Posted on

uninspired

I suspect I might be succumbing to the lurgy that has been going around here for the past two weeks. I’ve done my best to avoid it but a lot of sick people have been breathing near me recently, coughing without putting their hands over their mouths, sneezing and not immediately rubbing everything down with alcohol wipes or better yet, bunging everything they’ve touched in one of those sterilising machines you see at the dentist’s surgery. They clearly want to infect me.

This may explain the general lack of inspiration I feel at the moment. I know, I know. We writers are not supposed to need inspiration. We have to sit here, through the pain and boredom of having no ideas and nothing to say, just so we can say we paid our dues. And sometimes, just sitting there, just working, is enough to get you back into the flow. But other times, it really isn’t. It’s putting words on a page, then looking back and thinking, jeez. I am really bad at this.

Well, that’s what the past couple of days have been like for me, writing-wise.  All I can hope for is that the lurgy passes swiftly, or alternatively, that it wreaks havoc on me, sending me into a fever in which I hallucinate wildly and creatively…  and maybe travel through time or to another dimension. I quite like that feeling you get when you’re ill, of being in another world. Not that I want to be ill. I just want to be a better writer.

Posted on

the truth about cats and dogs

Blogging is a steep learning curve. Now I know never to slight cats in public again. They have their defenders. More surprisingly (to me), they have actual haters. I felt a bit embarrassed that people assumed I was a cat hater, when all I’d said was that cats are evil. Which is hardly contentious at all, is it?

Anyway, let me put the record straight. The truth about cats and dogs is that I like both types of creatures very much. I do not, however, like guinea pigs or hamsters. So feel free to despise them if you wish.

 

Posted on

the daily george

I’ve decided that it would be a cool challenge for me to blog every day between now and the end of the year. The aim is to blog about what I’m writing and reading, of course – but inevitably there will be detours into dog-walking, alcohol, work and other adventures. I can’t help it. Be patient with me – I am finding my blogging feet.

Yesterday when walking the dog, I saw a cat sitting halfway up a tree. I don’t think it was stuck. It seemed to be perched there, trying to work out what the hell to do next. Luckily the dog didn’t notice it, and therefore did not try to chase it down and destroy it with loving chews. I hope that it has found its way home now.

It made me wonder: what is the best pet for a writer? Most writers I talk to have cats. They love their cats, post pictures of their cats making allegedly funny faces, ascribe to their cats all sorts of mysterious intelligence and clearly love them a lot. In fact, it’s tempting to believe that without a cat, you will never be a real writer.

Now, I’ve got nothing against cats. Oh, apart from their inherent EVIL, that is. (Torturing birds, biting the heads off rabbits, looking snooty…) But I think that a dog is the perfect pet for a writer. They are intelligent, peaceful, playful, always willing to listen, and they get you out of the house on a regular basis. This is important: writers who stay indoors all day long and don’t take long, leafy perambulations end up starved of inspiration. We need to go outside. A lot. Dogs make this happen.

Didn’t get as far as I wanted to yesterday with the new short story, so I’m going to turn off the internet and try to finish a first draft today. In the meantime, you can argue about whether cats or dogs are the best pets. (Clue: the answer is ‘dogs’.)

Posted on

a confession

I don’t know how to tell you this, but… I’m not writing a novel.

I know, I know. I’ve led you on terribly.

The truth is, I’m writing THREE novels.

I don’t know how I got into this mess. First, it was just the one novel, and I was totally devoted to it, but halfway through I got this feeling I just couldn’t ignore, and I had to go off and write something else. That novel, I finished the first draft of. But as soon as I had finished it, I started drafting out an idea for a totally different novel, and now that one has seized my imagination fully.

I’ve been such a fool!

When I write short stories, I usually have at least five or six stories on the go at once, each in a different stage of development. So I suppose I’m doing the same thing with these novels. IT IS SCARIER WITH NOVELS. Three novels = a hell of a lot of work. I keep trying to make myself choose between them, but that leads to despair and deep confusion. I think I have to write them all.

Somehow.

Meanwhile, I have decided to spend the day writing something completely different – a new short story. I have no ideas or inspiration for it, but I believe that if I sit quietly at my desk for long enough, the story will come to me. Let’s hope so, anyway.

Posted on

writing is rewriting

So I plucked up courage and read the first draft. It was everything I expected it to be: sloppy, solipsistic, boring. But after reading it, I wrote a list of everything I liked about it, and there were FIVE WHOLE THINGS! So much of the story became clearer to me as I read, particularly towards the end. I realised that there were layers and layers to this story.

I also realised that it’s the kind of story that, if it is not done brilliantly, will be dreadful. It is difficult material and I am terrified of fucking it up.

But I’m working on the second draft, nonetheless.  Two thousand words today. Having the basic story already worked out, more or less, allows me to have a much more interesting time with the writing.

I hope that I can catch up with my short story writing soon, too. Novels are great but very time consuming.

Posted on

the fear

I’ve got the fear.

It’s half-term next week, and it’s about two months since I finished the first draft of my novel. A good time to start editing and revising. That was the plan, anyway.

So this morning I printed out a paper copy, with the intention of reading it through once and taking it in. No notes, no criticism, just see what’s there and how I feel about it.  It was quite satisfying to see the big wodge of paper  sitting on top of the printer. I felt a little bit proud.

But when I went to pick it up, to take it in my hands and start reading – I couldn’t. I sat there, staring at it, trying not to read any of the words on the page. I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Part of a sentence: “…clattering out of slots…”. Awful words. Terrible. This whole thing is a mistake, I thought. Abandon ship!

At some point I am going to have to gather up my courage and actually read the damn thing. Writing is such a head-fuck sometimes.

Posted on

everyone: shut up

On the bus this morning, I sat next to a woman who was reading one of those women’s magazines that say things like ‘HAVE SEX!!!!!!’ in giant orange letters across the front cover, alongside a picture of a minor celebrity wearing an outfit made of dishcloths.

She (the woman on the bus, not the dishcloth lady) had the magazine open at a double page spread, which I could not help noticing because of the frankly ridiculous title: ‘We ask 40 men one question: WHAT SHOULD WOMEN BE BANNED FROM SAYING?’

You think I’m joking, don’t you? I hope you think I’m joking. I’m not joking.

I have got pretty damn good reading-over-the-shoulder skills, but the answers from said forty men were so depressingly awful that I gave up after only a few. Save yourself the brain-rinse, I thought. Sadly, however, I did manage to read that women should be banned from talking about: their friends, their ex-boyfriends, their hair, clothes, beauty in general, celebrities, and sports. Oh and also,  we shouldn’t make ‘a big deal’ out of things.

“I hate it when they make a mountain out a molehill,” one fellow said.  “Stop moaning and get on with making my dinner. I’ll tell you whether something’s important or not,” he did not actually add, but I’m almost certain that’s what he was thinking. I could tell by the misogynist glint in his piggy little eye.

Having not read the whole double-page extravaganza of patronising, women-are-so-annoying chat, I can’t say for certain, but I imagine that other topics that may offend masculine sensibilities could be: work, politics, television, food, housework, and of course women’s rights. Better to stick to the safe side, and when males are lurking, limit your conversation to how freaking great men are! Better still, just be quiet.

There have been several studies which suggest that women’s IQ and self-esteem are significantly lower after having read a women’s magazine. No wonder, if they are all full of this sort of crap. I don’t read these mags myself – I’d rather read a book, or a short story. Actually, scratch that. I’d rather disembowel myself with a teaspoon than read any more of that rubbish.

Who’s with me?

 

Posted on

your dreams and what they mean

Last night I dreamt about apostrophes. I was writing sentences without apostrophes, so that my students could rewrite them with apostrophes and… well, that’s about it, really.

I guess this dream means I’ve either got serious problems (possibly a punctuation-based meltdown in the near future?), or no problems at all whatsoever. My subconscious mind is apparently free of the usual nagging worries about the overwhelming futility of human existence and the urge towards evil that lurks inside all human hearts.  For obvious reasons, this disturbs me.

So, as always in times of doubt, I turned to a dictionary. There are several dream dictionaries online, but they are rubbish compared to the brilliant ‘Your Dreams and What They Mean’ by Nerys Lee. I found this gem in a charity shop somewhere, many years ago, and I’ve kept it with me ever since. Not only does it have a gorgeously suggestive cover illustration (The Dream, by Henri Rousseau), but inside it has all sorts of information that I have never read anywhere else, from a brief description of the history of dreaming, to advice on how to deal with a psychic or incubus attack whilst asleep.*

Amazingly, there is no entry for ‘apostrophe’, ‘comma’, or for ‘punctuation’ in general. However, I did find out that a rhinoceros is traditionally a sex symbol, a whale is symbolic of the feminine self (“the womb of mother nature”), and that a jay is a messenger from the dead.

Perhaps you already knew.

Well. Even apostrophe dreams are quite interesting when looked at from a certain angle. Indeed,  I get many of my best ideas from dreams, and from dream books.  I already wrote a story called ‘Your dreams and what they mean’ (It is here) and now I’m scouring this fantastic book again to see if inspiration strikes.  I am somewhat tempted to write an epic poem about a rhinoceros and a whale. Watch this space.

 

*In this section of the book, I just found a small yellow moth, dried and pressed into the pages.

Posted on

teething

As you can imagine, for a site with such great big teeth, I’ve been having a few teething problems, but things are slowly getting sorted out. Thanks to everyone  for your comments and links. And those of you who have complimented me on the fantastic design of the site, I have to tell you it was all my brother’s doing. His name is Matt Bruce, and if you pay him vast sums of money, he might just be persuaded to design something for you.

In other news, I started back at my day job last week so have been swamped under a pile of lesson plans and new students, and have hardly written anything at all. What I have written is quite a lot of personal stuff about being ill and fucked up, and I’m not sure anyone actually wants to read about that. I am considering how personal I want to get on this blog. I know everyone has a different approach – I haven’t worked out yet what I want mine to be.

Your thoughts? Do you get personal on your blog, or do you keep it strictly business?

 

Posted on

convent geometry

My story, Convent Geometry, is published in Ideomancer this month.

I’m very happy to have a story in Ideomancer – it’s a great magazine that has published many, many fantastic stories, including this one by my fellow writing group member, Ilan Lerman.

Perhaps it isn’t the done thing to say so, but I really love this story of mine.  Obviously it has its faults, but there is something compelling, to me, about the characters and setting. After writing it (which I did over the course of about a year) I did a lot of research about the characters and their world, and about sacred geometry, with the vague idea that there might be room for a novel here. But in retrospect, I think I just wanted to live in their world a little bit longer. (I don’t recommend doing the research for a story after you’ve written the story, by the way. I suspect there’s a better method. :))

There are three women in the story, each of whom speaks to me quite clearly. I love Nocturna, and feel that she loses so much. She is not such a nice person – she is controlling, rigid, jealous – but she is innocent, and very simple in her wants. And Lumiere just wants to be free: she has a genius for geometry, and she is forced to use her talent any way she can, even though it ends up being so destructive. Then there is Joan, who is so damaged, so unprepared to find beauty and wonder in the world. I don’t know why they are so important to me. Perhaps they represent three battling elements of myself. Maybe it’s just the power of three – in sacred geometry, three is the number that creates the universe.

I don’t know. Some stories just live. That’s a good feeling, to write a story like that.