Ink on my fingers

This is how I write...

'A certain skinlessness goes with the ability to observe and describe feelings. This does not make for blithe unconsciousness. Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.' ~ Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty

This is how I write: I shower, dry my hair and get dressed. I make breakfast and drink a mug of tea while reading emails and blogs. I have a cigarette. I go and buy the paper. I come home and realise I haven't washed up from the night before, so I do that. I then, mysteriously, feel an urgent need to vacuum the entire flat, and dust all surfaces. I have another cigarette. It's now lunchtime so I make food, eat it, and have another mug of tea. I stare into space for a while. I have another cigarette. I sit on the sofa and flick through a magazine. I dip into the Jeanette Winterson book that I always have close to hand. I think about what I have to write. I feel guilty that I'm not writing, so I have another cigarette... finally, at around 3 o'clock, I sit back at the computer and open the word document. I stare into space for a while...

Sometimes I like to mix it up a bit. I'll blitz the bathroom. I'll meet a friend for coffee and gossip. I'll take a walk to the sea (I call this 'research'). Occasionally I'll write an article, but that doesn't count as real writing - real writing hurts. When it flows out my fingertips then i'm in love with what I do - what I'm trying to do - and the staring into space, the feverish thinking, the mental gymnastics is all part of the courtship. But i have the procrastination gene. I'm a single woman with no children who lives on her own - I have acres of time to write, but still I am like a dog who has to turn around hundreds of times, shuffle and fidget, until she finds the most comfortable position to lie down in.

'A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.' ~ Thomas Mann

I love that quote, and I know that these thoughts are coming from the knot of anxiety and excitement I have in my stomach. On Wednesday I go to London to meet my agent. I want this project to advance to the next stage but I'm terrified of this too. I worry that I'm not up to it, that I'm no good, that no one would want to read my words, that I've run out of steam. But most of all, I fear going back into the swamp of emotions I've been working so hard to clear. And I know this is the final part of the healing, whether TB is published or not, but still... I'm feeling intimidated.

I found myself in a bookshop today, and I mean this quite literally. Browsing through the poetry aisle, looking for poetry written by women (why are there so few? I don't want to read Beowulf or Hughes or, heaven forfend, Andrew Motion! I bought Sharon Olds instead - her words make me roar) I found a book with my face on it.  When the film Il Postino was released in 1994, a slim volume of Pablo Neruda's love poems was published too. The cover features Massimo Troisi as Neruda, on his bicycle, and above him is me. My ex took the photograph - I think it was one of the first photographs he sold - so I bought the book and brought it home. I'm hoping that this strange little coincidence, this fortuitous finding, is a sign of good things to come.

Lottery tickets and lipstick

I’m in trouble. It’s day four in my adventures in the blogosphere and here I am again, already writing a post when I should be writing an article. I knew this would happen. Feel pulled in so many directions: it’s Saturday and because I have been so lax this week, work-wise, I have an hour-long interview with an expert to transcribe and a 1,600 word article to sculpt, yet I want to go to the beach and have coffee with my friend Madeleine and her kids, I want to buy the papers and read them while drinking tea on my sofa, I want to go into town and buy a new lipstick to cheer my face up, I want to sit and read blogs all afternoon, I want to go to the supermarket and buy some duck breasts so I can try a new recipe tonight for dinner, I want to get on the train and go have brunch with Anna in Soho, I want to buy a lottery ticket and win a million pounds so I never have to write another article again and can indulge in writing TB and not have to worry that I can’t pay my gas bill… I want… I want… I want. The article is for the best-selling women’s magazine in the UK ~ and I am grateful for the work, of course I am, but today… today I want to be doing something else.

The beautiful moon-struck Elena suggested tagging some friends to spill their own beans - you can read hers here - so I am sending the call out to Denise, Megg and Alexandra, and anyone else who would like to reveal a few jelly beans, mung beans or refried beans… big or small, the choice is yours. Should add that I have no idea what the tagging etiquette is, so if i'm off the mark, please tell me!

As every day is Poetry Day in my little flat by the sea, here’s something I read last night that I wanted to share here…

Magic

From indescribable transformation flash
such creations--: Feel! And trust!
We suffer it often: flames become ash;
yet, in art: flames come from dust.

Here is magic. In the realm of a spell
the common word seems lifted up above…
and yet is really like the call of the male
who calls for the invisible female dove.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, 1924

Setting sail into the unknown

‘I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I begin to look at it, until it shines.’
~ Emily Dickinson

I’ve called this blog ink on my fingers as that really does sum up where i am in my life right (write) now. I’m living by the sea on the south coast of England - living by myself, I should add, the most positive life-affirming thing i think I have ever done - trying to keep the wolf from the door by writing articles for magazines and websites, while making my brain expand and contract as I write my book. Ahh yes, The Book.... the thing/object/dream/cathartic exercise i have been working on for the last five months... i have a sneaking suspicion that TB will be creeping into these postings as i get into my stride. perhaps i'll turn into Charles Dickens and share a chapter at a time, or more likely, i'll send out little snippets, like butterflies into the ether and see what comes back. i look forward to connecting with other souls with inky fingers (and bells on their toes)

The first six chapters are with my agent now, a wonderfully feisty Irish woman who i have complete faith in, and if all goes well I’ll be in London next week to meet with her so we can roll up our sleeves and plot the next stage - to find the right publisher. But in truth that feels like a dream - to get the work published and in readers’ hands would be amazing, but before that can happen I know I have many more red-wine-and-cigarette fuelled nights ahead of me, with ink on my fingers and pieces of paper strewn over my living room floor (literally cutting and pasting, with scissors and sellotape, has proved to be the best way to focus the mind when the words start swimming across the monitor)…

so I spend all day writing - writing articles, writing TB, writing in my diary, writing lists of things I should be doing, will be doing, want to be doing - and now, at last, I’ll be writing here too. The photo is a painting my beautiful sister did for me as a christmas present - the way she sees me writing, with my head lost in thought. I’ve always been in awe of her talent, what a gift to be able to put what you see in your head down on paper - shiny serif words never feel quite the same…

I’ve found so much inspiration from reading other’s blogs that the temptation to join in and get cosy in my own corner of cyber space was just too irresistible. of course, whether I write anything profound, that helps and inspires, or just plain amuses, remains to be seen...

but it’s exciting to see how this new project will grow.  It also feels strange to be writing for/to readers who can leave their comments (and please do!) - you get used to writing anonymous words for magazine readers, where you don’t have to put yourself into the text - and I’ve kept a diary since I was eleven, a conversation that I don’t think will ever end - but a blog is different, and as I’ve read more of them over the last few months I’ve come to see that there is such an incredible network of like-minded souls out there, a real community of artists, writers, dreamers and believers all sharing their thoughts and lives. So here I am, cup of rooibos tea by my keyboard, sun shining through the window, ready to set sail into the unknown.

~welcome to my blog~