When I was a kid, I had a collection of Trolls – funny little plastic figures with wild hair. One sat on top of my pen for years. I’ve always liked them. But nowadays, online trolls are pure evil. So virulent are Twitter trolls, the counter movement #BeKind has evolved. It’s all too easy to gob off online - a few late-night beers, and from the comfort of your own sofa, nastiness can wing its way into the life of some poor sod you’ve never met. It’s no good saying, ‘but they’re famous’ as a defence. That’s like saying people are asking for it. It horrifies me how personal some of the comments are. Women are slammed for being too fat, too thin, too old, having too much Botox, being frumpy or too sexy. We can’t win. Parenting styles are vilified. Often these comments are from other women. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your spirit. Verbal bullying can be worse than ph...
I’d never heard of NaNoWriMo until I started spending more time on social media during the very brief periods of time between working from home and sobbing aerobically from home for the last nine months, which have felt like nine bloody years . To be honest, I’m very new to social media and have learned all sorts of things in the last year – from NaNoWriMo to Writers Lifts and Pile Ons! If you too are new to all this, NaNoWriMo stands for the National Novel Writing Month and during November, the aim is to write every day a minimum of around 1,6000 words so by the end of the month you have 50,000 words towards a novel. I think it started in the States. This is literally all the information I had, gleaned from one single Tweet I saw on November 1st, although I then became aware of writers (often young and bushy tailed) announcing their daily word totals. Being me (knackered, grey droopy tailed, ...
I’m a very lucky woman. Sometimes I wallow in self-pity and forget it, but mostly I know how lucky I am. I have work, a home, a loving relationship and cats who are loving when it’s feeding time. I’ve been sober for 14 years, although it’s been a close call in lockdown. We’re all lucky. If you’re reading this on a computer, living in a First World country, despite the hellish year many people have endured thanks to COVID, despite our personal tragedies, we are all blessed to have so much more than MOST people on this planet. I’m a survivor and I’m lucky. I’ve supported Action for Children – formerly the National Children’s Home – since I worked at TV-am. I was a researcher on an item talking about child abuse. Daft as it sounds, it hadn’t really sunk in until that point that I’d been abused as a kid – both physically and sexually by several people. Until that moment, talking privately to the charity’...
Comments
Post a Comment