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Creativity•Life•Writing

Wowsers

12/10/2020 by Alison Asher No Comments
Here's me. Shame about the contour map on my face, but I am one happy camper right now.
Well hello there!

So it looks like blog might be back.

When the lovely young fellow from the hosting service managed to free things up and I could have a little peep behind the curtain here, for a moment I thought I’d turned into a virus or something. FIVE HUNDRED and ninety four comments. The most I’ve ever had. To be honest peeps, for one magical moment back there at 4.32pm, I thought I was a proper author.

So much lovely from BrandonWang and KeithNob. Beautiful suggestions for some shemale action from SlappingLesbian. And the alluring offer of various medications to make things bigger, harder, longer or just more healthy (yep you can get antibiotics with your authentix (sic) Nike Airs) from most of Russia and half of Germany.

The joys of the interwebz.

Anyway, this is just a little warm up to get my phalanges pumping (no, don’t send me a pill) and my synapses singing.

See y’all soon.

PS Feel free to comment. But don’t worry too much about the myrrh next time (or merkins for that matter).


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Creativity

Bleeding Fingers

25/11/2014 by Alison Asher 10 Comments

Do you ever have in impending sense of doom?

I have it often, and I have it right now. It’s 5am, and just like I promised, I have been getting up each morning to blog and to write. The problem with getting up earlier than usual with any intended task beyond a shuffle to the coffee machine is that my brain doesn’t seem to rest properly. It appears that because I haven’t gotten all of my thoughts out of my head before going to bed, they circle and swirl around all night, until I can stand it no more and have to get up.

Unfortunately they don’t just keep to themselves either. Just as I suspected, with my ideas of cells and interconnections yesterday, they weave and thread and tighten themselves into little knots, trying to connect with one another, and making up new patterns where ever they can. So my sleep is fitful and plagued by dreams of exams that I haven’t studied for, and contact lenses that won’t fit into my eyes properly.

I only have a small brain, and despite my claims to the contrary, I can really only concentrate on one thing at a time. That is the reason why people often assume I’m very organised, because to exist in this world I find I have to get one task completed before I can start on another. The passport applications must be handed in before I can start on my CPD hours. CPD must be ticked off before I can do the Christmas shopping. Shopping must be done and wrapped before I can start my BAS. And on and on and on it goes, seemingly forever.

The blog used to be another of those tasks, something to be done to relax and calm my mind of an evening. The 5am Club rescheduled that, and now I am adrift, not really knowing what to do before bedtime, with one part of me (which, as the hours tick over becomes all of me) fiddling away at the topic for the day.

It’s bloody exhausting.

A 5am friend told me to give it a go for a few weeks to get into the swing. She said it will get easier. I hope so, because today I have slightly numb fingers, because I thought it would be a good idea to learn the guitar instead of writing last night. I kind of leant the chords to ‘Hound Dog’ (The first song I could find an easy YouTube on that didn’t contain lots of music words I don’t understand, like tabs and bars.) but of course only I know it’s Hound Dog, the chord changes are too slow for other humans to recognise.

So now I must away, armed with my new understanding of Bryan Adams from “Summer of ’69”. I didn’t play it ’til my fingers bled, but they do feel like they’ve been worn down a bit.

 

Tell me 5am-ers, how do you turn off your brains?

Can you play guitar? How HARD is it???

 

 

…From The Ashers

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Writing

Confession Time

19/11/2014 by Alison Asher 6 Comments

Confession Time:

I want to write a book.

There, I said it, and in a little while, I am going to press publish on this blog post, and anyone who casually stops by my little haven in the internet will know too. I have written a lot of things on here since I started blogging, some of them quite personal I suppose, so much so that I now think of myself as one of those over-sharing people, for whom life doesn’t seem to happen unless they tell the world about it, whether the world is listening or not.

You RRs know I’ve been reading a goal setting book, and one of the things that Matthew says is key to realisation of goals, is telling others about them. And I think he is correct in that. Usually if I want to do something I parp on and on about it, boring everyone around me to dust until the groundswell is such that I can’t help but do the thing in question.

Writing has never been like that for me.

I read something by Stephen King (the greatest modern author) years ago where he said that he often has people approach him saying that they too want to write a book. They even outline the plot to him, (as if he could care), talking talking about their amazing book idea, but never doing any of the actual writing. He said that writers don’t talk about writing a book- they just write one. And if my memory serves me correctly, he says they write not so much because they want to, but because they must.

So forever I have kept my secret hidden.

I have always written little bits and pieces for my own amusement, or for a small audience, and I have been kindly received. People who already know, and I assume, like me, have said nice things. Some of them have compared my scratchings to proper authors they have read. Others have said that my scribblings could be a book. I have just smiled a sanguine smile, thanked them and said, “No, I’m a chiropractor.” As though having a real job precludes me from ever doing anything else.

I think it is telling, that a close friend once read this little blog, looked me in the eye and said, “You were born to do this.” I have done lots of cool things in my life. I have had a flukey and fortunate existence, with minimal trauma, and much success. But when my friend said that, I grabbed and clutched that precious gem and squirrelled it away, burying it deep in my heart, just behind the first ventricle, where it could sit, safe and heavy, so I could always know where it was.

 

Confession Part Two:

I started this blog as writing practice.

That’s it. I didn’t really do it to entertain and interact with you. I didn’t have a great product idea. I didn’t want to be useful to you. I’m sorry lovelies, but as usual. this blog wasn’t all about you, it was all about me. The very idea behind it was to start exercising my writing muscles, for as you know, neurones that fire together, wire together, and I suspected that getting into a regular writing commitment would make the words flow. Which is true. They do mostly, sometimes spilling forth like so much frothy diarrhoea, my fingers flying across they keyboard in a frenzy as the words jostle to be heard.

A friend told me that an author (I think it was Bob Hawke’s wife, Blanche) was asked when the best time to write. She said, “The muse shows up when you show up.” I think she might be right. The problem is eeking out a time to show up. I sometimes feel like making time to write steals from my family, which I cannot do, and also other important and fulfilling tasks like paying phone bills and cleaning bathrooms.

I read a book recently by Cartoon Dave (Dave Hackett) a local guy who I know to be full of energy and fun. I think I kind of assumed he sat down every morning, did a few cartoons, maybe organised his next shoot time for his television show and then put in some good solid writing hours before doing the school run. Then I read in the acknowledgements that he thanked coffee, for all the 4am starts. So writing the book wasn’t necessarily easy for Dave, but he found a way to make it happen.

 

Confession Part Three:

I hate early mornings.

Always have. I’m a night person, but somehow I don’t think I’m going to get a book written by staying up after midnight every night. Even for me, Night Owl in Big Glasses, it might be too much of a stretch. I am part of a whole lot of closed groups on FB, and one of them is with a bunch of incredibly motivated people who are in a 5am club. They get up every morning at 5am and do STUFF. I am never up at 5am. However, lately the idea has been kicking around in my temporal lobe I think, and it has taken to communicating to some melatonin, and for the last week I have been waking at 4.45am. I don’t like it, not one bit, so I roll over with a huff, and try to go back to sleep. But the idea keeps tickling away at my corpus callosum.

So today, this blog is brought to you by the number 5.

I did it. I got up at 5am (which is not really a big deal- in Queensland we don’t have daylight savings- it would fade our curtains- so at 5am it’s perfectly light, and already warm). Still, it’s a start.

So if this post is particularly long and winding, it’s because I’m partly delirious and mostly still addled with the stuff of my dreams.

Hence the confessional.

I guess it’s like being in the little box, with the priest next door. You know he’s there, you know he’s probably listening, but still you go on. Still you say things that afterwards you wonder why, but somehow the safety of the darkness and the sweet invigoration of getting something off your chest and into the world makes you jump off.

So here goes.

I’m not going to edit this post, or even re-read it, lest I chicken out. Apologies in advance for typos. I’m about to jump. I hope I can fly.

 

 

…From The Ashers

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Writing

The King Rules

15/11/2013 by Alison Asher 4 Comments

Hello Constant Readers,*

I’ve had a long day working in my play job (because clearly, much like Anna Spargo-Ryan, I am a writer- this is my calling etc) so I really can’t be bothered blogging for y’all.

Plus, I have this to, ummm, got to bed with:

SK book

His Majesty.

But I will share with you.

 

Here are some of the reasons why Stephen King really is the king of all:

“She wasn’t wearing a bra; Andi could see the shifting punctuation marks of her nipples against her shirt.”

…”the hungover eye had a weird ability to find the ugliest things in any given landscape.”

…”not talking to anyone, not causing any trouble, just getting high. Feeling the weight of sobriety -sometimes it was like wearing lead shoes- fall away.”

 

And there’s more… So much more. As usual, it’s a bloody page-turner, creepy and revolting of course, but mainly, just a wonderful roller-coaster ride full of people you know in a heartbeat, such is my liege’s ability to write them into reality in a sentence or two.

I kneel before you again your highness.

I hope I can be Stephen King when I grow up.

 

 

* That’s a SK reference. I really am a fangirl.

 

What are you reading right now? Any good?

Are you in a bookclub? And if so can you invite me?

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Writing

Interfriends

17/10/2013 by Alison Asher No Comments

 

A thing happened today on Twitter.

I found out that a lady who I have been reading for the last year or so, has had a tragic suicide in her family.  I don’t know this woman, not really, not IRL.  But I have been following her life for over a year, both on her blog and in her tweets, and so I feel like I know her.  I’ve watched her travel, seen her grieve, been sad happy glad scared relieved, as her life has been laid out before me.  I have laughed and cheered and cried right along with her for quite a while now.  In fact, I suppose I feel like I’ve shared more of her life than some of my IRL friends.  I even know things about her past.  Her wedding day.  Her childhood.

We have corresponded a few times in the comments section of her blog, and then via email.  Not much, really, but I feel like I get her.  And so when my friend Hayley died, I made sure I told her.  Because I feel like she gets me.  And she did.  She said exactly the right things (typed exactly the right things).  Just like I knew she would.  She cared about the right bits.

Today I’m so sad for this person I’ve never even met in the skin.  I want to make it better for her, disappear some of her pain, just like I would for a flesh-friend.

I suppose she’s like a pen-pal in days gone by, but accelerated due to the immediacy of our post.  We can get to know one another so quickly, in 140 characters, click, send.

Today has reminded me of the power of the written word, in the ways that it can touch our hearts and make us feel.  Transform us even.  Make us laugh.  Or cry.  Wring us out.

Letters, books, emails, posts, tweets and texts.  Somehow we can get a sense of knowing someone that we’ve never met, not in real life.

It’s a strange thing, this brave new world we’re in now.  Strange days indeed. Most peculiar. (John Lennon: prescience?)

Vale Eden’s Brother.

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Kids

This Morning

22/08/2013 by Alison Asher 2 Comments

Today is my big day at work, so I haven’t seen much of the kids.  Just bit of time together this morning, and a quick goodnight.

After I was all done, I came up to see Coco’s homework on the table.  She had some spelling words to “look, cover, write, check” and sentences of same.  Her writing is slowly getting better, as she seems to be getting less fatigued these days.  She is proud of her achievements, probably because they are so hard won.

It isn’t the neatest writing in the world, but you can see she has tried hard, and the work is all her own.

My favourite, was her sentence for the word ‘breakfast’.  All spidery writing and smudgy from the rubbing out:  “The smorning I had breakfast.”

It made me laugh.

That kid.  She makes me cry more than any person I’ve ever met, but my God she makes me laugh more too.

She’s had a tricky week, but tomorrow is the book week parade, and I know she’ll be up early ready to dress up as Pearlie the Park Fairy.

Keep up the good work Coco, your tenacity makes our hearts sing.

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….From The Ashers xx

What about you, what makes your heart sing?

What did you do the smorning?

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