Stopping and starting

As the dog goes to day care today I decide to scarper off to Exeter again. I don’t feel good about it though. Frog is not happy – he had a boring day at work yesterday and is looking forward to another boring one today. How can I enjoy myself if he’s not enjoying himself? And my hair is horrible – I don’t want to appear in public. Nevertheless I go, telling myself I’m having an ‘artist’s date’.

    Artists’ dates are a recommendation of Julia Cameron (in her book The Artist’s Way). The idea is to have two hours a week on your own doing something you really enjoy in order to refill the creative tank. And it’s true. I do need a break. I get so wound up writing that I need to relax, and I need to prove to myself that I can stop and start at will because then I won’t be so terrified about getting stuck into a novel again.

    I don’t approve of myself shopping (frivolous, wasteful of money, detrimental to the environment etc etc) but after a week on my own with nothing but the dog and the countryside as company I crave bright lights and consumer goods. I want to be with lots of people – preferably ones I don’t know so that I can observe without being observed.

    In the John Lewis café I am fascinated by a seventy-something woman in turquoise with turquoise toenails. Her hair is a rather harsh dyed brown as are her eyebrows. She is eating chips with dainty fingers while talking with her mouth full. She gets out a packet of wet wipes to mop herself down.

    A man gets on to the park and ride bus. He has spiky red-gold hair and is wearing a baggy black suit. He has a worried expression and I see him as a small worried boy. He has been worried all his life, I think. Which is why I am delighted when he answers his phone and says, ‘I got the job mate so I won’t be available . . . Sorry mate . . .Cheers mate.’ As he gets off the bus I see that he has a thick red-gold plait all the way down his back.

    Plenty of fuel there for the creative tank, and here I am writing again – so it is safe to stop.

    I wonder if I can write a novel in the same way that I write my blogs – with a clear idea of overall theme and vague ideas for the next two or three days’ posts, but not really knowing where I'm going in the long term or what I’m going to say until I actually sit down at the computer.

    It would be much more interesting than writing synopses and planning scene progression. Why bother to write a story if you already know what’s going to happen? And on the other hand it might stop me feeling as if the whole novel is arriving at once and crushing me.