An invitation to a book signing in N8 and Prevarication .... how to wallow in it...

An Invitation

On Saturday 23rd April 2016 -

a talk and book signing.

at Hornsey /Crouch End Library at 3 pm. 

Missed my book launch ? Come to this event

Prevarication and why you should wallow in it ...

If there's one thing I'm good at above all else  ...I'm also good at justifying why I prevaricate. My mind is dead sneaky at ducking and diving to avoid starting (or finishing) ANY project, particularly any WRITING project until I'm at the razor wire edge of the deadline.  The thing to remember is that quite often while you're doing all the displacement, prevarication your brain (well mine anyway)is working over-time, processing, cooking, developing, perfecting what it's about to create.

So if you're at home,  do whatever you need to do - I know I absolutely HAVE to wipe the kitchen surfaces before I can sit down and write.  When it comes to - OK I have to stop doing all this stuff, - I take myself off to the library, the cafe wherever, where there's no cleaning, cooking, sorting, tidying to distract me. . 

Of course even when you're out, prevarication can get in the way all the time too.  Take the British Library. Yesterday.  First as the place is rammed with students preparing for exams etc on the outer bits, all the desks taken up, I decide to go to the reading rooms - lots of room there.  Down to the basement, take everything out of rucksack and put in clear plastic bag, then find a locker to put stuff in, then find a pound coin, then go back up to the third floor reading rooms. Half an hour. Then deal with texts, emails, Facebook - half an hour.  Work through list for 2 hours.  Tick, tick, tick. going through the to do list.  Getting there. 

Take a break for a snack and a drink.  Have to go outside the reading room and in the corridors for that. Get back in and its 4:45 pm. I'll work until 7 pm. Good. The girl next to me says-  you know the reading room's shutting at 5 pm? (No...) Yes the library is open until 8 pm, but not in here..  So much for that plan.[ Later found out it's only one of the reading rooms that shuts early.]

Back to the list.  So 5 hours work is reduced to 3 in total.  That's a good day.

Some days I can spend all day prevaricating.  Some people think that when/if they stop the 9-5, finally retire whatever, they'll have all this free time for writing. Yeh. I wish. The days fly past.  Something that you think will take a day takes a week.  Something that should take an hour, takes up a day.  You don't have to rush in the morning, you take longer to get going, watch the news, Heir Hunters, Home Improvement, check Facebook, shower, make a late breakfast.  Suddenly, it's midday and you won't get out to the library until 2 pm.

You see prevarication runs you, well ok me then.  The world is full of stuff to do, distractions. And I’m more than willing to follow their leads. But I still maintain it’s all part of my creative process. I must get past the prevarication sometime....

How many books have YOU finished and published after all?

Click link to my books on Amazon.

Feedback from my memoir course - a testimonial

I feel a lot more hopeful and inspired after reading about your journey ......I found your course really helpful for starting to grapple with these questions (eg. how to write about living people without breaking the social secret code) and actually going forward in some way. I hope it will be possible to join another group with you in future, if you do decide to do one...And I'll let you know how I get on with the memoir. SC

New memoir course starts today April 7th at 6:30 pm Blend Cafe, Green Lanes, N4

When the ocean surges ...

When the ocean surges,
don't let me just hear it.
Let it splash inside my chest!                                
Rumi 

I returned to London after two days away, right in the eye of Storm Katie(on the night of Easter Sunday) on the West Sussex downs, near Shoreham.  The howling and shrieking  storm was so wild where we were, on the top of a hill,  that at c. 2:30 a.m. a strip of amalgamated metal about 8 foot long and 3 foot wide was ripped from the roof right above our heads.  As I had no idea that is what had happened(until the following morning) and as it now quietened down, I immediately fell fast asleep in spite of continuous winds, driving rain, and slept soundly until 8 a.m.

Someone asked me if it was scary, that storm.  The answer is no not really, it was exciting and quite dramatic.  I was quite safe, staying in a warm hostel, no leakages occurred in spite of the missing roof panel.  Not like the awful damage the flooding caused recently to people's homes.  It was brought home to me by a poor woman probably my age ish, being interviewed by some news channel about the damage to her home as she was being evacuated.  The ground floor of her house, with all her cosy things in it was under 2 foot of water - dirty, smelly water at that.  Suddenly her face crumpled and she started to cry. and all at once it turned from a piece of news broadcasting, that one views dispassionately, to real life and the effect on a real person and the suffering caused by a terrible storm. That poor woman's plight brought tears to my eyes.

Later I drove  with a girl called Edna, down to the beach.  I was brought up in Swansea and have always been happiest where I have regular access to the sea.  I love the sea on a wild day - great breakers smashing on the rocks and spray rising high into the air - the drama of it.  Edna went off walking on the beach and I sat close to the water on a rock, safely above the incoming surges and watched the breakers rolling in and then sucking out - a long drawn out gravelly sound, repeated over and over, a soothing rhythmic sound, like a chant.

Rumi's ocean metaphor stands for being a full-on participant in life, not just an observer.  I hope that at the end of my life (whenever that may be), looking back I will feel able to say that I  'let it splash in my chest'.
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You want to Write Memoir?  New Course starts April 7th 2016.  6;30 pm. North London

Look at My Courses tab for further details.