Quotes

Isn't is annoying that you read a perfect quote somewhere, you even go as far as to make a note of it, then some months later you need the quote and:

1. you can't remember the exact wording of it

2. you can't for the life of you remember where it was you saw it

3. no matter how hard you look you can't seem to find a hint of

4. you begin to imagine you dreamt the whole thing...

that's me this morning!! I know there is a good quote out there, I KNOW I have read it and I can't lay my hands on it at all!!!!

When in doubt ... and the work ain't flowing, what's a girl s'posed to do???

Writing to find out what I know...

...and not to show what I know, was something that my erstwhile heroine and main protagonist, Rebecca West, claimed she did. As usual I cannot put my finger on the direct quote, but today is an exercise in writing to find out what I do actually know.

I sat down at the computer and banged out a couple of hundred words, to add to the couple of hundred sat in an ambiguous draft lurking on my desktop. I then pasted the two pieces together and hashed out a few more sentences.

It's all about breaking the curse of the blinking cursor. There is nothing more intimidating than a blank page! So I now have an exploratory sum of about 1500 words - if I can hash out another 500 print them off and try to organise the thoughts contained into something slightly more coherent than they currently stand then I am doing well. All my books are in my office so I am struggling to locate exact quotes and thoughts - I have so many of both it is like an orgy of parentheses in my head - but the idea is that in free writing I may actually come up with a nexus of ideas that eventually will form a basis for a chapter. Oh I know roughly what the chapter is about, but it's getting that on the page in such a way that I can actually be deemed worthy of a PhD place in one of the most illustrious universities in Britain ...

hmmmmmmm!

Pre-writing Limbo

I am at 'that' stage; you know what I mean, where you have done the research, planned (in your head) the rough draft of the chapter, decided in the main what you want to say, but need to actually start!

Procrastination City!

So what do you do? You sit at the computer, you open up word! Good start you think, word is open! Look at that, a whole, blank, fresh clean white screen with all those little twiddly buttons on the tool bar.

Keyboard ready, notebook to hand, maybe even the web browser has been closed in preparation for the big moment!

So do you start to type, oh no! That would be, well, hasty in the extreme.

Best check facebook! get that up to date and then start writing, otherwise it will keep flickering across your mind all the time!

And then - well update the blog, let all of my one followers know I AM ABOUT TO START WRITING PEOPLE! ... erm person!

Then of course you need an image - no entry is complete without the image is it?

Phone rings, well you have to answer, it might be important.

Telesales - still you never know!

Silence falls, the cursor is blinking ... so now all I have to do is write, right?

......

Achievement

Yeah - today I set out to do something - and I did it!

I had to read a book on Vorticism, not overly long but when you have to absorb the underlying premises and theories and keep them somewhere in your head it can get very tiring!

But I DID IT!!! I am pretty pleased to have got through it - I am almost ready to start writing this next chapter now! Tomorrow recapping and planning it out I think, then a little bit of reading musing and thinking

over the weekend and I shall be hot to trot on M

onday morning- bright and early!!

Moaning, groaning and whinging

... seems to be a public pastime these days - wherever you go or log in to you get a plethora of gripes and grimaces greeting you. Now I know I am the world's worst whinger at times, but I am optimistic, and all the groaning and bellyaching can have a very negative effect on one.

So today I am going to be positively cheerful - the PMA will take precedence and I shall not sit and grumble about my son being sick, my IBS playing up (4 times to the loo and back this morning already!) or the house looking like a shit-tip!

NO!!! NO I say! I will be positive!

I HAVE READ TWO CHAPTERS AND I AM STARTING ON THE THIRD!!!!! Ideas are formulating. My brain is making noises of the intellectual variety and I am in noway daunted by the prospect of applying Worringer's theory of Abstraction and Empathy in art to literary modernism!!! :D

Positivity - that's the word of the day!!!!