Category Archives: writers block

Hebdomadal thoughts

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Yet again it has been a very long time since I wrote on this blog. Last time I was feeling the possibility that I might start writing again but then life intervened. I now have a beautiful granddaughter called Hope, born in Leeds in November, and I had a long bout of flu over Christmas and the new year, so one way and another I have been a bit distracted. I have written on my other blog but not here.

However in this new year I have decided to try to write more regularly. The word ‘hebdomadal’ leapt out at me in a question on University Challenge and then I read this post on one of the craft blogs I follow. Jane Brocket is proposing cutting back from writing daily to writing weekly while I am going the other way, stepping up from very infrequent to weekly!

In order to do this I have also decided to approach this blog differently. Perhaps I have worried too much in the past over what to write here and that may have stopped me writing. Probably I have been too conscious of my strapline and afraid of falling short. I hope that writing something every week will help me to loosen up. I am a Quaker – I write a blog – so this is a Quaker blog whatever I write.

I look forward to exploring this further in the weeks to come and I hope you will join me hebdomadally.

Bloggers block and thoughts on how to go forward

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I have gone forward, not as one travelling in a road cast up and well prepared, but as a man walking through a miry place, in which there are stones here and there safe to step on, but so situated that one step being taken, time is necessary to see where to step next.
                                                             John Woolman’s Journal

This quotation came into my mind at Meeting yesterday and the more I have thought about it the more I see how accurately it reflects my experience this year.

Six months ago when I wrote my last post – and I can hardly believe it was that long ago – I was full of good intentions and was intent on making a new start at writing regularly. I even started another blog for craft-related thoughts but that too I have neglected for six months. In February I thought that I was starting out on ‘a road cast up and well prepared’ but I have found myself instead in ‘a miry place’ and I got stuck in the mud!  

The year so far has been busy in many ways but I have not been allowing myself enough time to pause and reflect and think about what I might write here. I think, now that Woolman has helped me to look back, that much of my malaise stems from being prevented from going to America in April, where I planned to attend the QUIP [Quakers Uniting in Publications] conference and do some historical research, by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud. That was my miry place and although I have gone on with my many activities as usual, mentally I have remained stuck in it.

But gradually, and especially in the last couple of months, I have found ‘stones here and there safe to step on’ and have been feeling more positive. I put a lot of energy into organising a party for family and local friends to celebrate the amazing fact that Chris and I have been married for 40 years. I spent weeks tidying up the house and garden and the whole family helped with the catering and pulled together on the day. In spite of some rain it was a really happy occasion and wonderful to have all three children and their partners there and for me to at last really see them all as adults.

I have kept in touch with the world through Facebook, sharing photographs, comments and frequent status updates, but that is not the same as writing here. I have, although not perhaps consciously, needed time to see where to go next. Now is the moment to take a few more hesitant steps towards unblocking this blog.