So much for good intentions

I went to my writing workshop on Tuesday - and that was great. But apart from that have to say my writerly intentions have gone the way of so many other good ones. But I can't complain - the week was filled with all sorts of other good excitement - getting great news about bursaries etc for Dan for UCT this year, making a list for Kieran's 16th birthday braai and slowly attacking yet another backlog of work. I started the year with mumps, which left me looking rather (more) jowly and my glands are still a bit swollen. And I still feel tired towards the end of the day. Boring, boring, boring post, but I'm writing it. Let me at least use the space for a syllable poem called a Naga Uta which is supposed to follow the pattern 7/5/7/57/5/7/5/ and end 7/7

Thinking about a Phoenix

Create, recreate
ever thown into the flames
or left in the cold
ash of yesterday's burning.
Such power needed,
to ignite and burn and suck
air from all around.
Or so it feels each time the
force gathers inside,
sits, growls, pushes to be free
to turn a cold world
ablaze in bright heat. And then?
After the fury
of the sudden flare - then what?
Sitting then, waiting
in the grate of lost longings,
thrown out with the trash.
So, would you be a phoenix?
What would make you choose
to envy a bird that burns
to ashes over
over and over again?
Could the plumage be worth this
pilgrimage to death and back?

Not great. I don't like the last two lines. Will have to fiddle.  In the meantime, here's some phoenix fiddling with Photoshop brushes - I love them - and they're so easy to make!

The big day

We've been gearing ourselves towards today for ages. My son, Daniel, is singing in a benefit concert, for a bursary fund of which he is the first recipient. I offered to help (naturally!), and so have learned a lot about the ins and out of organising something like this. So today is going to be busy - getting things set up, making loaves and loaves of bread (my standard when it comes to snacks) and getting him to the hairdresser, a singing lesson, rehearsal with the orchestra and to the concert itself. I'll write more about it tomorrow.

As I mean to continue

I was talking to a friend about blogging the other day - saying that it would be great to use a blog as one would morning pages. Take the time to clear my head of stuff from the night's dreaming, the ups and downs of the day before, mull through work-, family-, writing-related material. Or for that matter, clear my head of all that stuff at the end of the day. But however I use this space, I'll try not to forget my primary motive for setting this blog up - to get  back into the practice of writing on a daily basis. Ideally, from here I would go straight to my writing - spend an hour or so on those pages and then get to the day's paying work ... wouldn't that be nice. But as things stand now I have a ms gnawing at my elbow - it's been sitting to my left for a few days now, waiting for me to start work on it. So let me make headway there, and for now be happy that I have stuck to my promise to write here regularly.

I had fun designing my blog's header last night. I've learned how to make brushes in photoshop - so I used some of those. I love the cool frogtree green that I've chosen. It feels calm and productive. Red can be a bit hectic and somewhat instructional.

In the beginning

I love editing. And I love freelancing. But ... there is a downside. No matter how hard I try, how fervently I swear that it's not going to happen again, I see my own work slipping slowly, gently and inexorably to the bottom of the pile. Below the bottom - it becomes subterranean. I have neglected my writing for so long that I don't know if I'll even be able to blog. I'll be starting writing workshops again next week, and maybe that will give me a kick start. I need it. I have a book to finish but I have been away from it for so long that it sounds as if my characters are calling to me from the bottom of a deep deep well. I need to throw them a rope. I ned to throw myself a rope too. Made of something easy to grip, not the slippery stuff of expectations.

So here's the plan. I'm going to trick myself into believing that I am a writer again - and the way I'll do it is by writing here regularly. Even if it's only 100 words a day - I've just done a word count here and I've written 202. More than I've written for myself in a long time ... I'm not going to write about writing the whole time. I'm just going to promise to write.