About a woman who, having scored a hit with her first novel, is searching for inspiration to replace the utter flop she submitted as her sequel. she employs an age old tradition of complete boredom in the hope ideas would flow. Unfortunately, she couldn't still her mind enough for the flow to start, until.....
As I read it, I thought back to my childhood and my mother's response to my cry of, "I'm bored, what can I do?"
Her answer was always the same; she'd suggest I went upstairs into my 'playroom' ( a small box room filled with a wall to wall desk, cupboards, shelves and all the paper, pencils and other crafting stuff a child could ever want) and find something to do.
Boredom is a great creator; with nothing in its way, the right hand side of the brain kicks in, and ideas in pictures, sounds and feeling come out to stimulate the vocal mind.
It was during these moments, which quickly turned into hours, I taught myself how to make and create in papier-mache, how to use inks to 'colour' black and white photographs as the Victorians had done, how to sew dresses for my Cindy doll, how to use poster paints mixed with glue, glazing paste and sand to give a different textures, how a birds breast feather was attached using fishing lure feathers and glue.....so many different techniques and ideas, I wouldn't be able to list them all here, but safe to say, I would have failed to experiment and develop these skills if I had been stuck watching the TV, Netflix or a video game.
During the summer, boredom would lead me outside into the garden to create tents out of tarpaulins and my mother would bring out sandwiches and squash so I could play picnics with my teddies.
As I grew older I would take myself off for a walk into Shaw's farm and watch the cows, the chickens and listen to the ducks on the millpond.
It wasn't idyllic at all, the place hummed with the smells of a farm and I was continuously wary of the farmers dogs and tractors. The lane up to the farm skirted the crematorium and often the white smoke would be coming out of the chimney.
If the farmer at the bottom of the hill had turn the pig muck heap, the stench was gut-wrenching and on days like that, the bike and a few friends would translate any boredom into camps in the hawthorn shrubs, chasing each other in glorious games of 'IT', the dogs chasing at our heels keeping us safe from any unwelcome visitors and herding us together so none of us strayed far.
Boredom gave us imagination and once that had hit home in all its glory, it morphed into creating go-carts, small sail boats which we raced on the pond, and later, doing up old engines to put into racers, ab-sailing off the roofs of our houses (no, our mum's would shout at us if they caught us), bartering games, hula hoop challenges, skating...........
What made us different from today's youngsters?
We were allowed to get bored and find something more interesting to do instead.
How did it effect us?
We all became good at writing from our imagination but also from our memories which we made every day we went out and played. And now? Even in my 60s I never have time to be bored. As soon as I have nothing to do which is mundane and necessary the radio/TV/phone/internet all goes off and I allow my mind to wander.
So far I've taught myself how to podcast, how to blog, paint and draw, travel the world and explore, make cards for birthdays and Christmas, garden, grow orchids, study politics, train as an nlp master and am now thinking of creating a sounds archive with social history relevance for the future generations of social scientists who will comb the net for such inspiration of the past.
And let's face it, I'm writing this blog now when I could be glued to the TV or watching Netflix or playing a game on my phone........ but what's more entertaining? For some of you I suspect the thought of doing something like this would be the last thing you'd want to do, but if you have very young children who are not already addicted to the phone or the tablet, may I suggest playing with them?
Get some paper and coloured pencils, draw silly things and play the guessing game...what have I drawn? Or what am I thinking about? Or get a board game and play it for a while.
Sadly, parents fret they are not giving their children the very best of everything materialistic in life and forgetting the very basic gift of all,
Imagination.
Her answer was always the same; she'd suggest I went upstairs into my 'playroom' ( a small box room filled with a wall to wall desk, cupboards, shelves and all the paper, pencils and other crafting stuff a child could ever want) and find something to do.
Boredom is a great creator; with nothing in its way, the right hand side of the brain kicks in, and ideas in pictures, sounds and feeling come out to stimulate the vocal mind.
It was during these moments, which quickly turned into hours, I taught myself how to make and create in papier-mache, how to use inks to 'colour' black and white photographs as the Victorians had done, how to sew dresses for my Cindy doll, how to use poster paints mixed with glue, glazing paste and sand to give a different textures, how a birds breast feather was attached using fishing lure feathers and glue.....so many different techniques and ideas, I wouldn't be able to list them all here, but safe to say, I would have failed to experiment and develop these skills if I had been stuck watching the TV, Netflix or a video game.
During the summer, boredom would lead me outside into the garden to create tents out of tarpaulins and my mother would bring out sandwiches and squash so I could play picnics with my teddies.
As I grew older I would take myself off for a walk into Shaw's farm and watch the cows, the chickens and listen to the ducks on the millpond.
It wasn't idyllic at all, the place hummed with the smells of a farm and I was continuously wary of the farmers dogs and tractors. The lane up to the farm skirted the crematorium and often the white smoke would be coming out of the chimney.
If the farmer at the bottom of the hill had turn the pig muck heap, the stench was gut-wrenching and on days like that, the bike and a few friends would translate any boredom into camps in the hawthorn shrubs, chasing each other in glorious games of 'IT', the dogs chasing at our heels keeping us safe from any unwelcome visitors and herding us together so none of us strayed far.
Boredom gave us imagination and once that had hit home in all its glory, it morphed into creating go-carts, small sail boats which we raced on the pond, and later, doing up old engines to put into racers, ab-sailing off the roofs of our houses (no, our mum's would shout at us if they caught us), bartering games, hula hoop challenges, skating...........
What made us different from today's youngsters?
We were allowed to get bored and find something more interesting to do instead.
How did it effect us?
We all became good at writing from our imagination but also from our memories which we made every day we went out and played. And now? Even in my 60s I never have time to be bored. As soon as I have nothing to do which is mundane and necessary the radio/TV/phone/internet all goes off and I allow my mind to wander.
So far I've taught myself how to podcast, how to blog, paint and draw, travel the world and explore, make cards for birthdays and Christmas, garden, grow orchids, study politics, train as an nlp master and am now thinking of creating a sounds archive with social history relevance for the future generations of social scientists who will comb the net for such inspiration of the past.
And let's face it, I'm writing this blog now when I could be glued to the TV or watching Netflix or playing a game on my phone........ but what's more entertaining? For some of you I suspect the thought of doing something like this would be the last thing you'd want to do, but if you have very young children who are not already addicted to the phone or the tablet, may I suggest playing with them?
Get some paper and coloured pencils, draw silly things and play the guessing game...what have I drawn? Or what am I thinking about? Or get a board game and play it for a while.
Sadly, parents fret they are not giving their children the very best of everything materialistic in life and forgetting the very basic gift of all,
Imagination.