Disaster averted, Dad’s 75th was a success and my book mojo’s back
INSPIRED I am this week. The reason, you ask, is that I’ve rediscovered my love of reading, writing and creativity. The spark, coming after years in the cultural wilderness, arrived out of nowhere. Well, it was bubbling away under the surface, finding form in late night scribbles on notebooks and beginnings of stories, descriptive musings, hammered onto the iPad, just before I conk out for the night.
I started a monthly creative writing course in my local library and was convinced I was going to be the next Raymond Carver, only to discover that, as with every craft, a hell of a lot of work goes into writing a short story. The first thing I had to learn was that spewing out a story onto the page may seem like inspiration and, in a way it is, but it is only the starting point. I submitted a story created in a ‘free writing’ moment which turned out to have no real beginning, middle or end. No character progression, no story arc, nada, zilch. It was a descriptive effort which could form part of a chapter of a novel, at best. But it wasn’t within an ass’s roar of being a complete story.
The next lesson I learned was that material for stories is everywhere, right now. There are so many threads which can be woven into stories, which can trigger memories which spark and then fire the imagination. Simply sitting down and delving into the imagination is a habit I’m learning and enjoying.
As a student in UCC many moons ago, I went from studying literary great to literary great, living in keenly observed worlds of the imagination, be they Blake’s, Wordsworth’s, Conrad’s or Shakespearian in dimesnion. The college bar was the place where - over a mug of coffee and a hot chicken roll - the morning’s lessons would be digested and mulled over with other like-minded English Lit students. Then life happened and jobs, of which I tried my hand at many before settling into the world of journalism, which involves getting published, but, it is not the ‘free writing’ of the imagination, the creative writing of the literary greats I studied.
I was away in Kerry last week for my father’s 75th. Organising it from a distance was quite the undertaking. The first venue cancelled and when I tried to find another, they were all booked up for Christmas parties, but I eventually found the Rose Hotel. Then the band cancelled and the bakery got the cake for my niece, who was also celebrating a birthday, wrong, but in the end the whole thing worked out wonderfully.
My sisters, brother and mother were over from the states for the party so it was like a family Christmas, or Thanksgiving, in the American tradition.
My father got the surprise of his life and it was a great occasion. I returned to a creative writing workshop on Wednesday with Wexford crime author Cat Hogan. Cat spoke about the mental health benefits of writing ‘ long hand’, how it improves memory, reduces the heart rate and went on to outline how she wrote her novels in a clear, entertaining and interesting way. One exercise she did proved very useful. It involved writing about a place from your childhood. I stared at the blank page dumbfounded but once I allowed my mind to settle, I was able to recall, with some clarity, a place which I was able to write in detail about.
During last week, which I had off from work, my instinct was to get in the car and go to places to Christmas shop etc. Instead I kicked back with a book and read and did some writing. What better way to while away these early winter days.