"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity" Franz Kafka

I am buzzing curiosity, what are your three items?

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

I launch into an exercise on how to write flash Non-Fiction. The instruction is to select three Items on my desk with minimal thought, describe each succinctly, and, whilst writing, allow significance, meaning and connection to spontaneously emerge.

The author exquisitely describes items crafted by his now two adult sons; a pen holder that did not quite live up to its job title and a coaster inscribed with “papa”, an affection never used by his son for a Father’s Day gift. The third item was red sand – in a vial – or just a container? I think the sand came from a region in Spain where his favourite author lived and died. The desk of a proper and successful writer. With three distinct items chosen, explored and illuminated.

I am choke on comparison. There is nothing personal, nothing of sentimental value, nothing from my son, nothing vaguely like a talisman. My desk is a mess; my ADHD, unlike me it’s host, will not be thwarted.

Wait. What if my entire desk is a physical expression of me in the world? This unbidden awareness materialises on the page as I am writing in real time.

My Item One is my desk. A training ground for poltergeists practising teleportation with flotsam and jetsam covering the entire surface and shelves. Look an empty perfume bottle, lip salve, unintelligible notes, spec cleaners, glue, hand cream, foot cream, my dicta-phone, plasters, a duck shaped pencil sharpener, tape, sunglasses, a remote control. The USB sticks - I have no idea what is on them as my labelling system fizzled out, best intentions always RIP. Until the next time. Dry blue tack balls, chin hair removal device, leaflets, business cards, tissues, used or not hard to tell, desk tidies, or “messies” or “messies” as they do not live up to their reputation. Numerous barcodes square shaped things that you can scan. Losing things is my forte, latterly found by chance in random places. A makeup sponge and fancy cream in a stylised tube, from a wheeze to “sculpt my face”. That lasted a day max, unfortunately after I bought the products; and my face remains as nature intended, a chipmunk or a turtle, depending on the light and angle. My desk in a funny old way a metaphor of my life, challenging, erratic, uncertain, bonkers and a living oxymoron. This is fun.

Item Two: my laptop. It is a portal to humanity. It’s significance escalating as my body is increasingly vexatious. Movement, action, often compulsive, is deeply engrained in my DNA. But I have Hyper-mobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and every system of my body a target with chronic pain riding shotgun. As I age it becomes worse, and the menopause irritates ADHD. After a second cancer this time in my womb, I am banned from HRT, and hormones did alleviate ADHD. My world has shrunk, I depend on a mobility scooter, it is too dangerous and painful to walk outside even with crutches, and with toes and feet fracturing for no known medical reason. Multiple griefs to digest what was and what is now and forever that what was and is that I resist, deny, then accept. I am landlocked.

I am a siren. I am an archaeologist, digging for what lies beneath, with paradoxical intent bubbling within me and on the page. My grandiose fantasy? I am a profound catalyst. Or realistically, a quirky read, an amusement, an affirmation, a challenge, and my visual stories are curiously unexpected. My dream is that these offerings might be a spark that sets off a chain reaction within the reader, not tethered to my musings. The ultimate hope is that my pieces have multiple personalities depending on the reader at that moment in time and in their life. How many times have words and images filled me with awe, rage, affirmation, heart break, inspiration, and all the myriad ways of being human illuminated by fiction, non-fiction, all craft and art.

Item Three is an action. I look up my top desk shelf, and my there is my shrine. My writing ritual is to light a candle and incense stick before I start. There used to be Buddha statue, which I broke. Do you know the edict “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”? See I can follow instructions! albeit accidentally.

I am a writer and visual story teller and the candle and incense act according to their nature too. They burn unapologetically, ephemeral yet tangible. Smoke and light, shadows and sunshine, show and tell or ambiguous even ambivalent. Like us writers, the creators, the candle and incense live as their nature allows, expressing their essence, transitory, unique and real. It is a compulsion, it is an addiction that can never be satiated.

This free flow writing transcends the curated “me”. Yes, I will edit, and edit again, dyslexia demands, and it might never be published in Vanity Fair. I am present tense, it flows through me as me to you. We are equal when we come to the page, practising alchemy, the magic craft. Voice, style, interests, topics and definitely technique and quality evolves, we can only get better. Self doubt will try and ambush us, yet this means we care, we are passionate. Writing is in you and no-one can ever see the world like you. You are a canvas ask yourself what colours, subjects, forms are you drawn? Your thoughts, words, your actions are your tools and materials.

But first………..

I am buzzing curiosity, what are your three items?

“You start out with one thing, end

up with another, and

nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future”

(Rita Dove, Poet).

Until the next time

Lucy