Success and spontaneity

I’ve always fought shy of success. I’ve seen what it can do to people and I’ve seen the pressure it can create. I worked hard at school and university – too hard perhaps – and ever since then I’ve wanted to live not succeed. I’ve been happy hiding in a backwater, counting the pennies.

    Recently however I’ve been wondering whether that's an antipathy I need to confront. I’ve been wondering whether I mightn’t be happier with the validation that success can bring – of me and my way of being and of the way I’ve been spending the last ten or so years of my life.

    In other words, it might be time to have my fiction published.

    And if that sounds arrogant, it’s only because I know – as described in the previous post – that the universe responds to intention.

    To that end, I’m entering my autobiography – or ‘memoir’ as they seem to call autobiographies by non-famous people – for a competition. I don’t think it’s got a cat in hell’s chance of winning. I wrote it in two weeks flat, pacing the hills with a notebook and pencil (dog in tow). As my sister said, it reads more like the research for a novel than a book in its own right. But what it might do, is get me noticed.

    I last did anything to the autobiography about five years ago so I’ve been going through it quickly taking out the worst bits. I did rewrite that first draft after sending it to Cornerstones Literacy Consultancy for their opinion and I'm now noticing that, while the second draft is better structured, it sounds pompous. I’m trying too hard. The first draft sounds more like me.

    I’m not going to do too much about the problem now but it’s interesting to note. I shall bear it in mind when I go through my novel again, which is what I intend to do when I’ve finished with the autobiography, just in case anyone should ask what other writings I have in my drawer.

The book I'm reading at the moment

The book I’m reading at the moment is a masterpiece of directness. Even though the story is convoluted and chilling (‘as twisted as fairy lights in the loft after Christmas’ says one quote on the back of the jacket) and even though the author is also a poet – perhaps because she is also a poet – nothing in it sounds as if it couldn’t be spoken as easily as written. The style is an example to me.

    Blogging is helpful too. It’s good practice – for me – in writing more spontaneously and naturally.

    Another reason to continue with it.