What a weekend!

Thank god it's Sunday! Amirite?

Both kids were in bed well before 8pm tonight. George skipped his nap today so was bound to go to bed early. And Olivia had a 24 hour tummy bug for most of yesterday and last night. She didn't do a lot today but she didn't eat a lot either. 2 pieces of toast and 2 small bottles of formula.

Yesterday I went to Catherine Deveny's Gunnas writing masterclass. It was great. It wasn't a class about actual writing techniques, it was a class about how to find the time to write, how to stop procrastinating and how to get it done. There were about 20 people in the class, and a lot of them were already writing professionally in some way, a few people had already written manuscripts, there were a couple of teachers as well. Catherine got everyone to pair up with the person next to them and after a five minute chat we introduced the person we had chatted to, and then they would talk more about what they wanted to write, if they wanted to. Catherine, or Dev, as she is called by her friends, gave everyone tailored advice. Nothing over the top, just something straightforward that had either worked for her, or worked for someone she knew.

I have always wanted to write a book about my experience living in Iceland 2002-2003. I have extensive diaries, with the emails I wrote to people pasted in them, as well as my personal thoughts. I was never sure if I would write it in a fiction or non-fiction style, and the thing that worried me was what if somebody doesn't like what I've written about them. Dev said that I have no idea how anyone will react to what I've written, and they don't even know until they read it. She said until I've actually written something, I don't have to worry about how someone will react to it. And as long as it's not bitchy or snarky, they probably won't have any good reason to be offended anyway.

She has a very good point. At this stage, I've written nothing!! I can't even remember what's written in my diaries now!

Her best tip was to write for 10 minutes, 5 days a week. Preferably first thing in the morning. The Gunnas challenge is to write for 1 hour, 4 days a week, for 4 weeks. Yesterday I was sitting there thinking how the fuck am I going to find the time to write for an hour at a time except when the kids are sleeping? So I thought I would try 10 minutes.

Then Olivia was sick, vomiting in the night and I thought there is no fucking way I will be starting that today.

But you know what? I did!

I was having trouble sleeping anyway, because I was tensed up waiting for Olivia to spew again. So I got up, took my laptop, sat in the lounge with a clothes horse covered in dry washing in front of me, mess all over the place, ignored it, and started typing. After ten minutes, I felt like I'd only just started typing, so I kept going for nearly the full hour. George woke up before the hour was up, but I just ignored him and kept going. He wasn't crying, just talking to himself and calling for me now and then.

I've decided to start by transcribing all my diary entries and emails into a document, and then I will start sorting things into some sort of order and come up with some sort of narrative to make it into a good read. And edit it in the voice I want it to sound like, decide on what tense to use and all that sort of stuff later. For now I'll just get it down.

Dev said first you do the down draft, get it down on paper kind of thing. Then you do the up-draft. Fix it up. Then you do the dental draft. The terms come from someone, ah, I googled it, Anne Lamott.

So I'm just going to get it down first. And then I'm going to worry about what it's going to be later. I actually went back to the computer a couple of times today, when the kids were annoying me, and did the whole letter that I started transcribing in the morning. It was a letter I wrote to Jason while I was working in the hospital on the geriatric floor. 12 pages long!

Dev had so many great tips, and I already loved her from following her on facebook. She's opinionated and unapologetic and I love it. When I first started reading her, I was a bit taken aback by some things she said, but she's opened up my eyes a bit over the last year.

The theme of the Gunnas course is just do it. What do you really desire, and what's stopping you? The writing thing is one thing, but it also resonates with my career ambitions. This year I'm asking myself what I want and figuring out how to get there. I've got my fabulous mentor for the next few months to help me get over some humps and I've realised that I need to be a bit impulsive to stop myself overthinking everything.

Just do the thing. It's not like you're trying to kill anyone, you're just trying to achieve the thing. So do the thing. What's stopping you? Is it really a reason?