Steady steps

This is how I feel. I love starting a new course, making plans that will be changed, all the hope that grows from a new beginning. Those of you that follow my blog will know that this has been a frustrating time, a time of waiting, and of handing over decisions to other people. I’m not great at either of those things. I like to jump, then panic that I’ve no idea what I’m doing. My home has several pieces of flat-pack furniture that illustrate this tendency. 

I’ve got mixed feelings about going back to short fiction. I’m not it’s biggest fan as a reader, which obviously affects my skills as a writer. Looking at the course, I can see the benefits already. My frustration has been that my stories seem to finish before they really start, I never feel I create enough depth. This is the skill, of course, and I am confident that I will develop and perhaps even learn to love short stories, as a writer and as a reader.

You may be wondering why I need a course, why don’t I just write ? The simple answer is that I need to learn to craft, in the same way as a potter, a painter, a maker of beautiful cakes. Education and imagination will give a fabulous spring board, and no amount of teaching can make a writer out of nothing. What teaching does is to make a writer the best writer they can be. Learning, crafting, and most importantly feedback give me the skills I need to create something that has impact. Writing is a way of being heard in a world that is too noisy for those of us who find it hard to shout, and I want to write something that is worth listening to.

I’ve been neglectful of other activities too, I’ve read very little poetry over the last few months. Now I’ve started again I’ve realised how much I have missed it. A poem unlocks part of me that nothing else can. It moves me in a measured way, without the clanging emotion of music, which makes me weep, without knowing why, or a painting, which leaves me in awe. A poem makes me think, and slowly unfold my feelings,and this is what gives it the power to stay. 

I’ve updated the poem of the week page to share a few I’ve read recently. 

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