My time off included a whole lot of this
“Holiday” as my friends across the pond and Down Under would say.
Or as I like to call it, “staycation”, for it was a vacation where, rather than travelling someplace, I remained in my home town.
(For the record, I make a further distinction between a “vacation”, which to me involves travel, and a “holiday”, which is travel to someplace particularly noteworthy or exotic. But that’s just me.)
Image by @lovely_free_bird
I don’t even want to spend all my spare time writing.
The reason for this is because writing is far too solitary a pursuit – the loneliest of all the arts in my opinion, due to it possessing the least impressive and share-worthy interim stages.
Xena looking stern and steely-eyed after a bath.
Thinking back on it, season 2 may well have been the first season I actually saw. My memory of it all is rather cloudy. While watching season 1, I remembered every episode, but for some reason don’t recall having viewed them on TV, at least not from the beginning.
In any case, I do remember that it was also season 2 that made me want to be an adventurer – to roam far and wide meeting people, solving problems, battling evil, and having fun.
The former of the two – the staying up late – seems to happen, or has happened, mostly in relation to a deadline of some sort, be it one of school or a self-imposed project with a time constraint (e.g. a homemade birthday gift for an out-of-town friend).
(I also recall, during university, having stayed up and out way late at some club, party, or other manner of social gathering, but those days, alas, are largely over now.)
Maybe it’s because it’s the first advice many of us ever received. Certainly it seems like it should be beginner advice.
I can see it perfectly: a student of sixteen or seventeen hunched over his/her desk at school, pencil in hand poised above a sheet of three-hole-punched, lined loose leaf.
(Am I totally dating myself with this memory in longhand? Do high school students even write by hand in school anymore? The pencil in this vision isn’t even mechanical).
The morning began as most as winter workdays do, which is to say dark, and because of that, what felt far too early to me.This year, I made a conscious effort to remember my writing birthday – to commemorate it on the actual day, or if nothing else, to at least make note of it. February 12: in truth, an arbitrarily-chosen day meant to mark the start of my first (incomplete, shelved) novel as approximated through a forensic accounting some emails I sent to a friend around that time.
I’m an Aquarius writer.
Flinders Street Station – a major transit hub, Melbourne, Australia
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, I’d travelled more than half a day into the future; perhaps journeying more than half a day closer to my final day.
~
These were among the first words I spoke on Australian soil to my Aussie-born friend and former Vancouver roommate who was the impetus behind my recent trip Down Under. This after she’d retrieved me from a very crowded Melbourne airport and pointed out all her favourite cafés, restaurants, shopping areas and, walking paths during the drive to her apartment.
My decision to re-watch all six seasons of the show Xena Warrior Princess – which is set in Ancient Greece – corresponded with my decision to someday rewrite my shelved first fantasy novel as historical fiction, also set in Ancient Greece.
That and because Xena is such a thrilling character – my favourite fictional character, in truth – whom I hadn’t watched since the show ended in 2001.
Just like chocolate, everyone has a favourite quotation as well. (Image from the movie Chocolat, 2000.)
For they are found everywhere online: in status updates; in tweets; as part of social media bios; within blog posts. Sometimes an individual blog post will be nothing but a quotation.
I too enjoy a good quote. Back in 2010, I did the 12-week self-help, self-directed artistic rediscovery course known as The Artist’s Way, which is the subject of screenwriter Julia Cameron’s book by the same name.
It took me 11 months to complete the program.
At certain times of the year, my job requires me to work overtime. One such occasion recently occurred, and at the end of my protracted work day, I found myself riding the elevator down with my boss, who is also an up-and-coming writer.
We got to chatting about how we would spend the rest of our respective evenings, or what remained of them. This morphed into talk of how we usually spend our evenings, in particular as related to our writing.
Janna G. Noelle 