Jams And Chutney

Before I had enough courage to confess to myself that I am a writer, I had long given up finding my way in the world of the other arts. As the 3^rd daughter of a father who taught graphic arts and nude figure drawing at the Academy of Arts, I had been overly stimulated to paint and draw and follow in his footsteps. I´m pretty sure I was the only child who handed out hand-made woodcut printed invitations for her 9^th birthday party. A party on which we visited a museum of natural history, and I remember feeling relieved that day because now my friends could see for themselves that keeping small pets in pots of aqua fortis, as we did at home, was in fact quite normal. Skeletons of animals could be seen at other places than at my house.

Back to the story at hand. As a child I already was a serious observer, I could draw pretty well and always got high grades. I was the second of my sisters to apply and become a student at the academy. It all was pretty much as expected. To cut a long story short, it turned out not to be the thing for me, much to my father’s dismay. I actually felt pretty good about it.

But for this strong urge to create, I kept feeling inside. The need to create was not gone once I had decided that photography, drawing or painting were not for me. It was only growing stronger as I grew older. From an observer I was slowly developing into an actual person. Someone with opinions of her own. And the urge to create was growing too. Hidden deep inside it sometimes burst out. In suprising ways. Like when I started to crochet. Not just for me, I feverishly made ponchos for my daughter, and two of her best friends. Or when I suddenly felt the need to bake cakes, and lots of them. Baking cakes asks for an opportunity with lots of people to eat them. So one year, shortly before Christmas, I sent out all these medium sized Christmas cakes. By post, indestructible because of the thick icing but still carefully wrapped and packed, I sent them off to my sisters, my brother in Poland, my mother, my boyfriends parents and my best friend in Barcelona.

This is not a nice gesture, this is misguided creativity.

Although my family might disagree. Come December they still remind me of the cakes.

After this realization, it was still a long way to the writing I do these days. Writing has become a part of my daily routine, a simple and clear way to express myself. Something I have to do, and I do it like this, every day:

I get up at 5:45, take a shower and take the dog for a short walk. Then I make myself a big cappuccino and sit down at the kitchen table to write my morning pages. In these I complain, I tell about my dreams, my worries, all the random silly things that go around in my head at that time. This normally results in such total nonsense, that I hardly ever feel the need to reread them. Only once in a blue moon does a good idea come up during this mental dumping of words on paper. After this my head always feels quiet and calm. Empty and ready to focus on a new idea, come up with new connections. I can never stop this writing in the morning: my mind gets cluttered easily, every day. I love writing them with my old fountain pen.

After this, when I go off to work, I take my netbook with me. On the train to as well as back from work, I write on my other stories. Or on my blog posts. And when the train is so crowded I don´t have a place to sit down, I read. As I work part-time I usually have some time to continue my writing in the afternoon. All this has led me up to this point. Even though I’m learning to control the need to create, I still feel that writing my first novel is a frighteningly big journey.  I do feel confident enough to embark upon it though.

And really, I have no choice. It´s either this or stacking all the shelves in all the cupboards in my house with endless supplies of jams and chutney.