Write-Place

 Day 3 of Posts From the Past   My idea to repost past blog posts of mine to remind myself (and others) of my ability to do so and to compare/contrast my thoughts, then and now continues. I am finding that not only does this improve memory and recall, but also fills my mind with other things that I need to be writing about.  With thanks to my children and grandchildren for making me a mother, and to my own Mother, not with us here on earth since 2018, but forever in my thoughts. 💖                                                                                    -   March 22, 2020 I knew weeks ago that I ought to be keeping a daily diary on here or elsewhere of events, appointments, thoughts, feelings and opinions.  I knew way back in August when I purpo...

  Ok, so the article I thought I had shared to my Facebook, didn't actually share and the very intelligent comment that I'd posted to go with it looks less than intelligent without it. And yes, the smart comments of others are I suppose, deserved. It was such a good article too, but the most annoying thing is that I can't find it again, and I don't remember who the author was. In my attempts to find it however, though not finding the actual one I have found a number of others on a similar theme. If I ever find the one that I read in the first place, I promise to reference it and the author properly and thank him/her now for the thoughts. It was about Writers not being thought of as doing a real "job" and are so many times expected to write or talk about their writing, give opinions and views on theirs and other people's writing ... for free, ie without proper payment. The article writer in question cited a time when they were asked to speak about their ...

Looking back over past posts that I have written for this blog - as I often do when I need to focus my mind on one new thing to write about - I found a post from way back with  this title ,  "Know Thyself".   I wrote that I had found the ultimate "get yourself moving and write" site or at least thought I had. The idea was to take part in that year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the idea of which was to begin writing on November 1st with a goal to write a 175- page, 50,000 word novel by midnight on November 30th.   NanoWriMo I declared that this seemed "simple", and then immediately decided that it was not so. Having started with good intentions that morning and being sure that at least a few hundred words would be written that day, despite having "other" things to do, my plan went awry and I castigated myself that I ought to have "known myself better". I then described my scenario that day - the site itself was running v...

Came across this post of mine from 12 years ago : Battle of the Hard Copy   Write-Place (wwwrite-place.blogspot.com   in which I write that in the battle of 'book versus e.reader', I would argue for the case of The Book, to the bitter end.  Granted, I was talking about something called a 'View Quest Mediabox' which at the time was £52 and half the price of a Kindle, but oh, how new technology and age changes one's views. Apparently, at the time this 5 inch wonder could not only store hundreds of books but you could watch videos, listen to music and use a voice recorder on it. Clearly in 2011, the Smart Phone as we know it today had not reached me, or at least, I could not afford one then. I did get a Kindle like this  which a quick Google search tells me was brought out by Amazon in September 2011. I soon lost interest in it as I could not get to grips with the turning the page buttons forward and back and as the device does not have a touch screen, for me the '...

Here we are, already on the 3rd day of the new year of 2023 and I have been berating myself over the weekend for not having a thought or two worth expressing here about anything at all.  Anyone looking back over the 14 or so years of this blog will see that this is by no means a new 'thing' for me, and a simple search of " New Year" "Christmas" or even "Time" finds me castigating myself for not writing a post, the timing of a post or for the feelings and thoughts that I should or shouldn't have had about the season.  (I have posted handy links for some of these posts to save the reader searching themselves, which is a thankless task :) )  So where does Mr Micawber come into this ? He is a character in Charles Dickens' book "David Copperfield" and is renowned for many sayings which we use in everyday situations, such as "Something will turn up". Here, I need to explain that his quotations come about due to his inability t...

  Autobiography -  Processing the fact and the fiction When embarking on writing your own autobiography, no doubt one of the most important questions you will ask yourself is "What shall I call it ?" There are a multitude of ways of deciding on a title, for an autobiography, from picking a catchphrase from your working life to a phrase relating to a particular talent - or lack of it - which relates to you. It was suggested to me by tutors while at University that the title should be left till last, but I have found that in practice, having something in mind keeps you focused and gives the reader an idea of whether they want to read the writing or not.  The list of 'famous' authors of biographies is endless.  A quick 'Google' gives us Prime Ministers (current and past) Ghandi, Mandela, most politicians present and past as well as writers as diverse as Agatha Christie, Anne Frank and Alan Bennett and so called 'celebrities' of the day,  some of whom I ha...

It was the last night of my four night visit to Rome. I'd walked myself to the verge of exhaustion again and was having a final cup of tea in the bar/restaurant next to my hotel. Some new brick paving was being laid on the street and the bar was struggling to keep down the dust, even after the builders had finished for the day and the air conditioner was doing it's best to pump out some cool, moist air onto the tables and customers sitting outside with food and drinks. Emerging from the haze of cold air combined with concrete dust, was a woman, glasses hanging lopsidedly from their cord around her neck, speaking a combination of English and Italian, from which we customers understood that she had something annoying in her eye.  She lurched across to my table and asked if she could "leave this here a moment" , laying down an A4 notebook, whilst squinting and protesting about the "something" in her eye as she did so. "This stupid thing - it keep...

So, just when I decided that it's time I really ought to get back to using a pen or pencil instead of a keyboard constantly, I find this function on my phone. Whether it's been available all the time I've had the phone or if it's a new thing, I don't know, but I do know that it's a lot easier and quicker than the memo facility and, whilst there is definitely something to the feel of writing on paper- especially brand new paper and I've got a beautiful new notebook that is crying out to be used -  needs must, as they say and my old age and the conditions it brings with it mean that using one thumb as opposed to a whole hand is a more pleasurable experience.   I understand that I can write, edit, save and share whether online or not so have visions of me tapping out my next best seller (next ??) while sat on a beach, on top of a mountain, in the woods, on a boat ( not likely) or wherever I happen to be when the muse hits me. Yes, I am expecting it to hi...

"The art really is in isolating yourself and letting as few things into your head as possible. To only admit those things into your head that come from a direction where no one else ever looks. That is the difficult thing." W.G. Sebald This is a very profound thought - or maybe it just seems profound to me because of a particular state of mind at a particular time. Sebald speaks of "the art" but does not specify the art of what. We can assume that he means the art of living, but this can also be narrowed down to specifics - writing of course comes straight to my mind,or anything creative. But surely knowing the art of living must be one of the most amazing things to be able to get to grips with. Sebald admits it's difficult. I will do my best to try.