The rot sets in

Community garden, Highgate Hill, London

Lately I’ve been thinking about bodies. And compost. But mainly bodies.

I haven’t been thinking about body deposable techniques. Rather I’ve been dredging my brain for everything I learnt in uni about anatomy and musculoskeletal conditions*. My neurones are synapsing over time. I’m left dull witted and entirely at risk of falling asleep on the train after work. Once home I’m house hunting, training for a half marathon**, reacquainting myself with friends and family (so they don’t wonder who the strange redhead is sleeping in their daughter’s bed) and starting two separate yearlong diplomas.

After a nine months of having little worries and no responsibilities other then occasionally wearing clean clothes and eating vegetables - I’ve somehow piled a whole lot of responsibilities onto my plate so that I can’t even see the plate anymore.

Needless to say I haven’t been writing much, other a couple of letters and what you see on this blog. Whilst I’m happy with the blog, it’s been sliding into mainly book reviews. I’ve only vaguely mentioned writing my travelogue but not to any real extent. I love doing book reviews, but the original intent of the blog was to focus on developing my writing and have a manuscript written, edited and good to go by the year’s end.

So this last month I’ve been ‘composting’. According to Patti Miller author of ‘The Memoir Book’ -

“often, experience feels monolithic and can take time to break down into usable elements…tackle events which are too recent, and not only are they (writing students) overwhelmed by the events emotionally, they also find their writing ‘lumpy’ and raw, much like the original materials of a compost heap.”

Because I like plans and lists, I’m taking on Miller’s advice to do some ‘pre-writing’, which is not posing with your pen poised as if you are just about to write something. Rather

“You are not writing the memoir, you are writing about it. This pre-writing is a ramble, a kind of scaffolding, from which you explore the general territory.”

This week I’m going to figure out my approach to my travelogue – I’m half thinking of creating a chapter/personal essay for each country I travelled to***. But I want to figure out themes, intent, tone and style. Hopefully I develop a strong base so my compost heap sprouts a small seedling which grows into a heaving tree

'Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven', Secret Garden, Islington, London

I realise I’ve taken Miller’s metaphor and completely changed it’s meaning, but I think the idea of trees more appealing then rotting banana skins..

* I’m a physiotherapist

**I once read a study that if you visual yourself exercising this has a positive physiological affect on your cardiovascular health, minor at best, but at the minute I’m risking crow’s feet as I concentrate super hard on imagining myself running. I’ll hopefully squeeze in a spot of actual running this week .

*** England, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Belgium + Hungry + Bulgaria + Romania + Prague + Austria (in one essay as I spent I fleeting time in each), Turkey, Iran, India, Tibet + China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia

Day of Yester

I'm missing ten days in the outback; and fret over a slew of threadbare days from Kathmandu. I only have mere fragments of time from Hungry and Bucharest. Then there are vast tracts of unaccounted days from London. For sections of my travel journal are so bald and patchy it makes John Lithgow look like a spokesperson for ‘The society for ridiculously lush manes of hair’*

I wrote with the upmost regularity whilst on the truck**. Flicking through the pages the legibility is poor, reflecting the state of roads in third world countries, and the content enormously over-wrote. Some entries I thought would only take up a handful of lines, but rambled forth into two or three pages; typically incoherent ramblings, rehashing the most mundane details of the day. Though looking back on it, the ‘mundane’ occurrences are often the most memorable, like - storing toilet paper in every pocket, communal peeing on roadsides around the world, pouring buckets of water into squat toilets (to be clear my whole journal is not solely about bowel motions and toilets), border crossings with stony faced guards armed to the teeth, broken conversations with friendly Iranians, tea with Turkish mayors, meeting local militia, sleeping in a sleeping bag brimming bottles of drinking water in Tibet or cooking on a Yak dung fire.

It wasn’t always a bed of roses on the road. In fact, many beds where literally fields of thistles and faeces. So there were the hissy fits but also absolute hilarity. I tried to include these aspects in my journal as in the words of Oscar Wilde ‘I never travel without my diary. One should gave something sensational to read in the train.’ So I tried to get to the guts of daily life and record sensational snippets of campfire chat as well as the smells, sounds and sights. I tried to recapture the smell of rotting fish, not just airy fairy wisps of happenings.

Now that I’m back in Sydney, I intend to keep journaling. I face the dilemma of lack of discipline and fear of nothing to write – the same issues as on the road. Does anyone else have these issues? I’m putting together a post with tips about how to successful keep a journal.

*‘The society for ridiculously lush manes of hair’ is an entirely fictional entity. Though if you feel compelled to start said institution please do consider me for membership, even just for the novelty factor of having a founding member with a bird’s nest of frizzy locks a la Ron McDonald esque

** I was part of a group who spent six months driving Overland from London to Sydney, camping on roadsides, beaches, abandoned airstrips and quarries

How do you do?

I've tentatively dipped my toe into the world of writing with some success, however I want to submerge myself.

Ballpoint Arcade is my office. My desk space. This is a place where I will sharpen my pencils, rifle through my tatty, torn notebooks, surreptitiously sniff crisp new paper before rigorously wrestle with words. It currently looks shiny and somewhat sparse. But fear not, there will be reams sheets of scribbles, piles of dog-eared books, rainbows of post-its, stacks of yellowing newspapers and inky ballpoint pens rattling about. But unlike my real world desk you needn't worry about the sweet smell of decay from the occasionally forgotten banana skin, wedged beneath a raft of papers.

The intention of the blog is to pull up my socks and step up my game. Move past half finished stories and create a new system of filing ideas that doesn't involve napkins or cereal boxes, so budding ideas may bloom. I'm getting professional. Not just aiming to get published but also to hone my writing and editing skills.

I have drawn up a calendar of writing competitions to act as deadlines. They include a range of genres from fiction, essay, creative nonfiction, poetry - as I want to push myself. I'll be taking direction from those who know best - writers. By reading and reviewing books of all sorts from writing how-to guides, cozy murder mysteries, sic-fi, chick lit, classics, nonfiction, fantasy to speculative fiction.

Whilst I plan to write daily, I'll only be posting here three times a week. I'm currently balancing a couple of other writing projects including a travelogue about my recent 9month overland journey from London to Sydney.

Please stop by, nibble on an iced vovo, sip on a cuppa and stay for a chat. Book recommendations are warmly welcomed as well as opinions on the weather and writing.