Synchronicity and 2016: unedited.

With the smell of gammon, cinnamon and cloves bubbling on the stove,  it feels like Christmas all over again as I await the arrival of my 16 year old daughter from a month long exchange in Germany.

But January it is and so, the arrival of a new year for plans, goals, dreams and future features. And my January BLOG. (I love the newness of January, don’t you? The uncluttered, clean feel of opportunity?)

While 2015 seemed fraught and frustrating in some ways (see Dec blog) I sense that 2016 will be one of SYNCHRONICITY.

Here’s why:

As the days of December drew to a close, I finally got to reading Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar – one of thousands of books /authors on my to read list- and as with most books, I then delve further into the life of the author to satisfy my intrigue into the life of writers and the why and how of what they write. Which is sometimes a bit harrowing because it seems to me that many, if not all of the serious literary ones are either depressed or suicidal or live a strange type of existence and have lots of affairs with people of the opposite sex or same sex and usually have some sort of psychological trauma associated with their mother or other family member.

This leads to a cursory examination of my own psyche (and of course that of my mother) and I wonder about the state of my mind which seems, superficially at least, to be fairly stable and with a marriage of now over 20 years (yes, tempestuous at times but with no third parties that I know of !?) and four offspring, I then conclude that this is probably the reason that I will never be taken seriously as a writer – though naturally, this may also be attributable to a variety of other factors which I will leave to you to decide.

What I do conclude though is that I don’t care. I will continue to write, undaunted by the serious writers, bestsellers, number of thousands of new books that are published or self-published and have thousands of reviews on Amazon where I only have one. (NOTE to self: Release and Publish online at the SAME TIME that publish in print- not a year later silly!) And I will continue to BLOG once a month to let you know about my writing process or anything else that I wish to blog about. Because I love to write.

Back to the thread of synchronicity … the lives of authors, interesting themes and then on the trail of feminist writers, my eyes zoned in immediately up Toni Morrison’s Love on my bookshelf and a few days later, I was given some old copies of TIME magazine and opened up in the middle of a July 2015 issue on the page of, guess who? Toni Morrison. Lots more to read here.

One of the several other authors I looked up on was Simone de Beauvoir. A few days later, I happened upon a book on my coffee table  ( I couldn’t remember where/when I had bought it ) called “Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World, by Stephen Trombley” and who should I randomly turn to? Yes. Simone de Beauvoir.

And then the first Twitter post I see yesterday from Amanda Patterson’s blog on writing (one of my best sources of writing inspiration) is that it was Simone de Beauvoir’s birthday and she posted this quote….

 

 

 

But this was after I popped into a coffee shop for a quiet hour to myself to think and dream and read a travel brochure about where to go in 2016 and contemplate my last few months of forty something and happened to sit opposite a women I had never met before who happened to live in Bath. And she joined the conversation with another friend whom I hadn’t seen in while and we started talking travel and life and how she was closing in on her 5^th decade and children and life etc. And I felt an immediate connection to this person I had never met. And why did it matter that she lived in Bath? Because Joanne Penn, another of my favourites on writing and inspiring has just moved to Bath. No relevance really. But synchronicity. On talk of travel she also told me that though NZ is supposed to be beautiful it really is “ the ass end of the world”. My thoughts exactly.

I won’t bore you with other synergies I keep finding ( like the fact that Joanne Penn rated BIG MAGIC, Elizabeth Gilbert one of her best books of 2015 and it happened to be the one I feel closest to at the moment and lies closest to me on my desk…) but I would like to end off with this, my goals and dreams for 2106:

I will finish my next book this year (though my deadline of end March is looming and not likely)

I hope that when it’s done, somewhere someone will like it enough to bring it to you and it will get other reviews like one who compared my first book to Eat, Pray, Love.

I will continue to blog once a month and hope that it keeps you at least a little interested in my next book , my life, my thoughts or whatever I blog about.

I will try to keep to my other goals of keeping fit, pursuing new and other passions and leaving law, time for family and friends, travelling to new places ……..

None of which matter because daughter just phoned from JHB and caught her connection to CT! Must get ready and finish the gammon!

MAY 2016 be SUCCESSFUL and SENSATIONAL in every way for all of you too!