Daily Pages

For the last four months (at least) I’ve written precious little – life has sort of taken precedence and somehow my creative life has been swept away. In an effort to bring that back and to create some discipline in my writing habit I’ve begun again to do Daily Pages. Many writers swear by this method – each and every day you sit down and simply write. Yes, I realise there is no ‘simply’ about the whole process of writing, but you can either sit for an hour without doing anything else (no temptations of the internet, telephones or televisions) or you can write one or two thousand words. Stephen King does this every day (if his book, ‘On Writing’ is to be believed) and we all know how prolific he is….Other writers use their daily pages as a journal or diary type exercise in which they simply write down how they’re feeling and what they’re thinking about. I’m not sure how I’m going to use my time right now, I suspect I’ll begin simply writing a journal and then wait to see if stories begin to populate the page.

So, I began yesterday…and here’s the result – remember this is just as I typed it, no editing, no censoring and therefore no good as a proper piece of writing but rather like training or playing scales – it’s all part of the writing process.

Second attempt at daily pages. I know i should be doing this long hand just to get used to the feel of the paper and pen, but here I am tapping away and to be honest i do find it quick and easy to just type. Probably not the best thing for writing because it goes almost as fast as I think...but maybe that’s a good thing.

If I handwrite all of this I’d be considering, probably, each and every word I put down – thinking about sentence construction and grammar and how it would work. it would be a very conscious and possibly self-conscious act.

Quite possibly a very good thing as a run up to getting back onto the horse back of fiction – dear god what an appalling metaphor!

Anyway, typing sort of by-passes that internal critic and just allows me to write as it crosses my mind. i’d love to think that Virigina Woolf did it this way – just allowed her mind to go with the whole stream of consciousness thing, but having read ‘To the Lighthouse’ and seen how closely her writing in stream of consciousness resembles poetic prose like that of Marlene Dumas – no, no, no. Dumas is a painter. I’m actually thinking about Marguerite Duras! Who wrote ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ and the beautiful ‘Moderato Cantabile’ which I was introduced to when I did my masters.

Anyway, that’s all notes to remind me of stuff, but doesn’t get away from the fact that when I write a stream of consciousness or even a bit of poetic prose, I just let myself ramble on. Well, I do at least for the first draft. When I go back to it then I begin (I hope) to actually craft it and shape it.

and I’m writing that and my prissy conscience is being very snippy here and saying, ‘Hmmm, and when was the last time you wrote or redrafted something then?’ True. This makes me feel like an alcoholic or a drug addict who has lapsed and is hiding something, lying to myself.

First drafts are just jumble sales of words, aren’t they?

Oooh! I’ve just had a message pop up to tell me I’ve received an email from P. And i need a pee...coincidence? Or am I just finding it really hard to pin myself down to the page these days?

And the funny thing is that I adore writing – I adore creating stories about people who populate my head, different versions of me who can do things I can’t. Different versions of me who can be angry about that lost gym kit which wasn’t lost at all, if only you’d bothered to look! Versions of me who can tell people to stick it. Versions of me who can say, Yeah, thanks for being a five minute friend, really appreciate it, now f**k off.

All versions of me who don’t bother to think about consequences, other people’s feelings, other people’s circumstances and how life affects us all differently. A wild and free version of me – impulsive and probably rather unpleasant. Not at all like the lovely, cheerful, generous, and quietly seething real version.

Still need that pee.

Still haven’t decided if hand written or typed is the way to go. At the moment the typed is wining over just because it’s quick and easy. Surely that ‘s the best way to decide? Whatever is quick and easy and suits you?

There is no right answer.

Writing long hand is just so labourious. But also that’s what can potentially make it really good – fiction I’m talking about here. And even poetry – it works better somehow if it’s written down first. I can’t write poetry on a screen, but fiction just seems to pour out maybe because for me it’s more direct. Or because it keeps up with the action carrying on in my head. Who knows?

I need to go for a pee now, otherwise I’ll wet myself and my coffee will get cold – it’s been sitting there for the past half hour at least. And I’ve not checked that email either – I’m being very disciplined. I wonder if I’ll be able to keep this up?

I really ought to check out my old diaries from my teens. I’m sure most of it is utter rubbish, but who knows? There may be something worth reading there. And I’m only 260 words from reaching my target of 1,000 words!

I really need to find something to write about rather than these tired ramblings. I can see I’ll get a blog post out of this but no fiction and fiction is what I want to write these days. I love writing stories and I miss it. Maybe that’s what I need to remind myself of – my love of writing stories. I used to make stories up when i was a child, write them down, tell myself new stories, read old stories.

I still read but the writing of stories seems to have waned a little recently . Life does tend to push things into the background sometimes.

I miss stories.

I’ve a few in draft form that probably need rewriting and might be worth submitting to some places...I have mixed feelings about doing that too – what if nowhere will accept them? What if...what if...but if I never send them, I’ll never know. And who really cares?

Never, ever let yourself do things or not do things because you’re worried about what people say. Especially when those people are people you don’t know or maybe even like.

do things because you’ve got nothing to lose. Okay, roll out the clichés now. I’ve got hundreds of them.

Cliches are a writer’s version of the yellow post it note – it’s there screaming at you telling you that you need to change this phrase in the rewrites because it’s hackneyed and bland. This is where you put in your snazzy new version which really says what you need it to say to get across your version of the world.

And I’m over 1,000 words and still need a pee and my coffee is still waiting to be drunk.

The good news is that I don’t think that writing this took me more than about 30 minutes. It may not be good, but it was quick.

Tears

I’ve read a couple of rave reviews for the latest Toy Story film and I’ve now got mixed feelings about seeing it. I didn’t see the first one when it came out, I finally watched it when I’d got children of my own and the second one had just been released.

What’s not to like about Woody and Buzz? A wonderful story about friendship and trust backed up with a strong script and enough in jokes to keep an entire lecture on intertexuality going strong. But Toy Story 3 is by all accounts a real tear-jerker and that puts me off going – not because I don’t like tear-jerkers, on the contrary, I love them but I don’t like to cry in public.

Crying in public, in my family at least, is a sign of weakness. Not that we’d say that because we’re as buttoned up as the local haberdashery. Unfortunately this is all at odds with my natural inclination to sob at every available opportunity. Someone’s dog dies? Someone’s dog rescues them? A child wins a race in the face of adversity? Man lands on the Moon? A town gets flooded? All of them bring on the same effect – I cry. When I was studying fine art I was accused of being over sentimental in my work – no surprise there.

So I try to avoid occasions that will end up with me all puffy faced and snotty – it’s not a good look. Unfortunately that’s almost impossible as I try to deal with my twelve year old son’s recent diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes. I went to see our family GP a couple of weeks ago to ask him to help us with getting my son, R an insulin pump because his life will be more close to normal with one and he’ll have better control over his condition. Our GP was great and hopefully R will be on a pump by the end of the year. The meeting itself was a total car-crash of emotions. I couldn’t even get the first sentence out without becoming blotchy, sweaty and high-pitched. I did a lot of fanning my face – you know, the action you see emotional women do on films when it all becomes too much for them. The fanning is useless – it doesn’t cool you down or stop you from looking like a baby having a temper tantrum but it does give you something to do with your hand while you try to drag back the emotional tarpaulin that’s fallen over the side of stability and into the raging seas of loopy. Blowing out seems to go along with this too – I’ve no idea how it’s supposed to help but I seem to do a lot of it when I’m ‘emotional’ – I would say I picked it up at antenatal classes when I was pregnant but that would be a lie – I’ve got twins and it was decided very early on by my doctor that an elective caesarean was the way to go – no breathing exercises but instead a subscription to ‘Hello’ magazine for when you’re waiting around for the pesky kids to be delivered, washed and sent to your arms.

Maybe all the emotion swayed the GP into getting things moving quickly – anything to have the snotty, damp woman out of his surgery.

 

So you see I can’t go to the local multiplex and watch Toy Story 3 as much as I want to because I will sob. Loudly.

Technorati Tags: Toy Story,Toy Story 3,cinema,tears,crying,type 1 diabetes,children

A weekend of exhaustion and exhilaration

It’s the end of the rugby season and this weekend saw the very first tour for Canterbury U12s. Both my sons play for them so the three of us trekked off with the team to South Wales for a weekend of fun, fear, and fry-ups.

The boys left the club Friday morning in a minibus packed with soon to be sugared up pre-teens armed with mobile ‘phones. It was no wonder then that when I joined them in Wales that evening that the parents were well on their way to polishing off a barrel of Shepherd Neame beer and the boys were apparently having a party in their dorm.

The following morning it transpired that some individuals (I’m leaving out ages and names) managed to get about two hours sleep. This was clearly evident during the morning’s activity of gorge walking as plenty of people slipped and fell in the water with an alarming amount of regularity.

We went gorge walking with Call of the Wild. It was an amazing morning for a number of reasons. Both my sons are used to taking part in outdoor activities and some things that could be called ‘extreme sports’. In the past we’ve done white water rafting in Wyoming, rock climbing in the Rockies, hiking in the canyons in Utah and at home we regularly go mountain biking all over the place and rock climbing continues to be a feature of family days out.

But….all of this was BD – before diabetes. Since son #2’s diagnosis some six weeks ago we’ve managed to go climbing once – to The Reach, and we’ve been out once on our bikes just around the local lanes and bridleways. Both activities have involved us going armed with blood glucose testing kit, sugar tablets and cereal bars. It’s also involved the constant worry that he’ll go too low and pass out or go to high and become aggressive and begin vomiting. But you go anyway because it’s what we do and diabetes isn’t going to stop that.

As gorge walking involves being wet most of the time we couldn’t take the glucose meter – I’ve long suspected that it’s a comfort blanket at times and Saturday morning confirmed it. R needs, of course, to test as often as he feels it necessary and at the moment that’s a lot. I believe that part of the testing is him learning how he feels when he’s low or high and the machine backs up his suspicions. I also believe that he doesn’t trust himself and that little read out reassures him. It’s early days yet and if that’s what he needs to deal with this right now then that’s what he should do.

We took only a packet of lucozade tablets and a couple of cereal bars – he ate the cereal bar just as we were setting off and the tablets went into a dry bag that the instructor had strapped to himself. We were incredibly fortunate to discover that Paul, one of the instructors, knew all about Type 1 diabetes as his wife has had it since the age of 15. He’s also a first aid trainer, calm, confident and kind – just what we needed. At one point I thought R was having a hypo – he’d gone white and seemed a bit disorientated. So I called Paul over, he chatted to R, made him do some finger exercises and assessed him. No hypo – but he was extremely cold - it was freezing in the water and R isn’t very big or have much of a layer of fat on him. Star jumps were prescribed and within a couple of minutes he’d regained the colour in his cheeks and was back to moaning about how cold he was! Fortunately this happened right at the end of the morning and our next stop was watching the rest of the boys and dads jumping five meter drops into the swirling cold water. Then it was back to our bunk house where R checked his blood and discovered he was 4.4 – exactly in range just before a meal.

So diabetes hasn’t stopped him. He can continue to take part in any sports he wants to – we’d been told this but until you do it and prove it to yourself, you can’t believe it. Admittedly he had a couple of hypos within the next 24 hours (one right down to 1.8) but we were expecting that.

Last night when we got back from the weekend tour and this morning as I sort out stuff I’ve found myself increasingly tearful through sheer exhaustion and incredulity. I’m incredulous because I can’t believe that a) we got through the weekend without major event and b) that I even attempted the weekend with both boys on my own at all!

It was stressful and hard. It was hard to watch all of the other boys – R’s brother included and be reminded that he’s lost some of that freedom. It’s not fair that now he has to plan ahead with everything he does so that he eats and rests regularly. It’s not fair that he’s got to try to be sensible so much now. It’s not fair that he carries around fear with him every day.

I hate this disease.

Technorati Tags: diabetes,type 1 diabetes,parent of type 1 child,rugby,Wales,gorge walking,extreme sports,hypoglycaemia

We’re here because of history

Some of you may know that when I was a twenty-one year old undergraduate I had a serious illness which saw me in and out of hospital for about six months. That experience changed my life and has rather like a small stone in a pond continued to send out ripples ever since. At the time – actually even now – it was a horrible, terrible thing to happen, but I’m still here and maybe it made me a better person or maybe I tell myself that to excuse the screw ups that happened as a result, who knows?

Anyway, one thing that happened back then was that I learned how friendships can be forged or broken by illness and experiences. Experiences alter us, sometimes it’s in tiny almost unnoticeable ways and sometimes it’s huge adjustments. Maybe I became more aware of my own mortality or maybe I began to realise what’s really important in life – it’s not your job, your possessions or status, it’s relationships. It’s a cliché but no one lies on their deathbed and says they wish they’d spent more time at work.

So now R’s diagnosis of being a Type 1 Diabetic which is currently incurable and life threatening makes work and money retreat into the background while family takes the fore. At the moment we’re still in the shadow of diagnosis and I certainly want to educate everyone I meet – I want to tell you all how without insulin R will become extremely ill. I want to remind everyone how less than one hundred years ago this was an illness that routinely killed children. Now, thanks to the work of Banting, Best, Collip and MacLeod children and adults with Type 1 diabetes can continue to have normal lives. Yes, they need to inject themselves four or more times a day and  they need to test their blood repeatedly each day, but that’s a small price to pay if we consider the alternative. Today I watched a short film all about how insulin was discovered, used to treat Type 1 diabetes and save countless lives. Thanks to ‘Sofaraway’ on the Diabetes Support Website for that link.

And now reading back this post it seems like I’ve been trying to say two things at once (it’s a regular problem with me!) . I wanted to say something about relationships and how illness and big life changing events often alter us and them. And then I got carried away educating everyone about diabetes – just can’t help myself….

I’ll come back to both topics soon – I guarantee it.

Technorati Tags: diabetes type 1,diagnosis,parent of type 1 child,diabetes support website,education,relationships,life changing

Re-entry

Last week both boys returned to school after the Easter break. For R this was his first day at school since diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes. I took him in by car, his brother went on ahead (out of choice) on the bus. The school was great – showed me the medical room, explained to both of us what procedures are in place for the two other pupils with Type 1 and generally reassured me that they’d take good care of him while he’s there. I was about to leave when R needed to do a quick blood test as it was about two hours after breakfast. And he had a bad hypo – his blood was 2.3 – so what does that mean?
For non-diabetics our blood sugar levels hover around 5.0. R was sky-high at 30.0 just before he was diagnosed. Now we aim to keep him between 4.0 and 10.0. Anything below 4 is an indication of hypoglycaemia and if you follow that link you’ll see that it explains that having a hypo can simply mean feeling ‘spaced’, lightheaded and odd right through to becoming unconscious, slipping into a coma or ultimately death.
Scary stuff added to the daily life of every Type 1 Diabetic.
Fortunately for R he ate some dextrose tablets and within an hour he was back up at a normal level and he could go into class. So what caused this hypo? He’d eaten a large bowl of porridge only two hours before and it’s a slow release carb – greatly loved by GI dieters – it fills you up and should help to keep your blood glucose levels nice and stable. However, add a growing boy and a large dose of anxiety about returning to school, being the centre of attention and having to deal with injecting and testing – the whole newness of it – and his blood glucose levels hit the floor.
A new note to add to my mental filing cabinet about R and his diabetes – nerves give him hypos.

Technorati Tags: diabetes type 1,parent of type 1 child,hypoglycaemia,returning to school,nerves,blood glucose levels,coping,fear

Growing vegetables in your car and other forms of procrastination

Why is it as soon as I have an approaching deadline I begin to find other pressing tasks to do? These same pressing tasks never get done when I’ve plenty of time and nothing better to do, no instead I wait until the new term is beginning and I have classes which I need to plan and prepare for. In a few short days I will be back at work and teaching an entirely new set of students. I’m looking forward to this because I like my job and often there are some really interesting people taking my classes. You would have thought then that I’d be working hard to come up with some thought provoking, entertaining, enquiring lesson plans and doing lots of background reading to re-familiarise myself with the set texts. And that’s not to mention the marking I need to get done for another group of students.

I found this list I wrote months ago about procrastination because I don’t change. Back in September I wrote:-

Actually I feel like having a little nap right now and so far today I have…

weeded the garden [Don’t know why I bothered, it’s full of weeds again now and we’re in April]

fed the chickens

cleaned up the bird table

baked three angel’s food cakes [they tasted HORRIBLE – don’t bother making them again – and they don’t freeze well]

done three loads of washing [see Weeding]

watched part of a David Bowie interview

browsed through videos on vimeo.com

looked at Facebook

checked my email about ten times

looked at how to grow 100lbs of potatoes in a 4x4ft square – I almost forgot to add the ft to 4x4 – now that would be interesting – how to grow potatoes in a 4x4. Would the 4x4 have to be a static wreck somewhere? Or could you do this will continuing to use the car as your family vehicle? Potatoes probably wouldn’t be the best thing to grow as they need to be cooked once dug up. Tomatoes would be better but they require quite a bit of water and unless you managed to rig up some sort of diversion from the windscreen wiper fluid or the radiator it could be tricky.

See what I mean? That was another five minutes or so just pondering how growing veg in your car would work.

 

And now in April I’m really pondering the car as greenhouse thing. Interesting.

Add an extra ten minutes for looking on Google Images for a Greenhouse car and then another minute or two wondering how long it would take me to draw a cartoon and then upload it to the laptop.

 

You know the best advice for combating procrastination? Do the thing you hate doing first. Get it out of the way. Just do it. Then you can play all you like.

*Blows raspberry at screen*

Good writing is full of surprises

In September I’m going to be teaching a whole raft of different classes for Kent Adult Education and amongst these classes is a one day course on Booker Prize Winners of the last twenty years.  I want to teach this because I think so often we hear all the hype about the book but never get around to reading it. Sometimes we get around to reading the book and no one else has and if you’re anything like me you’ll want to talk about the book. Thank goodness for the internet on that count – at least now I can stop boring family and friends endlessly about books I think are brilliant – now I can bore all of you.

No, that’s not come out right….

Anyway, I took a look at the Booker site and picked out a few of my favourites and added some of those I hadn’t read to my Must Read List. In the last few weeks I’ve worked my way through all of Pat Barker’s wonderful Regeneration Trilogy Which I can’t recommend highly enough – I adored it. The Ghost Road is the final one of the trilogy and mixes fact – WW1, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon with fiction – the character of Billy Prior who is an officer alongside Owen. The story was gripping and the prose quite beautiful. The ending was no surprise, inevitable to anyone who knows even the smallest amount about the First World War. I was reminded of the BBC comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton and staring Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie, Tony Robinson, Tim McInnery and Stephen Fry.

Even though this is a comedy it’s widely used now in schools to explain and teach about WW1 and personally I can’t watch it through without feeling tearful at the loss of a generation.

Pat Barker uses black humour throughout her books and the effect is similar to Curtis and Elton’s – one moment you’re laughing and the next in tears. Truly wonderful stuff.

Technorati Tags: booker prize,ww1,blackadder goes forth,ben elton,hugh laurie,stephen fry,tony robinson,tim mcinnery,rowan atkinson,pat barker,regeneration trilogy,the ghost road,bbc,comedy,tragedy