This has been one of those weeks where I really don't have much to say – pretty much subsumed by work with a pack of brutal deadlines. I broke all my previous records and proved that when I have a fire lit under my arse I can type 2,500 words an hour. I don't recommend doing it, but I still have it in me. This was for an alt text job that I misjudged the number of images I had to write descriptions for. That was *fun*. Not. But hey, it pays the bills.
Anyhoo, I've not done nearly as much reading as I'd have liked to. I've just been so knackered in the evenings, and honestly, when I've spent my entire day reading and editing and writing, the last thing on the face of this planet I can bear doing is more reading. Nope, I watch short prank videos on IG. And chortle like a lunatic.
But today being my birthday, I'm taking things slow. The husband creature and I went to buy some nice things at the shops and we've got a few friends coming around for tea. Which is something we don't often do. My brain is itching for me to write, and my next WiP is nibbling at my grey matter. I've got some ideas I'd like to weave in. Mostly, I want to make some acerbic commentary about current global events. But it's good, also, that I'm not actively writing today. I need a break. I'm feeling a bit crispy at the edges.
And yeah I know, I'm blogging today, but I enjoy this; it's one of my guilty pleasures. In a few years' time I might look back at these words and cringe, but for now it's a valuable outlet. I'm not so vain to think I'll ever have a biographer looking through my dog ends of thoughts and opinions. But I'm not likely to inflict my memoirs on anyone either. Haha.
Which reminds me of a a writers' meeting I once ran. There were a dozen participants, of whom only one was a teen. The rest were all retired. There was the one prerequisite man with faulty hearing aids predictably sitting the furthest away from me (he was writing a political conspiracy theory thriller – of course he was). The rest were all ladies who were either writing poetry or their memoirs. The teen was sitting next to me, looking rather wide-eyed at all the older folks, and she leaned over to whisper, "What is a memoir?" At which point I laughed a little too loudly before I explained it to her.
We all want to be remembered. Have our names memorialised on stone. But when I walk in the local cemetery as I am wont to do, so many of the headstones are so badly eroded you cannot see the names. Particularly tragic are the ones that were initially intended as shared plots, with the one spouse's details on the joint headstone blank. There's a story there, except no one's around to tell it. Or the sad little stones, choked in long grass, of the little children who lived perhaps a day or two, who were so loved and wanted by their parents that they had their names carved into pale marble with a bible verse. The parents are now in the dirt, too. All gone. And homeless people make their beds on the graves.
I guess I'm always slightly maudlin about the ephemeral nature of life, conscious of trying to pack as much living into each moment before it's gone. I'm reminded of that immortal line from Highlander, when the Kurgan tells Connor McLeod: "It's better to burn out than to fade away" – and that's kinda been my ethos over the years.
Though now approaching 50 I have learnt to pace myself. 47 is plenty good to get stuff done, and I would prefer to be able to go at a decent pace for a good few years still. I like to remind myself that Robin Hobb wrote her breakout novel Assassin's Apprentice at age 47, when she'd already written and published countless other novels under the name Megan Lindholm. So perhaps there is hope for me yet.
And lastly... Because this is a bit of a rambling mess of a post. I have been slowly putting my ebooks up at my Ko-fi shop because honestly, I'm tired of Jeff Bezos getting more fancy yacht money out of me. If you've yet to read any of my books, do consider buying one of mine or simply buying me a cup of coffee just for shits and giggles. It being my birthday and all that...
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