Tag Archives: writing

Post 3. Routines

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People like routines. It’s just how people structure their everyday life. A couple of my friends go out for a walk every morning, rain or shine, at about 8 o’clock. It sets them up for the day. On those days when it’s too cold or really too wet and they have to stay inside, they get miserable, looking out of the window until the weather improves and they can put on strong shoes and go for the morning stroll. I admire that. 

First thing in the morning is my slow waking up time, which goes on until about 10 o’clock. After 10:00 I’m  ready to face the world. Before 10:00 everything just seems far too difficult. I used to hate going to work at 7 o’clock in the morning, especially in winter when it was dark, driving through narrow country lanes with an eye open for icy patches. 

I’d arrive at work and be faced with the jovial bonhomie of  colleagues who were early risers, happy to be up with the lark, and ready to face the challenges of the day, when all I wanted to do was grab a cup of coffee and be left alone. 

The 8 o’clock Monday morning meetings were a particular trial. Policy was made here, and everybody was expected to contribute. If, like me, you were still in a brain fog, you really didn’t have anything intelligent to say, which made you look stupid or unimaginative or perhaps not a team player.

Afternoons and the evening are a different matter altogether. By 2 o’clock I’m fully functional and continue going until about midnight. 

So my routine is a slow cup of coffee, catching up with the mail, having a look at the newspaper and generally seeing what’s going on in the world. After that, I’m ready to face the day. It’s my routine.

When we had a dog, getting up in the mornings was a mixture of chore and pleasure. I really enjoyed taking the dog out, even though it was bright and early, because of the companionship. I think it’s probably because the dog  didn’t talk. It listened patiently to anything I wanted to say, and even sometimes looked intelligently interested, but it didn’t argue or answer back or challenge my half baked ideas. I guess having a good dog structures your life for you, but it has to be taken out whether you like it or not.

But things change and you adapt to the life you now lead. These days I don’t have to go out to work and I’m free to spend as long as I like coming round with a cup of coffee. Nobody cares if I’m not washed and dressed by midday. Only my inner critic, who  speaks in my mother’s voice, quietly nags me that respectable people don’t slop around in their dressing gown half the morning, and wouldn’t I be ashamed if somebody came to the door and I had to open it when I wasn’t fully dressed. 

These days I find I’m not happy staying in all day, however creative I feel. These days I need to get out of the house otherwise I will go stir crazy. The walls close in and life becomes very oppressive, so that by 2 o’clock I’m desperate to get out either for a walk or a drive.

Partly, it’s about seeing people. I was brought up in a home where there was too much to do to waste time having coffee or tea with friends or inviting people round for supper. I can hear my mother’s voice now. Haven’t these people got anything better to do? It’s not as if their house is neat and tidy. The devil makes work for idle hands. 

That’s not really a very good way to bring up your children. You’re teaching them that other people don’t really matter and socialising isn’t important. We know that’s not true. We all need other people and having a good social life is important for everybody’s mental health, but these childhood traits run deep and become established habits that are very difficult to break. 

I like company but not all the time. I couldn’t be one of these people who has to go out for coffee with friends every morning. I’m generally very happy and comfortable with my own company but sometimes I too feel the need to meet kindred spirits. Again my childhood shapes my adult experience. if idleness is the devil’s thumbprint, work is the path to salvation and so when I need company or I’m tired of my own, I find a job.

I volunteer for a committee and throw myself into its activities. I enjoy doing that, especially if it involves problem-solving, but after a while, usually a couple of years, I find myself becoming oppressed by the expectations and the commitment, and have to move on. 

It’s one of my many shortcomings. I find it hard to relax if I have nothing to do, so my social contacts are usually for the work I choose to do .When it becomes oppressive, I can’t ease back and settle for friendship. I more or less give up, and discover later that I have not only given up for work but given up the friendships as well, and that’s not healthy. So I say to myself why don’t you do something about this, and, usually, the answer is I find another job.

Post 5. On being compared to a literary character

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Many years ago, a friend compared me to a character in the book. It marked the beginning of the end of the friendship. The character in question was selfish and uncaring, and the fact that the comparison was made in public and intended to denigrate was very hurtful, so much so that I can remember it vividly now, fifty years later. I still feel embarrassed that someone should choose to depict me in such an unpleasant way to close members of my family and friends. It’s made me think about how vivid literary characters can be and how good the authors must be who can create them.

One that sticks in the mind is Quilp the evil dwarf in the Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens describes him as: 

so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly and cunning, his mouth and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face, was a ghastly smile, which appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog… he ate hard eggs, shell and all, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads and tails on… drank boiling tea without winking, bit his fork and spoon till they bent again, and in short performed so many horrifying and uncommon acts that the women were nearly frightened out of their wits, and began to doubt if he were really a human creature.

The image of him dancing on the wharf and standing on his head and his sheer wicked joy has stayed with me for years.

Dickens was wonderful at creating these characters. Bleak House is full of them, the sad Lady Deadlock, the self-regarding, scheming John Jarndice and the hopelessness Miss Flight. Similarly in  Great Expectations we witness the eruption of Magwitch from the grave, and the sad deranged cruelty of Miss Havisham.

 In a similar way every time I read Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants I see the despair of the girl wanting to keep her baby, knowing that the relationship really is over and not knowing what to do. She’s stranded in the middle of a foreign country with a man she’s beginning to stop loving and he is so oblivious, so self absorbed that he doesn’t give any thought to how she might feel. 

“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.

“It’s lovely,” the girl said.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

“Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads. “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have

done it.”

“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

He is so emotionally illiterate and although it’s set in Spain with hills in the background, it feels like a desert and for her it is.

There are lots of other characters who I would not want to be linked to. Steerforth comes to mind and his cynical betrayal of Emily Peggotty, the scheming Uriah Heep or the brutal Wackford Squeers. Dickens is full of characters like these.

Henry James’ villains are much more subtle, so polite, urbane and scheming. Gilbert Osmond and the unscrupulous Madame Merle take deliberate and wicked advantage of the innocent Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, as America does of Maggie’s Verver in The Golden Bowl.

But there are some characters I wouldn’t mind being compared to. Who could object to being compared to the steadfast Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd or the immensely patient Joe Gargery.

I guess that sets up my next writing target. Develop one or two decent characters of my own, write them at length, rather than in a couple of lines. Paint them in oils, rather than a quick pencil sketch or cartoon. Set them in some challenging situations, and see where the story goes.

Post 2. Beginnings

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So, if I can’t get on with a hand written journal, I’m wondering if keeping an electronic journal might be a way into a daily writing session. Goodbye to the A4  page a day diary, with the narrow lines and intimidating pages.

Yes, I know the purists say make an hour for yourself every day, but that doesn’t work for me – there’s just so much else to do.

My first thought was to use my laptop. If I don’t like something on the laptop, I can delete it. If I’m using a book I can only delete it by cutting out the page, which always spoils an attractive book. Perhaps the attractive books need to be used for my other writing – if my poems are good, perhaps they deserve to be in a hand written book.

A bit of research pointed me towards specific journalling programs, or to using an on-line journal like WordPress. With an digital journal, there’s no intimidating blank page to fill, and for some reason, no sense of failure if I don’t write very much. Nor is there that sense of spoiling an attractive book with rambling scrawl.  

I  tried a couple of  different electronic journalling apps. I started with an app called Day 1, which had good reviews, but was a little preachy, giving me tips about things I might like to write about, as if I don’t have a brain of my own. Any programme that insists on giving me hints and tips is at a disadvantage. As it wanted me to pay to use its enhanced features, I looked elsewhere.

I had hoped to find an app that gave me a bit of colour, but they all seem to only offer black and white options. None of them offer me coloured backgrounds, which means it’s all rather dull.

I also tried using a WordPress on-line journal but it wants to give me tips and hints as well. Would I like to write about where I went yesterday, or what I had for lunch.  I suppose they think its helpful, but it annoys me. Fortunately, I discovered how to turn the hints off, which made me feel a whole lot better. It’s that combination of wanting to be in control and a lifetime of resisting being told what to do.

I decided to settle for the Apple Journal app built in to my phone and discovered the convenience of being able to dictate a journal entry and send the text to a document. I can do this whenever I want to, and wherever I might be. It saves all that scrabbling around typing badly and spending more time on corrections than on actual writing. If only the microphone was more accurate. Perhaps it will learn and adapt to my speech patterns and vocabulary.

What I like about doing it this way is that it doesn’t have to be some big thing. I don’t have to sit down for an hour with a cup of coffee and a notebook and stare at the wall or out of the window until inspiration strikes. Ten minutes with the laptop or phone open and the microphone on and I can chatter away and put the day’s events into perspective.

I wouldn’t want to be dictating my journal if there were other people about, but it’s easy to do when I’m in the house on my own, especially when everyone has gone to bed. It means I have a bit of time to myself to reflect on the day and where  I think I want to go with my writing and other  elements of my life. Why is it that journalling feels as if it has to be done in secret? It’s the confessional, I suppose.

I’m not sure the entries I’m making all the stuff of great literature but it’s a start and perhaps the great literature will come later.

And suddenly this seems to be coming together.

Post 1. First Thoughts

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Why am I writing this blog? It’s about self discipline and conquering imposter syndrome. After totally failing to keep to my 2024 and 2025 resolutions of writing every day and keeping a journal, I thought I’d stick my neck out and put a weekly blog on the internet. Don’t expect great literature or world shattering philosophical insights. The blog’s a public statement, a commitment to publish something every week. I don’t expect to have any readers, and this is little more than deranged ramblings, but they are my ramblings, and if they are out there, I’ve met my target of writing something every week.

My attempts to keep a journal in 2025 were a complete disaster. I bought an A4 page a day diary, thinking  I would be easily able to fill a page a day (half a page on Saturdays and Sundays) but the lines were quite narrow and the whole page to fill became intimidating when I felt tired or had been too busy to sit down and write. Yes, I know the purists say make an hour for yourself every day, but that doesn’t work for me – there’s just so much else to do.

I succeeded until mid March when various reasons stopped the regular flow, and before I could turn round, a couple of month had passed and I had got out of the habit. 

The empty dated pages looked at me like a rebuke. How could you ignore me, they say. Aren’t I important enough? You did Monday and Tuesday. What have I done to offend you on Wednesday? So a book of undated pages, an occasional book if you like, might work better for me.

Some of my writer friends are mustard keen on daily writing – morning pages, cafe writing – but I struggle, so lets stop pretending I’m going to be self disciplined enough to keep a page-a-day diary and find another way.

I have several very attractive blank books given me by friends to encourage me to write, but that’s the problem. The books are lovely – excellent quality paper, often with beautiful illustrations on facing pages and sometimes with prompts to get me started. Imposter syndrome barges in. What do you  have to say that is worth spoiling these beautiful pages? The book looks so much better empty, and writing anything less than great literature in it idoesn’t seem acceptable. The book is spoiled, and somehow that seems disrespectful to my friends.

A cheap A5 book from Smiths doesn’t seem like desecration., though, of course, a notebook means I have to sit down, preferably at a desk, find a pencil and start the process off, and perhaps transcribe it to the lap top later if I want to use the ideas.

My new year’s resolution is to try again. You are welcome to join me on my journey.