Robyn Writes

Getting back in the game

Getting back in the game

It’s been a bit of an odd month so far, September. I started it full of hope – I’m a bookish creature, and harking back to those not-so-halcyon schooldays, I’ve always considered September to truly be my ‘fresh start’, rather than January and its new year promise of change. Then I got norovirus, and it pretty much buggered up the first two weeks of the month for me. God, I hate vomit.
 
Also, work has been mad, to say the least, which doesn’t really put me in the right frame of mind to do much at all of a weekend except batter the shit out of Victorian gang members on Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.
 
So while I’m very good at doing that, I haven’t been so good at getting started on a) fixing up the blog and b) kick-starting my creative writing again.
 
What I have been fairly good at is buying stationery. The back-to-school stationery rush is one of my favourite things about September, and I picked up a few choice items to try and ignite my writing fire.
 
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I’ve also tried to salvage a few items. Neil Gaiman, one of my favourite authors, is a big fan of writing things out by hand – at least to begin with. So I dug out an old Parker fountain pen that I got as a present one year, cleaned it up and put a new cartridge in. Fingers crossed, that’ll help. In the process, I also found a Shrek edition Vector, which is possibly the most ridiculous pen I’ve ever owned. I cleaned that one up too – it might make a good editing pen, after all.
 
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In terms of actually doing some writing, I’ve been seeking out short story competitions to give me a bit of a kick up the arse. I’ve found a couple with entries closing soon, and I’ve begun working on something that will hopefully become a nice little flash piece. I say nice, but actually, I don’t really do nice – I do macabre, or futuristic, or stuff in space, but very rarely nice.
 
And, as you can see, the blog itself has taken a bit of shape! I decided to give up on the idea of coding something myself and picked up a theme that I think will suit me for the time being. I’ve created a portfolio page and updated it with the few bits I have done over the past five years or so, and am very much hoping to add to the ‘published works’ section with a few of these short story competitions, although I won’t get too excited about them just yet.
 
So, my blogging journey begins once again – hopefully I won’t forget about it for half a year again! I’m very much looking to start reading other blogs on the writing process, and pieces from other aspiring authors, so if that’s you, please drop a link in the comments! September’s not over yet, and I plan to seize it by the balls, with a pumpkin spice Frappuccino in the other hand.
 
xoxo – Robyn

Learning curve

Although I’ve not really been blogging (or writing much of anything outside of work), I have been noticing all the ‘your bandwidth has nearly run out!!’ emails coming in from my hosting company. Yeah, I guess I didn’t really get the hang of that security thing.

So I’ve been doing a bit of research today and found a few plugins that should, fingers crossed, stop a load of the brute force login attempts I’ve been suffering from. But hey, at least it reminded me I still have this thing, right?

While it’s been somewhat freeing not to worry about having to put out new content each week, I’ve missed having deadlines on my personal creative stuff. So now that the Big Event is over for the year, I might be able to concentrate on getting some story drafts together, sprucing this old girl up and actually getting a grasp on my creative life again. That is, if Pokemon Go and Star Trek on Netflix don’t eat up my evenings for the next few months.

xoxo – Robyn

Well. It’s been a while.

It looks like not actually logging in and doing anything with your blog means that loads of unscrupulous bots try and hack it. Those gits. So maybe I’d better actually start updating it before the robots take over.

Any advice on firewalls, security etc would be greatly appreciated.

xoxo – Robyn

New Year, Never a New Me

Traditionally, I’ve never done change that well. Moving halfway down the country at an early age will do that to you. But throughout 2015, a lot changed, and I think I did pretty okay.

The first major event was moving in with Charlie. We’d been talking about it for a while, but we finally got the cajones to gather up some cash and make the big leap out. It was bittersweet for our parents, but these things have to happen. It’s been nice — really nice. Without getting too mushy about it, I’ve never been so sure that Charlie’s the one for me, even if his vegetarianism means never know the pure joy that is a slice of pepperoni pizza (trust me, that’s a lot of joy). And I’m always excited to see what the next day will have in store for us, whether that’s heading out to some far-flung show or snuggling up on the sofa to watch New Girl.

The other one was the passing of my grandma after a tough battle with cancer. Although my grandparents live hundreds of miles away, it’s left a more profound gap than I anticipated. It’s weird picking up the phone when I’m over at my mum and dad’s and finding it isn’t her on the other side. It’s also a bitter reminder that I was given too little time with my other grandparents as well, and I miss them all so dearly.

And finally, I turned 25. The quarter-century. Sounds like a Hunger Games event. So far, it’s alright.

I’ve got aspirations for the New Year, because everyone does and it’s the right thing to do. My first and foremost priority is to get my health in order, and in typically overdue fashion, shift some pounds. I hate exercise. I spent four hours playing Fallout 4 on the sofa, watching my character run and going ‘yes, good, sprint across the Commonwealth’, enjoying the fact that I didn’t have to exert any effort of my own. I am very good at shooting things on a television. I am at the peak of physical fitness in the virtual world, but I’m drastically out of shape in the real one, so I’m heading to the gym and attempting to stick at it. In the past year, I’ve tried various diets — Slimming World and the 5:2 stand out as the obvious ones — but it’s all bullshit unless you keep at it. I unfortunately like chocolate and bread-based dishes too much. I committed to buying new workout leggings at least, so we’ll see what happens this month.

I also want to make time to see the people that matter to me. I’m good at seeing my family, but my sister now lives three hours down the motorway and we don’t hang out unless she comes home. I’m phenomenally crap at seeing my friends, even when they live in the same town, so now that they’re all further away, I’m effectively a hermit. So I’m working on that, and it’d be great to keep in touch with some of my old university friends, and make more of an effort to make great memories.

My writing has taken a backseat since I moved out, and really, since I started getting a bit more responsibility at work. Although I’m not making any huge promises to myself, I’m going to try and pick up where I left off on TBO with a little column about what music I’m into that month. That’ll be nice, I think.

No matter what the world throws at me, I’m comforted by the fact some things will never change. Approximately one hour into 2016, I smacked my head on the cupboard door getting a glass out. I’m listening to an old Rival Schools record as I write this, rather than something new. I’ve got half a pizza waiting in the kitchen. I will probably stay in my pyjamas playing Fallout 4 until Charlie comes home. And that’s okay — now I’m in my mid-twenties, I’ve learned to cherish who I am. 2016 will come and go, and hopefully, it’ll be filled with all the things I like best — starting with that leftover pizza.

A New Beginning AKA How I Finally Learned To Let Go

My name is Robyn, and I write things. That’s really the crux of this blog, as it is with any blog, really — I wanted a self-proclaimed corner of the internet to massage my ego and let everybody know that I had Things To Say, and I wanted them to be heard. I write things professionally, as a junior marketing consultant, and I write them not professionally, as I have been doing since I first discovered Microsoft Publisher and realised that I could create newsletters for the kids in my street. From the crudely created four-page manifestos of a nine-year-old to the self-indulgent personal essays I used to post on my music blog, I have always needed to find a way to make my voice heard, and as my mouth doesn’t always like to connect with my brain, I decided that being a writer was ultimately, the thing I’ve always meant to be.

Whether I’m meant for writing or not has been the topic of the moment for the past few months. In a professional context, drafting web copy for spa hotels and social media posts about motorsport events has become second nature. But finding the same energy and drive to do it at home, in coffee shops, on trains and aeroplanes has been a constant struggle. I wrote a novel when I was 15, attempted NaNoWriMo numerous times throughout my teens, and was a prolific fiction writer throughout my university years, but over the past twelve months, it feels like the magic’s gone, the imagination’s dried up and the fountain of ideas is long since barren. And that terrifies me.

So, I decided that I had to take positive steps to get my writing life back on track. Nobody was going to do it for me, after all. It meant letting go of broken projects, being stricter with my time and giving myself the creative space I needed to breathe. So, blog — ta dah!

I used to have a website called TwoBeatsOff. It was a music blog, which had a revolving team of contributors, and I worked on it for seven solid years (I thought it was six — I was wrong!) before I decided that I needed to cut ties. And it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I agonised over that one more than I agonised over breaking up with my high school boyfriend. It had been my pet project for years, and although I am not afraid for writing to feel like work, I just couldn’t bring myself to review crappy pop-punk EPs for zero money. I’ve never felt that writing as a whole has to earn me anything, but in that context, I wasn’t prepared to work for free any more. I wasn’t prepared to keep the whole thing floating in a vast sea of exactly the same fucking thing. I’ve archived all of the posts on here — if you feel like dipping into them, please do, there’s some great stuff! — but this blog serves a totally different purpose.

I hope to try and chronicle my way back into writing. I’m attempting to write more fiction, finish off a set of personal essays I started and maybe, just maybe, get into a novel. I play D&D on occasion, but I’d like to actually be the dungeon master for a change, so I’m starting to write my own scenarios and campaigns. I know I’ll never be able to stop writing about music in one way or another, but I plan on doing it on my own terms.

This has been a bit of a mission statement, but it’s good to finally get it all out on paper. Or screen. Or something. Here’s to a fresh start — and probably a good time to learn how to use the espresso machine.