Fear of the blank page and other ongoing concerns...

Hello blog. Hello world. Hello handful of compassionate, kindly personages who read this as their good deed for the day/week/year...

It's been a while but let's not dwell on the past, let us look to the future...

...and the sword of Damocles which is the 50,000 words of NaNoWriMo threatening to crush me beneath the weight of failure.

Every October I consider whether or not NaNoWriMo is going to govern my existence for the following month and every year I succumb to its fiendish charms... Damn you NaNo, with your allure of domestic avoidance, ungoverned and wildly spirited words and the opportunity to put whatever I'm meant to be editing on hold and have a wild verbose affair with something exciting and new.

I normally love and equally curse you NaNo...
But... this year I am using you for my own ends; twisting you beneath the whip of my desires and I'm going to use your word count demands to crush my necessary novel re-write beneath your spreading chair bound arse! (Yes I said arse not ass... I know it sounds horribly English, but every time I write ass I feel like I'm doing a bad impression of an accent and implying I'm more hardass than I am... Damn...)

I realised about three months ago that the much ignored second draft of one of my first books no longer needed editing - it was way beyond that. I mean, it was kinda shapeless and its weight distribution was all over the place... if editing is cosmetic improvement then this draft needed to be taken to a lab powered by lightning, where my helpful assistant, (let's not say beautiful, he's kinda lumpen like the draft), Igor, would cut off every appendage and replace them with parts of better books. Levers would be thrown on a stormy night and "It's alive! IT'S ALIVE! WaaaHaaaHAAAHAAAARRR!" type thing would occur.

But rewrites are hard. And demoralising and they kinda make you feel like a teenager scuffing your Converse and groaning about it not being fair and but I've already done it once and why do you hate me so much! I wish I'd never written you in the first place!

*cough*

But it needs to be done.
So I'm trying to suck it up and get on with it and if I'm going to have to substantially rewrite this creature of mine, then I'm going to use one of the best motivation tools the internet and writing world has ever birthed and I'm going to have fun, (and alcohol and junk food and not shower or clean myself, the house, the cat or the husband), for thirty days whilst doing it!

YYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR! (Battle cry whilst holding a plastic sword in pajamas and over stimulated by tea).

So... she says looking sideways at the bloody misshaped manuscript lying wet on the operating/dinner table...

Wow, I'm really behind on Pretty Little Liars and it's kinda research and inspiring...
(Note to husband: please remove fuse from TV whilst out. x)

The start of something new...

Ahhh.

New Years Day.

A day of thinking of the year ahead, of contemplating dreams, locking down plans and starting to build that Ultimate Weapon for taking over the world.

And also the day to beat yourself up for the failures of last year, wallowing in the fears which held you back and nursing the scars sustained from that terrible explosion when last years Ultimate Weapon short circuited, gave you third degree burns and covered the whole north of the city in a strange green syrup which the police could never pin on anyone...

Ahem.

Whilst in the past I've subscribed to both schools of thought, age and experience is teaching me to keep things simple. So this year this is my plan:

1)  Write. Every day. Anything. It can be a blog post like this, a page of writing practice or add to the word count of the almost finished novel. And if I don't write something, it better be because I'm editing something - even if it's only a paragraph. Write or edit. But mostly WRITE.

2)  Blog.
As a creative person with a full time job, the brain farts coming from my head may well be utter shite, but every now and then I might accidentally stumble upon a pertinent point or some deep emotion which I feel it's my duty to share with the world because it's cheaper than therapy.
But even if I'm only typing out loud and repeating the ramblings of gutter hermits from time immortal, at least I'm talking to the world. It would be egotistical to presume the world's listening anyway.

3)  And I can't believe I'm putting this out there and ergo tying myself down to some kind of unspoken cyber contract, but here goes...
I work in a bookshop and I buy too many books.
It's been two days since my last book purchase.

(breathes out slowly)

That was easier than I thought.
Firstly, I know there's no such thing as "too many books" with an addendum dependent on the size of your house and secondly, that's when most people realise they need to move or get rid of all their furniture and construct it from carefully stacked hardbacks instead...
But, I have a tendency due to the divine intervention of Staff Discount, to buy books and hoard them, never quite getting round to reading them because I'm reading something else which has been published subsequently; or, and this is worse, buying books on a whim because of the divine Staff Discount and realising after two years that I'm never going to read them and donating them to charity instead.

Some of the unread books. Don't feel sorry for them, they have a warm home and don't have to do any chores

I buy too many books and I need to read the ones I already have because I hear them weeping quietly in the middle of the night when I can't sleep because I'm thinking of the next books I want to buy or working on the next phase of the Ultimate Weapon.

(Deep breath, long rambling sentence which editors would cringe at now follows)

I buy too many books and need to save some money for a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter where I can truly delude myself that magic exists and that the Harry Potter books are a gentle mass introduction to the concept in the same way that The X-Files started to get us used to the notion that aliens were real and the American government has been harnessing alien tech in secret for decades but knew we'd freak the hell out and so kept it on the down low...

But basically I buy too many books.

So, during 2015 I plan to only buy one book a month.
I can't believe it's there in black and white. I think my palms might be sweating a little.

One book a month. Exclusions can be made for gifts for others and titles for the bookclub which I run in our store, (January we're reading The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith, but I already have a copy as you could probably guess. Jeez, I sound like a real HP/Rowling nerd... Oh wait, I guess everyone knew that already) and any other rational, plausible reason which I can't think of right now due to the palpitations and nervous glances at my bookshelves...

So, write, blog and one book a month.
Sounds simple right?

Wish me luck.

If words are weapons, writers are assassins...

"Every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged"
Max Barry, Lexicon

We all know the power of words, that a rousing speech can raise the rebellion or give the hero time enough to foil the evil villain... We all know that words can take us to worlds which don't exist, create lovers and friends that we will never meet but we'll adore for the rest of our lives... We all know that words can wound. That hearts can be broken with just a sentence and that a well placed word will create scars that will never leave us...

So is it so hard to believe that there are words out there that can cut through all of our rational defenses, all the social programming, to our very cores? That there are words which make us totally vulnerable to suggestion, instruction and command?

You know that flutter in your stomach when you answer the phone and the line is silent but you know that someone is about to speak... There's your answer. We intuitively know that words have power and we also know there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We are so easy to Derren Brown.

Max Barry knows this and that's why Lexicon is so good.

Lexicon, (isbn 9781444764659), was published in June this year and I've been meaning to write a review for it ever since I raced through the proof copy a few months back. But something kept holding me back...the fact that it was so damn good.

Set in a world where a secret agency has harnessed the essence of language, identified the key personality types and the specific sounds that can hack each of our brains, this is a novel like nothing I've ever read. From the start it throws you in at the deep end and by the time you realise which way is up, you're already well out of your depth. And it's an immersive, obsessive read. I ate it greedily, spending an entire day off reading in bed with a near constant supply of tea and chocolate biscuits and there aren't many books which grip me like that - I think the last one before this was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and if you read this blog regularly, you'll know exactly how I feel about that book :)

But Lexicon is something different.

It is a great read, it has a compelling plot, fully fleshed characters, ingenuity and cleverness by the bucket but there's also something else...

You know that moment when you could almost believe that the X-files is an authorised government leak? That the truth is just a scrape of the surface below the unbelievable... That there's an element of truth in the horror stories which scare us...

With Lexicon there is always an undercurrent that Barry is pulling back the curtain and giving us a glimpse, not of the wizard, but of our programming. Of the way our minds perceive and comprehend language and sound, from the unspoken command of someone saying our name, the instinctual reaction of a mother to her baby's cry, to the way the hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we hear a scream in the middle of the night. A glimpse of how words and sound manipulate...

That sounds could cut through all the bullshit in our heads and leave us vulnerable...

But Lexicon takes it one step even further... What if there were a word, a phrase that could hack everyone? That there was no defense against. What if this wasn't a new word, but a forgotten word, a word that had been with us since the beginning of us grunting and gesturing at the rock, the cave, the fire... What if this word wasn't ours, what if it had come from before... What does that mean? Where does that leave us?

This is a well crafted, incredibly easy-to-read tale that behind the romp and adventure, exotic locations and death toll, behind the curtain are a lot of Big Thoughts. Note the capitals. This is linguistic philosophy masquerading as mainstream fiction. This is subtle, compelling and essentially, this is fucking clever. And not a literary fiction, big-words-and-podium clever. This is a book which knows it's readers can be smart and still like a damn good read. A book that knows you can like Kafka and Iron Man with the same brain.

This is the kind of book that every writer wishes they could write. I know I do. In an industry where some books bludgeon heavy handedly, this is a showman with an assassins blade, this is misdirection and mass entertainment. This is Derren Brown as fiction.

Now, I might be loving Lexicon too much. I might be reading too much into it... I might be selling too hard and showing you the inside of the empty top hat...

But the best thing... The thing that's really going to bake your noodle... The only way you're going to really know whether this book is everything that I say it is... The only way you can decide for yourself is to read Lexicon.

Consider yourself Derren Browned.

Stop whining and write...

So, everyone who has ever read this blog knows that the reason it exists is to motivate me to keep writing and that's been working less well of late...

I could make excuses and I'm sure everyone would be very understanding and say soothing kind words of encouragement, when what you really need to say to me is "Stop whining you lazy bitch and pick up a pen, for God's sake!"... And even then there's no guarantee that it would get me writing any more than I am...

Sometimes the motivation has to come from within... And sometimes it needs to be a strange inspiring mix of both external encouragement and internal drive/guilt/obsession etc.

In the last week I have realised just how talented and driven some of my friends are. Their creations aren't going to cure cancer or feed the starving but they will change the world in small ways, intimate nudges of reality which entertain and inspire. They create because they want to and it makes them happy and one of them reminded me this week that it's okay to create things just for yourself...

A lot of what I write I write for my own entertainment and mental health. Sometimes stories or ideas become almost obsessions, like a hermit crab has crawled into your skull and starts trying to take your brain shell where it wants to go all of the time. And once that idea is there, the only way you're going to get anything else done is to scoop the f***er out and boil it onto a page.

I have a whole world of stories like that.

I realised during last NaNoWriMo that almost everything I write is in the same universe. I realised this when in a totally unrelated story, one of my other significant characters turned up, totally out of the blue. I hadn't expected it or planned it and suddenly there he was, drunk on the doorstep and really screwing up the plotline.

And suddenly a lot of things made sense. I haven't just been telling stories, I've been subconsciously creating a world. And it really has gone past the point where I should be writing this world. Sharing this world. It's gone past the point where I have to leave behind the notion that I could stop writing and it wouldn't change who I am and I need to accept that there's a world inside my head that needs to be let out to howl at the moon.

I need to stop seeing writing as a hobby and knuckle down and accept that it is part of who I am and that if I'm not writing, the world doesn't seem right.

So, forgive me for this brain fart on a screen - it's just me processing and cornering my creative self so that I have no option than to write. Because it's fun. Because it's want I really want to be doing. Because I'm letting myself down if I don't.

So, thanks have to go to Damian for making me give him this blog address and spurring me into doing something with it! Damian is incredibly talented - check out Beached Rockets Issue 0, in quality comic shops around the UK. And thanks to Frankie, John, Pip and Rowan who write and remind me I should be doing the same.

And because I should, here's something I wrote last week, raw, unedited and chronologically almost the first wordage for the world inside my head... Forgive the lack of formatting, technical errors are occurring...

* * * * *

He'd heard rumours of course. Drunken words over spilt beer, a collector, books trapping the spirits of the dead. And when she died... Died by her own hand, the book on the bedside table, pages open and drifting as if in a breeze when the only thing breezing in the room was his ragged breath as he sobbed and screamed, clinging to her, his fingers deep in her blood, in her cooling flesh.
He heard the rumours and remembered. He remembered her funeral and the way her family looked at him as he stood there in black leather, sunglasses and hair covering the red scratches around his eyes, the lines freshly dug into his skin by screaming and crying and ranting. He remembered standing outside her home as her relatives cleared it all into a removals truck, bin bags and cardboard boxes.
He remembered the book lying on top of a collection of novels with pink covers and happy fuzzy endings. He remembered the book disappearing behind the closed door of a small white van bearing the logo of a national charity on the side.
He remembered all of those things in the midst of overlapping shouted conversations in the Angel in Highgate, the air thick with released frustration and sweat, in the moment when Buxton said, "Christ, I didn't tell you that I met him last week? The book guy, the one who used to do that stage stuff, the one with the, you know, the books.."
Raven stopped staring into his drink and watched Buxton's hands flailing through the air.
"What?"
"The book guy! Whatsisname...the one with all the ghost books, Harry summit..." He rolled his fingers through the air, trying to stir up the information from beneath the booze and years of hardly paying attention to anything other than Top Gear. He snapped his fingers and pointed right into Raven's face.
"Harry Parker Prentis! The man with the ghost library! He came into the Glass Jaw last week, big suitcase rolling along behind him, man looked like shit, I can tell you, face was all haggard and he looked like he hadn't slept for a year... Jeez, I always thought it was bullshit, y'know, myth, but there he was, real as you. Man didn't look like a legend, I can tell you..."
Raven watched Buxton's lips moving but his words had blurred into the background, a low whine smothering everything, his heart and mind caught at the edge of static, the energy building in his fingertips. He pulled his hand from around the pint but not quickly enough. A thrum of energy slipped from his fingertips and onto the glass and it popped like a lightbulb, spilling beer across the already sticky table and onto the floor.
A rumble of laughter and hooting trickled through the pub almost covering the chime of glass as it bounced to the floor. But beneath the laughter there were pockets of silence and Raven felt eyes upon him. He looked around the crowd, ignoring the grinning faces, the flushed cheeks and the friday night glamour and found three, no four, intense expressions. Wariness poised over empty hands, waiting for the attack.
He raised his own hands slowly, palms outward, empty and relaxed, waiting for the jeering to die down and the crowd to return to their conversations and alcohol. Raven felt the gazes slip from him and sighed lowering his hands. Buxton glanced wide-eyed around the pub and leaned in towards Raven conspiratorially.
"You pissing off the wrong people? What happened man? You seem...off?"
Raven flicked broken glass onto the floor and kicked it under the table with a boot.
"You saw him? Parker Prentis? The medium with the library of trapped spirits?"
Buxton looked offended. "What? You think I'm lying? Have I ever lied to you? Have I?"
Raven looked at Buxton, his eyes cold, memories flittering across their gleam. Buxton shrugged.
"Okay, so there was that one time, or maybe twice, but I had your back anyway, so what does it matter...but this Parker guy...he was right there. He's real Raven. The fucker is as large as life..."
Raven stared at Buxton in silence, chewing over the man's words and adding the pinch of salt required due to his reputation. He sighed, leaning forward and resting the edges of his hands on the table, fingers intermeshed.
"Tell me everything you know."

2.83 pages...

The last time I posted I had hit the 50,000 word mark in NaNoWriMo and was fast approaching the end of November with a fair old chunk of story left to write... The larks of a Christmas in retail and the recovery from Christmas in retail have kept me away from the blog, but now I've caught my breath back... I guess you're wondering if I succeeded?

At 10pm ish of 30th November I validated my word count at around 60,025 words, (and here I and the word count widget at the NaNoWriMo web site will have to agree to differ...) with at least 15,000 to 25,000 words left to write to complete the tale... and the Champagne remained unopened...

Although I'd 'won' I didn't feel like I'd really done it as I hadn't actually completed the novel in a month... I'd hit the word count, but not completed anything... And so I kept going. I kept the 1,667 words a day goal and kept up the pace, finishing 'From The Library Of Parker Prentis' on 12th December at a total of 87,470 words written in 42 days...

I was like nothing I've experienced before... That amount of wordage in such a short time and wholely focussed on moving forward, never looking back, never re-reading and never editing... It felt like a blank cheque for creativity, it felt like every excuse to not do something had been taken away and all that was left was the drive to put a world on the page.

So, what worked?

Well, the pep talks from NaNoWriMo made officially registering completely worth it, especially the ones from Chris Baty. Every time he sent a pep talk I felt like part of the community, I felt like a brother-in-arms, I felt like he could feel my pain on the bad days and share my triumph on the good. The last page of his NaNoWriMo support title, 'No Plot? No Problem!' (ISBN 9780811845052) genuinely brought tears to my eyes with its motivational, reach-for-the-stars joy...

The NaNoWriMo sites stat pages for your progress were incredibly motivational too, offering a graph with the ideal word count zooming up the middle. I swear the notion of falling below that word count curve made me break out into a cold sweat... Especially when right next to it, in cold hard black and white pixels were the number of words you needed to catch up to regain your ideal word count... Seriously, a cold sweat... 

But best of all, and I can recommend this to anyone with a short term or long term goal; have a chart on the fridge and buy sticky gold stars... The boxed kit of 'No Plot? No Problem!' (ISBN 9780811854832) came with a month long chart with holes for daily word count and spaces to stick stars or sad faces for FAIL days. Of everything, this fridge display of daily fail or success, on display to anyone who comes into your house, helped me keep track of how well or badly I was doing and shamed me into writing even on the days when the new Assassins Creed game came out and the duvet called to me. I never thought yellow sad faces could chill the very blood in the veins...

And so, what now?

Well, it's been just over a month since I typed the last words of the first draft, eyes full of tears at leaving behind these characters, their world and the whole god-damned glorious experience of it all! And, well, it's probably time to consider editing... So, I'm going to read the whole thing through in the next week or so and then start editing and based on previous experiences, I know I should probably have a deadline and break the whole thing down into daily chunks. I find editing a slower and more complex exercise than writing, so I probably should give myself a couple of months to edit/re-write... It's 150-170 pages depending on formatting which at most brings me to the daily target of 2.83 pages a day...

Oh, here comes the cold sweat again...

Wish me luck and mighty Seshat, make it not shit... Please?

That's a lot of words...

It's November 26th, 1:25 as I write this and approximately fifteen minutes ago I hit 50,002 words in NaNoWriMo...

For a few days before the start of November I thought I would never have this moment, that there was no way on earth that I would be able to write 50,000 words in one month, even with a week and a half off at the start...

And now I'm here... Wow. This is a good place to be. There's Crabbies Ginger Ale, bakewell tarts and I ran round the house dancing and singing loudly to 30 Seconds To Mars and Florence And The Machine. I laughed, I cried, (seriously, I did. I think it's the relief and the knowledge that if I wanted to I could just stop right now...), I hugged my Halloween Hello Kitty, (Hello-ween Kitty?), because the cat's asleep on the radiator bed and when I asked her if I could hug her she gave me a look that implied it really wasn't going to happen...

And now?

Well, there's champagne in the fridge for midnight on the 1st of December and at least another 10-25,000 words left to write to finish this story and I have about four and a half days left...

Can I finish a whole novel in a month?

Let's see shall we.

"The time has come," the Walrus said... "Well, almost," I replied...

So... I've woken up with less than nineteen hours until NaNoWroMo with the first line of my novel suddenly stuck in my head... and it's dialogue... and I'm never going to remember it. Is it so wrong to write it down somewhere?

Against all rational and sane thinking I have decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo this year. Last year I considered it but had no concrete idea and felt too net-less to be able to tightrope walk into a 50,000 word novel with no idea of what to write about. This year I hadn't really thought about it yet and then about six weeks ago I had an idea for a short story which was about ink...

The idea had come from my hubby, Frankie mentioning a low budget indie film he'd heard about and had ordered by the same name. The moment he said the word my head filled with images and story elements, but when we watched the film, it was nothing like what I'd imagined... Which is not to say it was bad, because it wasn't - it was possibly one of the best, most inventive low budget, indie movies I've ever seen - so kudos to the writer/director Jamin Winans.

But, I now had a bundle of images in my head of ink; ink staining skin, sentient ink, a crime scene covered in ink instead of blood... I thought it might be useful fodder for a short story or two and then I remembered an idea I'd had a few years ago about a children's school library that had a hidden room full of books. Each book held the trapped spirit of the last person who had read it...

I let it mull and then after a few days I realised this was not a collection of short stories, or even two novellas but one big effing tale just laying there on the writing table of my mind like a big naked grinning Burt Reynolds... And it kept winking at me in a knowing way...

About a week later I signed up for NaNoWriMo and have been making notes on character details, plot elements and mentally pacing the floor anxiously ever since.

I've never done NaNoWriMo before. I don't think I've ever written that much in that time scale ever before.
And I'm not convinced that I can do it...

As 12:01am 1st November approaches I have been swaying from a mildly cocky "I can so do this! I'm going to kick that word count's ass!" to "Oh My God. What have I done? What was I thinking..." etc, you get the idea. I keep half telling myself that it's not too late to gracefully withdraw. But it is. I have to at least give it a try... And shouldn't I be excited about this? The creative abandon, the free reign to let the first draft blow but actually get it down on the page?

And I am, in a kind of I'mgoingtothrowup kind of way.

There are three things that are keeping me going: 1. My hubby may not have signed up on the web site to be humiliated by a global community if he fails, but he is aiming to be writing the 50,000 words with me. Continuing an idea he's been working on, off and on for a year or so, we may even have a word count chart each on the fridge door and housework be damned! So friends be warned, our house is going to be a filth pit of words and forgotten chores for the next month. I only hope the cat can forgive us... Check out his blog to find out more http://autocratik.blogspot.com/

2. A handful of wonderful, brave and talented writers from work are also going to be doing NaNoWriMo this year. I suggested it, so their families and partners may hate me very soon, but by God we're in this together! Fools that we are...
So far the list of these heroes contains: Rowan, Hannah, Sam, Jenny, Ben, Andrea and Jordan.

3. If you're doing NaNoWriMo donate some money to The Office of light and Letters, the charity who run NaNoWriMo, if only because then you will get exclusive pep talk emails from authors but most importantly from the founder Chris Baty. I've had one pep talk from Chris and I think I need to print it out and stick it on the wall because it reminded me what an adventure I'm about to have. Chris's email was like Dr Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go..." Chris, (excuse the first name use but I feel like he's patting me on the shoulder in a reassuring way), takes the fear out of the leap into the unknown by making you realise that anything can happen during the next month... That I may start December with an almost finished novel... A novel of which, not even one word or sentence even existed before 1st November.

Well, except for this one sentence that I'm scared I'm going to forget... It's only 21 words, what's 21 words between friends?

Wow. This is going to be an adventure. This month is going to be memorable.

To everyone out there who's stepping up to the starting line, good luck, keep writing and don't stop. Don't slow down if you're uncertain or look over your shoulder to see who's gaining on you. This is your race and you're doing it to prove that you can. And to have the adventure.

I'll see you during the month.

Writing cheques with my mouth that my mouse can't cash...

Have I experienced a blow to the head? Taken the wrong meds and am suffering from poor judgement? Who knows quite what made me decide to do it, but I've signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.

During November, despite having a full time job which will be effected by the approaching mania of the festive season; a husband who is, to be fair, fairly low-maintenance; a cat who delights in waking us between 2am and 6am at least once every night and a mildly interesting social life, I will attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days, approximately 1,666.6 words a day....

Admittedly I have two weeks off at the start of the month so there is the opportunity to bulk up the word count to save my own neck later in the month...

But the anniversary edition of Halo and the new Assassin's Creed: Revelations games come out on the 15th of November!!!

Forgot about that when I signed up.

Bugger...

Ticking clocks and pumpkins...

I know. It’s been a while...

I’m sitting at home and pondering the strangeness of spare time. I actually have holiday and I am so unaccustomed to it, I’m not sure what to do with myself... The soundtrack of the house around me is one of a ticking clock and distant washing machine: a clock from my grandmother’s house, now hung on my wall and if I close my eyes I can imagine her living room, the cool silence of a family reading, my gran sitting with a poodle on her lap, her eyes distant, her hand worrying at the hem of her skirt... The sky outside looks like a vast slab of pale marble, the glitter of the rock made up of fine rain.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would take time off in October? When the sun is an irregular visitor, when the house is cool enough to warrant putting the heating on maybe once or twice a day. When even the ducks and swans on the river are questioning the good sense of being half immersed in cold, green water.

I have two words for you... Autumn and Halloween.

I love this time of the year. There’s just something about the early morning mists, the dew laden cobwebs, candle-lit pumpkins, crunchy drifting leaves, being able to wear gloves and jumpers and drink hot chocolate all the time... The Pagan year is coming to a close, the veil between worlds is thin and I feel the magic in the air and inspiration seems to come with every breath...

So why am I being baffled by having time on my hands? I think it’s partially from being inside. I need to get outside and soak up the season and let it work it’s magic on me, even with the rain and the grumpy ducks. I need to be writing again - I feel like I’ve lost a limb and the phantom sensation of writing is eating at me, the shape of the pen almost in my hand and the scratch of paper just out of hearing.

So why am I sitting here still? I feel like the day has stalled...

I need to go and buy pumpkins...

Minutiae

Somebody once said that the Devil was in the details and as writers we're always looking for the little things that concrete the reality of our writing.  But how far can you go?  Where's the fine line between appropriate attention to detail and OCD?

I'm sitting in my usual coffee house, in my usual seat, by the window on the first floor, overlooking the market.  It feels like the first day of Autumn; the sky is a flat mist grey and the awnings of the market look subdued, like off-season deck chairs.  The people walking below have slumped shoulders, heavy bags, yawns splitting their faces wide open.

This all seems like appropriate attention, I'm not dwelling on a list of every bloom sold on the flower stall, or describing everything that the man sitting on the bench below is wearing...  Although I like the way he stares off into his thoughts as he struggles to zip up his jacket, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.

But the things that mesmerise me, that make me pause; the way the milk blossoms and billows through the tea when I first pour it in, like a fast growing coral, pale against a mineral brown sea...  The way one lone white feather flutters on the pavement in the breeze of everyone's footsteps...  The way that the woman on the phone behind me has perfect hair except for a couple of loose strands, standing out from her head in a half circle of gold that glints in the light...

I feel I teeter on the brink of over-description constantly, because of the tiny things that catch my eye - shiny, silver details clamouring for the magpie mind.  It would be so easy to fall into that cloud world of heat and motion in that grande Earl Grey, or to sit by the market and watch the passage of that feather as it attempts to touch the passers-by with its simple beauty.

The film of the plastic bag in "American Beauty" captivates me, I see the beauty in the disposable, the shape of the wind in that dancing plastic.

But do we get lost in those moments?  Does it take us away from ourselves for a brief respite, a reminder of the gloriousness of the overlooked, the minutiae of our lives?  Or do we lose connection with each other whilst we are absorbed in the details?

I don't know, but I love the way my tea blossoms and the dance of that feather and I wish there were more opportunity to write about these things without losing track of the bigger picture.