Varifocals has returned. The moles are winning at the moment but some new deterrent may help: packets of extra strong garlic powder may do it. After the last post a pop up advertisement appeared on my screen: it was for a product designed to cure smelly breath. So beware big brother, or in this case, big google, is watching. The moles could possibly use the halitosis cure.

Christmas is nearly here. What do other writers do over Christmas.? Is there time to write? One Christmas tip might be to tidy and clear your writing space or writing room so it becomes really inviting, tempting even. So if there 10 minutes to spare you can get something down in your own space that you have just as you like it. I'm putting tinsel on the computer, although I'm not sure it deserves it. And no tinsel or Christmas card for my ISP who deprived me of e mail for 6 weeks.

But Christmas isn't for moaning. We all know people who do nothing but complain, nothing but put out negative thoughts without any pause to think about how anyone else might receive them. Christmas is the one time of year that counting blessings, however corny that might sound, is a wonderful thing to do. Its about friends and family and raising a glass to people no longer with us and taking time out in the middle of winter to make a holiday, whatever that means to you. Not about worrying about dressing up or dressing down or how much to buy or how much to eat and drink. Before this sounds too much like "Thought for the Day" Varifocals will stop. No religious opinions on this blog.

Varifocals' writing goes slowly, but it goes. Two chapters written. Much encouragement from a friend at the writing group. Blogging helps, although the idea of being part of the blogosphere is alarming. Even more alarming is the idea from an agent writing in Writing Magazine that the thing to say to people who want to write a book when they retire is 'forget it.' Retired people have a wealth of skills, ideas, organisational abilities to bring to their writing. Imagination doesn't stop at a certain age. Let's hear it for older writers!

That's it. Time to feed the cats.

It has taken 10 days for a very large molehill to return after liberal applications of garlic. More garlic, more swearing and shouting, more threats from better half to use traps (empty these threats, he's too kind). The most pungent garlic I've ever found is from a local grocers; it's amazing anything coming near the raw crushed stuff would be able to breathe, let alone find worms to eat. Perhaps I can play at being scientific and say that the garlic has a half-life of 10 days, then I could time things properly. So far the most recent dousing with it has kept the piles of earth away for 2 days. 8 days to go then. Tomorrow I shall abandon any pretence at science and try an old wives' remedy: mothballs. (Why are there no old husbands' remedies or tales? No old husbands or no husbands with stories or cures?)

It has also taken 10 days for my e mail to be fixed. And 3 days for the computer to be away to be checked out. And no, it wasn't my computer. I'd hate for my little white box to be slandered.

Without e mail a sort of peace reigns. No distractions. No replies to be made before writing anything. Much less opportunity for procrastination.

Without a computer ...

A fountain pen and a block of paper served me very well. A tip I was given ages ago (thank you Andy) was, in fact, to write long hand to stop endless redrafting on the screen which just held me up. I found lots of ideas at the end of a pen. Although a very useful tip would be not to write long hand after a certain amount of wine: all those wonderful sentences and all that exquisite prose will be completely illegible the following morning.

Perhaps one should measure how much alcohol it takes (for each individual) to create unreadable writing. A half life then. Something like two glasses and one loses sense of punctuation. The rest of the bottle and you couldn't read anything at all the morning after.

Maybe inhaling moth balls might clear the head.

That's it. Cats are having their morning nap.

Varifocals has returned after a long gap. It's not a consistent blog, just an every now and then one to boost my enthusiasm for writing. How I envy consistency!

The last Wrekin Writers' Group carried a stern warning on using cliches. Before that I had a wonderful holiday, when we chilled out completely. After that I was snowed under with work and couldn't think straight for ages. I buried myself in work, putting my nose to the grind stone. Now I have some time to spare.

No more cliches (if I can help it). Rural France was inspiring. I developed the practice of procrastination to an even greater art form but eventually I did indeed get The Novel out and began work again. The sun and peace and - probably - good wine all helped but the most important thing was the lack of work pressure. Now I am back to writing in short bursts and will have to learn to continue in little bits of time.

The ABI (appropriate blog idea) of the day is the continuing saga of the moles. Garlic didn't work and the lawn boasted several more great mounds of earth on our return from France. I looked at mole traps but neither I nor the better half can bear to use them. Ugly devices of stainless steel designed to kill in a pinching action. There are also smoking things - find the tunnel, light a fuse on what looks like a candle and shove the spluttering fizzing device down the tunnel, stamping earth on top of it. They are supposed to encourage the moles to move out, not kill them. The effect lasts about two days. I'm developing a affection for such energetic mammals that keep going whatever the odds.

Ah! An Idea! Writers must be like moles - keeping going whatever the odds and whatever nature or man (which I don't consider natural any more) can throw at them or shove down their burrows. Writers must carry on burrowing away, avoiding traps, poisons, rejections, depressions, interruptions. The garlic might be good though.

However, Varifocals has brought back a huge supply of Clairefontaine notebooks and must begin to fill them. I really couldn't bear to use Moleskin notebooks now.

That's it. Time to feed the cats (who can't catch moles either).

I steal stuff. I nick things occasionally. This isn't plagiarism, it's taking things out of the public domain and using them differently. I think all writers do it. Start with an idea from another story and turn it into one's own; there's very little out there that's not derivative. Think how many times the Biblical stories are reused: Cain and Abel's murderous pairing is very popular. Chaucer's character the Wife of Bath is completely made up from bits and pieces of other texts, poor thing.

I've stolen the idea of Appropriate Column Ideas from Tim Dowling in the Saturday Guardian and turned them into Appropriate Blog Ideas (ABIs) and hunt round for them as a way to inspire or put off any other writing. As this blog is supposed to be about writing and creative ideas or the absence thereof Varifocal turns the spectacles onto Important Things in the Day to hinder writing.

Professional work of the paid variety. Has to come first, then exhaustion sets in.

Interruptions from elsewhere. Attending meal times with one's other half. Finding things for same. Conversing with same.

Necessary Leisure Time. Important for the creative juices (I keep hearing about). No fun, no writing apparently.

Sleeping. Eating. Searching for chocolate. (Someone out there knows who I mean).

The biggest ABI of the day however, is the Great Mole Hunt. A huge molehill appeared in the centre of the lawn. It shouldn't matter of course. No one here bothers about the moss much. . But this was insulting even to our lowly standards of lawn keeping. The molehill was flattened, reappeared, flattened, reappeared ... As did numerous molehills on the edge of the garden, with several seeming to have most of their bulk under the shed.

Flattening mole hills takes only two minutes out of writing time. But searching the internet for safe mole deterrents is a whole afternoon typing into a search engine (an ersatz substitute for typing creative thoughts).

Having wasted hours, with many pauses for coffee and serious thought, the idea of garlic came up. It's now thirty six hours since half a bulb of peeled and crushed garlic was shoved hard down a mole tunnel. No return of the molehill. Yet. There's a story in this somewhere if only I wasn't too busy checking the mole tunnel and putting garlic down the next one.

That's it. The cats have got to move, I want my armchair back.

Varifocals has done nothing. No writing hour each day, no ideas in nice notebooks, no revision of stories, no looking over the quarter of novel. I read this morning of an author (now subject of a new book exposing all sorts of interesting things for those who live vicariously through biographies) who always had at least six different reasons for doing anything and every one of them was right. I have some reasons for not writing. Friends and family are all ill. All serious stuff - no details here, I'm not going to write a misery / illness blog but other people's concerns somehow stop me writing. They're a drain on creativity. I have a demanding profession, it produces end of working day mushy brain syndrome. I have a lot to do that doesn't concern writing. I feel guilty about writing for myself. So back to the blog to get going again.

On the other hand I am very lucky. I have my own study - all mine, shared only with the cats, who don't interrupt much (I wish they'd teach partner not to). I work part time. Theory has it there are two whole days each week in which to write. Ha! I have the support of a marvelous writing group and friends who encourage.

I used to be very disciplined. I used to have deadlines and I obeyed them religiously. Now there are no deadlines apart from those I set myself and allow myself to break. They're really procrastination lines, semi permeable. I'm reminded of the late Douglas Adams who said something like, 'I love deadlines. I love hearing the whoosh! as they go by.' My homemade limits make wonderful noises at me. More like raspberries however. And a tinny voice that says, 'you're no good.' It squeaks at me and needs to have a cushion put over it. And the lines - whatever they're called - need to be made rigid, unyielding, absolutely fixed in my head. And I need some sort of alter ego so it's a different part of myself that writes.

So I'm posting this without revision, agonising or worrying about anyone reading it. It's to get me to write. (But any tips, hints, comments welcome. Oh what a hypocrite, I'm not supposed to care!)

That's it. I've fed the cats, thank you.

Varifocals has just returned from Paris! A magical city I have never before visited and on the first afternoon there I was convinced I was going back. We went to Le Marais, an area of small streets, unique shops and tiny restaurants spilling out onto the pavements. A blog shouldn't be a tourist guide - just look it up for yourselves - and go if you can! The Left Bank is now more Armani than intellectual so I stayed on the Right Bank, drank wine under a bridge over the Seine, sat in cool squares lined with Chesnut Trees and walled in by eighteenth-century buildings.

The city is a wonderful place to people watch (actually so is anywhere one can sit quietly with a coffee or a drink and see the world wander by on a nice day, doesn't have to be Paris - try Much Wenlock or Shrewsbury, but I'm in love with Paris right now). I made word sketches of the people I saw and short sentences about places to remind me afterwards. Text photos to be the basis of stories and perhaps part of the much neglected novel that is supposed to be 'on the go' and is more usually 'on the stop'. I bought a selection of black and white postcards of Paris in the 20s and 30s and thought I could make stories out of them.

Paris seemed quieter than London, easier to be in somehow. And, for once, I didn't get lost. Varifocals is renowned for shortsightedness and a serious inability to find the way anywhere, famously turning the wrong way to get home from Sainsbury's. (Oh, Telford!) But not in Paris - no confusion, never stuck for the right (or left) turn and even the map in the Rough Guide was comprehensible. The Metro was simple and cheap and the trains full of buskers who got on and off at every stop. I'd never heard a saxophone played on the tube before.

All this must make for some writing material of course. And the blog is doing its work because now I am recharged I've set myself tasks of at least an hour a day at the keyboard and / or making more sketches in a notebook to use at a later date. I don't use the moleskins (although they seem to work for everyone else!). There's a brand of stationery called Clairefontaine in all sizes and very bright, cheerful colours which inspire me. I stocked up on some notebooks, big and small when in Paris - carrying the baggage back home was a problem! So this is a happy, post- holiday blog with no axes to grind, only written for the joy of it all.

That's it. Time to go the vet. to discuss latest ways of cat flea control.

Varifocals has turned the spectacles on a writing competition wanting 500 words from survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA for convenience). It seems wrong. Why? Writing about one's own experience is normal and writing is a powerful therapeutic tool. But for a competition? It may leave the writer feeling very vulnerable, especially if she / he has no back up. It may help to celebrate survival of one of the most cruel experiences a child may undergo. Indeed, there was a piece in Saturday's Guardian from a CSA survivor. She sounded alright (mostly). But others may not be so free of their experiences and perhaps 500 words for a competition, which involves money, may not help the fragile. Presumably it would be judged on the quality of writing.

I think it calls into question what we write about. There are more questions than answers here. We write from experience; maybe alter that for fictional purposes. We write from the imagination - but that's ours too. Bereavement, dying and death are normal, part of the human condition if you like (forgive the cliche), and plenty of novels, blogs and short stories revolve around death. But CSA is not normal: it breaks down the usual healthy barriers we need in childhood. A simile I've read is that it is like a watch that has the cogs broken away from the mechanism. So how do we write about it? It's abnormal and abhorrent, but writers use the abnormal and abhorrent in literature. I'm not suggesting that it is never written about, that it's swept under a carpet of silence as it once was - not at all. There's more protection and help for children and adult survivors than there ever was (despite what the papers may claim)and the openness helps the victims and the punishment of the perpetrators. I think making CSA as part of a competition is perhaps problematic, maybe not. What does everyone else think?

There's also the question of whether one should always write about what one knows. Eric Ambler wrote a novel about Turkey without ever being there - he had a photograph. Chaucer made up stories gleaned completely from other texts. How do we make things up? How do we get the research right? I get really annoyed if I read a book that has detail wrong (at least, the detail I know about -I must miss plenty I don't know about). One popular novel has larks singing from a tree in a town (never, they inhabit open fields), another put eggs into a freezer for storage (try it!).

On a more cheerful note my inspiration for the week came from hearing a snippet on Radio Four, I didn't catch who the speaker was. She said something like 'If your boat doesn't come in, swim out to meet it.' Something to apply to writing, to keep going, to keep swimming out.

That's it, the cats might want lunch now.

Firstly, a huge public thank you to the people of Wrekin Writers for encouragement, patient answering of questions with good humour and arranging this to link up with the Wrekin Writers website. All this advice one reads about starting to write says 'join a writers group' and it's absolutely the right (write) thing to do. Without the group I would have never have had the nerve to start a blog.

2. I think I want this blog to be a tool: a journal of how writing a blog helps me write other things. It's a bit like having a big pot of soup on the stove. I don't have time to dedicate a lot of time to writing and I have to write in small bits and pieces. So writing a blog more frequently feels like having a pot simmering - with what I'm going to write on the blog and - importantly - everything else - all the time (somewhere in the background of whatever else I'm doing), instead of having to re heat it again to boiling point every time I sit in front of the keyboard or pick up my fountain pen. So this is a journal of how I feel about blogging in terms of my writing rather than a public diary. It's also an exercise in desensitizing myself to exposure and to keep writing.

3. I found a marvellous inspiration in the Guardian this Saturday (Review, 4th July, 2009). It's Alice Munro (aged seventy, by the way), saying how good it is (and how good she finds it) if "you've still got life up for translation ... you're always fooling around with what you find, not so much interested in its usefulness as in transformations and revelation.' I'd like to think that's what writing is about. Especially for me is the "fooling around'; taking every day things / events / scraps of overheard conversation and turning them around into a story, making a narrative that might mean something, something that might grab a reader to make them think differently. Or perhaps to try to transform the ordinary into an extraordinary experience for the reader.

That's it for my second blog. Time to lock the cats up for the night.

1. This is my first blog. I needed a long-hand version of what to say plus two glasses of wine before gathering courage to do what the rest of the world seems to do in its sleep. I had to work out what an URL was.
2. BUT. It seems to me that those who want to write successfully (in whatever terms) write all the time: letters, articles, stories, novels, commentaries and - blogs. So it's selfish - this blog. Its to inspire me because by writing more (here) I will write more. If I'm blocked I think I can blog and unblock - that's the general idea. Perhaps along this selfish route I may inspire others - or at least interest someone for a few seconds. I'm not altruistic but I'm not entirely selfish either. My ego is not large by any means.
3. I might not write the truth, about me or about any experience of mine. Or about anybody else. Writing is all story. (Read Hayden White about history for this). I might produce a false persona or tell little bits of real stuff. But that's what writing is all about. It's all glimpses of 'what might be' or 'what if' or something real transmuted into a story so the 'real' is mixed up. We all carry with us 'editors' in our heads so that what we say or write is checked automatically so we don't reveal too much or it is turned and twisted to suit the situation we're in at that moment. After all, crafting a story to suit the audience is just like that. I try to write to suit a woman's magazine and that's really different from crafting an paper for an academic journal. A friend once told her PhD supervisor she'd make it up as she went along and he was really horrified and lectured her about the saintly nature of research. But there's no real truth out there (at least not in the arts subjects) and one opinion or one story is as good as another.
4. That's it folks. Time to feed the cats. More to follow.