“The best cure for an off day is a day off”

says Frank Tyger, editorial cartoonist, columnist and humorist for the Trenton Times (New Jersey)

and says Caroline Coxon, as well.

It's actually quite hard to take a day off if you work from home - all you people who think working from home is mostly spent, well...NOT working. Swanning about, as Peter describes it. (He has a REAL job, remember?)

My work is always in my face. It's why I end up very often slogging away in the evenings and at weekends...

So - yesterday was my Big Day Out in London with my school friends

I was really looking forward to it but my Work Ethic Demon was sitting on my shoulder saying 'You haven't got the time. You should be getting on with things. You'll only regret it."

Excuse me, Work Ethic Demon. I DON'T REGRET IT!

I didn't think about work. I had a wonderful time. I got back late but I slept very well.

So there!

Today, I feel as though I've had a fortnight's holiday.

Note to self: Must do more often.

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

There are lots of John Leonards who might have said this including an American roboticist and Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

 
I think I'm going to settle on the literary, television, film, and cultural critic...seems more like the sort of thing he would say, with all due respect to roboticists everywhere.

Today is the annual schoolfriend reunion extravaganza in London - we're going to the National Theatre to see the Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition...oh, was just going to post the winning image but seems it's been disqualified for too much 'shoppin'

In the evening, after dinner, we're going to see:

And in between, I expect we'll have several stops at cafes, bars and other eateries to fill up on cup cakes, tea, glasses of prosecco...

I first met Mandy, Jenny and Jan in September, 1966 - at our first day of secondary school.

So these old friends have been growing for forty six years!

So far...

Yes...

Three rules for writing a novel.

So? Oh, here we are...

 ...and if HE doesn't know, what little chance have I?

I'm banking on the notion that really there aren't any rules.


Yeah!

But "It’s the cry of the artistic rebel who will go to the grave denouncing rules and techniques and anything that gets within a hundred yards of structure.

This does create a very good feeling, like you’re the king of the world. You can completely ignore all of the storytellers who came before you (be sure to call them hacks or sellouts). The fact that you’ll most likely not place your book anywhere shouldn’t hinder you from your intractable writing course."

(James Scott Bell said this in his excellent article How not to write a novel)

But I want to break the mould.

Do something original. As if.

It IS possible to do this within the rules.

Isn't it?

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day..."

" and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”

Neil Gaiman by Adrien Deggan

I wonder if only writers can understand what it's like to be a writer?

All I know is, that it is the BEST feeling when my writing goes well. I'm trying to think if there's any other experience that comes close. The only thing for me is when I'm riding and we (either Alfie or Poppy) are so much in harmony that we're like one being. (Sorry Peter, if you're reading this!)

Without wishing to sound too far up myself (she says, proceeding to do that very thing...) this kind of experience, to me, has been best described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness

In essence, "flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity."

Note to self: Must re-read.

Yep, how to achieve happiness...

But tell me, someone, how do you achieve FLOW?

“You must write every single day of your life..."

"You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders..."

Mansfield College, Oxford

 "to sniff books like perfumes..."

Kuroda Seiki

  "and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads..."

 "may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

Thank you, Ray Bradbury.

Like a kick in the butt, the force of events wakes slumberous talents.

I'm not sure who Edward Hoagland is - let me check - an American author best known for his nature and travel writing...but I bet he wasn't referring to the same sort of kick in the butt that I received earlier this morning.

It was my own silly fault for getting between two geldings arguing about hay in the field. I only worked out which one got me by the size of the hoofprint on my backside!

The dimensions of a dinner plate...

Spot!


To be completely honest, it didn't actually hurt that much but I'm hoping for an impressive bruise.

My slumberous talents were certainly wakened.

Now I must use them to carry on with the rewrite!

Half way there, page wise, but I'm getting to the part where the storyline needs a rethink...

“Do it from the heart or not at all.”

Jeanette Winterson

Sometimes I believe in synchronicity. No, correct that statement - I ALWAYS believe in synchronicity, and sometimes it proves itself to me beyond doubt.

For the past few days I've loved, loved, loved being a writer.

(Okay, I realise it won't last...writing can be a struggle too)

I have always, always put my own writing into second place - last place, even. Regarded it as a sort of guilty pleasure that I can only allow myself to do IF I DESERVE IT when I've done lots of other (money-earning) work first.

I've felt the need to accumulate a load of credit in my own personal Bank of Self-Punishment...

A growing realisation has come upon me that this is not the road to happiness and fulfilment.

(Yes, it has taken me all this time...and me university-educated as well.)

Then I watched Imagine: Jeanette Winterson - My Monster and Me  (Sorry people outside the UK who won't be able see this and Brits too, once the allotted time on iPlayer has elapsed)

I couldn't describe the effect it had on me better than Lucy Mangan from The Guardian

"By the end of it you felt as refreshed and exhilarated as if you had been bathing in a rough sea. And if, afterwards, a melancholy descended as you realised how rare, how profoundly, depressingly, vanishingly rare it is to hear anyone at all, but – I'm afraid – especially a woman, speak so passionately, eloquently and above all fearlessly about her life, loves and work – well, maybe we can start the demand for more here."

SO...enough of this fannying about, Caroline Coxon. Just follow your heart.