How To Write when in Mid-air
A writing prompt for grief, illness or uncertainty
Dear friend,
I do hope you are well? Sadly, I have been through a bit of a bumpy time. Recently, just as I recovered from Covid for the second time this year, the see-saw of life upended and threw me off. Each time I think I have a wide vista ahead to get going on my writing - the time to concentrate on a new book - it gets swiped by Mum’s illness. Dementia seems to me the best of cunning foes, and its latest plan was to erase Mum’s spacial memory, meaning she doesn’t know whether she’s just telephoned or not.
If you’re anything like me, you never desired a mobile phone in the first place. I still remember my first Nokia. An annoying friend (now ex-friend) bought one for me for my birthday in the early 2000s. Way back then I had suspected what it might do to my sense of autonomy. The ability to switch off and then, to dream. And how right I was? ‘Can’t you just turn it off, if it annoys you so much,’ I hear you say. Once I could, but now I can’t. To do so would risk missing an emergency call from Mum.
The other day, after ten calls in fifteen minutes, I weighed up the metal, glass and plastic accoutrement in my hand and decided to make a deal with Mr Samsung. I forced myself to look at the device in a new way. As I needed to write, to keep in contact with myself, while keeping my phone on, I remembered the advice I give to my writing students.
When you’re under pressure make your writing tasks as small as possible.
Take notes, I instructed myself. Use what is in front of you. View the world as a source of stories. “Be vigilant.” As Raymond Carver said, “there are significant moments in everyone’s day that can make literature. You have to be alert to them and pay attention to them.” Simple! But just one thing Karen: your records must be imaginative and, if you can muster, light.
“Why be dull?” I hear the words ringing from Kristen Scott Thomas’ lips, when she played the character Fiona in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’.
Script excerpt from ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ (Director Richard Curtis, 1994)
[second wedding]
Mrs. Beaumont : Are you married?
Fiona : No.
Mrs. Beaumont : Are you a lesbian?
Fiona : Good lord! What makes you ask that?
Mrs. Beaumont : Well, it is one of the possibilities for unmarried girls nowadays, and it's rather more interesting than saying, "Oh dear, never met the right chap," eh?
Fiona : Quite right. Why be dull?
Such a good question this is, about dullness. It offers up a notion that we have a choice in how we view things. This line has stayed with me for thirty years. Not only because it was spoken by one the most beautiful actors of our time, but because it was the first positive response around lesbianism in a film I’d ever seen.
I began to write. A string of notes, which I emailed to myself. ‘Today I...’ was the title of each email. Each day I replied to the email sent the previous day. After I pressed send the email arrived a few seconds later as a fresh new email, aptly named 'Note to Self'.
Life with mum is sometimes fine, sometimes draining, but there must be other things to notice too. There is a fragile beauty to be captured. All too often I find myself searching for humour like a light switch in the dark. Dementia is not entertaining, but we have no choice. Mum has no choosing. Yet we are a good mother and daughter. We love one another. That remains.
So, there we were, my sister and I, vaguely coping. Taking each day as it comes. Two Sundays ago, I had massaged her wild hair with the self-cleaning shower cap. Once 'washed', I’d parted her hair with the brush. I knew which side she once liked it to fall, and now it was the side I made it fall. We meet at this parting. Then I stayed, watched the film ‘Three Men and a Baby’ with her. I’d never seen it before. I was in tears within minutes, which shows how on edge I had been. Before I left that day, I shaved the hairs from her chin, dusted them off her top.
‘Are you still here?’ she asked me, while I stood in front of her blowing into the electric razor.
‘I am here,’ I replied, wondering if I was. She could see me, but the question didn’t add up. I bent to kiss her, hoping touch would make things better. If only I could envelop her a cagoule of rescue, widen the vessels of her brain, reverse time and make it all better. More of her, more of us. Bury her confusion down my allotment. Grow potatoes from it. I’d give her a sack full of holidays to look forward to. But she doesn’t know this thing called ‘looking forward to’, this time which we grasp as the future. We collide in a place called now. Constant now-ness, never later.
I am aware you might also be in a similar position, caring or full of grief for other reasons. You might be carrying despair inside your stomach, heart and bowel. I hope not. I hope you are not living in a Groundhog Day, like my friend so wearily referred to her own situation the other day. I believe pain and grief resides in the body, unless released. I know things which go unexpressed have the power to make us ill.
So, if you are finding yourself in a difficult situation dear friend, I’d like to propose something?
Would you like to join me in a writing project? Even if you’re not a writer would you like to try this following exercise for one week? The idea is to email yourself with what you have done that day, or the day before. Start your email with ‘Today I…’ then write down everything you can remember, however small, or big. Then, and this next bit might be hard, but do try - write one thing which was amazing, or something you learnt, or something which was unusual or funny. Something you ate or cooked and enjoyed. Something which brings a lightness. If you have nothing that day, then try the next - look for something while you go about your business. Begin, ‘Today I…’ and write the truest thing you can. Then at the end of the week, read all the writing through. Join the threads together or leave them to float solo on the page. Read them out loud to yourself, your cat, a friend, or the wall.
This is my idea which could germinate better health for us all. Those of us who still have words at our disposal also have power to change the way we feel and see our lives.
You can read my story ‘The Watery Day’ which came from the notes I made with the exercise, 'Today I...' Please note this is for those of you who are my paid subscribers (thank you). By subscribing for as little as £5.00 a month, you receive special access to the V.I.P room where I post monthly video art, readings, short stories etc. Plus you are supporting me and helping me keep going as a writer. Your support as ever is amazing.
Write soon, write often.
Your friend,
Karen xxx
P.S. Jane Dinmore, artist, DJ, general good laugh, is having an exhibition soon in Hastings. Running from 19th -21st at the Observer Building, on the evening of Saturday 20th my alter ego, Barbara Brownskirt, will be performing amongst the ART at The Funny Hole Cabaret. Tickets here: https://www.outsavvy.com/event/18154/the-funny-hole-cabaret
