Early Writings: Some Things Don't Change

In the last installment of Early Writings, I discussed my early fascination with horror. I wrote a short, and frankly, very disjointed book with some friends at the time, about the Sawyer family and their battle with the supernatural.

I am learning a lot about the person I once was from all of my childhood possessions, including my early writing, which arrived in the boxes of items sent over by my mother this summer.

The book about the Sawyer family does not seem a million miles away from my recent obsession with reality TV programs such as Ghost Hunters and Haunted Collector. So why do these things intrigue me? The best answer I can come up with is that I love stories about real life, and so often in these programs they are digging into the past, finding out the histories of the people who lived (and sometimes died) in the houses before them. Sometimes the stories are tragic, but often they are just littered with ordinary everyday details, like the ghost in the hotel who whistles while still going about his daily work.

And of course, like so many people, I'm sure there is a part of me who wants to think that the people I want to stick around do -- at least in some sense or the other. Or maybe it's just that I can't believe there are people who make their living from ghost hunting. I mean, how do you get jobs like this? (Not that I would want to do it. My imagination is in overdrive as it is.)

So with that, I will leave you with another random chapter from the book. At the end there's a chapter called The Conquering (not written by me) that kind of ends it, as one member of the family goes through the mirror into the "human spirit world" and basically tells the ghosts to go away. But before that we have... Horrifying Dream*.

Tara danced into her room humming a soft quiet melody. She flounced into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. After a while she was snoring. Mrs. Sawyer peeked into her room and smiled. But only if she knew what she was dreaming! 

First, Tara saw a long neverending graveyard. Her mind focused in on a small corner of it. She could see all her family except herself. Where was she? Then all of a sudden she saw the grave. It said "Tara Sawyer. Died November 23, 1987."

"No! No! No!" she screamed. "What's wrong?" said a voice. Tara looked it was her mother. Tara didn't want to tell her mom what happeded so she just said "I had a bad dream."

During breakfast she realized something. Today was November 23, 1987. She gulped. 

After breakfast she went around telling everyone that they should leave the house. Her mother thought this was unusall for Tara so she gave her an aspirin and a puzzle book and sent her to bed. 

While she was concentrating on her puzzle she started thinking about her fathers death. Tara started to get dizzy. The room spun around fast. Voices echoed in her ears. Leave this house, go away. A female voice screamed at the top of her lungs and suddenly everything went black. 

When she woke up all visions of this were gone. She told her family about it and they belived her. Mrs. Sawyer was getting a little trobled by these happenings. 

I would be troubled too. I might need to take an aspirin now and go to bed with a puzzle book.

*As usual, not corrected for spelling and grammar.

Related Posts:

• Early Writings: A Horror Fanatic?
• Early Writings: Dear Diary

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Boredom As A Good Thing

When was the last time you were bored? I'm as guilty of chronic busyness as anyone. But the problem with this is that creativity goes down the tubes. And I'm not just talking about real artists and writers here. I'm talking about you and me and being creative in thinking about our lives, at work, or making time for whatever it is that we really like doing that involves some sort of creativity.

Thing is, for me, writing is not just something I do when I sit down at my laptop to write. The words, or at the very least, vague ideas, have been brewing around in my head for a while. And when does this actually happen? Usually in those moments where I'm walking from the train to the tube or standing in a queue or sitting on the bus staring out the window. Or even when I'm preparing dinner (notice I didn't say cooking), waiting for the timer to go on the Marks & Spencer chicken in the oven.

And when I'm really busy there's no time for even those fleeting moments of nothingness which my brain needs to do some sort of creating.  

I am often flummoxed by this paradox in work of any kind. Creative thoughts and problem solving is usually a result of time away from tasks and a mind not engaged in overdrive or stressed out. Do high-flying executives carve out solo time just to think? I bet they do. Perhaps that is why very successful people appear to be exercise nuts -- they are doing it more for their brain than for their body. By spending an hour first thing in the morning pounding on the treadmill (something incredibly boring, in my opinion), their minds actually have time to mull, to brew, to work. And as we know, mind and body are far more connected than most people think. 

I've been dipping into Brene Brown's book on vulnerability recently, which the first time around I thought was hard going. But it's connecting with me more now and she makes the very good point that people who limit the daily anxiety of life -- and just cope better -- are good at setting boundaries. They believe they are enough in order to say "Enough!".

This really resonated with me. In order to live the life you want, to connect with the people you want, to do the things that you want (which for me include creative endeavors), you have to set boundaries. Which for me, specifically, means making sure that I have time to get a little bit bored, to give my brain the space and time to think.
 
Do you carve out time specifically to think? I'd be curious to know how you do it.

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Early Writings: A Horror Fanatic?

I do love a good horror film. Not the bloody gory stuff, but give me a good old-fashioned haunting any day. And worryingly, this has now extended into an obsession with American reality T.V. programs where "professional" ghost busters visit the homes of people experiencing unexplained events. I may soon need to cancel our cable subscription to the "Really" channel -- but not until I stop going out of the house.

From a very young age I was pretty worried about what was hiding under the bed. I guess you could say I had a pretty active imagination, as I often wondered if skeletons came out of my closet at night and danced around me as I slept. At my parents' house last Christmas, the Hub and I found a picture I had drawn of a big blue monster hovering over the bed of child (most likely me).

But what I didn't realize was that my early writing also touched on the supernatural.

In the boxes my mother sent over this summer, I found a book written in conjunction with some other girls from my class at the Catholic school, which would put me in the age range of 10-12. It had no title, but it did have an introduction, which will give you a pretty good idea of where we were going with it (I will only include those parts of the book that I authored, which seem to make up the largest proportion anyway. I have also kept in any grammatical and spelling mistakes for authenticity).

This is a story about a family of five girls and a boy. The children's father is dead but their mother is pregnant.

Good news and bad, I see.

The family moves into a large mansion. Karen, who is the youngest, suspects a spook. Her suspicion may be right because many spooky things start to happen to everyone. The Sawyer family is unaware of the exciting adventures to follow. We hope you will enjoy this spooky book. 

Each chapter essentially details a "spooky" event, of course, like in The Family Meeting.

Mrs. Sawyer had called a family meeting. Everyone arrived in the parlor just at the right time.

What time is that? I am glad they are a prompt family -- and that they have a "parlor" -- my early writing seems to be riddled with references to grand old houses. Clearly another obsession of mine.

Mrs. Sawyer started talking about the strange happenings. Without any warning Sara got up and walked to the book case. She pulled out a book to show the family. Instead of carrying the book over to the couch, she screamed and droped it. Her mother saw her hands and almost fainted. They were covered with blood. Jessica took her to the kitchen to be cleaned up.

David went over and looked at the book. "Come here!" he yelled franticly. On the book was written:

And it was written in blood! 

What else could it possibly be written in? This is a horror story, after all.

Mrs. Sawyer ordered a full exspection of the house. Tara and David: The basement. Jessica and Jenny: The Upstairs. And Mrs. Sawyer, Karen and Sara were the downstairs.

It's almost as if I was scripting one these reality shows where they sweep the house. And good thing too, because look at what they found.

Other creepy things were found: A bloody knife, A piece of black cloth, A page of a book with a blood stain on it and a once shiney ring with a red ruby. "A scary house and a scary atmosphere," whispered Jessica. 

I'll say, egads, not a ruby ring!

I know you're dying to find out what happens. Stay tuned for the next installment: Horrifying Dream.

Until then, check out "Really" and its plethora of ghost programming. And you'll soon see how they must have used my early horror writing -- particularly "Haunted Collector" which is all about objects -- as a template.

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Finished, But Not Quite

I think I have officially finished the big life-changing clear out that began back in May. Well, at least I have checked off all the main boxes on my original list. But I do feel like I'm not quite done.

Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, has certainly been just that (which is much fodder for another post). And I am now curious to see at what point my level of possessions "clicks", as she discusses. This is essentially an equilibrium point of the number of belongings with which you feel at ease. I assume now after the initial cull is done, I can begin the process of tweaking here and there to find out where this set point lies. 

And that is good, because there are three specific reasons I don't feel completely finished. 

The first is that when it comes to sentimental items, particularly the letters and photos, I still think I kept too many. I whittled the letters/cards down from over six shoe boxes to three and I categorized and shifted through countless photos, ending up with four shoe boxes of discards and rejects. I am planning to make new photo albums with the remaining pictures -- a much more slimmed-down and edited version of my life story to remember now. 

With clothes and other less personal items, I was ready to send discarded things out to the rubbish bins or charity shop straight away. Not so with the photos and personal correspondence. I need more time to read through the letters and start to make albums of the photos, in order to decide where I am comfortable. And being an incredibly sentimental people-person, despite my brash blog post Burn 'Em?, I am no where near ready to set flames to my discarded letters. This might take me a while. 

The second reason is I haven't even really begun to read the pile of papers of my early writing. Or the diaries. I have no idea how much of that I will end up saving and in what form. But that is a project that will not take a few hours or even a weekend. And I am looking forward to the process -- and you should as well, considering the positive reaction I received from my brother and sister-in-law at my debut reading of "Thunder Under the Sun," a novel I started that sounds incredibly similarly to a V.C. Andrews book (remember Flowers in the Attic?). I promised them I would serialize it on the blog. I am currently working up the nerve. 

There's yet another reason: the electronic cull awaits. In this day and age I cannot just clear out the physical stuff and ignore the mess that awaits on all my electronic devices. Now that would be sloppy. (Kondo doesn't discuss this in the book, so I guess I'm on my own here, although a friend forwarded me her list, so I will try to use that as a guide.)

But the good news is I believe I've succeeded in the main task set out in Kondo's book: to clear out all my possessions in less than six months. The point of this is to feel a monumental shift in attitude to belongings. And the peripheral benefits of this are already clear. Not only is there the weird, added bonus of finding it incredibly easy to be neat -- something that has eluded me throughout my life -- but I am also gaining a better sense of who I am and what's important to me in life. 

(I know, no one believes I'm not a neat person. It's one of my two best kept secrets. The other one is that I am a bad speller. Just ask my Mom, she will confirm.)

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