Tiny hairs clothe the inside of your arm, pale and velvet soft. Purple veins sit under the surface, tracing jagged patterns wrapped around your fingers. My fingertips brush yours. Trail fingers upwards to the soft curve of your shoulder, brush my lips against your collarbone and follow it, swooping down, up. Your throat pulses against my mouth as goosebumps stand to attention, your hair a waving cornfield. You tremble and I inhale softness, musk and vanilla, peach fuzz. When you speak, I do not hear. I absorb your words, transmuted in vibration. I feel sound, rest my ear against your heart to understand life, strength, constancy. I am drowning, cocooned by memory, caught by anticipation, hypnotised, ensnared by the possibility of you.
Skin, taut and strong.
Long glossy hairs clothe the hills and valleys of muscles restrained and defined. Soft, corded veins contain the heat of blood and life. Your flesh retreats beneath my hand, then rises up to meet me, first shy, then bold. I map these contours of a strange and well remembered land. Your breath holds steady; mine catches in my throat. On a journey of discovery, I travel these many roads, to find and lose myself. I search this country of you, in the light and dark, on the wide plains and ridged fields, for the particular place that smells like home.
This piece is one of three poems and two short stories that I contributed to the anthology While glancing out of a window, now available on Amazon UK.
As each year draws to a close, we naturally think about taking stock. What did we do, what did we get, what are we still hoping for, good or bad. It’s been a hell of a year, on many levels. Sometimes the big picture is overwhelming, and we can only make sense of small things. Like tracking our own progress, footprints in the snow.
I recently read a Medium post by Dajana Bergmark, called Blueprint for a productive 2017 . I liked a lot in the post, especially the brain dump and the idea of prioritising your effort, because effort and time are finite resources. I never have enough, and I’m sure you’re the same. But the further I read, the less attractive it became, for me. I’m not good with organisers and ticking boxes, and forcing myself results only in abandoning the whole idea. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Any system has to be customised to suit you. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
I’m a whole picture person who baulks at prescribed step-by-step plans in minute detail. Details matter, but at different levels for everyone. So, I look for a broad brush solution I can live with, then drill down only as far as I will actually implement. I wrote recently about making progress with writing, and seeing that at the level of a whole piece. This is about a closer look at how things are moving forward.
I mentioned before that I took up watercolour painting as a complete beginner. I devised a simple list which allowed me to track progress without it being a chore.
Attend a beginners’ class (weekly for 10 weeks)
Complete at least one painting every week – from the class or a book
Date each painting and write 2-3 comments about technique on the back
File paintings consecutively in a portfolio
Just dating each painting proved to be an incredibly powerful tool. It allowed me to see my progress over time, which was very motivating. Committing to one painting a week, thinking about the techniques and writing a comment helped me move fast, even when the classes were over.
I was able to join an improvers’ class after a few months. Granted, many of the artists there were much more experienced, but that also spurred me to learn more and raise my game. But without my portfolio behind me, I would never have had the courage to consider that class.
But what if I don’t want to paint/write, or don’t know what to paint/write?
Painter’s block, creative block, writer’s block all yield to action. What works for me is to step away from the emotion, and simply get to work. That might mean opening a random page in a magazine and painting whatever is there. It might mean going to a writing prompt website, picking one, and writing. It might mean creating something else; a poem, a meal, a garden, an ordered and tidy room.
If I want to improve, that means practising my art, just as an athlete practises before the big game or competition. I can’t afford to do only what I want, especially when time is precious.
The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
Louis L’Amour
In other words, inspiration comes after initiation. Get warmed up, then get going.
Tracking my journey as a writer
This is very important, yet it must be simple. For writing, my 2016 list looked like this:
Attend a writing group regularly and produce work for it
Submit to at least 10 competitions
Revise my novel to make it ready for submission
Read 2-3 craft books
Write a weekly blog post NaNoWriMo
Using a standard calendar that comes with Excel, I have noted what I wrote and when. For my blog, WordPress has analytics built-in. It is surprising how motivating it is to see a run of completed boxes. I guess the whole idea of star charts is not just for kids after all. I can see which months were better for writing than others. And I can course correct when necessary, which is why NaNo dropped off the list.
Yes, I achieved those goals. Feels good, too!
Each written piece is tagged and dated, and sometime soon I will compare the first and last, the group pieces with my other work, and so on. Now it’s time to think about next year’s goals, building on this year’s successes and challenges. I might build another layer of detail into my tracking, or commit to a number of words per week. I already know that writing every day is impossible with my current commitments, (because I tried it, and failed) so a weekly target is more realistic.
That which is measured, improves. That which is measured and reported, improves exponentially. Pearson’s law
As long as we don’t spend all our time reporting instead of producing work, this could be useful. Making a beautiful map is not a substitute for making the journey.
My Very Easy Tracking Plan™ boils down to this:
Find a system that you can commit to over a long period.
Track your work, no matter how simply.
Finish your stuff.
Enjoy your achievements.*
In the end, it is producing the work and growing as a creative that matters. Not blog views, competition wins, external validation of some sort. That may come, and of course we hope it will. But the work comes first. Always.
*We all deserve a gold star. Congratulations on doing the thing, whatever that was.
It’s a foggy, dark, miserable time, this pre-solstice period. It needs a moment to catch your breath, between work, flu, badly adjusted car headlights that dazzle you, getting up in the dark and going to bed exhausted. And the endless shopping.
Whether Christmas energises or dismays you, whether you celebrate or not, whether optimist or pessimist, try to pause, and just be for a moment. Amid the conspicuous consumption and brightly wrapped capitalism, there can be stillness.
But you have to be determined to find it. Here’s a moment for you.
Medium, the writing platform, recently hosted a competition. The prompt was to describe your ideal writing environment. If you look at Instagram or Pinterest, you can see endless pictures of beautifully arranged workspaces. The wood desk just so, with a new notebook, fresh wildflowers in a jam jar, an antique typewriter or a shiny new Macbook, perhaps some reading glasses and a cup of expensive coffee. You know the kind of thing. In a recent post on Medium, Nicole Bianchi shows us where some famous writers did their work, and adds inspiration on what a writing space should include.
I like to see gorgeous visuals, but my reality is far removed from that.
As I write this, my laptop is set up on the dining room table. Books are piled on the sideboard because the bookcase is crammed with more books, CDs and who knows what else. A vase of orange roses provides a colourful focus, and outside promises an orange/pink sky painted by the setting winter sun.
Sounds lovely, and it is. It’s also untrue.
There’s much more to see, but you would have to tune out the piles of papers and magazines, shoes that should be elsewhere, odd items of clothing and assorted detritus. (And no, I don’t always have roses.) It would require serious wrangling to get a perfectly curated image, which I could then share in the hope of convincing you that not only my desk, but my entire life is beautifully, artfully arranged. An image that whispers, click the heart and make me feel loved.
I wrote before about wrestling beauty from a cluttered reality by focussing on what matters. Still, there is no doubt that I find ordered spaces tranquil and calm, and surely that releases energy to spend on creating things? Well, yes, and no. If I have to spend an hour clearing up before I start work, it will never get done. My brain will be hijacked by a hundred thoughts, resentments and distractions, and why can’t he hang it up? I’ve asked him a thousand times, so sick of being taken for granted…
And just like that, writing vanishes in a cloud of righteous procrastination.
The whole picture is one truth, and the edited highlights are another version of the truth. Maybe my untidy room is the first draft of the perfect writer’s haven. Here’s another truth.
My ideal place to write isn’t a tangible reality. Although, a corner of the spare bedroom might one day become that haven. First I’d have to tidy stuff, move other stuff, buy a desk… Maybe next year, when I can summon enough energy to go to IKEA. And then assemble the desk.
Instead, I think of my ideal writing space as a state of mind.
My mind needs to settle, cast off the mundane, edit out the noise. Like a deep pool, it requires stillness. Only then can I see past the surface, clear to the bottom. Only then can my characters reveal themselves and come to life, beckoning me on so that I can follow, hoping my fingers can capture their adventures.
That state of mind might come with silence, or with music. I use 8tracks as a source of instrumental music, because I find words distracting. There are lots of playlists for study and writing. I’ve never written in a coffeeshop; maybe that’s a challenge for next year. But if you like the sounds of background activity, then coffitivity offers different options for human white noise. What’s your ideal writing space?
I can’t wait for conditions to be perfect. The only time is now. My ideal place to write is away from the daily grind, just far enough to lose sight of laundry and unread books and washing up and tonight’s dinner.
Let me dive into imagination, and see what treasures are waiting there.
From my table, I watch them. She is bright
Floating in turquoise silks
He follows in his suit of drab.
A bottle of red sits heavy between them.
She orders another flute of champagne
Borrowing its sparkle and fizz.
He drinks Châteauneuf du Pape
I hope they have a taxi later.
The waiter takes the order
She takes his gaze and smiles.
Then, glancing at her companion
Takes another sip
Her eyes demurely lowered.
Not red, no. Too obvious and so
Elegant French manicures stroke and tease
Linger on the stem of her glass.
A green salad, to start.
Poached fish, steamed mangetout
While he chews rolls and butter
Then attacks steak, perfectly seared
Still bleeding inside.
A stoker feeding the boiler, he steams through his fuel.
Meantime she watches, raises her glass
Swallows almost nothing
She seems to run on pure energy.
Her third finger glitters, and how is it
That black carbon, heavy coal, brilliant diamond
Are made of the same stuff?
Trusty carthorse, flighty racehorse
Cannot be yoked together.
From my silent table, I watch them try
An unlikely alchemy.
One of these does not belong.
