the week in pictures

because this week has sort of been about pictures.

I like sitting with my notebook and a biro and drawing a shape. Sometimes it stays a shape, sometimes it becomes a drawing, often words come and land around the shape.

The process is a bit like freewriting, you don't know what's going to come, and you have to get over the initial feeling of 'what' to write/draw. I am no artist. Sometimes it's just boxes, rows of boxes, sometimes circles. Triangles. Etc.

But there's something freeing about it, it sort of unclogs me. And I like it when a shape sparks some words. I'd love to write a novel around shapes that are sometimes drawings where words come and land.

I'll share a couple from my notebook this week.

This one started as a square that was being pulled out of shape, but since I realised it looks like head, neck and shoulders, that's what I see. The words came from the 'pulling apart' of the box.

This one started with the long rectangle in the middle, which felt like a door, or a divide of some sort.

I had a birthday this week, my first without my Mum. I don't write about my grief here on the blog, and I don't write Facebook updates about it. I write in my journal, and I talk to people. Maybe it comes through in the fiction I've written since losing her, without me meaning it to. Maybe one day I'll look at every word I've written in the last 4 months and think it is drenched in it. I just didn't think I could say I'd had a birthday, without saying it was without her. It was both happy and sad, every day is.

Most of my friends bought me books, which is awesome. Look how lovely they are. Which should I read first?

One great moment from this week: drinking wine, with this view. It was easy-ish to imagine it was ALL MINE, and not the Earl of Harewood's.

Dyed my hair, used the leftover hair dye to advertise my friends' ace Zombie web series, Zomblogalypse.

New shades

Greek coffee, with homemade biscuit (started out as a birthday cake, evolved into birthday biscuit)

Mmm, might have to go and make a Greek coffee. My boyfriend is half Cypriot, and I was introduced to this kind of coffee by his late father, who drank it all the time. It's amazing - you boil it up in a pan with water and sugar, and serve it in these little cups, a bit like an espresso cup, and it's just so nice. Very strong, very sweet, kind of gravelly, but serious and full on and no-messin.