Week 40 – Whatever the weather…

This week has been a bit up and down, writing-wise. As I said on Wednesday in the flash fiction post, the weather has mostly been dismal. I have actually found it quite difficult to write anything upbeat with the rain and drizzle. So, alongside the tasks I was continuing from last week, I decided to put some sunny scenes on the tv (on mute; I didn’t want my jealousy to get in the way!) and use them to direct my writing.

This was a bit of a mixed bag, results-wise.  The first problem was that travel shows don’t always cover where you want them to cover – I initially found Norwegian fjords and Wales, not exactly the tropical scenes I was looking for.  I ended up channel-hopping a lot, and it wasn’t very time efficient or writing-friendly!  So in the end I put on a film based in Hawaii, and sped through all the interior scenes, rainy scenes and scenes where the landscape or seascape weren’t on show, to just look at elements such as the sun on the water; the green of vegetation against the sky; the sand against the volcanic rock.  I got through the film pretty quickly but it was very useful in transporting me away from the grey world around me, and finally got me writing something a bit more cheery.  At this rate, I’ll have to dig out the holiday brochures/cds every time I want to write a scene that takes place in the summer!

The poetry I found last week didn’t fill me with the inspiration I was looking for either – I have held over this task until I can give it the attention it needs.

However, book club this week was useful.  Again, the time spent on the actual reading was fairly minimal, but it did help me begin stringing together the ideas I have floating in my head for themes through the novel; this is something I need to get to grips with as it is messy right now.

Other than book club, the other positives this week have been writing a few pieces of poetry and researching newspaper articles for future poetic/prose inspiration (as this worked so well last week).

So as I said, a bit up and down.  That is the problem with writing, really – each week brings its own positives and negatives, and some weeks the negatives are a bit disruptive!

In other news – well, flash fiction was covered on Wednesday, so instead I’m going to talk sport – yes, this week the Olympic torch made it to the UK.  Ok, it’s not exactly sport, but it’s close enough for me!  It would be fun to write a few stories based in the towns and villages the torch travels through; maybe I’ll try that in the next few days…  Of course, the Games don’t start for a while but there has already been a lot of conversation about them, so I’m sure that a few pieces of poetry or prose will come from the experiences people share.

Other than that, I am going to take a mini holiday, so the next couple of posts may not appear on the normal days.  Let me know if you had a go at the flash fiction though, I’d be interested to hear how you found it!

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂