When it's my turn to read out in class my word count goes up immeasurably. The adrenalin gets words on paper, like nothing else, which I'm told is good and I certainly need some sort of spur. (I'm ignoring the downsides we all know about: the immensity of the challenge - competition, from other aspirant and existing published authors, the length of time it's going to take, the sheer debilitating, lonely hard work but...).
The Book had trotted along quite happily in the beginning, with all the cheerful naivity of a 10 week old puppy. Despite my nerves on the day, goodness knows how many terms ago, the first piece I read out went down better than I'd expected for a newby. People were kind and supportive.
I know, in fact have known for a long time, the rough outline, nothing new, though I've been struggling with how to throw in a few unexpected twists because I don't want it to be too predictable, but hey, I've got shelves groaning with paperbacks by authors whose first novels went straight to a car boot sale.
Anyway, having an outline is all very fine, but after the honeymoon period it started to get serious. The story begins at a point some time after the event and that part virtually wrote itself. Then I needed to put in some back story. One thing the class has drummed into me is that flashback is BAD and it took me a while to work out the difference between that and back story. I'm still not sure I've got it right, but that's what I've been struggling with - how to explain what had happened before to make the heroine (huh! at the moment, she's so pathetic she irritates me and I've got to get her going forward so she won't do the same to anyone else) the wreck she is and bring her up to the point where I started and from where she can actually get going with her life, so the interesting stuff can begin.
Last summer, sitting under a sun umbrella in my tiny garden with the laptop and a jug of water, had been productive. I'd got more than 20,000 words. But (with the change in the weather?) I've been stuck since the autumn - well, since early autumn.
Last week I thought I'd turned a corner. The words flowed, she was dealing with new circumstances and I couldn't understand why TB had been dragging in recent months. I knew I need to bring in some of the other characters, so I did, but I worry about overwriting, so I cut corners, though I didn't realise it at the time. I list them and ..... well, that's pretty much it. The piece I read out last Friday is a descriptive list of the people who pop in an out.
While I was reading I heard my voice getting faster and faster from, maybe, halfway through, so perhaps my brain was pre-empting what came next. When I finished there was one of those silences while the class struggled to come up with something positive ... and it was obviously hard. In the end, bless them, they managed it and they were brilliant. The list of faults grew longer and longer, but after the initial excrutiating pause it was a relief. The thing is that what they said was absolutely right and as soon as they did, I could see it. Light bulb time. What I'd written was OK...ish, but needed to be interspersed in the text in a natural way. I was telling them rather than showing them - or do I mean leading them? Whatever, I could see instantly that what I'd written was a description, what I wanted them to know, rather than interesting prose and more importantly, they showed how I could put it right. Oh, and they made nice comments about the overall style of writing too, so that's the positive. Always end on a high note.
The ironic thing was that in the first half of the class we learnt about writing synopses and - though what I'd read out had been much too detailed - that was almost what I'd written.
Anyway, that's the thing about class feedback. Terrifying certainly, but it never fails to be constructive and supportive and I doubt if I'd still be writing without it.
Monday, 21 February 2011
Has this blog has turned me into a ranter?
Looking back at a couple of things I've written, I'm not proud of it. Where has that grumpy, whining cow come from?
It might be to do with needing the oomph to write anything at all - something that pisses me off. Perhaps this as my alter ego bursting out. Perhaps it's the time of year.
Still, a little more restraint might be good.
It might be to do with needing the oomph to write anything at all - something that pisses me off. Perhaps this as my alter ego bursting out. Perhaps it's the time of year.
Still, a little more restraint might be good.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Is it rational to dislike a stranger?
I caught a bit of Ed Milliband's speech to the Welsh Labour conference on the radio yesterday . The excerpts stunned me so I searched the Internet for the full text and found it on the New Statesman's website. Now I don't know the man, so this is obvously a subjective judgement, but it left me both pitying and despising him for the comprehensive deceit of it all....
Then, when I cooled down, I felt slightly guilty about my reaction and I started thinking about how I could feel so strongly about someone I've never spoken to. I mean, the man's just a baby. Perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt?. Perhaps he believes what he said?
Then I thought, he's a politician. He's probably never had a proper job - and if he doesn't know what he's doing by putting himself out there, he's surrounded by people who do. Just as he, or those around him, knew what he was doing when he set out to take away the job he knew meant more to his older brother than any other. Sibling revenge for goodness knows what, of the most public sort. Perhaps that sort of blind ignorance is what a politician needs. So I'm glad I don't know him because it frees me to think how blind, ignorant, patronising and smug he appears. How sad.
I got started on this train of thought because of another blog I contribute to. A personal thing, involving normal people.
It was born from the wreckage of the (still) ongoing situation concerning a well-known ex-drama-now-soap and the reason I finally started this blog. By the time comments on one particular page of TA blog got into the 600s a group of regular contributors started tossing ideas around about an alternative place to meet. While the rest of us were still talking about characters and places, one person offered the use of a blog she'd had already got and no longer used. We'd barely started signing on there and discussing whether our host would really want her blog invaded, when another person took the initiative and registered Lawnder Hall on Wordpress. Well, yes, a bit previous, but so far, so good and someone needs to be proactive about these things or nothing will happen.
Lawnder was set up to be a democratic alternative to TA and its blog, anyone could contribute, there'd be no moderation or censorship and we'd take it one day at a time and mistakes would be apologised for. And LH has grown .... and grown .... and grown since 27th Jan this year. .... at least in physical size. Contributor numbers on the other hand rose at first, then dropped back and have now stablised on about a dozen hardcore regular contributors.
The thing that makes LH relevant on this post is that, more interesting even than the blog itself, is the personal dimension: the struggle each person has between RL and the fiction, who prefers which and who is more able to switch between the two and the effect those things have on the whole.
The thing is, everything is driven entirely by what we see written on the page, or an email in front of us and our subjective interpretation of it. None of us has ever met. About four weeks ago we were all strangers. Not any more and yet.... We all make judgements and some of us feel we know and like each other, based on nothing but a few squiggles on a page. Others seem to have done their best to alienate anyone that disagrees with them. But how real is any of it? Some characters burst onto the page in full colour - good or bad. Others release information gradually, throwing up surprises on the way. At the moment it seems that one dominant personality is heading for disaster, but that could change. At the moment LH resembles nothing so much as a swooping flock of starlings: it varies in size, with hundreds of individual elements, but is in constant motion and making ever changing patterns. It fascinates me, this judging by nothing more than a few words.
Are those judgements rational? No.... but it's interesting, very human, changeable and normal .... and incredibly easy.
Then, when I cooled down, I felt slightly guilty about my reaction and I started thinking about how I could feel so strongly about someone I've never spoken to. I mean, the man's just a baby. Perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt?. Perhaps he believes what he said?
Then I thought, he's a politician. He's probably never had a proper job - and if he doesn't know what he's doing by putting himself out there, he's surrounded by people who do. Just as he, or those around him, knew what he was doing when he set out to take away the job he knew meant more to his older brother than any other. Sibling revenge for goodness knows what, of the most public sort. Perhaps that sort of blind ignorance is what a politician needs. So I'm glad I don't know him because it frees me to think how blind, ignorant, patronising and smug he appears. How sad.
I got started on this train of thought because of another blog I contribute to. A personal thing, involving normal people.
It was born from the wreckage of the (still) ongoing situation concerning a well-known ex-drama-now-soap and the reason I finally started this blog. By the time comments on one particular page of TA blog got into the 600s a group of regular contributors started tossing ideas around about an alternative place to meet. While the rest of us were still talking about characters and places, one person offered the use of a blog she'd had already got and no longer used. We'd barely started signing on there and discussing whether our host would really want her blog invaded, when another person took the initiative and registered Lawnder Hall on Wordpress. Well, yes, a bit previous, but so far, so good and someone needs to be proactive about these things or nothing will happen.
Lawnder was set up to be a democratic alternative to TA and its blog, anyone could contribute, there'd be no moderation or censorship and we'd take it one day at a time and mistakes would be apologised for. And LH has grown .... and grown .... and grown since 27th Jan this year. .... at least in physical size. Contributor numbers on the other hand rose at first, then dropped back and have now stablised on about a dozen hardcore regular contributors.
The thing that makes LH relevant on this post is that, more interesting even than the blog itself, is the personal dimension: the struggle each person has between RL and the fiction, who prefers which and who is more able to switch between the two and the effect those things have on the whole.
The thing is, everything is driven entirely by what we see written on the page, or an email in front of us and our subjective interpretation of it. None of us has ever met. About four weeks ago we were all strangers. Not any more and yet.... We all make judgements and some of us feel we know and like each other, based on nothing but a few squiggles on a page. Others seem to have done their best to alienate anyone that disagrees with them. But how real is any of it? Some characters burst onto the page in full colour - good or bad. Others release information gradually, throwing up surprises on the way. At the moment it seems that one dominant personality is heading for disaster, but that could change. At the moment LH resembles nothing so much as a swooping flock of starlings: it varies in size, with hundreds of individual elements, but is in constant motion and making ever changing patterns. It fascinates me, this judging by nothing more than a few words.
Are those judgements rational? No.... but it's interesting, very human, changeable and normal .... and incredibly easy.
Friday, 11 February 2011
A few degrees can make so much difference!
We're well past the shortest day and into the New Year and though February can be a grim month, I think the realisation of both those things right now is a bit of a yipee moment.
In theory, I don't mind winter. It's a time I get a lot done in my clients' gardens - putting in new structures, dividing and moving things around and a lot of tidying up, not forgetting weeding out the little thugs that never seem to stop reproducing, before spreading loads and loads of well rotted horshe (as my mother's cousin, a retired military man accustomed to minding his language, called it). And long hard winters decimate the nasties, we're told (though I'll bet they're as efficient as the good ones at finding places to lurk until it's safe to come out and start munching on the best plants in the spring).
Also, there's something masochistically gratifying about working outside when sensible people are snuggled up against their radiators with furry boots and big, soft jumpers on.
And the light - it's multi-mooded. Winter light gives the monochrome landscape an edge you don't get in Summer with lines softened and smudged by colour. When the ground is frost-silvered and hills cast low, narrow shadows, the bare trunks of trees stand serenely like self-confident nudes, oblivious to the cold.
That's the theory. In reality, by now, I'm sick to death of all the layers I have to put on to do the slightest thing outside. When I'm working it's worse - the spares I have to load into the car: armfuls of leggings, jackets, tops, scarves and hats, socks, gardening gloves and spare boots. Then, just as I'm getting stuck into the middle of a mud desert, my mobile rings. If it can make itself heard through the layers, for some reason I'm compelled to track it down. In cold, wet wind I've got leggings on. The theory is that you put your hand through the slit over your hip, designed to match up with the trouser pocket underneath. If the phone's in a pocket down the leg of my combats, there isn't a hope. If I were a contortionist, I'd not be able to bend enough in all that clothing. I stab my fork grumpily into the ground and strip off unco-operative wet gloves, slimey with mud and I begin to search for it, groping with the other hand among the layers of fabric round my neck for my specs, so I can see the name on the screen. Usually the last phase is purely academic and the caller long gone....
I don't know if we're suffering global warming, or if we are, whether it's natural or man-made. To my unscientific mind there are arguments on either side and I'm a bit like the tennis ball in a particularly aggressive match, being bounced from one side to the other, whether I like it or not. Either way, it's taken us too long to notice that we're doing our best to make things worse.
What I do know is that this winter reminds me of the old days. Walking the dogs this morning it was nearly warm. I decided to go up, rather than across the gentle hills that back this town to the East. No rain, but the light was dull and remnants of a more spiteful wind whisped round my ears as we walked higher than we have in a while. Despite that it was bliss to leave my hat and gloves behind and there was extra happiness in the dogs as they bounced from one fresh scent to the next.
We're still weeks from Spring and just a couple of days ago the ground was unforgiving and hard, sharply ridged with frozen ripples of mud left over from when the heifers thundered around in their last games before being shut up for the winter. It was bitter and I risked turning my ankles at every step. The Gremlin's enthusiastic pounces on molehills had become much more wary after a couple of head-on collisions with rocks masquerading as freshly turned earth.
Before that, in the weeks before Christmas, the hills had been covered in snow. Proper snow, lying inches thick on the ground and on every branch and twig. Beautiful. The first morning it was powdery, crunchy under foot. There's something about snow makes the dogs excited and even the DD forgot her dignity and danced, pausing only to chomp mouthfuls of dog ice-cream. The Gremlin quickly picked up snowballs on her legs, so much so that her front legs fused together in just a few yards and when she ran, being a go-for-it sort of character, somersaulted over and over, but kept trying. I skied my feet along to make a path for her, because she made it clear that being carried wasn't in the plan, but even so she kept striking out gamely on her own, scrambling and rolling out across virgin territory.
I've only known snow like this once before in the 28 years I've lived in the South West. Usually it lasts here, at best, for a couple of days and tracks wear through to muddy grass by the first afternoon. This time it lay in such a thick carpet that for once the sledgers and boarders had a good week. Dog walkers were joined on the hill by hundreds of people that probably never set foot up there from one year to the next - and in fact might have thought twice about what they were doing in December if they'd known about the piles of poo of all kinds lying in wait under all the innocent whiteness.
It all reminds me of the Winters of childhood, when scientists taught that another ice age was on the way. People just put snow chains on their cars and got on with it. Farmers hitched up snow blowers and cleared the lanes so the milk would get through and life went on, pretty much as normal ...except schools allowed girls to wear trousers to school.
Whether this is a normal chain of events or not, it's noticeable that - having promised drought, heatwaves, warmer winters during the hardest one since records began, for the second year running - the Global Warming lot has renamed itself the Climate Change lobby.
Whatever is going on and whatever the weather throws up, this year and in the future, we have no choice but to look forward and I like the gardeners' saying - every disaster should be looked at as an opportunity...
In theory, I don't mind winter. It's a time I get a lot done in my clients' gardens - putting in new structures, dividing and moving things around and a lot of tidying up, not forgetting weeding out the little thugs that never seem to stop reproducing, before spreading loads and loads of well rotted horshe (as my mother's cousin, a retired military man accustomed to minding his language, called it). And long hard winters decimate the nasties, we're told (though I'll bet they're as efficient as the good ones at finding places to lurk until it's safe to come out and start munching on the best plants in the spring).
Also, there's something masochistically gratifying about working outside when sensible people are snuggled up against their radiators with furry boots and big, soft jumpers on.
And the light - it's multi-mooded. Winter light gives the monochrome landscape an edge you don't get in Summer with lines softened and smudged by colour. When the ground is frost-silvered and hills cast low, narrow shadows, the bare trunks of trees stand serenely like self-confident nudes, oblivious to the cold.
That's the theory. In reality, by now, I'm sick to death of all the layers I have to put on to do the slightest thing outside. When I'm working it's worse - the spares I have to load into the car: armfuls of leggings, jackets, tops, scarves and hats, socks, gardening gloves and spare boots. Then, just as I'm getting stuck into the middle of a mud desert, my mobile rings. If it can make itself heard through the layers, for some reason I'm compelled to track it down. In cold, wet wind I've got leggings on. The theory is that you put your hand through the slit over your hip, designed to match up with the trouser pocket underneath. If the phone's in a pocket down the leg of my combats, there isn't a hope. If I were a contortionist, I'd not be able to bend enough in all that clothing. I stab my fork grumpily into the ground and strip off unco-operative wet gloves, slimey with mud and I begin to search for it, groping with the other hand among the layers of fabric round my neck for my specs, so I can see the name on the screen. Usually the last phase is purely academic and the caller long gone....
I don't know if we're suffering global warming, or if we are, whether it's natural or man-made. To my unscientific mind there are arguments on either side and I'm a bit like the tennis ball in a particularly aggressive match, being bounced from one side to the other, whether I like it or not. Either way, it's taken us too long to notice that we're doing our best to make things worse.
What I do know is that this winter reminds me of the old days. Walking the dogs this morning it was nearly warm. I decided to go up, rather than across the gentle hills that back this town to the East. No rain, but the light was dull and remnants of a more spiteful wind whisped round my ears as we walked higher than we have in a while. Despite that it was bliss to leave my hat and gloves behind and there was extra happiness in the dogs as they bounced from one fresh scent to the next.
We're still weeks from Spring and just a couple of days ago the ground was unforgiving and hard, sharply ridged with frozen ripples of mud left over from when the heifers thundered around in their last games before being shut up for the winter. It was bitter and I risked turning my ankles at every step. The Gremlin's enthusiastic pounces on molehills had become much more wary after a couple of head-on collisions with rocks masquerading as freshly turned earth.
Before that, in the weeks before Christmas, the hills had been covered in snow. Proper snow, lying inches thick on the ground and on every branch and twig. Beautiful. The first morning it was powdery, crunchy under foot. There's something about snow makes the dogs excited and even the DD forgot her dignity and danced, pausing only to chomp mouthfuls of dog ice-cream. The Gremlin quickly picked up snowballs on her legs, so much so that her front legs fused together in just a few yards and when she ran, being a go-for-it sort of character, somersaulted over and over, but kept trying. I skied my feet along to make a path for her, because she made it clear that being carried wasn't in the plan, but even so she kept striking out gamely on her own, scrambling and rolling out across virgin territory.
I've only known snow like this once before in the 28 years I've lived in the South West. Usually it lasts here, at best, for a couple of days and tracks wear through to muddy grass by the first afternoon. This time it lay in such a thick carpet that for once the sledgers and boarders had a good week. Dog walkers were joined on the hill by hundreds of people that probably never set foot up there from one year to the next - and in fact might have thought twice about what they were doing in December if they'd known about the piles of poo of all kinds lying in wait under all the innocent whiteness.
It all reminds me of the Winters of childhood, when scientists taught that another ice age was on the way. People just put snow chains on their cars and got on with it. Farmers hitched up snow blowers and cleared the lanes so the milk would get through and life went on, pretty much as normal ...except schools allowed girls to wear trousers to school.
Whether this is a normal chain of events or not, it's noticeable that - having promised drought, heatwaves, warmer winters during the hardest one since records began, for the second year running - the Global Warming lot has renamed itself the Climate Change lobby.
Whatever is going on and whatever the weather throws up, this year and in the future, we have no choice but to look forward and I like the gardeners' saying - every disaster should be looked at as an opportunity...
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