The life of a fledging, blossoming ‘writer’ – dramatic yet slightly pensive sigh – is not an easy one.
By day I don protective clothing and slide around in mud (sounds odd until you remember I work as a project manager for a builder, plus it rains a lot in Wales).
However come nightfall, I transmogrify into a wandering scribbler, jotting down the Remarkable and not-so-Remarkable Things I Experienced Today.
Now I’m taking a course in Creative Writing, I’m learning to see the remarkable in the unremarkable and the unremarkable in the remarkable. I think. Confused? Me too.
In short, some kind of inspiration. So much so that I’ve become totes pretentious and have started to carry a battered notebook with me at all times. Unless I forget (easily done) in which case I send a text to myself, full or random ramblings.
Anyway, I digress. Essentially I lead quite a boring life, unless you count the mud, so I don’t really get to do exciting writeable things. Yet I have found that inspiration, words, phrases and a bit of other things strike when I least expect it. Seems however, my work-mates expect it.
Like today, we are currently working up a mountain and were sitting outside rushing to finish our coffee before the wind whipped it into a frappe. It was freezing but the clouds were stunningly beautiful. I pointed this out to my colleague, mesmerised and staring at the sky with misty eyes. He checked his phone, made his excuses and swiftly went back to banging bits of wood, muttering. Then the slabs of insulation danced and skittered in the wind, as if by an invisible hand (quickly scribble note).
‘There’s a story in that’ is my most commonly-used phrase at work, followed by ‘Shut up, boss, s’not funny. I tripped’.
However, in the last few weeks, I have upped the ante. After a particularly exhausting day keeping the boss in check, I told him in low Bond-villainnesque tones that I would put him in my novel, provisionally entitled, ”Two Bacon Butties To Go, Ta, And Go Easy on the Ketchup’.
Much to my dismay, he seemed delighted and played up to his role. So now I have to put up with even more Christmas songs on a loop courtesy of the evil elves at Smooth Radio and he has cut my caramel shortbread ration. Today we had fairy cakes. No comparison, even if they did come with plastic Santa Claus rings on top (which I collect and push into the air vents in the car).
So, no, the life of a struggling author/writer isn’t easy.
But! This challenge will surely be the making of me?
