WHERE DOES TIME GO?
It seems only yesterday I was hanging up my receptionist’s uniform for a life of baggy house clothes and endless hours of sitting at my pc – with a couple of housewifely duties thrown in for good measure. {Well, got to keep the troops happy, I suppose.}
Summer is just around the corner – at least it is supposed to be. If volcanic ash disruption is not enough to tax the poor, weary travelers, this week the tourists were met by torrential rain and Cecil B De Mille thunderstorms. And let’s not forget the reams of irresponsible reporting from supposedly esteemed news agencies. CNN, BBC…shame on you. Greece is not a country in chaos. The streets of Athens are not running amok with anarchists and violence.
For us Corfiots, our summer life is so different from our winter. The majority of folk, here, are employed seasonally. Working in the tourist industry means long hours, often seven days a week…. and for not much financial reward. It is, however, a time for long, balmy evenings relaxing on the veranda or down at our favourite coffee shop, sipping on ice-cold beer or chilled wine. There is something about hot days and sultry nights that brings out the muse in me. This is the time when I get creative, when I feel ‘romantic’. It’s when I fall in ‘love’ with male character.
I am old-school. I love to feel pen and paper in hand. It makes my work seem more personal. Somehow, when I transfer to pc, I detach. My ‘art’ then becomes ‘craft’ as I get down to the nitty-gritty of editing, formatting, subbing etc.
In the quiet afternoon shift behind my hotel reception desk, I sit, writing pad on my knee, one eye trained on the entrance lest my boss arrive and wonder why he’s paying me to write ‘malakie-es’ {Greek for….best you don’t know}. The pages are a mass of scribble that would challenge the Rosetta stone but it is my baby or as Golem would say…my precious. I am possessive, totally immersed in my story. Believe me, I have tried many times to write straight on to pc but I cannot. The words do not come.
Now – fast forward to October. Novel finished and a stack of coffee-stained, ink-smudged A4 waits on my desk, begging to be transferred into something resembling a legible WIP. Stage two begins….. To be continued.
