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| "My friends only wanted to hear about it if I’d been scorned by my tempestuous mistress" |
I figured I deserved a break and that I should start to enjoy my evenings again instead of working and writing, working and writing. In that time, I discovered a supremely enjoyable but wonderfully challenging, hard and painful thing called Crossfit and, for the second time in my life, writing took a backseat as I flirted with a new, more exciting, physically rewarding love.
I was soon being ridiculed for how much I talked about my newfound obsession and after a while my friends only wanted to hear about it if I’d fallen off a treadmill, smacked my face or otherwise been scorned by my tempestuous mistress. Ever the defender of my great loves, I didn’t have the heart to break it to them that Crossfit didn’t actually involve any running on treadmills as that would go against its fundamental mantra of functional movements. Hmm. No wonder they made fun of me.
When the honeymoon period with Crossfit wore off (though I still can’t cut the ties fully and continue to flirt with the old girl a few times a week), I returned to the writing game, with a renewed confidence and vigour. I started by re-reading the novel and tweaking as I went. (That’s tweaking not twerking. Twerking wasn’t invented then). I initially thought that it was going to be painfully slow and a bit embarrassing to see my innermost thoughts and ideas on paper but it was such an important and cathartic part of the process. I came across a lot of errors and felt that it wasn’t really written the way I would like. So I played around, added stuff (technical writing term there ladies and gents), built up the characters and managed to make the story feel more true to what I had wanted.
Throughout my first rewrite, I spent a lot of time looking up correct grammar usage, researching syntax, subplots, soliloquies and alliteration (pun intended!) but quickly realised I am not a grammatical expert and, despite trying to give the prose my closest attention to detail, I knew I needed some extra eyes to read over what I had written. I put out a call to action to my network - i.e. updated my status on Facebook - to find an editor, and in a neat but totally true coincidence a friend from Crossfit volunteered to help in lieu of copious amounts of red wine. A deal was struck and I handed the story over to Colleen.
Waiting for the return of the book was a nervous time: What would she think? What if I’ve spent all this time and energy and it’s no good? What if wine turns out not to be payment enough to trawl through pages and pages of my storytelling? Luckily, and to reassure you all that it’s worth a read, I am pleased to say the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and Colleen’s comments have only added to the richness of the story I was trying to tell. Prior to this, I have had only five other people read through the book and give me some valuable feedback: So I thank Lisa, Tilly, Gareth, Sophie and Lindsey for their constructive comments and enthusiasm for what I’m trying to achieve.
While Colleen was editing the book I took the opportunity to relax and enjoy the welcoming (and very muscly) arms of Crossfit, and it’s there that I came up with the title. A twist on a lyric from one of my favourite tunes and a lyric one of my closest friends is particularly fond of, ladies and gentleman, I introduce to you ‘Tattoos of Memories’.
But you can’t read it just yet, it’s not quite ready.
Written by Corina Hawkins, soon to be author of ‘Tattoos of memories’ and creatively bossed by Lindsey Barnett, who is a legend. Photo from Crossfit 6100 in East Victoria Park.
