thoughts – Violet Daniels

Sunday Post #4

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted at @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news ~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme.

Another week, another Sunday. I’m writing this feeling a little sleep deprived as I haven’t slept much this weekend – but not by choice. I’m having another insomnia flare-up, which I haven’t had for a while. They tend to come and go in spouts. I think it’s because I’ve been feeling more anxious than usual, and I’ve neglected writing in my journal and the importance of gradually winding down in the evenings – which always helps.

It’s been a strange week – again, I haven’t published too much but I have still been writing every day, although the word count is down on last week. I averaged around 1000 words a day this week, compared to my usual 2000. I don’t stick religiously to a word count, but I think it’s good to have an idea of how much you are writing to help you stay on track.

I’ve been doing my first bit of copywriting for a small company based in London and I’ve been enjoying it so far. It’s freelance and technically my first paid writing job which is exciting and a step forward. I get to learn about completely random things like antique carpets and cloud software but it’s strangely satisfying!

I’ve had some more success on Medium – I’ve now been named as a top writer in their reading and books categories, which is exciting and completely unexpected. Having only been on the platform for a month I didn’t think I would get this much recognition so quickly. I have been loving writing over there and it’s really improved my confidence.

It was my 23rd birthday last Wednesday, which passed in a haze. It was a strange lockdown birthday but still a nice day. We got a takeaway and I did lots of reading, it was nice. I saw my family from a distance yesterday and was able to celebrate with a cake (but I didn’t blow the candles out in the usual way!) and nice food. It’s the little things these days.

It’s meant to heat up again next week just when we thought Summer was over. I hope it doesn’t get too hot, I’m ready for winter now.

This Week on the Blog

Surviving Another Year Around the Sun

Book Review: Alone Together

Book Review: Salvation Station

This Week – Elsewhere

10 Books to Read in 2020, Books Are Our Superpower, Medium

Reviewing my First Month on Medium

Currently Reading

Quiet, Susan Cain

I’ve always known I was an introvert, so I thought I better read this book. I fancied reading some more non-fiction so I decided to pick this up.

I’ve only read about 50 pages so far, but have already learnt some pretty interesting things. Van Gogh was an introvert, as is Bill Gates! It starts with a discussion about how American culture and society grew to prioritise extroversion, and how this is gradually changing as we alter our misconceptions about introversion and shyness.

I think I’ll learn a lot about myself with this one.

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid

When the Booker Prize nominees were announced a while ago, this was the only book I thought I would like the sound of, so I decided to read it.

The story begins with Emira, a young, African-American babysitter, who gets accosted at her local supermarket for looking after a white child. The security guard in a racially motivated attack accuses her of kidnapping the child and she is forced to call the father.

It follows the perspective of Emira, and her employer, a famous blogger called Alix Chamberlain.

I’m really enjoying it so far and it hooked me straight away!

I really haven’t been reading that many articles this week, so I will leave out my favourite articles for the week – hopefully there will be some to include next time.

Please note – this post does contain Amazon affiliate links and if you choose to use them, I will earn a small fee but this doesn’t impact my review in anyway.

An update & thoughts on the booker prize

Long time no see! It’s been over a week since I published my last blog post and it’s because I’ve been in a bit of a slump. Recently there have been days I can barely pick up a book – so apologies for the lack of posts and reviews.

I intentionally decided to take a week off doing anything remotely productive (writing, editing, pitching, etc) just to see if it would re-fresh me. It did at first, but then my hormones kicked in… But in that week I got back into running which was great until I injured myself with shin splints so now I’m trying to rest and am back to square one. I am in agony even when just walking so if anyone has any tips please let me know!

I am still living in a lot of uncertainty job wise – the retail sector in the UK is struggling and this is three months before the furlough scheme ends, so it is worrying. Every day it feels like the news is filled with another company making cuts with more unemployment, and the worst is yet to come.

I’ve been feeling a lot of reading guilt lately as I’ve got books pilling up on my NetGalley shelf that I haven’t read and given feedback for and I’ve also got a lot of books I’ve purchased which I haven’t read yet. We got a new bookcase last week and it’s made me realise how many books I own that I haven’t read… so maybe I should go on a bit of a book buying ban?

Image: Violet Daniels (Instagram: @_vdaniels_)

The two books I am reading at the moment are pretty heavy going – I feel guilty for not having finished a book recently but at the same time, I want to take my time with these and not put any pressure on myself.

So the Booker prize longlist was revealed on Monday and I’m not surprised I haven’t read a single title on the list… I’ve heard of two of them – Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light and Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age. But as usual, I haven’t read any of them. It’s funny I think nearly every year since I’ve been following it, I’ve yet to have read one of the titles. I read Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport which was nominated last year but wasn’t really impressed with that.

Although Mantel is arguably one of the best writers around and has done tremendous work for the historical fiction genre, part of me really hopes she doesn’t win as she’s already so well known. I wasn’t hugely invested in last year’s, but I do wish Bernardine Evaristo could have won it on her own, instead of being overshadowed by Margaret Atwood who had already won the prize once. The prize itself is more valuable for the international attention and recognition than the prize money, and both Atwood and Mantel already have that. I always think these prizes should be given to relatively unknown and undiscovered authors so that they can be recognised.

Saying that, most ordinary people and readers don’t take too much of an interest in prizes so it doesn’t matter that much. However, having worked in a bookshop, I have noticed that awards sell and customers gravitate towards fiction with the Booker prize stickers on – so who knows how much it influences reading habits!

Has anyone else read any of the titles or is going to? Such A Fun Age has been on my radar for a while so I might give that a go and Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi sounds interesting.

This is a bit of a mundane post but I thought I would write it just to let you know I’m still alive and well! Life has gotten significantly flatter in recent weeks and my motivation to read and write has dipped, but hopefully that will get better soon.

I’ve recently become a contributor to The Indiependent which is a great site for aspiring writers and journalists to become part of! My first piece was a review of Colour Blind, a poem by Lemn Sissay.

Love and best wishes to you all 🙂

Isolation day 87: retail, furlough, brain fog, and podcasts

England is taking its first tentative steps forward, nearly three months on from an unprecedented, national lockdown. Tomorrow will see the opening of “non-essential” shops, as the great British people prepare to flood the high streets during a pandemic which is yet to disappear.

As I sit here writing this, I do wonder what will be going through those peoples’ minds as they make trips into local towns and cities across the country, acting as if the pandemic has magically gone away. It’s safe to say I will not be in a rush to visit shops any time soon.

Many major high street retailers will be adopting the “quarantine items” approach and storing things for 72 hours to kill off the virus. Many shops will not be allowing customers to try items on, and instead encouraging them to take them back to their own homes and bring back if need be. This all seems so comical to me. If the queues for McDonald’s reopening are anything to go by I think the turn out for retail will be just as crazy…

Meanwhile, my furlough has been extended for the time being, I have no definitive date for going back to work but expect it may be between July-August. It feels so strange to realise I have not been to work since the end of March. The world feels so different to the last time I got on that commuter train and made my last latte. I’m pretty sure I won’t even know how to operate the coffee machine when I return… (sorry to my boss if you happen to see this!)

These past few weeks have been pretty rough. I almost feel as if I’ve had this cloud of fog over my brain. Any time I have go to do something, I have found a million excuses why I shouldn’t or just put it off for as long as possible. I feel like my attention span is now worse than ever and I find it hard to concentrate on anything that makes me think. I still feel like there’s a thousand things I could be doing that I’m not. I actually plucked up the courage to send pitches in for national news outlets but have heard nothing back which is disheartening. However, I know that I can’t give up and I need to keep trying. It’s annoying though because the piece was quite “time-sensitive” and I can’t re pitch it as it just wouldn’t be relevant now. I find that half the battle is getting the article idea in the first place.

I’ve been lax with exercise too. At the beginning of lockdown I was taking the daily exercise allowance quite seriously and would go for walks most days, however, since it has gotten busier outside with the loosening of the lockdown, I now feel more worried about going outside. I do generally feel like most people are acting like the pandemic is over and the virus has just disappeared. It worries me because you can never predict how anyone is going to behave, I actually wrote a piece for empoword journalism about this. But I am managing to at least get in one run a week – this week I actually managed two so I guess that’s pretty good going.

Day by day, the political response gets worse. What worries me more than anything is the sheer lack of integrity and accountability that Boris Johnson shows. When he even bothers to turn up for the daily conferences (which now seems to be like a weekly thing) he doesn’t answer the questions, he silences the scientists and offers no valid information for the public. His treatment of the Black Lives Matter movement has been diabolical, it took a prompting from the leader of the opposition at PMQ’s for him to even address it, and even when he did it was shoddy and half hearted. I can never agree with Conservatives politically, but at least some in the past haven’t been so full of hypocrisy. It really worries me.

I’ve recently re-discovered the value of podcasts and how great they are to listen to whilst you are doing other things. I love cooking but sometimes I just get a bit bored chopping and waiting for things, but now I tend to pop something on to keep me entertained. I also listen to them in the bath a lot – which I am still having loads of. They make me happy and content which is what I really need right now.

For some unforeseen miracle, we managed to get our hands on some flour – the first time in about three months. I have since made two batches of Irish soda bread – as we’ve got the flour but still no yeast – and have been enjoying the taste of fresh bread. Although maybe a little too much, because on the second bake I basically ate the whole loaf to myself which resulted in a carb induced coma for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t recommend.

I am actually really proud of my blog at the moment and how far it has come since the start of the year. In January when I properly started I could count the amount of followers I had on two hands, and now I am fast approaching one hundred. I know that isn’t much in the grand scheme of things but I think it’s mad that so people want to hear what I have to say. And I am so pleased that I managed to save up enough to get myself a new laptop – my old one was so clunky, heavy and slow and now I have a really fast laptop which feels lovely to type on. Getting it at this time was definitely a good idea.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling. That was my isolation update. I thought I would be doing more of these but I guess I didn’t realise how “samey” the days would be.

Hope you are all keeping safe and well 🙂

Productivity pressures during COVID-19

If you’d have told me 2 months ago that I was going to get 8 weeks and possibly more of free time to write and do whatever I want, I would have jumped at the challenge to bash out the next King Lear. I’m only talking about King Lear above all the other plays because everyone keeps banging on about how Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine…

But now, 7 weeks in, I find myself feeling disappointed. Not because I haven’t written, but because I haven’t pushed myself to write about other subjects I care about. This whole COVID-19 crisis has made me so angry, mainly due to the government’s poor response here in the UK. Everyday I think about writing something about it – my drafts folder on my blog is full of unpublished things I’ve written in the heat of the moment. But for some reason I’ve found that writing about politics and COVID-19 is so hard, I lack clarity when I write, and the ability to form a coherent argument. This is something I did over and over again whilst studying history at university, and because of this – I feel I should be able to do it with more ease.

I’ve been loving writing book reviews – but anything beyond this has been impossible. And I’m annoyed as I could have used this time more wisely – but the words just won’t flow. There are so many things I feel I want to say about COVID-19 but don’t know how to say them. With pushing back my MA for another year, I feel I ought to be ceasing every moment to write and expand my horizons but I lack the confidence to pitch to other media organisations and websites. Why would they want to hear from me? Why is my opinion or outlook any different? But at the same time, I know I could be using this time to work on it. And I know what I have to say does matter too. Self doubt is a real thing, isn’t it?

I keep telling myself it is ultimately fine, as I am still writing and thinking about what I want to write, even if I’m not always getting pen to paper. Or fingertips to keys, however you want to look at it. Being unproductive, and lacking the will to write is ultimately okay – the pressure we put on ourselves can outweigh the energy and creativity that we initially have. The pressure can manifest itself in self doubt, anxiety and lack of motivation – and that’s definitely what I’ve been feeling at the moment. I know I need to be less hard on myself, but it is easier said than done. And I know I don’t need to write the next King Lear… (it’s not even the best Shakespeare, lets be honest…)

COVID is here to stay, I don’t think we’ll be only living with it for the remainder of the year, but far beyond. It will become the, “new normal” as they keep saying, thus, I’ve got to get over this writing barrier. Maybe it’s my distance spent from the mental challenge that academia used to bring. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we are in the middle of a global pandemic not seen on the same scale since 1918, and it is really really hard to motivate yourself to do anything meaningful.

There’s so much pressure in the media and online to make something of yourself during this time, to lose weight, to get fit, to write a book, to bake – and it’s hard when your outcomes do not live up to these false expectations. Because it is not just “free time” it’s a hard time – where everything we have been used to have been taken away from us. Where we cannot access those small comforts we once had, and where our days lack the routine that working life usually brings.

On a serious note – the pressure to make something of this time is real and felt by many. It’s something that I need to shift to the back of my mind and not let cloud my passion for writing. But at times like these, which are very unique and surreal, it is hard to do, and this should be spoken about more. If anyone says to me, “what did you do whilst in quarantine?” and scoffs at my lack of achievements, then they must be the biggest superhero in the world, as this is one of the hardest times – and we shouldn’t treat it as a pathway to guaranteed productivity. And guess what? It’s actually okay to not be doing anything. Especially if that means we take that pressure off ourselves.

What we do with out time isn’t some kind of productivity competition over who can achieve the most – and it is easy to see it as this, when we are all spending more time on social media, which portrays life through a golden haze. But it is a time where we should banish the ideas and pressures behind “productivity” all together. It’s a word that is constantly bashed around in media and academic discourse, but once we free ourselves from its reigns, we may actually find ourselves better off.

Self Isolation: Day 1

It’s a beautiful March day, the sun is shining and I have spent most of the time indoors wishing I could go outside and enjoy the sunshine. However, the nature of our current reality prevents me from otherwise. So says the traditional Chinese verse, “May you live in interesting times…” We certainly do.

It was an interesting week at work, in some ways busier than ever before, but in others, such as my commute into work, quieter than I have ever experienced. I sat on the train yesterday and did not encounter a single person all the way to work, only noticing three people get off when I did. The station was empty as well as the platform. One day last week, the center of town was absolutely thriving with people – it almost felt like a pandemic wasn’t on the cards. People were buying everything they could, and fast.

I am now facing my first official day at home which feels very strange. I live next to a school, which has obviously closed its gates. On a normal weekday you can hear children playing in the school grounds and the school bell sound when lessons are due to start. There’s none of that now. The sounds of cars and buses have been muted into the distance and it’s strange to think we do not know when normality will return. Or when it returns, what it will be like.

Like many, I await 5pm when Boris Johnson is due to deliver his daily update. Will it contain useful information this time? Or more of a reiteration of what has been said before? Will it give us more answers or questions?

I believe a full lock-down should be enforced as the measures at the moment are not enough and they are not being followed. People are still travelling for leisure, shopping for non-essentials and loitering in mass groups. Until isolation becomes mandatory, the virus will continue to spread. It is a sacrifice we should all be willing to make to protect as many lives as we can. The virus is still not being taken seriously enough and that worries me.

Although isolation poses its many challenges for me – no real time outdoors (living in a flat with no access to a garden), no going to the gym or to work, it also renders itself to opportunities. I can use this time to read without guilt and write all that I can, as long as isolation doesn’t take too much of a toll. For now, the possibility of having more time is desirable. However, who knows how I will feel in a few weeks, or even days?

Hoping you all are staying healthy and happy in these difficult times. 🙂