Workshops and writing practice

We’re back to a thorny issue. I’m putting together the workshop outline for ‘Grow and Tell’ in September. It includes a memoir exercise, a ‘taste and write’ based on home-made preserves, and a horticultural section on how to preserve, conserve, and otherwise hang on to, your edibles.

So what’s the issue? Daily writing. I do write every day – it’s my job. I don’t write fiction EVERY day, although most days I do, but I do write every day (except Sundays, as I am now learning to have a day off) and it works for me. What doesn’t work (for me) is the daily journaling or free writing process outlined in ‘The Artist’s Way’. I know it does work for many, but I think there’s a significant minority, like me, who discover that if they give their first writing of the day to morning pages, they end up with second-rate later work. On the other hand, the Artistic Date does work for me and is a profoundly important part of my creative practice. Every time I say this though, somebody in the room will huff and mutter as if I am dissing Ms Cameron. I am not. There are no rules. Really, there are no rules. THERE ARE NO RULES.

The Artist’s Way is a brilliant process for those for whom it works. For those for whom it does not work, it’s deeply frustrating to feel that you are the only person who doesn’t ‘get it’. In saying that I am simply stating the experience of one writer – and I just don’t understand why being non-representative in this area is so controversial. If I said I didn’t get heterosexual love (I do) or sushi (I don’t) or baseball (I don’t) or ballet (I do) nobody would be terribly upset. But as soon as I say that while many find morning pages a great creative spur, some, like me, don’t, this susurration of infamy begins somewhere in the room and spreads like a cold breeze.

Hmph. I shall still say it. And I just hope everybody thaws out when we get to the plum curd, blackberry butter and sloe and apple jelly ….

I will always miss what I Havant …

Which is a truly awful pun (or as the great master, Terry Pratchett, is wont to say, pune) but I had to make it, as I shall be in Havant and it was too good an opportunity to waste. Actually, as a writer, I think I have an obligation to pun – it’s definitely in one of the contracts, somewhere, possibly the one I signed in blood when I was a sulky teenager busily failing all my GCSEs (don’t worry if you failed all yours, it’s not your last chance to make anything of your life, despite what teachers have been telling you for months).

Anyway, back to Havant. I shall take some seeds, obviously, to swap or give away or sprinkle on roundabouts like the good fairy of gardening that I am. Maybe some jam … I wonder if the nice folk of Havant would like to do a jam tasting? Or does that sound a bit Women’s Institute? I wouldn’t like to trespass on their territory: the WI enforcers are fearsome!

Perhaps I should turn up in my gardening gear. Although that would seem both a bit arch and rather as if I didn’t value the lovely people who paid for tickets which is not my intention. But if I turn up as me, I always fear I’ll be a disappointment – surely they’re expecting some kind of Percy Thrower with breasts?

The thing is, I never set out to be a writer on things horticultural, and so I don’t have a template for the person who pitches up to talk about Minding My Peas and Cucumbers at events literary and social. It’s all a bit peculiar.

Maybe I should take pumpkins …

Oh lord and blithering hell – where did the last six weeks go?

I’d love to say that I’d been thrashing out some fabulous new piece of novel length fiction but I haven’t. I have been wading through the setting concrete of the umpteenth rewrite of my novel, but that’s not news, in fact it’s the opposite of news.

Rebus has had a serious operation and is disconsolate but that hardly takes up all day every day (it has been taking up quite a bit of the nights, especially when he howls like a coyote, making me sprint down the stairs and open the door of the room he’s settled in, after which he sprints past me, collar and all, up the stairs and throws himself on my bed like an operatic soprano dying onstage at La Scala. Sometimes, by the time I’ve turned off the lights, cursed the book I stubbed my toe on, and made it back to bed myself, he is snoring gently. I’m not sure if that’s genuine or not but either way, it’s deeply annoying) and we did get second place in the ‘Most Creative Allotment’ competition but we only got it today so I can hardly use that as an excuse.

The truth is … I’ve been busy doing nothing. I shall try to be a better blogger. Thank you for listening.