Drafting along

Day one of my adventure

I have officially started the draft of the travel memoir. I decided to start at the start. Not so obvious as you might imagine given that it is now tucked away the furtherest in my memory. But it was kind of waiting to be set forth on the page. It was all going swimmingly, I had about a page – at one and a half line spacing. And then suddenly there was a halt. My mouse wouldn’t move, I couldn’t scroll up or down the page. The cursor was still blinking but the mouse had died. It was 10 years old, that’s probably quite a long life for a mouse. I was not a little mad at the timing – it could have happened in the middle of a job application and I really wouldn’t have minded so much. I needed help not obstacles in taking the first steps with my draft. But I surprised myself by remaining calm – there was no swearing - and methodically working through the options.

Breathe deeply

I was worried that my lovely free flowing words would be wiped away if I had to reboot. So I hunted around for a ‘save’ keyboard shortcut to press. I found one and pressed, nothing happened. Then I thought maybe I could print it and if necessary retype it later. I turned the printer on, lights flashed, wheels whirred, it looked and sounded fine but it was having no luck talking to the computer. I was all out of ideas for saving my work and moved onto the next issue – fixing the mouse. Very simple really – go to the store and buy a new one!

A work in progress

So after the mini technological drama I got going again. On my first day I managed 889 words. I can tell you this because I have made a spreadsheet to track my progress and to cheer myself up when I feel stuck. I can generate weekly and monthly totals, allowing me to compare weeks and months, as well as a cumulative total. Before I started I wondered if I would have much to say. I had already written a skeleton form in the blog and I wasn’t sure if there was too much to add. Turns out there is, quite a lot in fact. At this point I have just over 13,500 words and I am only up to the first farm. I am rather enjoying not worrying about the length; it feels like quite a luxury after the short form of the blog and postcards. I will have to come back and edit but I shall worry about that later. While the words are flowing and I have time I am keen to keep going. Structuring, cutting, fact checking and grammar corrections can all wait until later. Perhaps when I have a little more distance.

My first birth

I have been remembering and writing about the first few days at the farm when everything was new and overwhelming. I am surprised by how easily it all comes back – the initial fears about getting there, worries about fitting in, frustrations of not being very useful and more positively the amazing moments – seeing a baby goat being born, helping with the cheese, even standing in the sun washing the moulds. It is more than a year ago that I left the first farm and yet it is still so clear in my mind.

Together with being accepted into my course, starting the draft is shifting my identity – well at least how I see myself. Not as unemployed, or as the mobile guy euphemistically put it ‘on home duties’. I am a student (again) and a writer. There I said it. I am a writer. In training.