annanotbob's Diaryland Diary
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Back home
Look at this!!!
That's where I used to live! I didn't take the pic - in fact it was a full-sized double page spread in The Guardian and I've just lifted it, but how dramatic is that? A cargo ship sank 100 miles west of us and 2,000 tonnes of timber were washed overboard. Man, I wish I had a truck. I shall go and see for myself tomorrow.
My final day as a rich bitch was as good as I'd hoped. A morning yoga class, followed by a facial, followed by 'dry flotation'. That was weird - it was like being cocooned in a warm waterbed, with lots of fleecy blankets. I fell immediately into a trancelike state. Not exactly awake, but not asleep either, in a blissful between place. Then lunch, a bit of a snooze and some rotating round pool/sauna/steam room/hot tub. I SO wanted to steal some towels and now I can't believe that I didn't. They were the biggest, softest, most absorbent towels I have ever encountered. Ours are just nasty - they're all torn, itchy and scratchy and some are those really fucking annoying ones that just move the water around your body.
Then it was home time. I drove really slowly across country rather than on the motorways, trying to sustain my chilled out state. This would have been easier if my car didn't bear such a close resemblance to a dustbin. It's the first time I've ever been bothered by the mountain of filth, but the contrast with all the cleanliness of my recent surroundings was too extreme to pass me by. I intended to clean it today, but there was an icy wind blowing in and... well, you know how it goes.
And now I'm home, determined to sustain the new lightness of being. Which means writing. I am aided in this by having made a connection with the woman who did that story2oh! I was on about before I went away. She's a Canadian TV scriptwriter when she's not making weird stories on facebook and we got into a bizarre exchange of notes via a game of scrabble I was having with one of her characters. Now she's invited me to be a writing buddy - we're reporting back on our progress by Wednesday.
It's given me such a boost, which is not to say I've done any real writing yet. My aim, as stated to her also, is to start redrafting one of the novels. The Polish cleaners one is very downbeat so I decided to have a look at the first Nanowrimo one. This is about a woman who reaches breaking point when Bush is elected for a second term and decides she can't take any more. It's serious in its overall message but not in tone and incident. (I hate the term light-hearted, in fact I hate all the terms that come to mind, it's fucking hilarious, at least I hope it will be).
But there are a couple of problems. One: I wrote it all in a month and as it moved around between the characters I didn't bother working out chapter breaks, so I have 76 pages of continuous prose. Two: I wrote it all in a month so it's pretty bloody awful. It's no good thinking I can rewrite a paragraph at a time; I have to read the whole thing through and see what needs doing. Three: I broke the printer so I can't get a hard copy. It kept saying 'paper jam' so I pressed the help thingy which told me to take the back off and remove the paper. I took the back off, there was no paper and now I can't get it back on. It has the rollers attached to it which move the paper through - no back = no printing. But my technical support team will be here early tomorrow to mend it. Yeah, Sam. I've read the first few pages and I've managed to forget it almost completely. Although a lot of it makes me cringe with embarassment, there are bits that I really like. It's now buzzing around in my head again, so that's good. What I need though, is a more recent catalyst - an incident that could push a person out of their habitual moaning into direct action.
Today I am grateful for:
1. Friends old and new
2. Sam
3. Renny still being clean. He's checking out 12 step groups and is looking good.
4. A walk to the park in the rain with little Millie
5. Sara cooking dinner
Sweet dreams xxx
|11:42 p.m. - 21/01/2008
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