A DIFFERENT LOVE

Let there never again be that confusion
Where words be left hanging
In places that are dark

Let our life be quiet
The ‘chatter’ left in other times
It has no place here

Let my heart be always as sure
As you have proved yours
In your gentle, precise way

Let others wonder
How a quiet man holds
Safe eternity in his grasp.

Always yours, Beth xxxxx

Go With the Flow!

Writer's Block, Blank Page, The Horror call it what you like and whether or not you believe it exists is your prerogative  for me, it does. Of course there are the likes of Fredrick Forsyth who churns out at least ten pages a day and insists 'It's a job, that's all. Get on with it!' 

That's me told!

Still, being told off NEVER worked for me. I get that dreaded feeling  sitting there waiting for the muse to descend and allow reams of wonderfully flowing prose and precise believable dialogue to fill every last centimetre and nothing but nothing comes. 

Well nothing other than the urge to check Facebook every five minutes. Wow, I never knew a cat could do that - I must share it with all my friends - do I share this to fill my time or to make them as unfocused as myself? Mmm....to be fair they send me an equal amount of rubbish. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for every last video, picture, quote, status update, my current particular favourite is the one of a two year old dancing to Gagnam Style, and filled at least 30 minutes of otherwise wasted blank screen time. 

I love them all BUT, they are not helping as no sooner have I sent them to fifteen people and then read their 'funny' comments there's another one to watch and share and comment and so on and so on and before you know it it's pretty much lunch time (11.15 is 'pretty much' lunch time, right?) Then of course, as I go for a daily power walk after dropping off half pint, I need to shower and wash my hair obviously, don't want all my ex work colleagues to think I've turned into an unwashed crazy woman who sits rocking at her desk waiting for inspiration, stroking her kitten in yesterday's pants (not the cat...she always has fresh pants!). 

No sooner is all that done then it's time for a quick cuppa and off to pick up Number Five again. It's tough work but someone has to do it!

This has to stop - and stop it shall.

The power walk although time-consuming (i'm up to an hour every morning now), is a great way to get into gear, to clear your mind of everything from 'hysterical' quotes to friends disastrous (public) break-ups which actually BTW are really useful for writers so keep 'em coming (watch out for yourselves in my characters!) just don't expect me to comment so much...before 3pm anyway when my work day ends!

This month, yes I know it's only half way through (12th is almost half way through, right?) I have discovered a new way to get the juices flowing...oi oi...you at the back there, get your mind out of the gutter...I meant creative juices, obvs! And this is it......

Apart from the three books and four or five scripts i'm writing I have started another book...before you scream 'finish the others first' this is different. It's an exercise; a way to unblock the block so to speak a literary laxative if you please. 

This book has no plan, synopsis, character breakdowns, no plot, story no beginning middle or end. It is free-flow. I sit down straight from my walk (after a quick cuppa) and write whatever comes into my head. It gets me going, dispels the horror of the blank page and if I write nothing else that day at least i'm 500-1000 words further on with this 'non-book book' which, I have to say, is turning out to be rather good! Because I have nothing invested in it, i'm not stressed about it, not tying myself in knots wondering where the protagonist is going to meet her fate, I just write. I write and write and when I get to the bottom of the page I stop. By that time, without forcing it, ideas for my other stuff comes falling out on to the screen too. 

If you're a writer, give it a go. It's certainly more productive than sharing your/my comedic genius with one and all on a twenty minute rotation. 

Anyway...have to fly it's lunchtime...11.19 actually. What? I've written 600 words of my non-book and a blog! AND I now know, thanks to my morning mind-jog, what i'm writing in the precious time after lunch!

Breakfast Time

Like marmalade left to spread
Across the gleaming table when no one watched.
Boats drift in then out of it’s salty orange wake

it lifts, drips scatter, small shredded orange crumbs.

Curtains open around the bay, nets are filled
Seagulls fed.
The private view ends as the bright dish
looks down across the sea.

Order of Service

Grief hangs here now

With the unworn tie

Bought in the hope he’d be here

The date bought forward and the appropriate food.

It stares me in the face, the four familiar blister packs left still by the bed

Usurped in the last few weeks with ‘something for the pain’

And a chair for awkward visitors

Repeating that he ‘looks peaceful’

odd that, as he never was.

It takes the place of thought

invades the writing of lists

Once filled with biscuits,

meals for two and full fat milk.

It holds me amongst the pillows, the dark

Then dreams replace It with him

Walking our veiled girl proudly toward her future.

And mine, alone.

It holds my shaking hand as he should have

As I check the cars

The flowers, the order of service

He was right to go for the cheaper suit.

‘Daft to pay big for something you’ll just wear once’

New 'wet' Dawn

Well, that was a wet and windy start to the day...and that was just in my house...boom boom!

IS IT WRONG TO BE SO HAPPY THAT YOUR CHILD HAS STARTED SCHOOL?

Firstly, apologies for being somewhat absent of late. Summer holidays, half pint starting school, manicures, you know what it's like!

But here I am, sat at my desk and having started my FULL-TIME writing malarkey in earnest. I am giving myself a daily pat on the back for reaching my self-set target of at least 1500 words each morning. Whoop!

It's a very odd feeling though. For twenty five years (on October 10th) I have been a mum and when I haven't been at home with babies or pre-schoolers I have been out earning a wage, actually being paid - real money. Here I am now, no little people at home and no wage coming in and, god only knows why, I am happy!

I now it's a long journey and hard work to get a book written and then a harder job convincing a publisher to buy it. A work of faith on both sides, but if I don't write the book I don't even have the chance of receiving a rejection letter and will never know if my writing is good enough.

I was interested, this week, to read an interview with JK (all hail) Rowling, where she expressed her own fears about not being good enough and people not really getting her adult fiction 'A Casual Vacancy'. Harry Potter was rejected by something like 13 publishers and she just kept going. I am praying that I have that kind of staying power!

A great part of this new 'job' of mine is that reading, something I once felt a selfish pleasure, is in fact a vital part of my day....another whoop! So mornings are spent producing the word count and afternoons spent getting lost in somebody else's words, heaven!

I'm off for a little read now - finally got round to reading the pile of books stacked 'not-so' neatly by the side of my bed! I did mention reading always been a guilty pleasure and there are only so many baths one can take in a day!!

MAD FANTASY

I could enjoy going mad

Smilingly sliding into my immoral pit

With each slice of sanity disappearing

Another care

My hair

Filthy and shameless

I’d eat shit and spit

Out the bits, which, for whatever reason,

Displease my madness.

I’d wear my skirt so short

And my stockings would be wrecked with holes, some hopefully stitched

Stares as I stumble, mindless and happy

Down the street, are distorted in my madness and perceived as desire

My twisted red lips promise something other than decency

‘I wouldn’t mind having sex in a toilet’ they say

‘smeared with other people’

Some dirty, drunk stranger would suit my demeanor now

And we’ll fall out of our cubicle with a post coital can of tenants to share

But not our names.

Or I could call myself Sue

I could quite enjoy going mad.

You?

GREY MATTER

Sledgehammer

Chisel maybe.

Anything cruel, hard.

Just here - if you could just break my face

Loosen off the ivory grip.

Can you slide your finger between incisors

And yank down the flesh?

Ugly and uglier to come.

Hideous words will dribble out and punctuate pathetic tears.

You can disregard the tongue and heart; they’re useless now and have been no friend to me.

So, trying not to make me gag

(even in bitterness I have my conventions) onwards and I feel upwards is the proper course

Here you’ll find the messy truth of the grey matter

And somewhere there amongst the floodlit brilliance and the shopping lists and amidst the lovers and the liars you’ll find your place,

Where you fit in to this ‘piece‘ ‘bit’ ‘bird’ ‘tart’

And of course you do.

Sorry to fuck up your clean shirt,

I can be ‘such a bitch’

Funny that!