day twenty-one

Five days since my last post! I hadn’t quite realised it had been so long. It’s partly because due to work last week my schedule was a bit jumbled, which meant the writing in the morning/posting at lunchtime routine didn’t work. The weekend had its own rhythms, and I avoid using screens on Sundays; and yesterday I was ill in bed with a rotten cold. But I have been writing: every day, apart from yesterday (and I really missed it). The other reason for not posting quite so much is that, for the same reasons (work busyness and illness) I’ve not really done much in terms of the scrapbooking element of this blog. Nothing apart from watching films and, er, drinking wine. Both lovely, but not much to write home about.

Writing wise, things are still moving on at quite a lick: I’ve already forgotten exactly what I did on which day, but I’ve been tinkering with the Pembrokeshire poem, drafted a new one (megafauna!), and today wrote a whole new piece, just like that, from an idea that’s been floating around since September. Ta-da! I have no idea if it’s any good or not, but I enjoyed writing it. I think maybe I just needed to get it out of my system.

So, another new benefit from the write-daily regime: not only is it getting easier and more fun each day, I’m actually beginning to feel a bit… addicted, perhaps? It’s rare that I’ve felt like this about writing poetry. Prose, yes; poetry, no. Each day I’m chomping at the bit, and it’s pretty exhilarating.

day sixteen

Another early start (it’ll be the same again tomorrow) meant another missed writing appointment this morning: yes, I should be getting up earlier, but no, I’m not. Unlike yesterday, though, I didn’t write on the train, and for a while it looked like I might miss a day (horror!) – I got home exhausted, with writing the last thing on my mind. But then something kicked in – cussedness, perhaps – and I decided to just write for as long as my dinner took to cook, which was twenty-five minutes (actually longer than I have been writing for most mornings), and was twenty-five minutes well spent on chipping away at the Pembrokeshire coast path poem. Of all the days I’ve written, today I felt the proudest. If I’m actually sitting down to write on the days I least want to, I think I’m getting somewhere – in terms of habit-creation, I mean.

Apologies, invisible audience, for the introspective and self-absorbed nature of these posts. I suppose I see it as documenting the month’s experiment, and I don’t seem to have been doing enough stuff this week to balance out the boring detail of day to day writing.

day fifteen

this is not what my view looked like.

Briefly, because, well, just because: work commitments meant I had to leave the house super-early this morning (well, comparatively speaking), so I didn’t have time to write first thing, at home. So I wrote on the train instead. Notes for a new poem. I love this write-daily thing.

day fourteen and an evening birdsong walk

I am so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open (I know, and it’s only 10.30), so I will keep this as brief as I can while simultaneously reporting on all the things that are on my sleepy mind…

First, the writing got done. It was my dedicated writing day today (swapped with the usual Thursday for work-related reasons), so again, of course it did, there can be no possible excuses. But it needs to be reported!

And what a great day it was… I turned yesterday’s notes, which I wasn’t sure about, into a whole, new, finished, poem. And yes, I think it works. Of course, it may not be the best thing I’ve ever written, but as a poem it does what I wanted it to, if you see what I mean (I’m thinking about Sylvia Plath’s observation that a poem can be a table or a chair or a pull-along duck… as long as it works, it’s fine). So that’s three brand-new poems in two weeks… I’m ashamed (but also thrilled) to say that’s more than I wrote (poetry-wise) in the whole of 2012. This writing daily lark needs to continue.

I also shoved at the Pembrokeshire coast path draft a bit more, and got a bit closer, I think. It’s hard work, partly because it’s long, and partly because I think it runs the risk of being description/feeling. I’m not entirely sure I know what it’s doing yet, but for now I’m just trusting that if I keep at it, it too will turn into something useful, whether that’s a table or a pull-along duck.

So one of the satellite effects of this writing daily thing is that, as momentum increases, so does my desire to get things out there. I’ve always found submitting poetry to competitions and journals about as painful as writing them in the first place – in part just because of the sheer boring-ness of it, and in part because, yes, I’m lazy and disorganised. But today I submitted four pieces to Magma magazine, and I’m working on my submission to the Faber new poets scheme – ambitious, yes, but why the hell not? It doesn’t cost anything to enter, like most competitions do. I’m also thinking about a submission to a new online journal, and two other upcoming competitions run by Mslexia. The likelihood is that none of these will actually come to anything… but just having a go feels empowering. And grouping all my poems together, in some sort of coherent order, has helped me identify which ones still have slight disfigurements that need fixing, as well as rediscovering some that I’d forgotten about/mislaid after The Great Laptop Theft of 2012.

I’ve been meaning to mention last Thursday’s walk for the last few days but just not had the time to fit it in… I’m tempted to put it off again today but know that if I don’t write about it soon all the freshness and zest will be lost. I’ll keep it brief: I live pretty close to the unbelievably gorgeous Sydenham Hill Wood, the largest remaining tract of the old Great North Wood, which used to stretch from Deptford to Selhurst. It’s now managed as a nature reserve, and it’s a really special place: it’s hard to believe you’re so close to central London when you’re there. Quite by chance I stumbled across an online mention of last Thursday’s evening birdsong walk, and as I’ve been getting into birds a bit recently (in the most casual way possible – mainly just keeping an eye out for them, and enjoying watching them in the trees around my flat) and generally just loving woodland, I went along. Although the wind meant that we didn’t hear a huge amount of birdsong, it was still brilliant. Learning to listen out for and identify a few birds just from their calls was pretty thrilling, and learning about the wood and its history from conservation officer Daniel Greenwood was fascinating. Plus being in woodland at dusk is pretty special by itself. There’s another guided tree identification walk this Thursday, and if I can manage the timings work-wise, I’ll be there. Highly recommended if you just happen to be in South East London.

Swifts weren’t on the menu, but here’s a piece I wrote about listening to them a few years ago, on London Grip.

days twelve and thirteen

I tend not to do anything particularly work-y on Sundays, including writing poetry (which I do see as work); and I especially avoid screens if I can (ie my laptop). But I’ve got a separate little project (aside from poetry) that I’m trying to do on Sundays at the moment, so that’s what I did yesterday. No poetry, but still writing.

Today I was back on track, writing for fifteen minutes this morning after breakfast. I was a bit reluctant to turn on my laptop and possibly waste time on twitter again, so I left the Pembrokeshire coast path poem alone for the day and started some longhand notes for something new. I didn’t get very far and I’m not sure it’s really going to turn into anything… but we’ll see. It’s my writing day tomorrow so I’ll have a good chunk of time to push it a bit further and see where I get to.

In other news, today I had some really lovely feedback on the two poems I finished last week, which I very much see as being products of this new May habit, so that was encouraging. And I entered a really great-looking poetry competition. Fingers crossed!

days ten and eleven

Because I didn’t post yesterday, and Thursday’s post was written early-afternoon, I want to report here that I did finish ‘the horse poem’ – well, a workable draft, anyway: nothing’s really finished (ever?) until it’s been workshopped by poetry friends, and already I’m unsure about a couple of elements. And the title definitely isn’t right; currently it’s labouring under ‘The words I’d yet to write’ (the Ray Bradbury title just didn’t work, in the end). Still, I got it as far as I think I can for the moment, and I feel hugely pleased. That was the first poem I’ve finished since February, and one that had been on my radar to write since last summer, and writing something new after a long pause always feels very good. But then I actually finished the other poem, too! I’ve called it ‘The Cherry Tree’ and yes, it’s definitely in memoriam Dallas Willard, bless his dear heart. Again, it needs workshopping, and in fact I’ve done some tinkering on it today; but getting to two good workable drafts in one day felt a huge achievement. The effects of writing everyday are definitely cumulative: it’s always hard work, of course, but the whole thing seems to be flowing much more easily. Long may it continue.

Since then, I’ve had two slightly out of kilter days in a row: both yesterday and today I’ve done my twenty minutes’ poetry writing (tinkering with ‘The Cherry Tree’ and working on a new/old draft about walking the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path), but not after my morning trigger. Yesterday I made the mistake of opening up my browser – this is a new temptation, only possible if I’m working on a draft on my laptop rather than longhand notes – and that was that, pretty much: twenty minutes of reading twitter instead of writing. Oh well. So I started my lunchbreak with twenty minutes of writing instead (which is why I then didn’t post here). Then this morning I had a lie-in – it is the weekend, after all – and made the decision that I’d do the same again today: I was keen to get out of the house to get on with what I’d planned. Obviously writing later in the day is much better than not writing at all, but I need to be careful not to let this happen too much: part of the strength of a habit is its being anchored in something else that happens every day, no matter what, and I’m still building up my daily poetry-writing muscles. And that morning window is such delicious writing time…

I was going to write about a brilliant (guided) evening walk in Sydenham Hill Wood that I went on on Thursday night, but dinner’s calling me. More on Monday (Sunday is officially no-screen day).

days eight and nine, in memoriam, and Orpheus

I didn’t manage to post yesterday, but rest assured I did write in the morning, after breakfast. I was tired and running late and just feeling a bit like giving up (on everything, not just writing), but like a pro I still did fifteen minutes, and actually felt better for it.

I had some very sad news yesterday. One of my all-time heroes and favourite authors, the philosopher/theologian Dallas Willard, died. I’d found out on Monday evening that he’d been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, and I was actually in the middle of drafting a letter to him, telling him just how much his writing had meant to me over the years, when I found out that it was too late. I worked with him on a book once, and we met twice: both times I was struck – gently overwhelmed, maybe – by his warmth, his gentleness, his wisdom. Someone somewhere online has written that being with him was like standing in a ray of sunshine; what an enormous tribute to the way you carry yourself, the way your life speaks. I can honestly say that Dallas’s books The Divine Conspiracy and Hearing God have changed and shaped my life and thoughts, but more than anything he could have written, I feel it was the totality of his life – the humility and wisdom he radiated – that was the biggest gift he gave the world. Essentially, the beauty of who he was as a person. This was obvious to me from what he wrote, how he spoke, and in the small number of e-mails and two precious conversations we shared. There’s a lovely tribute to him by one of his friends here. A fanfare for one of this world’s truly beautiful makers.

So after that sadness it was good to meet up with the lovely Eleanor to go and see Little Bulb Theatre‘s gorgeous Orpheus at the BAC. It’s a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a thirties Parisian music hall/cabaret style, with Django Reinhardt cast as Orpheus, and it’s just as brilliant (and ridiculous) as that sounds. The first half was fun, but after the intermission things really took off: there were lots of spine-tingling moments, and the scene where Persephone sings (in falsetto – she was played by the male percussionist of the eight-piece ensemble) her plea to Hades to let Eurydice go actually had me sobbing in my seat. (I’m sure the day’s death had something to do with that.) Highly recommended if you’re in London.

Afterwards we had a late supper at one of south London’s finest pizzerias, Donna Margherita. I’d not been in ages, and it was as good as ever. Cold pizza for lunch today!

So, today: yes, I did my writing. (Of course I did; it’s my official writing day, so no excuses are possible.) I had a good long session and I’m *this* close to finishing the horse poem, which is (I think) going to be called, after Ray Bradbury, ‘How to keep and feed a muse’. Hopefully I’ll have it finished by the end of today, as well as some good work done on the new draft, the tree one I mentioned on Saturday, which may turn into some kind of tribute to Dallas. We’ll see.