Looking ahead

I was doing well there, for a bit. Getting a post out every day, every second day, and then I faltered. I feel like I have nothing to say, I kept opening new blog posts, even giving them a title and then, breath bated, I sat. Then I berated myself and said: "Shiny, if you have nothing to say, then you'll just have to bloody write about having nothing to say." Feeling suitably shamed by my own beration (is there such a word?), here I am.

I'm counting days until I leave for the great Karoo expanse. I shall be there for almost two months, blessed with large tracts of time during which I have no commitments. None. I plan to do a large amount of sitting on the stoep, maybe drinking beer, maybe reading, maybe watching the donkeys amble by (yes! there are donkeys), maybe chatting, maybe being still and listening, but definitely breathing. Large lungsful of clear Karoo air that make my heart swell.

And then, hopefully, I'll be showered with inspiration to write and I won't feel like I'm dragging myself over here by the scruff of my neck.

Enormous sky beckons

Whinge, whine, moan, groan. Good grief. Enough already Shiny. Enough. I'm stopping now.

In much happier news... My plans for escaping into the Karoo, to the place that makes my heart swell, are coming along. There was a slight hiccup a couple of weeks ago that, momentarily, looked like it might upset the whole apple cart and not allow it to happen but, in the manner of a pitbull, I refused to let go, and it now looks like I'll be going for six weeks.

Six weeks.

Fresh air, open sky, nothing to do but contemplate the fresh air, the open sky. Bliss. I'm also hoping to give the trashy novel I wrote last year during NaNoWriMo a good working through to see if I can make it readable and, perhaps, publishable. I also have wisps of another story flitting about in my head and am contemplating doing NaNoWriMo again this year to try and capture those wisps.

It seems silly not to, when I'll be out there, in the fresh air, under the enormous sky, in the place where inspiration flaps around me...

Oh, I am SO excited. I've been waiting months to write this post, the one where the dream, finally, is forming into reality.

Weather

It’s weathery here on the tip of Africa. I do not use the term ‘weathery’ lightly, either. The winds gust and howl as the heavens open, showering down huge drops of rain and even some hail. The clouds are dark and heavy, leaking onto earth, obscuring the mountains, giving everything a feeling of dampness and a pervading sense of melancholy.

It’s the type of weather that makes me want to stay home, light a fire in the hearth, and write. Yes, write! Woohoo. It’s been a while since I had that urge. If only I could magically transform into a trust fund kid and didn’t have to come to Real Work, then I could feed the urge.

Instead, here I sit in The Ivory Tower, staring out across the Cape Flats, watching the hadedas flap against the wind and rain while I deal with the rigours and tragedies that are my Real Job.

Tomorrow, though, I shall stay home and pretend to be that trust fund kid.

Getting back into it

I am starting today. I know, I know – I keep saying this. I keep promising myself I’ll write more regularly, I’ll write every day, or every second day, or twice a week. And then I don’t. I must, though, to recover some modicum of sanity, to practice, to get myself going. I just must.

Various Real Life, admin stuff has messed with my escaping the city for two months plan. I’m fighting for it, though, making other plans, getting the ducks in a row. At this stage I’m looking at a month, maybe a little over that. I have to rely on various other people, which makes it frustrating. Luckily, I’m blessed with lovely ‘other people’, making it a little less frustrating.

So, in the meantime, I need to get into a rhythm of writing. Hopefully I’ll be here again tomorrow, with something more interesting than a Me-Me-Me Pep Rally.

Writer's block and some Very Good News

Having been relegated to staying home, firstly by an op and recovery and then by pure, common-garden anti-sociability, I found myself not having anything to write about. That's a blatant lie. I was still thinking of things to write about, I was just not writing them. I don't know why but the writing's just not coming. Writer's Block? Of course I've heard of it but surely you have to be a Real Writer to get it. Nope. Apparently not.

This city is making me claustrophobic.

So. Here I am. Trying to open the channels. To write again. But I feel like I have nothing to say. How many words can one write about that? One hundred and eight, apparently. Yes, I just hand-counted them.

On a very positive note, with regard to opening up those writing channels and curing my claustrophobia, our plans to head Karoo-wards, where my heart swells and my lungs fill with air, are very much coming to fruition. Come October, we'll be heading inland to bask under huge blue skies and sit on the stoep doing nothing (and, hopefully, writing a trashy novel) while donkeys amble by on the dust road. Bliss.

The unwatched TV

There is a distinctly different sound made by a TV being watched and one sitting alone in a room. It's one of my pet hates, a TV left on in a room where nobody is, talking away to itself, lonely. A psychoanalyst would probably put this down to my innate fear of loneliness and give me all sorts of exercises to overcome this fear but, luckily, this is my (self-indulgent) blog, so I have no need to be scared of psychoanalysis and its resultant exercises that I'd hate doing. Besides, I'm perfectly aware of my fear of lonileness, as has just been made obvious here. I don't mind being alone, in fact I like it sometimes. But loneliness - ugh, shudder.

I stray. Watched TVs, be their audience one or a crowd, seem to have a confidently calm kind of sound, like people talking to friends they know are listening. The minute the audience leaves the room, though, leaving the TV on its own in a room, the volume goes up slightly, as if the characters on screen have raised their voices and are peering expectantly around the side of the screen, waiting for someone to come back in and watch, allowing them to carry on with whatever scene was playing out.
Sunday morning ramblings on a Wintery long weekend, getting my writing juices flowing. Again. And I'm a little lazy about writing for a couple of weeks, then come back, and someone's moved all the furniture? This new format? It took me ten minutes (admittedly in a very lazy I'm-still-in-my-pyjamas-at-12 o'clock way) to find what to press to make a new post. Hell man, what's with the symbols for everything? Can't we just use lovely, old-fashioned, words? I can't imagine that anybody illiterate is wanting to write a new blog post, so why the need for little pictures?

Surreal. Nonsense.

It's hot. I'm not complaining (too loudly), though, because those little signs of Autumn are about and I'd far rather have hot, than Autumn. Autumn brings Winter and Winter turns me into a grumpy whiney person with no personality and a two-dimensional smile, if any at all.

I've had a vaguely surreal-feeling weekend for some reason, probably due to the hot nights causing a distinct lack of restful sleep. I saw friends, ate while we sat outside enjoying the balmy night, reflected to myself the priviledge of having old friends, and listened to conversations that I seemed to be flying above.

It's as if my mind seems to have shifted slightly off centre. Perhaps it was always there and now, in a flash of middle-aged wisdom, I've only just noticed. Did I really just say 'middle-aged wisdom'? Good god. If anything proves the point, that sentence must be it. Did I say my mind shifted slightly off centre? I think what I should've said was, my mind has taken a flying leap off a high, and particularly pretty might I say - the lillies are flowering in all its crevasses - cliff.

Waffle, waffle, nonsense. But it's writing, and I need to get back into it. I figure if takes thousands of a couple of nonsensical wafflings, so be it.

500th Post: An announcement

Five hundred posts. 500. This is my 500th. It should be memorable then, shouldn’t it? I have chosen it, therefore, to announce the plans that I’ve been mulling over, talking about, polishing up. G and I are hoping to go and live in that heart-squelching place in the Karoo, the one that makes my entire being smile, for two months from October.

The seed was sown after our last visit in September. I’ve always loved it, and the city has been feeling crushing for a while now. The vast, open Karoo sky, blue in the day, scattered with a billion stars at night gets my creative juices flowing and, hopefully, will allow me to write. Well, that’s the plan. To write or just to be still for a bit, in a place without pollution and hooting cars and city-harangued people.

I have permission from work, we have a house provisionally booked, we’ve made lists and budgets and twirled ideas and dreams. The boxes are, slowly, being ticked. The next big one is for G to get permission from her work, to work remotely (oh, how delicious! Remotely! How it rolls off my tongue…) This is not as easy for her as me, she having been there less than a year, as opposed to my almost fifteen years at mine. Hold thumbs.

And so, there, with my 500th post, hopefully a long time dream will be turned into a big-skied-lungs-filled-with-air reality.

Wordless

It's been hot. Thick, sticky, hot. The kind that makes you feel like you're breathing in hot soup and makes you gasp slightly. We do hot here, in Summer, it's par for the course, really, living in Africa, and I like the warmth, but this is humid. We're not used to humid. It makes me feel like I can't get enough air.

It may not be just the weather. I'm having that stifling city feeling again. The good news is that I am working on a plan that might offer some repreive, there are just a couple of ducks that need rowing first. More on that later. In the meantime I am trying desperately to breath enough to make me write. I've been slacker than slack and I miss it.

I wake in the early mornings, the quiet grey light of dawn peaking through my curtains, and the words prance and dance in my head, stories beginning, emotions flowing, epiphanies abound. Once I'm up, though, they skitter away, scattering in the sunshine and noise of the day in the city and I am left, wordless.

Perhaps I need to get back and finish those Writing Prompts.

Yoohoo

I did it. I wrote 50 000 words in a month. I have to admit that they're not brilliant words, I have not written the next amazing South African novel, not by a far shot, but I wrote fifty thousand words in a row, to make a story. There will be no awards for this one, or any other I write after, but I did it. 50 000 words. In a row.

And now I'm exhausted, but I've missed being here. Mostly I miss Candy Sandwich's amazing adventures; I missed Livvy coming back, beautifully; Kitty admitting the painful truth, heart-breakingling (Precious Things, that's it for you, Kitty); Miranda, Tamara, Geli, I wait; Family Affairs, I long for you to be able to write freely again; and so, so, much more. I have words bubbling up again, though.

I'm back, as much as I can be. I'm waking up. A new year is beckoning, there will be things going on.

In the meantime I watched some Cape Town schmodels mingle with two Catholic priests, like something out of a ridiculously fabulous Tim Burton story. I'm back, I hope. I have a new soundtrack. It makes the words line up, a good soundtrack.

NaNoWriMo

So, I signed up for it, and it's Day 2 and I'm loving it and I'm, surprisingly, on track. Like I said, it is but Day 2. I am, honestly, scared by the trash that is so easily flowing out of me and know that, if I do manage to finish it, there may, if I'm lucky, be about 8 000 usable words, the rest being relegated to the dirty corners of my computer. But I'm loving it.

NaNoWriMo. 50 000 words in November. That's 1 666.66667 words a day. Every day in November. Write a novel, focus on quantity, not quality. That can come later.

I'm tired. Already. I keep waking in the early morning, words swirling around in my head, flying out of me into my dark bedroom, playing movies on the backs of my eyelids. Then, later, the words are gone, and mainly trash falls out onto the page. I'm exhilirated (how do you spell that? It looks wrong) by it, like a fire is burning, somewhere deep within. This will not be a beautiful, prosaic story, but it'll be 50 000 words strung together. All in a row, all together and, hopefully, in amongst it all, will be some bits, a skeleton, that I can flesh out, fill with blood and breath, and bring to life.

If I can just keep the momentum going.

Writing Prompt Five: A diary entry from Humphrey

These writing prompt things are completely bizarre, but fabulously so. Here’s number five. It was gross but I actually really enjoyed this one.

San Jose, 27th October 2011.

It’s not that I wished to have been involved in such crass behaviour, it was just that I was born into it. I opened my little compound eyes and wiggled what I now know are my antennae and looked around. I was not alone, but surrounded by my brothers and sisters and the biggest feast I’ve ever seen. All around us, a living spread of food.

Thinking back I cringe at such unbecoming behaviour, all of us chomping away at that tarantula flesh, not even stopping between bites to wipe our mouths. It was a feeding frenzy. I blame youth and pure naivete. My brothers and sisters think not, of course, but I consider them all simple.

I only realised the error of my ways once we’d eaten up the entire feast. I gagged on the fur on the outside and realised what we’d done. Now being five hours old and far more worldly, I stopped, spat out the fur, and swore to go vegetarian. It’s been three days now and I’m just getting used to the ridicule from my brothers and sisters. I swear the copper in my wings shines much more brightly than theirs, though, on my vegetarian diet, so I'll push through.

Humphrey Tarantula Hawk, the 12 674th, aged 3-and-a-half days.

A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn’t that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.

The big blackboard

The beginning of the year is always such a time of introspection and thought for me. It’s silly, really, because the 1st of January is just another day, after the 31st of December. I always feel like a new year is an enormous blank slate, like those little blackboards kids used to use in school. But a huge one – a humungous, smooth, empty black space, with hundreds of boxes of coloured chalk below it, waiting to be drawn with in twirls and curves and plain print and cursive. Just millions of options, expectantly waiting.

This year I am going to make an effort to feel that way every day or, at least, every month. I’m going to try and fill my blackboard with colours and writings each month and then, at the end of it, start some more. I want to try and not be weighed down by what’s gone before.

Sounds so deep doesn’t it? I’ll tell you a secret… I just thought of it as I was writing this post. I often think up my blog posts in the early hours of the morning. Even more often, they flitter straight from my head and out of my bedroom window, to be scattered on the breeze… little images and sentences let free into the dewy morning air.

Not this one, though, this one flowed out and, luckily, landed on a page, right here in the Ivory Tower at Real Work. And I think I’ll keep it.

TDoT(27): What’s the best thing going for you right now?

I'm writing. I'm really writing. It's something I've been wanting, meaning, to do for years, and now I'm doing it. I'm making myself sit down and write. Stuff. Maybe stuff that'll turn into a book, maybe not. But I'm happy to just start with Stuff. Wierd that I don't count this blog as writing, isn't it? I must've written thousands of words by now. Is there a way of counting?

Waffling here. I can see the light at the end of the Thirty Days of Hope tunnel. It's nearly done. I've enjoyed it, I've hated it, it's been therapeutic. It's made me shed some things, or just face them head on, leaving space in my head, to write that Stuff. This is the best thing.

Let's catch up, shall we?

As you can see, I'm going rather faster than one post a day for Thirty Days of Truth. There are a number of reasons for this, the main ones being:

1. I wish to write a book
2. Anything which allows procrastination is taken up with vigour (see point 1)
3. In order to get to the book-writing I need to finish Thirty Days of Truth (see point 2)
4. I am obsessive-compulsive about finishing things (see point 3)
5. I am on holiday this week allowing for large amounts of vigorous procrastination
6. I wish to finish my Thirty Days of Truth by December

I hadn't realised how hardcore the whole thing is. I didn't read the entire list before launching myself into it with vigorous fervour. Silly me. However, I'm putting my Big Girl Panties on and doing it. Vigorously. Fervently. In far less than thirty days. I've never liked being told what to do. I shall do it in, urm, twenty-something days. Before December the first, that being a big day for me. I wish to be done with the truth-telling then and return to the safe coccoon of my vaguely truthful storytelling.

Back to point 5. I'm on holiday and it's Summer and one of my old varsity friends and I are visiting galleries around the City Beneath the Mountain this week. And lunching. Today we wandered off to the seaside, a small place full of eccentrics where I met the postman and discovered he's about the nicest man there. But back to TDoT. Sigh. What's next?

TDoT (5): Something you hope to do in your life

I hope to write a novel. In fact, I'm closer to that dream than I have ever been before. I'm almost finished the writing course which has been completely intimidating but really good. The majority of the people on it have novels written already. They're 'tweaking' them.

Me? I've found a character through the assignments we've done that I really like and think maybe I could turn into something resembling a book. I just need a plot now and to make myself sit down and write. I'm supposed to be doing just that now but look, I've procrastinated myself into doing thirty posts revealing my truths. Good grief.

I am busy writing something that will either turn into a synopsis of the book or just be my character's background but it's becoming something. It's starting to wake me at night and occupy my early morning thoughts... where she is, what she's doing.

So yes, I hope to write a book. It'd be cool if it got published too.

Looking inward, literally

I lay watching my insides this morning. My liver, pancreas, kidneys, hiding behind each other, under my layers of skin, like children behind their mother’s skirts. They were simultaneously inside me, and on the screen. At one point she turned the colours on and I could see my blood pumping furiously through them, willing them on to stay plump and happy. The report was all good. It’s a weird feeling, though.

When we arrived, a panicked man was driving behind his, his flickers flashing. He nudged rudely past as we turned into our parking, then turned around and drove the wrong way back, parking directly in front of the entrance to the hospital. Opening the back door of the car he helped a heavily pregnant woman out. All thoughts of rude man flew out of my head as I saw The Stork fly over. I cried at the thought of such excitement. I’m a sissy that way.

Then I looked at my insides. While I lay there watching them swirl, I realised that this blog has metamorphosised into something it wasn’t before. I’m beginning to write stories about other people, and ignoring those about me. I know what it is. I attended enough Psych 101 classes with my friends at varsity to be able to see through myself.

It’s that privacy thing again. People I know read this. I am always amazed at how other people write so blatantly and honestly on their blogs. I am in awe of that. Perhaps they too, though, are only allowing glimpses into certain parts, leaving others in the dark. I also fear that I may have lost my sense of humour, though. It feels dark in here.

Maybe that’s just me?

Schoolgirl crush

It is Summer. This fills me with glee. The air is warm, it’s light in the mornings when I get to work, I am wearing cotton Summer tops. You can see why this would make me happy. The prospects of icy cold beers watching the sun set, at eight! Yippee.

In the meantime, while Winter danced it’s dying dance (until next year, of course), I signed up for a little writing course which is filling me with nervous angst and titillating expectation. I fear I will be exposed by my fellow writing-course-writers as the frilly, over-descriptive writer that I am. There are people on the course who’ve already written novels. Novels they sent to publishers. Real ones. Oh my god, what’ve I got myself in for?

I was in the middle of one of the delightful anxiety attacks you’ve just experienced above, while downloading the video we had to watch for Module 1, which featured our teacher. He's delicious. I have a schoolgirl crush. I just know he made the video especially for me (and not the 100+ other students.) How do I know? Because he was talking directly to me, of course. Looking me in the eyes, his own twinkling at me, his voice lilting with passion for storytelling me.

It’s strange, because he’s not really my type, but there’s something about him that makes him yummy. He has an American accent, an accent which is by no means on the top of my Accent List. Good grief, I didn’t even know I had an Accent List until I wrote that! I find them a little rough normally, but his is... well… perfect.

I guess it could just be his passion for stories and writing that does it for me, but I think, personally, that it’s his little hint of a smile, especially made for me, that is my melting point. So you can imagine how pleased I was to find that he’d made me another one for module 2. My very own little video love letter, downloadable, just to me and 100+ other writing-course-writers , on the beginnings of stories.

I wonder if I need to get out more? The thing is, I need to wait at home, patiently, for Module 3, to see if he’s made me another one, don’t I?

300th post... Well sort-of

Oops, I missed it. I'm not sure how, because (I thought) I was watching so carefully, each time I signed in and wrote a post, seeing the numbers click up... 298... 299... and then, whamo!, this morning... 301. I was planning a great 300th post. 300! That means I spilled out words onto a screen 300 (and 1) times. Sheesh. Obviously a pretty cloud scudded by or a hadeda flapped and shouted over at me, or something, which distracted me, and made me miss it. It's not serious, though, because this 'centurial' birthday, I don't think I have anything momentous to announce. No great blurts, like the 100th and 200th. You know my Tragedystory... you know pretty much all. Well, all of the things I'm willing to write in a public forum. Oh, the privacy thing, yes, it's still there.

So what to say on this, my 300th (+2) post? I think the thing I want to say is Thank You. To the world, really, to Blogland and the real one. I realised while thinking about this post this morning that both the real and the 'unreal' (blog) realm provide me with so much entertainment and just stuff to write about, be it sometimes just inane rambling. Had I not got into this blog thing I would be neglecting my writing even more than I do already. And I really do love it, once I start.

This all sounds a bit like an Oscar acceptance speech except that nobody is starting to play music so that I’ll shush and leave the stage. I am back from my break in the countryside to a little place on a big river in a village with an aching heart. We ate, we slept (a lot!), we played Trvial Pursuit (a lot), we read books, and we stared at the stars and the beautiful new moon. And it was quiet, except for the sounds of birds and the occasional tractor. I was meant to write while I was there. I didn’t open my laptop once. It was bliss.

I have lots of stories to write now – of the village with it’s sad tragedy that happened, unbeknownst to us initially; the young girl Heidi-like, up in the hills, doing wine tasting; the old man, youngest of eight, at the bottom of the hill, making wine; and the talkative girl at the hotel bar, fixated on E!’s inane ramblings of blondes drinking too much and taking their clothes off, her story too dark to tell in our fleeting meeting, but I could feel it was there.

Best I get to work then, isn’t it?

My weekend

I had a busy weekend, filled with blog fodder. I feel like I'm at primary school and am having to write one of those 'What I did on my weekend' essays. Problem is, I don’t feel like writing. Tsk. And I find that, if I don’t write almost immediately, I forget to do so, and those poor stories – of fish lunches at the harbour, oysters for breakfast, a long-last-experienced church visit and watching my first implosion – go astray and just flit about, like strings of mist, eventually melting into the African heat.

I will try later, to at least tell of the church experience, and the implosive demolition of the graceful twin old lady water-cooling towers yesterday, and how we met two queens after lunch. It was a good weekend. I will try to elaborate, I promise.

This is just me warming up, okay?