Hello all. It has been a very long
time. Unfortunately, in the big juggling game called life, the ball that gets
dropped the most is writing. I've decided I'm not happy about that. So I'm
trying to fix it.
For the past few months, my writing has been a bit of a wasteland,
writing one or two lines a week on my novel if it's lucky. I'v decided I'm
going to do something I did last year for a while - committing to writing for
10 minutes every day. It doesn't sound like a lot, which is why the psychology
is good. When it's a word count, or a longer period of time, I am less likely
to do it because there is so much other stuff that *has* to be done.
10 minutes is easy. And it's progress. So in the sight of whoever
has not yet given up on my blog, I declare my commitment to 10 minutes writing
per day. No going back now.
I have good news, though. In the wasteland of my writing mind,
today I found an oasis. An idea has been trickling through my thoughts for a
few weeks now, and today it crystalised into a story. I have been writing for 3
hours, and I now have a first draft of a short story. This rarely happens for
me.
I want to tell you the story of the story. I walk to work most
days, and a fair few of my shifts require me to go down The Avenues. These are
a series of interconnected streets between Chanterlands Avenue and Princes
Avenue in Hull. As I was walking one morning, I noticed some rosemary on the
path. Not just a little bit, as if someone had dropped some, a lot of rosemary.
It trailed along the path for a long stretch. there were heaps of the stuff
about as well, all over the avenues.
I couldn't stop thinking about the rosemary. I found it really
odd. Why would there be a trail of rosemary? There must be a story behind it.
I've seen trails of blood down Newland Avenue before, and it doesn't take much
imagination to work out the story behind that. Sometimes you see a trail of
sand or compost, where the bag must have torn without anyone realising.
But rosemary? I couldn't imagine anybody carrying enough
rosemary to drop that much. Rosemary isn't something one generally carries
about by the armful.
I imagined somebody carrying a rosemary plant down the avenues and
started to think about what would drive somebody to do that. Today, a story was
born.
It sounds odd, I know. It may not even be any good. But I wrote
it, and I'm proud. it ha been far too long.
Anyway, I will try to blog more often, to let you know how my 10
minute writing plan is going, and if anything becomes of this little story.
