company just sent a complete one and never asked for the bottom bit back. I found a use for it. The pond became stagnant in my little wildlife garden. So I bought the fountain, cleaned the whole pond out and installed it. The only thing is that because the wind has been so strong the water gets blown over the grass and I filled it three times yesterday. The fountain is solar powdered and I have to move the panel around to catch the sun as where the pond is is rather shady. I moved the panel away from the sun yesterday while the wind remains strong and will try again.

So, that my week.

During the second week of lockdown this is what I did

With cloudy skies today I decided to tackle cleaning the bedroom, the only thing left on my list to do (except perhaps window washing). My to-
do list is shorter and I am on top of things like I haven't been in a while. The gardening is coming along and if all the seeds flower and produce grows we will have a riot of a garden this year. I have things growing on saucers and in pots to experiment.

My reading pile is gradually receding - I'm down to only one pile on the bedroom floor but there are books in a drawer and on a shelf still to read. I've been trying to cheer up a member of choir who is elderly and whose internet keeps playing up. He is so frustrated and fed up. We email a lot and we maybe moving into WhatsApp!

I have decided that virtual classes are not for me. I have tried with both my writing group and choir, but I don't think I'll be continuing. I particularly did not enjoy choir, but I am keeping in touch with a few people from there in other ways. I feel guilty in saying that now I've accepted that this is how things are, I am quite liking this slow life. While the weather is good I have the garden. When the weather is bad I do the chores and work on my laptop catching up with courses or viewing gallery exhibits. I save many links from Facebook but so far I've hardly used them. I take each day as it comes and try not to think about the future.

One scary thing I did was cut my own hair. Having tried to layer the top and sides I asked my hubby to use his beard trimmer (which has the largest cut comb) to do the back for me. There are a couple of longer bits still to fiddle with but I am really happy with it. I do prefer short hair and once the fringe starts to get into my eyes it has to go as it irritates me. I'm sure hairdressers will have lots of problems to sort out after this, still there's nothing like a challenge.

I am struggling in the last five weeks of my poetry challenge but am still on target. I often write poetry with a bit of a story, but one I wrote last week turned out to be more flash fiction than poem. I decided to take out the line breaks and put in speech marks to convert it into a flash. Perhaps I could add a bit more detail now. Anyway, I thought I'd share this one with you. Take care all.

Lions

He said he’d had an invitation to the Tower. I said, ‘You don’t get invited there, you get taken’.  He said this was different, he was going to see the lions washed.

‘Oh pull the other one,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ he said. He was going with his brother.

So, I gathered my five children and walked the two miles by the smelly Thames, brown as human waste, which it was, and the little ones squealed delight as the turrets came into sight. ‘Will we see the King?’ asked my youngest.

‘I doubt it,’ said I. George probably had his eye on another castle, the one his wife was imprisoned in for laying in another man’s bed.

We arrived at the Tower of London keen to see this spectacle. A small crowd mingled, but fewer than I had expected. Some jeering rang out and a Yeoman strode over, his menacing looks made me squirm.

‘You’ve missed it,’ he said.

Some scruffy lad piped up, ‘So, where are they?’

The Yeoman pointed upwards to the spikes where two heads were impaled, blood still dripping.

‘They ain’t lions,’ said the lad. ‘We wanted to see them washed.’

The Yeoman laughed, ‘No lion washing today, but if you like you can see them. They have not been fed yet, though prime meat, you are not, more skin and bone than flesh. Still, I don’t think they will be fussy.’

*

(The first April Fools joke is believed to have been in 1698 when several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to see the lions washed)