This last month I’ve treated myself to some dedicated *me* time – some time to write for the pure pleasure of writing. Most of my time is spent putting my lipstick on other people’s word-collars, leaving perfume on their punctuation-pillows and generally playing around with other people’s texts. While my brain wishes longingly to just roam freely across its landscapes, creating for itself, I can rarely allow it such liberty.
Two purposes meant that my creativity was allowed out to play: firstly my application to do an MA in professional writing, for which I have my interview after Easter; and secondly a kind request to ‘guest blog’ for my online friend Mel Menzies.
Following her recently published and increasingly popular semi-autobiographical novel ‘A Painful Post Mortem’, she has been keen to support her readers with information and access to help in order to avoid the tragic events in novel from once again becoming a painful reality. I can only hope that my recollections are of benefit to someone.
What I enjoyed most was luxuriating again in the glorious process of writing. The ummings and ahhings at the start, and the blank page that stares in anticipation as you fiddle around with those first little words.The black eeking its way across the screen as brain and fingers get into sync. Watching as the words gather themselves into a structure and thread their slow and methodical way into a completed piece of writing.
Of course it takes days to get there (on short pieces of writing like these!): revisiting, rereading, reading backwards, forwards and inside-out until each word does what you want it to. But what a wonderful process!
I’ve learnt to enjoy writers’ block; I know that it’ll shift eventually. The brain is a fantastic organ that, left to its own devices and not cajoled into an immediate answer, will present the writer with exactly what he or she needs.
Sometimes I wonder if the chaps at Nike weren’t talking to writers, not athletes, when they told us to ‘Just Do It’!
Here’s to the next chance I get to write for pleasure 🙂
