This is my blog and I can write what I like

Sometimes I lose confidence with my blog, and then I don’t write a post (like yesterday). When this happens, it’s usually to do with self-consciousness (e.g. will my sister think I’m boring? will my brother think I’m revealing too much?)

When I feel like this, I should remember

• that it’s my blog, and no-one else’s and I can write what I like
• that my favourite blog is The Scent of Water, and I like it because the writer writes what she thinks and feels, and she writes about trivia as well as big LIFE questions, because, like me, she is a “lifelong devotee to the beauty of the quotidian.”
• that in the words of Kurt Vonnegut (correct me if it was not him) said we should write as if we are writing to one specific person, and not to the whole world. And yes, I know he wasn’t talking about blogging, and that when you’re blogging, you are in fact writing to the whole world (!) but I think it’s a sound principle nevertheless. For example, when I’m writing PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS, I’m writing to Jane (Linfoot). But when I’m blogging, I’m writing to a dear blog reader who likes to hear what I have to say, whatever it’s about.

Here is a picture of something that made my day yesterday – a present from my daughter, Zoe. Zoe designed the card for the front of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. With this mug, she was trying out a method of decorating china. She said that when it went in the oven, the writing was bright red, just like the writing on my book cover, and the line inside the rim was the same colour as my book cover, so she was disappointed with how it turned out.

I’m not! I love it to bits!

(and the brown marks on the china are drips of tea from this morning – not mistakes.)

Isn’t she creative?