a gift to myself

I've been going great guns with my photography in the last year and I've even been doing a teeny tiny bit of art but while I was reading Poemcrazy and Foolsgold (by Susan Wooldridge) around Christmas it struck me just how much my writing has really fallen by the wayside. I have an awful lot of words swirling around inside me that would probably benefit by being released into the ether ... you never know, it could even help quieten down my monkey mind a notch.

Serendipitously enough I recently opened my regular helping of 'secret sauce' from Sophie Nicholls (a friend of a friend who is a professional hypnotherapist and passionate about creative writing). The newsletter announced the launch of Sophie's e-book 'Hypnotic Journaling' ... now I can't emphasise enough how cynical I am about e-books ... in my experience 99.9% of the e-books I stumble across on the web look like the author is pulling a fast one and trying to trick me into buying the book equivalent of the emporer's new clothes. But having met Sophie earlier at a party last summer (she was lovely, I was slightly tipsy) I decided to throw caution to the wind and treat myself to it in a spirit of 'new year, new me'. I downloaded the e-book the other day and I'm already loving the warmth of Sophie's writing style. I'm being strict with myself and not reading any more until I've done the first exercise but I'll let you (my imaginary blog audience) know how I get on :-) In the past I've had a tendency to greedily race through books without doing the exercises so I can always tell just how good a book is by whether it inspires me to stop and put pen to paper instead of racing to the finishing line telling myself I'll go back and finish the blanks in later, which of course I never do!