Category: Writing

  • One Year of #Periodically: Sharing is Caring | #Periodically 27

    One Year of #Periodically: Sharing is Caring | #Periodically 27

    Fanfare alert: it’s been one whole year since I published the first #Periodically blog on Fictitiously Hilary. This marks my 27th blog about my menstrual, gynaecological and all together grossly overshared health. If truth be told, I can’t believe it’s only been a year, it’s been a bit of a mad one.

    So much has happened in the last 12 months, and, as I mentioned last week, writing the #Periodically blogs has given some really awful situations a positive edge. Writing about this never-ending shit-storm has meant I’ve actually got something from the shit-storm. The year would have been a bit of a downer without it.

    Health wise, the last twelve months have seen me hate the pill, have eliminating surgery, an infected bellybutton (nice!), cysts, cyst, no cysts, vaginismus (that was a curveball), counselling, stop running, start yoga, give up sex, several very painful pelvic exams, four very painful ultrasounds, anaemia (another curveball), one trip to the emergency gynae unit, going back on the pill, almost liking the pill, hating the pill again and going on pain eliminating antidepressants. It’s remarkable, but not all that surprising, that I have had so much medical intervention in the last 12 months without reaching a stable diagnosis or any reliable resolution. It’s also pretty distressing to think that things at this point are probably a little worse than they were a year ago. On the bright side, I’m incredibly fortunate that all this medical intervention, except prescriptions since leaving Wales, hasn’t directly cost me a penny! #SaveOurNHS 

    I say directly because my health has cost me financially. The increase in doctors appointments and pain last autumn undoubtedly influenced my decision to go freelance but I don’t regret that decision for a second. I graduated last July, spent four weeks in South America (including a struggle with altitude sickness that makes so much more sense now I know I was anaemic), before having the op and then deciding to go freelance.

    Going freelance straight from university was an awful idea, I knew it was at the time, but #Periodically has been a huge part of my freelance “success” (as in I’m still alive). While I haven’t monetized the blog, #Periodically has opened up so many doors, from top-secret projects that are going to change the world, to helping me get accepted onto the masters course I’ll be starting in September. It’s also let me meet some amazing people, from Period Poverty activists like Mandu Reid and Gabby Edlin (who I met in a toilet of all places), to entrepreneurs and game-changers in female health.

    From time to time, #Periodically has also veered away from my personal experiences and into other things, like femtech and menstrual cup reviews, as well as reviews of books like Sweetening the Pill and It’s Only Blood. The most popular blogs, ‘Does being anti-pill make me a bad feminist?’ and ‘My experience using Natural Cycles,’ combine review and personal experience — something I hope I can do more of in the future.

    In the first #Periodically I wrote, “I don’t want to write about it after the fact, because after the fact might not be for a long time. I want to write about it while it is happening,” and THANK GOD I had that mentality. Who knows when the end of this saga will come, but by sharing my experience, often in TMI detail, collaborating and campaigning I feel like I’ve got so much more from this year than just pain and frustrating doctors appointments. I hope the blogs can help make a few more people sit up and take female health, particularly menstrual health, even the tiniest bit more seriously.

    Thank you so much for reading and sharing the #Periodically blogs, especially if you were only here for book-talk. I have no idea where me or #Periodically will be in another 12 months time, but I can say with some confidence that things are probably going to get weird. 

    My favourite #Periodically is still #Periodically 4, check it out here: “Conversations with Doctors That Shouldn’t Have Happened”. 

  • A Note on Writer’s & Reader’s Block

    A Note on Writer’s & Reader’s Block

    Inspiration has been a hard match to strike this week. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I’m working on a slightly different (and secret!) project at the moment and I’m pumped for that, but when it comes to reading and writing, my usual motivations have simmered. So true to form, I thought I’d write about it (does that mean I’m over it already?!) Writer’s block is something I know all too well and I find mixing projects up helps a lot, but reader’s block is not something I’ve experienced before.

    When it comes to reading I knew my 2018 reading goal of 65 books was going to be tough. So to try and counter disappointment at the end of the year, I thought that if I go super hard in the first couple of months of 2018 then I can take it easy for the rest of the year. I’ve succeeded with this plan, I’m writing this on February 23 and I’m on my 14th book of the year. But this ‘success’ has come at a price. I’m finding it a little hard to concentrate on what I’m reading. Last weekend I found myself not loving Ali Smith’s How to be Both, which surprised me because I loved Girl Meets Boy. I was worried that I would have liked it more if my mind was less on the deadline of how many books can I squeeze into February and more on the content, characters and writing of the book. I think I succeeded in rectifying the problem though: I followed How to be Both with Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I haven’t read it in years but a children’s book demands a little less brain power and offers a lot of entertainment. It shifted my brain back into the reading for pleasure zone. I’m now purposely making slow progress through Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. However many books I read in March, I hope I stop competing with myself and just enjoy the brilliant books waiting for me on my TBR pile.

    As far as writer’s block goes it’s been a mixed bag. Creatively, things are good – things are happening. I’ve been getting my novels out there to agents and feeling positive about what I’m submitting. I’m even working on a play, as promised. In fact, I’m even more inspired about it after having seen Fran Bushe’s one-woman show Ad Libido at Vault Festival last night, where I had this exact magical Gilmore moment:

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    The problem this week has been with non-fiction and journalism. This poses a slight problem given that it’s my source of income. Last week an article I wrote about pubic hair was published on Repro Justice, you can read it here. I loved writing it and have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations I’ve had because of it, but ideas for the next article and/or blog are playing hard to get. That being said, if there are any blogs you’d like to see from me or reviews you’d like to read, please let me know!

    Get in touch if your brain’s switched off in inconvenient places this week, then I won’t be alone in my frustration, and if you are facing a wall too, I can confirm that there is always a way around it, even if you have to tear it down with your bare hands. Anyway, I’m confident that my normal levels of reading, writing and loving both will be back soon. And don’t worry, if it doesn’t come back soon I’ll be sure to blame it on the pill.

  • Writing Resolutions 2018

    Writing Resolutions 2018

    I promised I was going to write this blog last year and never did, and I’ve tried to write this year’s a couple of times and failed at that too. Why am I hesitant? Because of what I want my resolutions to be and the repercussions of someone as stubborn as me ensuring that I follow through with them…

    Writing Resolutions for the year 2018

    The first one is nice and simple. To write a play. I only recently noticed that my favourite classes at university were often the drama-centric ones, and that a fairly large percentage of my reading habits are made up of plays. There’s obviously nothing like seeing a play dramatised on stage, but I take a surprising amount of pleasure in reading plays (probably because I perform them for myself like one-woman shows – I recently did this with Fleabag). So yes, in 2018 I would like to write a play. Long or short, tragedy or comedy – whatever, I’d just like to give it a go.

    The second and final resolution (less is more, right?) is to publish something. Whether it be this as-yet unwritten play, the novel I wrote a year or two ago (Project 27) or the novella I am in the process of finishing, I want to publish something. The latter novella is something I’ve been meaning to mention. I accidentally wrote it in November and have been tweaking it since. Dare I say I think it’s actually alright? Anyway, since I keep jabbering on about the fact I have now written a couple of things, my family and friends are getting (understandably?) frustrated that I won’t let them read any of it.

    Half of my feelings on this are “it’s my novel, piss off,” which is obviously a very mature and diplomatic response. A quarter of them are “I will share it but it doesn’t feel like time yet,” which translates as “no literary agents or publishers have taken the bait yet and I’m not ready to self-publish”. And the final quarter of them are “well go on then, what’s the worst that can happen?” At which point I begin to imagine all the possible horrible things that could and might happen in the event that I publish either of these fictional works.

    But these are all issues I need to get over and I think 2018 might be the year to get over them. If no publishers or agents have expressed any interest in the works by the end of the year and I still think they’re good, then I will seriously consider self-publication (talking myself out of it already aren’t I?) I’m hoping my unyielding fear of doing it myself will motivate me to really sell one or both of the books to the winning agent or publisher this year and that something might come of all my time cooped up with this computer. For Christmas I received the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2018, which I hope will help with my search for my agent OTP.

    As gratifying it is for me to know I’ve written fiction that I think is good and being chuffed with what I’ve achieved, it doesn’t make me any money, it doesn’t shut my family up, and it doesn’t satisfy a huge part of my motivation to write – to be read.

    On that rational note… Happy New Year, again! I hope 2018 is going well for you all. Let me know what blogs you’re interested in seeing this year. More or less #Periodically, for example? Head over to my Instagram to see what I’m currently reading and what other books I got for Christmas.

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    Winston was reluctant to help me get a thumbnail for the blog