I see the Norwegian sea...

...which is of course the same as the Aberdonian sea except clearer and closer to my face as it is currently lapping up against the flat I'm staying in right now!

I arrived in Stavanger on Friday and spent the weekend in an awfully posh hotel as Mr Alan Wilson had left his flat keys in London where he was away on business. Silly boy! However, we made good use of the comfiest bed ever invented and I enjoyed generally finding my feet in the city centre. Everyone who knows me knows how useless I am with directions so I have already been lost approximately 812 times.

Today is my first day in Alan's flat so while he is at work I thought I should update this.

It is amazing being this close to the sea and everytime I lift my head up from typing there seems to be a new boat sailing past. The sky has been so clear since I arrived and apart from the freezing cold (which serves me right for forgetting any sort of winter wear) the weather and the scenery has been lovely.

I miss Laura and the cats immensely but this is okay. It's good to miss people and things and it gives me time to appreciate what I have.

It's good to have time time away. To be alone and to enjoy the silence and the pace that life should always be. Norwegians apparently enjoy a slower pace. No-one seems to be rushing anywhere and on Sundays practically everything is closed so people go for walks and just enjoy the simpler things in life. I like this.

I'm hoping to work on a fair bit of writing while I'm out here. I'm reading some Janet Frame and some Miranda July and trying to get myself into a headspace where my work is truly fictionalised. I think it's important to try and think out with oneself and that these things can be hard when real life (work etc.) is constantly in the way and you and your life is constantly in your thoughts.

I find myself getting consistently more and more annoyed with the way some writers I am reading just now (mostly newer writers, online and such) feel the need to dramatise every single word. I believe that trying to bring so much art and meaning to every syllable can get in the way of simply good storytelling. From personal experience I know that the stories I have read that have changed me the most are about the most mundane yet universal themes.

I am interested right now in the silence of people. How to describe people and situations without any dialogue. This is frustrating to me as someone who likes to write as I find my chosen medium so limiting yet it's all I can see and it's all that I understand and all that I want to understand.

I used to wish that I could appreciate visual art and music in the way that I do words. However, now that I have this I find that words can't communicate art and they can't communicate music effectively the way that art and music can enhance words.

Maybe I need to start working with all three, or maybe I need to realise my own limitations.

I'll keep trying for now. (this is not a dramatic sentence, k?)