Dozy Writes

Hello and thanks for visiting. My name is Donna (a.k.a. Dozy) and I have set up this site as a space for my creative endeavours.

I have always enjoyed writing and over the years I have written many short stories, some longer stories, pieces of poetry as well as countless business reports. Two years ago, I decided to leave the world of human resources and higher education behind so I could write a NOVEL. Yes, I know, it’s a big statement.

Writing a novel wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do, I also planned to travel and catch up with all of the people I never got the chance to see because I was too busy working like crazy. After I finished work, I pottered around for a while spending time with friends and family and enjoying the time to breathe away from work. In truth, I’d become pretty burnt out during my final year in my job so having some time to recuperate was invaluable.

After a couple of months I decided it was time to start working properly on my novel. I’d had a loose idea sketched out for over a year but had never had the time to focus on it so this was my opportunity now to become a writer.

Naturally, I decided to follow the writer stereotype checklist to ensure best results:

• Attic apartment by the seaside
• Floral dressing gown
• Hair in a messy bun
• Scholarly spectacles

Two weeks into my retreat I surveyed the sum total of my work: 1734 words. Seriously, I’d written more words in an email. I wasn’t naive enough to think writing a novel was easy but I’d written two thirds of a novel 20 odd years ago and it seemed to flow quite easily that time so why wasn’t it flowing now? 

Well, it seems that the 2020s are quite a different beast to the noughties. 

Quick query: when do we start referring to this decade as just the 20s? When someone references the 20s I still think of Josephine Baker, Charlie Chaplin and Al Capone rather than Drake, Taylor Swift and Paul Mescal.

It turns out that there are a lot more distractions in the 2020s than there were in the noughties. It further turns out that I’m very good at getting distracted, one might almost call it my top skill although I’m not sure that I will add it to my LinkedIn profile.  

I have provided a top ten list of my distractions whilst trying to write which I compiled a couple of years ago but are still relevant today.

1. Watching cute dog videos on social media
2. Playing games on my phone
3. Binge watching TV series
4. Messaging my pals through one of the gazillion apps we use to communicate with each other
5. Reading other people’s magnificent pieces of writing i.e. reading books
6. Calculating my menstrual dates (not as easy as you might imagine given that I am perimenopausal)
7. Eating snacks
8. Afternoon napping
9. Doodling with my selection of BIC 4 colour retractable ball pens
10. Making lists

In an effort to address this, I decided it would be good to have another project that I could work on, thus letting me focus on something else whilst ideas for my novel churned away in the background of my mind. However, I do have a tendency to get a little bit too enthusiastic and before I knew it, I had about 15 million different projects on the go and only one or two of those were anywhere close to being finished.

My partner (henceforth referred to as A.P.) wondered if I perhaps, possibly might be delaying the act of sharing my writing because of my tendency towards perfectionism or possibly even because I was feeling somewhat fearful? Naturally, I had to prove him wrong but first I had to address my concern about how honest I should be when I’m sharing some of my writing online. 

I am an open book and I will happily share my life experiences with most people I meet. The idea of doing that online seems like a different concept somehow but the idea of holding back also feels wrong to me so I wasn’t sure where to draw the line. 

I shared this concern with A.P. and he reassured me that there isn’t actually an Information Commissioner monitoring how much I choose to reveal about myself. Apparently the Information Commissioner’s Office only monitors public bodies so I am perfectly entitled to choose what I want to publish. 

So, I’ve decided to share some essay, article-type musings that I’m working on as it will give me the impetus to get them finished. My first article, The Lost Art of the Phone Call, is now live and others are in progress as we speak.

In addition, I will be writing a blog post on a regular basis but not like the modern idea of regular which seems to be every 30 seconds. I’m thinking more like the 1990s idea of regular so probably every week to 10 days. 

I also plan to gradually share some information about some other creative projects that I’m working on which are varied and diverse. I’ve always joked that I’m “a jack of all trades and master of none”, a bit of a dig at myself for getting bored at the idea of specialising in anything but it’s only in recent years that I discovered the full version of that quote:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.” ~ William Shakespeare

So here’s to being a jack of all trades, and hopefully my musings will entertain you in some small way.