Happy Booze Year

The suggested reading on my Kindle have similar covers.  Empty bottles lay limp and sometimes wine pours itself into a quirky title.  Another is the figure of a woman blurred, either the back of her head or her legs, too ashamed to face the camera.

Tomorrow’s New Years Eve and it’s terrifying.  How do you celebrate booze-free? OD on caramel ice-cream instead?

Last week, my boyfriend’s friend visited and we stayed out until morning, destroying a few boxes of cigarettes a night, and sinking endless pints of beer.  On the third morning, one arose to find an eye sealed-shut, covered in a spray of purple, while the other had a sore egg-like growth on the back of his head.

The whole week was a blur of McDonald’s and cheap beer, encircled by a strange language in cloudy bars. By the end of the week, when the friend left, we hid in an eerie hostel with darkened halls, where obscene paintings stretched ahead as you climbed the stairs.  The most memorable was a topless woman getting her nipple tweaked on a bus, while another man robbed her.

Now we’re living in the forest and working hard to get money back up.  Christmas was drenched in vino tino and plasticy beer and I’m sure tomorrow holds the potential to plummet us into a dark, tangled mess.

This will be the first sober New Years Eve for 12 years, so we’re planning to eat pizza overlooking the sunset and feel the gentle shift into a new decade.

Happy New Years guys!

Always Leave a Trace

I don’t think it’s ridiculous to cry when you re-read what you’ve written and find out it’s shite. The dialogue’s so flat! So cliche!

The self-critic has the power to paralyze so you furiously stab the “x” button to keep the monstrousity lost forever.  Students have the luxury of the all-knowing red ink, crossing, circling, and underlining mistakes that have gone unnoticed.

But honing your craft alone is tricky.  All these blogs boom “read, read, read”, “practice, practice, practice” but what if your writing is still the worst thing ever?

Even though it’s cringey, we have to accept the wooden sentences and 2D characters that have found its way on paper.

But we have to keep records.

Whether you’ve left a short story on “Private” or it’s buried deep in your computer, bite the bullet and re-read your work.

I found my two-year-old blog the other day and decided to check out ~the past self~.  Was it really as horrific as I remembered?

No. It wasn’t.

And it broke my heart because doubt had sunk its claws into my temples and flooded me with self-loathing, disappointment, and zapped any confidence I ever had.

Sure, sentences were riddled with spelling mistakes and it was far from perfect, but it just shows how debilitating a lack of confidence can be.

OKAY, SO HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THIS & THRIVE?

The cure is to think like a male politician.

Not the sweet boy who chews his cuffs in the corner of the room but that guy who thunders his opinions the day after everyone’s wrecked, convinced his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and third-wave Feminism are correct.

It’s possible to emulate confidence.  You just have to tell yourself:

• “I’m always improving!”
• “It’s going to be an endless journey but I’m going to be gentle on myself.”
• “You can’t get any worse, you can only progress.”

This is the bolt of energy we need pouring from our fingers and onto paper.

We’ve got this guys!