Curious lost lines

Brain hurricane season is still present; I have had more ideas in the past few days than I knew what to do with.

This appears to be a long one and I blame it all down to the “Bluewater technique” I spoke about in a previous post.

I really did try to force myself to write something every day whether it’s going to be published or not, whether it’s more than a sentence or not and I got thinking about some very wacky things!

You’ll see them as posts such as “If I were a fairy” or “life of a mermaid” though the latter is due in the first week of June, so you won’t see that just yet.

Somethings I consider unpublishable or are unfinished poems or plays.

I don’t like to leave poems unfinished but it is a habit I am trying to get out of because a book I’ve been reading called “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy says, it is easy to lose a good line, never delete the line when you don’t know where its taking you, store them in a folder called “lost lines” and come back to them later, a poem doesn’t need to be rushed.

So I’ve done that and have accumulated approximately twenty unfinished and would be deleted poems in just a week!

They don’t even have to be poems actually; they could be good prose lines for a short story or a novel.

Who knows where those lost lines will lead us?

There is a whole paragraph which seems exciting, but I don’t know why yet.  But it’s very intriguing and it’s called “The Masters of Dream”.

I haven’t been able to add more to it yet, because in all honesty I was busy with other things today and working on those things with a raging head and ear ache.

But I could not ignore that paragraph, which started like that.

I hope I have time tomorrow to think about it and see what this is!

Thanks for reading!

First brain hurricane season of 2023

I think its “Brain Hurricane” season again, this week there has been lots of new fresh ideas for things and I have started some new stuff, whilst working on my current projects too!

This hurricane season started around the 13^th May 2023, I never know how long it’s going to last or what will survive the storm, but I hope I get as many of these ideas finished as quickly as possible nonetheless!

So far the storm has given me a dark cabaret play, a children’s series with art ideas for making a new toy brand and some better ideas for old projects such as one of my ghost stories.  It has also reignited my interest in a project I abandoned eighteen years ago about a boy addicted to video games.

But mostly this storm has given me a lot of ideas for art projects to make my art brand more recognisable with its own characters.  One such character is a type of rag doll, based on an old story I gave up years ago – talking of which, this doll’s story is also in revival.

Now I was beginning to panic about how this will affect my current main work, Project AD but it turned out to be assisting me with that, which is highly irregular for brain hurricanes! 

This storm is actually helping me think of art pieces for the characters of that project too and they look more original in my mind – the thing is though, I am not a particularly good artist, so there are a lot of art practises that needs to be done!  But I believe I have found a style I want to work with and that excites me a lot!

So that’s the general work update right now.

Thanks for reading!

A dark cabaret play

Insomnia is something I’ve lived with for a long time; I have always been a night owl.

But recently my brain had decided the best hours to concentrate on anything is between 3am and 6am every morning, which to say the least is unsociable and inconvenient – had I lived in Alaska and working on the British time zone, it would be more bearable but I don’t.

My brain seems to think it lives somewhere in the West of Canada or America for some reason and has since I was a teenager!

I’ve never been there, so I don’t know why it’s clocked for it.

Anyway, last night was the worst because my brain kept me up until 8:45am – why?  Because around 6am it decided now is the perfect time to a turn a poem I’ve been working on into a play and I wrote nearly six hundred words to it before I decided I was starting to hallucinate!

So, yet again, my brain has decided only to have let me sleep for ten hours in the past two days all told, five hours is all I am getting lately in a night on average.

I think I am surviving because as I daydream I zone out and sort of go into a meditative state of stasis throughout the day, if it hadn’t of been for that habit I think I would have cracked by now!

The play is a dark cabaret, mild horror in my opinion, poetic and I am not going to share the plot here – but there are only five characters in the whole thing.  I know the beginning, middle and end and there are songs in my head I will eventually write for it and being as I know nothing about choreography I may have to collaborate with someone for that if anyone is interested in helping it go to stage someday?

It needs to be written first though.

But yes, this is not my first foray into writing a play, I’ve done it a lot in the past but most plays ended up being destroyed as I lost confidence with it.  Though some others did survive but goodness knows where they are now, finding anything in this house is like a quest for The Holy Grail!

I didn’t plan for this to happen, my brain just did it.

I could have done without the extra work, but there you go.

I am going to write it as it calls me, like I do all my things and I am living in the hope that it will be complete within the month, but like always, I won’t hold my breath!

I wasn’t even supposed to be writing anything other than poetry for the blog this morning, so it was a total surprise for me.

Funny old brain of mine!

Thanks for reading!

My creative process

Since 2017 the idea of me getting out of bed and being eager to write anything towards a novel first thing has been a laughable notion; I used to be like that every day, but not since then.

Before September 2022 I would write approximately 1500 to 3k words a time, approximately 3 times a week sometimes more, but since September that too has been a laughable notion.

Yet there it is, several times this week I have done some creative work almost daily, though mostly drawing, but today was different.

I woke up with the enthusiasm to write and I wrote for nearly two hours and although it was only just under 2k words in that time, painfully slow in comparison to past efforts – it made me feel accomplished in some way and that perhaps I am getting my mojo back again?

Though the story I wrote towards was a project known here as Steampunk 2, I haven’t thought about this story for a long time, in fact it was last mentioned in a post here dated 3^rd July 2022 and that was probably the last time I did any thinking about it!

I have no idea why I woke up and immediately thought about that project, usually ideas stew in my mind for days before I get around writing things down, but not today – this was an instant!

I am still unsure why, but it doesn’t matter – the thing is, I did it!  I wrote like how I used to years ago, woke up with energy and enthusiasm to do so and I did it!

I think the idea of forcing myself to concentrate on a particular project just because, could be the reason why I may not want to write it.  I have pressurised myself and before I moved out of my parents’ house, I never did that.  I never pressured myself into saying oh well; I have written five chapters to project such and such I must do so again tomorrow!  I never did that, I skipped from one thing to another quite merrily and was very productive back then!

I think I’ve been too influenced by the scientific and orderly mind of Paul in this regard, because he has been the one to convince me to only concentrate on one maybe three projects a time, not all seventy odd!

So I kind of developed an element of guilt behind it wanting to write outside my planned five main projects.

I decided three wasn’t enough for me, I needed five.  That didn’t make me anymore productive either.

So, now I am going back to the idea that any work on any day is good work as it is towards something – no work in one day because  I don’t want to focus on one of five ideas is unacceptable to me.

You know what?  Last week I wanted to start writing towards a horror story that’s been in my head for two years and I didn’t knuckle down to do it, because it wasn’t my main five projects.  I had this guilt complex of writing towards that story, because I should be working on ABCD or E – you get the idea?

So I spent just 45 minutes half-heartedly writing towards project AD and the quality in my work was terrible!  In fact I feel like deleting last week’s work!

But if I had of written towards that horror I know I would have got 2 or even 3k done that day, because there were a few things I wanted to write about in that story and I was in the mood for it. 

Guilt stopped me.

I am being disloyal to my main five projects I felt!

Pah!

I am not going to do this anymore!

I believe the universe was talking to me directly tonight because I was reading a book called “Tate – brief lessons in creativity” and they reckon that every creative has their own process and when they deviate from it, they become naff or blocked.  It’s not 100% quoted accurately, but the gist is there!

Today I decided to do whatever I feel like from now onwards and today has been the most productive writing day I’ve had since 2017 in my opinion!

I noticed my poetry is becoming difficult for me, because I am trying to push myself to create at least one poem a day to keep the blog alive.  But that’s not working anymore for me!

I am putting myself into a poetry block mind-set and my creative brain is rebelling by thinking about other things – like art where I don’t restrict myself and I have even caught myself dancing and moving my body more and doing wacky things (which is normal for me anyway) only I think about random lyrical lines I am making up as I go along but it’s all freestyle and unrecorded.  Then I realised, it’s a kind of performance art this! 

Once again I felt the universe was talking to me, because it was at this time I saw an advertisement for a performance art show being performed at The Belgrade theatre called “Drive your plow over the bones of the dead”; where it is apparently dance, poetry, acting and all sorts of things in one show.  I don’t know much about it, but it kind of spoke to me and I would like to see the show some day – though I probably won’t get the opportunity to! 

My brain doesn’t like limitations, so it’s removing me from what it sees as harmful creative pursuits and setting me free in others I don’t overthink too much!

When I start overthinking and when I start making rules, I block those pursuits too… I think I am learning a lot about myself lately!

There are many things I would like to write for my blog but I worry about how chaotic it may appear to my readers.

Abstract thoughts, descriptions, no real story, no real poetry either;  just words thrown together almost lyrically with descriptions of random acts and I sit back and wonder – what am I doing?  What is this called?  Overthinking again… then I block myself and I delete what I have done because I become embarrassed.

It’s odd, nobody will get it, I think to myself.

This is the true reason behind my procrastination – the reality is, I am doing things but I am destroying them no soon as I have done them, because I think the world will find it strange or unfathomable.

Like I have lost my mind and lost in thought and dribbling on with different words, to the extent I appear to be talking gobbledygook and as though I’ve lost the plot entirely… men in white coats will be coming for you soon – echoes Paul, who also doesn’t really grasp what I do at times!  But then again, he doesn’t grasp creative people as a whole, does he?  Being a scientist and all that!

Then I think – what the heck… should I take a risk and publish it?

I never really know for sure… but I think I will risk it soon!

Thanks for reading!

New horror project

I was struggling to get into a creative mind-set today and so I decided to try and awaken my creative brain, only to regret the result!

Three minutes into warming my creative brain up via fantasy pictures on Pinterest, it made me revisit a project I haven’t touched since Easter 2022, after brainstorming for that project I decided to go and eat some lunch.

A toasted scrambled egg bagel and a banana to be precise – not that you’re interested!

Whilst eating the lunch I looked up and saw something on TV “They killed a man’s best friend” and it set off an idea in my head – I hate stories where dogs are killed, but this is unfortunately going to be part of the new project and that’s going to be a difficult write up – but it gives us the catalyst for what’s to come in the story and it’s a much needed one that is justifiable!

Just that simple thing gave me a dark fantasy or maybe a horror idea which is fast flowing in my head – this has pissed me off because I did the creative warm up for my at least one of my current top three projects only for me to be interested at first with the fourth project and a completely new idea!

A horror one to boot!

Going back into horror it seems, well to be honest, it never really left me!

I am still doing the cat ghost story and a bunch of other stuff!

Yes, I haven’t abandoned the cat story S.

So this makes this story code name “Dog story”.

Thanks for reading!

Precious time

For the past few weeks my brain has been more than just a tad topsy-turvy. 

I have been suffering from insomnia for years but since around November my insomnia has got far worse, sleeping an average of just four hours a day and it really is day time sleeping too – often getting to sleep around 8am to wake up around noon.

It feels so alien and wrong to me, I have never been one who likes to sleep and I have never been one who accepts people who sleep-in; I am one of those people who generally have little respect for people who sleep in bed past 10am (even on a Sunday)and here I am, doing just that!  In fact, before I got sick, I was disgusted by people who couldn’t get out of bed by 8:30am!

But there you go, things change and not always for the better!

For me it is inconvenient to be asleep during the day because Henry is at school and whilst I am fighting with my insomnia and sleeping whilst he is at school it means I am practically getting nothing done at all for weeks now!

No reading, hardly much writing, no art yet, listening to music, not much meditation or conversation, not much of anything. 

When I am awake I am tired to the extent of feeling faint most of the time that all I am able to do is sit and stare and try to maintain consciousness.

So if the quality of the writing in my blog has been really bad lately, you now know why!

Last night was an exception for me considering these past few weeks, I managed to get to sleep by 2:30am and wake up around 10am, which is amazing considering what’s happened sleep wise for the past two months!

I’ve done more in these three hours today, than I have for the whole of last week!

If anybody out there knows me, they know that one thing I can’t stand more than sleepy heads, is people who waste their time by choosing to do nothing!

I have a huge intolerance for time wasting, unless it’s purely for relaxation, recuperation or fun!

I am easily frustrated by myself if I find I am not being productive in at least something – it doesn’t have to consistently be the same one thing, as long as I am being productive in something!  Such as cleaning, reading, honing a skill, writing, socialising, exercising, bonding with a pet, gardening or keeping my brain sharp with a strategy or puzzle game.  Anything which doesn’t contribute to some kind of betterment in the future, or productivity is a waste of time!  Unless as I have said, it is for fun or recuperation – this is where TV and music comes into play for me.

Because for me, the TV and music can be very productive, even though I might just be sitting and watching or sitting and listening, because not only am I relaxing and having fun, it adds to the stimulus for ideas to be creatively productive in the future or a form of research – this is something non creative people can never understand!

Though even watching TV these days is a task not worth fighting for as I can never watch anything in full without being disturbed or someone randomly coming over and turning the channel without asking if I am watching it and to fight to keep it on is not worth it and too much energy!  I live with selfish people who don’t care and are stronger minded than I am, so they walk all over me! 

The idea of sitting down and doing nothing in a brainless manner, even for relaxation has never really made sense to me; Paul does it all the time, he sits down sometimes for hours and I ask him what he is thinking about and it is always the same answer “nothing”, I don’t get it!

Even when I meditate I never go into that state of “no mind” so I suppose then by meditation standards I am doing it all wrong?  But I just can’t seem to grip the state of “no mind” relaxation.  For me, when I relax I suppose it’s a sort of astral travel?  I am wondering round in the throes of my mind in forests, having conversations with people, thinking deeply about anything and often find myself doing the things in my head that I would like to do physically if only!

When I was bedbound sick, you have no idea how crazy it made me just sitting in bed all day every day for so many years just existing as it appeared to me to just suffer!

I exist purely for germs, was my everyday thought – to give life to infectious little bugs as a host and nothing more.  As dramatic as it seems, that’s how I felt!

Sickness, procrastination and doing nothing, is highly inconvenient for me – as is sleep, going to the toilet and travelling in a car, because of the little activities I can do during those times!  Time wasting, can’t stand it!

Yet I’ve done it so much over the past eight years whilst recuperating from ill-health and you have no idea how much guilt I put on myself for it either!

The only time that time wasting is ok for me, is in pleasurable pursuits, then I can waste lots of time doing those things!  I am a hedonist after all! 

But yes, time wasting is my biggest frustration in life and the idea that my health and now insomnia is getting in the way of so much I want to do, life is short as well – is there any wonder why I am often finding myself suicidal?

I wasn’t suicidal before I got sick, in fact I used to be scared of death – but since being ill and lonely, I often crave it now, in fact some days, on bad days, I want to run towards it!

It’s a huge contrast to how I used to be when I lived with my mother, I wanted to be immortal, wanted to become rich enough to invest in discovering the immortal elixir of life and silly ideas like that!

Rich enough to put in research to life extending sciences!

It’s funny now how I don’t think this way anymore, how I just want to fade away because my body insists on being a time wasting shit head, a bum – I don’t like being a bum – don’t respect bums and hate being one, but I am one and you have no idea how much I loathe it and I am fighting against the odds to stop being one!

But the thing is, there is only so much you can do with four hours sleep and a compromised immune system and an NHS system that constantly fails to support you and poverty to boot!

There comes a time when you think about just giving up…

It’s exhausting trying to fight for the little freedoms of everyday life which almost everyone else seems to take for granted!

Those little things other people take for granted, are just mere dreams to me right now.

Thanks for reading!

Brain hurricane season

It’s what time of year again, a time I call “Brain Hurricane Season”.

What is Brain Hurricane Season?

Brain hurricane season happens approximately twice a year for three weeks and inundates me with new story ideas that I have to plan out; but they come so fast I often have to pause current projects and oftentimes I never get to write all the stories I dream up!

The catalyst for this brain hurricane season was an idea I had for Marvel, thanks to discussion Henry’s friends had about Iron Man.  Can he be saved or not?  Is there hope?  I did some research but not much, only about four hours and I have got side-tracked by other things.  But still, interesting stuff nonetheless.  I need to get watching the last two movies though to fully understand what the kids are on about.

Anyway, the kids moved on and now they’re talking about three or four other Marvel movies, such as hearing rumours that Tom Hardy is giving up Venom, is that true?  I did some research and it doesn’t appear to be!  We’re big Venom fans here in this house, it is a recent movie that made us cry laughing – it was so funny!

So I can blame this little bit of research and playground gossip on being the catalysts for my brain hurricane season.

Turns out some of the new ideas are connecting to a current project; my so-called standalone Christmas novel is now going to be part of a small series, hence why subconsciously I have been holding off it for a while.  I thought it was just Christmas music as to why I couldn’t write it.

For some reason or another, the Christmas novel is going to contain poems and songs and is going to be connected to another story about Candyland and The Easter Bunny.  This idea was brand new on the 16th October 2022 and will be known as my Easter Project.

I think another catalyst to all this is the fact that Henry and I realised we listen to a lot of songs related to candies and chocolates and so we created a playlist last month called “Candy” on our only luxury, Amazon music.  It’s funny what the brain does when you listen to certain types of music!

Henry is excited by my new plans as he loves movies about candies and anything Willy Wonka related, he just loves food that kid!  But put it in a dream world where you are having adventures it gets him all excited, but my Henry is ever the businessman – he said to me “ma, think of the merchandise”, oh yes, he is already acting like my manager!  I just wish he would let me write!

I have also decided that although I love writing horror, I want to downplay the gore and darkness of it to make them into family friendly Halloween style stories, as I have decided to focus mostly on family entertainment more than just doing whatever I feel like doing at the time.

I sat back and thought the other day about what kinds of responses from fans will I enjoy the most?  I thought, I love kids, the kids of the world mean everything to me and I am most likely to respond to a child in full if they ran up to me.

Then I had the idea of, wouldn’t it be cool if I became a bestseller and I had mini merchandise toys in my handbag of the characters I wrote and handed them to a kid who recognised me on an off chance?

Thanks to Henry I am thinking about the other business behind writing, not just the book sales now.  Good to think big I suppose?

So I decided, well then, that settles that, I am writing for family entertainment with kids in mind and my inner child has been singing about it all day!

It means I can be more light-hearted and playful and I love seeing kids laugh! 

My inner child has also been insisting that I revert back to being a nine year old but I told it, OK, on some conditions… we don’t eat like we did when we were nine years old and we don’t laugh hysterically in people’s faces when we are nervous and put on a show for them and then hide behind the sofa because you forgot your senses and realised what a nitwit you made yourself out to be!

My inner child nearly cried, I was too harsh to it, so that’s why I said sorry to it and gave it 4 individual jelly babies to make up – she wants the whole bag, I said no, she cries and I am trying to ignore it – it’s for her own good!

I am not saying I can give up horror for good though, adult horror that is, because it’s a major part of me – but it’s just not as big as it used to be in my heart anymore as I am healing a lot of my darkness lately.

All I really want in life now onwards is light hearted fun, lots of love, good friends and a comfortable home, health would go a long way too – but hey, I am working on it!

There is a children’s picture book series brewing in my head too, for kindergarten age.  It’s about a friendly community of monsters that are friends with each other. 

Another story is about an angel who decides to become interviewed by a chat show.

So many new things coming to me and this is only the start of the Brain Hurricane Season, I still have two weeks to ride out, if this is a normal storm!

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but there are lots of problems in the family right now where I can’t concentrate on more than a paragraph or two per day; so this year I am just not going to bother.

I really wanted a project completed by now, but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.

To be perfectly honest, I am losing hope to do anything creative these days as I am simply not allowed the time to myself to do anything.

I can’t rely on working on anything whilst Henry is at school, because at any moment Henry is sent home early in the day and I lose my flow.  He is being sent home as often as twice a week!

Since Henry overheard the school suggesting he has an autism assessment, Henry seems to have taken it upon himself to emotionally play up all the more, like he enjoys the attention he is getting about it.  Henry is really play acting towards the teachers concerns and I have told him, this is a dangerous game for his life long-term, but he thinks it’s all a game!

I suggested to Paul he is only doing this so he can be sent home from school to create his robots all day long and play for twelve hours a day on that darn laptop of his!  When he is sent home from school, we should ban him from TV, laptop and his robots until his proper home time comes.  But then Henry plays the suicide card and Paul relents and lets him have the things!

Then I hear the arguments and screams between the two of them because they are getting in each other’s way, and Paul can’t move around the house because of the mess Henry is causing!  I try my best to help, but every time I open my mouth it just fuels the fire in the both of them! 

I tried to take myself upstairs to my bedroom to write upstairs, but they shout so loudly to one another so often, it’s hard to drown them out unless I put earphones on and I don’t like to do that because of increased ear infections. 

I am dying of embarrassment because neighbours walk cautiously past the house, staring at it because of the hysterical screaming that goes on consistently.  I tell them about it, but Paul and Henry are so self-absorbed, they just don’t really care. 

I hate this kind of environment, it doesn’t help my PTSD at all, in fact I am often drained and can’t eat because of the stress of it all, because a lot of the huge arguments are at dinnertime at the dining table and nobody can eat when this goes on! 

I don’t wear my hearing aid when Henry is home, because to be perfectly honest I don’t need it – that’s how loud things are here as soon as he gets home.  Besides, there are times Henry will randomly screech loudly for the slightest thing and it blooming hurts if I have it in my ear at the time!  I even lost hearing a couple of years back where Henry did a screech so loud my ear bled, found out I had a perforation over it!  Henry was two feet from me at the time! 

This is what I am living with.  It’s not excuses to not working, you have to be here to experience it for yourself, because I am telling you, it’s constant!

I do most of my blog posts when they are all in bed at night; this means my sleeping pattern is badly out of sync for a healthy and social lifestyle.  My sleeping hours are anything between 3am and 1pm depends on the day!  Mostly its 4am to 10am, not enough I know, but what else can I do?

I rarely watch TV as nobody respects the fact I want to watch something, reading is getting less and less for the same reason – practising art is almost non-existent, my meditations are slowly going out of the window… it’s tough to have a decent life here on any level!  Even when I am asleep, from 7am until I wake up, someone checks in on me every 45 minutes waking me up, so it’s not even undisturbed sleep.

Lately Henry’s behaviour has been so bad, that I have often forgotten to take my meds because he has been so demanding! 

Anyway, just a heads up about why I can’t finish things.  Never used to be this way! 

Happy reading! 

The workings of my brain

So I demanded room for my writing in the house, away from all of the noise and I have won; I have said this before, but I am proud of this little victory, it means a lot to me and my writing.

I have made peace with my body too, I am no longer trying to control its habit of dominating me but now working along with it, going with the flow; I’ve learned to go with the flow because my Chinese astrological sign is the water dog, when I go against the flow I get into all sorts of problems.

So instead of forcing my body and mind to do things it doesn’t want to do, I have decided to see what my body wants from me instead. 

So, when my brain is most likely to be active creatively, instead of forcing myself to stay asleep or go to bed at a semi-reasonable time; I have decided to let my brain do what it needs to do in order to get things done. 

Doing things this way has proven that I am losing the habit of procrastination, because I am not using up my energy fighting against my flow.

This is all well and good, but when I have deadlines to fulfil for my publishers in the future, how will I fare then?  My brain has to get used to the idea of doing some things it doesn’t like at times that might not be suitable for it.

So far this week I have started to write as soon as Paul goes to bed, this is the best time for me, because once Paul is in bed, the whole household is still and quiet – except for me, I look like a ferocious grim reaper tapping away at night in dim light with the strange gnarls of steampunk in the background.

It is autumn and I am getting cold in the night, so I am wearing hooded navy blue fleece pyjamas, with the hood up and a hot water bottle stuffed up my vest.

A grim reaper using Morse code to contact the dead or at least that’s what comes to my mind when I see myself in the mirror as I glance up.

Half in my bed with a little adjustable table, typing away; with ten books at the foot of my bed and a note pad, chamomile or green tea at the side table and the sound of a windy steampunk world all around me; it is as cosy as it sounds, or weird, whatever your persuasion.

I love my space.

I fought hard for this space and it is pretty here, the best room in the house.

I have a trio of different coleus plants in a huge pot in the window with a crystal hanging down at the centre catching rainbows to throw at me as I work during the day; because sometimes I do write during the day, usually around 1pm to 3pm as that’s the quietest time of day for me when Henry is at school and lunch is done.

I have my purple fleece blanket, my Alice in Wonderland and dragon collection all around me – to see my bedroom you’d think I was a teenager; you know, that girl from the movie Labyrinth Sarah? My room is like a homage to the movie, with the Brian Froud artwork here and there and the amount of fair folk and goblin books I have in the room, you wouldn’t know I am forty tomorrow.

Yes, I am forty tomorrow.

So that’s when my life is going to start, I’ve always planned it.

Just because tomorrow I will be forty and my life starts doesn’t mean I will grow up however, I will never grow up and you can’t make me!  I will still keep my strange and dorky childish things and I will still lack a sense of responsibility and I will always need a daddy figure in my life.

I won’t change that about me, it’s something I made peace with a long time ago and it is the thing about me that I am most proud of, more proud than any of my accomplishments to date.

Strange I know, but at least I know who I am and who I want to be in the future.

I didn’t choose to lock away my childishness because it didn’t suit other adults around me, I didn’t choose to lie to myself and regret it for the rest of my life.

I chose to be me, the best and most honest version of myself possible.

But I digress.

My post was about what my brain gets up to, or at least that’s what I think this post is about?

My brain is the most creative between 8pm and 6am, but I tended to try and relax with books or YouTube from midnight until I sleep around 3am, just because it’s more reasonable than sleeping at 6am.

So I thought, OK, give into the brain and work as soon as Paul goes to bed at 10:30/11pm and write until 6am, but get this… my brain works only until around 2am before it actually decides it is sleepy now.  It never does that.

In giving into my brains demands, I am now sleeping three or four hours earlier than when I chose to ignore it – are you baffled by this?  I know I am!

Though saying that, twice this week I have woken up because my brain had a random idea I had to write down – but ultimately, I am sleeping earlier and longer.

My brain is a funny old thing.

You know if something is complicated I will breeze through it, if it’s easy I fail.

Take eggs on toast for example, I burn the toast and break the egg yolk with egg shell in it, but make me do cakes, soufflés, pies and whatever I am a champion in the kitchen!

I am the same with sawing wood, it takes me twenty minutes to cut an inch into the wood with a saw, but I can carve any piece of wood into a pretty statue if you give me a whittling knife!

Don’t ask, because even I don’t get it.

Well, there you are an introduction to the ways and habits of my brain – I hope you enjoyed the somewhat weird insight.

Thanks for reading!

Stifled writing and a look into my brain! (WARNING – it is not for the faint-hearted)

People who write can often get bogged down with the concept of finding that great idea which will earn them money and quite often when they do this, they lose themselves and in some cases, even lose the love for writing itself.

I am at fault of doing this as much as anyone, particularly in the past five years, this is because financially I am suffering to the extent that birthdays and Christmases have been disappointing and not as traditional as I am accustomed to.  In fact recently I found an old Christmas shopping list, which included food, presents, games and décor and basic normal food to last for two weeks over the festive period so we can focus on more family time and that list was five pages long with two sections on each page; this year it was only 3 pages long with only one section as when I write in an excited state, my letters get bigger than my usual handwriting – which is a bizarre idiosyncrasy that I have.  My lists are quite methodical, I will list food from Tesco, Food from ASDA and food from other places separately within the list; I will list where to buy certain presents too and for whom, which shops, so we kind of plan a shopping map in our minds whenever we go to town.  Along with this list will be a separate length of what kinds of decorations or traditional Christmas stuff we need, such as crackers from B&M and purple bauble at Wilko, you get the idea?  We usually do a massive buffet on an old pasting table in our living room and fill it to the brim with food and drinks as well as the coffee table, because Christmas Eve is the only time in the year where we can guarantee an influx of visitors and we like to feed them – this year it is a no go and I am embarrassed that this may come across as too inhospitable compared to what they are used to, as everyone usually got a bag of food to take with them either for snacks at home that night or jars of homemade stuff, which we just can’t afford to do this year.

I hate pleading poverty, but lately it is getting me to a state of breaking down.  I went for advice on my ESA benefits two weeks ago to a lady who is very kind and runs a charity, I was so embarrassed detailing my struggles to her as she was helping me fill out the forms that I was shaking and my teeth were chattering so badly with the humiliation of it all.  She thought I was freezing cold, but I told her, it’s just that I am so embarrassed by it all and she said that it was OK, but it really isn’t though is it?

Usually I am very good at being calm and self-composed, despite anxiety issues, but lately I just can’t keep it together, I am struggling to hide behind a façade like my normal self would.  Most people can’t tell that I have anxiety issues because I masked it so well, but lately I break out in tears over the smallest of things and what is worse is that I am getting short tempered with it, with people I feel are cold or unfeeling and I have this awful feeling that I will say something out of character at my next medical which will make me lose the benefit.  I am very scared about it.

If I could get a job I would, but no one is going to employ someone with the health issues I have.  I did struggle a few years to get a job, before it got too bad seven years ago.  All of this makes me try to push myself to create something just to get out of this mess, but it isn’t working, it is stunting my creative growth badly because I am not writing what I really want anymore.  I am writing the lesser ideas I have which are the most popular amongst my nearest and dearest and unfortunately what I love to write about, they hate immensely.

What I like writing about are dystopian stories similar to Mad Max, I am Legend and Tank Girl.  I enjoy writing about vampires and their sired offspring as I call them and histories as a massive saga dating back to the Ancient Sumerians and contemporary times too, how they live and how they lost loved ones.  I enjoy writing inane pun infested comedy fantasies where you meet mermaids and trolls with a very Monty Python meets Discworld air to them and I enjoy writing horror that touches taboo subjects.

According to those who are in the know, the only type of book up there I have mentioned that they can barely stomach is the comedy fantasy, not my main love of in depth vampire soap operas and dystopian tribal warfare.

Yes I love my fantasy comedies, but whenever I discuss my writing with those who are privy to them, they always get more excited about any updates on that genre than anything else and I feel if I don’t write this genre more than the others, I am failing to please this specific audience.  I am one of these people who find it really hard to talk to people about my work, those I do are precious to my motivation, if I don’t talk about my work, I can’t do the work.  But unfortunately my discussion circle seems far too niche and not entirely me.

I used to mix and mingle my genres a lot and had a wider circle I trusted to talk about them to, usually as dinner party discussions but since moving to Warwickshire, I don’t have that anymore.  London is a very different place, with very different people with mind-sets very different to Rugby’s.

I have mentioned vampires and horror to people up here I thought I could trust with my writing, but they recoil or give sideways glances to those next to them and simply state “Oh, right, not my cup of tea really”; Then I share my fantasy comedy ideas and they feel that fantasy is strictly for children, surely I should write something nicer for them?  Not drunken elves and mermaids who rip eyes out and swear profusely with such corny puns as well!

Apparently my personality must reflect my work and because I don’t lark around like some tomfool jokester all the time and I seem a pretty calm deadpan person in real life, I can’t be taken seriously in comedy surely?  Won’t I come across as some kind of fake?

Now that hurts, but it has been said to me before and I find it amusing that comedy must be serious… really?  I wonder how we all laugh at serious comedy!  Should we laugh at flippant tragedy then?  I don’t know what kind of world I have tripped into a hole of, but it is certainly quite different here to where I am from, I can tell you!

I think if I was to walk up to my favourite British comedian of today and say “Darling, you are not taking your comedy seriously” he would choke laughing and crying at how stupid that sounds.

*passes a dictionary to said people and points to the word “comedy” for reference*

So, though I am currently in quandary over my work, my main quander is this – “how can I develop a trusting relationship with people online so that they can become my beta readers and I can learn to trust the online community with my plans and outlines”? 

I’m not sure I can.  I am very protective of what I share with people because I have often had entire ideas stolen and published behind my back and that someone became very successful with my ideas and have not produced work since I eliminated them from my social circle a decade ago.

I have thought that maybe signing up to a free creative writing course with the OU would help me discuss work and improve my skills with an online tutor?  But not sure if that is really what I want – improved skills are always good, but not sure if I want straight laced professional opinions which are bias regardless of genre and content.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about just writing whatever, whenever and go back to my scatty ways that were long lost a decade ago.  Paul tried to organise me too much I think?  Tried to get me to focus too much that I lost my way; I don’t really have a way.  I am higgledy-piggledy and mentally a mess when creating.  Paul often said if a hypnotist was to delve into my mind for just five minutes he would run out of the room screaming “get me out here, she is completely insane, she is such a mess, she is so confusing, help me, help me…. And oh, pass the paracetamol that gave me a headache!”

Why the drama?  Because I will have seven documents up at the same time, one is a horror about a cat, two are vampire novels concentrating on two entirely different characters, one is a comedy fantasy with tiny people, and one is a dystopian story based on a religious concept of the apocalypse and angels, the other document is writing notes to eventually put into any work in the future, along with research papers and notes, scribbled papers and notes off the computer, and Wikipedia up on the internet with another internet page looking for the history of Thracian warfare.  If that is not enough, I am also meddling with playlists on Amazon music flipping through them depending on which scene and novel I am working on in those few seconds, whilst daydreaming about food and what it might be like if I was the size of a peanut in my garden.

You get the idea?  That’s my brain in just five minutes.

I am like the dog who is in the garden playing fetch with you then all of a sudden I have ran away chasing squirrels, then coming back to you wondering where the ball is and oh look sausages!

With a mind like mine, it has been said by people before – is there any reason to wonder if I will ever find it possible to get anything finished?

I pass them some books I have indeed already finished and I do so quite proudly.  Then I announce, they are not for sale, they are not edited and they are not good enough.  The person looks through them, finds they do indeed need editing but are absolutely wonderful, why not publish them? 

Because they are mine!  Then I grab the books and hug them close to me with a snarl!

I am like this even with the art I paint too.

Thing is, there are ideas I do want to sell.  But I am scared that those private stories reveal too much about my inner workings.

I feel psychologically exposed, basically.  It brings about the kind of feeling in which I can only sit back and think, it would be better to be physically nakedly exposed than that, then Paul tells me to stop being weird and dramatic!

Writers block and brain food

A debate today on twitter has been whether or not “Writers Block” exists or not?  My two cents on the matter is that writers block does not exist, I used to believe it did but then as I grew as a writer I learned that it was purely laziness on my part and the simple fact that I rarely thought outside of The Box.  I was also very nervous about how much of what I wanted to write has been done before and how little my stories represented “Original” ideas. 

The latter is laughable to me nowadays, because every idea in the present and the future has already been done somewhere, nothing is unique, but you need to understand that every human being is unique and therefore will have a unique take on a story already written.  For example, if a hundred writers had to write a story based on Alice in Wonderland every one of them would have a different stance to it.  Some would suggest that Alice was a drug addict hallucinating everything that had happened to her, another writer would believe that she had multiple personality disorder and that every other character who was not Alice was in fact her alter egos.  Another, would write the story as close to the original as possible, but even then there will be differences, some will make it dark humour, some will make it serious, some will throw in too much drama and one might make Alice a man from a rock band who got kidnapped and taken to an alien world and so on and so on. 

Now that has me thinking, wouldn’t that last idea be great?  Aliens kidnapping Alice Cooper, taking him to Wonderland another planet, but you see I can’t do that because of so many copyright laws, but it is a fun idea to play with in my mind or as a fan fic.

I can play with ideas like this all day long in any situation.  The problem for me is that I have too many ideas and I can struggle to decide which one to play with at the time.  I have got to the stage where I have selected five current novels I am working on and having to use random.org to help me choose which one to work on today?  I literally list and number my ideas like a maniac.  I even have a random scene list which is also numbered to help me fill in boring bits of my story or to prevent boring bits from occurring.  If I don’t know what I should do in the next scene, I use random.org and my lists to help me.  Each list is categorised.  It doesn’t sound very artistic, usually artists and writers are disorganised and free thinking, but I do organise my stuff like this a lot.  Granted I lose lists a lot, but I am getting better at keeping them in their place lately.

The idea of writers block is unfathomable to me in recent years.  I have learned if you constantly read and learn and if you make yourself look for art of what you are looking for, poetry etc, you will become inspired and if you do this daily as part of your routine, your mind will eventually throw things out at you.  Don’t ignore “brain farts” as I call them either – things such as…

I was reading a book about ancient Sumerian beliefs and I came across the title chapter called “The creation of man” I misread it as “The Cremation of man”.  This can spark interesting ideas if you don’t ignore it.

You’ve got to constantly stuff things into your brain daily, furiously, eventually your mind can switch into creator mode with little or no effort.  Try it.

Do this… 

Think of silver dragons and go to deviant art, flick through the pictures you first see in their search bar that says “Silver Dragons”, do this for 5 minutes, then go to pinterest and do that there again for around 5 minutes, just flick through pictures quickly, you don’t have to look at anything individually, just literally look them over, notice each different scene and do it at quick speed, you are not there for research, you are not there to steal, you are there to feed your mind and it is a hungry monster than doesn’t stop!  No idea is stupid, no idea is pathetic, if you get an idea whilst flowing like this, write it down because you’d be amazed how quickly these things pass through, it can be like being on a high speed train and you are trying to keep focused on a particular field you’ve just gone past!  Then search silver dragon poetry in google, or silver dragon songs, or silver dragon art in your search engines or snap chat or tumblr or anywhere that is likely to have a search option!

Do this with scenes or creatures or events you want to write about.  Writers block is just an excuse for lazy writers.  Don’t be a lazy writer.  If you don’t love playing with your mind and feeding it like this and you find writing hard work, then you can’t be a writer.  Because writers don’t work, they play and they do this every single day.  Some scenes are hard but the writing is never stressful or hard work because you love it and if you love something, it can’t ever be hard work!  Don’t keep chasing the money either by looking for things that are trending, because trends change exceedingly fast, as soon as you write about what is trending now you are already out of date by 30k words.  Play and write for you and read a lot of books; not just fiction books on the genres you like, read broadly, especially non-fiction because that can help you world build.