It takes a year to slow down and see the world!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Last week I felt a strong urge to visit an old friend of mine, someone I haven’t been in a long time. No, that wasn’t a spelling mistake. Said friend is me, living alone, focused completely on my writing. I love my wife and dog, so I’m willing to merely touch that other world writers go to, when left to their own devices. A netherland of ideas and dreams, we slip in and out of it all the time. Everyone I live with has to put up with me shrieking “Yeeaaarrrgghhh!” when they do something as radical as entering the kitchen.

Some in the past have felt offended that I reacted with shock to their presence. Others even stamped their feet and cried “I f***ing live here!” in justifiable frustration.

Thankfully, the Snapper understands and doesn’t get upset. To the unaware, it looks a hell of a lot like I’m just cooking, or wiping down a sideboard, but really I’m off, lost in paragraphs to come, paddling my creative canoe down rivers of imagination.

Oooh, and hasn’t he gone all fancy shmancy!

Others might say ‘head up the backside.’

You decide.

One story that fell out of me recently came with a strangely powerful voice, and for the last few weeks I’ve been getting more and more excited about applying that voice to other stories I’ve already started.

Hence for the last four days and another three to come, I’m off away, on my own in a little house in the big sky splendour of Ballycroy National Park.

Right now, the northerly wind that’s howling under the door has blown the clouds off the mountains. I’m sitting where I have sat for hours each day, writing at the kitchen table, under a roof pounded by rhythmic waves of summer rain.

Nine years have passed since I focused on my own work. Between freelance writing, contemplating my navel, and teaching (my next Craft of Writing Course starts September 7, so book early to guarantee your place: cadley1@eircom.net), I’ve created little.

Now it is pouring onto the screen, and I’m not stopping to read it.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.