Story challenge

I was really happy Damyanti Biswas tagged me in a 100 word story challenge this week. I hadn't spontaneously written anything for a while, what with lockdown and writing to various deadlines, plus behind the scenes business of family life and better paying work, so it was good to write something simply for the pleasure of writing rather than with any specific purpose in mind. I had forgotten how enjoyable writing can be. Damyanti has written more about the exercise, the joys of writing for its own sake, and highlighted some of the pieces resulting from the challenge, which you can read on her blog. I'm grateful to her for the chance to take part.

Winter school

Feeling champion to have been selected to attend the University of Limerick Creative Writing Winter School.

By myself

Ages ago I started to post a graphic sequence about dyscalculia. I didn't finish it, in part, because it isn't finished - it's just more of the same, every day - another reason was because it was bringing to the fore how frustrating it is just knowing its there, cocking me up on a daily basis, and it reminded me how I'm letting it hold me back.

I'd love to do an MA, then a PhD - and the associated things, research, lecturing, papers, conferences, books, but the merest thought of schedules, timetables, funding applications, statistics, getting out of the door on time, and more importantly, getting back to pick the kids up in time, all keeps me within a mile radius of kindy and school, and myself, in a very small place. Usually, I'm home. 

It's not like my time is wasted, however; I write whenever I have the house to myself, edit in any spare minute the kids are home, and read in the evenings, and I've got enough work ticking over to keep me busy editing for the foreseeable. Being busy isn't the issue. And it's not like I haven't done anything like it before; I did a bachelors when my daughter was a toddler. I already know how hard it is to get to places for a given time. 

I miss out on many writing related opportunities because I miss-read submission dates or submission details or I get so stressed anticipating some numerical fuckwittery that I self-destruct. 

Another reason I didn't finish the comic is the same reason I go for weeks without blogging, tweeting, facebooking - time doesn't have those pieces to move about for me. When I miss the window of opportunity one day, I struggle to work out how to fit it in the next where everything already has its place predetermined.

My husband, math whizz that he is, says things like, use a calendar, Windows planner or write yourself spreadsheets to put in all the submission dates. Good one, Einstein. Would if I could. He doesn't get it, probably because there are times, when I'm not stressed, when I'm actually up to primary school competence with maths, and once or twice I've solved simultaneous equations. Once or twice, maybe more but I can't remember more than a few digits. There are people the world over, trying to call me only I've given them the wrong telephone number.

Lastly, I didn't finish the comic because it would be a long victim yawn like this post. And I don't buy into that; it's not who I want to be.

On words

Imagine they are your children; your family -do what you have to do to feel for them. Start small - one thing at a time - and see what we can do.




You start again. You sit there and you write. You write even if it is utter drivel. Then you sit and write some more.


You cannot change everything. You can change some things. Accept what you cannot change. Learn to live with the possible.
Catdownunder


You are a published writer: you have a blog. Now your readers must think their own thoughts about what you have reported.Several consciousnesses focussed on the same theme. Better than nothing.
Patteran


But you can't change the world....Do as much as you can with the constraints that are placed upon us; you can do no more.
Donna Hosie


I think writers could make a difference. But many of us only want to entertain.
Lori

The Telling IS the doing.

Through our blogs, we're gathering in a circle around a fire, talking and crying, laughing and cheering, trying to make sense of this crazy, mixed-up world. And if, in the end, it makes us feel less odd, less lonely and less pessimistic, maybe we won't go out and slap someone.
Kass

...you do what you can do... hug and love your children, hug and love your friends, hug and love yourself, and know that...

A man walking down the beach came upon a man who stood among countless washed up sea stars. He was picking them up one at a time trying to throw them into the sea. The walking man hollered, "You know you can't save them all." The other man stopped for just a minute with a sea star in his hand and replied, "I know, but I can save this one." And he threw the sea star back into the sea.

"We're all looking for heaven, which is later and elsewhere. Actually everything in front of us right now is a miracle, here and then gone, forever. What's the nature of that miracle? I don't know: no one does, and that's it's nature. You can't even really say that: but you have to keep on asking the question. That's what makes us human."
Annotated Margins quoting Norman Fischer


Most of us just use our blogs for preening. So that's one small difference You've already made.
Thomas Taylor


...trying to accept being human...guess it's no harder or easier than being anything else...depends where you live..
Rachel Fenton


There are way too many hard, harsh, hideous, cruel things in the world.

I think that I write to try to communicate and interpret the world. Sometimes just writing for me helps to work through some of the unfathomable worldly tangles.

Individually we can be the best friends/neighbours/people we can be. We can shine goodness as best we can.
Sara Crowley


If we didn’t have journalists and their photographers out in places like Haiti then the world would never know how bad things are. Individually I have no doubt that they do their bit when there but even if they never lifted a hand other than to click a shutter that would be enough. Like many I have the photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc, the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running down a road near Trang Bang after a South Vietnamese Air Force napalm attack, embedded in my mind. The same goes for the young man shot in front of our eyes during the '68 Tet Offensive. The sad thing is that over thirty years on I’m still seeing images like this and they don’t affect me like they once did. That doesn’t mean they have lost their power and for some the photos from Haiti will be the first images of a disaster like this that they will have seen and they will be the ones that will become a part of them.

Do you know what I remember about Live Aid? Bob Geldof. Now, why him? Because of the state he worked himself into. You could see how frustrated he was. He didn’t have the words. What words were there? But then we have this wee, scruffy, Irishman getting all worked up at swearing at the British public before the watershed: "Fuck the address, let's get the numbers!" After the outburst, giving increased to £300 per second. He reminded us, the generation who’d cracked jokes in the playground about starving Biafrans, that these were real people; you’d think it was his family that was dying out there and, of course, we’re all related if you go back far enough.


I don’t know the people in Haiti. But I know you. I should feel for them but what I feel is for you. You have become a proxy. I should feel the way you do. We all should. We’ve forgotten how. That’s why we need writers, to hold our hands and lead us into scary places we'd rather not go.
Jim Murdoch



I have that photograph, Jim, along with one of a man being beheaded in a public square - before and after the blade came down - in a highschool text book I didn't return. And others. And for the most part I, too, amble through life with little daily thought about such matters because I am too caught up in my immediate sphere of existence to give them the time of consideration...I remember kids in my class laughing at these images...I remember leaving the room to be sick after looking at the beheading one...I remember Live Aid, the swearing and the pot-bellied kids with big heads and spindle limbs and all the bloody flies, the colour of the dust and the richness of contrast where a droplet of saliva or a tear escaped and the flies going in and out of gawping mouths and feeding on those tears, and how for years afterwards all people remembered was the godawful song...I remember the start to Isherwood's "Goodbye Berlin"..."I am a camera.." and there are dozens of others who have used that same line in one way or another but there's one fundamental problem with that idea...a camera cannot feel, it cannot move of its own accord...we can, I can...there's a difference between passivity and ignorance...observing and ignoring...thank you for reading and for taking the time to make a difference to me...
Rachel Fenton


...while art can seem trivial when compared to the pain and suffering some people go through on a daily basis, I think that it can give some kind of a hope - I think of how listening to music helped me during admittedly much less tougher times - perhaps the frailty and shortcomings of art can be what makes it powerful in a way.
Andrea


I love the idea that you and I and all other writers - and I add here artists of all types who represent humankind and life - join hands to speak about things that would otherwise not be said or heard.
Elisabeth


...it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the horror of it all, the tragedy, the unnecessary unfairness of care/aid/finance. I've certainly been feeling that. And then my daughter comes home all excited about money they've raised at school...and what do you say? 'It's all hopeless, the world is unfair?' No, I didn't say that. At 9 I'm still keeping some of that from her...when I can.


At times like this writing can seem like a bloody stupid thing to be doing. We see nurses on TV and think 'look at them, they can DO something!' But we can't all be nurses. We just can't.
Rachel Fox

we can't change a world, but we can change our small part of it. I do my best to be decent to other people: I may not be able to love, help or change them, but I can be decent to them. And decency involves truth, sharing thoughts, and listening.
Titus

Right then...I'll do what I can...my son's filled his nappy and the sun is shining...onwards...
Rachel Fenton

Vanessa Gebbie's got news on what writers can do to help Haiti over at her blog.

Feel write

This was in my file of "Phone Photos". I have no idea when, where, what it is - looks like a very blurry view - it seemed fitting.

Today is Wednesday - evening for me, morning for some of you, and some other unfathomable time differences for others. I hadn't planned on posting anything new until Friday but I'm such a rebel!




I've been stuck with my WIP for weeks now, or thought I was, until I realised I was only snagged on that chapter. My novel is in three parts and I have the first and the final parts planned out to such sphincter toning precision that when I came to planning the central section (for which I have been researching for months) I found I was somewhat constricted - creatively constipated one might say.



The research has been intriguing, fascinating and moving and I have learnt a phenomenal amount. I wish I could tell you some of the wonderfully random and amazing things I now know but I'm hanging on in case I can or need to use them in my narrative. However, the research has posited a huge burden on my narrative frame. I have acquired some very special information but with it comes a responsibility. I cannot simply write what I feel like writing because I have not only the facts to bear in mind (not to mention all the dates which are driving me out of my innumerate mind) but  also the feelings and integrity of real people.



Last weekend - with some assistance from my fellow tinternetters with their bloggy bludgeons - I forced myself to write the first chapter of the central section. It took me all of Saturday to get the basic shape of the thing, with the relevant historical detail (that was the real difficulty - I have all this wonderful information and I cannot use ninety percent of it - no that's not an actual figure, I have no idea of an actual figure but it seems like the shape of ninety percent - but I want to), and the plotting just so.



Usually I would leave it at this stage and move on to the next chapter and then revise after a few to make sure it wasn't getting too out of shape or that elements or characters weren't deviating too far from my plans. Small mistakes early on can devastate the plot evolution later on and it's letting the plot spin a few wheel burns later that's the fun part so I don't want to curb my fun by not being careful early on. Only I haven't got any plans, not in my sense of the word plans, for this central section yet. Or so I thought.



I'd been hung up on this section for so long - rummaging through masses of notes and documents to try to piece together a plot - that I'd forgotten about the thing I could do. Therefore (note absence of "so" to start this sentence), on Saturday I put the research to one side and I just wrote. I stopped worrying about the dates and the facts and all the other details that have been escalating in my easily overawed leetle brain and I wrote. And it was wonderful. I have a thousand post-it notes stuck all over to remind me of details to follow up on or add later but I let the words flow and didn't stall them with sense or reason and I got a first draft of a chapter. I was so relieved that I sent it to some people who have a very vested interest in this section of the novel and they were thrilled - the protagonist is, they said, just how they - his family - have always thought of him. PHEWSH!



And I am light. I can write without the weight of responsibility holding down my wrists. And now I can't wait to see where the words will take me next. I had been hopping into my planned sections and writing the odd bits but I really find those easy and I want to save them until the last. The central part had become the Brussels sprout, the part I must get out of the way first, but now I'm developing an acquired taste for it. I'm still not comfortable about not having it all planned out to precision for this section but I have a brief outline and now I have a start....and I'm going to go with the flow and see what happens. I'm going to let myself feel what to write. So far it feels right.

Using my bottle

I think this is possibly the ugliest piece of work I've ever created. It's a self portrait of a seventeen year old me.

I don't need compliments, I need advice.

When I was seventeen I kept a diary. Ten years later I read it back and wanted to exterminate my seventeen year old self. Luckily I didn't have to - she was trapped. Another four and no doubt I'll laugh, if I can find the diary to read it that is. I hadn't thought about it at all until I trawled through some old pictures for inspiration.

I like getting older. From sixteen to thirty I looked nineteen, it was a blessing and a curse. Now I look my age (thanks to the NZ sun), feel it (thanks to relocating across the globe and extending my family), and all I need is for the sense to kick in (?).

What's the best piece of writing (or other) advice you've ever received, what's the worst, and do you like avocados?

Oh, and, if you see a familiar looking bottle at the beach don't uncork it! Some things are better left forgotten.

Wring out the old

Sorry this is a long one, I usually like to keep things snappy! Note the vicar - he was on the news recently. Google St Matthew's in the City! - Andrea at Rainbow notebook, I'll try and get a front shot in another time!


2009 was a whirlwind of a year for me, both personally, privately and for my writing. You could say I've been through the wringer! Done a brief inventory and discovered something pretty unbelievable - I wrote (this does not mean they are "finished") fifty poems in 2009, thirty poems in the month of December alone! Would love to post them up here but I'm going to overcome my submission fear and send them out to some ezines and journals etc when they are right.

As well as the poetry there was the flash and short fiction (and some of my flash merges with my poetry but I keep it separate): I wrote fifty stories and gathered together what I hope can become my first collection - no news is good news, right? Plus, I sent a couple of things to competitions. I even managed to make myself cry with a couple of stories!

I also wrote a novel. Back in May/June I wrote a novel set in my old home town - to exorcise it I suppose and allow me to move on. It's a good story and an easy read with a linear narrative and a lyrical style and a funny protagonist. It's also an allegory. It took me four weeks to write 80,000 words (and no, it isn't a load of hits) and almost killed me! The bones of the story had been with me for some time and allowed me to do a chapter by chapter breakdown of the plot and, essentially, write a chapter per night. At weekends I would work on it for twelve hours per day and it was both the easiest and hardest thing I have accomplished. It served it's purpose. I no longer have any urge to revisit any aspect or elements of my home town in a novel! I am cleansed! What it also "taught" me, however, was that I want to write more complex novels. My first novel was/is quite complex and I think my lack of success with that had put me off a little, made me think I should go more mainstream, but you know what, I am who I am and I write what I write and so I'm back to writing just for me: and it feels good. It feels very good.

As soon as I decided that a stack of books lifted off my shoulders and left me with a spanky new dust jacket.

I'm going to take my time with my latest WIP - not because I think I've earned it (incidentally, I do think I should have some sort of holiday - offers on a postcard!) - but because I want to savour it. I want the words I commit to it to be the very best I can for the words' sake as well as the narrative's. It's proving to be a challenge, in every sense, to me. I am struggling with a lot of numbers on a weekly basis and I, as I've blogged before, am not bedfellows with numbers. And that brings me to another point...

...For the past year I have been writing on my bed! Since my son became active I haven't been able to leave my writing laying about all over the place and have had to decamp to my bedroom (oh, to have a bigger house - come on agents, make those publishers buy my books!). It's not ideal: it's not even comfortable (really, you should try it: the sheer perversity of being on your bed and not sleeping....), and my back aches and my bottom gets nins and peedles far too frequently.

I wanted to go into 2010 with a more balanced approach to writing, less like a learner driver - gas/breaks/gas/breaks ... - I may not be able to change my personality but I have got more defined and realistic goals, ones which don't put so much pressure on me to be a writing machine, don't need so much grease or un-clogging, and allow the words to sparkle.

Part of me will always talk to that kid who was kicked, spat on, followed home and pushed in the gutter and had her clothes drawn on, and part of me will listen to her telling them, the kids that did that to her "thanks - you made me", but there's another part developing, one who doesn't need the mother of the past. In 2009 I cut the umbilicus.

I started blogging in May to present myself to the world as a writer. I felt like a bit of a fraud, after all I had nothing published. Looking back at how much I have written, however, I think I can call myself a writer now.

Nothing is as it was at the beginning of 2009 but for one thing; last year my resolution was to find an agent and get published. This year it's the same. You still up for a ride?



PS I can't swim and I failed my driving test six times! I can also hum the theme to Black Beauty whilst tongue galloping! - Bet you thought I'd forgotten - or maybe you had?
PPS - why did no one tell me I had missed the "a" out of beauty? Some critics you lot are! Ha! Changed it now. Must remember to spell check more!

Give me a bug

Beetles, courtesy of The Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Bug hoover, courtesy of my daughter. Spider, discourteous! Note how many times the legs are folded at set junctures, thus seemingly smaller than in actuality, though not as large as in my fear-riddled mind!

Bugs: they really bug me!

I don't have a positive relationship with spiders. I am okay if I know they are there - unless they are larger than my thumbnail, or, in the case of the one pictured above, larger than my whole thumb with legs outstretched! - But it is the element of surprise which makes my nerves jangle and the hairs stand to attention on the back of my neck. This wee beastie (note humour used to diffuse fear) brushed against my little finger as I reached for a teaspoon off the sink drainer. I vomited. Don't worry, if you were thinking of popping in for tea and are now concerned abut hygeine - it went on the floor tiles and I bleached! Luckily, I had the bug hoover my daughter bought me for my birthday handy! It was difficult to suck it up - the spider probably weighed as much as the battery used to power the hoover! But the really strange part is, once I caught it, I had to look at it.

(I think it was only there because it was dying, otherwise I doubt it would have hung around long enough for me to lay my clammy hand to the bug catcher.)

It's similar to when you're watching a horror film and the unwitting victim is about to go into the darkened room where you know the evil bloodthirsty thingymebob is lurking in wait, and you shout "don't do it, don't go in - RUN!" And then they go in and get mutilated and you squirm and don't look, and tuck your knees in to your chest. That's me. And then I peek. I repeat this ridiculous behavioural sequence a non-sensicle number of times until I feel unafraid. But I don't touch the thing that I'm afraid of. That would be sick.

So I write about bugs. I find them fascinating. Beetles I find beautiful in their own many coloured intricate way. Spiders: "Know thine enemy"! I embrace my fear for the benefit of my writing.

Telling me

As far as I am aware, the end result of this image still hangs in a tertiary education facility somewhere in the North of England. Media: felt tip pen on jotter pad.

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag..."

When I was seven my grandfather taught me to paint with watercolours. It became my hobby. I have his tartan printed shortbread tin with his paints and brushes, a pencil and a putty rubber, and a piece of charcoal.





When I was seven I wrote my first story and showed it to my primary school teacher. She didn't believe I had written it. Writing became my secret.





When I left high school I had failed my mathematics. I wanted to study journalism because I had to be able to get a "proper job". I was refused entry to the course because the then head of the course thought I was too shy to make it as a journalist. I was brought up to accept the advice of my elders and of professionals: these people knew what they were talking about, apparently.



I looked to science - I had an aptitude for chemistry and biology - I had no mathematics and was refused entry onto the science courses. I enrolled to study art, modern history and English language, and to re-take mathematics. A few months into the course I had dropped history and was re-failing maths. I was deemed unworthy to go to university. I hadn't thought about university. On the advice of a lecturer I dropped out of my other courses - because what use were they if I wasn't going to university?




If I wasn't studying I had to get a job.





I signed up for an art and design course when I was still seventeen, it included fabric and fashion design, jewellery design and ceramics, and in the summer break I got myself a job at my college - painting murals. I still have a great interest in fashion and fabric design, I still make my own jewellery, I went on to study and make ceramics. I still paint. My writing is no longer a secret.




A while ago I was asked if I thought my writing and art were connected. I know the thought processes behind the two definitely are but it took me a while to step away from myself enough to be honest about my work to see what my painting and my writing, and, therefore, what I am about.


"And smile, smile, smile..."


We all have an image of what we want to be. We all aspire to be the best that we can be. We all want to be open to others and embrace difference. And underneath all that - if we were paintings and someone x-rayed us, beneath the layers of what we've told ourselves and everyone else what and who we are - there would be us; raw, rough and unfinished, but us nonetheless. I call this potential. Every blank canvas has it. Every empty screen, clean sheet of paper, new beginning; they are the tabula rasa, the potential. But when we create upon them a mark which we later decide we do not want, do we say - that's it, that was your one chance? Or do we continue with another sheet, another layer of paint, a new document; a new beginning. Does potential cease to be because we didn't achieve it in the first draft?




So, anyway, last week I found the design of the mural I painted in my summer job and I thought of this poem. I wrote it last year.




She wore VERY FLAT
sandals, the type that
history tells us
were worn by Jesus,
though I doubt if He
were real He would be
inclined to wearing
manufacturing
successes such as
these samples of mass
production nor source
purposefully coarse
skin making designs
dyed a lurid lime.
And even if He
were He probably
could not find any
sandals SO VERY
similar; with the
chrome buckles and the
gluing of the straps
concealed within flaps
tucked inside the SO
FLAT soles. Who would know
for definite? No
real proof exists though.
As is commonly
the case, like her, He
more than likely had
soiled, cracked skin: a pad
resulting from too
much wear of a shoe
severely lacking
support; cushioning
secondary to
looks. Feet which tried to,
unsuccessfully,
shed in blocks only
becoming ingrained
with dirt and the dead
skin becoming grey
in pallor. I say
the word probably;
the reality
was I couldn't see,
well not properly,
her feet, because frayed,
trousers, discoloured
from being trodden
upon and sodden
in all weathers, hid
them. I think she did
this on purpose, part
of a student's art
project, a no jest
feminist protest.
Lurking within brown,
corduroy worn down
to the ground were no
doubt legs that were so
hairy they were part
of the protest art;
intrinsic to what
it is to be that:
a feminist. I
realise that my
description does, on
the whole, rely on
probability,
gathered unwisely;
STEREOTYPICALLY.




In my short story collection there are two semi-autobiographical pieces: one is called Potential. With age comes the ability to project confidence. People who meet me are intimidated by my height and outspokenness - ironic that in school I was bullied for my height and quietness. I was called scaffolding (as well as cardboard cut-out and dictionary) I couldn't shorten myself so I upped the volume. I wear bright colours. I speak my mind. I am honest even when it would serve me better, and those around me, to lie. If I have offended you with this or any other post or comment I have made please tell me; directly. There are, as any writer or reader will know, multiple interpretations of any word or combination of words - it all goes back to that slippery chain of signification - and it would be a fool who professed to know what any one person means by a small selection of words, or to take from that comment an assumption of what a persons views might be. I would say to such people, go back and look again at what offended you from another perspective. I am many things. Other people think I am different things; but, underneath, I am still there, shy as I ever was; writing.



"What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile."


I could tell you another version of me, and another, but really, what difference would it make? You'll each have your own perspective, some of you will have more than one - hopefully.

So shall we

It isn't saving lives, is it?

Writing is pretty selfish.

One markets it as an essential tool for understanding society, or a method of ascertaining the human condition but that's being somewhat philosophical.

Can writing save your life, or anyone else's?

The intuitive ones among you may have noticed a touch of melancholy to my tone - yes, I got another rejection. You are a sensitive lot! I've lost count how many negative returns that is from the ten or so queries I sent out but that's because I have dyscalculia and not because I am not counting! However, there are some unaccounted for (um) so it's all still very much to play for. And even if they all come back with no love I will be sending another batch out and going through the same process all over again. I am nothing if not tenacious!

Life would be simpler if I could be happy doing some other job. All I can do is make stuff: of words, of paint, of stuff. You make of me what you like.

Publishing is serious business

It seems some of you may have had problems leaving comments on my last post, so here's a new ramble, with the hope that the blog gremlin has gone.

***NEWS FLASH***comments box now set to appear as pop up...seems to have fixed the problem! Thanks to very talented tinterweb expert Husband Of Mine (HOM).

I have learnt some new stuff this week. And it made me laugh.

I have for some time been trying to get to know the ins and outs of the publishing world, in preparation for when I need to know it. I may never save to memory all the alphabetical abuse that passes for book sizing, but one term I am never likely to forget is French flaps. I discovered them whilst reading a post at the talented Nuala Ní Chonchúir's blog:

http://womenrulewriter.blogspot.com/

except of course I had seen them (have books with them), but didn't know they were blessed with their own marvellous name!

I have much to learn, I concede, and the learning would be easier if everything still left to intellectually lift were as toe-ticklingly teenager titillating as this! Made I laugh it did.

So, I am actually a very serious and mature writer, don't ya know. I'll prove it: wrote myself a plot this weekend for my latest project. Whether I'll stick to it is another matter entirely, but it feels good to have made an assertive start.

I've had this idea for some time now. I knew my protagonist from the off. I had several ideas for what story I wanted to write too, but when it came to scribbling the storylines out, my character was poohpoohing ( I prefer my poo with an aitch and no gap) them until I stuck with the one that best suited her.

So I'm about ready to start writing, and that's the very reason I haven't. I'm going to think a while longer, and see if a better story comes along. See who pops by to make friends with my gal. See what a bit of restraint makes me see.

See, I told you I'm learning!

(And for those of you who want to view the results of my very sensible publishing research, read the following:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3637006/Marginalia-French-flaps.html )