
Hello out there (or in there),
I hope that wherever you are, all is as well as possible with you and your families.
My apologies for the long silence from The Phraser. My excuse is that I’m trying to write a novel. When I set off with this grand, novel-writing plan, I did not realise how difficult it would be. There has been some progress, but I’m still not sure in which direction.
Meanwhile, I’ve been missing the blog, so I thought I’d try to get a few posts up before the end of the year. For the first one, I’ve set myself a creative writing challenge: to describe 2020 with just the senses … sight, taste, smell, sound, touch. After a lot of sitting with my eyes closed, and trying not to get carried away, here is the result.
i used to teach a lot of poetry when i was a teacher and somehow I always started with the sense of smell. smell is so evocative – I still have my mother’s leather handbag which smells of her perfume, her cigarettes and …her. I miss her so much but she died in 2006 – yet just to see the handbag is comforting even before I sniff it!
I also lived in spain for a year in the very early seventies – now its the smellof lavender cologne combined with the whiff of a cigar which immediately transports me back to madrid in the winter. that combination was a must have for all men of a certain age at that time.
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Those are both such powerful images, and so intimate at the same time. The first gives me such an impression of your mother, and the second takes me straight to the heart of Madrid.
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Keep trying. You are a great writer full of vivid descriptions and touching ways of seeing the world. Novels are hard to write. Let yourself enjoy the process. Wishing you a prosperous New Year.
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Hello Antoinette – somehow this message slipped under the arrival of the New Year. Thank you! And very best wishes to you for the year ahead. I shall keep trying. Am in the process of attemtping to record a story to put up in sections as audio and as a blog post. Hope to have it up within the next few days. Just have to gather my confidence and get it done!
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So well written Georgie, I could see, taste and smell everything. Wishing you and yours a very happy Christmas 🎄😄
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Thanks for reading. I hope you all have a wonderful Zim Christmas. Best wishes all round for 2021!
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