An Assortment of 'Picky Bits'

Quick and stress-free writing ideas for when you just need to get through the day.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

A few days back I woke early, sometime just after dawn. There was a hazy corona of sunlight around the curtains, and the loud chatter of birdsong beyond, as if a hundred feathered households were arguing over breakfast.

There was the usual routine. Put the coffee on. Stretches and exercises. Reading emails and making a list of tasks for the day. But I could feel an undercurrent in me, an internal restless jangling. A sure sign it was going to be one of those days, when I should be focused, working and productive, but instead my mind would be like the birds outside, flitting around, ceaselessly moving.

I sighed, sat at my desk, and began the battle.

***

My mum, at dinner time when I was child, had a particular sigh when she was tired and irritable and faced with having to make food for me, my sister, my dad. That sigh, given as she stood arms folded, or wiping them on a tea towel, said this: “I’m fed up. I have no energy for this, I don’t want to have to think of cooking. I want to lie down and go to sleep. I want to take myself away, walk out of the house, be alone.”

Sometimes there was a variation. She would stand in front of the fridge, holding the door open, her eyes scanning up and down, up and down. Eventually she would puff out her cheeks. This sigh would be long and slow.

I knew what it all meant. Either the darker path, where dinner would be a meal made fast and loose, grudgingly served. And if we didn’t finish every scrap, there would be hell to pay.

Or the lighter path, where I said I wasn’t that hungry, really, and maybe we could just have some picky bits?

***

Picky bits? A British colloquial term for a casual, thrown together meal of leftovers and snacks. Things fished from the back of a cupboard, foods that pass the smell test. It’s fridge grazing but sat at a table. It’s tapas without the attention to detail.

***

I had a meal of picky bits yesterday for lunch, after a morning of procrastination and sighing and attempting one job only to abandon it for another.

I remembered my mum’s tired sighs as I ate. And from that connection, an idea formed. I opened up a blank document, and begin to write this piece. The longer post I have been editing can wait. I’m celebrating my picky bits day by giving you the same. Just some bite sized writing things that won’t feel like a huge meal of a project to complete. A few things you can graze on, enough to feel like you’ve done some writerly productiveness.

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There’s a selection of writing-related ideas beneath the paywall below for my paid subscribers.

But if you want a bit of story time in your day and only have 15 minutes spare, then you can listen to my latest short story, Snowbirds and Coyotes, commissioned by the BBC, now on BBC Sounds or via the bbc.co.uk website.

For listeners outside the UK, I think you may be able to listen via BBC.com or the BBC app, but don’t quote me on that!