Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Hello



Today in my bathroom, after I'd arranged shampoos and beauty products according to their  exact colour shade, after I'd scoured and sluiced my bathtub, sink, and toilet, after I'd painted the walls in Morning Mist and ummed and ahhed about what pictures to  hang, after I'd scrubbed the grouting with a toothbrush, I realised I might be avoiding a few things. What I felt most sad about avoiding was writing this blog. 
      
This blog used to be a place I turned to when the writing bug bit. It fulfilled a need to express powerful and not so powerful events in my life. It provided sanctuary for my soul. Then I started writing a book, completed an MA in Creative Writing and what-dya-know, I'm lucky if I write here a few times a year. Though I do blame lack of time (most of my energies are poured into agonising over where to place my next semi-colon), that's not the sole excuse. It's fear. I want to be taken seriously as a writer and so whatever I write and whatever medium I write it in I feel must be worthy of that. Yet when I wrote most on this blog, and best, I think, was when I wasn't worried about being taken seriously. I wrote because I wanted to. 
     
Writing a blog is exposing. Especially when writing about the kinds of things I tend to write about. I always tried to fight the desire to hide behind words - clever words, beautiful words, original language. My blog was rough and tender. It had strange poetry splattered across it. Posts about innocence and galaxies and stalking Bearded Collies along Hove seafront. About sea swimming and dinghies and falling off my bicycle and being rescued by old ladies with purple rinses. About my mother's stroke. My Dad's absence. About toppling into love and crawling back out again. Oh, and I wrote one post whilst on E.
     
My day-to-day life has never been that usual. Which is why I'm bothered to write in the first place.  I don't want to fall into that trap of seeking to please or of trying to be like other writers. Because we are all different breeds of creature. The animal I am can only walk, climb, kill and give birth my way. 
     
I've got a little hidden lately, down in my burrow. Dark eyes to the ground, incubating my babies.
     
So it's time to show myself again.
     
Hello.

5 comments:

bereweber said...

Hello indeed!!

beautiful Clare, you know i love your blog, for all the reasons you said, it's YOU! it's random, it's great, it's feelings, it's passion, it's tenderness, and the poetry of your soul, truly! no fads, no over-analyzed styles, that makes it so beautifully yours

i am happy to read you again, scrub your blog away for the world to embrace

Clare said...

Bere... my right hand gal xxx

DL said...

Eff yeah!!!

Marta said...

Yay!
It´s good to read tou again! :)

(It´s funny, the verification word for my comment is "bless". Hmmm!)

Clare said...

And it's so great to hear from all of you... xxx