Hot Dates and Chocolate
It's not so much Chick Lit around here as Choc Lit at the moment. This is possibly the two-year old's favourite word - he has learnt to push a chair over to the fridge, and clamber up hopefully murmuring 'choc-lit? choc-lit?' I have no idea where he gets this love of chocolate from ... no, really I don't. However we are using it to good effect with potty training - a friend said she managed to crack it in a matter of days by using Smarties as rewards instead of the usual star chart.
Feel like I deserve a couple of Smarties myself. After yesterday's post I dug out Elvis' Number 1s CD, and took my own advice about clearing out your writing space. The pilot took the children swimming so for the first time this summer I had four glorious hours to work without interruption. As I was clearing out a whole wheelie bin of papers for recycling, I came across a quote from Noel Coward: Fun is fun - but work is more fun. That man knew what he was talking about.
It's eight years ago this summer that I worked through Julia Cameron's 'Artist's Way', and flicking through my journal from those weeks made interesting reading yesterday. It was literally another lifetime - we had our own home in London that I loved, two good incomes, two cool cats. We spent our holiday that year in my friend's chateau in the south of France, strolling through Nice and dining at the Colombe d'Or. When the book sells, I want to take the children there and see them splashing around beneath the Calder in the beautiful pool. This year (if the pilot isn't called in to work), it's going to be a staycation. That summer I had no idea that by Christmas we would have sold up in London, and be travelling around the world. I had no idea that my City boy was going to become a pilot, that there would be seven moves in six years and two beautiful children coming along. All I knew was that I wanted to write - and yesterday I finally sorted eight years' worth of notebooks and scraps of paper into coherent shape ready to write the next book. It felt good - scary, but good. The boondoggling is almost over - just as soon as they are back to school, it will be time to write.
TODAY'S PROMPT: Everyone deserves a treat, a reward for the work you are putting in. Chocolate does it for the toddler, but the 'Artist's Way' uses weekly Artist Dates - these are times when you do something that will help your creative work, when you replenish yourself by doing something that you really want to do. Whenever I think 'What? Is this a hot date?' it reminds me of Billy Crystal in 'When Harry Met Sally.' Yes, this is a Hot Date with yourself - put it in the diary. Look ahead over the next week. Is there a couple of hours where someone can watch the children for you? Ideally you want to get out of the house to go have some fun, but if you are stuck at home, pick an evening where you can devote time to yourself once they are asleep. What do you really want to do? Is there a great exhibition in town that you've been dying to see, or a movie, or if you need to be at home, maybe a DVD? Or is it ages since you've been antiquing, or tried on outrageous shoes, or just sat peacefully with your notebook and a coffee watching the world go by? Don't waste the precious time squeezing in chores or grocery shopping ... make a date with something you used to love, or have always wanted to try, that you never get a chance to do with small people in tow.
