Thinking and writing about writing

I’ve been having a very interesting morning. Interesting but perhaps not in the sense you would expect, in that I haven’t been doing all that much. I’m not at work today; am home having a day off as Time Off In Lieu.

I’d planned to sleep in today and get up at 7am (gasp!), firstly because I don’t have to do anything or be anywhere today, and secondly because I had a lateish night last night. We went out to dinner with some friends we met through EverQuest, and I got to bed around 11pm. (Such reckless abandon! 😉 ) Well, that plan fell through, because at 4:57am this morning I woke up and was immediately wide awake and ready to get out of bed. Exactly as I have been doing for the past few weeks. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I have been trying to discipline (torture) myself by waking up at 5am every morning, including weekends. I think I can now safely say that the early rising experiment is no longer an experiment, and that I am now trained.

Since I was so awake I decided to get up because any fidgetting would wake M up too. I thought I would just potter around and let myself do whatever I felt like, instead of following my usual workday routine. On a normal weekday I spend the 3 hours before I have to go to work reading, drinking tea and having breakfast, writing a little bit, and getting ready for work. I am resigned to the fact that I am a creature of habit – I used to rebel against the idea because I thought it sounded so boring, and made me sound so boring. I’m glad to say that I no longer care whether others will think I am boring – and perhaps worrying about such silly things is in itself, boring.

So here I am, just letting myself do whatever I felt like. In reality I have just been doing exactly as I always do in the mornings (I just said I am a creature of habit): reading, drinking tea, having breakfast, and enjoying the fact that I didn’t have to get ready for work today – I have just been taking as looooong as I wanted. I’ve been reading stuff online and following all sorts of links. Washing my Pelikan M200 (I have the amber one). Listening to music and the radio. Playing chasey with Baubles the Cat (I think all the running around the house has exhausted her as she has retired to the bed, under the covers).

I’m trying to get to the point: why this morning has been interesting. Heard this very inspiring discussion on the radio. It was part of the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival, a forum called Writing Saved My Life, and the two writers who spoke were Augusten Burroughs and Lee Stringer (his website seems to be down so no point linking to it for now). They talked about how writing literally saved them from their addictions – Augusten‘s was alcohol, Lee’s, crack cocaine.

I’ve been thinking for the last couple of days about writing as a whole, and writing for this blog in particular. Part of the reason for my lack of inspiration this week was the fact that I have been stopping myself from writing about certain things that have been happening at work. I think I could get myself into seriously hot water if I did, even if I named no names, because Perth is such a small town and it truly isn’t that hard to work out who I am (and any librarian worth her salt would probably be able to). So work-related stuff is out of the question. It’s a pity because it would be fun to write about. I could try to turn it into a scene from The Office, maybe? I don’t think my workplace is that bad, but I could try! Hah! I could write about The State of Librarianship as a Profession, but I would want to do it proper-like (like Blisspix who does it so well!), and I haven’t had the time to sit down and sketch it all out. (Maybe this weekend.)

So anyway, back to the talk on the radio (I love RN, it does such interesting stuff!). What really blew me away was the readings each author did from their books. Listening to passages from their books was really like listening to the author talking to you – the language just flowed so easily and was so good to listen to. And because the author had been talking, you could hear from the passages they read, how they crafted their sentences, and got things just so. I was most impressed (and will have to add their books to my To Read List). The talk is available to either listen to online or download as a podcast, if you’re so inclined. (You have to select from a list of podcasts and downloads – It’s called “How Writing Saved Me: SWF Forum with Augusten Burroughs and Lee Stringer”.)

Lee Stringer talked sitting in a hole in (under?) Grand Central Station in New York, and discovering he could write, and that he enjoyed it. Writing has also been about trying to fill the spiritual emptiness, the “real thing”, that drug addiction was, for him. It also “grows the writer” and changes him/her. When asked about how it felt to reveal so much about himself in his books, his response was “That stuff that we keep inside are precisely the things that we all have in common” (I am paraphrasing from my notes). Perhaps this is why blogging is enjoyable.

I don’t think writing has the same urgency for me, but so far it’s been very enjoyable, and sometimes I do think it’s helping to keep me sane! Even if I can’t write about some things, writing about other things has still been good, and now that I’m slowly getting into the routine of writing, there’s nothing to stop me writing about work in all its grimy detail, on paper.

That’s been my interesting morning. If you read this far, I hope it hasn’t completely bored you! 😉

Categories: writing