I didn’t post on here yesterday, but I wrote a very short piece about my first love, inspired by hearing Donovan’s ‘Catch the Wind’ on Amazon music the previous evening, and I posted it, with a link to the song, on the blog for my regular writers’ group, with an automatic link to their Facebook page, which I then shared on my timeline and another FB writers’ group. It seemed appropriate because it was sort of a short story, or at least fast fiction (though it wasn’t fiction – is there such a thing as ‘fast memoir’? There is now.)
I can’t seem to get my head round how to link the WordPress blogs together, though they’re both set up to share on FB and Twitter. I think it might be something to do with this blog, like my other two (yes, there are three altogether, though I don’t write to the other two any more) being self-hosted. I also have a WordPress.com blog, from about ten years ago, that has hardly anything on it, because I realised I could (in theory) get a better Google ranking by having it on my domain name. But my WordPress.com identity is still out there, though under my married name.
Three members of the writers’ group are registered on the group blog, but only two of us ever post to it, though when I set it up I sent an email invitation to all the members. I guess they don’t know what to do with it – probably not helped by the fact that I set it up immediately before the lockdown, so we didn’t have a meeting at which I could give a demo. We don’t use the Facebook page very much either, although we have two collections of stories and poems under our collective belt (‘Southsea Soup’ and ‘Of Life and Love’), and a third, ‘Flights and Fancies’, coming out imminently. (I’m currently proof reading, but have already managed to knock a cup of coffee over my copy).
Sometimes I think it might be fun to get a bit more pro-active with all of this, but then…
IF I do start writing properly (and I’m not saying I will, that depends on what sort of inspiration comes to me, if any), it will probably be more memoir to start with – specifically, ‘The Long Way Back’, the first half of which is largely done, and the first draft of the rest, except – guess what? – I don’t know how to end it.
A friend commented (on Facebook) about my previous post that she has two novels that will never be finished, but she doesn’t ‘beat herself up’ about it. So why do I? Why not just let it all go, accept that I am who I am, not cut out to be A Writer. After all, I’ve given up on so many idealised dreams about how my life ‘should be’ (happy relationship, career, financial independence etc), why do I keep picking away at this one?