Category: Creativity
-
An entire world, enclosed
Somewhere out there lies the rest of the valley, but as far as you can see, we’re completely isolated here on the high fellside above Sparty Lea. It’s no wonder I came up with the idea of an isolated world, for my science fiction trilogy. A world isolated but otherwise exactly familiar. This is a…
-
Some tasks are guaranteed to provide joy
My professional days were spent, mostly, chasing needles in haystacks, and never being sure, from the outset of any given project until perhaps half-way through the contract, that the needle would be found. Sometimes it wasn’t, towards the end, and so my professional days were numbered. Writing novels is not entirely dissimilar, I’m finding. You…
-
But tasks make a joyful punctuation . . .
I have delved deep into the first of the four novels I mean to read over the next few days and weeks. I have begun. It’s lovely, and I’m away with the faeries into another land and another time, but the present also makes a welcome intrusion. Today we’re expecting a delivery of two big…
-
The joy of reading
Too often, in the grand scale of things, I’m obsessed with doing, creating, achieving, finishing. So much so that when otherwise idle, as I’ve felt over the past day or so, and when challenged to ‘read a book,’ I find myself explaining, ‘but that’s not really doing anything!” Err, apparently, wrong! There are four books,…
-
Family fun . . .
I’m beginning to think that families exist to keep us safely grounded. Besides the obvious, I mean. We stick with families because sometimes we need to be teased! Well, perhaps the teasing turns merciless, and that’s not good. But good-natured and with love, that sort of teasing, that feels healthy and perceptive. I was on…
-
The joy of persistence
Halfway through my editing odyssey, I know it’s not really Homeric, but it does feel like I shall have to begin again when I reach the end. After all, my first novelistic attempt went through seven drafts, while my second became a rather convoluted series of fragments searching for a story. This third novel feels…
-
Can pretend joys become real ones?
When lonely Geppetto carved out a wooden boy to keep him company, he didn’t realise that the magic of creation might reveal a hidden side. But perhaps his effort was an early manifestation of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, the work of imagining a better way, rather than letting the negative ruminations overwhelm. I do not like…
-
A task completed . . .
In this blog I celebrated, nearly a month ago now, the completion of the first draft of my manuscript, Daughters of Eden, which had turned out to be the bona fide finale of the science/climate fiction series I’ve been working on for the past three years. Today I’m celebrating the completion of the packaging side.…
-
Woodworking joys . . .
Actually, I’m not interested in selling anything I might make. As our dear friend opines about his amazing bird houses, which decorate several walls around our smallholding in Sparty Lea, ‘if I had to sell them, it would take all the fun out of the activity.’ Same for me. No, what I want is to…
-
The delights of feedback
My good friend from college (university) days back in Pennsylvania is a constant source of joy. We seem to have many areas of empathy, and the primary one is now in the realm of ageing. One of the great things about feedback in this blog is that I get to re-consider the thoughts I’ve had,…
Roads to Joy 