Blog hopping, via Highgate Hill Kitchen and a Storm of Tea Cups

So, because the world is a food-writer-tea-tasterly small place, I feel rather warm hearted at the invitation from both Sarah Gory, from Highgate Hill Kitchen (QPF Director and moonlighting food blogger extraordinaire) and veteran reviewer, poet and dark artist, Zenobia Frost of A Storm of Tea Cups.

We are asking each other about writing, process and working, and in that process of working on writing and process, sharing insight into some of the incredible colleagues and fellow creatives out and about in our networks.

Here’s my take on …um. Me.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am nervous and excited to say that I’m working on two major projects at the moment, preparing to record a live album for Going Down Swinging and a draft of a play as a part of my year as Artist in Residence for La Boite theatre.

How do you think your work differs from that of other writers in your genre?

My hope is not that my work necessarily differs for the sake of difference, although many subtle differences are always in place between voices, styles, forms, genres. I hope that if I find a way to be self-critical, questioning and reflexive in my writing, then I at least have a shot at being as authentic and truthful as I can be to a particular set of emotional experiences, and hopefully the kind of lyrical, narrative work that comes from that will give people both pleasure and a shared intimacy, even temporarily so. I feel I have a long way to go on all fronts, but I am trying.

Why do you write what you write?

I write what I write mainly because this is the clearest way that I know to process experience, to respond to the stimuli of life, and to be a part of the relationships, the community and the world that I find myself in. I think that answering why is a funny challenge for me. Sometimes I think it’s a compulsion, and I just haven’t found an answer to “why not?”

What’s your writing process, and how does it work?

My writing process is pretty iterative. Research, read, watch things, think, write a bit. Chat it over with someone. Research more, read it over, think, write a bit more, write a lot, get very frustrated and delete it a lot. Often if I have a particular writing task, I grow quite obsessive and bore everyone in my life talking only about that thing. And some strangers too. I see intrinsic links to that thing that I am writing in everything that I do.  Then try to surrender gently and with grace to the act of just doing the best that I can at the time that I can. Eventually you have to press print. Eventually you have to get on the stage. The work will be exactly where it is at the point, and I try to take pleasure in the fact that it could always change.

And often when it’s over, it’s as if “poof”, nothing ever happened at all. I am sometimes quite happy with that sense of potential erasure and rebirth. So much effort, so much pain, and then memory is fallible enough to make you think you want to do it all again.

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I am passing the torch here to Ms Bri Lee, who juggles the delightful combination of fashion and law with a wit and style befitting any silk with Poise On Arrows. And to another MYSTERY blogger. Who I will ANNOUNCE AS SOON AS I FIND THEM.