An afternoon with Clara

With Nano finished and Christmas done and dusted for another year, I finally have a bit of free time to get back to blogging (one of many New Year’s Resolutions is to try and blog more regularly).  The run-up to Christmas is always a bit manic, the big day itself tends to leave me somewhat frazzled – especially as it was my first time hosting the whole shebang this year – and with a new job and a move to London looming on the horizon in the next fortnight, 2013 looks to be getting off to a hectic start too! So thank goodness for the next few days, which are a much-needed holiday. I don’t have much planned, apart from catching up with some old friends. And today, I decided to spend some time with one of my oldest friends. Clara.

I’ve known Clara since I was 11. We met in Surrey and have pretty much gone everywhere together ever since. I don’t get to spend as much time with Clara as I would like, so days like today are a real treat. Clara, as you have probably worked out by now, is, of course:

My beautiful harp.

She’s a clarsach (or clarseach, or clairseach…hence the name: Clara the Clarsach. What?! I did say that I was 11 when I got my harp!) – a concert-strung, Celtic beauty with 34 strings, a maple frame and hand-painted designs on the side.

I’ve been playing the harp since I was 9 and, after 2 years of renting a harp from the local education board (yep, you really can rent just about anything!), my parents decided that the harp and I were developing into a fairly serious relationship and that I should have one of my own. And so we went to Pilgrim Harps (www.pilgrimharps.co.uk) to find Clara.

Over the past 20 years (great, now I feel old!) I’ve played, practised and performed at lots of different events from weddings to corporate Christmas dinners. However, I’m really not a natural performer, so in some ways the harp and I must seem like an odd fit. It’s a flashy instrument, a bit of a showstopper. When people come to visit, Clara does tend to attract attention and I sit there, waiting for the inevitable ‘go on, give us a tune’ comments to start.

And, because people tend to get the wrong end of the stick and think I’m being really precious if I don’t play something, more often than not I’ll pluck a quick reel or jig and hope that will be enough. I’m an introvert – not at all a performer. I love playing as part of a group, or providing background music (that’s just adding atmosphere, people are too busy eating canapés and quaffing bubbly to really pay attention to the music – and that’s fine by me) but put me centre stage and things tend to fall to pieces. Faced with a solo performance, you can pretty much guarantee that my hands will be so clammy they’ll start to slip off the strings, I’ll make mistakes in pieces that I know by heart, and my right leg will start to shake uncontrollably (the left leg never gives me any such trouble!). Really, I would have been better off staying in the background with my recorder!

Of course, there are exceptions and every so often I’ll leap out of my comfort zone and do something like this:

That’s me playing at a (very good) friend’s wedding. I love being able to add something to such a special day and it's always lovely to be asked, but I’ll only do it if I have a) plenty of notice (i.e. plenty of time to practise, practise, practise) and b) it needs to be for a very good friend!

So I love days like today. It’s just Clara and me. I have enough time to tune every one of those 34 strings, replace the ones that need to be changed, and play my way through a repertoire of old favourites and practise new pieces. I’m a fan of mixing it up, so I’m as likely to play Death Cab for Cutie or Bob Dylan, as I am a traditional Irish air.  I’m hugely in favour of everyone having a ‘selfish’ hobby like this. My harp is just for me and it’s really just for my own enjoyment.  Practising makes me happy (and a better harper!) and that’s it. It doesn’t keep me fit or help me to lose weight. It doesn’t make me more intelligent. It’s a million miles away from my 9-5 office life and won’t improve my career prospects. It doesn’t benefit anyone else apart from me.

And, I think that's okay. Sometimes, a little bit of selfishness is just what the doctor ordered and, after an afternoon with my harp, I'm feeling relaxed, happy, and just about ready to start tackling the chore that is packing for our move to London!

Nano - 10 days in!

The Nano challenge: Write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.

So we’re 10 days in and this is how things are shaping up:

Target word count for day 10: 16,670

Actual word count for day 10: 16,717

Ever so slightly over the target and I’m pleased with how my second attempt at Nano is coming along.*  As with last year, I’m surprised at just how much time I’ve managed to free up and devote to writing. My Nano strategy so far has been to follow the mantra ‘Just Sit Down and Write!’ As with last year, having a specific goal to work towards (those elusive 50,000 words) is providing me with a lot of focus and an unusual amount of self-discipline. I get in from work and I sit down and…I write. There’s absolutely no reason that I can’t do this every other month of the year, but there’s definitely something about the Nano challenge that compels me to actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, to be more precise) and tell a story from start to finish.

One of trickiest things for me at the moment is forcing myself not to listen to my inner editor. Given that I work as an, um, editor, this is pretty difficult. It’s hard to allow myself to simply write, to put the words on the page and just get the story down, without checking and rechecking every phrase to ensure that it’s perfect.  I have to tell myself that doing that would defeat the point of Nano (for me, at least). I know that what I’ve written so far is nowhere near perfect. If I get to the end of Nano and I have written something that I quite like, it will need to be thoroughly revised, redrafted and refined before I let anyone else within reading distance of it! For now though, I’m trying to tell myself that it’s okay not to be dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts at this point. Right now, it’s about getting the story out of my head and onto the page. Telling the tale from start to finish. Taking baby steps towards writing a book.

*I have, however, started to realize that Nano-ing and blogging are pretty much incompatible, so I think that blogs entries over the coming weeks could be few and far between!

Countdown to Nano!

Nanowrimo.

This time last year, I hadn’t heard of it.

I was introduced to the idea of Nanowrimo by my friend Sarah. Being a very astute and observant lady, Sarah had noticed that although I love to write, my writing plans are often thwarted by a fairly pronounced tendency to procrastinate.

My writing-procrastination cycle goes something like this:

1- Have idea for story.

Excellent.

2 – Decide to write detailed plot outline for said story (can’t begin writing without full plot, otherwise madness will ensue).

3 - Decide is more important to first have detailed life histories drawn up for all characters in book.

4 – Veer off into random daydreams in which I become bestselling author. Decide to use money from bestselling books to buy rambling, rundown farmhouse in beautiful countryside idyll.

5- Wonder how best to approach renovation project on rambling farmhouse.

6 – Argue with boyfriend over décor ideas for (non-existent) farmhouse that has been bought with (non-existent) money from (non-existent) bestselling books.

7 – Boyfriend suggests may be best to start by actually writing book.

8 – Write 1000 words.

9 – Stop writing as am distracted by: work/ yoga class/ work/ going for a run/ work/ catching up with the girls/ work /going out with the boy/ work/ phone calls from my mother…etc…

10 – Decide problem was idea for story. Clearly not engaging enough otherwise would not have procrastinated in such a fashion.

11 – Have another idea for story.

Excellent.

So, with this in mind, Sarah’s suggestion that I give Nanowrimo a go was perfectly timed.

Nanwrimo = NationalNovelWritingMonth.

It happens every November and the aim is to write the (very!) rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Nanowrimo sets 50,000 words as the goal. For all things Nano-related see http://www.nanowrimo.org/en.

Last November I signed up, logged in and decided to see if I could write 1666 words per day. And here’s the interesting thing – I could. All that time I thought I didn’t have, suddenly materialized. I was carving out pockets of writing time here, there and everywhere. 15 minutes in the morning before leaving for work. 20 minutes on my lunchbreak. 30 minutes while dinner was in the oven.

I suppose I really shouldn’t have been surprised that having a specific writing goal in mind for each day worked so well for me. I’ve always been that way – working best when I’m working towards something specific. At the moment, for example, I’m really struggling to find the motivation to run as I’m not really training for anything. When I was training for my 10k earlier this year, or for the relay race a few weeks ago, it wasn’t hard to motivate myself to get out there and train, but with no new race to work towards, I’m finding it all too easy to talk myself out of lacing up my trainers.

Nanowrimo also tapped into my fairly strong competitive streak. There’s a lively Nano community and most participants log their daily word counts online so it’s very easy to see how you’re doing in comparison to everyone else.  Do I really want to be the person who is only logging 100 words per day while everyone else is hurtling towards the 50,000 mark? Definitely not.

Of course, Nano isn’t for everyone and there are arguments to suggest that maybe it’s not even a very good idea at all. After all, what sort of material is going to come out of a period of enforced creativity? It’s a fair point and indeed, I’ve read stories about editors complaining about the amount of appalling draft manuscripts they receive post-Nano as aspiring writers send their work to publishing houses as soon as they type that 50,0000^th word.

But it worked for me and I think it’s a good idea for people, like me, who have plenty of book ideas floating around but struggle to find the time to get anything down on paper.

Unfortunately, Nano beat me last year. I was going well and had even hit the half-way mark when the combination of a break-up and a house move knocked me for six and my daily writing targets were abandoned.

And now it’s almost Nano time again. I’m signed up. I’m ready to go. And this year, I’m getting all the way to 50,000 words.

Plus, I have a really good idea for a story.

Excellent.

Goodbye September...and Goodbye Saturn

**A little disclaimer: If all things astrological leave you rolling your eyes and mumbling about ‘hippy, new-age, folksy nonsense’ then it’s probably best to stop reading at this point and come back for the next entry as this one will be full of astrological shenanigans!

I’ve always been quite interested in things like horoscopes, even though I take them with a fairly large pinch of salt. My horoscope is usually the first thing I read in a magazine but do I really think they’re accurate? Not at all. Nine times out of ten the little comments are so general that anyone could apply them to what’s going on in their life at that moment and lo and behold your horoscope is spookily on target!

So, I’ve heard about astrology (I’m a Leo-lady: so that’ll be bossy and stubborn but with really good hair!) and the Chinese zodiac (the year of the…um…pig. Of all the animals I could have been – tiger, dragon etc – I got the pig. ) and I’ve even had a look at runes and tarot cards but I’d never heard of the Saturn return.

The what?

My thoughts exactly when it was first mentioned at work by my friend Jen. It was around this time last year that Saturn first popped up in conversation. Apparently (and for a much better explanation and all things generally Saturn-related take a look at http://saturnsisters.com/), it takes Saturn 29.5 years to orbit around the sun and so just before your 30^th birthday Saturn is coming right back to where he was when you were born. Unfortunately, Saturn’s early birthday presents aren’t the greatest and having just about survived my own Saturn Return I think I can safely say that Saturn is the bringer of some seriously tough love.

Your particular Saturn lesson depends on the zodiac sign Saturn was in when you were born – Libra for me, which meant that from December 2011 until early October 2012 I was going the learn all about criticism. Yup that was going to be the main theme of my Saturn Return: criticism. Apparently, this was going to be a transformative 10 months in which my life would be turned upside down and I would be a stronger, happier person at the end of it, if I paid attention to what Saturn was trying to tell me.

Yeah, right.

Saturn Return.

Criticism.

How much could happen in 10 months?

Ummmmm….

In early December 2011 I split up with my long-term boyfriend.

From Jan – May I hit the roughest patch I’ve ever had in my career.

Some old, long-term friendships started to fall apart around the same time.

And was there criticism?

You better believe it.

Family, friends, colleagues, vague acquaintances. Suddenly it felt as if everyone had a problem with some aspect of my personality. When things were at their worst in March and April I felt like starting a deli-counter style ticketing system: ‘Please take a number and then wait your turn to tell Lauren exactly what you think of her.’

So what to do with all this criticism? Well, pre-Saturn my tried and tested mode of dealing with criticism was to ignore it and in true Leo-style plough on stubbornly with whatever I was doing.

But it sounded like Saturn wasn’t going to let me get away with that.

So I decided to try and separate the critical wheat from the chaff. What was useful criticism and what wasn’t? Turns out there was quite a bit of useful stuff, mainly involving the need to develop a more positive attitude and stop automatically seeing the negative in every situation.

And, of course, there were a few bits and pieces that I won’t be changing anytime soon (sorry you don’t like my hair, mum, but I’m not going back to blonde!).

Anyway, I did my best to pay attention to whatever Saturn was trying to say and the upshot of all this is that now, just a few days before my Saturn Return comes to an end, things are pretty good.

I got back together with my boyfriend and we’ve just moved in to a lovely apartment together.

In mid-September I was promoted at work.

And looking back, being single for a while and living in a flat-share means I’ve made lots of lovely new friends.

So I guess there was something to all the Saturn Return stuff in the end – though I can’t say I’m particularly sorry to see it finish! That’s me free from Saturn for the next 29.5 yearsJ

Well, almost…

Saturn trundles off into Scorpio on 5^th October so if you have any last-minute snarks or criticisms to throw at me, you’ve only got 5 days left to do it!

And if you were born between August 25^th 1983 and November 17^th 1985, good luck – you’re next in line for a visit from everyone’s favourite planet!

Welcome to the Dark Side

A lot of things have happened this year and 2012 has been full of changes for me. I’ll probably do a proper stock take of everything at the end of the year but today I thought I’d write about one of the more frivolous changes this year: my hair (yep, it’s a frivolous post today – I blame the hot, sunny and downright cheerful weather!).

I’d been stuck in a hair-rut for, oh, quite a few years! At the ripe old age of 13 I decided that blondes had more fun and so began 15 years of highlighting my natural mousey locks ever-increasing shades of platinum. The cuts have changed (everything from an ill-advised bob to the ubiquitous ‘Rachel’ haircut in the mid-90s*) but the colour has by and large remained the same.

Until this February, when, in a fit of post-break-up pique, I did this:

I didn’t put too much thought into having it done. I decided I wanted a change and so I switched from blonde to red. And I loved it. Dark red on top with magenta tips. It was a big, bold colour and people couldn’t help but comment on it. Everyone (except my mum, who just doesn’t understand why I would want to be anything but blonde) liked it and for the first time in my life strangers would compliment me on my hair.

But there was a downside. Red hair dye is the hardest colour to keep in your hair and it fades super-fast so every six weeks I was back in the hairdresser’s chair to have my roots touched up and my bright magenta ends brought back to life. It didn’t seem to matter which colour care regime I tried (and I tried a lot, from the eye-wateringly expensive Aveda Colour Conserve range to the more purse friendly Avalon Organics), nothing stopped the fade from bright red to bleached ginger.

Red hair also runs. Pillows, duvet covers, towels and clothes all ended up covered with spots and splodges of red. The final straw came when I went for a run and came back looking like an extra in a bad horror movie with streaks of red running down my face and neck (and I wondered why fellow runners were giving me such strange looks!).

So, yesterday, I decided to go for something a bit more natural. Or at least that was the plan. I told my hairdresser that I wanted to try being a brunette, something a bit darker than my natural colour.  Turns out that while red may be one of the fastest colours to fade; it’s also one of the hardest to get rid of completely. The solution: a two-stage process. For the next six weeks, I’ll be rocking this look:

Yes, I’ve gone to the dark side and my hair is currently pretty much the same colour as a plum. It’s a very dark, slightly gothic and fairly dramatic colour. It’s also taking some getting used to but I like it. I’ve a sinking feeling that it will fade pretty fast too and in six week’s time I’ll be sporting a purplish-reddish collage! The next step will be to add a lighter, chocolate-y brown into the mix to try and get a more brunette look.

I mentioned to my friends this week that I was going to dye my hair again and get rid of the red. One friend - Jen - commented that she hoped the change in hair colour wouldn’t change my personality. This made me think: this year I’ve been through the colour spectrum: blonde, red and soon-to-be brunette via plum!

Are the stereotypes true? Does my personality change to fit in with the clichés about each hair colour? Did I have more fun as a blonde? Was I more sweet and innocent with lighter hair? Was I feistier as a redhead? Will I be more intelligent and mysterious as a brunette? (I’ve no idea what the clichés are about plum-haired women!).

Hmmmmm…I think I can safely say that none of the clichés fit. My personality has been pretty much the same with each colour. I was still super-sarcastic as a blonde and definitely had introspective, shy moments as a redhead. I’m fairly sure my IQ won’t suddenly improve with the addition of some brunette dye. I’ve been thinking about hair colour from a different perspective: I want to find a colour that matches my personality – a colour that adapts to me rather than the other way round.

Have I found it? Almost. Red was definitely a better fit for my personality than blonde ever was. Purple is certainly going to be fun for the next six weeks but it’s a bit too gothic to become a permanent fixture. Which leaves the brunette spectrum. Chestnut? Chocolate? Mahogany? I think my perfect colour just might be in there somewhere!

*I didn’t actually ever have a ‘Rachel’ haircut. I did ask my hairdresser for it when I was about 15 but, thinking about the mullet disaster I ended up with, I can only assume that said hairdresser had never seen Friends!

Pixie Power

This morning I went for a run. 30 minutes. 3.01 miles.

Nothing too interesting there you might think. Lots of people run.  And I’m sure lots of these people got up this morning and ran faster and for longer than me. But what really struck me this morning was how much I enjoyed my run. If you’d told me this time last year that I would run a 10k (and actually make it to the finish line!) and end up enjoying running in the process I probably would have decided you were delusional.

Prior to January this year, running and I were not friends. Sure, I would hit the treadmill at the gym but it always felt like a necessary evil.

Then at the start of 2012, one of my colleagues – Jen (follow her running adventures at the excellent http://www.2itchyfeet.com/) - suggested a few of us sign up for the inaugural 10k Town and Gown here in Cambridge. Jen – a super-fit and super-motivated lady - had already been bitten by the running bug in a big way. Normally I would have given the 10k suggestion a polite ‘thanks but no thanks’ but this year was different. I was going through a particularly rough break-up. I had just moved to a new house and was back in a flat-share for the first time in two years. I was burying myself in work and not really doing much else. Maybe I should give this running suggestion a try. So, much to my own surprise, I said yes and signed up for my first 10k. This would be the longest distance I had run since…umm…ever.

I printed out a 10k training schedule for beginners and off I went, running by myself along the Cam. The first few runs felt brutal. I really wasn’t used to running outside and it was a very different beast to running on the treadmill – there are no yappy dogs chasing you at the gym for one thing! I was out of breath after 15 minutes of fairly gentle running. I would go back home and my flatmates would take one look at my beetroot coloured face and decide I was about to collapse. Running continuously for 10k seemed unlikely and severely embarrassing myself in front of my colleagues looked to be pretty much a given.

But…gradually…week-by-week and run-by-run…I got better. A little bit farther each time. A little bit stronger. Until finally, not long before the day of the race I found that elusive ‘runner’s high’. That point when running doesn’t feel like a slog, when you feel light on your feet and full of energy, when you just keep going even though you’ve finished your training schedule for that day. My mind was clear. I was less stressed. I had caught the running bug! I ran a practice 10k the week before the race and completed it in 58 minutes. Certainly not the fastest time ever but if I could do that on the day I would be very happy.

Sadly, the universe had other plans.

On race day it was, to use the vernacular, absolutely pissing it down. It was a cold, wet and miserable April morning and when my phone rang just as I was pulling on my jacket I jumped at it, hoping that it would be the race organiser calling to let me know that the whole thing was cancelled. It wasn’t. It was my colleague and fellow runner Sara confirming that it was still all systems go and we were meeting as planned.

Urgh.

I think the rain put a lot of runners off and it was a sparsely attended race (not that I have much to compare it to but there really weren’t a lot of people). The six of us stood huddled under umbrellas for a good 30 minutes before the race started. In those 30 minutes there was nowhere to go and nothing to do apart from get progressively colder and wetter.

The race started and off we went. Large parts of the course had turned into muddy ditches and you had no choice but to slow down and squelch around them. The rain pelted down in sheets for all 10 kilometres and at around the 7k mark I was hit by calf cramp. I kept going and stumbled over the finishing line in a very poor 1hour 12minutes. I was slower than all my colleagues. Now, I know that somebody has to come last, but why did it have to be me?!*

I was disappointed for several weeks afterwards. It seemed that all the training had been a waste of time. And, to be honest, I really hadn’t enjoyed the race. It was wet, it was miserable and for large chunks of it I was running by myself, I couldn’t see anyone in front of me or (rather more depressingly) behind me.

Then I tried to see the positive side of things. Maybe the actual day of the race hadn’t been great. But all the training that had gone before it hadn’t been so bad – apart from those first few runs where I thought my lungs would explode!

So I kept running.

I even signed up for another race. On September 16^th this year, along with 5 of my colleagues, I’ll be taking part in the Chariots of Fire relay race in Cambridge. We’re calling ourselves the Pixies and we’ll each be running 1.7 miles so this is more about speed than endurance. I’ve been training hard and even though I know I won’t be the fastest (I think Jen pretty much has a lock on that one!), I really hope I won’t be the slowest.

After the relay is over…who knows? I’m pretty sure that I’m going to sign up for another 10k. I’d like to improve my time and have a better overall race experience. But whatever happens, I’ll definitely keep running!

So, having read all that (and if you’ve made it to the end – well done!), why not take a look at our sponsorship page:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=ThePixies&pageUrl=2

and give some pennies (or pounds) to the Pixies! Any donations would be much appreciated. Thank you!

*I wasn’t last overall (before you start thinking I’m an incredibly poor runner). There were runners who came in behind me. To be fair, most of them were septuagenarians but still, I wasn’t the slowest overall!

(Not-So) New Year's Resolutions

Having taken months to actually set up this blog, it seems apt that I finally got it up and running on 1^st September. I’ve never lost the feeling that September is ‘back-to-school’ month; a time for fresh starts, general optimism and a ‘can-do’ attitude. I remember approaching each new school year with the idea that it would be my best year ever. I would be organized, I would work hard at all my subjects (even maths), I would get up in time for breakfast in the morning, and I would stop avoiding P.E.  Of course, these resolutions usually lasted around a month and by October normal service had been resumed: my dad was doing my maths homework (thanks dad!), breakfast was a slice of toast hastily eaten as I legged it to the bus, and I was happily forging my dad’s signature on a series of increasingly inventive excuse notes (Dear Mrs. McIvor, Please excuse Lauren from today’s P.E. lesson. She has bubonic plague but should be fully recovered in time for her music lesson later in the afternoon).

Fast forward several (let’s not think about just how many years it’s been since I left school!) years and I’m using September rather than January to make some (Not So) New Year Resolutions.  This year, I’m even writing them down:

-I will complete NaNoWriMo* this year

-I will actually polish up whatever I finish for NaNo and maybe even let some people read it

-I will have a better work/life balance (currently I’m tending towards the workaholic end of the spectrum)

-I will finally learn how to do a shoulder stand in yoga

*That’s National Novel Writing Month. This November I’ll be trying to write a novel (50,000 words is the minimum I’m aiming for) in 30 days.

So there you have it, my grown-up ‘back-to-school’ resolutions. Will I stick to them? Ask me again in October!

Birth of a blog

Hello and welcome to my blog, which has been a shockingly long time in the making, due to some serious procrastination on my part. But as Sam tells C.J. in The West Wing:

“Let's forget the fact that you're coming a little late to the party and embrace the fact that you showed up at all.”

First I spent several months wondering just what the whole thing should be about. I needed a theme – but what? I could blog about writing and maybe it would be a good way to break my writer’s block (scarily present for the past 7 months!). Or maybe a blog about folk music would inspire me to practise my harp a bit more and seek out some new groups to play with.

What about a frivolous blog about hair, beauty and make-up? It might be fun to write reviews about all the products I try in my ongoing quest for shiny, voluminous hair; dewy, spot-free skin and sharp, defined cheekbones.

Maybe sport. Over the past two years I’ve turned into a yoga bunny and been bitten by the running bug.

I was also tempted to blog about relationships. In the past year I’ve experienced breaking up, making up, coupledom, singledom, beingonabreakdom, good dates, bad dates, comedy dates. Definitely plenty there to blog about.

Then a week or so ago I decided that I just couldn’t decide. The theme of my blog would be themelessness. This really will be a bit of everything. 

It will be somewhat random, fairly left field, hopefully entertaining and definitely quintessentially quirky.