16 Things on My Mind
A random (but hopefully interesting) list
1. I’m very intrigued by the idea that short stories are being snapped up by Netflix and others to be made into films and TV shows.
2. How much do our expectations of how our writerly life ‘should’ be actually mean we don’t take time to really enjoy how our writerly life actually is? (Ditto for life in general).
3. What noise do peacocks make? I think my neighbours own peacocks. One landed in my path the other day and ran off down the road like and emu. Do they make the weird honk and shriek I hear most days?
4. There is almost nothing more valuable than having extended time talking and eating great food with a dear friend. Nothing like it to nourish the soul.
5. The jacaranda trees are starting to bloom. There is one on my street that I can see from my window and all the purple petals are lining the stairs up to my door. What a treat!
6. Can a love affair with a country feel just as strong and deep as a love affair with a person? (Answer: apparently yes).
7. Having a filling without anesthetic is far better than a filling with it for me! Game changer.
8. How can a book written by someone who as far as I know has never lived in Mexico explain something so profound to me about living in Mexico, in just two lines?
9. Most life writing requires such radical self-honesty that it demands all of the writer. It also may take draft after draft to really find the truth. (Tip: the truth is often in the place of resistance. Tip 2: You can’t always rush or push past resistance, you may have to peel off the layers first).
10. Great minds don’t necessarily think alike but great minds are able to find merit in each other’s thinking and get curious, even when they think differently.
11. Heart the Lover by Lily King made me bawl my eyes out. What a book!
12. I saw an old tree friend of mine at the weekend and it genuinely felt like the reunion. Do you have trees you love like friends?
13. Sometimes decisions don’t make any sense, but you know they are right regardless.
14. As someone who doesn’t drink I’ve never minded that others do. However, I am discovering that nights out when no one is drinking when we end up in a late-night café/bookshop feel incredible to me.
15. This entire article Mexico’s Inner Child, an interview with three Mexican authors which feels so hugely pertinent to so much of the moment we are living.
16. I’m remembering Ram Dass’s words “I realised I was hanging onto my past for fear of having no future,” and once again they feel like guidance.
And Bonus thought for my Teas and Tales crew: I didn’t intend to have such a hiatus (life!) but I do hope to be back in the next few months. I think of you all a lot! I hope you are still sipping tea and writing tales.
Your turn! I’d love to hear what you’ve been thinking about…
Mentoring
Do you need a therapist for writing?
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Yes, that weird honk sound... that's the sound they make. 🦚
On a road that is a stone’s throw away from where my mum’s house is situated, lives a gigantic magnolia tree that I have seen since I was tiny. It is just magnificent right now. I even have a picture of it as a screensaver on my phone. I can’t get close to it as it is in someone’s back garden but I am glad its blooms seem to blossom for everyone. Oh and peacocks.. one of the few birds I can easily identify by sound before I’ve even seen it.. it’s like a cross between an elongated wail and a honk. There was a time when we’d find peacocks on our garden shed at my adult home. They’d hop over from the farm yard nearby.