Day 47 – Yellow Snow

I think that the goings on in life are designed to test our faith, our will and our patience levels. I think all of us sometimes consider ourselves trodden upon and it’s only when we see or hear about the hardships of others, people that we may know only in passing that we start to realize that the hand of cards we have been dealt could have been a lot worse.

It is in our nature to compare ourselves with those who are better off or doing better, we have an inborn competitive spirit to want to be better and we moan when we aren’t or when life throws a lemon at us.

Last week in ‘Texas, a child, two years old, drowned. That alone would be enough to break the spirit of any parent. That this mother, who I know, lost the father of this child two or so years ago too only compounds the misery. I have lived with nothing in comparison to this. I cannot hope to understand the pain and the anguish that this mother and family are going through and the anguish they will feel for many years to come. To bury first the father and then their child must be the most gut wrenching experience anyone could endure. She may never read this but my heart is with her. They are in my thoughts. I count my lucky stars everyday.

To change the subject. I was asked yesterday by someone who reads this rambling of words, if my plan was to write a book. Which it is I guess but I don’t know when. Like I said right in the beginning it’s sort of a bucket list thing, along with climbing Everest, single handedly rowing across the Atlantic backwards and so on. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind doing it but don’t ask me where to start. I sort of imagine myself hiring a log cabin in the snowy hills for a few months and crunching out a book about something or other. It’s the romantic notion I have of doing this. My pragmatic side asks though what I would do for electricity and whether or not I had enough ink in the printer to print it all out. Should I do it on a lap top or a desk top and if so what is the best, Apple or P.C? And would I back it up somewhere? And if so, onto what? A flash stick, a CD, or perhaps an external hard drive, and who would cut the wood for the fire and cook the food? And who would do the shopping. And would the log cabin in the snowy hills have an inside toilet or an outside toilet and if it was outside would I just pee in the snow by the front door because it was too cold to walk the path?

But then what to write about too? I mean, would you have a great big white board with the story plan sketched out, would you brain storm this with someone (your editor perhaps – if you have an editor) would you add content to the character as you went along or is this done in advance, do you make places and streets up or do you visit these places and do research? I have so many questions in my head about the making of the story. I enjoy a good book; a really good one I’ll read from start to finish in one sitting but it fascinates me more thinking about how the author pulled the whole story together. How did the author decide on the town of Forks for that vampire story thing? How did Rowling come up with detail in Harry Potter? (And how did her publicist come up with the quaint but bullshit story of her starting the book on the back of a paper napkin while sitting in eggs n bacon café in suburban Glasgow? I mean really, have you ever tried to write with a pen on a paper napkin. The thing scrunches up, your writing looks medical, it’s just a fuck up!)

Going back to the bucket list thing and writing a book. Yes I would like to is the simple answer but a word of advice; don’t be rushing to your bookshop for a number of years ‘cos it could be a while still! And when this book that hasn’t been written yet makes it onto the best seller list, you’ll know that you read about it here first. And that’ll make you feel good and all important too. And for those, as of today, registered followers of this drivel, I promise you front row seats to whatever awards dinner I’m received at for this book that hasn’t been written. Pinky Promise.

One final random thing until I type the now customary ending. How difficult can it be to sell a good quality, one lady owner, all bells and whistles car for a fair price? So far…it seems more difficult than one would expect…

Until tomorrow.