Pics, Pophs and Zombies

Yesterday I was walking down a track by a field. About fifty rooks had gathered in some trees beside the track and were making a hell of a racket in the low afternoon sunshine. It was like they were all talking at once about some massive breaking news in rook-world. Rooks are social creatures, and so are we.

The daily walks with Jerry, my Golden Retriever, are an essential part of my writing process. When I set off from the house I don't think about anything in a conscious way. Then, usually about half way through the walk, or when fifty rooks strike up a conversation, some ideas ping into my head like notifications on a mobile phone. It may be a scene in a chapter which needs changing, an idea for a blog post, or a few lines of a poem. For me, sitting down at a computer or a pad of paper does not usually produce inspiration. I need the free thinking time first.

After the country track, my walk takes me by some houses and across a busy road. Occasionally I meet a human being, but the urban world is mostly filled with Pics, Pophs, and Zombies. Pics are 'people in cars'. They are busy and distracted. I was one of them once. Pophs are 'people on phones'. Sometimes the pics and pophs are one and the same. Zombies have a fixed stare and don't often make eye contact. You can spot them by thin plastic wires coming out of their ears. Crossing the road, I half tripped over some bits of plastic, the remains of broken car trim. When I got home, I wrote this haiku down before I took my shoes off:

Cigarette, sun, mobile phone

Car crash line goes dead.

Rearrange everything.

Why the Writers’ Lunch

We’re a (small) community of writers both published and aspiring, based in Yorkshire. We meet weekly for lunch and a discussion of what motivates us to write, what prevents us from writing, what we’ve learnt and what we’ve written. In-between mouthfuls of sandwich, burger or wrap, with the odd jacket potato thrown in.

 

We’ve decided to create a shared blog for many reasons. It will help some of us take our first tentative steps into the blogosphere. It gives us the chance to see what effect exposure to the bright glare of (potential) readers has on our writing. It requires a regular commitment – something which personally I really need to give me the impetus to put words on a page.

And because we have found that it helps to help each other.

Writing is, of course, a solitary activity. How could it be anything else? It’s just you, your pen and paper. Or keyboard and screen. Or quill and parchment if that’s what floats your boat.

When it’s going well the solitude is part of the joy – the quiet exploration of your own head to discover the worlds you might create, the characters you could breathe into life, the emotions you want to evoke in your readers. Even if the only reader is you. But when it’s an off day, it can feel like you're screaming into an empty room and hearing the echoes of your creative failures bouncing back at you from every surface.

In this state, mutual encouragement and support are required, are even mandatory. It is how we turn our struggles and our doubts into better writing, perhaps even competition winning or publishable writing. It's how we garner the courage to pick up our chosen writing implement once more and try again.

This is why we lunch. And this is why we now blog together too.

So welcome to the Writers' Lunch. We will be offering up our writerly thoughts and our literary endeavours – be they light bites, sweet treats or hearty meals – for comment and feedback, (gentle) criticism and as food for thought.

Bon appétit.