Written all over my face

I’ve decided to write a book.

This will make a nice change from just reading them and will also give Amazon and the local library a much deserved rest. I had an absolutely cracking idea for a novel the other day which I can’t tell you about in any great detail in case you steal it or point out that it sounds like the one you just finished over the Christmas break which would be very discouraging and force me to spend several weeks in bed with a bottle of gin and a bag of sweeties. I will tell you, though, that it isn’t about a school for wizards, and it doesn’t feature my personal triumph over hard drugs (I could take them up now, though if it would help sales or make the school run more interesting). It also isn’t a tale of war-torn lovers and it most definitely isn’t any type of chick-lit because my novel will actually be a proper book, not an extended issue of Cosmo.

I say all these things with firm conviction.

However, that’s with the caveat that

1. I actually write the damn thing      and 
2. Someone actually publishes it.

 

But these are merely trifling details…

 

I got off to a roaring start, writing pages of notes and scrawling down relevant phrases late into the night, thus thwarting Husband’s attempts to be intimate or have meaningful conversation (what for? We’re already married, aren’t we?).  Later, I found myself plunged into a very pensive and dislocated space as I started to remember some things that had been buried so deeply I didn’t know they were part of me –like a splinter you can hardly feel or see anymore, but when you dig beneath the surface it starts to poke you again and hurts like hell. It is cathartic in a way, and valuable literary material– call it personal psychological research – but it’s not really making for jolly japes and pranks.

 

Four asked me today when we were out on one of our mother-daughter-girls-only afternoons, why I seemed sad. I told her I was remembering things that made me feel a little bit low, but I was actually very happy to be with her, to have time to be just with her.

She said

“How can the sad from the olden days still make you feel so sad now when really there are only happy things happening today, like having ice cream with me?“

 

That was a very profound piece of wisdom from someone who really knows how to live each moment in the present, who feels and expresses her emotions to the full, right as they come. Why should I let the sad from then stop me from being happy now? I’d already done that sad. It was crap. No particular need to do it again, at least not right then while I had a chance to be joyous and spend time with such an astonishing person.

 

We ate ice-cream and had a lovely time giggling inappropriately at pictures in the art museum.

The only down side to my day is that I have not been able to muster any more deep thoughts to write for my book, only shallow ones, so I may end up writing that 300 page Cosmo-style book after all.

Either that or more blog posts like this.