Life is the art of drawing without an eraser

...and so is writing.

This is written on Saturday night, after a brilliant but intensive day on the Finding A Voice course.

This won't be a long post because I'm exhausted, to put it politely.

If I weren't so exhausted, I'd be energised. I WAS energised until the exhaustion set in.

I didn't take that many notes, content and fascinated simply to listen to an author at the top of her game relating how it's very often a struggle, that she doesn't know what the ending of her story is when she starts (HOORAY!) and that THERE ARE NO RULES and it's my job to write fiercely - write the fiercest, scariest, most powerful book I can write.

As for my voice - this from the Talmud:

"We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are."

Then it was lunchtime and after lunch...life drawing! A surprise. A shock. A lovely large and curvy lady posed for us in the nude and we had to overcome all our insecurities and inhibitions and draw her, standing, sitting, reclining, holding umbrella. I felt like Lucian Freud. So very close, for me, to the experience of getting over myself in order to be able to write. Such fun! Writing could be this much fun, couldn't it?

Then, writing a stream of consciousness...

I've never written so freely.

(It's now Sunday and I can't wait for what Day 2 might bring)