The Year of Living Safely

I had no ideas what to write about this morning so took a trawl through last year’s November posts. Apart from a lot of stuff about Nano, it’s a reminder of life before Covid, a time when we still hoped Boris Johnson might not be Prime Minister, a time when Leonard Cohen released his first posthumous album and when – ta-da! – the lifesaving, lipsmackin’, crockery-cleanin’, labour-savin’, utterly wonderful and brilliant dishwasher was delivered. It was a real boon for me since OH does most of the cooking which meant I was in charge of washing up. There were piles of it every day and never enough space; it was the bane of my life. Although in principle I’m opposed to acquiring too many gadgets a dishwasher is about the most liberating thing you can have if like me you’re in a household of four where one person is incapacitated, one is excused because they’re the cook and the other needs so much cajoling that it’s easier to just do it yourself.

Meanwhile 2020 has been the year of living safely: not going out, not seeing people, wearing masks and gloves and endlessly, endlessly washing our hands. Seriously, I’m amazed mine haven’t dropped off.

There – I did find something to write about. The French have a saying: en mangeant, l’appetit vient’ – it is in eating that the appetite comes. Just so: it is in writing that the ideas come.

Stay safe – I’ll leave you with a news item that brightened my morning:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/18/boris-the-menace-beano-to-publish-first-comic-for-grownups

Kirk out

The Fat Lady Has Not Sung

Well that didn’t last long: my resolve to avoid the news lasted until just after I hit ‘publish’ on yesterday’s post and then I could no longer help myself. Once I’d checked the news sites and heaved a sigh of something – not sure if it was relief or hopelessness – I kept checking back like an obsessive keeping tabs on a football match they’re not allowed to watch. Biden’s ahead, but will it be enough? It’s looking as if he’ll win but it ain’t over till it’s over. Will Trump’s ridiculous bluffs about cheating translate into anything solid? Or will they blow themselves out like a squall at sea? Even if they do, will his infantile posturing lead to riots and discontent? Even if the courts find against him, how many of his supporters will still believe he was cheated of victory?

I still, after four years, cannot conceive of how anyone with half a brain could vote for such a man. We are through the looking-glass here and it’s not enough to say that only morons and the utterly corrupt voted Republican; plenty of otherwise sane and sensible people did so, otherwise he would not have got in. But as Lady Bracknell might have observed, to vote for Trump once might be construed as carelessness; to vote for him twice looks like stupidity. I simply cannot understand it – and I don’t like not understanding. But hey ho. At the time of writing Biden has 264 seats (if seats is the right word, which it isn’t) and Trump 214: that’s better than it was yesterday and looking good, since postal ballots favour the Democrats. First one to 270 wins. It’s closer than anyone would have liked but I’m cautiously – oh, so cautiously! optimistic.

I started Nanowrimo this week, a project tentatively called A Saturday Afternoon in the Museum of Thought, and it’s going well so far. My daily target is 2400 words and I’m hitting that. Yesterday was a bit of a struggle at first but then it picked up. Since I don’t work weekends there are only 21 working days in November so my daily target is higher than other people’s.

Please god let Biden win – and soon.

Kirk out

What Enola Crap

It’s been a while but I’m back now and seriously grinding the nose to the stone because Nanowrimo has begun. Yes, it’s that time of year again when people aim to write a novel in a month – or 50,000 words at least, though some go way beyond that and aim for the whole 50K in one day which leaves me asking why, god, why? much as I do when people take on a triathlon. I guess I can understand the urge to push oneself to the limit but there also seems to be a fair amount of end-gaining and competitiveness here as well, the point of which eludes me. But there you are.

So what have I been up to during my absence? I’ve been decorating is what: the pantry has been transformed from a cobwebbed black pit of mould (quite suitable for Hallowe’en really) into a lovely clean white space, and I’ve begun work on transforming the bathroom from a pasty and patchy blue to a beautiful dark aqua. In order to obtain this shade I went to B&Q, as one does, clutching the bag in which our shower curtain came, so that I could match it. Failing to find the exact shade I wanted I headed over to the paint mixing desk (sounds a bit musical, that) hoping for a nice friendly chat and the mixing of the perfect pitch that I was after. There was someone being served and a man waiting so I tried to guess where the queue was and positioned myself, appropriately distanced. The person being served eventually finished and they started on the man in front of me. They mixed him a pot of paint and then another, then the two members of staff began working in tandem to fulfil his order, placing pot after huge pot in the shaking dens (or whatever they call them) having added the appropriate colour to the base paint. It was interesting to see how it’s done but the interest palled after about ten minutes. What the hell is this guy painting? I thought. Presumably he was a tradesman but he was getting enough paint for a whole row of houses. Eventually I’d had enough, decided that he must be painting the Forth Bridge, and left. I plumped for a contrasting shade of ready-made paint and I was glad I did. It looks great.

So much for decorating. I also have to confess I’ve been watching a fair bit of telly as well; there are a lot of great series coming up, such as The Crown series 4 which includes Princess Di, the next instalments of His Dark Materials and other things I can’t remember – but in the meantime I’ve had to make do with repeats of Sherlock and the excellent Michael Palin’s travel series, supplemented by retrospectives of the same.

Like many people I take a stroll through Netflixland now and again to see what’s new. Not much, is the answer, at least not yet. I’d decided that Enola Holmes, the story of Sherlock and Mycroft’s sister, looked really naff but then a couple of people raved about it so I gave it a whirl. If I hadn’t been so exhausted that afternoon I’d never have sat through it – in fact I think I slept through some – but if you haven’t seen this, don’t bother. Seriously. It’s awful. The main character is mawkish and about as believable as an Enid Blyton heroine; Helena Bonham Carter gives a fairly entertaining cameo as her eccentric suffragette mother, but when she leaves the family home unexpectedly and Enola’s brothers Mycroft and Sherlock arrive to take care of her, the fun definitely stops. Considering how many and varied the portrayals of these characters have been in film and TV, they could have done so much with them but here they are never more than cardboard cut-outs; Mycroft is the repressive patriarch and we see none of Sherlock’s brilliance, he’s just a sort of meek backdrop to Enola’s supposed genius (compare and contrast the final episode of the BBC’s Sherlock featuring his sister Euros.) There was never any sense of danger; though Enola is threatened by many and various enemies there’s never any question that she will fight her way out, and when she finally breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience if we have any ideas to help her, I gave up. Or would have, if I’d had the energy to reach for the remote. Enola Holmes is a pile of bats’ droppings and thoroughly illustrates what the vlogger Thoughty-Two has to say about what is wrong with Hollywood these days.

On the other hand, Britbox’s resurrection of Spitting Image is great fun; the puppets as brilliant and inventive as ever with Priti Patel as a vampire, Dominic Cummings as a swivel-eyed alien and Boris’s hair having a life of its own. Trump’s face is melting, his tweets are written by his anus and I cried with laughter at the scene where Boris tries to channel Churchill and ends up with Thatcher who gives him a good slap round the face for supporting Brexit. So go watch – and if you haven’t got Britbox there was an episode broadcast on ITV on Friday.

I’ve also taken up the piano again – or to be more accurate, the keyboard, and tried to do my scales and exercises with a little more dedication.

So that’s us up to date. How have you been?

Kirk out

A Night of Gongs and Clankings

I had something of a nuit blanche last night; what with the bells and the clankings, it was like being in a haunted castle only much less fun. The Aged P-in-law (also much less fun than Dickens’ character) wanted the heating on, and the heating in this house never gives over clanking. You wouldn’t mind so much if it only clanked when heating up or cooling down, but it clanks intermittently all the time it’s on – just to remind you that it’s there, I suppose. You don’t notice it so much in the day but at night it’s like creaking floorboards which convince you that someone is stealthily climbing the stairs; besides, it’s a sound I normally associate with waking up so subconsciously my mind was preparing for it to be morning. Eventually I got up and grumpily searched for my earplugs, though not before we’d been woken twice by Aged PiL complaining of being cold. To be fair, it has turned very cold of late and though I’m not generally a fan of frigid weather I am happy to see it. I’ve hated recent autumns where it’s warm and damp or even hot and damp and you don’t feel a nip in the air till November at least. I regard this as a sign that lockdown has had some effect at least on our disastrous warming of the planet.

But enough of that or I’ll start depressing myself.

I’ve started another knitting project (there’s no stopping me at the moment) which is a black roll-neck jumper. I’ve also knitted a hat from the remains of the wool from the first jumper. It’s very satisfying. And the project for Nano is coming along nicely; I’ve planned most of the chapters in very rough outline now.

TV-wise, OH and I are greatly enjoying the Michael Palin retrospectives, both the programmes themselves and the programmes about the making of them. Palin nowadays looks grizzled and elderly but still recognisably Palin, and it’s abundantly clear that the success of the series hinges very much on his affable personality and egalitarian outlook. He’ll try anything and talk to anyone and endures hardships and delays with patience and fortitude – a real role model. Speaking of which, I’m off to endure the white-out fatigue of today with patience and fortitude, pausing only to yell to OH to bring me a shot of tea which can be administered intravenously.

I feel there is more to be said about Palin and his programmes, so I’ll come back to these. In the meantime, have a good Tuesday.

Kirk out

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Length

I wasn’t going to do Nanowrimo this year but I seem to feel the need for a bigger project at the moment. National Novel Writing Month, when people all over the world commit to writing 50,000 words during the month of November, is a useful way of getting a draft down on paper. My way of doing it is to divide the words up by the number of working days so that I generally aim to write 2000 words a day. This is surprisingly easy given that I’m not looking at all at the quality, just the quantity. It can be very freeing just to let rip without worrying, and on a good day I can just rattle the words off and sit back with the glow of a job that is at least done, if not done well.

The problem comes with the editing. How do you begin to edit such a pile of garbage? It would be like trying to sift through a landfill site – which some day people will have to start doing because we can’t keep on throwing stuff away like this. So I think this time I’m going to think a little bit about the quality as well and try to write 2000 reasonable words rather than just 2000 words that come to me on the spur of the moment.

There is of course any amount of paraphernalia associated with Nano: mugs, t-shirts, pens, books, certificates and of course the inevitable Facebook group. I don’t know if I’ll check in with the group much this year, because it seems to be full of people bemoaning the fact that they are behind, or else sprinters who write 75,000 words in their first week and are aiming for 200,000. Why? What will they do with all that verbiage? Is any of it good? It makes me feel tired just thinking about it. Not to mention the fact that they all seem to be writing SF or fantasy. Still, it’s an achievement to write 50,000 words in a month and I salute all who try.

Kirk out

On Writing Rubbish

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that nine-tenths of what I write is rubbish. I don’t mean on this blog because what you see here are finished posts, hacked from the raw rock-face of thought, messed around a bit, buried in soft peat etc etc, honed and polished, sanded and rubbed and sent out to seek their fortune in the world. More on this later. But much of what I write as a first draft is pure unadulterated junk, mostly because I’ve set myself a word limit and I’m trying to reach it. This however does not make it worthless.

Why not? Well, firstly because it’s something instead of nothing. Where previously nothing existed, I have created something, even if it’s only a flat thing like Kipper’s cake (obscure children’s book reference only family members will understand.) And Something can be worked with and improved upon, even if most of it is ultimately deleted. Secondly, there may be some gems in the rubbish, which is why it’s always a good idea not to delete anything while writing the first draft, no matter how bad it seems. When you’re writing a story (this goes double for poems) you have intentions about it. But the story (or poem) has intentions too, and often these come out when we’re not watching. So don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

For example, I once wrote a dialogue between Father Christmas and Jack and Jill. They were talking in the snow and Father Christmas took off his jolly red suit to reveal a convict uniform with arrows on. He was supposed to be giving Jack and Jill their presents and only gave them snow and ice so they weren’t very happy. It’s a short scene and when I wrote this I had no idea what it meant. I still have no idea what it means, yet a little voice tells me that it has some significance and so I hold on to it.

This blog is nearly at 500 followers. I realise that’s tiny in blog terms but I’m just pleased it’s still growing – so remember, my 500th follower will get the choice of either writing a guest blog post or receiving an e-book of poetry.

Keep it up.

Kirk out

Will Somebody Please, PLEASE Save That Cat!

I know I’ve blogged about this before but the more time I spend on Facebook writers’ groups the more it strikes me that there’s an entire industry out there devoted to (supposedly) making you a better writer. Every week I come across more courses, workshops, talks, lectures, books and videos than I can count; every week I hear of programmes and apps and other things I don’t even know how to categorise which claim to help you to edit or plot or download a cover for your novel or publish or market it. Armies of readers both alpha and beta (and I’ve only just discovered the difference) wait to invade your text and pull it to pieces. And that’s not counting all the Nano-based gimmicks such as stars and certificates, crystals and word-count validations and I don’t know what else. Call me arrogant, but I don’t feel the need for a single one of them. It makes me wonder how the likes of Jane Austen or James Joyce managed to pen a single word without the help of Scrivener or the ever-incomprehensible Save the Cat Beats (OK having read that summary I understand what it is but why is it called that? What does it have to do with cats and why are they saved?

When I started writing I did everything by hand, including editing, and the final draft was then typed up. There was no choice of fonts, no way of putting things in bold or italics (just underlining for emphasis) and copies could only be made with carbon or by using a photocopier. And I never did any courses because I figured (again, call me arrogant if you will) that I was my own best teacher. I still maintain that if you want to write, you need to do two things: write as much as you can, and read as much as you can. Read whatever you like, read good writing and bad writing and try to figure out the difference. Take a notebook everywhere you go and work out how to describe what you see and hear; figure out how to transcribe dialogue and how to convey your own thoughts and feelings.

I’m not saying all these courses and apps are worthless. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never used them and even if I wanted to I can’t afford it. But it does make you wonder. Give me the traditional route any day and you can save your own cat…

Kirk out

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby – a Brief History of My Time in Writing

I have blogged before about the moment on a German mountainside when I began to write again after years of being blocked. Back then my work consisted of ‘diary’ writing and I’d be happy if I wrote a page or two each day, doubly so if there were some good ideas in it. Back then I couldn’t even imagine writing something so coherent and structured as a short story, let alone a novel. This state of affairs continued for quite some while: I’d write fragments of description, dialogue or characterisation but no matter how I sweated and groaned and prayed, nothing hove into view which might remotely be said to resemble a Plot.

Gradually these fragments began to weave themselves together and eventually some sort of narrative emerged and I began to write short stories, a couple of which were even published. But I still couldn’t imagine writing anything as vast and complex as a novel. What would I write about? What would happen? But over time the stories wove themselves together and somehow out of nowhere I wrote my first novel. Then I discovered Nanowrimo and wrote three or four more but still I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read, let alone publish them. Then I wrote another novel, sent it to a dozen friends to read and got some positive feedback. But still I couldn’t imagine having a publisher or an agent. Now I’m starting to imagine what it would be like to have a publisher and agent – but when I get there I’ll probably struggle to imagine being successful. And so it goes on.

But there’s another strand to this story, because it’s also a journey from prose to poetry and from the written to the oral tradition. When I started writing I assumed I would write novels. Short stories didn’t seem relevant and as for poetry, that was for another race of people entirely. I definitely, absolutely did not see myself as a poet, despite – or perhaps because of – having written comic verses as a child and love poems as a teenager. I just didn’t take them seriously as poetry.

Enter Word! I can’t remember what drew me to this (then) tiny group of poets in Leicester. Maybe it was that they met in a bar (always a plus), maybe it was that they seemed a refreshing antidote to the precious groups I’d hitherto encountered, one of which made a huge deal about me even attending, let alone reading. But going to Word! was like opening the doors and letting in the storm. It blew me away – and I came home thinking Yes! I can do this! The next time I took a poem I’d written and although the idea of reading in public terrified the pants off me, the group was so supportive that I never looked back.

In order to discover myself as a novelist I had to travel back in time to the beginnings of literature, to the sadly undervalued oral tradition. And that is where I found my voice.

Kirk out

More Nano Stuff

Aaaand today’s incomprehensible Nano phrases are: ‘my 4thewords referral code is *******. Use to get us both extra crystals on signup,’ and ‘the official Nano team offers a two-week extension as 4thewords is a sponsor and I’m going to include the code here.’ Wow. Extra crystals eh?

Words fail me. Well, they don’t but you know what I mean. What the hell is all this stuff about? I know people use it to motivate themselves but what would I want with a picture of a crystal (for I assume that’s what it is) or even extra crystals? What even is a crystal anyway? Probably some collection of pixels that sparkles in your inbox. I don’t need that.

*Sigh*. I guess I shouldn’t criticise these things if they help others, but sometimes you wonder how Virginia Woolf or Emily Bronte managed to string two words together without the aid of certificates and crystals and the ever-incomprehensible Save the Cat Beats. (I still can’t get my head around that one.) Sometimes I wonder whether hardship can actually be a spur to the determined writer; when I think about how some women wrote in cold rooms with zero encouragement – sometimes being positively discouraged from writing, that’s all the crystals I need. Crystals of frost on the window-pane perhaps…

But some people on the Nano group are doing this against incredible odds, staying up till the early hours, writing with children on their lap, battling discouragement from family and ‘friends’ – it never ceases to amaze me how many people there are who would never dream of doing Nano but have no hesitation in discouraging those who are. As the saying goes, ‘blowing your candle out does not make mine burn brighter.’

https://whatwillmatter.com/2011/11/quote-blowing-out-anothers-candle-will-not-make-yours-shine-brighter-unknown/

Kirk out

Half-Way House

I am officially half-way through Nano in terms of words, at 25,000. Actually that’s not strictly true as I wrote 2,000 before the first of November so at 27,000 I’ll be half-way there. Or should that be 26,000 as I’ll be aiming for 52?

Yes.

Well. How’s it going? I hear you cry. And why not? It is actually going a whole lot better than I thought it would; when I was writing ‘Tapestry’ I set myself a goal of 750 words a day and that was a struggle, but at the moment this stuff is flowing like the floodwater currently making so many people’s lives a misery (our daughter lives in Doncaster and I’ve been messaging her constantly but she assures us that they’re not in the danger zone.) It feels like one of those balls you can get made with rods and – hang on, I’ll find a video as I don’t know how to excribe it, as Holly used to say.

Yeah. One of these:

Whoa, that’s scary!

So yeah, it feels a little like that, pushing ever outwards to explore the natural limits of the form where everything’s stretched to the limit. But we’re nowhere near that yet.

Actually ‘excribe’ is not such a bad synonym for ‘describe’ at least in terms of written description. A born poet, that girl. And I wonder what The Maze will turn out to be like? If recent videos are anything to go by she’ll be talking before long.

Dishwasher is being plumbed in today. I look forward to no more complaints about the washing up: instead we’ll have moans about having to empty or stack the bloody thing…

Kirk out