7/9/2014 0 Comments Blog Hop Entry!I am participating in a blog hop - linking my blog to those of others, all sharing a common set of questions. Thanks to Jill Alman-Bernstein at I Must Be a Mermaid for inviting me to participate. Her post can be read at http://imustbeamermaid.co/2014/06/26/we-hop-to-the-words-of-our-own-hearts/ Why do I write what I write?
The answer to this question is incredibly simple. I write because I must. It’s funny though because this hasn’t always been the case. For many years I barely wrote a word. But often when I think back to those silent years I feel as though I was in a sort of a coma then – shut down emotionally. And it wasn’t even the years of my abuse – in those I had a voice – a quiet one, like a whisper – one that only involved paper and pen – but all the same I had a voice then – poems that spoke of my pain and anguish as only an abused child can write. No, my silent years came later – when I was married and having my family. I spent so long pretending that I was okay because that’s what I thought I had to do to fit in, I suppose in the end I came to believe it – that I didn’t have any feelings any more. I suppose I was just numb. Whatever it was I became so silent – as If I had ceased to exist. In recovery I began writing again almost furiously – as if I had spent so long in my self-imposed silence that I was literally bursting at the seams and I could barely write quickly enough to get all the words out before I lost them! It’s still like that. In my blogs, my stories, my Facebook page and my morning posts there I am rarely at a loss for words – I rarely feel stumped for something to say. My mind is always working and my words are always hovering about in the wings like actors rehearsing their lines ready to come on stage and share them with the world. How does my work / writing differ from others of its genre? I think that many people these days are beginning to understand that to really connect with people there can be no façade – we have to be real. But that’s the one thing I suppose that I feel makes my work stand apart from others – that I am real. What I write about is from my heart, from the journey I have been on and whether you agree with me or not, it’s simply about who I am. I am not looking for anyone’s approval – I am just being me on paper – or on the internet! A writer friend of mine – Lee Stringer - speaks about how important it is to appreciate that in all of our human interaction we are really only just scraping the surface of getting to the true nature of ourselves. In reality we barely know each other – making up for what lacks in our knowledge with supposition and assumption – and yet we feel we are being deep. I accept that we are doing our best and trying but we still have such a long way to go! And in part I think that’s because we have yet to reach the point where we actually really know ourselves. We are really only just scratching the surface in that! Lee is right after all! When it comes to what I write about – well it’s just about what I am learning, what I am figuring out, how I am allowing my life to unfold. I share so that what I learn can help others but what I won’t do is to censor – I try and be as real as I am able to be. In our sailing journey – in which we are novices who are willing to give it all a go – we share the reality of our lives – not the prettied up version – the one where we gloss over our mistakes in the hopes that others will think us real sailors – the one where we don’t mention the ways in which we got it wrong in the hopes that other sailors will accept us – no – we tell it like it actually is for us. We have had others comment that we make a lot of mistakes – that we fail at a lot of what we do – and they say it like we have failed them. In reality we are doing what others may not be willing to do – we share the silly things, the hard things, the mistakes and failures because we also then say how we overcame them – how we faced this challenge but got past it. We share the brutal truth to encourage and inspire others to give it a go – without the fear of failure – because we try to take that out of the equation! So yes, our posts contain errors and mistakes – but we mean it – every one of them! We want people to know how it really is! What am I working on/ writing now? As well as keeping up-to-date with blog posts (which I try to do weekly) and my Facebook page (which is set to offer something every 2 hours 24 hours a day, catering to the world-wide audience it attracts) I am also the author of a weekly email newsletter which delivers support, hope and encouragement direct to subscribers inboxes - you can subscribe via this link - http://eepurl.com/R-1bH. I am also working on a the manuscript of a book to be called Out of the Ashes ~ 365 Days of Hope in Recovery. This new project is about offering readers in a paper form the sorts of daily encouragement I have found to be so popular on my Facebook page. Not everyone who has something to be working through has internet access and the hope with this book version is that it will reach an audience my electronic presence cannot. I have so many other projects that have had to sit on the back burner for a while now, but I hope to pull them back out when my current projects are less demanding – there’s Polkadots and Moonbeams – the story of a young woman in recovery who runs a suburban café, and the customer who comes in one day and changes how she sees herself, her life and her future. There’s Sophie, a character I relate to so well, a young woman born into a crime family who finds herself to be a victim of crime but who can’t let her family fight for her, and instead looks to the legal system to get justice. I have Charlie the Reluctant Sailor – a short book aimed at younger readers about adventure and facing fear in the form of a sailing border collie, and a memoir – Miles Away - that is waiting for a publisher to see its worth. I also write professionally for a magazine about sailing and usually have at least one article I am working on at any given time. Currently I am writing about the epic 40 days and 40 nights my husband spent delivering a boat from West Australia to New Zealand. What is my writing process? My writing process is interesting given that currently, and for the last 3 years, my home has been on board our yacht! We are often without power, and frequently without access to the internet. We are sometimes at sea and always limited in terms of the physical space I can occupy! We are sometimes excited to be arriving somewhere new and exploring and adventure is never far away. Trying to fit in the regular practice of writing can be something of a challenge. I used to have a desk and I liked to furnish my space with soft music and scented candles. These days I have a tiny ‘desk’ beside my bed which is also on a set of stairs so it can only be used when we are stationary and for the most part I divide my writing time up into two sections. In the morning I get up before everyone else. I spend a couple of hours in the quiet of the morning with the sun rising behind me, a candle burning before me and I put on paper what I have been thinking about in the dark of the night. Usually I wake up aware of what I want to write about and after making a cup of tea, I begin. For my Facebook page Daily Comment I write directly on the page. I edit for typos and spelling mistakes and do take a look back over it for sense and to make sure I have said what was in my mind – but other than that I don’t over-edit. I like this particular piece to be written in the moment – liking that it is fresh and new and straight from my heart. For my blog posts I want something a bit more thought through and do write in a word document where I can edit and play with what I am working on. My friend Lee Stringer speaks of going through the back door in approaching writing – slipping our point in, in a kind of hidden way, rather than just coming straight out with it. I like what he does himself and I have learned that sometimes this works very effectively. I begin at point A and want to take people to point B by the end of the piece. I do edit and work on these a little more than my morning posts. For anything else – well there’s a lot more at stake. I like to get my first draft down and then put it aside. I like to think about it for a while and then come back. Sometimes I will begin again – sometimes what comes later becomes the beginning – sometimes I love what I began with and go with that – but I like the sense of sitting it on my mental back-burner for a bit – sort of like ruminating – or simmering a pot on the stove. I like to let it sit for a while. For more complex pieces I like to see it printed out. I feel like I am looking at someone elses’ work then and can objectively and more clearly see the flaws in my argument or the gaps in my thinking. I like to then take the words I have edited more by hand, and then put them back on to my screen – I seem to see them then in a more fresh way. Writing almost anything for me is like being pregnant and giving birth. There can be pain in what I am working on – especially when I am writing about something hard – but it’s like it grows with me – it’s almost an organic process. And part of that process is about sitting back and watching it take shape and emerge, like I have created it and now it has taken on a life of its own. I feel as if the words sometimes choose me rather than me choosing them. And then, when it’s all done I read what I have created and I feel like it’s been a team process – me and the words have collaborated and made something together which is not entirely my own but has now become a part of me – and somehow I myself have then grown in the process. Blogs linking in: Helen: The Machinists Wife http://machinistswife.blogspot.com.au/ My name is Helen. I was born and spent my childhood years in England, teenage years in South Africa and adult life here in rural Australia. I am wife to Andre, the "Machinist" and mother to three Young Adults - as well as a beautiful Granddaughter. I chronicle the daily quests of Family, Home and Business life (Metal Fabrication), pursuing balance while flirting between the three. Welcome to my Manufactory! Scott: [email protected] http://bluewolfjourney.blogspot.com/ I am a guitarist, harmonica player, film and music nut and an avid cook. I am cheeky, sarcastic, grumpy and a loveable rogue. I am also a recovering alcoohlic and have a blog where I aim to share my experience, strength and hope with others. To find out more about The Blue Wolf ( which is me ) head on over to One Mans Journey on Facebook, hit 'Like' and find out more about that average little guy. Colin: Sailors to Seadogs http://www.sailblogs.com/member/colinjackie/ My name is Colin, I have spent the best part of my life as a musician, a bass player in countless bands, playing blues, rock, folk, reggae,(love reggae) and pop that wasn’t pap. I write songs, always inspired by people or places, and I tend towards quirky I suppose. I still perform live gigs, and these days due to the wonders of cyberspace you can find me performing live on the internet site Streetjelly.com, under my stage persona, Eagle. It’s a long story. Along the way I have always kept a loose journal of my bumbling through life, a sort of diary perhaps, or just the need to get it out of my head and onto paper, where the confusion seemed to make some sort of sense. In between gigs I worked as an electrician. My dad knew a bit more about the life of a starving artist than I did back in the heady days of the 60s’ and persuaded me to stick with the shipyard apprenticeship which I did till I was 21 before heading for London to became a “pro” musician. Made a few records, went on tour in Europe, the UK and even a stint in Beirut, Lebanon. Twenty years later, I went back home to the beautiful English Lake district and opened the areas only recording studio, making demo tapes for local young bands on the first rung to stardom. I met my wife Jackie, and over the next twenty years we both became very involved with local community events, carnivals, concerts, and festivals, I even spent eight years on the local council. For over ten years Jackie and I worked together on a restoration project to turn a derelict 9 acre park back to a thriving public amenity. Then, one weekend we went on a start yachting course and discovered that we both loved sailing, and set about learning how to do it. That was back in 2008, and after taking lots of courses and exams we became, in theory at any rate, yachtmasters! We drew up madcap escape plans to “live the dream”, sailing the islands of the Caribbean and maybe even beyond. We “retired” in 2013, sold our house in the UK, and gave most of our possessions to charity, before getting on a plane and decanting to Cabarete in the Dominican Republic. In 2006, on a whim, we had bought a little apartment there, thinking it a rather agreeable place for us to retire to, away from the long cold English winters, and, often as not, English summers. And then, after just six weeks in the DR, we bought Picaroon, 30 years old, forty feet long, with wooden masts, a ketch, in the next island of Puerto Rico. We spent six months living aboard, in a town called Salinas, fixing stuff until she was ship shape and sea worthy enough to bring her almost 500 miles back to Rep. Dominicana. The transition from my long hand journals to online blogging began back in about 2005, so it seemed a natural thing to do when we began our sailing adventure to start a new blog. Entitled, Novices to Navigators, and my first entry “So we’ve bought the wellies” went live on the site Sailblogs in 2008. Blogging is a bit like song-writing, and my hobby, painting with watercolours, sometimes they just flow effortlessly, often they’re a bit overworked but just now and again inspiration will be sitting there right on your shoulder, and it all makes sense.
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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