It's much colder today. The sun isn't coming out. It's a day for thick jumpers.
Yesterday I woke up early, again, without an alarm. I woke up excited. Usually mornings feel like they're against me, but here, it's a different reality - because every moment is mine. My only role is 'Writer'. The simplicity of it is like a much awaited deep breath.
After writing my blog, I headed down to breakfast. I ate a lot. In Chester, I am greedy and I mindlessly consume. Here, I am an engine and I tip in fuel. The food doesn't matter. The words matter.
We write timed exercises. I fill two pages on the prompt, 'Freedom smells like...' I decide it smells like suncream shiny and greasy across shoulders, flowers heady and bowed under the weight of their own pollen and a pathetic bubble of strawberry bubble gum. I write about a one night stand and a phone number etched into the wood of a toilet cubicle door. I write about a girl searching for her mother.
In the afternoon we decide to go for a short, easy walk, but are quickly lost. We are nettle stung, over heated, brook jumping, private land invaders. We sneak around bulls and hide from men in tractors. We emerge hours later, paddle in a Ford and sip elderflower fizz, making up imaginary childhoods for colleagues.
Back to writing. I produce a few new chapters out of sync - the ones I want to write. Its hard but somehow it works. My cheeks are flushed and my shoulders ache and the words are showing up. I realise that half my novel is still unplanned, unknown. This is somehow a surprise. But ideas for plots and people are coming to me from a range of sources. Keep going.
More wine. More reading. I share an unedited piece, all at once terrified and delighted. 'Be shit,' I tell myself. 'Let yourself be shit, and let that be okay. Fix it later.' The writing is better than I hoped. Or maybe I am just kinder to myself than I imagined.
More discussions - an argument has broken out at the tutored retreat next door; Black writers furious at the idea of a white person writing about how life is as a black person. The group is split and charged. Apparently this is called, 'Trespass.' We mull this over. Jane talks about a poet who writes a lot about sexual abuse, and the assumption that she had been abused. She tries to put words to discovering that the writer had never actually experienced anything like this. We talk about wearing different hats, and different skin, and how limited we would be if we only wrote about our own small lives.
At midnight, we crowd around the dishwasher trying to get it to work. Confused. Beaten. Five approaches later, the water floods in.
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