Since no one will read this, what the hell….

I’ll just write anyway.

I just read that in a piece by Khadejah, a writer on Medium, How To Think Like An Online Writer. In addition to advising that no-one will read your deathless prose (my words, not his) until you’ve been writing and publishing for at least a year, more likely four, he says he committed to writing one article a day for a year; he’s now been doing it for sixteen months.

Right now, everyone is blogging about NaNoWriMo, in which you commit to finishing a 50,000-word book during the month of November. I’ve tried that, but can never stick with it. I do like the idea of committing to writing an article a day for a year — I think about 600 words. Going to start it today and see what happens.

As noted in my brief Medium bio, I’m a writer (I’ve written nine Harlequin books, Los Angeles Times and Westways articles, corporate PR; lately I’ve been doing travel pieces. I’ve lived in southern France for the past eight years, absolutely love it here in the Languedoc area of Occitanie — informally known as Poor Man’s Provence. I’m inspired to write about it; the parts that tourists don’t visit, but should.

I’m also in my mid-seventies, ok, correct that: I just had my seventy-seventh birthday and I’m grappling with the idea that I’m old. I’ve written quite a bit on the topic. Here’s a link to a piece I wrote for Jancis Robinson’s Old Vine competition:https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/wwc21-old-ladies-languedoc

But, even as I write these words, I realise that I’m doing what I really don’t want to do for this project (the commitment to an article a day. )What I want to do is write about the small moments in my daily life — kind of like I do in my journal — but with the difference of knowing I’m putting it out there, potentially, for others to read.

Already, I’m looking to see how many words I have written. At the moment, only 324, half of what I’d set out to do. Also already, I’m telling myself this isn’t a great idea. It’s sort of why I couldn’t do NaNoMo — in the effort to meet the daily word count, I start writing a lot of blah blah blah which ultimately turns out to be unusable.

Right, so one little daily moment. It’s early November, the mornings are cooler, the days are shorter. Willy Nelson singing September Song has been an earworm for the last few days. I’m in a three-year, going on four, relationship with a man who, all corny sounding mush I know, will be the love of my life. We’d both said (after four marriages between us) that we’d never live with anyone again — but here we are, happily sharing my small garret, I like the romantic sound of that word.

But yesterday, I spotted a lump in his neck, just below his Adam’s Apple and I’m scared. I think, hope, it’s thyroid-related, he’s made an appointment. But it’s made everything feel very poignant. This morning, he was still sleeping, I walked out into the vineyards. The vines are changing colours, patchworks quilts of orange, gold, and red over the hills. In the glow of the early morning sun, the leaves are like stained glass.

When I came back, he was up, making coffee. I smelled toast as I walked up the stairs (three flights up) to our place. He’d already put out marmalade and Marmite on the little table by the French windows in a corner of my study. The breakfast room we call it. We listened to the BBC news, clucked about Boris Johnson’s latest mess, shook our heads in wonder at a piece about a new ultra power telescope, twenty years in the making, that might eventually be able to detect life on other planets and I said that people involved in such projects must feel all the little political squabbles are so insignificant. Peter nodded. I’m not sure he was really listening, but that’s ok.

Right, I’ve done it. Written a little moment. I think, hope, it will come easier. That these early pieces will be like warming up a car’s engine. Back tomorrow with more.