Writing about the pain of loss.

People often maintain that it is therapeutic to write or speak about the devastation felt upon the death of someone very close to you. Just as they say better not to suppress your grief, rather you should let it all out, allow yourself to cry, rant and rave, whatever gives you relief; bottling it up only delays the healing process. But the truth of it is the healing process is slow whatever you do and, where you truly love, can never be wholly complete; years may soften the loss but never entirely eradicate it.  Images, memories, a remembered tune catching us unaware can wipe away, as though they had never been, the in-between years. Each of us copes differently with our separate grief, shocked, saddened and bewildered by the feelings evoked. Seamus Heaney describes such loss in his poetry as being caught broadside, nearly blown away by the suddenness and force of it. Emile Zola speaks of the artist in 'His Masterpiece' who at once turns stricken from his dead child's bedside to begin capturing the image on canvas. In this way we are desperately striving to diffuse the pain, to put order on something that in our hearts we are all too aware is beyond our control.

Nesta's website just updated. See Ebooks!

Pleased to report my website www. nestatuomey.com has just been updated. Now with the addition of the EBook version of my second novel Like One Of The Family' on the EBook page all four titles can be seen with instant linkup to Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble (the Nook) and other suppliers.
Other titles are Up Up and Away my first airline novel. The Straw Hat and Other Stories tales of life, love and conflict  in Provincial Irish towns and The Mask and Other Stories  about sensual, intriguing and feisty  modern Irish women. Check 'em out!

www.amazon.co.uk

Back to work!

Taking another day before getting down to the business of writing. Need more time to think of my characters, put more flesh on them and discover the small things about them only a friend would know. Important to record their ages so I don't get bogged down later when in full flow. Maeve Binchy used always drew up charts listing names, ages and relationships of her characters. Good advice. But I'll probably just plunge in. Ah well, we all have our own method. Some people end up not using their first chapter. Very few are like Gabriel Garcia Marquez who retained the opening lines to his books, never altering a word. Someone once said  the first and last chapters should be discarded as they are all lies anyway. Most would agree using the last chapter to summarise what the book was all about is a mistake!  The main thing is to stop talking about it and, in the words of Sean O'Casey, "Get on with the bloody play!"