‘The girl stared at Jenny with cold blue eyes and…’ ‘Dear Karen, I don’t like…’ ‘a shape so dark and stealthy…’ ‘somethingmoves in the still …’ ‘tympanist hits his drums with two sticks so…’ ‘Leçon onze – un lapin = …’ ‘Heat of room 20°, heat of ice 0°’
These are on the back pages of a notebook I had when I was twelve. In the front is a novel I wrote around the same time. In the back, as you can see – all sorts of stuff.
The cover has long gone, but I suspect this was a school notebook hence the little bits about Music, French and Science. I doubt the school intended me to write stories in it. But there you go – it was paper, I had ideas, what’s an aspiring novelist to do?
Apart from the finished novel (a searing tale of a quest against dangerous odds, magic, romance), there are scraps of sentimental poetic drivel, and the start of another novel, including blurb and chapter headings. There are also various drawings of characters and animals.
But I was twelve. So I confess that one page is entirely dedicated to the fact that X loves Y next to a drawing of two stick figures under a love heart with the word ‘censorded’ across them, and a variation in X’s handwriting of ‘Paula loves Z’. X was my best friend and definitely wasn’t in love with Y, and though I was in love with Z, the closest he’d ever got to realising I existed was to pick up and hand over stuff that I’d knocked off my desk in clumsy agitation at his proximity as he passed.
Both the finished novel and the planned one sum up me aged twelve. I was naïve and immature. My stories were an amalgam of the sorts of supernatural/paranormal older children’s books I was still reading and themes of adolescent angst, bereavement, threat, and of course a bit of romance. (In my books the hero wouldn’t just hand over the stuff and go back to his desk, but gaze into the heroine’s eyes and fall in love.)
But whatever my lack of maturity and sophistication, and despite being generally shy and lacking in confidence, I clearly wasn’t shy about being seen writing stories at the back of notebooks when the lesson got boring and the teacher wasn’t looking. At that point in my life, if you’d asked me what I intended to be when I grew up, I’d have said ‘writer’ and no one would have questioned it.
I admit that even into adult life, while probably not so upfront about it, I’d still find moments of boredom in the office to scribble ideas and scenes on bits of paper now and again.
Properly writing in public though? When I started up in earnest again in 2015, I was still travelling a lot with work and consequently wrote large amounts of stuff on trains, oblivious to who was nearby. Once I thought I was alone in an empty carriage, writing a murderous scene and suddenly a voice from behind said ‘ooh!’ and made me jump out of my skin as I turned to find someone reading from between the headrests behind me.
Nowadays I find it a lot harder. I’m not sure whether that’s because the trains are busier, I’m more tired, or older, or what. But it’s rare that I write anywhere other than indoors in private. I struggle to write with certain noises in the background: songs (I start singing along in my head which interrupts my flow), chatter (I find myself listening in), teenagers playing video games (I mean…). My son (to stop me shouting at him for loudly playing the video games) put me onto https://mynoise.net/. Now, if there’s too much extraneous noise when I’m writing, I listen to Rain on a Tent, Irish Sea or – believe it or not – Train and Railroad Sound. It helps me disappear into my own world where I find it easier to focus on writing.
But the other week, for long complicated reasons largely involving an inadequate bus service, I went with my husband to a nearby town where he was meeting a friend, and went somewhere else with my laptop to work while they caught up.
I thought the library would be a good place to write. But the only free table was by an automatic door which opened every two minutes with a sound like Ivor the Engine’s ‘pssht-coom’. It was also full of surprisingly noisy pensioners and I didn’t feel like putting the headphones on when I was sitting by a door in case one of them came up behind me with evil intent when I couldn’t hear them.
I next went to a chain coffee shop and tried that. But pop music was blaring and it too was full of noisy pensioners. This time I did put the headphones on, but even with the volume ramped up I could still hear the two pensioners who sat down next to me and started a loud conversation.
Finally, I went to an old coaching inn. It’s very nice. A lovely setting to write historical fiction plus they served cream teas.
Two ladies had a laden cake stand and sat by the fire talking quietly. On another table, three ladies were drinking wine, one talking incessantly at the top of her voice. Music was playing, but it was fairly innocuous (and was turned off after the loud lady left.)
I gave my order then put my headphones on and drowned out Ms Noisy with train sounds. No one paid me any attention except to bring tea and scones with jam and clotted cream. I typed away happily for over an hour. Will I do the same again? Maybe. I might pick somewhere else though.
When it was time to go, the young waiter overcharged me. He’d seemed rather vague the whole time – admittedly it probably isn’t the most exciting job but even so. It took a lot of explanation to get him to understand how he’d done it (a simple enough mistake but a mistake none the less). Eventually he went for a manager who agreed that I was right. Throughout this, the young man kept calling me ‘my love’. I’m sure he was trying to be friendly, but I doubt he’d have done this to someone his own age and it made me feel like I was his granny. (All right, so I’m old enough to be his granny, but I don’t yet feel old enough to admit it.)
It was annoying to the point where I felt like picking up the carrot cake and squashing it in his face. In fact, the last time I was at that coaching inn, it was with my own gran, and she might have done that if he’d tried it on her.
But I’m a writer, so I have my own type of revenge.
I included him as a very minor character in a scene I was writing. A lot less messy, and somehow more satisfying. I doubt he’ll ever realise, but if he does he ought to be glad. I write murder mysteries. The character based on him might not have made it out of that scene alive.
So if you see any writers writing in the wild – be nice to them. You don’t know what they’ll do if they put you in their book.
Mwahahaha.
Copyright (c) 2024 Words and Picture Paula Harmon – not to be used without the author’s express permission.
Am I alone in seeing stories everywhere? I can’t remember when I didn’t think ‘what’s their story?’, ‘what if X happened next?’, ‘why are they/is this/am I like this? What led them/it/me here?’
I dealt with long boring journeys by imagining the lives of the people we passed in the car, or what might be behind a high wall/hedge (lots of Cornish trips), or why a castle was in ruins. I coped with bullying by imagining situations in which I managed to express my feelings and the bullies changed their ways (biggest fiction exercise of my life). I enjoyed subjects where there was a story (English, History, RE), or patterns (Maths, Physics) or a challenge deciphering a pattern (Maths, Languages). If I’d spotted the stories in Geography and patterns in Chemistry, I might have enjoyed much them more than I did. If I’d been taught art differently, perhaps I’d have got to grips with that at school too. I stopped taking art at fourteen, in what was then called the Third Year, and is now called Year Nine, and in both eras called ‘Options Year’. This was when you study a million subjects at exactly the point of adolescence when you have become really truculent and know all adults are idiots, yet have to decide what you’re going to do for your first set of public exams (in my case, O levels). Long story short, I dropped art at fourteen.
Ever since I could create a word, I have been by nature a writer. But Liz Hedgecock has been encouraging me for some months to do art challenges with her giving me the chance to play catch-up on those art lessons I put to one side. I’ve found it really freeing, tapping into the part of me that writes short stories rather than novels. It’s a chance to try a narrative in a few lines rather than huge number of words. When she suggested we try Inktober, I was happy to give it a go. But when I looked at the prompts, I knew almost immediately that at my skill level I was definitely going to look for a ‘story’ for each one, not only to cover up my inadequate skills but to keep me motivated.
I think that largely Liz did the same, although with a different approach. You can see what Liz did here. But if you don’t follow me on Instagram – here is what I came up with and a summary of the background behind the stories that came into my head. to help me make sense of the prompts.
Dream, Spiders, Path, Dodge, Map
To start with I dug out a bottle of ink I’ve had forever and a lovely fancy glass ink dipping pen and did what I could with them.
I used the ink and pen for the first three and found myself sketching in a fluid, free-form way which tapped into my subconscious quite nicely.
As a vivid dreamer, it was hard to know where to stop for Dream. I included all my recurring dreams and nightmares but tried to make sure my bed was heading into happiness, even though I remembered too late that pictures should read left to right, not right to left. Ho hum.
I don’t like hurting Spiders, but prefer them at a distance, so looking at photos of them to draw from made me feel queasy. I decided to turn our treatment of them on its head which sort of coincided with our daughter (home for a break during peak house-spider season) talking to us through the Ring doorbell in a husky voice ‘Hello! I’m Simon the Spider. I just want to be friends. Please let me in.’
Path – the last I drew with ink and dipping pen for a bit, depicts me at some point in my life in my early twenties, deciding between the risky route of chasing my creative dreams where the dragons were (left) and the sensible career route (right). I picked the latter but am now in a position to go back to that fork in the path and change direction.
However, that’s not to say it’s all easy running and Dodge, the first one I drew with a fineliner (can’t remember why I changed, but it changed how the drawings turned out) has me trying to get to my happy place while being attacked by household duties, work/writing deadlines and to-do lists.
By the time I was drawing Map, I was away from home and had a mini art kit, so it was drawn with a fineliner and is perhaps the last one digging into my subconscious for all the things that prompt or hinder creativity. I wasn’t terribly happy with Map, but that’s how it goes. On the other hand I was an avid map drawer as a child, so it was good fun and I just wish I’d had a bigger piece of paper and fewer distractions.
Golden, Drop, Toad, Bounce, Fortune, Wander
A dragon was the first thing that sprung to mind for the prompt Golden. I went straight back to being six and the teacher reading from the Hobbit about Smaug the dragon in class, though my dragon of course is less murderous and mostly understood. I’ve always wanted to draw a dragon but thought I couldn’t, but I decided to give it a go anyway and found all those scales rather therapeutic to draw.
Drop – I regret to say that the word ‘drop’ just made me think of a running nose, so I had to do a bit of lateral thinking. I knew what I wanted to draw for Toad, so it seemed logical to draw what happened before… It nearly ended up with being a potion to turn a man back INTO a toad after a regretable spell. You’ll just have to decide whether it’s his fault for dabbling or the soup-maker has a naughty intent.
As for Bounce – I thought of the bounciest thing I could think of and tried not to remember the Spacehopper my father ran over when I was seven. I was very fond of it, and it never recovered. It gave my Dad a fright though.
Fortune was difficult for a number of reasons. I couldn’t think what to draw at all – or rather I could, but it was too complicated. It was difficult day at work and I wasn’t really in the mood that evening. I decided to go back to the ink and dipping pen and then regretted it. Everything went wrong! But what I was aiming for was the idea that there’s definitely a rich man in the seeker’s life but it’s at her expense. No idea if that comes across.
Wander was easier and is based on two photos of my daughter in different forests in different years, wondering which way to go next. (Bless her, my daughter ended up as an unwitting model and doesn’t look anything like the way I’ve portrayed her but I’m pleased that she’s braver at trying different routes than I was at the same age.)
Spicy, Rise, Castle, Dagger, Angel, Demon.
I could have drawn my husband’s numerous chilli plants for Spicy, or the contents of our spice cupboard, but of course ‘spicy’ has another meaning and I decided to have fun and go down that route as well! It took me four attempts to write ‘chipotle’. I could type it, but I couldn’t write it with a pen. This is one that I’m planning to do again and/or colour.
Likewise Rise – I suppose I could have saved this idea for Fire, but a phoenix rising with hope from disappointment and fear of failure seemed apt that particular day.
By the time I was drawing Castle, I was away from home again, and trying to deal with the intricacies of a real castle didn’t appeal. A sandcastle while more manageable felt a bit dull, so guess what – a story came to mind. My daughter loves octopuses and in a story world, one would come to her rescue if she needed it. (in reality she’d probably just biff anyone stomped on her sandcastle).
Despite writing murder mysteries which occasionally involve daggers etc, and despite thinking that daggers can be very beautiful and nearly drawing the one from Murder Dunovaria, the news being what it is, I didn’t fancy drawing a Dagger. The phrase ‘beating swords into ploughshares’ came to mind so I decided to draw (not very well as you can tell from my having to redraw the hammer) daggers being turned into doves.
The Angels in the nativity play come from the disappointment of never having been one as I described in Advent Calendar and also from remembering when my son was a shepherd in a nativity play aged five. He had his crook confiscated after rehearsals because he kept tripping up the primmest angel. When the day of the public performance came however, somehow he’d managed to get hold of a crook again and guess what he did? The primmest angel flat on her face as she walked down the aisle. He swore it was curiosity not malice but… I was the one dealing with her cross mum.
I didn’t want to draw a Demon for a number of reasons, so decided to do the sort of thing I’d have done at school and re-interpret the brief. So instead of demon, we have demonise. It was close to National Black Cat Day apparently, so that’s what I went for. Poor black cats. They don’t deserve the bad press. It’s time for them to fight back.
Away from home again with a simple art kit, I was wondering what on earth to do for Saddle, then remembered a story I had in Weird & Peculiar Tales, itself prompted by a dream, in which a hapless goblin cross breeds a werewolf with a chihuahua and went from there. (Admittedly my husband asked why I’d drawn a chicken being put on a dog, but hey.)
Plump coincided with the launch of Booker & Fitch omnibus of books 1-3 so here I am being plump (I’m plumper in real life) plumped down on plump cushions in Hazeby-on-Wyvern reading the book.
Frost was easy in theory, although I was in a very hot place at the time, so it was hard to imagine, and I found it hard to draw with black on white and wished I were home with black paper and white or silver pen, but I wasn’t. So here I am as a child, when I didn’t have a radiator in my bedroom with the view of mountains from my window obscured by frost as happened quite often.
Chains was a horse who was waiting, poor thing, to cart tourists around in a sort of cab in 30+ degrees Centigrade (86+ Fahrenheit). It didn’t seem too bothered, but it was happily chewing on the chain attaching it to a railing. I don’t think it was trying to get away, but it was hard not to imagine it (I would have been).
Scratchy – this is the cat we had when I was a little girl, scratching on a piece of wood which we’d brought back from the New Forest after a camping trip. Why? Because I’d spent several days pretending it was my motorbike (give me a break, I was about four or five years old) and I talked my dad round into bringing it home (Mum was not so keen). At home, the magic dispersed and it became the cat’s scratching post. But I like to think she was clever enough to know it was a motorbike really.
Shallow – again, I had something quite ‘deep’ in mind, but didn’t have the skills (or time) to draw it, so instead, here is a nod to all those summers when I (or later my children) thought they’d actually catch something in a rock pool but never did because the creatures were too clever to be caught.
And Celestial (by now I was back at home with black paper and silver pen) speaks for itself – or does it? All astronomists should look away, but there are the Pegasus and Draco constellations together (possibly unlikely) waiting for me to fly amongst them.
Dangerous, Remove, Beast, Sparkle, Massive, Rush, Fire
Finally we’re into the last week of October/Inktober. By now I was getting tired of working out what to draw, and was, once more, away for a couple of days (it really was that sort of month). By now, the prompts seems even harder to draw. Even though I’d taken photos to help me, it turned out they didn’t. So I had to dig down a bit.
For Dangerous, I remembered when my husband bought a Shun knife and kept telling me (the person who does most of the cooking), every time I cooked (e.g. generally) how sharp it was. One evening, while considering that he should be glad I wasn’t seeing how sharp it was on something other than onions, I rolled my eyes… and sliced into the end of my finger. Glad to say that it healed up fine. Sorry to say that onions aren’t improved by being pink. Will honestly say that my husband and I do not look this young although the expressions are broadly accurate.
Remove was tricky. I had a few ideas including someone removing hate from their heart and being ready to replace it with love, and someone pinching a piece of someone’s jigsaw just as they were about to finish it (sorry – that’s my brain – goes from sentimental to mischievous in the blink of an eye) and then remembered I was going to be drawing while on a train and I couldn’t face trying to draw a jigsaw. Something someone said made me think of masks or make-up and that’s what I decided to draw. I don’t wear much make-up and certainly haven’t worn this much for years, but am really fascinated by make-up artists’ skills and occasionally wonder if they could improve me. Sadly though, at the end of the day it would come off and the real me would be there underneath. The train-ride wasn’t exactly smooth and that’s my excuse for any errors (cough).
Beast was potentially as hard to draw as Demon, but by this point in the challenge, both Liz and I had decided that hands were ‘a beast’ to draw and so I went for the image above. In the pencil sketch I have the right number of finger joints. Somehow when drawing in fine liner, I added one in. This proves the point about drawing hands.
I knew from the outset that I wanted to draw my lovely daughter’s lovely eyes for Sparkle. I categorically didn’t do either the exercise or my daughter justice, but will definitely try it again. I was, by this point, really missing the opportunity to use watercolours or acrylics to add colour, or just use various pencils, but there you go. It’s all a learning curve and I’m glad I can do it without a teacher marking my efforts.
Massive was another where I didn’t quite know what to draw, then we passed a group of tourists queuing to have a birds of prey experience. The birds of prey looked as bored as the horse waiting to cart tourists around (though the temperature was more manageable where I was then). I wondered if they were thinking ‘why do the tourists get all the fun? What if we were big enough to carry them instead of the other way around?’
I had some photos of people on the underground to use as inspiration for Rush, but then thought back to when I was a child and spent time watching nature – the driven clouds, the busy insects, the running river, the the little creatures in the river marching about, oblivious (thankfully) to the adult world of being so head down rushing from A to B. Somewhen I stopped doing that, and am only just starting again.
Finally, for Fire, this is another from Weird & Peculiar Tales – or rather it’s what might happen one day. I have a sort of myth-story in there about when dragons and humans were friends – the humans providing friendship, the dragon providing warmth and protection. Then, because humans are involved, it all goes wrong. This is imagining a future which I think we’d all love – -when we stop fighting and pointing fingers and just sit down together and enjoy friendship and warmth.
So there you have it – a bit of my soul laid bare. As I said before, I’m proud of some of my drawings, not proud of others at all, may retry some, may not with others. But I had a go. It’s back to the writing now, but I’m not going to stop the art. I’m going to keep doing it. Tapping into that part of my brain that likes to tell a quick story and isn’t worrying about judgment feels like going back to a freer, less disciplined me. And that’s not a bad place to visit now and again.
Words and Images (c) Paula Harmon 2023 – not to be used without the author’s express consent.
Start work in earnest on a recipe book I’ve been planning for a while.
For one reason and another, I only managed number three, and my long suffering (his words not mine) husband has been playing guinea pig again.
My first proper job involved working in a bookshop/coffeeshop. My then manager/friend/housemate, properly trained in catering college, was mesmerised by the way I cooked while muttering to myself, ‘I’ll bung some of that in, then throw in a bit of this and taste and see what happens’. She suggested I ought to write my recipes down and call it ‘The Bung and Throw Cookbook’.
I never did of course, partly because I never measured anything, and it seemed like too much work to figure things out. Besides, after twelve months, I left to work in an office and never had the urge to return to a job in catering, Nevertheless at home, I continued making up and collecting recipes. For a good length of time, cooking was my main creative outlet, whether making something complex or simply trying to produce something quick and tasty from what happened to be in the cupboard or fridge. I still think it’s a wonderful way to relieve stress – as my mind has to leave troublesome things aside while it concentrates and creates.
Then I started writing historical fiction and wondered ‘what would my characters eat?’ as I explained here. From that point, I wondered if I could create a cookbook re-imagining what Lucretia (2nd Century), Katherine Demeray (1890s) and Margaret Demeray (1910s) might have eaten (that I might like to eat too).
The books I’m working with are The Roman Cookery Book which includes recipes from nearly two thousand years ago under the name of Apicius (translated and compiled by Katherine Rosenbaum and Barbara Flower), The Best Way published in 1909 and The Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book published in 1912.
It’s harder to re-imagine the food than you might think if you don’t know old recipe books, which are all written for people who fundamentally just needed ideas, not techniques. E.g. all three books are pretty much a forerunner of the ‘Bung and Throw Cookbook’ my friend suggested I wrote all those years go.
Would I eat any of the recipes? Yes (though not all).
Can I cook them easily from the information provided? Well…
Working out recipes from The Roman Cookery Book is the hardest. Are all the herbs safe? (Or easily available?) What can I substitute for the ubiquitous garum (fermented anchovy paste)? How do I decipher some of the recipes? They mostly simply list ingredients and vague instructions without quantities or timings.
Some things are hard or undesirable to do: ‘cool in snow’, ‘remove the spines from your sea-urchin …’, ‘take your jellyfish …’, ‘best served with peacock’.
There are a lot of chicken recipes in the Roman book, but since until relatively recently a young (e.g. potentially tender) chicken was most valuable as an egg layer and hard to mass-produce, do they mean chicken or some other fowl?
The simplest way I’ve found to decipher some of them is following the wonderful Tavola Mediterranea website, but otherwise, I’m on my own.
The Suffrage Cookbook and The Best Way are more comprehensible to a modern cook. The ingredients can be easily bought (with the possible exception of brains which I don’t want to eat anyway). But some of the instructions are just as much ‘bung and throw’ as the Apicius book. ‘Enough of…’ ‘Some…’ ‘A bit…’ ‘The usual amount…’ There aren’t many chicken recipes but a fair amount for meat which is nowadays comparatively more expensive. There are more vegetarian and spicy recipes than people might think. Timings, when given, would turn most vegetables, pasta and rice into mush.
My idea is to take a selection of these recipes, work out the instructions and cook them as if Lucretia (or more likely her cook) or Katherine or Margaret would do with access to modern equipment (and less inclination to boil things for hours).
I’ve shared some deciphered recipes before here, and I’m ploughing ahead. It’ll be a long process, involving working the recipes out when necessary and then trying them on willing volunteers (mainly family).
On Saturday evening I cooked Chicken stuffed with Saccotosh (sic) for my husband and mother. Until recently, not being American, I’d honestly thought that ‘Succotash’ (along with sassafras) was a mock swearword made up by Looney Tunes, so it was interesting to find out what a British woman in 1912 – who obviously knew otherwise – had come up with.
The ingredient quantities are vague, the cooking instructions even more so. The main warning was ‘chicken should be sewn up to prevent the corn bursting out’. Anyway, I worked out what the missing details probably were, and without sewing anything or having the chicken explode, it proved delicious and was eaten to great appreciation.
On Sunday night, I made a Curry Pie. In terms of instructions, there’s sufficient filling information, but no explanation as to why it’s called pie when no pastry is referred to. But it does say to cook it in a pie-dish. So I sort of assumed the pastry and went for it. It was tasty too, but needs a bit more tweaking before I’m happy with it.
In the meantime, my husband remains the main recipient of all this experimentation. Do you think he’s insisting on cooking tonight to give me a rest, or because he’s worried that one day he’ll end up like the guy in the drawings below? Well, he’s going to make jambalaya using the leftover chicken from Saturday’s Succotash/Saccotosh recipe, so he can’t be too worried about my recipes.
Can he?
Words and pictures (c) Paula Harmon 2023, not to be used without the author’s express permission.
At the moment, after finishing work (for the moment) on two books simultaneously (listed at the end), my Muse is tempting me from what I’d been planning to write next, towards writing a ‘contemporary’ novel set in an alternative world where there’s also magic and might just include A Novelty, in a slightly different format. Is this something I should do next? Tempting.
It’s also tempting to have some time off. Or at least, to ease up on the drive for creative perfection (or as close to perfection as it’s possible for me to get).
For me, this is where what I shall loosely describe as ‘art’ comes in, because with ‘art’ – I just let my imagination do whatever it fancies without worrying about the end result, even more than I do with cooking (because after all, no one is going to die if I get the art wrong).
We’re obsessed with perfection these days. People compete on television in virtually every field from sport to dressmaking to Lego modelling. Doing something just for itself without anyone getting first prize would not make good TV perhaps, but it’s good for the spirit, and something we seem to have lost the knack for as a culture. I think we should bring it back.
I stopped studying art at school aged fourteen. Years later I tried to learn water-colouring from a book and a few years after that dabbled with acrylics. I sort of stopped again until this year, when Liz Hedgecock suggested we do some art challenges, starting with ones we made up ourselves before moving to ones found online.
I’ll be honest: I’ve enjoyed some challenges/prompts more than others; I’ve been pleased with some results more than other results; I’ve sometimes been more in the mood than other times; other people have liked some things more than other things. But none of those have really been the point. Not for me anyway.
The point for me has been simply having fun in a task where I just enjoy the process, sometimes more than the end result.
There’s always a mental fork in the road as I read the prompt and decide whether I’m going to try and reproduce accurately or make something a little more of an impression; whether it’s going to be serious or quirky. This may depend on subject or time. It may also be something to do with mood as much as subject. But each technique seems to bring out something different.
The soft sounds of a pencil when I’m sketching are calming, and there’s a relief in being able to erase a line that’s gone very wrong.
Watercolours sink into the paper, they build in hue, they’re delicate, dreamlike. The very act of applying them is relaxing. If they go wrong, maybe I can add some ink or other media, or just live with it or decide to try again sometime. Or not.
Acrylics are fun, bold, risky (also hard to get out of a carpet).
Ink is a commitment. It also seems to bring out a slightly surreal side of me which reminds me of my father’s sketching and cartooning.
It’s the process that does me good. My brain switches from all the things that are bothering me, the plot ideas that are fighting for the surface, a desire for perfection. Not all the ones in the image below are that I like or that I think are the best of what I’ve done, or the best I could do.
One – the dark picture with the woman in a long dress – was created to a prompt ‘paint out of your comfort zone’. I had no preliminary sketch as I would do normally, I just painted. I wanted to conjure up some of the contrasts of Edwardian London in the Margaret Demeray books but couldn’t really get across what I was aiming for due to lack of knowledge/skill/time. Do I think it’s good? Nope. Did I find some release in being less disciplined? Yes.
Likewise, the picture of the inside of my writing shed is not even close to what it looks like or how I wanted it to turn out. Everything from perspective to accuracy is wrong, but you know… it captures a moment I guess, and it was fun to bung all those colours down.
The one with the four quadrants is supposed to be an acrylic abstract. I do like that. In my head it represents the four seasons without me really planning it at all. For a control freak, that’s not bad going.
In one stressful week in June, when it was impossible to do any of the writing work I’d planned, the best way I found to centre myself was the ten minutes I spent each day messing about with pencils and/or paints. For a while I just switched off. The street scene with the bunting is one of those paintings.
Last week was even more stressful than that with no art time at all. It was nice yesterday to dig out an ink pen, switch off, tune out of the world and start messing about for the Inktober challenge. So far, it’s tapped straight into perhaps the more surreal side of my subconscious.
If you’re feeling stressed, why not have a go at some art yourself? The back of an envelope and a ballpoint will do if you’ve nothing else to hand.
Or do it in the sand or the mud or some flour on a work top. You don’t need to show anyone. You can destroy it if you want. The important thing is not to judge yourself or let anyone judge what you’ve done.
It’ll just be for you. I promise you, if you turn off your inner critic, that it’ll do you the world of good.
If you want to know where Inktober takes me next, feel free to follow me on Instagram. Just watch out for spiders!
The two books ready for pre-order are Death On The Towpath – book 4 in the Booker & Fitch series written with Liz Hedgecock (releasing on 30/11/23) and Dying To Be Heard – book 4 in the Margaret Demeray series (releasing 14/12/23)
Words and pictures (c) Paula Harmon 2023, not to be used without the author’s express permission.
