Project Me

I’m actually living up to a promise I made myself well over two and a bit weeks ago! I’m blogging before day’s end and looking forward to a night of unexpected craving! Nope … for a change it’s not food!

It was December 2003 when I lay on the beach and tried to occupy my mind from my normal neurosis of singeing my lily white skin and spending the remainder of the holiday soaking myself in after sun lotion and avoiding allowing my skin to touch at any of the joints, that I started to daydream. A series of meditations, events in my life and my kinship with the ocean started to merge itself into somewhat of a story. Before I knew it, suntanning was so yesterday and writing a novel was the newest crazy idea

The first few chapters fell into place so quickly and the story came to life within a few months. Distracting myself from the illness of my dad, I lost myself in the story and the subsequently left the pages to settle in my mind until I had grieved the loss of my dad.

This is what I love about my personality. One day I woke up and decided who I wanted to read the first draft of the novel. It was Greggie, Baba and Pandora. With less than a month to go before Pandora came to visit sunny SA, and about ten chapters still to complete, I decided that she would be returning home with a copy. So, it took about a year and a half to write just over half the book and I set myself the goal of doing the other half in … yes, just over a month.

Time and again I had a rational moment and told myself that I would also be seeing my dear friend two months later in Italy, but no … I wanted her to have finished reading it by then.
It might not be completely apparent from my chilled attitude (as I hear some people chuckle) but I am very stuck on timelines, deadlines and self inflicted goals.
By some miracle, I managed to manipulate time, not say a word to my friends, write until 4am in the morning, neglect everyone around me, eat obsessively and martyr myself to my deadline … but I met it.

Bless my girlie friends … Pandora and Baba both read the book with so much love for me that the drafts were returned with a few red pen markings of blazingly obvious spelling errors. But for the most part, the LOVED everything … they loved the story, the plot, the characters, the ending … oh hell, they just loved me.

On the other side of the fence sat Greggie, of course, who returned the book to me with an abundance of red pen markings and an overview comment of ‘your grammar sucks in dialogue, throughout the entire book!’ He loves me too … and because of that, he knew I could do a little better in some places and a lot better in others … and so the second edit of the novel began.
Okay … so it didn’t begin! It’s kind of been on ice since October last year!

Somehow, today I feel so much calmer about the children’s website and the pre launch campaign. I’m not too worried about the new content that I need to write for the relaunch of my website and time is ticking along as everyone around me works magically on the first children’s story.

Greggie has reminded me that even though Ephineah (that’s the title and it’s said E-fee-nee-ya … because I have heard every variation under the sun) is more like my passionate hobby than my work-work, it’s still work and I can’t use it to perpetuate the well settled workaholic. I’m watching that and have already done the very bold thing and weened myself of yet another self inflicted deadline.

Behind the scenes, I’m not having the best time living at home and finding myself learning lessons about family and the self that is a bit tougher than I realised … and all I want to do is escape. I’m not the kind of person to run from my reality, so the next best thing is to find a healthy escape. Eating … bad escape … so I am learning! Ephineah and the story that I am dying to share with the world … good escape!

I did, for a fleeting moment think that dashing off to the Jock was … good escape! Damn reality … so back to spending tonight just the way I want to … escaping into the reawakening of my Novel!

I’ve also managed to avoid news and all indications about who won anything at the Oscars and am a tad excited to keep one eye on the screen to see how everyone in Tinseltown did!