Written Into a Corner
My two main characters have been stuck in the kitchen for almost four months now. I wrote them there and now I can’t write them out. It’s a nice kitchen but you wouldn’t want to spend a whole novel there. Especially since they drank the last of the Jack Daniels the night before and there’s nothing stronger than Darjeeling in the cupboard. I should be writing them out now, but here I am writing this instead. I am a bad person. OK, I’ll have a go.
Twisty Writing
I think it’s fairly safe to say that I’m blocked and no - it’s nothing that Fibrogel can fix (as far as I’m aware). I have writer’s block, this thing we read of in every single book about writing that only people with writers block ever read. However, I am fighting the block - I have new techniques. Technique number 1 is called Twisty Writing - see example below:
The idea, as the more observant of you will have gathered, is to write in a twisty line. Write anything, just keep writing and don’t stop until you reach the end of the line. It’s a variation on freewriting, except you aren’t confronted with the dreaded blank page - your only target is a line, and any fool can fill up a twisty line with random gibberish. Genius!
There is one drawback. It works really, really, really well if you have a swanky DTP application like Adobe Indesign - but I don’t know any other way of doing it on a computer - though I bet there are many. I haven’t tried it on paper, but I imagine it would be pretty cool.
Anyway, this is my first technique in the fight against writer’s block. You saw it here first.
Feeling Guilty
It’s been a little while since I last had anything to say, so I’m obviously feeling guilty about that; and as of now I am officially ‘bunking off’ from my writer’s group because… well because I haven’t done any writing but also because it can all get a bit, ummm, frantic.
Now, regular readers (who am I kidding?!) may be reeling in their chairs and exclaiming - “Writer’s group? She’s never mentioned a writer’s group before!” and yes Dear Reader, you are correct. I have not mentioned it before. I have tussled with the thought of telling you all about, but have always refrained for fear of offending the innocent. You see, my particular writer’s group is so full of idiosyncratic people, that in the unlikely event of one of them stumbling across this blog, they would recognise themselves in an instant. However, all I will say is that my writer’s group is currently in the throes of trying to organise a ‘poetry reading’ evening at a local cafe, and all is not well in paradise. No sireee. The lady at the cafe was very enthusiastic at the start, but has now decreed that there is to be no music, no microphones, and no swearing or suggestive language of any kind. Hmmm. Anyone know any good nursery rhymes?
So anyhow, tonight I predict much wringing of hands and wailing about artistic integrity at the group, so I have chosen to hide at home and eat chocolate.
You Tube - Yay!
Bloody hell, who’d have thought it would be so difficult to embed a You Tube video into a self hosted blog? I’ve spent HOURS looking at various sites and hacks and was about to give up and binge on chocolate digestives by way of consolation, when I happened upon viper’s video quick tags and, oh blessed relief, it’s now a simple task! The only gotcha, is you must clear your cache after activating the plug-in, otherwise your ‘write post’ interface doesn’t change. Anyway, now that the tekkie bit is out of the way, there are a couple of videos that I wanted to post. One is music, the other is funny:
Music: Terra Naomi, Say It’s Possible - great song and a really cool video:
And now for the funny - you must watch this to the end:
Incidentally, the music on this video is Robbie Williams, Burslem Normals. Oh, and yes, of course, my fight with technical issues means that I have not written a single word, despite being at my computer for over three hours.
Is there REALLY a relationship between sex and creativity?
Tonight I watched a very excellent documentary - Beryl’s Last Year. Shot by her Grandson Charlie, it’s a fly-on-the-wall type affair which follows Beryl Bainbridge, for one year - hence the title. Not just any year though, it’s the year that Beryl is convinced she will die, since many other close relatives have died aged 71, and the film begins with a celebration of her own 71st birthday. The film just finished, and already I want to watch it again. In the first instance, I watched it because it was about a writer’s life, and I thought I would get an insight into how a novelist works - and I did. But it was about so much more than that. Take away the writer, and you are left with a woman who has led a fascinating life, and is a remarkable character.
Don’t get me wrong, the bits about her writing life were fascinating. Like anyone else, she has writer’s block, and she procrastinates. She writes on a computer that’s over twenty years old and ought really to be in the Science Museum. While she writes, she smokes, one cigarette after another (though at the end of the film she was trying to give up and had cut down considerably). But her writing wasn’t going well and when we left her, she had abandoned a novel. Maybe there’s hope for us all.
For 71, she’s in great shape, it seems to me - especially since she smokes non stop and drinks rather a lot. If I’m anything like her at 71, I’ll be a happy woman. As I write, I’m wondering if she has an autobiography; it would be a great read. Ironically, at the end of the film, she found that actually, her parents had both died when they were 70, not 71, so she has already out-lived them.
Anyway, I’m not going to paraphrase the whole thing - BBC4 has a habit of repeating everything at least eight times, so I strongly advise you to watch it if you see it listed - and you can read a review of the film here. However, Beryl said one thing which struck a chord - hence the subject line of this post. According to Beryl, we are at our most creative when we are sexual. Now there’s a thought! She used to worry about what would happen when ‘that part’ of life was over, but (thank God!) she reports that it’s fine, ‘you just feed off of the past’. It made me laugh, and it made me sad. Can this really be true?
It would make an interesting experiment, don’t you think? Take some of the most creative people and find out how much they think about sex. And does it follow that single people less creative than coupled people? Could this be the reason I can’t write?! If that isn’t a thesis in the making, I don’t know what is.
Good old Beryl.
Novel Number 2
I’ve finished three chapters of Novel Number 2. Hoorah!
However, at the risk of dampening your excitement, I should point out that just because I am writing Novel Number 2, it does not mean that I ever completed Novel Number 1. No sireeeee. Novel Number 1 has been in my head for years, but only a few chapters made it to paper. I will go back to it, but Novel Number 2 popped into my head recently so I thought I should write what I could while I could.
I should also point out that I have reached the giddy heights of three chapters because I split one long chapter into three short ones. Ta da! I’m wondering if I can split these three down to a further forty chapters and then call myself a novelist. Seems a fine plan to me.
When giving up seems like a good idea
Number of hours in front of computer: 2.5
Number of different websites visited: 14
Number of pointless emails sent: 2
Number of fiddles with wordpress theme: 6
Number of words written: 0
When I used to write…
This is a poem wot I wrote.
The Touch of Rain
Falling softly from the night
indigo sky
gentle yet profound
melancholy
but still hope.
Look out of the window
for a reflection
of my soul
and I will show you
the touch of rain.(c) Me - 2005