Of Creative Claptrap September 22, 2009
Posted by Jen in : General Shame, Journal, Novel , 26 commentsCrumbs, I’ve been ever so busy lately. Busy sleeping; busy becoming friends with new people; busy not writing short stories. I have, however, started writing my second novel. I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t. But there you go, I’m fickle like that. You wouldn’t think anyone in their right mind would leap out of bed with a novel title and whole new genre based on a random, early-morning text about porridge, would you? I scribbled down the first few hundred words which somehow completely grabbed the essence, the feel, of how it might be. ‘Breakfast Under the Bodhi Tree’ will be on the shelves under… um… philosophical comedy. Nope, it’s not a genre. Not yet. But you get the idea. Of course, after the first morning’s wheeeeeeeeeee I kind of ground to a halt and put the whole thing down to a hangover. But no. It bubbled away, fermenting. And those always turn out to be the best ideas, don’t they, the ones that won’t go away. Unlike my usual dive-right-in tactic I assume for everything in life, I’m actually plotting, making notes; ploughing through Plot & Structure which is the best book I’ve found so far on such things. It’s rather exciting, having fun with possibilities and character sketches before the actual writing begins. I wish I’d done this with the first novel.
I must confess, this philosophical flim-flammery is not quite a direct result of the Mindful Living/Creative Writing course I signed up to. The class is… um… different. There are only 6 of us and the teacher man is very calm, very quiet. Sometimes he’s quite funny, even though he is An American. The writing exercises we do are basically freewriting – taking the prompt and scribbling mindlessly mindfully for 15 mins with whatever comes. No right or wrong. Just going with the flow (man). Easy, yes? Oh, yes, very easy until it transpires that you have to read the piffle out loud to the others. With your mouth. *Sigh*
Sitting around the pushed-together tables, we went painfully round the circle. I listened to the others’ words, in which we had to introduce ourselves in a way we wouldn’t usually. They were all quite normal. Needless to say, I had to go last. All the better to make a mockery of myself. The lady before me explained how she had battled and conquered cancer with homeopathy rather than chemo so that she could conceive a child. Cue all eyes to the super-cute kid in the corner, playing angelically. And me?
‘I am not a lion-tamer,’ I announced, trying to make this sound like a revelation. Spiritual. Trying to think that I should make something up instead of reading the utter tripe that included the tragic ‘I am photographer of weeds and commenter on bendy biscuits’ not to mention the cringeworthy ‘I am the invisible sea spray that leaves a taste on your lips’… Oh, God, the utter, utter shame. I didn’t go to the second class. I pretended I’d been eaten whole by the untamed lion.
Of Insidious Ingredients (or Beware the Bends) September 3, 2009
Posted by Jen in : Bits and Pieces , 20 commentsI am, like most people in the world, many things to many people. I’m a mum, cook, taxi driver, typing-about-bits-of-grass lady, all sorts of stuff. But one thing I am not usually is a scientiffical genius. But. I have seen things and Made Connections.
Let me explain. Next door to my office is a health food shop. I hate the health food shop. Well, not so much the shop although it does smell a bit funny, but the people who shop there. They are all very old and very, very nimble. Honestly, you should see them leaping on and off their mountain bikes in their irritatingly springy fashion. ‘Ha! No need to tie the bike up,’ you can hear them think, ‘I’ll chase any thieving buggers in my bare feet.’ You see? They even have lively thoughts.
Last week, we had some biscuits from the health food shop, mainly because Tweed Clad Colleague was – in his words, not mine – “too fat and lazy to walk to the lardy biscuit shop”. The biscuits were, by anyone’s definition, rather bendy. I posed the important question on Twitter as to why health food shop biscuits were always squashy and was told within minutes that it’s the lack of gluten which generally binds biccies together. So perhaps the spritely seniors are largely loose-limbed due to their lack of gluten.
I mentioned this to a friend who suggested that it might not be a bad thing: that if the oldies were scoffing hard biscuits, they might suddenly start wearing hoodies, spitting in the street and saying swear words all over the place. This would clearly not do at all.
As I typed this commentary of social and scientiffical awareness, I remembered that my mother’s craving when pregnant with me was fried onions. Pan after pan of the things. And, being quite a clever genius today, I have deduced that this is probably why I cry so much.
Reader, the crux of my discovery is this: we are what we eat. What d’you mean, it’s already been done? Really? Oh. That’s the end of my biscuit research then I suppose?
