I have been doing a lot of soul searching recently. I think when you hit a particularly sticky patch in your life then you start re-assessing everything, looking for an answer to the question: where did it all go wrong? What I tend to find are the actual good bits of my life instead.
Rex. My faithful hound is probably one of the things that can bring an instant smile to my face. He's ten years old with a little grey beard and I've had him since he was a tiny little puppy with kennel cough and a runny nose. Whenever I walk into my home he comes and finds me, he sleeps on the bottom of my bed and when its really cold tries to get under the covers, he loves having his ears rubbed and his fear of squeaky toys has been replaced by an actual obsession with them. How can the world be a terrible place when little dogs like Rex exist?
I also have my family, my writing, my friends and all the other things that bring an end to the misery which can sometimes feel overwhelming. I can get lost in a song or a daydream, I can go to my favourite restaurant and just eat the best food, I can watch my favourite tv shows, go to a gig, watch a film at the cinema or empty the shelves at Blockbusters, I can drink a skinny latte in Starbucks or surf the net. There are so many good things to look forward to but sometimes we forget them, we take them for granted so often they almost become invisible.
When I write I give my protagonists so many challenges and disappointments that I feel like I'm inflicting all of my disillusions on them but its good to let them suffer for a while so I don't have to. My challenge is going to be writing a chapter where everything is good, where the character realises how many positive things there are out there and finds a little hope and its not going to be right at the end of the book its going to be somewhere unexpected.
x
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