Two in one - Failing and Snot

Yesterday's topic was Failing. An investigation into writing junk, recognising it as such and learning to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak. You had to write a full page of trite, repetitive, gushing, clunky, melodramatic junk - the worst gibberish you can muster - then read it through, understand what was so crappy and why you wrote against what you think is 'good' writing. Then scrumple it up, delete it, throw it in the bin - along with your belief in failure.

So, nothing on the page to show for yesterday.

Today is charmingly entitled Snot. Lovely, here goes:

Today, for a minimum of one page, write about snot. Afterward, consider how you felt before you began, as you wrote, and once you were finished. Record your responses. Check if any material emerged (ha ha, ho ho, tee hee!!!) that you could incorporate into a piece you are working on (oh hell, am I meant to be working as well as practising?) Or, list other unmentionable topics you could explore as you write.

Thursday 17th May 2007

Snot (I'm dedicating this one to chickenix!)

A tiny finger holds up a crusty green and brown flake. 'Bogey, Mummy' says the two year old on the other end of the finger. It's a bit like wiping bottoms, cleaning up sick, picking up dog poo, removing wet pants from a clammy little body. It's a job you do through love. You wouldn't take possession of another child's bogey (unless you were being paid). Fiona, the pre-school teacher of the littlest ones was not fazed by the presentation of a bogey. If you choose to work with children it's part and parcel of the job.

A head cold brings more snot that you cold imagine. How can sinuses produce so much or hold so much fluid? Where's it coming from? Hayfever means the same problem. That first day in spring when the trees throw pollen from their shy flowers with gay abandon. That fated visit to a National Trust property for a walk in the garden. You spend most of your time going back and forth to the shop to buy over-priced, over-decorated, under-sized tissues in fiddly little packets. Head full of clear, gushing liquid, eyes full of jelly. Oh, for a proper box of Kleenex Ultra Balm man-size. (Do they still call them that? Isn't it a bit sexist by today's standard? By anyone's standard?)

The healthcare industry thrives on our perennial ability to produce too much snot. Decongestants; nasal sprays and drops; tablets and capsules; tissues, soft and medicated. Tissues that won't dissolve if you trumpet a cup full of soggy, runny goo into them. Pseudoephedrine, the magic ingredient, dries up the mucus. It makes your mouth dry and your heart race and can give you nightmares. None of it really works - I know because I've worked there. We, the marketing people, laughed at the ineffectiveness of Strepsils. Expensive, unpleasant sweeties for hypochondriacs. All the free Nurofen you could swallow wasn't a bad perk, though. Liver damage ahoy!

Bogeys, boogers, mucus, phlegm, snot. Hideous connotations, unpleasant words. The Americans even have Eye Boogers, I recently read about them in a rather enlightening copy of US Cosmo I found on the train. Eye boogers - the advice to avoid them was don't wear back eyeliner inside the rim. It's what we've always called 'sleep'. It's unavoidable - anything that is constantly lubricated like the eyeball produces an excess of used fluid and expels it. It's all mucus. Up the nose, in the eye, and errm... elsewhere. Ahem. So basically snot by another name. Charming.

Which me brings me on to the last point in today's exercise - other unmentionables. My novel won't have sex scenes. Allusions are enough. Can't do it, don't want to, won't, shan't. Snot's bad enough - but oh, I'm having the vapours thinking about the rest. Shudder. Willies and such are best left to the fertile plains of the imagination. Look at what happened to poor old Alan Titchmarsh when he wrote a 'tender' sex scene in a novel - ridiculed on TV and in the press and presented with a 'bad sex' award. Bless. Didn't stop him writing more though, nor people buying his books. Hmmm, on second thoughts... "Her heaving bosom flushed crimson with desire. A stirring in his Y-fronts reminded him she was a right goer... "Take me, Derek!" she panted. "Oh, Val, yer a saucy sort" he grunted, advancing on her, one hand fumbling in his pocket and the other reaching for her purple nylon thong ...

Oops, yesterday's trash seems to be repeating on me.