London Coaching Group

I snuck along to the London Coaching Group's monthly meeting last night, despite having no claims whatsoever to be anything related to coaching. I went purely because the wonderful Mark Forster was speaking on 'Coaching for Creativity'.

It was a great evening; I was expecting to hide in a corner during the 'refreshments and networking' pre-talk bit, but I found that coaches are a gregarious and extroverted lot who come up and introduce themselves and make easy small-talk. I was surprised by the mix of ages (a few looked no older than me), and attire (I'd expected more suits.)

Mark has a gently humourous style, and said some interesting and insightful things. A few of his points were ones I was already familiar with from his books and blog, but he said some good new things. The exercises he made us do were also great; I was sceptical about some of them to begin with, but ended up being surprised how well they worked.

The "Instant Expert" one, which he kicked off with, involved turning to your neighbour and asking them a question, about anything. They had to respond by saying "I'm an expert on that subject and I have three points to make" (or any variation thereof), then giving the points. It worked, though I didn't think my points were especially creative!

I found the "Ten Minute Writing" exercise very effective, though. Mark set his timer for 10 minutes, and we all had to write, without stopping, revising or editing, on any topic of our choice -- anything we were struggling to find a solution to. This is something I'm definitely going to keep trying, as it worked well -- not only did I begin to come up with some more creative or different possible solutions to my problem ("Having enough time/energy to write") but I also had some encouraging insights into the current situation. Such as the fact that I'm probably writing as much fiction as I averaged during school/university anyway.

The oddest exercise was one where he asked us to hold out a pen and decide whether or not to drop it. We had 15 seconds to decide (and to do whichever!) Then we repeated the exercise but this time we were supposed to "let the pen decide". From talking to people afterwards, there were quite mixed reactions to this one!

For me, though, there was a definite sense in the first that "I've decided to drop the pen, so I must do it quickly in case the 15 seconds run out" whereas in the second, I dropped the pen after perhaps 10 seconds because it "felt right" and because I didn't need to worry about whether I did or didn't drop it during the time.

All in all, it brought up a lot of thoughts, not least that the coaching world might one day be an area I'd like to get involved with.

And Mark signed my copy of Do it Tomorrow. What more could a fan-girl want? :-)

Garrett Guests

The Garrett has survived its first weekend of guests, coping well with both friends and parents.

Last Saturday, we had two friends round in the evening; many doughnuts and lots of chinese takeaway was eaten, and impressive quantities of vodka were drunk. It was great to catch up with a couple of lovely people who we'd not seen since mid-January, and I think I finally crawled to bed about 3am.

On Sunday, we had the Boyfriend's mum and step-dad over for a Mothers' Day Lunch; cue panicked purchasing of a Mothers' day gift on Sunday morning, and a lot of cleaning. (The empty vodka bottle and beer cans from the night before was chucked hastily into the recycling boxes downstairs.)

All went very smoothly, though, and I was rather happy with my Waldorf salad. The Nunhead bakery contributed some very nice soda-bread and rolls, and the East Dulwich Deli provided a fantastic olive-studded loaf.

The Garrett is also rapidly filling up with our belongings (the Boyfriend's folks brought boxes full of his, and my dad drove up on Saturday morning with lots of my stuff. Including a table.) We are in desperate need of more bookshelves; we have sufficient volumes between us to equip a small library...

The world is not designed to make moving home easy...

I seem to have spent far too much time on hold this week, trying to get Virgin to sort out our broadband. (Due to some confusion over the change of name from the previous residents, and an outstanding bill.) It all appears to be working again, after me and the Boyfriend both phoned and hassled them. Fingers crossed.

Thames Water appear to now be billing us under the correct name, though Southwark Council have ignored the form I sent in and sent the council tax bill to our landlady instead of to us.

The competitions administrator person at Writing Magazine emailed to check that I am indeed a subscriber, as they apparently couldn't find me in the database. This is presumably because the email I sent to their subscriptions department, asking them to change my address, met with no response.

Eventually, the combined Powers that Be will realise that I do indeed exist, and live in the New Garrett...

Getting Things Done: Do it First

My time-management hero Mark Forster has recommended in various places on his blog, site and books that the best way to get a project going is to make it the first thing you do in the day.

This isn't ideal for me, as my "projects" are all (currently) unpaid things which I have to work round an 8.30-5 office job. However, it's been advice that's worked very well for me in a couple of areas:

- Bible reading.

I've got a book which provides a plan to read the entire Bible in a year. Given I've been using this book since October 2005, you might guess that I've not done terribly well on keeping it up every day. I have noticed, though, a very strong correllation between me doing my Bible reading before breakfast in the morning, and me doing any Bible reading at all during the day. Somehow, it's easy to find a multitude of other things to do in the evening.

- Writing.

I'm most motivated and creative in the mornings but, sadly, any burst of energy then has to be channeled into the day-job. (And getting up at 5.30 to write just ain't gonna happen!) However, over the past couple of weeks, I've tried making "writing" the first thing I do when I get home from work in the evenings. This works pretty well as a modification of the "do it first" method; I've done 3,000 over 3 days so far this week.

Vrisaki

The Boyfriend and I met up with a group of my University friends last night, to celebrate one of our number's birthday, at a very nice Greek restaurant near Woods Green; Vrisaki

Gorgeous food -- we had the set mezedes, and there was an impressive amount of it! The waiting staff kept bringing more courses, and seafood featured admirably prominently. I can see why Time Out gave it their "Critic's Choice" award.

It's a tad of a trek for us, being on the other side of London, so we now need to find something similar nearer home...

As ever, it was great to catch up with old friends, and to hear the latest Cambridge news. (All seems to be rumbling on much as last year; ex-Texaco garage remains a makeshift car wash, and Fitz room rents are still going up.)

A lovely evening, despite having to walk back to Nunhead from New Cross at 12.30am -- next time, I'll check out night bus timetables beforehand!

50 pence per word

BBC Radio 4 are running a short story competition: the brief is to write a story precidsely 100 words long which contains the six words: Bacon, Bodies, Experiments, Fire, Paper, Organic.

First prize is a £50 book token, and the winner and runners-up will have their stories read out on air. More details from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/contact_world_book_day.shtml

Deadline is March 12th. That's about a sentence a day, if you get started now...

Warning...

This sign is on my cycle route to work. I rather like it.

Now all I need is an unsuspecting politician to stand beneath it...

Writing, in the New Garrett

My twin excuses of "settling into a new flat" and "having my novel rejected (again)" have now worn off, so I've been settling back into a bit of evening writing over the past couple of days.

The New Garrett is very pleasant to write in -- I have plenty of space to spread scraps of paper and jottings, and the rather motivational benefit of someone else (the lovely Boyfriend!) to cook dinner whilst I write. (From student days, I've found I see dinner as a switching-off time, after which I struggle to get anything productive done.)

This evening, I've been working on a "long" short story, which is progressing well. I've done 500-odd words today, and the overall shape of the story has become clearer: I'll need to go back and rewrite a lot, but I don't see it as wasted time. Often, I find that it's only when I begin writing a story that I figure out the details of characters, plot and structure.

I did some brainstorming yesterday for this month's Writing Magazine short story competition, on the topic of "duty". It wasn't a theme which inspired me at first, but after some musing whilst cycling and swimming today, I have some thoughts for the character and general plot and structure of a piece. I've earmarked some time on Saturday for writing it; I've told The Boyfriend I'm going to work on it at the weekend, so now I'll feel lazy if I don't.

The only drawback to this New Garrett from a writing perspective is that it's so big, I keep losing my notebooks and pens... eventually I'll get used to living in more than one room!