750 Words

I have been put on to a site which helps writers to write. It gets you to write the first 750 words of the day as early as possible on the basis that they need to be blurted out, won't be very good, but will help you dump your mind on to paper and stop it disturbing any other writing task you have for the day. I have only been going two days but it is helpful. Like doing gym this 30 minute stretch gets the juices going. Here is today's effort. Don't worry about the grammar, typos or content but I thought you might be interested in the exercise.

Time for my writing exercises. Sunday was a good day to start doing this but a Monday will test things a litle more. I have already sorted out the recycling and green waste (in the rain) which is probably not the best place to have been on the first day of a cold.

I've noticed (I expect I will notice a lot of things as I am doing this exercise) that whilst I normally keep written pices short and precise, editing out every word that is not doing something useful on the page, in this case I am lengthening, strecthing and adding like a man whose life will be saved by 750 words, any 750 words, as long as he gets there as soon as possible.

'I'm sorry I have a cold.' I always hear John Cleese saying this in a Monty Python sketch from the late 60s or early 70s. He used it as a rather baffling excuse for incorrectly identifying a man as a woman ('Excuse me, miss...'). Python gave my generation a lot of its go-to phrases.

As ever at 7.30 a.m. radio 4 is on in the background. Although I have the possibility of listening to it online in my study I prefer the sound of the radio in the kitchen. It is like, I have said before, having intelligent friends chatting in the other room.

I only have two days to work this week as I am taking two days holiday and my monthly double day-off to leave me free Wednesday to Saturday. That means my Sunday prepartion needs completing by tomorrow evening and I need to hit the ground running not ambling. What a day to have a cold.

There are things to look forward to this week - perhaps rather too many but one of the costs of our busy lives is that social time with people needs squashing in where it will fit even if that leads to us being tired some weeks. We accept this and so will go and see Skyfall tomorrow night ('cos you just gotta see new Bond movies at the cinema in the first week) and then will spend two nights in London visiting family, returning for Bonfie parties on Saturday. I've just rebranded Saturday as a light day rather than a day off. I will then feel less guilty about attending a church function.

Colds dominate your space don't they? You don't necessarily feel more than a bit grim but everytime you stop for breath, or pause to think, you don't find your mind wandering over the thing you are pondering but it spreads itself over your runny nose, sore throat whatever and tells you to feel sorry for yourself. You can keep working as long as you avoid coughing and sneezing on people (I was probably most contagious in church yesterday before I felt ill) and take honey and lemon drinks, hot baths and an occasional snooze. being mildy ill deserves a treatise doesn't it? Wouldn't you like to be someone else for a day simply in order to assess what their pain is like compared to your own? Then you'd find out if you were a whinger or not.

I think, based on evidence but not proof, that I tend not to be bothered by colds as nmuch as some. One of the bits of evidence is temperature. I often find people telling me they are cold and at that point I notice I am but it hadn't bothered me. Clearly at that point I get psychologically damaged and haver to adjust the clothing or radiators but by and large iof nobody oans I am OK. Mind you I hate it when it is too hot but tend to cool myslef down rather than moaning. I can do holidays in the sun as long as I am taking a holiday in the shade.

I think, as an exercise, I will blog this pice of writing and see what my other readers make of it. I am pretty sure my editor readers will find it hard to resist the temptation to correct it but that is not the point of this. I have been reading back through each sentence but it has ben speed-reading, to go with the speed-typing, not proof-reading. Anyway you can't proof your own stuff. Your eye makes the sense of it you were trying to make in the first place. Hopeless.

Pity about West Brom conceding a last-minute lucky equaliser to Newcastle yesterday. Good morning.https://750words.com/