I fell in love with you and I cried: Chennai

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Blogging, Chennai, India, Motivation, writing

I fell in love with you and I cried: Chennai
(draft book chapter, part one, with a few extra details added for the blog)

(Kochi) The ride in the rickshaw from the train station to the guesthouse had been unpleasant, so we got a taxi on the way back thinking, why suffer if we don’t have to? We drove past parked up intricately painted trucks which looked like vintage fair ground vehicles; past a scooter with a man and a woman, her holding a tiny baby in her arms.

At the train station, again feeling comfortable, walking the length of the platform. I bought sweets, I said they were for cold/cough, the man showed me some herbal sweets, ginger or mint. I asked for twenty, a mixture, and he counted them out and wrapped them up neatly in a little parcel of newspaper held together with an elastic band.

At the train station restaurant we had masala dosa and vegetable biryani, this was mostly rice, but was nonetheless plain and delicious. Then another dosa to share, actually two, one each, as they came in twos as they sometimes do at the train stations and two more lots of chai tea. The waiters laughed but we wanted to eat well before getting on the train; we also bought samosas, banana balls and water from the station forecourt.

The train began its journey at the same station as us which meant we had no anxieties about people being in our seats. The train was the best one we had been on, as good as the Delhi to Goa one but brand new; it looked like it had never been used before and the seats still had that new plastic smell.

We were in 2 Tier AC (this means that the bunks are two high, not three, so everything feels a bit more spacious and the carriages, in my thus far limited experience, are smarter, with curtains at the compartments), a step up from our previous, daytime journey from Varkala to Kochi. The train left Kochi at around 7pm for a fifteen hour journey to Chennai. It was a good job we had eaten and bought food to bring on the train as no one came round with food, no samosas, no water, even.

First to get on after us was a young guy who had the bunk above my husband, he got straight up onto his bunk but the three of us talked for a while. He was a final year engineering student, he said that Indian parents want their children only to be engineers or doctors. He said sometimes parents decide when a baby is four months old or even before they are born what they are going to study. His parents were from Kerala but work in the UAE and he was brought up there up. He told us UAE is nicknamed Little Kerala as there’s so many people from Kerala there. We asked him if he had any pressure to get married, ‘Not yet,’ he said but his cousin who is a girl does, ‘She’s same age, at university like me, and wants to be a doctor.’ He talked about corruption and about politics and about the garbage problem. ‘As soon as I can, I’m getting out of this country,’ he said.

Later a man who had the bunk above me got on. He sat down next to my husband and we chatted for a bit. He lived in Kerala but was going to Chennai for a one week training course. He said he preferred Kerala for its climate and the nature, and said that Chennai would be hot. I asked him if he minded going, he said, ‘No not at all, it’s only one week.’

Then my husband and I watched Netflix, Orange is the new black, now finished, I’d like to get the book to find out how much is real, with the tablet and headphones, us both sitting on my husband’s bed and the man sitting on mine/ours (the lower bunks are also the seats for the people in the upper bunks until it is time for everyone to go to sleep).

Everyone got ready for bed (for me, this just meant undoing my bra, I wore comfy clothes and slept in them) and the man went up.
We each had two white cotton sheets, a pillow and a heavy woollen blanket, the ac makes it chilly and I folded my blanket double. The bed was firm but not really uncomfortable.

Someone closed the curtain to our cubicle and the lights were dimmed. It felt cosy, safe and peaceful. I think staff came and shone torch to check on us in the night. There was a guard asleep out near the sinks outside the loos. I think it felt okay to be with strangers because we’d chatted. I lay awake for a while, just enjoying the feeling. It was exciting. When I went to the loo, I counted the curtained cubicles to find way my way back to the correct bunk.

Woke up. The houses looked like Kanyakumari, which is also in Tamil Nadu, even though the two places are far apart (Tamil Nadu is a large state).

The palm trees were different to the ones in Kerala, some had shorter, floppier leaves and spiky trunks where the stubs of old leaves remained. Others were tall with very thin trunks and spiky punk hair like Dr Zeus trees and there were also low, bushy trees almost like English trees, like little hawthorn trees or big overgrown gorse bushes.

The train arrived later than expected, the man doing the training course said he had just enough time to get to the course for the starting time. No shower, no breakfast and going straight to a work course after an overnight train journey. He didn’t seem to mind at all, I thought about people in the UK, myself included and how we’d all complain if work expected us to do that.

The train station was big and busy, we found out where the prepaid taxi stand was and got a taxi to the guesthouse. Our friend from Chennai told us that Chennai was hot and dry and that where we were staying was busy, ‘You are staying in the real India.’

Our guesthouse was down a narrow alleyway off a busy main street, hectic with rickshaws and people. The guesthouse was tiled throughout with pretty green glass at the landing windows. Our room was small with no window but it was clean. We dumped our bags and went for breakfast- masala dosas- at a restaurant nearby that the guesthouse staff told us about, and then went for a wander of the local area.

We had finished our water on the train and spent a while looking around before realising we were overheated and thirsty. We stopped at a juice place and had fresh juice, salted peanuts and cold water and sat down for a while. Even so it felt good to be back in a dry heat, hotter but less humid, more like Delhi.

I washed loads of clothes and hung them in the bathroom, even though we had no proper window, just vents, they dried within a few hours, and didn’t smell, I was amazed. In Varkala during the monsoon it had been so difficult to get clothes dry.

I struggled with annoying WiFi, trying to do all the reviews I’d promised. Like postcards, only do if you really want to and don’t say you’ll do unless you’re sure. Now I only do if they especially ask and/or I make a good connection. I gave up and had a nap, often the best solution.

We went out for dinner at a different place, another local non touristy restaurant. Staff stood all around staring at us while we ate. It was a real lesson in overcoming the effects of self consciousness; eating rice with my fingers, being in the flow and not getting put off by six people watching us! The food served on yellow plastic plates again, like it was in Kanyakumari (must be a Tamil Nadu thing?). I had onion oothapam for the first time.

The night was warm and felt exciting and I didn’t want to go in for the night yet so we went to a little shop and bought 7Up and biscuits and cigarettes. I wasn’t sure if it was okay to smoke there (UK conditioning!). The hotel forecourt faced the alley but there wasn’t anywhere to sit, so we perched awkwardly on a little concrete step. One of the hotel staff got us some chairs and we sat down at the edge of the forecourt where it met the alley, and gave him a couple of cigarettes.

Opposite was a row of parked scooters. Three street dogs were squaring up and barking at each other; they were thick set with faces like Ridgebacks, sturdy, their bodies muscular and well covered. People went past, some said hello, we didn’t see any other Westerners. A older Indian man wearing a lungi and an Indian shirt, short sleeved with front pocket, walked passed us, greeted us and said, ‘Welcome to India.’

The wall opposite us was faded paint-peeled orange, tinged with blue. An orange cat sat on the wall. The cats in Chennai all seemed to be orange, not bright ginger tom colour but a paler orange. The colour of tiger milk, a drink my grandmother used to make me as a child, milk mixed with orange juice. A few feet below the cat was a little overhang roof of old blue corrugated metal. Beyond the wall the blue sky was tinged with yellow. The colours were warm and dusty, as if they’d been made out of chalk pastels. I gazed at the scene, wanting to remember, trying to soak it in, absorbing the colours through my pores.

‘Look,’ I said to my husband, ‘Isn’t it amazing, how the colours all go together; blue metal roof, orange wall with blue tinge, orange cat, blue-with-yellow-tinge sky.’
‘That isn’t the sky, that’s another building,’ he said. I looked again and saw that what I thought was sky was actually the wall of a big building in the background. It didn’t matter though.

A man came out of a door near where the cat was; he spoke to the cat as if telling it to get down, and walked off. The cat looked at him when he was speaking, stayed still for a few moments, then jumped down onto the blue roof, onto a parked scooter below, then from seat to seat along the length of the row of scooters, and disappeared from view.

Travel update

For nice pics see my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony

We flew from Chennai to Bangkok on Sunday night, arriving early on Monday morning. We stayed two nights in Bangkok then got the over night train, then a ferry, then a taxi, to our place in Ko Phangan, where we are right now.

I realised that I can’t pack for Thailand, India and Japan and have a light backpack that will carry on (7kg) for Japan ( my ticket to Japan does not include checked in baggage unless I pay extra).

I admitted that many of my clothes had been bought while shopping as a recreational activity and when I felt fed up with my clothes and wanted to get something nice. I had such fun shopping in an Indian department store in Varkala; there were a lot more staff than in an equivalent UK shop, and I had three women helping me in the changing room. I so wanted to go shopping, get some new stuff, and buy something with the women, that I ended up getting things that weren’t quite right.

Also if I want a light backpack I can only carry what I need right now. I had some thick baggy trousers, they would have been good if we go up North when it’s chilly in the evenings in January or February but honestly, I can just buy again, they were cheap; it’s not worth straining myself carrying a heavy bag for that. It’s hard for me to waste stuff/money, having been brought up to be frugal. It helped to think of it in terms of that I paid for the experience…

So just pack bare essentials in terms of products/meds/miscellaneous, plus sarongs and vests for Thailand and a couple of nice dresses for Japan. The hotel cleaner in Chennai even asked if we had any stuff we were leaving that we could give him so that he can sell it for food, so that clinched it.

I am proud to report that my backpack weighed in at 6.1kg at Chennai airport. (Unfortunately my handbag might be weighed and added to that, if so I have a bit more work to do…) I can just pay extra for some check in luggage, but this kind of feels like a good task, and kinder on my body to travel light.

Writing update

I didn’t do much writing in Pondicherry even though we didn’t do that much there and I had time; the room was hot and stuffy, I felt a bit out of sorts, slightly funny tummy, and somewhat spiritually overwhelmed/absorbing everything from Chennai (to be continued…).

So I read people’s blogs and relaxed and barely did any writing, apart from handwriting observations and thoughts while/about being there.

We got back to Chennai Wednesday evening, feeling funny having not eaten properly all day, bananas, nuts, biscuits and crisps (as all restaurants were closed, will get to that next week) and didn’t do anything that night. I worked hard on Thursday but I still had lots to do on Friday. I got anxious.

I had some thoughts, Well it doesn’t matter if you don’t do it, Nothing matters, vs It’s a commitment you made to yourself, You aren’t doing anything else. Thinking I’m writing to order, from the head, rather than free flowing from the heart (I kept thinking about the cat on the wall, and the raindrops on the shutters (to be continued); the spiritual moments of Chennai that I so wanted to capture and was interested in.)

But writing a book has to involve a mixture of head and pure creative flow or it won’t ever get finished or edited. There was no internet in the room, and nowhere to charge my tablet downstairs where the internet was, so that slowed me up a bit, alternating between using and charging my tablet.

But I accepted that, and when at around ten pm India time I got it (last week’s Kochi chapter and blog) done and posted, I felt very happy; like I was honouring a commitment I had made to myself.

It was the same when I did the draft chapter on Kanyakumari for the blog, I spent the whole Friday on it and got stressed. It’s actually much longer than a normal blog so although it seems an easy cop out to just do the chapter as the blog, it is actually is a lot of words to deal with. (And for you to read. Next time (this time, Chennai) I’ll let myself do it in parts, or extracts. And do more in advance. (But I have rambled on in the writing update so it still ended up being long, sorry!)

I’m typing this bit on Saturday; interestingly I didn’t start with the cat (I did that on Sunday, but it was nothing really, I mean it was in the notebook just fine, it would have kept); I just started at the top and worked my way down, warming up to it, setting the scene and the mood, even for myself. I started from the last bit of notebook that wasn’t crossed out (meaning it had been typed up). As I finished for the day (on Saturday) I looked at where I am up to in the notebook: I am at the cat bit! How many times do I have to say, Trust the process.

Sunday afternoon, before Thailand, equal parts not wanting to write as excited and anxious re packing and just wanting to be with the feelings and the experience, vs when I look at my notebook I realise how much I have to write about Chennai, and I want to get on with it! (Let alone completing the Kerala chapter, and doing the additions and corrections to the already done chapters…)

I carried on writing this Chennai chapter at the airport on Sunday, then late Wednesday night on the train, late Thursday night in Ko Phangan, and Friday (today) morning and teatime, so this week was better, just.

In the garden in Bangkok on Monday late afternoon I sat and made many notes in my notebook, ready for the Thailand section, so the future is taking care of itself.

Unhelpful thoughts: Maybe a book is too hard, maybe I just want to be a blogger; the 2014 ones that I’ve been re-reading and reposting as part of Throwback Thursday were luminous, proper blogs; I wasn’t writing anything else so everything went into the blog.

Helpful thoughts: If you want to carry on like this (globetrotting, focussing on self realisation, living outside the matrix) then you’d better finish the book, sell it and make some money!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

 

 

I want to say I love you

Tags

Goa, India, Kerala, Panaji, Varkala, writing

Photo: Hanuman Temple, Panaji

What’s on top

I’ve really enjoyed going on the internet this week, especially when I haven’t had access to it for a few days.  In Panaji I left the coffee-shop-with-internet buzzing not only with caffeine but with the fun of going on the internet for an hour.  Reading WordPress comments, picking up birthday messages and putting a load of brown rabbit photos on Instagram.

Then yesterday, in my first solid no rush, just do what you want internet session in days, I referred to my notebook where I keep a list of things to look up: (what do Indian chipmunks eat; more Malayalam words, which I practiced later at the shop; how to spell fuchsia; download a yoga class, which I then did on the veranda (on my new bright pink yoga mat!) after we got back; menstrual leave; Indian dress and the names of different garments; which states in India allow the eating of beef; British rule; the political parties in India and who’s who; the caste system).  Along with the smoothie with soya milk, the peppermint tea, the rest and shade after a walk around town, I felt so, endorphined afterwards.

Something else I found out this week, when finding out what to give cows to eat (they often have to eat garbage and sometimes look very thin, I gave the one in Panaji some bananas).  If you are in India, the advice is to put food waste on the ground not in a plastic bag, or if you do put it in a plastic bag, leave the bag open, don’t tie it.  Otherwise cows will eat the plastic bag as well, potentially causing illness and death.

Travel update:

Panaji, Goa:

In the taxi from Arambol to Panaji (both in Goa), I’m trying to write down the colours of the houses we pass but before I can think of the word for the colours of one house we’re onto another and another.  My notebook looks like a list of paint chart colours.  Feeling totally blissed out from the sweet visual sensory overload and my thoughts…  Realisations re writing, use the senses, use the emotions, document scenes, capture in notebook, scribble, take photos, look at my husband and step-son’s films and photos, draw on every book I’ve read, every writing class I’ve ever been to…  Not only that, my spiritual journey before I left, all that meditation, chanting, different religions and philosophies, reading, thinking, discussing, all that, got me here.  Here, in India!

The guesthouse in Panaji was painted baby pink with a maroon trim, exactly the same colour scheme of the first house I had noted down on the journey there.  Our room was big and white and spacious with a large wet room and another little room with a sink and a mirror in, plenty big enough to get dressed in and even to do a bit of yoga in, great as the three of us were in one room.  And the shower!  The shower in Arambol looked like it was dangerous, with bare flex and a plug in the wall right near the water.  It was only a trickle anyway and the water had ran out altogether that morning as it often did and we had arrived in Panaji hot, sweaty and dirty.  It was a power shower, with hot water if we wanted; it was such a pleasure, the best shower by far we had had since arriving!

And it had ac!  We hadn’t booked this, it just did.  The manager laughed about how excited I was about this.  In Arambol we had felt fine in temperatures of 35-38°C but we were at the beach with a strong sea breeze.  In Panaji we were not on the beach and it felt considerably hotter.  The ac was heaven.  Not only that, the local taxi driver had ac, and the restaurant where we went to eat in town had ac; it was almost cold.

Panaji is the capital and administrative centre of the state of Goa.  It does have a beach but it’s not such a destination beach as Arambol or Agonda, and even though we were only an hour or so away, it was a world away.  We noticed the kitchen staff staring at us from inside the kitchen hatch and we only saw one other Westerner in the town.  The restaurant where we went (we chose it as it had good Wi-Fi and we needed to get my step-son checked in for his flights home) was a solid building, very smart, (and cold), a world away from the beach front temporary structures we’d been used to.

We felt we were visitors to an actual town that existed by itself as opposed to Arambol and Agonda, where everything is easy, people have come from all over India just to serve the tourists.  It’s easy, it’s false, it’s set up just for the tourists, everything is sanitised and safe.

In Agonda we saw policeman with sticks threatening a woman who had been asking tourists for money, and early in the morning women would sweep and clear the beach of rubbish and cow dung, as if the tourists couldn’t possibly see anything that might spoil their paradise holiday.  Even the dogs looked okay, whereas in Panaji some of them didn’t look so good.  And we’re still in Goa, when we go to different places, it will be different and more challenging.

Although it felt ever so slightly edgy, it felt really good to be in a real place with real local facilities.  We ate breakfast at a cheap local cafe and my husband got his haircut at a local hairdressers.  And we finally got to a Khadi shop, I bought a kurta (tunic shirt to wear over trousers).

As in Hampi, as in Delhi, it’s on the balcony that I really feel it, where I am, how I feel.  Here it wasn’t even that moment, it was afterwards, looking at a brown rabbit photograph I took for Instagram and noticing how unreal the explosion of green and trees looked in the middle.  On one side was a mosque, on the other some run down residential buildings, on the balcony the red and pink sunlit colours, on the ground below an emaciated white cow… and in the centre this explosion of lush green forest.  As if there’s too much packed into the scene, one thing would be enough; the mosque or the forest or the building or the cow or even the sunlit pink painted balcony.  That is how it feels a lot in India, as if there’s just too much to take in.  As if everything’s been compressed, my step-son said.

It came to the end of my step-son’s time with us.  He’d travelled out with us and been with us for almost five weeks.  We were quiet on the way to the airport.  It was dark.  I saw a house lit up, every alcove painted a different colour.  I want to say I love you.  But like at the beginning of a relationship, where all you see is the good, I’ve barely been outside of Goa, I’ve had it easy.  So it’s too early to say those words just yet.

Food:

In Panaji:  Huge plate of bel puri, biryani rice and dal at the ac WiFi restaurant in town; paratha bhaji (Indian bread and curry) and black tea with lime at the local cafe for breakfast; good strong coffee and beans on toast at WiFi coffee house in town; vegetable masala at a beach restaurant; it’s hotter so we’re back on eating crisps in the afternoon, although for the moment I’ve managed to kick the Mazza (bottled mango drink) habit; iced tea and banana and walnut cake at the beach; big chunky vegetable samosas at the airport.

Varkala, Kerala

We left the state of Goa for the state of Kerala.  In Goa the houses are European looking, villa like with balconies.  Arriving in Kerala the buildings looked very different, more rectangular looking, some with pillars, generally wealthier looking, and still painted lovely colours.
Lots of churches, big, white, clean, lit up, with statues in glass boxes and modern stained glass windows.  We passed a Christian service, lots of people, lots of music, beautiful clothes, lots of white, children in almost party dresses.  Then we saw a mosque, a group of men, on the other side of the road a group of women in white with white head scarves, again, lots of people, lots of music.  A little bit further, more sound, more music, a Hindu temple.  All in the space of a mile or two.

In Kerala it’s nice to see that the men are much more in traditional dress, in Goa the men were wearing Western clothes, here they wear lungis; short and knee-length pieces material, kind of like thick sarongs, some tied at the base, some not.

We booked on-line and are staying in by far the swankiest looking area so far, full of semi deserted ayevedic resorts, totally a tourist area, even though our accommodation is humble and the cheapest place we’ve stayed so far.  We are near the North Cliff area of Varkala, a tourist strip.  Luckily we have one nice local family run restaurant next door.  We are a rickshaw ride away from the town, which is a little way from the beach with little accommodation available.  Tomorrow we move to the temple area of Varkala beach, which is much more lively, full of Indian tourists and with simple places to eat.

Food:

In Kerala: Puttu (rice and coconut turned out from a bowl mould) with a banana and a poppadum the side; dal and chapatis; lots of masala dosas; Keralan food- potato and coconut curry, thoran (shredded vegetables fried, delicious), with rice, roti and fresh orange juice; coconuts.

Writing update:

What I have been doing: typing up all notes (I should also include, scribbling copious notes in little notebooks that I carry everywhere with me, noting down visual observations, ideas, thoughts, etc, so much so that I think sometimes I need to switch off all the excitement for a bit to let me catch up).  Anyway, I have typed up all notes from Panaji, and almost all from Varkala- more keep appearing- and I have been working on the Delhi section, i.e. the first place we went to in India, together with the bit immediately before and the travel out.

I’ve been writing most days, often for a couple of hours.  Tuesday was good, a good writing session followed by a nap, Wednesday was pretty good but I got frustrated; I did a couple of hours solid writing on the book, I had plenty of time to do more but I just couldn’t.  I felt overheated and out of sorts, it was too hot to nap in the room and when I tried to nap on the veranda flies kept landing on me.  Plus I was stuck on the Delhi section, it had turned into a big lump of notes and completed blogs and bits about the travel and before and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  I tried to look at it again later, and still felt stuck.  My own fear and lack of confidence in my ability to see this through is my main enemy, but luckily I know that it is a very bad idea to keep looking at something that isn’t going well.  So I went to bed and went back to it again yesterday.

If in doubt, I adopt a back to basics approach (if things feel really bad this can be as simple as correcting spellings), in this case, write it in chronological order, which I did, and then it began to flow.  I stopped after a good session and whilst still enjoying it and feeling like it’s going well, which means that when I go back to it, I will do so with joy not a churning stomach.  Then as it was Thursday, a break, and then a session on this blog.  Today, this blog post.

The first month in India notes were all in one document, threatening to become an amorphous mass and overwhelm me, and so I have decided to divide up into places, or main places, for ease.  I have typed up the notes for Panaji and Kerala as new, separate documents and have moved Delhi into its own document.  The others I will do later (so as not to get overwhelmed/distracted).  It is easier for me to work with smaller documents as I am doing everything on my trusty Samsung Galaxy tablet and typing in a free Word app that allows me to type and save into a word document offline, very important as a lot of places we have stayed have patchy or no WiFi.  When online, it can then be saved to Google cloud, and shared via my email, which I do from my Gmail to my Hotmail email, so that it is on both emails (as well as the cloud, as well as in my documents on my tablet, and sometimes I also save it in a WordPress draft and email it to my husband!)

If you read regularly, please ‘follow’ the blog by pressing the follow button which appears on the bottom right of the screen when you go on the blog, before you scroll down.  When you scroll down to read it disappears, and reappears when you scroll back up.  Following helps me build my author profile which will help me when I submit my book proposal.  It also means you can comment and we can engage with each other which makes me super happy!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

 

 

How to write

Tags

Am writing, amwriting, Blogging, creativity, Getting started, India, Travel, writing

Anyone who has ever had to write an essay for school, a dissertation for uni, a quarterly report for their boss, reply to an email you are not excited about, or write thank you letters as a child, knows how hard it can be to write.  To get motivated to write, to start writing, to have the confidence to begin.  For writers of blogs, short stories or books, procrastination and crippling self doubt can prevent us starting or completing projects.

But writing isn’t always hard.  If your boss sends you an email asking you a straightforward question- the answer to which will make you look good, or praises you for something, that can be easy to reply to immediately.  Likewise a text that makes you cross can initiate a defensive reply before you’ve even thought it through properly.

And sometimes, sometimes writing is easy:  Like this blog; when I have something to say, the words just fall out.  And I’ve been working on my book, and enjoying it.  Yes it is also hard, when it gets long and I am unsure of the order, realise I have repeated myself, have to move things around.  But when I am just writing, feeling well, feeling happy, and writing because I want to, well then that makes me so very, very happy.

Yesterday morning my husband and I had a walk on the beach then breakfast (a beautiful fruit salad) eaten looking out onto the beach.  Then I wrote for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.  Later my husband read it, we talked, added notes and new ideas, then went out for dinner.  It was so perfect, I felt like one of those proper writers you read about who have a regular routine and everything or like Ian Fleming (writer of the James Bond books) who used to live in paradise in Hawaii and swim each morning before sitting down to write.

Okay so I am back…  ‘Don’t do your boom and bust,’ my husband said.  ‘I won’t,’ I said, ‘Look, I’m fine, I’m having a break, I’m not doing anything…  I’m sitting still…  (But I am super excited!).’  ‘I can tell,’ he said.

Here are some photos of my current living quarters:

I am making the most of the luxurious, quiet easiness, and the sea breeze, before Saturday night when we will be going on an eight-hour sleeper coach to Hampi, where it is 40°C.  Be brave, Rachel.

Thank you very much for reading.

PS, a word about money.  Our beach hut costs around £10 a night.  Cheaper ones are available at around £7-8, and hostels cost around £4 a night.  My step son’s return flight London to Delhi cost around £525, mine and my husband’s one way flights London to Delhi cost around £735.  This morning my husband and I had a nice breakfast in one of the nicer beach front restaurants for around £7.50.   Last night the three of us ate at a simpler, local place off the beach, we pigged out a bit and had more than we could eat, for about £11.

 

How to write a blog

Tags

Blogging, Blogging inspiration, First blog, Getting started, How to write a blog, writing, Writing inspiration

I was talking with the lovely J at work about her starting a blog.  ‘It’s just the getting started’, she said, ‘When you’re faced with that blank page, how to start it…’

So I thought I’d write something about how I write.

Trust the process

Trust your own process, that is.  Like child raising, like life, another person’s advice can only take you so far.  You have to find your own way of doing it.  The most important thing is getting started.  Or rather, the most important thing is to start.

What to write about

Or, overcoming the fear of the blank page.  Things I suggested to J:  Use photographs.  Start with a photograph and write a few lines about it.  Take or find a photograph of a piece of furniture that you have restored and write about how you did it, or tell the story behind that piece of furniture.  If you see a skirt or an outfit you like, get a picture and write about it.  Make a note or take a photograph of any ideas you have or inspirations you see.  The more you do this, the more ideas will come.

Find your schedule

Lots of people blog every day, even multiple times a day.  I totally understand why that would be an attractive discipline/ strategy to have.  But for me personally I’d end up getting obsessed, exhausted and resentful about writing every day whether I felt like it, whether I had time or not.  (I realise people probably line up posts and schedule them.)  I also get that it means your post is more often in the WordPress Reader so more people are likely to see it, hence more followers.

However, I limit the number of daily bloggers I follow.  I just don’t need that much stuff to read, and I like to have a variety.  Some people who only post once a week or so, I am excited when a post from them pops up, it never becomes a chore to keep up and it doesn’t clog up my reader with more than I can manage to read.

Niche or not?

Back to J.  She wants to write a lifestyle/fashion blog, but more aimed at an older demographic.  I relayed some things I had learned from a post I read about whether to be niche or not, and the general feeling was that (again, like child rearing, like life) you might start your blog as one thing but find yourself wanting to write about something else one day, so it might be best not to impose rigid ideas or limits as you then might have a wobble when you feel like you are going off message.  The post also said that most readers prefer blogs where the blogger writes about everything and doesn’t just stick to a niche topic.

Be yourself (everyone else is taken)*

*Oscar Wilde

The most important message to stick with is to be true to yourself.  That’s the coherent thread that hangs all the posts of a person’s blog together, even if each one of their posts is different from the other.  Authenticity is all.  I love it when I feel that a blogger is really just being themselves.  To borrow a point from another blog about other bloggers, I don’t mind if I don’t agree with them or if they talk about things I am not interested in.  If they are authentically writing about their experiences, thoughts and ideas, and I like them as a person, then I will keep on reading.

Every post is different

Each of my last three posts was made differently.

For Update, I was aware that I hadn’t posted for two weeks.  Anxious thoughts circled in my mind.  Should I just write something?  Should I make myself a rule re writing more regularly?  Does not writing every day mean that I don’t take this blog and my writing seriously?  Do I want this blog and writing to become something, or not? What message am I sending to the universe, and myself, about my committment?

I batted back these thoughts.  I will not post unless I have something to say, and that something turns into something I am happy with.  But one afternoon, my husband was at work.  I was restless, ever so slightly unsettled, and ever so slightly bored, well as close to bored as I ever get.

So I got into bed, made myself comfy and cosy, and picked up my tablet.  It wasn’t like I had some brilliant idea or point to start with.  My head had been spinning about all the things we’d been doing.  I could just write kind of an update, I thought.  Maybe people want to know the cats are okay (or that I’m okay about the cats, and aren’t still crying about them).  My mum had sent me a photograph of one of the cats.  I had my new tattoos.  And so I started writing.  It made itself into something along the way.  When I had finished, not only was I pleased with what I had written, I also felt a whole lot better in myself.

For the Matrix post, the starting point was my friend’s email.  It was so good, I wanted to put it out there.  It explained things so well, but in a different way to how I do.  So I pasted that in, added a few notes and saved it.  I knew I needed to have my own material in it as well so that it wasn’t just a repost of his words.  Over the next few days, thoughts and ideas came and I scribbled them down in different places:  in my diary, on a To Do list, on my India packing list, on a paper bag on top of the pile at the bottom of the stairs.  I often do this, I can tolerate my notes being scattered across lots of different pieces of paper.  Until I can’t.  On Thursday I spent the evening with my husband then he went to bed and I thought, I’ll just gather all the pieces of paper and type the scribbles into the draft, just so that everything’s in one place, I can finish it properly tomorrow.  But I got into it and even though I hadn’t really felt like it I sat down and finished the post, which had become a long, muddled draft, and needed work, almost four hours worth as it turned out.  Proof reading was done between one and two am on Friday morning, so I am sorry if there are mistakes. (I don’t think there are.  Two things are mentioned twice, but that was deliberate.  It breaks normal rules re writing, but you know what they say about rules, and I really wanted to make sure I made my point.)

Like leaving a trail to follow, like giving yourself hooks, clues and rewards, which I actually don’t do almost as much as I now think it would be a good idea to, the pieces of paper chaos is a method.  I get my ideas down, they are not lost, whether I have them on the drive to work and scribble them in my diary in the car park before I rush into work, or in the two minutes waiting for the kettle to boil, or on the drive home, hence scribbles on the paper bag at the bottom of the stairs, captured before I even take my shoes off and go inside the house properly.

For this blog, I just woke up on Friday morning and almost straight away started having ideas.  I crept downstairs and got my tablet, put off my husband when he called me, pretending I was still sleepy, which I was, but I didn’t want to lose the ideas which were coming thick and fast.  About J, about my writing process, my thoughts and opinions as a reader.  Most of this blog was written in one draft in bed during that session, with a couple of additions that I scribbled on a notepad over breakfast.  Today was just editing.

Timing and scheduling

I’m more art than science.  When I first started blogging in 2014 a friend and fellow blogger asked me what time I posted.  ‘It tends to be on a Sunday afternoon’, I said, ‘when my husband is taking the kids back to London and I have the house to myself.’

‘That’s absolutely the worst time’, she said.

‘Well that’s what time I write it’, I said.

‘You can schedule them to post at a better time’, she said.  I have done that a couple of times when I first started regularly blogging again in summer 2017, but nowadays, when they are written, they are posted.  Yes, I do believe timing is everything and for me, whether it’s sensible or not, when it’s finished that is the time to post it.

Re technology

The past couple of  months I’ve been training myself to write blogs purely on my tablet (Samsung Galaxy), ready for going travelling. However, when I was writing an article, I started using the laptop again, and realised how much easier it was.  Then a fellow blogger wrote a post about getting a Chromebook.  My husband had already suggested that I get one of those, having kindly spent some time researching the best laptops for travelling bloggers, and now I am fully decided that that is what I will buy to take travelling.  I will take my tablet as well as a back up and because it takes good photographs.

Making connections

Everyone says WordPress and blogging is all about making connections with fellow bloggers and readers.  It is, but where to start?  When you go to search and it says, ‘Search billions of WordPress posts’, it can be a little daunting.  I can’t remember how I discovered all the different people who I follow.  The only words I ever remember typing into the search box are ‘veganism’ and ‘menstruation’.  As with the rest of the internet, one thing leads to another and eventually you come across people you are interested in.  I also only ever follow people I am genuinely interested in reading the posts of, and I only comment or press the like button of a post if I really do.  I just feel that the writing and my interactions with fellow readers and bloggers need to be genuine.  I kind of feel that if I stick to that I won’t go too far wrong.

Get to know and trust YOUR creative process

My ex boyfriend used to say that even if he knew the song in his head or half composed on his guitar wasn’t that good, he’d still finish it, ‘to keep the channel open’ he said.

I always have plenty to say, or rather, I don’t open a blank page until I do.  So there may be a gap of two weeks or more between posts.  During a recent two week gap my husband innocently commented that I hadn’t posted for a while, only to be met with me defensively explaining all the other things I had been doing instead.  ‘I wasn’t criticising’, he said.  It wasn’t his fault, I need to trust my own process so completely that I don’t feel even a flicker of anxiety if I don’t post anything for a couple of weeks.

Likewise, when they come, I need to write them down.  Which is why on Thursday night I went to bed at 2am, and why I started writing at 7.45 am Friday morning.

When I get like that, blogging at 2am, up with ideas at 7.45, I need to make the most of it.  In the past, I might have worried that I was going manic, not because I might actually go manic in the pure sense, but because I used to worry about everything.  What if the ideas don’t stop coming, what if I can’t do anything else?  But I know it’s not always going to be like that, which is reassuring because I can’t be writing at 2am and 7:45am every day. (Not right now anyway)

But then when it stops and I go two weeks without having any urges or urgent ideas to write about, I worry that it has gone forever and that I might never write again.

Well I used to anyway.  Right now, I trust the process.  I’m still conflicted about what it all means, what is the goal, what is the point, but I think it’s best not to dwell on any of those things and just write.

 

Thank you very much for reading.