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Making it up as I go along

Making it up as I go along

Monthly Archives: May 2019

The cup with the golden bird

19 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Birds, Book 4, Tea, Word Birds, Writing, Writing rituals

Once upon a time, my oldest friend insisted mugs have personalities. She had (& still does have) a superstitious nature & wouldn’t dream of drinking her coffee out of a boring brown earthenware mug for fear of repercussions.

I’m not quite so choosy although I do have favourites. In one of my kitchen cupboards sits a selection of mugs with very definite personalities. The Virginia Woolf one, the sweet narwhal one (“I am not a unicorn” – quite), the bee one & several decorated with birds. And my “Girls Are Best” Girl Guides mug discovered in a charity shop a decade ago. Best of all though, are the cups. And saucers. I’m my mother’s daughter & I like a cup & saucer.

My writing rituals are many. And my first daily one begins in bed.

B BED 2

With a tray of tea. Because I wake early, I can usually manage a good half hour with my current book before the lure of notebook & pencil claims me. None of this happens without the tea though. Made in a teapot with different cups for different days.

Weekends tilt to the laissez-faire edge of writing – no one likes a swot – & the cup & saucer combos reflect this. On Saturday it’s the red rose one with forget-me-not sprigs idling like a lazy summer day. On Sunday I take tea from a charming old china cup & saucer, decorated with violets & a slender golden filigree of stems. My daughter bought me this set & I adore it. It’s tiny & delicate so of course, it gets saved for Sundays.

Come Monday though, it’s an entirely other cup of tea. (Sorry not sorry.) Monday through to Friday, I take my tea from the cup & saucer gifted to me by my writing sister, Janey. She knows me well. A golden bird is painted on the side of this cup: a golden hummingbird in full, fanciful flight through blue flowers.

hUMMONGBIRD

And as I drain each cup of good English Breakfast, scribbling & anticipating the morning’s work, there’s another one, a small blue bird in the bottom of the cup. I like to think she’s the golden bird’s sister, a less showy word bird, reminding me to get up & get on with it.

BLU.jpg

And to that end I must. To those of you who ask about these things – thank you. #Book4 has taken a tangent. A satisfying one & currently, the writing word of the day[s] is ‘immediacy.’

In word [birds] & deed.

 

 

Defining procrastination

05 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Book 4, Harper Lee, Procrastination, Quotations, Rewriting, RiverBook, Writing

Procrastination is a big word – it has a lazy ambition & is, frankly, a bit pretentious. I do my best to ignore it, in the hope it will go away. The other day though, I owned it. Hours past Virginia o’clock I was still messing about on Twitter. (I’d spotted a sister writer doing the same so what was good for the goose?) Nonsense of course & in any case, two geese are the beginnings of a gaggle & that way lies chaos. Eventually, we both flapped off to our respective typefaces & cracked on.

It’s easily done – disciplined or not (& I usually am) the temptation to lollygag around the interwebs is ubiquitous & wasteful. And me, in the middle of resurrecting an old story.

SCRIBBLING 2

Rewriting an existing story is complex. You might be forgiven for thinking that if you have the makings of an entire manuscript down, it’s just a matter of tweaking. The thing is, I abandoned it twice, because two other stories insisted on being written first. But I did, effectively, discard it which suggests there was something about it that wasn’t quite right.

There is a lot about it that isn’t at all right. Grace, my main protagonist, knows it too, which is why she doesn’t mind if I take my time to get it right. Just as long as I do, albeit, murdering most of it en route. (She doesn’t seem to mind that either – anything that makes her look good.) She knows she still retains the starring role & that the essential premise still works. It’s the detail that doesn’t.

Grace is like a determined gypsy with a basket of lucky heather. She shadows me & there is no respite. Having survived being dumped twice – her story all but relegated to the Dead Darlings File – Grace is persistent. She’s not a young woman – far from it – she’s old & something of a curmudgeon. Grace doesn’t care that her story is ‘old’ – her certainty of her place on my modest list of books is such that she makes it hard for me to resist her.

I read a quote by Harper Lee the other day: “To be a writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It’s sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it or not. Every day. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour in writing. In fact, it’s heartbreak most of the time.’

Harper Lee

Until that last line, I agreed with every word. Showing up, regularly, is what writing is all about, but heartbreaking? Not that, not for me. Writing feeds my soul. It makes me happy. Even when I’m embroiled in a massive rewrite, messing about in my river (there’s a river in this one, dear reader – a tricksy one), wild-eyed & certain I’m never going to get it right, I somehow manage to wing it.

Out with the old then & (Grace notwithstanding) in with the restructured, reshaped new. If, on the way, I take time out now & then to have a bit of a dally (tea, cake, Twitter break, more tea/cake), it’s only because writing is sometimes quite hard & every now & then I need time to think about it rather than actually do it.

I shall keep at it mind, & keep an eye out for my stray sister doing the same. I know exactly what she’s up to. Procrastination is the new research. Trust me, I’m a writer, I know about this stuff.

river water crow foot

My novels

Wild Spinning Girls
Wild Spinning Girls
Snow Sisters
Snow Sisters
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Ghostbird
Only May
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