A New Year Dawns

So today's the first day of a brand new year - a clean slate, a fresh start, a chance to start anew...... Whatevvvverrrrrr.
Ignore me, because I suspect that it's the lingering whiff of New Years' past which make me feel a little, ahem, negative about New Year, and actually the entire month of January really, because it always meant a dirty word to me - DIET.

This will be my year - I'd tell myself every January - by July, you won't know me,  I'll be three stone lighter, and wear cut off shorts and a bikini top on holidays, like Daisy Duke with a Belfast accent, ginger hair and blue/white skin.....yep, I've always found that setting realistic goals is the key to success.

But thankfully, I'm older and wiser now, and I've long accepted that I'll  never be Daisy Duke...and hey, that's okay. (Sidenote- have you seen her lately? Let's just say, that a little sunscreen wouldn't have gone amiss.)

Yes, even though I try not to measure my self worth by my
weight anymore, its very difficult not to, especially at this
time of the year, with the relentless TV ads, the quick fixes, and the before and after photos in magazines. So I try and remind myself  that, statistically diets don't work in the long run, and that WeightWatchers and Slimming World and others, are just massive corporations, who make huge amounts of money precisely because of that. But it's a hard concept to embrace when my jeans are tight  and my muffin top is off somewhere livin' it large.

So what's the plan, Stan? Well, in 2013 I discovered that the 5:2 thing works pretty well for me, so I'm going to do that for a couple of weeks, just to restore the old  mind and body equilibrium, while still enjoying weekends and caramel squares on the side. No more Daisy Duke fantasies, no more queuing up to step on a scale, no more carrying my self esteem around on a card with numbers on it. Nope, I'm just all about balance and moderation now ...except of course when I'm not....and that's when the Spanx comes out.




Speaking of balance and moderation, as an antidote to all the December excesses, I've decided to go dry for January this year...starting on the 5th. Don't mock me, I would have started today, only Himself and myself are looking forward to a couple of cheeky nights away, minus the kidlets, so I ask you, what's a girl to do? It still means 26 days, which is pretty much February when you think about it. Yikes! To be honest, the weekdays will be grand - I don't usually partake during the week - but there's nothing quite like that Friday and/or Saturday glass of wine, or three. Yes, I know its mostly psychological, and perhaps herbal tea will scratch that itch, but I seriously doubt it, so wish me luck!

I'm poaching a little idea that's doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment, and thankfully involves no deprivation whatsoever - the 'jar of blessings'. Basically, throughout the year you scribble down on a piece of paper the  little things that you're grateful for, or have achieved, or just  make you LOL, and at the end of the year you take them out and read them all. I've decided to do a family one for the kitchen, and although I can foresee issues such as too large writing on massive sheets of paper, and one or two nosy people rifling through the jar long before Next New Year's Eve, I do think it's worth a try.

(I gotta say though, a jar of grudges might be a whole lot
more interesting to read at the end of the year.
'Ah yes indeed, remember that natty old bunch of flowers from the supermarket you bought me on our anniversary?' or
'How could I forget that special time when you hit the neighbour's gatepost and it cost us 500 quid to fix?' Good times....)

I'm also going to make more time for reading and writing this year.....I know, I know, I need actual plans and realistic goals to make this happen, and honestly, I've done sweet FA over Christmas, but on the plus side, I've signed up for Round 2 of my writing course AND I've a little notebook tucked into my bag for words, snippets and ideas when they occur to me....because that's what proper writers do, don't ya know.....so Marion Keyes and Anne Lamott tell me anyway.

Finally, I just want to say thank you for reading anything I've written over the last year - it means so much to me - and to wish you the very best of everything for 2014. I'll leave you with this gorgeous quote by Neil Gaiman, which puts it much better than I ever could.

 "May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

Happy New Year my loveliesxxxxx

Notes on Writing

So, my writing class finishes tomorrow and, after a few speed wobbles, I've decided to take the plunge and sign up for next term. I had picked this class simply because it had the word 'writing' in the title, and because it was one of the few morning classes available.  I kinda ignored the word 'Novel' which came before the 'Writing' part, so it's no surprise that I felt, and feel, more than a little out of my depth.

Some people are even editing and now sending their 80000 word books off to agents and publishers! Others are in the throes of  their novels, wrestling with plots and characters and endings. And then there's me (and one or two others) who feels like a first year that's wandered into an A level class by mistake. Apparently I'm still 'finding my voice', which simply means that most of the time I've no idea what I'm going to write about. Thankfully though, our American teacher is just wonderful - patient, encouraging, and completely unfazed by the wildly different levels in her class.

There've been homeworks every week, and although no one checks it, we're supposed to have a word target of about 1000.... which is why I havent been around here as much lately! There're weeks I nail the 1000, but mostly I haven't managed it, so I write a blog post instead. Somehow, it's always much easier coming over here and talking to you than staring at a blank screen and wondering how the feck I'm going to 'torture my characters'.

Another part of being in a writing class is the sharing of your work with the class - whenyou'rereadynopressuretakeyourtime - and everyone is supposed to say at least 2 positive things before they make any suggestions on how it might possibly be improved. (Shit sandwich, anyone?)
Wellllllll, I haven't been brave enough to do it yet, obvs. Gimme a break! Some of the writing is so achingly good, that it's only in the last week or so that I've gone from thinking 'Not in a zillion years, baby!'  to 'Maybe, if I washed a Valium down with whiskey first.'

To be honest with you, I think I'd have given up, if it hadn't been for a brilliant book called 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott - its 'Shitty First Drafts' chapter is famous in its own right! Loads of times when I was looking for an excuse to throw in the towel, and convincing myself that I was wasting my time and everyone else's, and what the hell was I thinking signing up for this, I'd read something she wrote that resonated with me so deeply,  I'd either burst out laughing or burst into tears. Such wisdom as,

'Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper.' 

And,
'I need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked here.....If you are not careful, KFKD will play in your head twenty four hours a day, non stop in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self - aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today, and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on....The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on.'

And
' Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done. If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things, write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about being sentimental. Worry about being unavailable, worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being  unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it.'

(I heart you, Anne Lamott.) And I actually got a final assignment submitted last week - just a short story but who knows? Maybe, I'll even be brave enough to put on here to see what you think...unless I get it back tomorrow with red scribbles all over it and a big fat F on the top. OMG, I hadn't thought of that!
OK OK, I'm turning off  KFKD right now.
 Laters, Loveliesxxx 

More Than I Can Chew?

It's been a busy week. Among other things, I've started a writing class and I'm definitely feeling a leetle bit out of my depth. Not least because several of them have actually written books and are now in the process of editing (yikes!), but also in terms of the actual process of writing fiction.

Because I haven't actually written any fiction since, Oh primary school probably, and I'm not sure that I still have it in me, or if it were even ever there in the first place. Or maybe it IS still in there somewhere, and I just can't seem to put my hand on it at the moment. But maybe if I do find it, it might still work if I just tinker around with it for a while?

I just don't know. I know that I DO love to write, and I never seem to have any problem whittering on about whatever frivolous topic I happen upon on any particular day,  but whether or not I can translate that questionable ability into writing half decent fiction.... I simply don't know. And the bottom line is, and I'm just going to go and put all my cards on the table....I'm terribly afraid of failing. I mean, what if all I can produce is complete and utter shit?

Thankfully, before I allowed this self defeating naval gazing to spiral any further, I had a stern word with myself and concluded that yes, I may be on a different part of this writing  journey than my fellow classmates, but that's sure as hell not a reason to give up. Nor are the scary 1000 word homeworks which I may or may not have time to complete on a weekly basis. But if I  take the time and effort to begin  and develop a few characters, that may actually be enough for now.

Because although writing fiction is an entirely different genre  from blogging, surely there's gotta be some skill overlap?  Take the skill of observing people and situations for instance, also known as generally being a nosy cow- I excel at this and that's a God given talent people! I just need to make it multitask.

Also,  I've discovered Anne Lamott's wonderful book 'Bird by Bird' which is calming my fears, and helping me realise that everyone who writes is panic stricken most of the time, and therefore what I'm feeling is entirely normal. In fact, her chapter entitled 'Shitty First Drafts' is so legendary that it's on the syllabus of most writing programs worldwide.
'Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.'
Thank God (and Anne Lamott!) for that!

Anyway,forgive me, because that's quite enough whinging-it's Friday and a beautiful Autumn evening and that's excuse enough for this little gem. (Thank you Christopher!)  It's straight from the Gaeltacht and makes me proud to be Irish....and sure yer man's not half bad looking either...for a wee lad! Have a good one my lovelies xxx