Gillian Polack's Blog, page 48
November 23, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-24T11:13:00
It's Monday morning and I have a guest post for you, from a new writer. I hope to have a few guest posts over the next little while, because there are a bunch of writers who are not being seen. Reviewers don't prioritise their books and word-of-mouth has not kicked into gear. If you know any writers in this position, I'm happy to accept blogposts from them. I don't have to read their work (because so many people are asking for free books!), but I don't want infomercial posts. If anyone blogs for me it has to be something that my readers want to read. This means, I suspect, that potential guests should email me first, to chat.
November 22, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-23T12:43:00
I'm back from the market and it is indeed unseasonably warm. It should not be around 35 degrees at midday, not in Spring. But it is. My brain is surprisingly unmelted, but, like last night, I'm going to save the best of my work for the time of day when I am most able to do it, which is when things are under 30 again. Listening to my own advice (from the post I did when the weather was nice) and taking care of my body. Drinking much water. Not getting heat exhaustion. That kind of thing.
I've only got 8 things on my list for today. Two of them are quite big, but all the rest can be done in a couple of hours. There are worse days for watching the pavement get hot enough to fry eggs.
Now I need to seed my flat with water, so I can just pick up a bottle and drink. I'm one of those people who get dehydrated quite easily in this kind of weather and heat exhaustion is a bit of a pain and...
Part 2 of my thoughts on writer's block will appear in due course.
ETA: While typing that post, things got a degree warmer. For my US friends, it's now 96 degrees outside and not even 1 pm.
I've only got 8 things on my list for today. Two of them are quite big, but all the rest can be done in a couple of hours. There are worse days for watching the pavement get hot enough to fry eggs.
Now I need to seed my flat with water, so I can just pick up a bottle and drink. I'm one of those people who get dehydrated quite easily in this kind of weather and heat exhaustion is a bit of a pain and...
Part 2 of my thoughts on writer's block will appear in due course.
ETA: While typing that post, things got a degree warmer. For my US friends, it's now 96 degrees outside and not even 1 pm.
Handling writer's block - the needs hierarchy
A few weeks ago I taught my students how to avoid writer's block. The fun part of the class was playing with the techniques so many people I know use to defeat the mongrel: writing prompts, everyday mechanisms for overcoming temporary silences. I spent most of the class, however, teaching my students two much larger things: how to determine where their writing was on a needs hierarchy (adapted from Maslow) and how to identify causes of writer's block within that. I realised halfway through the class that I've never blogged about this and that it's about time.
First, the needs hierarchy. Think of a Maslow triangle: http://www.learning-theories.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.html Now apply it to writing. It's simple.
The basic need is the physiological and that's the same in my diagram as Maslow's. It's possible to write through illness and hurt (obviously, for I do it all the time), so it's not a simple "I need to be healthy and out of pain before I write." Healthy and out of pain helps: it's much easier to write without hurting.
What this means, however, is that one has physical needs is insufficient. There is a hierarchy of needs within needs.
The big thing is that the bottom of the writer’s block triangle, at the heart of our writing lives, is the body we have at our disposal. One day I’ll upgrade to a fully-functioning top class model, but right now my body is a rather battered vehicle that needs a lot of servicing and care. If I want to write, I can’t avoid acknowledging this. And I want to write. Always. Well, almost always. This means I need body-awareness always. Well, almost always.
The next level up in the writer’s needs hierarchy is emotional. Maybe I’ll talk about this later in this post, maybe I’ll leave it until another time. It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that writers are not machines. As not-machines, our emotions can get in the way of our working, or we can work past them or around them or they can be turned to use and put firmly into our fiction. However we handle them, we have to handle them. If we don’t, they can give us writer’s block. The good news is that if we were machines, our readers wouldn’t like our writing as much.
The top level has several levels of its own, but they all come down to writing problems. Some of them are to do with a plot bunny that has gone into hiding down an invisible rabbit hole or something else that’s nagging one’s writerly subconscious and that prevents things continuing until it’s resolved. Others might be as simple as “Which spelling did I use for that character’s name? Am I being consistent?”
In my experience, once the bottom levels of the hierarchy have been worked through and once one has faced the horrors of an unresolved deep dilemma, anything else is easy enough to work through. Not always, but mostly. Mostly, the hardest thing is identifying where the block is occurring on the triangle. Once I’ve got a clear identification I can deal with the actual problem. This is why I so seldom say “Ack! I can’t write!”
So let’s say that I have identified writer’s block inside myself.
I start at the physical level. If I’m dying, I take myself to hospital (or ring an ambulance). I do not try to work past the block, for if I do well, I will die. That’s a permanent writer’s block, as far as I know. And this is the first step of the triaging one does after one has located which level of the diagram the block is probably in: handle what needs to be handled before you panic about not being able to write. Do not put life threatening (or even rather serious) illnesses off to be solved later. Solve them now, or medicate them now (if they’re regular guests) and then wait and see what happens with your writing.
If your writing returns all by itself when your head is no longer splitting, you know you’ve solved the block. If it doesn’t, then and only then do you look for other factors.
The physiological side of the writers' needs diagram is to know what to watch for, to prevent where possible, to handle early. Not to work past danger zones. And not to die. Not to push stupid-far. So many of my students find pushing past their physical limits a source of pride, then are surprised when their writing pays the price. Most of us will do it - life is like that - and some people will let it manifest in their brain as writer's block ("I can't write.") rather than physical hurt. There's a sexiness in writer's block, after all - it's a cast iron excuse.
Not all illness and imperfect health and bodies that don't act the way they ought are equal in terms of writing. RSI and other problems that get in the way of typing is a big thing and it's preventable (mostly), so it's one of the things I check for regularly. I have it, after all, and it once debilitated me so entirely I couldn't even brush my teeth. Now it just gets in the way from time to time, so I watch my physiological needs and I make sure my desk is set-up reasonably well and that I stretch and that I do exercise. Even on the days with impossible deadlines, I take care of my body, because the next step after that is being unable to work.
Step one in dealing with writer's block, then, is to check your physical situation very carefully. And this is turning into a long post, so I’ll talk about the rest another day.
First, the needs hierarchy. Think of a Maslow triangle: http://www.learning-theories.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.html Now apply it to writing. It's simple.
The basic need is the physiological and that's the same in my diagram as Maslow's. It's possible to write through illness and hurt (obviously, for I do it all the time), so it's not a simple "I need to be healthy and out of pain before I write." Healthy and out of pain helps: it's much easier to write without hurting.
What this means, however, is that one has physical needs is insufficient. There is a hierarchy of needs within needs.
The big thing is that the bottom of the writer’s block triangle, at the heart of our writing lives, is the body we have at our disposal. One day I’ll upgrade to a fully-functioning top class model, but right now my body is a rather battered vehicle that needs a lot of servicing and care. If I want to write, I can’t avoid acknowledging this. And I want to write. Always. Well, almost always. This means I need body-awareness always. Well, almost always.
The next level up in the writer’s needs hierarchy is emotional. Maybe I’ll talk about this later in this post, maybe I’ll leave it until another time. It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that writers are not machines. As not-machines, our emotions can get in the way of our working, or we can work past them or around them or they can be turned to use and put firmly into our fiction. However we handle them, we have to handle them. If we don’t, they can give us writer’s block. The good news is that if we were machines, our readers wouldn’t like our writing as much.
The top level has several levels of its own, but they all come down to writing problems. Some of them are to do with a plot bunny that has gone into hiding down an invisible rabbit hole or something else that’s nagging one’s writerly subconscious and that prevents things continuing until it’s resolved. Others might be as simple as “Which spelling did I use for that character’s name? Am I being consistent?”
In my experience, once the bottom levels of the hierarchy have been worked through and once one has faced the horrors of an unresolved deep dilemma, anything else is easy enough to work through. Not always, but mostly. Mostly, the hardest thing is identifying where the block is occurring on the triangle. Once I’ve got a clear identification I can deal with the actual problem. This is why I so seldom say “Ack! I can’t write!”
So let’s say that I have identified writer’s block inside myself.
I start at the physical level. If I’m dying, I take myself to hospital (or ring an ambulance). I do not try to work past the block, for if I do well, I will die. That’s a permanent writer’s block, as far as I know. And this is the first step of the triaging one does after one has located which level of the diagram the block is probably in: handle what needs to be handled before you panic about not being able to write. Do not put life threatening (or even rather serious) illnesses off to be solved later. Solve them now, or medicate them now (if they’re regular guests) and then wait and see what happens with your writing.
If your writing returns all by itself when your head is no longer splitting, you know you’ve solved the block. If it doesn’t, then and only then do you look for other factors.
The physiological side of the writers' needs diagram is to know what to watch for, to prevent where possible, to handle early. Not to work past danger zones. And not to die. Not to push stupid-far. So many of my students find pushing past their physical limits a source of pride, then are surprised when their writing pays the price. Most of us will do it - life is like that - and some people will let it manifest in their brain as writer's block ("I can't write.") rather than physical hurt. There's a sexiness in writer's block, after all - it's a cast iron excuse.
Not all illness and imperfect health and bodies that don't act the way they ought are equal in terms of writing. RSI and other problems that get in the way of typing is a big thing and it's preventable (mostly), so it's one of the things I check for regularly. I have it, after all, and it once debilitated me so entirely I couldn't even brush my teeth. Now it just gets in the way from time to time, so I watch my physiological needs and I make sure my desk is set-up reasonably well and that I stretch and that I do exercise. Even on the days with impossible deadlines, I take care of my body, because the next step after that is being unable to work.
Step one in dealing with writer's block, then, is to check your physical situation very carefully. And this is turning into a long post, so I’ll talk about the rest another day.
November 21, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-22T15:24:00
In a couple of weeks I'll be used to this weather. In the interim, I'm finding that 30+ degrees hot and that work is sludge. I'm at the faded stage where I'm diminishing the paper around me so that I won't have any excuse but to do the work. I get a spurt of almost-energy at about 10 pm and all my labour will be before me at that point and I'll diminish the paper more, get through my day's work, and pretend that I always intended it this way.
There are reasons people take summer holidays. Only it's not summer yet. Thirty-six degrees tomorrow (not even close to a hundred degrees for you Fahrenheit people) and not quite summer: it's going to be an interesting season.
In the meantime, the swarms of paper that rustle around my everyday have diminished enough so that I've found my notes from teaching a week or so back. These are the ones I was going to write up into a blogpost. If I finished that, there would be less paper. There may be a blogpost. Watch this space. Just don't watch it too assiduously, for I'm unlikely to be at the computer for significant periods until it's a bit more evening-like around here.
There are reasons people take summer holidays. Only it's not summer yet. Thirty-six degrees tomorrow (not even close to a hundred degrees for you Fahrenheit people) and not quite summer: it's going to be an interesting season.
In the meantime, the swarms of paper that rustle around my everyday have diminished enough so that I've found my notes from teaching a week or so back. These are the ones I was going to write up into a blogpost. If I finished that, there would be less paper. There may be a blogpost. Watch this space. Just don't watch it too assiduously, for I'm unlikely to be at the computer for significant periods until it's a bit more evening-like around here.
November 19, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-20T12:10:00
I need a reset button today. I got my first proper night's sleep in a couple of weeks and for some reason this has stripped me of the capacity to see any good in anything. Another possible reason is that yesterday one of the things I didn't talk about (because it's not at a talk-able stage) disheartened me a bit too much. It's a project I've undertaken for other people and at various stages it has sapped more and more from me and things go wrong and, while an awful lot of people have supported it wonderfully, others have tried to take advantage of it. Quite a few others. And it's had more than its share of bad luck. Yesterday's complications might have been the last straw.
Or maybe it's a combination of the two. First night's proper sleep doesn't mean I have enough sleep (diminution of pain isn't demolition of pain) and I made the mistake of feeling hopeful about the impossible project and now I'm no longer feeling hopeful.
When something I'm doing just for me going wrong in this way I have no emotional issues with shrugging my shoulders, making the tough decisions and putting things on hold or moving on. This is what happened with The Art of Effective Dreaming. I felt really bad for my publisher, for they had an inordinate amount of impossible bad luck, but I didn't wake up with this sense of despair at life wasted.
I want the path of this other project to improve please (I thought it was improving - hope is something I entertained), and I want it off my plate, and I want to move on. Not today, though. The third possibility for today is that the last few weeks have been so bad and so lacking in sleep that I simply need more sleep. I'll do a few minutes work and see. If I get the urgent things out of the way and I still feel jaundiced and exhausted, I'll call it a mental health day and take most of it off. I don't often do this (and I caught up on a lot of things since last Monday, so it probably won't ruin anyone's life if I do it) but then, I don't often wake up reading each and every one of my emails as if they're signalling slow apocalypse.
Or maybe it's a combination of the two. First night's proper sleep doesn't mean I have enough sleep (diminution of pain isn't demolition of pain) and I made the mistake of feeling hopeful about the impossible project and now I'm no longer feeling hopeful.
When something I'm doing just for me going wrong in this way I have no emotional issues with shrugging my shoulders, making the tough decisions and putting things on hold or moving on. This is what happened with The Art of Effective Dreaming. I felt really bad for my publisher, for they had an inordinate amount of impossible bad luck, but I didn't wake up with this sense of despair at life wasted.
I want the path of this other project to improve please (I thought it was improving - hope is something I entertained), and I want it off my plate, and I want to move on. Not today, though. The third possibility for today is that the last few weeks have been so bad and so lacking in sleep that I simply need more sleep. I'll do a few minutes work and see. If I get the urgent things out of the way and I still feel jaundiced and exhausted, I'll call it a mental health day and take most of it off. I don't often do this (and I caught up on a lot of things since last Monday, so it probably won't ruin anyone's life if I do it) but then, I don't often wake up reading each and every one of my emails as if they're signalling slow apocalypse.
gillpolack @ 2014-11-19T23:54:00
I think I'm just going to have to accept that contradictions exist in the world and that six different views of the one subject can be maintained within a small group at a single time without conflict ensuing. I don't have to simplify seventeenth century religion, I have to embrace its contradictions. This fits, because I have the same need with Judaism in England in the Middle Ages and the same with ideas of tolerance and understanding in modern Australia. It's tempting to write summary overviews that reduce society to something manageable, but the truth is that real societies aren't manageable. Complexities. Contradictions. Confusions. And that's on a good day, in a stable society. Modern Australia can at once be progressive and impossibly nasty, so why shouldn't England in 1682 be at least as complex? It could be, and obviously it was, but it's quite difficult to hold all that in one's mind and then invent lives that fit into it. Stories simplify, and in this case I don't want it to.
This novel may have a fair gestation period. Until I learn to believe six impossible and contradictory things before breakfast and to understand how a single person can carry them all in their culture at a given moment, I can't shape my characters fully.
It's much easier to write these impossibilities into a modern novel, for those six impossible things are being believed by the person I just bumped into at the shops. I can use nuances to indicate it, also. How to get at the nuances in 1682? Research is my answer.
I just counted, I have 600 primary sources still to read, hopefully by early autumn. Now you know why. It takes much less than that to make a world come to life from the outside. It's the internal world I need to work on. Although I guess I can build my calendar soon, with sunset times and which dates my characters went to church for what services. Not quite yet, though - I want to reduce those 600 first.
What got me thinking about this? The wonderful people at the Norris Museum in St Ives have kindly let me have an electronic version of Edmund Pettis' 1728 survey of the town. This means I can blow up maps as big as I like and see hat's happening and shape lives around the streets and the location of the cherry orchard. I have access to so much information about the physical environment, now. I could do a superficial novel almost just using this amazing document. Except why would I want a superficial novel? Why wouldn't I want to use the survey as a stepping stone into a more complex and exciting mind-space?
In related news, I think I need to journal some of my research for this novel, because I think it's going to get rather complex before I sort things out. It's also going to be amazing fun.
This novel may have a fair gestation period. Until I learn to believe six impossible and contradictory things before breakfast and to understand how a single person can carry them all in their culture at a given moment, I can't shape my characters fully.
It's much easier to write these impossibilities into a modern novel, for those six impossible things are being believed by the person I just bumped into at the shops. I can use nuances to indicate it, also. How to get at the nuances in 1682? Research is my answer.
I just counted, I have 600 primary sources still to read, hopefully by early autumn. Now you know why. It takes much less than that to make a world come to life from the outside. It's the internal world I need to work on. Although I guess I can build my calendar soon, with sunset times and which dates my characters went to church for what services. Not quite yet, though - I want to reduce those 600 first.
What got me thinking about this? The wonderful people at the Norris Museum in St Ives have kindly let me have an electronic version of Edmund Pettis' 1728 survey of the town. This means I can blow up maps as big as I like and see hat's happening and shape lives around the streets and the location of the cherry orchard. I have access to so much information about the physical environment, now. I could do a superficial novel almost just using this amazing document. Except why would I want a superficial novel? Why wouldn't I want to use the survey as a stepping stone into a more complex and exciting mind-space?
In related news, I think I need to journal some of my research for this novel, because I think it's going to get rather complex before I sort things out. It's also going to be amazing fun.
November 17, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-18T11:14:00
When life gets too much I seem to have an internal choice between research and dreaming. Yesterday I chose research. My seventeenth century project has been on hold because everything else has deadlines, so it was nice to dip my toes into the water and do just an hour on it. I might do the same today. Today, though, my reasons are manifold.
Yesterday I was getting my head around the shape of primary evidence for the seventeenth century, because it's very different to the Middle Ages. What transpired was that, but also an answer to the questions of some of my students.
Every year I get students who are enrolled in undergrad (or even postgrad) subjects without even an inkling of what the subject is about. They bring their questions to me, in entirely different subjects. Or I get students (or non-students, at conventions and talks) who are writing a novel without any background on the setting they've chosen. I seem to have the aura of the universal teacher on occasion. Sometimes these folk want an instant transfusion of knowledge, sometimes (this time, for instance) they want to know how to develop the knowledge they're expected to have.
I was astonished the first time this happened. I was taught at high school how to build a structure of learning for myself and how to access subjects. That first time, I thought it was a particularly disadvantaged student who needed to learn how to learn. Now I realise that, firstly, I have a talent for learning, for developing my own structures to deal with problems like this (it's how I got quantum physics comfortably into my time travel novel, after all - if it can be learned, then I can learn it). Secondly, a significant number of students enrol in subjects and then find they don't have the necessary background knowledge to actually study that subject. They might enrol in a Masters by coursework in Medievalishness and not quite know who Chaucer is and be faced with Sister Frances teaching Medieval rhetoric using Chaucer as a building block. I did that subject with Sister Frances (lo, these many years past) and all of us had read Chaucer and were able to use his writing as a base to explore the work of rhetoricians and look at the Pearl poet from various angles and have a whale of a time. Without a basic knowledge of Chaucer and his work, however, this course would have been impossible.
What I've been facing is that too many students (the numbers vary, the proportion varies, but there's always at least one) enrol in subjects without the prior knowledge they need and, worst of all, without the skills to do a quick catch-up before their course begins.
What I've found is that the work I've done with writers and history is translatable to this particular need. This means that yesterday, when I was looking at the seventeenth century, I was also thinking "How is what I'm doing translatable into techniques students can use for this catch-up?" This is because I think more of my students are going to need basic learning techniques to catch up on subject knowledge so that they can get the most out of their course and do well in it.
The good news is the vast majority of my students are willing to put the work in. They don't know what direction to go in. They don't know how to create a structure of learning that will enable them to create a learning dynamic. They're willing though, and they care, and they're hard working. All they need are techniques.
What this means is I get to play in the seventeenth century a bit more this week (on top of everything else, but not unhappily so) because I need more avenues to send students into. The answers for this kind of learning are not one size fits all, and my tendency to go straight to second and third year lectures on a subject only works for students who share my particular needs and approaches. I'm developing my capacity to respond to a wider range of actual student needs, based on their learning skills and their background. This means I need a raft of answers and strategies. This fits perfectly with what I'm doing with that seventeenth century novel. I'm not writing it up: this is something I need to internalise. I need to be able to respond to precise situations in class, simply.
Now I have an excuse to spend an hour in the seventeenth century and, fortuitously, there's exactly one hour until lunchtime.
Yesterday I was getting my head around the shape of primary evidence for the seventeenth century, because it's very different to the Middle Ages. What transpired was that, but also an answer to the questions of some of my students.
Every year I get students who are enrolled in undergrad (or even postgrad) subjects without even an inkling of what the subject is about. They bring their questions to me, in entirely different subjects. Or I get students (or non-students, at conventions and talks) who are writing a novel without any background on the setting they've chosen. I seem to have the aura of the universal teacher on occasion. Sometimes these folk want an instant transfusion of knowledge, sometimes (this time, for instance) they want to know how to develop the knowledge they're expected to have.
I was astonished the first time this happened. I was taught at high school how to build a structure of learning for myself and how to access subjects. That first time, I thought it was a particularly disadvantaged student who needed to learn how to learn. Now I realise that, firstly, I have a talent for learning, for developing my own structures to deal with problems like this (it's how I got quantum physics comfortably into my time travel novel, after all - if it can be learned, then I can learn it). Secondly, a significant number of students enrol in subjects and then find they don't have the necessary background knowledge to actually study that subject. They might enrol in a Masters by coursework in Medievalishness and not quite know who Chaucer is and be faced with Sister Frances teaching Medieval rhetoric using Chaucer as a building block. I did that subject with Sister Frances (lo, these many years past) and all of us had read Chaucer and were able to use his writing as a base to explore the work of rhetoricians and look at the Pearl poet from various angles and have a whale of a time. Without a basic knowledge of Chaucer and his work, however, this course would have been impossible.
What I've been facing is that too many students (the numbers vary, the proportion varies, but there's always at least one) enrol in subjects without the prior knowledge they need and, worst of all, without the skills to do a quick catch-up before their course begins.
What I've found is that the work I've done with writers and history is translatable to this particular need. This means that yesterday, when I was looking at the seventeenth century, I was also thinking "How is what I'm doing translatable into techniques students can use for this catch-up?" This is because I think more of my students are going to need basic learning techniques to catch up on subject knowledge so that they can get the most out of their course and do well in it.
The good news is the vast majority of my students are willing to put the work in. They don't know what direction to go in. They don't know how to create a structure of learning that will enable them to create a learning dynamic. They're willing though, and they care, and they're hard working. All they need are techniques.
What this means is I get to play in the seventeenth century a bit more this week (on top of everything else, but not unhappily so) because I need more avenues to send students into. The answers for this kind of learning are not one size fits all, and my tendency to go straight to second and third year lectures on a subject only works for students who share my particular needs and approaches. I'm developing my capacity to respond to a wider range of actual student needs, based on their learning skills and their background. This means I need a raft of answers and strategies. This fits perfectly with what I'm doing with that seventeenth century novel. I'm not writing it up: this is something I need to internalise. I need to be able to respond to precise situations in class, simply.
Now I have an excuse to spend an hour in the seventeenth century and, fortuitously, there's exactly one hour until lunchtime.
November 15, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-16T10:31:00
I'm blogging early because we have had (in the past 48 hours) summer heat, much rain, much wind and we're apparently heading for thunder. This is the trouble with getting all of Spring in just a few days. The old-fashioned longer season was more comfortable.
Because I've been slack recently (I know, I had good reasons) I have to write 4000 words today and polish another 2000. This is not at the stage of optional extra. This means getting a start before the storms. This means making coffee. From this you will understand that it's all sorted, just as long as I have milk for my coffee, which I do. Also, it would help to know what I'm writing about. The first piece is about writers, the second is about William of Orange and the third I haven't even got notes for and the fourth my notes are buried.
What I did wrong yesterday was have them all in my mind at once, and not progress much on any. Today, therefore, no more than two at a time and those first two are Australian spec fic writers and William of Orange. I should just introduce them to each other: Charlemagne's cousin-made-fiction meet Terry Dowling. That's what I should do.
Coffee then drafting then thunderstorm then more coffee then the other two pieces. My reward for good behaviour is watching Molly Meldrum being gently mocked by Prince Charles on public television and probably to phone my mother.
Because I've been slack recently (I know, I had good reasons) I have to write 4000 words today and polish another 2000. This is not at the stage of optional extra. This means getting a start before the storms. This means making coffee. From this you will understand that it's all sorted, just as long as I have milk for my coffee, which I do. Also, it would help to know what I'm writing about. The first piece is about writers, the second is about William of Orange and the third I haven't even got notes for and the fourth my notes are buried.
What I did wrong yesterday was have them all in my mind at once, and not progress much on any. Today, therefore, no more than two at a time and those first two are Australian spec fic writers and William of Orange. I should just introduce them to each other: Charlemagne's cousin-made-fiction meet Terry Dowling. That's what I should do.
Coffee then drafting then thunderstorm then more coffee then the other two pieces. My reward for good behaviour is watching Molly Meldrum being gently mocked by Prince Charles on public television and probably to phone my mother.
November 14, 2014
Market morning
I have loquats and cherries (picked yesterday and late into last night by the young farmer who sold them to me) and the best mulberries I've seen in years. I have new season young peas, in crunchy, crispy pods. The rest is mundane, however, I also managed to get 4 rotisseried chickens for $28 and I'm making two types of soup and freezing some of the meat. And I have an inordinate amount of salad greens.
When I'm done with the unpacking and the mild bout of cooking, I shall do all my work, I promise.
When I'm done with the unpacking and the mild bout of cooking, I shall do all my work, I promise.
November 13, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-11-14T14:54:00
It's warm here today. In fact, when it hit 37 degrees (at its warmest it was 98.78 Fahrenheit, for those who really don't like C), I decided it was quite warm. My neighbours left the front door open, too, which means we have our first internal heatwave of the season and that soon notes will be left on the front door again.
I did a bunch of useful things this morning. Now I'm waiting for the cool change so that I can do a bunch of useful things this evening. In the meantime I shall.. do useful things, but more slowly. I'm still catching up from the loss of days earlier in the week and a bit of warmth isn't an excuse to stop. I shall drink much water. I shall have a warm bath. I shall get through three more items from today's list before dinnertime (which is when the change should hit, since Melbourne has already experienced it).
Tomorrow is market day. I'm reliably informed that cherries are affordable. I shall hold onto that thought while I gently pursue the completion of lists.
I did a bunch of useful things this morning. Now I'm waiting for the cool change so that I can do a bunch of useful things this evening. In the meantime I shall.. do useful things, but more slowly. I'm still catching up from the loss of days earlier in the week and a bit of warmth isn't an excuse to stop. I shall drink much water. I shall have a warm bath. I shall get through three more items from today's list before dinnertime (which is when the change should hit, since Melbourne has already experienced it).
Tomorrow is market day. I'm reliably informed that cherries are affordable. I shall hold onto that thought while I gently pursue the completion of lists.
