Friday 4th November 2011
Writing
1. Nope - nothing. The thing is, I am getting used to a new job which I started in earnest after coming back from this year's Edinburgh Festival. It is not the same as doing a job you have been used to for several years. It somehow takes up a lot more of your attention. I think that must be something to do with it.
2. The Glassblower's Daughter might have to be re-written in parts. I have had some feedback which suggests that it is old fashioned in its style and I am going to have a go at re-writing the things that give it this effect. A publisher has said that this old-fashioned way of putting dialogue (in particular) holds up the pace too much. So that will be a writing task to get me back on track again. The publisher asked me if my second novel was ready to be shown to anyone yet. "No," I said.
Reading
1. The stories in Too Asian, Not Asian Enough are brilliant. I am currently exploring the insides of people's houses with the intrepid Mrs Sharma - a pensioner who has turned cat-snoop (as opposed to cat-burgler) to while away the lonely hours and she has just discovered (she's hiding under his bed) that the builder opposite, who has just come home unexpectedly while she was still inside his house, is a transvestite...
Friday 28th October
Writing
1. I began writing a story. Before I had got very far with it instead of being about the mysterious appearance by figures from the past who had arrived to help in the present; it started to be about my Dad. I have never written about my Dad apart from a poem or two which I wrote around the time of his death. It was very early in the Morningand I hadn't been able to sleep. I have left it at that for now. I suppose it was a week ago I wrote what I wrote.
2. I got an email from SmashWords saying someone had reveiwed The Glassblower's Daughter. It was a young American chap - Thank you Joe Cowan. I am flattered, especially as another of your favourite books is, I see, The Monsters From Beyond Existence.
Reading
2. Began Too Asian, Not Asian Enough edited by Kavita Bhanot. (Tindal STreet Press 2011)
3. Was struck by the similarity between Stephen Pax Leonard (A Year On The Ice), Iain Sinclair (London Orbital) and me in that we all hate traffic - that is, hate people being inside cars speeding through their own landscapes instead of inhabiting them in some way. E.g.
Pax Leonard: '...streams of traffic poured past me in both directions... The only signs of life were fixed heads behind steering wheels, moving horizontally and swiftly as if on a conveyor belt in the wrong gear on an assembly-line of environmental destruction.' (Observer Magazine 30/10/11)
[Me - hahahahaha - maniacal laughter at the unintentional image he creates of the fixed heads being the things on the assembly line o' doom. Tricky thing, syntax.]
Sinclair: '... We walk towards Egham, inches away from speeding metal projectiles. Standing on a thin strip of ground in the central reservation, traffic snarling on both sides, I stared through my long-focus lens at a range of facial expressions that would have fitted into a Victorian Bedlam collection..... nobody signalled their pleasure at the miracle of motoring over the Thames... The line of traffic advancing towards the rising sun looked like a procession of the returning dead...' (London Orbital Granta Books 2002, p212-3)
Me: 'BAN CARS AND BUILD TRAMS YOU BASTARDS!'
Friday 9th September
Writing
1. The only thing I wrote were notes in my notebook; twice as I was walking to the station (to describe the appearance of various aspects of the scene after some heavy rain that fell the previous day) and once to list the elements of the outfit a lady at the bus stop was wearing. So I jotted. Well, that counts.
2. I edited. I began on a really good manuscript (Dissent With Modification: Human Origins, Palaeoloithic Archaeology, and Evolutionary Anthropology in Britain in the Middle and Late Victorian Era by John McNabb)
3. What about that thing I was typing? Yeah - well? What about it? I am ignoring it. No, that is not true. That implies a conscious decision. I don't know what has happened to it. I am sure it is very comfortable in its directory on my laptop. OK. Maybe I'd better save a back-up copy onto a stick. I'm sure it will arrive in the forefront of my attention at some future point. That's what these things do. Once you create them you have to let them go their own way and if that one has gone into a burrow and fallen asleep it would be cruel to poke an arm down there and wrench it out.
Reading
1. I carried on with Pure - fabulous dynamic imagery (a man with eyes like black nails hammered into a white face, a narrow street like a clogged vein...) and a storyline of momentous resonant potential right from the start. And I am getting used to the 'can't simultaneously scan both pages' effect of the Kindle now and its note-making function is fantastic. 2. I admired the beautiful drawings and the relationship between the text and the images in Inktastic Visions In Ink by Andrew P Jones (Thorn Press) available from the estimable and unique October Books, Southampton's remaining independent bookshop and a treasure trove of delights including sofas to sit and read on. They have a lively Facebook Page also... well worth a look.
Friday 2nd September
Writing
1. Well nothing. Oh, no, wait a minute - I did actually write something. I began writing a story which was based on a dream I woke up from in terror. But I didn't get very far with it. I have written about three sides in my notebook of it. I feel strangely mute. It is autumn and I have just got back from Edinburgh after a particularly busy Fringe and I have just gone back to my job and so maybe I feel a little flattened by it all. Maybe I need the dust to settle. So, I did write something. Oh no... I feel pointlessness coming on...
Reading.
1. I didn't read anything. I wish I was reading Pure by Andrew Miller but I just don't seem to be able to think of my Kindle as a book AT ALL. This needs to change.
Friday 26th August Writing1. The fact is I probably can't be a writer after all. I didn't do any this week or even think of doing any. There was no time. But I did think of a book I could write all about travelling around as a roadie to different gigs with a guitarist. Well that's mostly what I have done this week apart from eat and sleep. The most exciting trip was north to Gartley by Huntly which is about an hour and a half north west of Aberdeen. Beautiful landscape to gasp at on the drive up from Edinburgh.
Reading1. I began to read Pure by Andrew Miller which I have bought as a Kindle so it is the first book on my new Kindle which Jon bought me as an anniversary present (July 30th since you ask). It is hard to get used to only having one page at a time to read. I see that I normally read BOTH pages - in some weird way. Hmm.
Friday 19th August
Writing
1. I've typed like the snails this week and am up to 26,979 words (so I typed a footling 1862 words). But I footled my way to a tricky point in the narrative - I have finished it in a way. But I started in the wrong place and so the beginning is a tad scarce half made up.
2. I wrote a review of Lucky Bunny by Jill Dawson.
Reading
1. I have come within hailing distance of the end of the Derren Brown book. He is an odd character. I warmed to him as he described the unpleasant dilemma in which a naturally reticent person finds himself when he has to take part in PR excercises. But there is still the fact that he has judged that what he does to make his living was a good idea in the first place (as opposed to say, running a veggie burger stand at rock festivals or being a roadie or managing a hotel or social work or paramedic or quantity surveyor or cartographer or optometrist or... shall I stop? 'Yes yes, please stop! you chorus).
2. I read Lucky Bunny which was much more enjoyable.
Friday 12th August
Writing
1. I've typed like the wind this week - I'm up to 25,117 words now. That means that since last Friday I typed ooh... (calculate, buzz, grind) 4,200 words. That's more like it. But how hard it is. My subject floods out of that handwritten draft and almost washes me away.
How lovely it is to be able to cycle alongside the Union Canal - hello again, meadowsweet - I like to breathe in the scent wafting from their sumptuously luminous cushions.2. I'm working on writing a review of
Velázquez’s Riddle by Lyn Moir.
Reading
1. I carried on with Derren Brown's book but it is the equivalent of taking Psyllium Husks. Why am I doing it? Maybe it is a Derren Brown experiment in remote post-hypnotic suggestion. Maybe he is suggesting that the reader becomes world famous and rich and then later he will follow it up and see how he did. (He will trace all the purchasers through Amazon by hypnotizing the person in charge of the statistics of course).
2. I read the innovative and exuberant Velázquez’s Riddle by Lyn Moir. And then re-read same; fascinated.
(Psyllium Husks allieviated by Spanish olives and Rioja!)
Friday 5th August
Writing
1. I've typed 2622 words of my draft - in between delivering my artist to his venue to do his Fringe show and picking him up again. Parking being what it is in Edinburgh the guerilla drop off/retire and pick-up is the only financially viable modus operandi. And sitting with my laptop typing in the back of my parked car out in the suburbs is of course perfectly sane and normal and doesn't look in the least odd.
Reading
1. I am for some inexplicable reason reading a book by Derren Brown (profession - manipulating people for profit). It is extremely boring. I expect he means it to be. I don't think he ever does things without thinking about the entire effect of the action. He doesn't want the reader to fall asleep and so every now and then he demonstrates a barbed sense of humour which appears in the form of an acidically funny aside. I have come across one or two examples of something which could be cod academic research (he refers to a theorist/theorists's theories/theorist's book but says nothing analytical about it) but maybe it isn't, maybe he is just saying 'look, I've read this stuff so I have absorbed what they have to say and it informs my work in some way' which is fair enough but would be fairer enough if he said as much because as it is I feel he is going to impress some people that he is more wise and learned than he is. (There he goes with the manipulation for profit again). The main thrust of his book is that some people (group A, I shall call them) are suggestible while the rest (let me call them, group Right-On) are not.
Group A are good subjects/easy to influence/eager to please/already programmed to fulfil the expectations that those in positions of authority have of them (OK, group A, you can all sit down now).
I might just leave the book there and not bother finishing it actually. I suspect that anyone who does finish it will be from Group A. I will never be sure that I like Derren Brown though he needs to make a living like the rest of us and so writing a book and selling copies is a good idea and he does keep reminding his readers that they do in fact have full control of their powers and that he doesn't. He does explain that he is just persuading people to hand over control to him temporarily. He is de-mystifying and he is deploring unscrupulous practitioners of what is in fact a completely unregulated sector of the entertainment industry which occasionally has a horrible effect on the unwitting/drunk/suggestible/vulnerable among us. So. Hmm. A self-confessed, professional people-manipulator with a social conscience? Is that an oxymoron?
Friday 29th July
Writing
1. I wrote a review of Joan McGavin's debut collection, Flannelgraphs and went to her book launch at October Books in Southampton.
2. I wrote no words at all. I didn't even type any words to my draft. I almost don't know where it is in the house actually.
Reading
1. I finished Alone In Berlin by Hans Fallada. There is an immensely powerful section in it describing the character of a prison chaplain. That is a misleading remark in that it implies that this might have been the only immensely powerful section, which isn't true. But it is by then such a dark story that you are one distressed reader. The ending is redemptive however and the final sentence of the book is quite extraordinarily uplifting . It is worth reading the book just for that although if you were to go to the end first and read that sentence it would not have the same effect so don't do that. You have to have gone through the darkness.
George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four in 1948, a year after Hans Fallada published Alone In Berlin. Fallada's book is about a real world that IS the world of Orwell's book. Orwell's book is chilling but Fallada's book is almost annihilating in its terrifying account of a reality that actual people had to endure.
Friday July 22nd
Writing
1. I attended the EGM of the Poetry Society. It isn't exactly writing but I thought it was necessary.
Friday July 15th
Writing
1. No, sorry, I didn't do any. So that goat bit my hand.
Reading
1. Until I went to Luxembourg I carried on with Alone in Berlin - gripped. But I forgot to pack it.
2. I also forgot to pack my holiday reading (Interpreters by Sue Eckstein)
3. So in Luxembourg I went into a bookshop having decided to buy a copy of Pure, (the new book from Andrew Miller - set in France) in French so as to hone my language skills. They didn't have it however. So I bought Jane Eyre and am reading it in French. Not as hard as it sounds because I kind of know the book so well I am like those children who appear to be reading when actually they have had the story read to them so often they can recite it. Everyone in Luxembourg switches with ease between French, English, German and Luxembourgish. I don't though.
4. But I have read the papers and some blogs - fascinated by the Murdoch hacking case and the shocking deceit and mismanagement unfolding at the Poetry Society. Pass me my barricades - I am about to man them...
Friday July 8th
Writing
1. I now have 18,295 words which means I typed 2412 words. Woo! Go me! It doesn't get any easier and it appears to be unequivocal drivel but never mind.
2. I went to a 1:1 surgery type appointment with CIBAS in Portsmouth. It was an invigorating experience and I came away crammed with practical ideas and the discovery that I have been failing to direct traffic to my blog and instead have been directing it all to other people's. Well I intended to do that but he explained that there was a way to do it which meant that people came to mine first before pinging off to the other ones. Ho hum what an amazing thing technology is. So here is how you direct traffic to your blog:
How to promote yourself shamelessly:-
Way number 1 (Thank you CIBAS advisor)
First, have a Facebook account. So if you haven't got one, open one and add friends to it.
Have a blog. You obviously have one ...?
Anyway, do something interesting that you can invite people to. It could be a real thing at an actual venue but it might be a virtual thing or even just a blog post.
Write a blog post all about this interesting thing and if it is a real event in a geographical location include all the details of when where and what time. Put in links to other websites where people reading your post can go to find out more.
In your Facebook, click on the 'Create an Event' tab and fill it in with the details of your interesting thing. Where it says 'more info' add an inviting message and a LINK TO YOUR BLOG POST!!!
click the 'invite friends' button and invite everyone.
Click 'share'.
And now, friends will follow the link in the invitation and it will take them to your blog where they will land, forming a statistic. They might even browse your fascinating pages.
Now - I just need to check with my advisor that I've got this right. I could well be advocating how to promote yourself STUPIDLY.
3. Had a horrible flashback to the year 2003 (or maybe 2004?) when Southern Arts met its nemesis (the mighty, all powerful The Arts Council). Back then I flung myself into the fray and wrote long letters of protest with many reasoned and cogent arguments and it was all to no avail of course although many of us were fighting in that line. It was crushing and demoralising and now everything is different. Oh no - hang on, IT ISN'T! Because look at what the Poetry Society are doing!!. Go to this web page which isn't the Poetry Society's own fluffy kittens, knitting poems website - this is the members hastily erected barricade website. Because YES - the Poetry Society IS a society. Of MEMBERS. Hah! Take that, Board of Trustees of the Poetry Society!
So, IF you want to strike a blow for freedom, integrity, transparency and comradeship then read all about the closed door shenanigins and shufflings going on at the Poetry Society. Why have all its key artistic officers resigned? Why won't the board speak openly? And see how the membership has risen up against them. See the amusing spoof and march yourself along to the extraordinary general meeting which the furious action of members, uniting behind Kate Clanchy's banner, has forced the Board of Trustees of the Poetry Society to hold. It is on July 22nd. Anyway, I'm going to the meeting.
4. And in another direction I am drawn into more resistance politics - I've signed the petition to try and force the governemnt to stop them taking over B-Sky b and I am puking with disgust over News International, the Murdochs and Rebekah Thingy, their repugnant side-kick - How does anyone become so venal, so loathesome and abhorrent that they think closing the newspaper itself will make everyone stop condemning them? It's a whole new scale of abomination. Are they aliens perhaps?
Reading
1. Have been gripped from the outset by the extraordinary tension in Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. To read is to be tense. I find the Americanisms in the translation awkward and anomalous but can live with it. Wish I'd kept up my German so could read it in the original. OK, self, there is your task...
2. Reading A World Perhaps by the sublime John Lucas. Here is a short sample:
A Seasonable Wish
Pale belly to the sun, my old cat rolls
over and over on new-mown grass,
then stares up at a tree
whose blossom promises accustomed apples,
blinks and averts her head. No memory
I hope of how years past she'd choose her way
among high brances hurts her this spring day.
(I hope he won't mind me quoting it. He will never know I guess because he HATES websites and such. Well the last time I checked he did and even views email with aversion. Breathtaking writer though.)
Monday July 4th
Great news! Liars League emailed me to say they HAVE chosen my story to be read out at their July meeting. So Kenny will get his moment of limelight on Tuesday June 12th after all. It is at The Phoenix in Cavendish Square. Hurrah!
Friday July 1st
Writing
1. I added about 300 more words of typing to my draft - crawling through the handwritten pages , I know. I cling to them as if I can't bear to move forward..
Reading
1. Finished The Great Lover by Jill Dawson. My education misled me about Rupert Brooke. I was given an anthology at school with a poem in it called 'These I have Loved' by him. I adored that poem but have never been able to find it since. Now I know why. The anthology omitted the first dozen or so lines! It also omitted the last few lines.I was bound to like The Great Lover as it contains many instances my favourite things - bees. A note at the back suggests that bees are a theme running through the book but I think that the theme is honey; honey and stickiness and Jill Dawson is brilliant at conveying it and the many things it can mean. So here is one of my vipers' bugloss bees.
2. I began Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
Friday 25th June
Writing
1. I didn't do any writing at all.
2. I attended the Spoken Word event 'Are You Sitting Comfortably' at the Basement in Brighton. The room was decorated with seaside confectionary which was laid out in tempting picnics for the audience and when we got there they gave us cream cheese on sliced baguette. Look how cosy it was! Big polka dot teapots were being deployed at other tables and I said I wanted a cup of tea too. Jon went to get me some but came back to tell me it wasn't tea; it was either rum or vodka based cocktail mixture. While we listened to the actors of White Rabbit Theatre Company giving us lively and spellbinding renditions of our stories we ate cupcakes and jelly babies and they doled out ice cream in the interval. The place was packed - lots of students, lots of people my age, lots of people in fact. No wonder - when you are that spoiled. It was lovely. My reaction to hearing a talented actress read out Resting and Sighing in Between was first to really enjoy the way she did the characters' accents (one was Australian, another Russian) and the other was to see lots of ways to improve it.
Reading
1. I finished A Partisan's Daughter. I was a bit disappointed by the ending which I felt was contrived for maximum pathos. But the rest of the book is so good that I don't mind too much.
2. I started The Great Lover by Jill Dawson. It is about Rupert Brooke and a young woman from Norfolk who goes to work as a maid for the landlady/tearoom owner who provides Rupert with his lodgings at Grantchester. Jill Dawson is very very good at bringing to life that passionate poetic romantic-ness of some young men who are ardent and imaginative and uninhibited. The depiction of Nellie, the girl is good too.
Friday 17th June
Writing
1. I typed 1283 words of my draft. It is a dismayingly small amount. Which I don't have to account for. That is just how it went bla bla and my ribs are practically better now but this is my worst score yet. On the plus side I did actually move forward. I did two, one and a half hour (roughly) stints on two separate days after work. So I crawled along as you can see - ooh must have been a rate of ... 500 words per hour. It went like this: type...type...pause. Think. Go blank. Type type type.......think... typetypetypetype... cry... type Thinktypethink... pause...think think think. Pause. Press word count button. Sigh. type type... check back through the handwritten scrawl... sigh...typetypetypetypetype...type type type stop.
2. But! Good news. White Rabbit got in touch and said that on second thoughts my story ('your GREAT story' being their actual words) Resting and Sighing in Between would fit into the programme line up after all. So fiddle de dee and huzza! On Tuesday we are going along to The Basement http://www.thebasement.uk.com/ to see the actors of White Rabbit perform my piece. I'm very excited. I will put the story on my 'samples of work' page after the event. It will have earned its place. Well done, oh story.Reading
1. Reading A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernière. THis has a good meaty structure based on the idea of the storytelling woman. In that myth the woman (young woman) has to spellbindingly tell stories to prolong her life and save her life and the person she is telling has the power of life and death over her. He will kill or execute her if she fails to motivate him to keep her alive through curiosity and through being charmed. In this version the man - Chris - is the least threatening British man you could imagine; dutiful, self-effacing, polite, paternal, conscientious, hard working, modest, shy, altrusitic, domesticated, gentle, kind and compassionate. Many of the other men she has been involved with have all had the opposite characteristics (a cold, unfaithful lover; a naive, careless, unaware lover, a kidnapping monstrous rapist, an exploitative greedy boss, a damaged father) and so she has been eroded and traumatised, both by the actions of these people and by the sense of displacement that comes from having to leave your home then your country behind. She has to tell her stories and she is beginning to love Chris, who she has now spellbound into listening. I am beginning to feel the desperate urgnecy that is operating under the surface - a sense that she will stick the dreadful knife she carries into herself unless she finds a reason to go on living. It is like Sheherezade meets the Ancient Mariner but set in the 70s and with an Alan Sillitoe anti-hero as the knight who must save the damsel in peril.
Friday June 10th
Writing
1. My draft is now 14,300 words which means I typed 5068 words.
Reading
1. I finished The Rings of Saturn. Near the end he is talking about the practice of emparkment in its early days when great tracts of East Anglia were annexed to create what we might call theme parks now; to give rich gentlemen the illusion of vast hunting grounds. Villages (too ugly and inconvenient) were moved and rivers re-routed. It was just like The Garden of the Villa Mollini. And of course Rose Tremain is from that area too. So: a parallel between two books that I wasn't expecting. I like it when that happens.
2. I read a book from the 50s; The Girl Who Loved Crippen by Ursula Bloom. An early example of something Jill Dawson did much better in Fred and Edie.
Friday June 3rd
Writing
1. I typed some more of my draft. 9232 words now. So I beat last week's pathetic score by managing 1869 words. It is dire though. I'm not composing them - I am just typing them out. Why is it so hard? I have to force myself every time. Only this exercise of reporting on myself is keeping me going.
2. There isn't a 2.
Reading
1. I continued with The Rings of Saturn but slowing down because I don't want to finish it. I like it so much.
2. Read The Garden of The Villa Mollini - short stories by Rose Tremain. If you want a demonstration of how to write a story read these. (Read ANY story by Rose Tremain actually).
Friday May 27th
Writing
2. Re-wrote Kenny obsessively every day. Too many adverbs! Stop putting two adjectives with every noun! What's the matter with you? (Don't say your ribs are broken...) Then submitted it to Liars' League.
Reading
1. Finished Rescue The Perishing. It's a heartbreaking read. Carried on happily (well when not being shocked by cruelty and the march of time and DEATH looming over us) with The Rings of Saturn.
Friday May 20th
Writing
1. I began, at last, to type out the handwritten thing which is the thing I imagine turning into my next book. It is ages since I was doing this with something; ie copy typing pages and pages of my own handwriting. It appears to be complete drivel. So far I have typed about six thousand of its words.
2. I am going to submit something to Liars' League. I have completed the preliminaries; an enjoyable phase of the procedure; which according to me means read their website, take note of their instructions, check on their forthcoming deadlines and generally experience a pleasant expectancy because after all, I might submit something they like. I might be chosen. So yes; I've done that. Now comes the difficult bit. Writing something. I have written a draft so far - a short story on the theme 'Hot and Bothered'. It needs to be in by June 3rd. And the title of my piece is? Kenny.
Reading
1. Nearly at the end of Rescue The Perishing now. Read it! It is a terrible eye-opener. In May 1943 Eleanor met Jan Karski at her flat, his flat must check which, anyway, to discuss the on-going effort to Do SOMETHING which they were both utterly immersed in. Jan Karski whose story is currently finally published and being 'noticed'. I use inverted commas because of the dreadful, shameful, despicable, unbearable way in which from the moment he first told it - when something COULD have been done; to now; the official blind eye has stonily, implacably, heartlessly, unforgiveably; ignored it. Like they ignored, fobbed off, patronised, side-stepped, evaded, lied to and blanked Eleanor Rathbone. It makes you weep. Of course now; oh that's different; how they all rush to claim it. And upon what; to what cause; will anyone who makes ANY money from his story now, bestow that money? Can you even imagine what sort of a person would KEEP it?
Friday May 13th
Writing:
1. Hurrah! The curator got back to me to say that Tentacle HAS been selected to accompany that picture by Nick Andrew in the exhibition. I have been invited to the private view too. http://www3.hants.gov.uk/library/wdc/wdc-gallery.htm takes you to the page with details of the exhibition.
2. Finished and submitted The Deadline to the Grazia competition. Funny direction that went off in. I wouldn't have imagined myself thinking of a historical character to write a story about - once that has happened though it is very interesting finding out about them.
3.
4.
And I began working on another poem - inspired by another incredible photograph - thank you to a link shared by a friend on Facebook for that artist's work - namely the photographer Abelardo Morell. I'll put it on the 'samples of work' page when it's finished.
Reading:
Still on Rescue the Perishing by Susan Cohen. Gripping and meticulously researched account of the work of Eleanor Rathbone during the war. It is GRIM to see how callous the attitude taken by those responsible in the British government was. I am in pain so reading is hard (so is breathing) which is why I am so slow with this book not because the book is boring.
Friday May 6th
Writing
1. I finished my story about the sea. I went up to 2000 words plus and then I had to shave it and make it run miles carrying weights and finally resorted to filleting lumps out of it but at last it was almost 1000 words. Only 33 over. And they say 'around 1000 words'. Then I fell off my bike and broke a rib or two. After two days I was able to contemplate taking an interest in the world again and began on...
2. another story - the opportunity for which is descibed here: http://www.graziadaily.co.uk/win/archive/2011/04/19/your-chance-to-write-for-grazia.htm
3. I emailed the exhibition people to ask when they would be letting us know if we had been selected.
Reading
Can't read - too painful due to the cracked and broken ribs. But I did read quite a lot of stuff on the internet in connection with the new story - called The Deadline by the way.
I had to miss the second ever meeting of our new writers hub! Gah!! Damn you, broken ribs.
Friday April 29th
Writing:1. I began writing a story on the theme 'Sea'. I have a 1000 word limit. Groan, puff, whinge. However the thing it is for (if I was to be selected that is) sounds like such fun that I am contorting myself to comply. It is for 'Are You Sitting Comfortably' which I mentioned before - run by http://www.thewhiterabbit.org.uk/ - I missed the deadline for the theme of 'Lost' so am determined to make the deadline for both this theme and 'Revolution'. I have until June 7th for 'Sea' and June 3rd for 'Revolution'. It says on their website that they give preference to local writers. Hmm. Well Southampton is quite close to both Brighton and London so maybe I can be counted.
2. Nick Andrew, the artist whose painting 'Rilla' inspired my 'Tentacle' story, likes the story and has chosen some lines from it to put on HIS website. I am really pleased. It will make up for not getting chosen to be featured in the exhibition if I don't get chosen. I haven't heard yet. He hasn't put them up yet I don't think - not sure where on his site he will use them.
Reading:
1.
Carrying on with Rescue The Perisihing which is excellent. Just finished a chapter with a lot of very interesting background to how the situation in Chechoslovakia developed. And the ongoing story of the work Eleanor Rathbone put in is incredible. It describes her sense of betrayal and the way she felt unable to be as proud of being British when she came up against the government's refusal to help refugees in mortal danger. Of course they were not refusing as such - but the way they handled it amounted to doing nothing rather than doing something so it adds up to refusal however you look at it and more so when you look back at it. Not much changes really does it? But she carried on all the same, refusing to give up. The way she looked at it was that even if all she could do was save one person in her eyes it would be worth the entire struggle.
Carrying on with Rescue The Perisihing which is excellent. Just finished a chapter with a lot of very interesting background to how the situation in Chechoslovakia developed. And the ongoing story of the work Eleanor Rathbone put in is incredible. It describes her sense of betrayal and the way she felt unable to be as proud of being British when she came up against the government's refusal to help refugees in mortal danger. Of course they were not refusing as such - but the way they handled it amounted to doing nothing rather than doing something so it adds up to refusal however you look at it and more so when you look back at it. Not much changes really does it? But she carried on all the same, refusing to give up. The way she looked at it was that even if all she could do was save one person in her eyes it would be worth the entire struggle.
2. Began re-reading short stories by Somerset Maugham. I bet HE didn't write to a word limit. If anything I like his stories more each time I re-read them. No disappointment there (not like the Roald Dahl - which I loved years ago - I still love R. Dahl's children's books by the way).
Friday April 22nd
1. I wrote a short story in response to a picture which is part of an exhibition opening soon at a gallery in Winchester. Here is the picture, entitled 'Rilla'. The artist is Nick Andrew. See: http://www.nickandrew.co.uk/home.htm
My story is called 'Tentacle'. As usual with such activities I struggled massively with the word limit - which was a very fair 1500. All the same it was hard.
My story is called 'Tentacle'. As usual with such activities I struggled massively with the word limit - which was a very fair 1500. All the same it was hard.
It didn't have to be a story, it could have been a poem or a piece of prose. It came out as a story though once I'd seen that picture. (You can read it if you like. It is on my 'samples of work' page).
2. I became entranced by the 'knit a poem' device on the Poetry Society website http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/knit/knitgame/ and was so dying to have a go on it that I looked out of the window for inspiration. Quick, write a poem, I said to myself. There in the sun was the trough of white bluebells I have been fostering for the past five years. They multiply every year and I like them very much but this year I feel guilty because it has been too dry for a trough of bluebells and last year it was the same and they do not look healthy and I know I should either move their trough into a shady place or water it regularly and I do neither. So I can't show you my poem in all its knittedness (imagine each letter is a knitted square - imagine a woolly and stripey and many-coloured effect) but it says:
The heat fries white bluebells, planted in sun by mistake.
Lay paving stones of shade towards them, in a rescue mosaic.
The sun wilts their leaves for a warm salad, Is a fan of Nigel Slater.
In the soil, the bulbs broil, A snack for a badger, later.
Reading
I finished As A Driven Leaf and was a bit nauseated by the terrible flaying/burning alive scene but overall the book was both gripping and interesting and, of course, historically accurate.
I'm now reading Rescue The Perishing by Susan Cohen which is a study of the work of Eleanor Rathbone particularly in relation to her rescuing of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe from the 1930s onwards.
Also I am re-visiting the short stories of Roald Dahl in Kiss Kiss. I am irritated by the way they all have a twist in the tail. I don't like that effect.
Friday April 8th
Writing:
1.
Unusual Salami and other stories is now a BOOK. I have held it in my hand and shown it to friends. The thing I notice about it is how much it resembles a lot of other books - in the style of its appearance I mean. I think a lot of publishers must use POD technology. It would be a lot cheaper for short runs I expect. I began to read it and did not find any mistakes. Then I chickened out. I'd rather assume there are none at this point. I've seen many books with mistakes in. I have tutted sanctimoniously but now I won't. Someone will have sweated blood proofreading that.
Unusual Salami and other stories is now a BOOK. I have held it in my hand and shown it to friends. The thing I notice about it is how much it resembles a lot of other books - in the style of its appearance I mean. I think a lot of publishers must use POD technology. It would be a lot cheaper for short runs I expect. I began to read it and did not find any mistakes. Then I chickened out. I'd rather assume there are none at this point. I've seen many books with mistakes in. I have tutted sanctimoniously but now I won't. Someone will have sweated blood proofreading that.
2. I'm afraid I only wrote job applications. One of them led to a swift interview offer and one led to a pre-interview test in which I had to write a powerpoint presentation, a speech and a recommendation of something that the VC could do to make staff at the university happier. Now I have to wait until next week to see what happens next. I missed the deadline for the 'lost' theme at the WhiteRabbit thing. Come on me, go for the next one (the sea) which is still ahead of us....
Reading:
I finished Mad About Bees but felt totally let down by how unbelievable the male characters were and the ending was a cheap shock which had no real basis in the forgoing text.
I'd lost the wonderful As A Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg and searched all week to no avail until having the bright idea of looking behind the piano - and it was behind the piano. So (Hadrian is emperor now) on we go - observing Rome from an Antioch perspective - brilliant.
Other Stuff
I went to the inaugural meeting of a new Writers Hub http://www.newwritingsouth.com/development/hedgeendhub.php at the Berry Theatre (fabulous new space built at Wildern School) follow the link for details if you want to join. It was great - there were lots of young people as well as older age groups and a good balance of male and female and lots of playwrights as well as fiction writers and poets.
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Friday April 1stWriting:
1. I drafted some ideas for a new short story into a kind of loose framework. It is all a bit nothingy but I want to practise writing to a theme and writing short fiction. I find anything less than 2500 words incredibly difficult. A lot of competitions and open mic short story platforms want stories of about 1000 words. I am trying to do the theme 'lost' in time for an April 5th deadline. It is an outfit called White Rabbit with a lovely website. The thing sounds really interesting and I found out about it from another writer who sent me a link - here is the submissions link: http://www.thewhiterabbit.org.uk/projects/are-you-sitting-comfortably/submitting-a-story/
2. Carried on with proofreading the Glassblower. Nearly done now, only a bit of the final chapter left...
Reading:
1. Almost finished Mad About Bees (Candida Crewe) I like the book because of
a) the writer's occasional bursts of brilliant description and
b) because I like the two main characters, Nell and her brother in law Samuel.
But I am not altogether satisfied because I find the other characters a bit faceless and some are just names and I have given up bothering about them because I think they were only put there to facilitate a thread within the story wherein the main female character thinks about her attitude to fidelity. I feel as if the book is a story told to me by someone I hardly know about her friends who I know only through her telling me about them. So I don't feel involved.
2. Unlike the terrific As A Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg. I started that last Saturday and am halfway through already because of the densely involving plot. The setting - vividly depicted, is Palestine. The Roman empire is losing its grip, the Temple of Jerusalem is a desolate ruin, the Sanhedrin are held in awe. Their meetings are evoked so realistically that you feel they are conferences happening somewhere now. Each character is skilfully drawn and relationship problems are described acutely and with a perceptive sympathy. Everything rings true. The dreadful dilemma of the hero, who has just been excommunicated and has gone to join his great childhood friend in Antioch, is completely gripping.
Other things
Went to a one day workshop organised by the estimable Spread The Word. It was held at the Free Word Centre on Farringdon Road, which is a nice building, and was called 'Direct Action: Reaching New Audiences'. It was a good opportunity to meet other writers and as well as three excellent worshop sessions there was a one to one (if you booked early enough, which I did) and a reading by the wonderful Joe Dunthorne. It was a highlight but I thought the organisers could have staged it better. He was in the doorway and some people had not brought sandwiches so had gone out, as recommended, to buy some lunch locally and so they were coming back in during his performance. What were they supposed to do? And they couldn't have known until they had already burst in - he was just one more standing figure seen through the plate glass and there were a lot of other people standing around that end of the room also. He didn't turn a hair but it must have been discomfitting at least. And they must have felt mortified. He was most amusing. He is a fantastic writer - poetry, stories, the novel - oh and journalism - really good, all of it.
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Friday March 25th 2011
Writing:
1. This week I finished writing my short story for the Chawton House short story competition AND I went to the post office on my bike and posted it off to them.
2. I found many typos in the proof-reading of The Glassblower's Daughter and am now three quarters of the way through it AGAIN and still finding things like no space between a word and another word or a space between a word and its punctuation... sorry, am I boring you?
1. I finished Invisibles http://www.myriadeditions.com/ed-siegle
Towards the end I got so gripped that I couldn't put it down. I will say no more because the build up is subtly done in many delicate layers and to give any of it away would be wrong. I can say that the characters are really really lovely though - you feel that they are people you know. They inhabit a place that feels like real life - like my real life. You can't say that about most characters. Most characters are too good at something or too rich or too successful to be as real as the people I see all around me every day. Ed Siegle has a good blog too at http://edsiegle.com/ I like the post on privatising squirrels...2. I started reading Mad about Bees by Candida Crewe.
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Friday March 18th 2011
Well this page is called 'work in progress' and my theory is that unless I have something to say at least once a week there is no progress. And since I don't want to think of myself as a lazy writer I am determined to cudgel myself along in this fashion for as long as it takes. I need coercion in this way because I am approaching the anniversary of the death of my Mum. She was heading for her 88th birthday when she was suddenly cut down by an aggressive form of cancer that charged out of the undergrowth like a rhino and left her no choice. Today is the anniversary of the day the doctor at the hospital told us the result of the scans and investigative procedures. Little Mum was bright yellow by then because her bilirubin levels were so high. She was just as pretty as usual but like a character in the Simpsons. It is a pity that bilirubin is poisonous. It is a pity that there is no way to magically extract it from the bloodstream once the bile duct is blocked.
1. Finished proofreading The Glassblower's Daughter and submitted it to Amazon to join Unusual Salami and other stories where if you wish, you can buy it by following this link:
2. Uploaded the proofread Glassblower to Wordclay to begin getting it through the process towards appearing in a print edition.
3. Went on Smashwords where it was first published as an Ebook and changed the price from free to $0.99.
If your book is available as a Kindle on Amazon it has to have a price and since they won't accept it if you have it cheaper anywhere else I had to start charging for it on Smashwords as well. So far it has been downloaded 1415 times since the middle of November when it was first published. Such a high rate of download will now cease I am quite sure. Right from the start I charged for Unusual Salami and other stories and it has only had 50 sales since January (when it was published) even though it is only $4/99 (about £3.00). This is a steep price for ebookworld. My plan is to stay at $0.99 with Glassblower and occasionally to generate coupons so that if you buy one, you get the other free or something like that. Clearly I am talking of a time when I have published 3 books or 4.... (but optimism is good)
Reading wise I:
1. Continued with Invisibles. http://www.myriadeditions.com/ed-siegle I am immersed in Ipanema and occasionally yanked back to Brighton where Debbie, Joel's sometime girlfriend is, I believe, pining for him now he has gone, and also fearing for his safety. She is putting a brave face on it much as his mother is too.
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Friday March 9th 2011 (where this blog starts)
As far as writing goes I am currently doing the following:1. proof-reading The Glassblower's Daughter because I am curious to see it in print
It is easier to proof-read from a pdf file. Well that's what I find. I am experimenting with POD. I have already completed the proof reading for Unusual Salami and that has gone ahead into a POD incarnation. I await notification. As soon as they tell me it is ready I am going to order one and then I will know what it feels like to hold a book in my hand of which I am the author. (I am easily pleased).
2. writing a short story to enter into a competition
The competition is described here http://www.chawton.org/competition/index.html and has a delightful first prize of a week, staying at Chawton House and writing in seclusion with attention from a top publisher's editor. The story has to be connected to the work of Jane Austen... what could be more satisfactory?
3. steeling myself to begin typing out a handwritten draft of a new book
Steeling myself - because the subject matter is difficult and so even though I have already written it; in biro; on paper; in words; I am still unable to go to the next stage and I'm not sure why. It is about experiencing the death of someone you love. Ah. Maybe that's why.4. casting worried looks at the uncouth half written mass that constitutes my second novelWell it is slinking along level with me like a bear in the undergrowth. Who wouldn't worry?
5. writing diary entries at unpredictable intervals
As far as reading goes I have:
1. Just finished Doris Lessing Briefing For a Descent Into Hell
2. Just started Ed Siegle Invisibles (Myriad Editions, London 2011)
This week I went to London for the book launch for Invisibles and had a super time. It was a heartwarming celebration and so far, the book is great; with a wonderful description of riding a bike through Brighton late at night - ah, cycling; non-cyclists don't know what they are missing. He makes a late night swim off Brighton beach sound pretty attractive as well...not that I would ever dare to do that. The beach is so sloping and so pebbly and the waves so crashy and sucky and the water so deep so quickly and I'm such a drowny swimmer... but the main character is a good swimmer and I am now in Brazil.
