Onen i-Hidh Adanath...

The first time I felt this way, and had the very same thought, I was standing in the shower watching the snow fall down outside the frosted glass of the bathroom window; the second also in the shower, though this time the sun was shining - or trying to shine - outside. This third time I am once again in the shower, but this time it is dark, the temperature of the shower is far too high, and rather than watching the distorted world through the bathroom window's frosted glass, I am watching the steam obscuring my view, the condensation settling on the window, shrouding the frosted glass and the symbolism of it finally penetrates my brain as the question surfaces again: Why have I not been blogging? Why do I not post my status on Facebook? Do I truly have nothing to say?

Oh, certainly, I might share a whole bunch of photographs or inspirational quotations from other pages that I find meaningful or poignant, and sometimes I might even do more than just hit the share button, and post a word or two about why I have shared them, but little more.

I've known for some time I've been censoring myself; editing myself so that the frames come together to tell the story in another way, because... well.. frankly it's just easier that way - far less conflict.

Except inside myself.

So I said, on several occasions, that I wasn't going to do it any more, and yet here I am still doing it... and frustrating myself in that. I have ended up feeling like I have (or worse yet, should have) no voice, no opinion and certainly no feelings. The upshot of which has further hampered any sense of creativity and life that was all but stifled - as if with a pillow over the face - by a year long sojourn in Egypt.

Happily I'm out of that situation now. Still not where I truly want to be, but... what can I say? Some countries and some of her peoples are certainly backwards in their own sense of egality and in following the literal, and the meaning in spirit, of their own founding principles. So much so, that they shroud any route toward said egality in so much thorny red tape that even their own citizens do not know and cannot understand all the ins and outs of navigating it in order to gain admittance. I hate politics... and that's one thing you probably won't find me blogging about any time soon, (more than I have done just here anyway).

So what's to say, and what's to do, and definitely what's to write when all that was creative in my soul has been somehow deadened to the point where, yes - I will latch on to anything that is in the remotest bit a resuscitation, a work around, or even a leg up and over the dreaded wall of 'writer's block' that has been plaguing me for the last eighteen months or so?

The Use'ara cycle was coming along nicely, getting the Nano treatment but then was interrupted by the move to Cairo. Similarly the Life After series ground to an unceremonious halt. I turned to fandom to keep some shred of creativity alive, and managed at least to finish the 13th story of a series I had been working on before the block caught up even there.

But I digress...

As far as Facebook is concerned, I feel... uncomfortable, that's a nice gentle word, let's use that one, posting about what's going on and how I feel about it. I know I shouldn't, but sometimes, some of the posts I read on my news feed seem so much like people just airing their dirty linen in public, as it were. Do I really want to do that? Maybe it's just my overly conservative (note the small c) British nature that causes that. Should I adopt a more bolshy, forthright approach like other world citizens and just... tell it like it is, warts and all? Maybe I should try it for a while and see or feel the results for myself.

As for blogging, well, I find that the trouble with a lot of blogging is that in many cases, it tends toward political comments. I've already stated I don't really do politics. Oh, I live with them, like everyone has to because they're a sad fact of life. I have an opinion on political matters too, but in most cases that is my own and not for sharing. The trouble with political blogging is that, at least to me, it seems always to be hateful and angry. There is much to be said for exercising the option not to say anything at all, and to allow that to speak for your opinion and feelings on a matter. Is that not the basis of the advice your mother always told you: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all? Other types of blogging require... well... something to happen to inspire it. Stuck in my little hamster-wheel I usually end up feeling like the most boring person on the face of the planet. Who wants to read over and over again about the traffic on my way to wherever, and the kids (Whether hellions or angels) that I meet and work with?

Oh, I know there's more to it than that, and yes, I'm probably making excuses because - as happened very recently - when I do open my yap about something or another, it rarely ends up with me feeling any better about things and/or myself. But, since discourse is generally thought of as good, and because I have to do something to unlock this door, or take a wrecking ball to the wall that is standing between me and the creativity, which I know has to be on the other side of the wall, let this be a public affirmation of the permission to at least try... and feel free to poke me - but gently - with reminders to comply with my own wishes.

(A/N: As an demonstration of what I mean through all of this - it has taken me 3 months to write this.)

Major Website Update

I've been spending a long time lately rewriting the website so that the front pages show the current state of my original projects, and links to the schools workshops which I hope will take off in the next academic year. Today, finally, I finished the update, putting the last few pages together, and checking the links and things. Please feel free to repost and share the URL - and if you have an involvement with a school or youth club, and would like to arrange a workshop session, please feel free to get in touch with me for further details. To view the site, click the following link:

Cedarfiction: A Key to Infinite Possibilities.

What's the Use of a Blog If You Never Update?

A little over a week after my last entry to the blog here, we lost my grandfather, and after that, things began to shift in focus, and what I would have been doing - writing-wise, gave way to family matters, as was fitting. Then came April... and after a brief mess involving a well known UK coach company, a major US airline, and my endeavors to reach my guy in North Carolina, I finally made it into the arms of comforting domesticity.

It's hard to describe what that feels like to anyone that's never been away from their spouse for any protracted periods of time. It's relief, and joy and hope and love all wrapped up together into a vast embrace of togetherness. My spouse and I usually manage around 13 weeks of every year together, unless one or other of us take extra time out of work to add to that, and in this financial climate, that's not very possible. Anyway, mid April to Mid May I spent in cicada-infested Chapel Hill, NC. There's video somewhere, of the sound Mir and I lived with the last month of so, and when it's uploaded I'll be sure to share... suffice to day that to offset the constant hum - which sounded like a Star Trek phaser set to overload - we had to put on the TV, or some music. It was enough to drive anyone insane.

That's not to say I didn't get any writing or writing related activities done during the time I was away. I did. I sent out a short story, which came back to me a couple of weeks later, and has been sent out again today. I also finished chapter one of Use'ara: Thirteen Stars to a point where I'm happy with it for a first draft.

I also did a lot of reading. They say a writer should read, read, read... and that's what I spent a lot of time doing. As well as reading my way through Author Mark A. Roeder's Gay Youth Chronicles. I've also been reading and reviewing for fellow authors on LibraryThing, which really should be discovered. It's an excellent place for bibliophiles everywhere. I managed three reviews and still have another 11 or so to go.

I was going to sit down today and start on chapter 2 of Use'ara, but my copy of Writing Magazine came in the post, and I got caught up in reading that for all the helpful tips and web pages. I had to make myself stop part way through so that I could get some writing done. Which is what I'm going to go and do right now - or at least make a start.

Use'ara: Thirteen Stars - update

I just wanted to give a heads up for another website on which I'll be promoting Use'ara and other original projects, as well as here.

The first post on the new blog is here and it has its own mini-website to go with it... still under construction and powered by wordpress. Please visit and enjoy.

Distance

The following was inspired by the reading for yesterday in this most interesting and insightful book.


A blind child
guided by his mother,
admires the cherry blossoms...
- Kikakou

Once – many years ago now, too many years – I would have identified with the mother, guiding and loving; loving and learning from those that walked at my side, while at the same time revelling in the discovery as a child myself, surrounded by the scents, and the softness and beauty of the blossom, and the darkness too. But an ungentle touch, a careless hand, can as easily crush the beauty of the blossoms as it can come to know them, and by such a grasp I was cast aside, exiled to the distance to watch – helplessly disempowered – as my past self moved on without me, still loving, still guiding, still child like and still beautiful as the blossoms and the perfume I sought to know.

I don't make New Year's resolutions. It's pointless as I rarely keep them for more than a month or so, and then only feel a terrible sense of failure when I finally admit to myself that I have broken them. I do usually set goals for myself though, and even though, technically, my New Year was months ago, I was not yet ready to undertake the goals I've set for myself. Am I ready now? I don’t know, but I feel that the universe is read for them to be a part of my path in the coming year. She has been ready for some time and I've just been trying to ignore her. It's come to the point now where I can't do so any more and remain healthy in spirit and mind as well as in body.

The distance, the exile I speak of in the opening paragraph of this entry is the fact that all those years ago, I lost myself. Worst of all, I've come to realise, I lost myself to an influence that I though had left my life – I thought that I had cast it aside and let it go. Yet… as I meditated for the first time in many, many years, I came to realise that I had fooled myself very well into believing that. The physical influence, in the shape of a person that was once an important part of my life, is gone, yes, but the emotional and spiritual one – the damage I allowed this person to cause in me – remains. I am weighed down by it, its chains still pull at my ankles, and with each struggling thrash against them that I have made, all I have succeeded in doing is pulling on the tree before me so that the blossoms fall around me and are trampled in my efforts for freedom from the darkness that I once happily embraced and did not fear.

Realising a fear, accepting it and taking into oneself is a part of growing; is a part of taking one step closer to where you need to be. Today, as I claim ownership of the fear that I have allowed to grow unchecked inside of myself, I feel that I have taken one step back toward the cherry blossoms. Mother turns a smile my way that I feel, but cannot see. It is a welcoming smile, a knowing smile… and I, still blind, can barely perceive the blossoms She teaches me to admire, yet now, at least, I know they are still there… as am I.

To Make Another List.

I have a veritable zoo already living inside my head... a zoo full of plot bunnies - they range from small, cute and fluffy, to those that are definitely not any of those things... and usually have great big fangs ready to sink into the depth of my very soul. Such, I have come to appreciate, is my lot. I need to sit down sooner or later and make a list of all these ideas, and keep them in a file.

Recently, a friend of mine and I decided that we would begin to do an little exercise where we would both write for a set amount of time per day to a prompt, gathered randomly from books or the internet or wherever the fancy took us.

The time was 15 minutes each day, and so today I decided to just let rip with a free write... and ended up with another cage full of plot bunnies for my sins. I am unashamedly a science fiction writer - with a smattering of fantasy thrown in for good measure. Sometimes keep both pure and sometimes blend the two. What I ended up with in this instance I think will be a blending, but my question is, when will I get the time to develop what I have? How does one keep the plot bunnies alive until it is their time to escape out into the world?

Anyway, as I look at what I've written, I think I will probably edit the original quote to death, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it just feels like it doesn't fit with the rest of the idea it spawned. I don't know if anyone else ever has that problem, but I often do.

Rebecca finds herself sitting, immobile at a kitchen table while a strange man prepares dinner for her. She's not happy, seems like she's been kidnapped by said individual, who claims to 'love dead people' and then asserts that she's dead. What came from there, as I was walking to Sainsbury's to get myself some gummy bears (which I usually need for when I'm writing some particular kinds of fiction), blossomed into nothing like its inception.

Showers, and walks to the local supermarket are usually transformational for the poor bunnies... like some kind of insidious retrovirus - but that quite another story.

Kicking Off 2011 With Intent

I've spent a lot of the evening working on getting my social networking and all that jazz up to date, and trying to start creating my author platform... such as it is right now. This has meant a lot of form filling and cross linking and all that jazz. It's been quite exhausting, and honestly, can I remember when and where I went to school and with whom? I've been to bed since then, as the saying goes.

I can understand why agents and publishers like an author to have one of these though, I suppose it helps to save a lot of leg work... and... not one to want to upset the apple cart or anything but, isn't there some kind of saying about having a dog and barking yourself? (BTW, those of you that have noticed more than a smattering of cliches in this post - just so you know - they're quite deliberate).

Anyway - this is the year in which things will move for me, I am not only sure of it, but I will go at it with intent... check back in a few months and see if I haven't got something out there - something all of my very own.