Monday 25 November 2013

Christmas is coming

I have not written a word for a whole week - I know that because I just found a comment on my last blog post that I hadn't seen before and it was dated the 18th.  I can't quite believe that despite my best intentions, as documented in the last post, I still don't get on with it.

My eldest daughter loves to write, and she signed both of us up for NaNoWriMo.  The idea is that you should write a novel - a minimum of fifty thousand words - in the month of November.  My total number of words so far?  Zero.  And my daughter's?  About twenty thousand words, believe it or not.  And she is writing in her spare time, in between school work, Guides, choir and so on. 

To be fair, I am busy doing all the housework, cooking etc, and looking after the puppies.  Even the weekends pass in a blur, although I did escape to the shops for a couple of hours yesterday.  I don't really mind that I don't have time to write - it is only a couple more weeks until the puppies go to their new homes, and then I will have more time. 

Oh - except that we are keeping one puppy, so although my workload will be less I will still be busy.  And of course, it is Christmas coming up, which means I will need to start shopping for gifts, and for food and so on.  And then it will be the school holidays.

But there's always January.  Yes, I'll get back on track then.

During my sojourn at the shops, I bumped into an old friend.  We used to attend Hahnemann House - the dreaded day hospital - together.  She recognised me - I wouldn't have known who she was if she hadn't called out my name - and we stopped and chatted for several minutes.  It was good to see her looking so well.  She is working in Waitrose  (a posh supermarket, for those of you who live abroad) and she says she has put all her mental health problems behind her.  I was really encouraged by this - especially as she also had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and so many people seem to languish with this label.  She was a good person, who deserved better in life than she had, and I am pleased and relieved that things seem to be on track for her.   

That's all I have time for now - got to go and collect my eldest son from school - but hey, at least I have done some writing today!

2 comments:

  1. It is possible writing was a gift for recovery and you are now seeing it as a chore not a free pleasure hence the constant procrastination! Why not do a part time shop job like you said in M&S or somewhere and collect a load of observational material from the great British public and then turn that into a great recovery tale of all those interactions with the many of us out there who are quite unique on many spectrums! The stimulation out the house and away from the family and dogs will be very motivating. Best thing I did as blending in society reminds us how different we all are!

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  2. Hiya.

    Sorry it has taken me a little time to reply to this - I was trying to do so on my tablet, but it kept freezing. You could be right about writing being a gift for recovery - but I really believe that I 'am' a writer. I do a fair amount of social stuff outside the house already, with the kids' schools, my writing group, reading group and so on. So I'm not lacking interaction. But you are definitely right about writing becoming more of a chore than a pleasure - I think this is because I have come to see it as something that needs to earn me a living rather than something I enjoy for it's own sake. Which is wrong.

    I will definitely set myself a deadline - if writing is not paying, or I am still not doing enough of it, by a certain date, then I will get a real job. But I might set that deadline a little way into the future - perhaps when my youngest starts secondary school (which is several years hence). That may seem like a long while but I know how quickly time flies, and I know that once I start work it will be hard to stop because we will become reliant on the income. I want to give the writing a proper chance.

    There is a job opportunity with the McPin Foundation. I am going to apply, but I think I should also help spread the word. There are several positions available - they are recruiting for a peer research review panel. Here's a link to the website: http://mcpin.org/news/ That is only a certain number of hours' work a year, but it might keep things ticking over.

    And I recently heard about a local business which might need someone to write a monthly newsletter from home - I'm not sharing that one, sorry! I really would like to give my writing a proper chance, and these two small jobs together would enable me to do that. Once the pups have gone to their new home...

    Thanks for commenting. And yes, we are all different - but in some ways we are all the same.

    Louise x

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