Category Archives: Blogging

Nov 27 2012

30 Things to do before I’m 30

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This blog post has been in the works for quite a while (about 4 months). I’ve come close to posting it so many times and at the last moment, talked myself out of it again. Last week some friends on Twitter were talking about the 101 in 1001 lists thingy and I decided that it was time to post this. It’s still taken me another week to overcome inertia, so I’m posting it now before I give myself the opportunity to back out again. Apologies for any typos, I’m just sick of reading this over and over and then deciding not to post it. This is a long one btw, so grab a cup of tea and pull up a chair… Jo.

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a little internet-absent recently. Normally when this happens I come back with some blog post or other plagued with apologies and excuses. This time it’s different (and no, it’s not because I had to go to rehab following my Snickers addiction).

A few months ago I realised that I am now, officially, in my late twenties. I am 28 and a half (ish) years old. That means that in a year and half (ish) I’m going to be 30. I know that’s not an overly distressing thing in itself, but it prompted me to think about my twenties and wonder what, if anything, I have been doing with my life so far.

I started to think about the things I have done, but mostly, I thought about all the things I haven’t and I wondered why that might be.

Let’s go back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old. At this point in my life all of my friends had birthday parties at a place called The Big Buddy Bear Club which was a massive play area (ball pools, slides, tunnels, rope ladders etc.). The Big Buddy Bear Club was the place to have birthday parties. It was excessively good fun, for most kids.

I’m sure that given the amount of times I actually went to The Big Buddy Bear Club I probably had fun at least once, but all I remember is that I once got stuck in a tunnel and I found it very scary and upsetting.

I was crawling through a tunnel which had a gap in it. To cross the gap, I had to crawl across a rope bridge. As I approached the rope bridge I stopped. I wasn’t keen on crossing the rope bridge – it just didn’t feel safe. My gut instinct told me to go back the way I came, but there were kids behind me and I was too shy/scared/socially awkward to ask if I could crawl past them so I closed my eyes and hurriedly crawled across the bridge before pulling into a side tunnel and bursting into tears.

Even though I didn’t fall, and the rope bridge didn’t disappear beneath me, and nothing bad happened at all, I couldn’t bring myself to continue further down the tunnel. And I couldn’t bring myself to go back across the rope bridge, either. Supposedly, facing your fears means you overcome them. For me, it merely confirmed that I definitely found crawling across a rope bridge incredibly scary and that I didn’t want to do it again.

And so I sat there in the tunnel and cried. I cried about being too scared to go forwards and too scared to go backwards. All because of a totally non-threatening rope bridge especially designed for children of my age, height and weight to crawl across.

As I sat there sobbing loads of other kids crawled by. Some would give me a quizzical look before going on their way, others didn’t notice me.  Once again, being incredibly shy, I was too scared to ask one of them to help me get out of the tunnel. So I just sat there and all I could think about was how everyone in The Big Buddy Bear Club was having masses of fun except me. And maybe some other kid who was throwing up in the ball pool or something.

Eventually, after I can’t even remember how long, some girl I didn’t know saw me crying and helped me back across the rope bridge and back to where lot’s of extremely bored-looking parents were sitting on a bench drinking coffee and waiting for the party to be over. I sat with the bored parents until the end of the party, watching all the other kids playing and having ridiculous amounts of fun. I wanted to go back, but I told myself not to. It just wasn’t worth it, what if I got stuck somewhere else? What if next time, no one found me and I’d just get left there?

This is pretty much the story of my life. I’m scared of everything. When I face something I find scary I don’t conquer my fear, I simply reinforce the fact that, yes, I really do find that thing scary.

This is, apparently, how I roll. I seem to fear things I’m perfectly capable of doing, just in case something terrible happens. And so I sit on the side, crying, too scared to go forwards and hoping that, eventually, someone much more confident than I am will find me and I can go home.

Whenever I have taken ‘risks’ (and I mean that in the broadest possible sense of the term) I feel like things work out badly, and I regret taking that risk… And then that puts me off ever taking any other sort of risk or impulsive action ever again… Ever.

So now I ring-fence myself into ‘playing it safe’ that is: avoiding all the things that scare me, not making any decisions, and hoping that maybe one day everything will just work out for the best and I’ll be happy. I stop myself from making any decisions just in case I make a bad one that might make me unhappy.

So here I am. Nearly 30 and well and truly fenced into my comfort zone. This doesn’t result in a particularly satisfying life.

When I started thinking about what I have done this past decade, I realised that I’ve moved house more times than I care to remember, eaten a lot of pizza and watched a lot of films. I also passed my driving test, but I’m too scared to actually drive a car. And I wrote a novel… with no story.

I’ve realised that a combination of life anxiety and an unrelenting fear of failure has left me in this situation. I can either shrug my shoulders to it all and say that this is just the way I am, or I could do something (even if it’s a fairly small thing) to change.

In the interests of turning 30 and knowing that I’m heading in the right direction (or at the very least, be safe in the knowledge that I did more than move house and eat pizza) I’ve decided to make a change.

I started making a list of things I wanted to do before I’m 30. It’s kind of like a bucket list – minus  the  swimming-with-dolphins cliché and having death as the deadline. There are only 30 things on my list, but some of them might take me a while to complete. Others are small things that I’ve wanted to do for while but never got around to doing them – or simply because it’s easier not to bother.

I’m sharing this with you, Internet, to force myself to actually do the things on this list instead of flaking out like I normally do.

And I figured that since I’m sharing my list with the internet, I may as well write about each of them here. I foresee most of these things going spectacularly wrong (all part of the fun/learning curve, right?), and I’m more than happy to share those experiences for your amusement (you’re welcome).

Still reading? Excellent. Without further ado, here’s the list:

30 before 30 – The List

1. Join the Anthony Nolan register.

2. Have something (anything) published and be paid for it.

3. Begin to pay off my student debt.

4. Do volunteer work.

5. Be a confident driver (i.e. not have a panic attack when facing the prospect of getting in the car).

6. Write a new novel and complete my MA.

7. Learn how to play chess.

8. Take a yoga or meditation class.

9. Eat lobster.

10. Go ice-skating/sledging.

11. Learn a bit of Spanish.

12. Host a dinner party.

13. Walk the Three Peaks.

14. Try out for a roller derby

15. Have a party with a bouncy castle.

16. Master using WordPress

17. Go to a music festival.

18. Watch the films I haven’t watched (list to follow).

19. Go out for brunch.

20. Go to a drive-in movie.

21. Visit Edinburgh.

22. Do all the touristy bits of London you’re supposed to do when you’re a tourist.

23. Do a pub crawl.

24. Knit a scarf.

25. Do all the things I was too scared to do as a child (list to follow).

26. Own a round wicker chair.

27. Be a vegetarian for a week (or maybe a month).

28. Go on a random trip without planning any of it.

29. Stay up for 24 hours.

30. Work in the field for which I received my degree.

There’s a reason for why each of these things went onto the list, but I’ll explain each when I blog about them (because otherwise, this is going to be the longest blog post ever).

Apr 13 2012

The Blog Post I Never Posted (and other stories)…

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Before you go wondering whether I’ve fallen off the edge of the planet (again), allow me to reel off some excuses explain why I’m a little late with this post.

Okay, I actually did write a blog post three weeks ago. It’s just that I never posted it. I couldn’t really bring myself to post it because it was… well… quite depressing. I redrafted it several times, each time trying desperately to make it sound a little more chipper. And each time I thought that it was finished I’d tell myself to sleep on it and review it again in the morning before I published it. The next morning I’d wake up and start the editing process all over again. This went on for days and eventually I realised that I just couldn’t bring myself to publish it.

The post was about the fact I was consistently worrying about my future. I was worrying about being a writer, why I wanted to be a writer and if I’d ever really be one. I also wrote about how much I was worried that people saw me as deluded – and how sometimes I felt like there was some sort of judgemental crowd regarding my writer-aspirations as ‘something I should get over’ and that I should grow-up and get a proper job.

In my post, I suggested that in order to combat such worries of being deluded, aspiring writers should join together in some sort of support group. It would be Alcoholics Anonymous meets The Book Group – but with more tea and biscuits. And we would wear badges like this:

hellomynameisjo

Anyway, not to completely launch into this whole debate all over again (and rewrite my original post for the 9 billionth time), but the reason I didn’t publish the post was because it was becoming a snowballing issue, and while it helped to write about it, I don’t think that the internet is the right place to broadcast feelings on an existential crisis (but it might make a very good book). I like to blog about my neurotic ways, and the embarrassing situations I get myself into on a fairly regular basis – but I couldn’t bring myself to confess all the anxieties I have about my future. That kind of chat is reserved for unsuspecting close friends after a few Mojitos.

So, basically what I’m saying is, by not publishing my post I saved you 5-10 minutes of your precious time. You’re welcome.

Realising the overly serious tone of my blog post of existential crisis (which I never actually published), I decided that (if I did publish it) I should maybe follow it up with something a little more light-hearted. So I considered writing a post detailing how much I cheated on my Primal diet – which involved scoffing a sausage and egg McMuffin, some sort of artisan luxury French chocolate gateaux and a pizza (or two). Sadly, I never got around to drafting it and since having the idea I’ve been on a jaunt to Spain and eaten my way through Easter. This means that previous diet cheats are comparatively insignificant. If you’re still curious as to how much I cheated on my Primal diet, then simply consult the following mathematical equation:

Lots

The day before I left for Spain, I was chatted up. Twice. In the same day. This was very strange for me, because I’ve never, ever been chatted up before. By anyone. Ever. This is because I have spent  my life, in equal parts, being every girl’s ‘unattractive best friend’ and a total social recluse.

What happened? Well, it was a sunny afternoon and I had decided to spend the afternoon in town reading. A folded piece of paper was slid across the bench in my direction. ‘For you’ said man’s voice. I quickly discarded my initial thoughts that God was addressing me, and looked up to see a man scurry (with impressive speed) from the bench in the opposite direction. I unfolded the note:

u r beautiful

Underneath was (presumably) his phone number.

I was about 9% flattered and 91% amused. The flattery stems from the fact that I’ve never been called beautiful before. Certainly not on paper. To put this in context, here’s a list of other things I have been called:

About an hour later, a boy (I don’t think he could have been older than 17) sat next to me and almost immediately struck up a conversation that went something like this:

Boy: What are you reading?

Me: Stuff.

Boy: Oh.

Pause.

Boy: Are you a student here?

Me: Not exactly.

Pause.

Boy: What do you do then?

Me: I want to be a writer.

Boy: Oh. Is that something you’re… passionate about?

Me: Er… Yeah.

Pause.

Boy: YOU’RE VERY PRETTY!

Pause.

Me: Er. Thanks.

Boy: [Laughs Nervously/Manically]

Long Pause.

Boy: I can leave you alone if you want?

Me: [shrug] It’s fine. – I didn’t have the heart to say ‘Yes, please go away…

Boy: Sooooooo…. Can I er, see you again?

Startled, I shook my head and in a slightly more frantic manner than intended blurted NO! Then modifying it to a more polite ‘No, thank you,’ before realising that didn’t really make any sense. Then the boy laughed nervously again. Then he scurried away in the same direction as the last one.

Then I decided to do the rest of my reading at home.

In other news, Smoking Guy has had a haircut and developed a cough. We have still not conversed. Also, someone recently found my blog by Googling “professional smoking job”. Seriously, is that a real thing?

Nov 28 2011

How Blogging and Apple Crumbles are the Same (but not really)…

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Recently, I’ve been feeling like a total charlatan with this blog. I call myself a blogger, I tell people I have a website but actually all I have is a string of infrequent updates and an excessive posts about how picky I am when purchasing a new notebook.

I realise that this happens from time to time; I disappear without a trace and then come back with an apology and a long post about whatever and expect people to read it and for my stats to jump through the roof.

Fictional stats

But that doesn’t happen, because in order for your stats to be through the roof, you need to keep up with the internet. The internet is an Olympic runner, and I’m someone who hopes to keep up by running flat out on a treadmill in the gym once a month, and then spending the next three weeks recovering.

Actual stats

Blogging is just like dieting and exercising and anything else really… Breathing – there’s another example. In order to do something well, you need to start by doing it consistently: To diet you need to eat well, every day; to be gym ninja you need to work out at least five times a week; in order to live, you need to breathe all day and all night. Actually, that last one doesn’t really work in this whole simile thing I’ve got going on here. It’s like I’m suggesting blogging is the same as breathing, which I’m not. Blogging is almost nothing like breathing, at all.

Thinking about it, I’m also kind of suggesting that blogging is like dieting or exercising. It’s not like either of those. I’m not really sure where I got the idea for this simile from, but I’m beginning to feel like it’s crumbling around me like… something that crumbles really easily – like apple crumble – that crumbles pretty easily, and is also delicious.

Actually, apple crumble, despite the misleading name, is really not all that crumbly. It just has a crumbly topping. And sometimes that topping is chewy rather than crumbly. In which case, this simile works less well than saying that my original simile is crumbling around me like apple crumble. Because I’m not sure a simile can be chewy.

Okay, I’m giving up on similes because this is becoming a disaster.

And now I’ve pretty much forgotten what the hell I was talking about initially, because I was all “Mmm apple crumble is delicious, but not as a simile…”

Okay, yes. Blogging. Which, while not really similar to dieting or exercise by nature, it does operate on the same principle in that in order to be successful at blogging (or dieting, or exercising) you have to do it consistently.

Actually, blogging is a lot like those Tamagotchi things. Remember those? They were like tiny little virtual pixelated creatures that you had to look after and ‘keep alive’. If you kept forgetting to feed them or play with them or clean up their massive piles of pixelated poop they would die.

Tamagotchi happy1

Mine died. Because I played with it endlessly for about a day and then got bored and didn’t feed it or play with it and allowed it to live amongst the poop for too long. This is pretty much my mantra for life: Something is super-exciting for about ten minutes, and then it becomes annoying and boring and generally seem like too much effort to actually bother with. And then I pretty much start resenting it. Then I come back to it weeks/months/years later, forgetting all the hate and resentment and wondering why it’s no longer as brilliant and fun as it was to begin with (in the case of the Tamagotchi, because it was dead).

Jo's Tamagotchi

I’m sure I quit similes a few paragraphs back because I decided I was terrible at using them, and yet here I am again going off on a whopping digression comparing my entire life with how I treated my Tamagotchi.

Anyway…

I always have a thousand TOTALLY VALID excuses for skipping out on the internets for a while. But then coming back to blogging is like starting a new diet or a new exercise regime (seriously, stop with the similes) all over again. What I’m saying is, the weeks off from the internets/diet/gym undo all the hard work put in so far. Essentially, I start back at the beginning again.

And I’m a bit sick of starting back at the beginning again. Because when I’m back at the beginning and faced with the challenge of writing a post and pleading people to read it, I’m more inclined to give up easily and fill the text with terrible similes.

This time, my excuses extend to completely changing practically every aspect of my life in the space of two months,  and then deciding to take part in NaNoWriMo (again) which was totally stupid, because I failed (again). But in the 20k (or so) words that I did actually manage to hammer out, I got a few good ideas which could work for the blog. And so I’ve decided to make concerted effort to blog more consistently. The quality might be a bit patchy (i.e. talking about Tamagotchi poop and apple crumble), but at least it will be something. And that something might get posted more than once every two months.

If you’re someone who happens to read this blog regularly, then I guess I want to say thanks. And also, sorry for being really bad at updating.

So from here on out reader(s) (and spambots trying to sell Ugg boots in my comments section) it’s all change: I’m promise to post regularly. But I honestly can’t make any promises about refraining from using terrible similes.

PS. If you’re the person who found this blog by Googling “accidentally drooled on motherboard” then please get the hell in touch – joandthenovelist[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk. I’d love to hear from you.

Sep 20 2011

The All New Jo and the Novelist

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And so, you would be forgiven for thinking that I had dropped off the edge of the earth and decided to not bother with blogging any more and that I’d overdosed on Pizza Hut pizzas. But actually, it’s a much longer more boring more complicated story than all of that. And for the record, I don’t eat Pizza Hut pizza anymore. Not since they nearly poisoned me.

Almost a year ago, I installed a third party comment form on my blog called Intense Debate which, admittedly and having discussed this a few times with Nick Bryan on Twitter, sounds like something you should purchase from Ann Summers (but isn’t). It’s a comment system designed (in theory) to make comments more streamlined and look generally awesome, but in reality it serves no real purpose other causing complete disruption to the site.

In fact, after a while I discovered one or more of the following issues occurring at any one time:

  • Sometimes the form didn’t load.
  • Almost all of the time, the form didn’t load if you were using IE
  • Sometimes it didn’t publish comments
  • Sometimes it deleted previous published comments
  • Sometimes it deleted published comments on Blogger
  • Sometimes it deleted my replies to people, and then published them again after I’d written new replies
  • Sometimes it didn’t work
  • A lot of the time it didn’t work
  • It didn’t work so much that people emailed me to tell me it didn’t work
  • Did I mention how it didn’t work?

After getting completely fed up of trying to fix the varying issues, or whatever it was causing Intense Debate to have a meltdown every time I posted, I decided to migrate to WordPress.com. It seemed like a good idea – Blogger was kind of clunky (my template looked like a child had drawn it on the back of a cereal box with melted crayons) WordPress seemed so clear and minimalist. Seeing as Intense Debate is owned by the people who make WordPress I figured that the move would resolve all my commenting issues.

Somewhere around August, I had started the big migration to WordPress.com and I was super-happy. My template looked good, my old posts migrated okay, I had spent an unhealthy amount of time tweaking various widgets and pictures and permalinks* all that remained was uploading the Intense Debate comments – and some clever chap had made plug-in which did just that! Huzzah!

Oh. Then I discovered that you can’t use plug-ins with WordPress.com (did I mention that Intense Debate is owned by the same company?)

Fury ensued; tears, tantrums and take out meals from Nandos Chickenland – but nothing helped. I began to hate the Internet.

Eventually – post Nandos Chicken feast – I reached the conclusion that it was time to buy the domain, move to WordPress.org (which does allow you to upload plug-ins) and own my own website like a proper grown-up person with computational knowledge**

I won’t bore you with how long it took me to make this very average looking site, but I will provide you with a handy list of things I learnt during the process. You can print this off and keep for future reference (men should ignore point 2). You’re welcome.

Thingsiveleartaboutwebsites

I’ll end things here, because I’m tired I don’t want to keep talking about building websites, which makes for an exceptionally dull post. So, in case you missed it, the very awesome Suniverse allowed me to post on her blog during transition – so check it out until we resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Finally, thanks to:

Steven Chapman – for uploading the WordPress software for me (after 7000 of my own attempts)

IT Guy – for coping with my furious rampages around the house, excessive threats of violence towards my PC, providing Nandos take out and dealing with the tedious XML editing to get all of my comments back

No thanks whatsoever to:

Intense Debate for being a big pile of incompatible shit (Boooo, hiss etc).

* I don’t know what permalink is***

** Evidently, I don’t have any

*** Just looked up permalink on Wikipedia. It’s not what I thought it was. 

Jul 5 2011

How TV Ruined My Life…

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It’s coming up to three weeks since I last wrote a blog post, and I should warn you that by no means, will this post make up for it.

 

If you haven’t closed your web browser, or navigated yourself elsewhere and you’re still reading this, then you should probably reconsider. I’ll give you a moment (you’re welcome).

 

Still here? You crazy. Here’s today’s post:

 

Despite all my fantastically amazing intentions to write as much as possible, sometimes I quickly admit defeat and other life type stuff appears and completely destroys my writing schedule (suggesting I even have one). It isn’t long before it’s been a week since I last wrote, then two weeks and then three. Eventually, once things have simmered down, I know I’ll have to get back on the horse.  And getting back on the writing horse is always a bit of a pisser.

I know this. I know this fact so well I torture myself with it while I’m loafing on the sofa watching repeat episodes of Friends for the 8 millionth time. I am so overly aware of this fact, that I’ve already written a post about it. Twice.

But after a slog in the office or a weekend plagued with late nights and hangovers (that’s right, I get out), I’ll happily opt for slumming it on the sofa in my pants over writing a blog post about not writing because I’ve been at karaoke parties, torturing people I’ve never met before by shouting my way through Prince’s 1999 (seriously, no matter how much you think you know this song, you don’t. I learned the hard way).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to justify that watching TV as a valid reason not to do any writing. It’s even harder to justify watching repeat episodes of Friends, which I’ve seen a buhzillion times, and have on DVD instead of writing, but I still do it. And just when I start to feel guilty about wasting my life away watching shows I practically know line for line, I start watching something else instead, something really crappy, like The Big Bang Theory, which I don’t even like. Eventually, guilt will set in and my psyche starts to use all this TV watching apathy as ammo against me and I’ll start asking myself why I’m  watching shows I’ve already seen/don’t even enjoy instead of writing.

To minimize the guilt, and justify TV watching further, I’ve been asking people to suggest other shows (ones I haven’t seen, and might enjoy more than The Big Bang Theory) that I can watch instead. Therefore, I can justify not writing, because I’m relaxing.

Seeing as words are failing me right now, here’s a diagram of what goes on in my head.

Writing not going to happen

When other life stuff starts happening all over the place, and you’re trying to juggle work and a suddenly very hectic social schedule (I know, I can’t believe it either) alongside all the usual crappy things (like laundry and ironing and visiting parents and going to the supermarket and crying at your bank balance), collapsing in front of the TV to watch, well, anything is more appealing than shifting your brain up a gear and getting creative and bashing out a blog post or another chapter in your sprawling novel that is taking forever to complete.

Underneath it all, I know this isn’t really a valid excuse. I know that really, I’ve given in to laziness. I know that even if I just did five minutes of writing a day, it would be better than not writing at all and merely spending hours snarling at how crap The Big Bang Theory is.

But I also know (or at least hope) that I’m not completely alone in this. So, when you’re other life stuff gets hectic, do you still make time to write? How do you discipline yourself, or do you also resign yourself to watching The Big Bang Theory even though it’s rubbish?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

May 23 2011

How to become a hot, intelligent-looking novelist when writing in public…

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If you have any ideas about how to become a hot intelligent-looking novelist when writing in public, then please email me because I really need your advice.

There’s something very poetic about writing in coffee shops. I can envision myself staring off into the distance as I tap out the words of my novel on a slick laptop, drinking coffee, looking contemplative. In my head, that’s who I am when I go out to write in coffee shops.

The stark reality, however, is me hogging a table at Costa Coffee wearing broken jeans held together with a safety pin, torn Converse trainers with holes in them and a coffee stained shirt (a result of trying to write and drink coffee simultaneously). Clutching a flimsy, chewed Biro in my hand, I stare at my tatty notebook (also smothered in coffee stains) as I cram handfuls of chocolate muffin into my mouth, whimpering over my unfinished manuscript.

Some people (hipsters) attempt the contemplative intelligent look, but actually just look, well, like pretentious dickheads with too much time and money to know what else to do with themselves. The trouble is, there’s a fine line between looking contemplative and poetic and looking like a pretentious dickhead:

Fine line

Thanks to my lack of fashion sense or possession of a Macbook, I’m in the clear for looking pretentious. Similarly, thanks to my scruffy apparel (shirt with undignified coffee stains, and shoes with gaping holes in them) I’m also light years away from the romanticised intelligent novelist in my head:

No fine line

Look, I know that being a novelist isn’t about looking like a novelist. It’s about actually writing a novel. But sometimes I wish I looked the part. There are people who look poetic and contemplative and intelligent and creative and not pretentious. And I don’t know how they do it.

Sometimes, when I’m writing in a coffee shop, I see people who look a lot more like novelists than I do. I was going to take their pictures to illustrate this point further – but I thought that would be pretty awkward and weird. And I’m pretty sure the intelligent-looking hotties would find it a bit awkward and weird too.

So you’ll just have to take my word for it – there are people who sit in coffee shops with their notes and laptops and books and stuff, and they look awesome. They look like the coffee shop is their living room – they look like that table they’re sitting at, is their desk. They look like they’ve never had to struggle with fixing a chapter, or eliminating one of their main characters or spent an entire day trying to write a sentence. And what’s more, they aren’t scruffy. They’re kind of hot looking writer folk. They aren’t wearing clothes held together with safety pins, or shoes with gaping holes in them, or coffee stained shirts, nor are they pretentious hipsters with Macbooks and sunglasses. They’re these amazingly hot, intelligent, calm people just sitting there and writing novels and drinking coffee without spilling it all over themselves.

Who are they? Where did they come from? Why don’t they ever stop – not even to go to the toilet?

There isn’t really a point to today’s post. Other than: I’m jealous of hot, intellectual writery folk with laptops and their endless novel-writing* abilities.

*Admittedly, I don’t know that they’re writing novels. They could be writing anything. They could be writing an essay or they could be playing World of Warcraft. They still look like novelists. The bastards.

May 19 2011

People are weird. Especially the ones who go to coffee shops to people watch and take notes…

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Okay, I admit it, sometimes I go to coffee shops to write. I write in coffee shops a lot. I write in coffee shops probably more than I should considering I only work part time and can’t afford, well, anything. So, I thought I may as well write a post about writing in coffee shops. Even though I have so many notes about writing in coffee shops that I’m going to write three blog posts (but maybe only two – let’s face it, I get bored easily) all on the same subject, I still decided after about 30 seconds minutes of trying to write this post, to go out for a coffee and write down more stuff. And while I was at it, I figured that I may as well have a coffee as well. And maybe also, a sandwich.

Coffee

Nothing lures me into an afternoon of writing more than being in a place which serves coffee and sandwiches all day long and I don’t have to go to the effort of actually making them myself. But apart from the sandwiches and coffee which cost a small fortune (but are totally worth it), I do actually find it useful to get out of the house to write. It’s especially helpful get out and about when I’m really struggling to think of things to write about and nothing jump-starts a flat creative battery (wtf?) like people watching. And it’s so easy to people-watch in a coffee shop and take endless notes about what people are saying and wearing and doing and none of them are any the wiser… I don’t think. If you’ve never coffee-shop-people-watched before, then I have created a simple guide on how to start just for you:

cofshoppplwatch

I coffee-shop-people-watch so much now, that even when I go out for coffee with friends, I struggle to focus on whatever they’re talking about in favour of listening in to someone else’s conversation or staring out of the window at people in their weird outfits wandering by.

Some people might class this as being nosey or sad or being a really crap friend, but as far as I’m concerned this is all totally valid, writery research. To prove it, I’ve ransacked my notebook for my coffee-shop-people-watching best-bits:

“An elderly woman asks if I mind if she sits at the table next to me and I say ‘no, not at all’ even though I actually do mind if she sits there, but I pretend it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me that every time she turns a page of her Daily Express, a corner brushes against my elbow, or that she coughs ever fifteen seconds, or that she’s sitting unusually close to me, or that there’s at least six other tables in here and she decided to sit next to me, or that she kind of smells like perfume bought from an Avon catalogue about twenty years ago.”

“A man in a v-neck jumper and eighties glasses with leopard print frames mucks about with his iPhone and talks to a younger guy across the table about meetings and email and youtube. Later an even younger guy, a boy, emerges from nowhere, picks up a bag from under their table and sits behind them. Then he starts playing with an iPad and I can’t work out if he’s with the other two guys. Is he their brother? A son? Then I wonder if the first two guys are having a meeting or maybe an interview? Do they all work for Apple?! I can’t work it out. Later, the two men stand and shake hands. The guy in the v-neck and eighties glasses leaves with the boy and his iPad. The other guy goes to the bathroom.”

“A man wearing a purple witch’s hat walks by on the other side of the road, dragging a large, very broken, electric fan .”

“Someone is sitting on the grass-verge on the slip road opposite. At first glance, I think that it’s two people – two people hugging. Or maybe having sex. Then whoever it is moves, and it’s actually just one guy, and a guitar case. He’s a hitchhiker. I don’t know how long he’s been sitting there – but I’ve been here for a a half-hour and no-one has picked him up yet. If I was him, I would have got bored by now and left. Oh, wait. Now he’s standing. Did he hear what I was thinking? No. That’s impossible. And also, paranoid.”

This is all excellent fodder for my therapist novels and short stories and what not. Or at least it should be. Frankly, I forget about whatever I’ve written as soon as I close my notebook. But if I was a proper writer (like them authors what write books) I would probably use these life-type observations for my writing all the time.

So, proper writers, tell me: Do you people-watch and then use your encounters for stories? Give me some of your people-watching best bits. You know, just so I don’t look like a complete weirdo.