The Writing Life

    

Not many people understand what the life of a writer entails. When we are earnestly in pursuit of our profession we spend more hours on our work and/or craft (and more diligently) than most people do at any other job you can name. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me in person or over the phone, “What are you doing? Where have you been?” Average work days for most people are eight hours a day but for the past 17 years it has not been unusual for me to work at writing for more than 12 hours in a day and no less than 8. Ah! Those were the days! I can tell you that we are not only dedicated, in most instances, but if we could work longer days- if it was physically possible, most of us probably would and certainly not complain about it. Mainly, I am speaking for myself in this case but I’m sure that my fellow bombastic-but-ardent scribes most likely do the same or more. Some of us sleep.

     Once writing becomes a serious part of your life- for whatever reason you

are writing- words take on an importance in the way a surgeon’s tools become integral to his skill as a physician and healer. We scour dictionaries, pore over thesauruses and read obscure sources for the best word in order to give our ideas and theories impetus. We are not just pouring out words, we also devour them like hundreds of pieces of rice and corn at a meal. We must feed on words in order to create them. Our behavior is not unusual given our profession. Our words and ideas must have meat with fat on them! New words flash like neon signs in our minds for hours if they are powerful enough and our ideas are formed by how we feel about certain words. We are full of word prejudice; Arbiters of words, you could say.

     Writers are accused of being daydreamers in early childhood and even into adulthood. Having never experienced this type of criticism from anyone, I have come to understand that it’s quite common. The sentences we write take about 50 to 100 times more forethought per sentence. (You can give and take those numbers and still basically be right about the math. It’s an individual thing for each person.) We certainly come across to people as very quiet so we stare much more than we talk and you can be sure we’ve observed everything in our path, the room, the concert hall or the shopping mall. Observations come with the territory and believe it or not, it’s exhausting. Sometimes it can be tiresome to pay that much attention to certain mundane aspects of life. There are a percentage of us who believe that is what our job actually is- observation and then to paper. Journalists at heart- believe it!

   

  Personally, I was a poet first before I ever wrote anything else. My first book of poetry, Seasons of the Heart, is primarily a collection of my first poems up to the brink of adulthood- before I moved out and away from my parent’s house. Poets are very special writers and any writer will agree with me on that premise. They may expound much further than I because I am a poet and a writer. There are two workers inside of me needing to take that precious time. My poet is hungry these days and needs more sleep and sitting quietly observing everything. But the poet has learned how to swoop down like a heron on a surfacing fish in the water. When those poems come, everything stops and the poet writes and soars through those castles in the air. Castles? I’ll throw one in if I must but for now… 

   

    

The best gift a writer can be given is extra time. Mundane life activities such as housework, cooking meals, general self-care, driving anywhere, shopping and exercise take away time from what we’d rather be doing. We might be the worst workaholics in the world but I once read a quote from a famous feminist writer to this effect: “Writing is the one thing that, when I’m doing it, I don’t feel like I need to be doing something else.” That sentence sums up why we do it. Compulsion comes into play here but with the effect of positivism that other compulsions don’t normally convey. When we go for a walk it’s usually to clear our minds for another eight hours of solitary confinement with a P.C., typewriter or perhaps a notebook if we are having a restless day. 

 

     When you see a writer friend absorbed in internet research, a nose stuck in a book, pounding away on a keyboard or hiding in a corner with a pad and pen, don’t shake your head and stomp your feet. We’re being who we are. Yes, we really love you but we must write. Take us to lunch once in a while and don’t pay any attention when our eyes glaze over. We’re saner than you realize and we just need a little space for that idea fermenting in the brain. 

     In conclusion, here’s a piece of advice to all those who are sadly watching the writer quietly go about his/her work. If you buy them anything, as a gift perhaps, buy them some extra time. “How does someone buy time?” you ask. Of course, you can’t literally buy time but there are many things you can do for them which frees up said time. Be sensitive to what is unnecessarily taking up their precious hours to the point of distraction and there’s the answer. For me, personally, if I could afford a cook and maid I’d hire them now. I like having a decent-looking yard but wish I could just stay at my computer rather than mow or rake the lawn or any of the other numerous outside tasks which seem to be endless. If I had a handyman to fix the 100,000 things that need doing- bliss!

Enough said !

The Castle Lady

Expectations + Prayer = Real Results

 

     If ever I could say that a year just flew past me while I was trying my best to harness time, it was last year. By November I had to look up my records to find out when I had posted my last castle entry on my Word Press blog and was astonished to find that my Hertfordshire entries were posted during the earliest days of March and in a matter of a couple of days! I've been so busy trying to swat problems as they continually crop up that there was no time left for writing much of anything- especially about castles. Even this blog has really suffered for want of some good entries all through 2015. It's all the result of shifting from spending my designated eight hours ( or more) of reading, writing and researching to fitting those activities around a basic DIY day, every day. Nothing in the world is more impossible- with the exception of preventing wars! It's also quite exhausting.

     In the future, starting this year, all those things are going to have to take a back seat to my beloved work. The dishes will always be there. Mops need to dry out. I'll really put soap and my vacuum to the true test in 2016. Maybe someone will bless me with a Molly Maids gift certificate and I can go out to lunch instead ! Well, I can dream can't I ? Better yet, a housekeeper can stir up a white tornado around here while I sit in the eye of it and write my head off. It would be about time, huh?

     I do apologize for what seems like neglect but really is not. My heart has been right there- buried in the photos and videos and new books on castles and England. I'll have you know it's very frustrating to me when I can't get to my pet project. I even get withdrawal symptoms and pull out all my castle videotapes and the photos I've taken during my castle trips. I'm wondering if I ever had to have brain surgery, when they opened up my skull, they'd find it was shaped like a castle.

     All joking aside, upon receiving a revelation from the Lord, I realized suddenly that I have lowered my expectations about life a bit too far and really need to shift up into high gear a bit more. I need to doff the habit of praying and then forgetting all about it. Putting matters in God's hands does not mean dumping everything in his lap. We need to be actively engaged in the process of putting our prayers into action. The verse in James 2:26 is often misconstrued to mean that faith without carrying the matter out by yourself is useless but if the entire chapter is read carefully you find that it's all about bringing your attention to the matter at hand and to raise your expectations. Your faith level is contingent upon how high your expectations are of the outcome of your prayers and supplications to God. You certainly can't build faith without high expectations and you won't receive or acknowledge answers to prayer if you stay down in the well of despair.

     Therefore, I am going to challenge my readership on this blog and from elsewhere to start putting forth stronger faith along with accomplishments, dedication and plain hard work. Giving in to disappointments and discouragements can become habitual and they only weigh us down and put a damper on every effort we make towards goals, plans and dreams. God would not have any of us thinking like that and I'm not saying it's going to be easy but if you keep your faith and expectations high it can only help you. It certainly doesn't help to let all the negative naysaying and bad reports take center stage. That's nowhere.

     In order to live a full and happy life we have to take charge of it and there's no better way than taking the opportunities which allow you to shoot strong and high towards those things you feel will make a difference. I feel that way about my castle work and I'll never quit until I have accomplished exactly what I've set out to do. It's a long road but I love travel...

     So, expect to see a whole lot more castles on http://thecastlelady.wordpress.com in 2016 on south England and perhaps even more often on this blog which has always been my catch-as-catch-can forum. Of all my blogs, this one tends to force me to take stock and then forge ahead. In other words,

 

           

Three Months in a Time Warp

     I really cannot tell you how three months zinged past me while I was trying to finish Sudeley Castle's entry. It's almost like I woke up two weeks ago and remembered that I've been nearly done with Sudeley for more than three months. Did I get caught in a time warp? I cannot really say. All I can convey at this point is that it's good to be back in the chair with the P.C. in front of me and surrounded by my books in what is now my office and not my bedroom. I'm not done with all my changes and moving yet but all the pertinent books needed for my castle projects are close at hand and there'll be no more running all the way down to my nearly empty underground studio ( bka the catacombs) to look up something in a book. I suppose it would all be worth it if I was actually finished with this constant state of flux called 2014. By the way, 2015 will probably bring more surprises than I can handle but at least it won't be boring. (Not that my life ever is but it sounded like the right word to lay down.)       http://thecastlelady.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/sonorous-sudeley-castle/ 

     To explain this big time gap, I can tell you exactly what I've been doing but I can't explain why it amounts to so much time loss. There are so many things to do in a day it almost seems impossible to get to time for writing. I know that's usually just an excuse but I'm not one for sitting around and making excuses for the reason why something didn't get done or executed in a timely fashion. I have one piece of advice before I really get into this: Don't ever hire or recruit a volunteer who is known to procrastinate as a regular profession. Mr. Tom Orrow never knows what day or time it is or how he ended up in the current predicament he believes he's stumbled in on. He's full of stories but not an ounce of energy and he'll waste your time like no other. You save time when you do it yourself unless you happen to be me. I get caught up in details.

     If you've been tapping your toes and drumming your fingers wondering when my next installment on Gloucestershire is going to arrive online you have been sated for now. I'm always working on the castles but my time per day on the work has been greatly reduced due to the 1,001 things I have to do in a day just to keep life and limb going in a healthy manner. Did I say details?    

     Most of this year I have been planning and organizing a Garage/Moving/Estate Sale and on nearly every weekend in September I finally ran it. I did make some money on the sale but all the key beauty salon items remain which is a shame because those are the true bargain items. It did occur to me that I needed to alert the beauty shop stylists and/or beauty school students but somehow I didn't reach my target demographic for the bulk of the items for sale. I'm going to have to get strategic with this particular liquidation and I have a few ideas which I hope won't encroach on all my other duties on a daily or imperative basis. Determination didn't win this round so I'm going to have to work smarter on this particular problem. Know anyone that is planning to start a hair salon ? I've got a great deal for them !

     All through the month of October and clear into November I have been dealing with the grape harvest in my backyard which produced about 300 lbs of grapes this year and I picked nearly all of it by myself. Where is a migrant farm worker when you need one ? I have two gallons of grape juice in my refrigerator. Before I started reaping, the insidious invasion of inexplicable trees, little to medium, all over my property took my full attention and in October, on the 4th I managed to find someone to take most of the medium-size trees out. It was a relief to have that done. Now it looks like someone owns the property once again. All summer long and into Indian Summer and autumn I had yard work problems. Grass knee high to a giant, trees growing everywhere I wouldn't want them, beautiful rose bushes that were starting to look like wild roses and an unprecedented problem involving the butchering of my Russian Olive tree in my front yard...sigh. The list is endless and I don't think I ever want to carry another tree limb anywhere.  

     I saved the grapes too, Ma ! I gave a lot of grapes away to friends in my neighborhood but I suppose I really should start finding some winemakers and make money off these bumper crop harvests. I do sell some but not nearly as much as I could to say nothing of the fact that I could use the money! I lost about 100 lbs of grapes due to overripe fallout, insect and bee robberies (!) and underripe grapes because of paltry irrigation even though we had quite a few rainstorms this past summer. If I had gotten all the grapes and sold them I would have made about $400 to $500!

     All year long, all the way back from March, I have been dealing with moving a great deal of my possessions into other areas of my house. I turned what used to be my bedroom into a library/office/media room. My living room is now more like an entertainment/ rumpus room. I moved my entire bedroom into the room across the hall and my former studio that once housed all my worldly possessions will be turned into a spare bedroom shortly. The beauty salon is very, very slowly being turned into a nail salon. Except for moving heavy furniture I have been doing this all by myself. The reorganization alone is a really tough job. You must understand that I own about 10,000 books which I tried to weed out and it may be around 9,500 now. Don't laugh. I have tried to move them from a 12 X 12 foot space into a room that is more like 10 X 10. The entire project would have been better put into the hands of an interior decorator but I'm pleased with the results thus far.

     I'm sure other things suffered besides my writing this year. Mostly it was me. You have to understand that suffering doesn't come easy for me. I'm basically a happy person and I do well with what I have. I'm grateful for many things but mostly I'm just grateful to be alive and have something to work with and I'm content when I have done my best without complaining. To be completely honest, however, I hit my lowest exhaustion level since the beginning of the second half of this year and I'm only recently starting to feel like my normal self. Without entirely knowing what 2015 will bring I'll try to bring you the  rest of England's castles in a more timely fashion- as is possible. If it's any consolation, I'm always working at it- no matter the pace or stride and I'll always love writing about and finding new castles whether they be intact or just a motte covered with trees. Bulldozer anyone ?

This slope will do nicely,