Clobbering the Whatifs

I had strict parents and I went to strict schools. I remember waking up one morning when I was, I suppose, about eleven and thinking, ‘Every day there’s something to dread.’

That way of thinking has stuck with me, even though there’s nothing to dread any more except life itself and what ‘might happen’.

Frog’s mother gave me a lovely book once called A Light in the Attic. It’s a collection of children’s poems by Shel Silverstein, one of which goes as follows. (I won’t quote all of it because that’s not fair to the author or his descendants.)

Last night, while I lay thinking here,

Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear

And pranced and partied all night long

And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I’m dumb in school?

Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool

. . .

Whatif I start to cry?

Whatif I get sick and die?

Whatif I flunk that test?

Whatif green hair grows on my chest?

. . .

Whatif I tear my pants?

Whatif I never learn to dance?

Everything seems swell, and then

The nighttime Whatifs strike again!

Fiction-writing is my way of clobbering the Whatifs. I drown them out. I replace horrible possibilities with nice ones. Which is why it's so painful when I'm stuck, as now. I shall just have to laugh at the Whatifs instead, like Shel.

Brave New Year

It’s ten days since I wrote anything here, and I started this blog with the intention of writing a little something every day. The reason for my absence is my shame at moaning all the time. And if the writing is going well and I’m saying how wonderful everything is, that strikes me as equally tedious. What I need to do, I think, is write from the heart like Trish ‘cooking’ Currie and not from my head. I need to go deeper and I need to be more spontaneous.

    Which is exactly what Roselle gets you to do and exactly why her workshops are so terrifying and exactly why I’ve taken my courage in both hands and booked into her Thresholds Day on 1 February (Imbolc/Candlemas).

    And why I’ve arranged to go and stay with my sister in London (people/family and London being some of the things that terrify me most).

    And why I’m at last practising using the hearing aids I got two years ago even though they make the world of sound come alive in the most terrifying ways – my own breathing sounds like a pervert down the phone and I had to stop Frog shaking out his washing last weekend as it sounded like claps of thunder.
    Two days ago I had my first hearing walk. The motorway roared like an overhead jet but at the same time I could hear so many birds I thought it was May and I was listening to the dawn chorus.