I had the best day yesterday just doing my things. I wrote some morning pages, I crocheted a few centimeters and then ripped it back and tried again. I read some of a book and I listened to some of another book. All the simple things as I waited for a hotel check out or a train or a different hotel check in.

It’s the morning of our flight and we’re in Joyfull the 24 hour cafe around the corner from our hotel. It’s cheap and cheerful and they provide unlimited tea, coffee and soft drinks. We had dinner here last night and didn’t expect to have breakfast but we got a notice that our flight was delayed so we took the opportunity. We have gotten better at waiting and thinking of it as an opportunity.

Denis reads and I write. I attended a writing class last year and the teacher suggested writing in the cracks. At first I didn’t see how this was possible but she’s a very wise teacher and eventually it dawned on me. Along with shitty first drafts – where you just get the thoughts out without making it good enough or correcting anything. All the corrections come later in the next writing crack. It’s been the most productive behaviour change around writing I’ve ever made.

The nicest thing is that when you get back to what you wrote you’ve forgotten writing it and it seems ok, not great but ok. And this new moment is different so it brings different energy and if you’re lucky different ideas. All useful. Never correct yourself in the first draft – unless that works for you, you do you but when I correct in the first draft it makes my creative spark shy away from saying anything else. Could shut her up for days! Don’t want to do that!

Anyways, there’s something I want to tell you… I’m going to keep going at this writing. In a slightly different way. I’m going to try my hand at writing fictional short stories. Why am I telling you this? I need a place to put these stories and the whole blog discipline seems to work for me. So I’ll be putting them here.

There’s every likelihood they won’t be good – and that’s not false humility – most things start out not so good but with practice might get better. So here’s my message to you: There is no need for you to read these stories, ignore them. If you’re tempted to judge them or tell me how I can do bettter – don’t, it’ll just upset my creative spark and we don’t want to do that, do we? She’s already quite bothered and thinks fiction is impossible.

And when we next travel and I get back to blogging about it I’ll give the first post a title like TRAVELLING AGAIN so you’ll know you can start reading again. Ok? Right, that’s it from Japan. Thank you for joining us, I have loved your company xxxx