That is the question this evening.
Or rather; when to blog, and how often.
How often should I do it? How often does anyone else do it? Is someone next door doing it more often than I am, while someone in the next town does it only once a year?
Is it a case that regularity, rather than frequency is the key? Or is it like flossing, where you know you should do it every day, but in reality you might just squish it in once a week?
I could go on.
In an effort to find an answer of some sort to this question, I went sniffling around some other blogs to see how often other people 'do it'. I came to two conclusions: 1) it is possible for me to spend rather more time looking for evidence of others' inactivity than it is for me to be productive myself; 2) there is no rhyme or reason to how often people blog, and no definitive answer as to how often one ought to do it.
So, pressure's off. Phew.
Of less indolent, and more writerly, musings: I have been going like the clappers. This at least gives me back some sense of prowess.
Having set some targets for myself, I went ahead and smashed them. Now, the writing is not perfect by any stretch, in fact in places it's downright clunky, but I am racking up wordcount, and at this stage I'll settle for that. I'll put some fancy magic in place on the re-reads. This leaves me not ecstatic, but I'm not miserable either.
On the plus side, I have mapped the entire novel from start to finish, and written the final chapter, just because it was there, and so was I, so it seemed trite to put chronology before practicality.
In addition to all this productivity, I had a marvellous weekend, comprising two trips to the beach, the second one with a picnic and buckets and spades, some very nice food, wine and weather, lots of time for writing, half a game of trivial pursuit on Saturday between myself and Alex (always much cause for hilarity, especially when accompanied by fizzy wine) and I still managed to find the time to indulge one of my favourite weekend passtimes: afternoon napping.
Afternoon napping is something I adore. I consider it a very useful way to spend a chunk of Saturday. I especially like to grab one of the childers and persuade them come with me: Toby is a favourite, and he was the snooze-buddy of choice this weekend. He gives great cuddles, and I forgive him that he thinks it hilarious to wake me up with his morning breath. I shall save that little snippet for when he's older.
Afternoon naps never fail to disappoint when it comes to dreams, which is one reason I love them so much. As a rule I don't share dreams, but the ones I had on Saturday were, well, you couldn't write stuff like this:
I'd been having a bad enough dream of sorts, although I couldn't remember it, which had left me a bit upset. I then dreamt that I had woken, and went off downstairs to find Alex in the living room. In my dream state I was slow, and sluggish, and couldn't see very well, but I found Alex and cuddled up next to him on the sofa, which is exactly where he would have been had I in fact woken up and gone down to find him.
Deciding that fresh air was what i needed, I stumbled to the front door, and out into what looked like dusk. Something caught my attention in the sky, and I saw an immense eagle owl swooping down towards me. I crossed my arms in front of my face, and it soared upwards just shy of me. I dashed in to get Alex, and brought him outside, saying: 'you have to see this, it's an eagle owl!'
We watched as it circled around the tree across the road from our house, and as it turned towards us I saw it's huge, orange, cartoon-like eyes, upon which Alex said: 'That's the owl from the Gruffalo!'
And indeed, it was.
And then, of course, the Gruffalo appeared, and Alex and I looked at one another, probably both thinking - shit!
The Gruffaloe asked me if we still had his child, and something from my previous dream broke, about a child we were supposed to adopt, but couldn't for some reason. As politely as I could, not wanting to upset the Gruffalo, and stroking his face while I spoke, I explained that there is a process involved in adopting a child, and that we had had to involve the authorities. The Gruffalo scratched his head a bit, and said in a reasonable way: 'Oh, so I have to make a phone call, to social services or something?' 'Yes!' Alex and I replied, all relief that this was going so well, that he wasn't angry that we'd apparently misplaced his child.
He turned to go on his way, and searching for something good-natured to say, I called out after him: 'Watch out for the Wild Things!'
Alex turned to me in the dream, and looked at me like I was a stupid person and said: 'Ali, that's a completely different book!'
'Oh yeah.' I said, feeling a little silly.
And that it why I love afternoon napping so much.
G'night - sweet dreams....!
xx
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