Category: Musings

On choosing me

My sister and I were very much church brats growing up. We weren’t pastor’s kids, but my first ever friend (and, for a few weeks in the fourth grade, fiancée) was. My father was head of the Sunday School (by second grade it was my job after church to run across to the school whose premises we used for Sunday School and unlock the classes before the others arrived) and organised all the church youth camps while my mother cooked for them. My first bee sting was at one of those camps.

The second Wednesday of each month was spent playing on the church office floor while my mother received the offerings collected by the deacons during home visits the previous week. Sunday mornings I sat with my dad among the elders, and my sister sat with my mum in the choir gallery.

This is going somewhere, promise…

On Losing the Plot

Not literally, mind you. Mostly because I haven’t found it yet. The darn characters keep changing on me, and I can’t seem to make up my mind about the setting. Regarding the latter, I’ve decided to go with the old adage of ‘write what you know’, so the first act is now moving to South Africa. (Act 2 and 3 will, by necessity, be located in exotic locations I’ve never visited, but I’ll just make that up as I go along.)

But in any case the novel will get done in its own time. I’m for all intents and purposes withdrawing from NaNoWriMo 2014. I’m over fifteen thousand words behind schedule and am at present suffering from severe stare-at-a-blank-screen-syndrome. I’ve been trying to write every day since returning from my conference last week, dutifully opening Scrivener, staring at my notes, but since Sunday I’ve only managed a little over two hundred words.

I suppose it’s still possible for me to finish. Three thousand words a day would do the trick, but at the moment I just don’t have any words to write. As I said, I’ve lost the plot.

To start with, my conference was really good, but while I went there for ideas and inspiration, all I came back with are questions I do not even begin to know how to answer. Not academic questions, to be clear, but very distracting personal ones, about where my life is going (or not going), what I will find when (if) I reach my destination, whether I’m even on the right path to start with…

As if that wasn’t enough, I came home to the news that a good friend and former colleague had passed away. I’m going to her funeral in an hour, but it still hasn’t hit home that she’s gone. We’ve lost touch the past couple of years as she moved to a different school and I left teaching entirely, but I’m incredibly sad at the thought that she is gone.

So writing is hard at the moment and NaNoWriMo is just not that much of a priority. It’ll pass, but for now I’ll just let myself feel what I feel, and meanwhile I’ll keep staring at the screen hoping the words come, however few they may be…

Spring is in the air…

…and I’m feeling strangely optimistic. I suppose it’s because spring signifies a new start in more ways than one where I’m concerned – I was born in September, after all.

Spring in SA has arrived right on cue. Friday still we had terribly cold weather and even snow in some parts of the country, but on Monday the sun shone warm and bright in the sky. The nights are still chilly, but during the day it’s already warm enough to make one believe summer is on its way.

Green shoots are peeking out all over the place, courtesy of some unseasonal winter rain two weeks ago, and my neighbour’s clivia is in full bloom on our communal porch.

Clivia

One can’t help but feel positive in circumstances like this. I’ve even dropped my winter laziness and started exercising again. Here’s hoping I can keep it up (not just the exercise, but the attitude as well).

Books are treasure chests

Of course, some books are treasures in and of themselves. Rare first editions, illuminated 8th century manuscripts, limited edition collected works, and the like can fetch thousands, in some cases even millions of dollars at auctions and on the black market.

The stories inside them are also treasures, but neither of those are what I meant when I said books are treasure chests.

To find out what I meant you’ll have to click the link

So long, 2013

And once more we stand at the point where one looks back over the past year to reminisce, evaluate, mourn and celebrate the achievements and failures of the past twelve months.

I’m glad to say 2013 was a better year for me than 2012. Much of what I’d set out to achieve I never reached. My studies never really took off, and my first novel ground to a halt before it had even properly started. My plans for starting a non-profit have been shelved, at least for the present, due to a complete lack of support (everyone with whom I shared the idea was very interested, until I asked for their help). I didn’t get a job I was really hoping I’d get, and I fear I am slowly becoming a hermit, the majority of my human interaction these days taking place via a keyboard.

But I’m calmer. My last two years at the school I was angry all the time. I’m not anymore. In fact, the difference is so marked that, when my former employer asked me a few weeks ago if I wouldn’t please consider coming back, the wife said no. She doesn’t want me to go back to being stressed out and angry all the time. When I said I’m stressed out anyway about not having an income she told me to stop being silly. Can’t argue with that, can you?

My studies may not have made much progress, but I’d done several shorter courses in the field which have made me realise I want to specialise in the field of trauma counselling. Maybe now that I actually know about what I want to do my Master’s I might make some more progress with it.

And while the first novel tanked, I started afresh with NaNoWriMo and am almost done with my first draft. I got no writing done in December, but I will finish it, no matter how bad I think it is at this moment.

Plans for 2014? Finish Gift of the Dryads and see if it’s worth making publishable, along with writing the first draft of another novel, perhaps two. Finally finish the theoretical modules of my degree, submit my research proposal and get started on my thesis. And start a trauma counselling practice while I become a fully-accredited practitioner in Traumatic Incident Reduction. (Oh, and become fit enough to run a half-marathon while losing 15kg. I’m not necessarily planning to run a half-marathon…I’d just like to be able to should the urge strike me.)

These are not resolutions, nor are they intentions – I don’t do those anymore (except for one, which I’ll reveal next week). These are goals. I would welcome it if they turned into obsessions so powerful that my very sanity depends on them being achieved.

Not much else left to say save so long, 2013. Thanks for giving me some time to figure things out and regain my strength for what is to come. It’s been fun.