Another week, another social gathering… I’m not about today as I am visiting family to celebrate my niece’s birthday, so this is a pre-written quick update!
This week, I decided to take up a new work opportunity. It’s something I can fit in with writing and it isn’t too complex, but I’m hoping it’ll give me some inspiration for my notebook – a big part of it will be meeting other people so I’m sure a few character traits will pique my interest! I have never used a character from ‘real life’ of course, but I have identified common behaviours that have turned up in my writing, and you can’t do that if you don’t observe how people behave.
People watching is a human trait, I think: we all have a level of curiosity (or, if I’m honest about myself, nosiness…) as to what people are doing. We writers just notice the details more!
I am also looking forward to spending some time out and about with other people. I’ve said before that writing is a solitary thing and to spend more time meeting groups of people will be a pleasant change. My old job involved meeting new people a lot of the time, so all this time alone really took a while to feel normal. Luckily I have a big family and a great group of friends to alleviate loneliness but I am still alone a lot more than I ever had been before.
But due to meetings about that, and life stuff that I’ve been working on a lot of the time, the writing is suffering a severe case of neglect this week. I am not sticking to my timetable, and am going to have to get really strict with myself. So – I will have finished section one by next weekend. That’s the target, and that’s that!
In other news – We’ve reached book 37 in the list of the 100 best novels: Hadrian the Seventh, by Frederick Rolfe. Not sure what to make of this one as I’ve never heard of it or the author, and the reviews are mixed, to say the least! I will see how long it is before I decide whether to try it or not, I don’t want another Gulliver issue!
And finally – I saw this article about books reminding up of where we have read and re-read them; although I can’t say there are any where I remember the environment to the same degree there are some books that remind me of certain things. For example, I read Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in the car (not driving!) when my partner and I were on our way back from a holiday, so although I’m no longer sure where we’d been, or what road we were on, I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car when I think about it. Another book reminds me of walking home from school through a beautiful old town, because it was given to me by a cousin when she was interested in Chinese things and I bought her a present from a bookshop there. Books can transport us through time and space, and not just by the words in them – that’s just another reason for me to love the physical books; I relate to them entirely differently from e-books.
And on that note, I’m off to charge the reader so I can read during my travels!
Happy writing,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
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