I got back and quickly showered and grabbed some cornflakes and coffee and signed onto Zoom for my Arvon at Home which was "How to write anything" by David Quantick and was very different, less structured exercises and much more basically how to commercialise your career as a writer and importantly reassurances that to be a writer you just have to write. Writing is like exercise and the more you do it the easier it gets and that you should do it every day. There was a Q&A that we got to ask questions at the end and he answered them swiftly and slightly flippantly, but basically the big takeaway was to just crack on and write. There was an exercise that I wasn't overly sure I did very well and I found hard and this was it:
1.
Invent a character using two adjectives only -
eg “Jon is cowardly and romantic.”
2.
What do they think they want? Eg “Jon wants to
find a knight in shining armour.”
3.
What do they actually need? Eg “Jon needs to
find his fight and win it.”
4.
Now put them in a story. Describe that story in
two lines. “Jon is in love with his boss but his boss is a bully who sets him a
morally wrong task. Will Jon do the right thing?”
5.
Now make that story a novel. Describe that novel
in one line. “The story of a man who has to learn that love is never
unconditional.”
6. Now make that story a sitcom. Describe that sitcom in one line. “Jon loves his boss who makes him do terrible things and needs to grow some bravery.”
7. Now make that story a movie. Describe that movie in one line. “When Jon falls in love with his new boss, he has to decide – spend his life dreaming of what will never be or stand up to an evil bully.”
Lauren was also in the class and seemed to enjoy it too and mentioned she'd listened to him speaking before.Alan made lunch a pasta bake with some smoked mossarella cheese that he had bought and brought it up for me with the padron peppers as well. I ate some upstairs whilst the class was finishing and then went downstairs and faffed around for a bit packing up my Garmin to deliver to Curtis who lived over in North Leeds and drove over to see Hayley for a chat first.
I had to fill up my car with petrol for the first time since the 29th March, it's a hybrid and I've not really done many longer journeys in it so most of the mileage since March has been on the electric charge. As Alan suggested I chose to go to a pay at pump place at Asda on York road so that I didn't have to worry about social distancing. I called and chatted to both my mum and dad on the way over and they seem to be doing ok.
I then headed over to Hayley and we sat in the garden chatting and watching goldfinches, sparrows and angry pigeons and she gave me a karma cola to drink. We had a really good chat and then she was getting ready to have tea and teach a class. I've been taking advantage of her proximity as she will soon be living more like an hour and a half away on the coast.
I drove over to deliver my Garmin to Curtis who had purchased it in an auction and I'd donated the money to Selby food bank. He has recently taken up the hobby of beekeeping and so I kept my mask on and went to take a look at the hive with the bees, it was very exciting!
I drove home (really needing a wee at this point as I don't like trying to use other people's toilets at the moment if I can avoid it) and when I got back Alan had more or less finished making Carribean lamb and rice for dinner and so I quickly watered the plants and we sat in the garden and ate tea and I had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from Naked Wines and Alan had a ginger beer as the diagnosis from the doc was that he needed some strong antihistamines so he'd been to pick them up from the pharmacy in the village and so was avoiding alcohol.
I tided the kitchen listening to some more of "I heart Las Vegas" hung the washing out and then sat with Alan to watch some Peep Show and eat some ice cream. I also had another ice lolly.
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