It's getting dark outside. It's 5.46pm. There's a thick, beefy, grey night hanging around outside waiting to knock me off my still-summer-shoe-clad feet when I step out of the office in 10 minutes. Not cool.
The clocks will go back an hour on Sunday, signalling the onset of British Winter 2011 brrrr...making way for...mmm mulled wine, red wine, mulled wine, mmm repeat etc.
Incidentally, why is David Cameron trying to mess with time itself? In my opinion, nobody should be allowed to do this except God, Hiro Nakamura (from 'Heroes') and Bernard (from 'Bernard's Watch'). I don't think David is quite on a par with any of these guys. I'm not David-bashing as such, just wandering why he's thinking about long summers when we're about to enter winter? Live in the present, seize the day and all that.
Perhaps he has just been watching too many 'Bernard's Watch' repeats? In which case I don't blame him. But then why doesn't he just issue similar magic pocket watches to every Briton and we can decide Time for ourselves, "each to their own" style?
This may sound naive and silly, but this is very probably the next step in our technology-obsessed, power-hungry modern world...you heard it here first...watch this space...(didn't even intend a cringey time-based pun there oops.)
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
A Day in the Life of....A Scarf
Yes..that's right. A scarf.
I am currently attending a weekly writing class at The Institute and I love it. The teacher is fantastic and puts everyone at ease and we have a great group of people so it's lots of fun. Our task this week was to hold out our hands with our eyes closed. The teacher placed a different object in each of our hands. All of these objects were everyday, boring, and obviously inanimate. We had to feel them and describe them through the sense of touch alone. Although for most of us, it was easy to tell what the object was we still had to really hone in on this sense. With our eyes open, we then wrote descriptions of the object through each of the other senses. I got a pashmina-type scarf so I did feel a little creepy holding it to my face and inhaling the scarf like I was trying to breathe in the scent of my teacher. I refrained from tasting the scarf, as I thought this may be taking it a step too far on the creepy scale...I like her, but not in a stalker-eat-her-scarf kind of way.
We then had to think of memories evoked by the object and it's texture, smell, sight, sound and taste. It was surprising and fun what some of us came up with and we learnt a lot about each other too through our stories and relationships with the objects.
For homework we have been set the task of taking this exploration further and writing 'A Day in the Life of' our object. I actually really enjoyed doing this.
The point behind this whole exercise was to learn to look at familiar objects and the world with new eyes. We have labels and such familiarity with the everyday world as we view it, so rarely find reason to stop and think about the qualities of things we see everyday.
It is also very hard to sit down and 'decide' to write something interesting and profound off the top of your head. Our teacher Elizabeth explained that by starting with something everyday and mundane and writing about it in detail, we find new ways to engage with these subjects and they often provide a path to something more interesting/ profound when we are not even trying.
If you would like to see what an animated inanimate scarf does during a typical day please read on:
I am currently attending a weekly writing class at The Institute and I love it. The teacher is fantastic and puts everyone at ease and we have a great group of people so it's lots of fun. Our task this week was to hold out our hands with our eyes closed. The teacher placed a different object in each of our hands. All of these objects were everyday, boring, and obviously inanimate. We had to feel them and describe them through the sense of touch alone. Although for most of us, it was easy to tell what the object was we still had to really hone in on this sense. With our eyes open, we then wrote descriptions of the object through each of the other senses. I got a pashmina-type scarf so I did feel a little creepy holding it to my face and inhaling the scarf like I was trying to breathe in the scent of my teacher. I refrained from tasting the scarf, as I thought this may be taking it a step too far on the creepy scale...I like her, but not in a stalker-eat-her-scarf kind of way.
We then had to think of memories evoked by the object and it's texture, smell, sight, sound and taste. It was surprising and fun what some of us came up with and we learnt a lot about each other too through our stories and relationships with the objects.
For homework we have been set the task of taking this exploration further and writing 'A Day in the Life of' our object. I actually really enjoyed doing this.
The point behind this whole exercise was to learn to look at familiar objects and the world with new eyes. We have labels and such familiarity with the everyday world as we view it, so rarely find reason to stop and think about the qualities of things we see everyday.
It is also very hard to sit down and 'decide' to write something interesting and profound off the top of your head. Our teacher Elizabeth explained that by starting with something everyday and mundane and writing about it in detail, we find new ways to engage with these subjects and they often provide a path to something more interesting/ profound when we are not even trying.
If you would like to see what an animated inanimate scarf does during a typical day please read on:
A Day in the Life of A Scarf
I am rudely woken from my slumber by sharp rays of sunshine pouring in all over my body. Sunshine is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, I love the warmth and the brightness. However, I think it is simply bad etiquette to force the transition from clammy dark slumber to the brightness of the morning upon anyone. My wearer has never learned to refrain from this habit. In my younger years, this was easier to live with, but as I grow older I worry about my colours fading in the light. I prefer the preservation and peace of the darkness. Here I can nestle amongst other scarves, socks and knickers. The drawer always smells of fresh sweet apples. When I sleep I feel like someone has draped me around the boughs of an apple tree and left me here to rest.
After abruptly pulling open our communal wooden bed, the wearer continues her inconsiderate routine by plucking me out of the drawer. My body is still limp and numb with sleep. Her touch is rough. Can she not see that I am getting old? Sometimes when I am working for the day and I leave the house with her in the morning, I see thick brown cardboard boxes of various sizes being carted gently to front doors by delivery men. I often wonder why the wearer does not touch me like this, with caring hands. Eventually I decipher that the delivery men touch the packages gently due to giant labels taped to the boxes reading ‘FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE’. I often think at a certain age, we clothing items should also get a similar label sewn to our skin. My tassles are untwizzling you see, my rainbow coloured stripes are dusty now and I have a small hole in my left corner, where someone burned through me with a cigarette at a dinner party. There is also a tea stain on the pale, cream coloured part of my body. I remember the occasion when this occurred all too well, and how could I forget? The stain is a constant reminder and has not come out despite three hand washes and one, dare I say it, machine wash since. I had been delighted that the wearer had picked me from the drawer that day to adorn her classically cut black office dress. Despite picking a lovely dress however, the wearer was clearly sleep deprived herself, and running late. We stopped on the way to work so that she could buy a styrofoam cup of tea from a street vendor by St Johns Wood tube station. Once on the train, the wearer lifted the lid from the cup to let the tea cool. Steam rose from the milky liquid and harassed me. It was hot enough on the tube without this added wet heat. Now that I have since encountered the dreaded machine with all of the common clothes, I could liken the steam to the shock of heat that rose from my skin by the end of this terrifying fiasco, when I was finally removed from the machine in a giant heap with all of the other clothes. Although my care label is now faded, the wearer knows that I am a ‘hand wash only’ item. To add insult to injury on this particular tube ride, after receiving an unwanted sauna, the tube carriage halted at Baker Street station sending scolding hot tea jolting out of the cup and all over me. Needless to say, this was ‘one of those days’ at work for both of us.
There are younger scarves in the drawer that I used to be jealous of, but now hardly care to notice. One is particularly attractive. She is made of red and pink silk and gold threads pattern her luxurious body with delicate roses. These younger scarves do get picked more often than me these days, and I am often discarded at the back of the drawer. But as I said, it is cool and dark and peaceful in here so that suits me just fine.
It is still nice to be worn occasionally and despite my annoyance at such a wake-up call I do find that I feel a hint of pride that I am the chosen one today. The wearer drapes me around her neck. My top half is always pleased to be nestled against her warm, delicate, soft skin. But the trailing bottom half of my body is disgruntled with the wearer’s outfit. She is wearing that stiff, itchy navy blue blazer and we do not get on well. There is a sterling silver butterfly brooch attached to the top lapel of the blazer and I always scratch up uncomfortably against him and get stuck. The delicate strings of my netted middle stripe get caught on the butterfly antennae today. I am not best pleased. The wearer swirls around and parades herself in front of the full length mirror. She fidgets with me and pulls my ends this way and that. I try to cry out as she pulls me at one end and the strings wrap tighter on the antennae, the metal poking through the larger holes in my weave. The wearer ignores my discomfort. She sighs and her shoulders drop. She rips me from her warm pulsating throat violently and throws me to the bed. I flutter through the air as gracefully as I can and land on the unmade bed. “Get off” comes a gruff angry voice, muffled by the duvet. I look to my left and realise I am lying over a thick brown cracked leather belt. He’s also been discarded today by the wearer and we know we’ll be laying like this all day until she clears us off the bed later when she returns home.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
An Autumnal and somewhat gloomy take on the city...
I came across this old poem I wrote a few years ago. It describes the grey, hostile side of the city, viewed from a park bench (without a bottle of cheap cider, which would have been a perfect accompaniment given the mood of the poem). I was very much playing around with the structure/ form of the lines and I am not sure it works here, but anyway:
My hands. A bursting grapefruit full of acid juice.
A half-smoked cigarette smoulders in the gutter,
rolling to and fro with the breeze in a restless dance.
Ash bleeds into the drain.
An old man cycles past on a battered bike,
wisps of silver hair
whisper his secrets to the world from his pink head.
Ten kilos of wet sand sit in hessian sacks,
slumped at the foot of a nearby silver birch tree.
Red flowers of passionate velvet create hints of sex in this grey cityscape.
Conkers lie scattered on the grass and gravel,
smashed underfoot to a bruise coloured mush.
The smattered brown skins bear broken pearls of brown and black.
Fleshy, spiked green shells are but a distant memory,
no longer a muse.
A blue-eyed child runs wide into the embrace of the wind,
mittens flying beside him,
desperate to keep up the pace.
A smug roly-poly sausage dog raises his hind leg and
trickles confirmation of his existence onto some conker mess,
making a pungent muddy soup.
Leaves paper the poop scoop bin
with their fragile veins
and deep decorative shades
of red, orange, yellow and brown.
A filthy pigeon flutters from his lampost perch to the bin below.
He stops, jutting his head from side to side,
then sweeps away into the sky,
a little dot dunked in a vat of the city's shit.
This is the city.
Beautiful in its naked ruin.
Ferocious in its pace,
fragile and lingering in its traces.
I watch in the wake of its life.
A quiet tide sweeps over the roads like a tired, maternal broom.
The debris of another city day washes over the grey tarmac
and trickles
down the cracks
in
the
pavements.
This is the city.
The city.
My hands. A bursting grapefruit full of acid juice.
A half-smoked cigarette smoulders in the gutter,
rolling to and fro with the breeze in a restless dance.
Ash bleeds into the drain.
An old man cycles past on a battered bike,
wisps of silver hair
whisper his secrets to the world from his pink head.
Ten kilos of wet sand sit in hessian sacks,
slumped at the foot of a nearby silver birch tree.
Red flowers of passionate velvet create hints of sex in this grey cityscape.
Conkers lie scattered on the grass and gravel,
smashed underfoot to a bruise coloured mush.
The smattered brown skins bear broken pearls of brown and black.
Fleshy, spiked green shells are but a distant memory,
no longer a muse.
A blue-eyed child runs wide into the embrace of the wind,
mittens flying beside him,
desperate to keep up the pace.
A smug roly-poly sausage dog raises his hind leg and
trickles confirmation of his existence onto some conker mess,
making a pungent muddy soup.
Leaves paper the poop scoop bin
with their fragile veins
and deep decorative shades
of red, orange, yellow and brown.
A filthy pigeon flutters from his lampost perch to the bin below.
He stops, jutting his head from side to side,
then sweeps away into the sky,
a little dot dunked in a vat of the city's shit.
This is the city.
Beautiful in its naked ruin.
Ferocious in its pace,
fragile and lingering in its traces.
I watch in the wake of its life.
A quiet tide sweeps over the roads like a tired, maternal broom.
The debris of another city day washes over the grey tarmac
and trickles
down the cracks
in
the
pavements.
This is the city.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Note to self:
I will be writing some stories soon too. This blog is not just going to be book reviews, as I have promised to have 'words of all kinds.'
Graphic novels: I am not wearing a hat yet as it is still sort of summer, but if I was, I would take it off to you...
Three weeks since my last post! I could not have been busy enough to create a baby inbetween posts this time (If I had conceived since then, would it even be an embryo by now?) I will stop referring to my posts in terms of pregnancy, as I realise it's a bit odd, and a bit sexist for a woman to be relating everything to babies.
I have digressed. I wanted to talk about graphic novels. I have only recently discovered this medium of literature and I am hooked. I was always put off before by the comic book look when I flicked through. The first graphic novel I gave in and read was 'Pyongang' by Guy Delisle. A friend recommended and leant me the book so my curiousity caved and I succumbed. (Thank you Sophie)!
The book unravels Guy Delisle's experience as an illustrator working on a project in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. He is assigned a 'guide' upon arrival to North Korea and is not allowed to leave his compound without his 'guide'. There are pictures of Kim Il-Sung (the deceased, but "Eternal President") and his son Kim Jong-Il (the current Leader) on every wall of every public space.
Delisle is taken to 'The International Friendship Museum' - a hilariously conceived example of propaganda imposed upon the North Koreans to convince them of their own regime? The museum is full of valuable gifts of 'thanks' bequethed upon Kim Jong Il and the late Kim Il-Sung by leading figures from countries all over the world. Gifts are displayed from over 146 countries - a supposed show of reverence and adoration to the North Korean Leaders from around the globe. (Of course, the fact that this gift-giving is mere protocol for any official visitor entering the country is a small-print fact of little relevance).
Delisle probes a little to try and dig beneath the conditioned veneer. Are the North Korean population actually convinced? Brainwashed? Too afraid to speak their true minds? He lends his guide a copy of Orwell's '1984' to see if he can open up a dialogue. I won't give anymore away...have a read.
The book is simple, funny, moving and a really interesting and eery insight into the workings of North Korea, possibly the most isolated country in the world in a day and age where people read all the versions of 'the truth' they can lay their hands on and blab their opinions in blogs like this all over the internet.
I have since read other graphic novels too. Some of Marjane Satrapi's books (Thank you Mike), including the highly acclaimed 'Persepolis' (which was also made into a film in 2007, co-directed by Satrapi). The three books I read were set in and around Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. They are based on Satrapi's own experiences growing up in Tehran and Europe. 'Persepolis' (Parts 1 and 2) are highly personal and I love the quirky, insightful and intelligent perspective cast upon life and the important political events of the time by the confused and rebellious adolescent Satrapi, who narrates the story.
J.P. Stassen's 'Deogratias, a tale of Rwanda' provides another interesting read. It was first published in Belgium in 2000 and tackles the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The tale focuses on Deogratias, a young Hutu man who has been driven crazy as a result of living through the genocide, which saw longstanding tensions between the majority Hutu tribe and minority Tutsi tribe explode in the most tragic way. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in roughly 100 days. The story takes place before, during and after the genocide and traces the struggle of genocide survivors to continue living 'a normal life', having witnessed such atrocity.
I have just read 'Stitches', by David Small, another fantastic and highly original creative accomplishment. This chunky volume is made up more of pictures than words. Small's autobiography recounts memories of his grim childhood and strange, shockingly unaffectionate parents. The terrifying facial expressions of the Mother and Grandmother stuck with me. Small's drawings are so vivid that we experience this tale very much through the eyes of Small's young self.
I found all of these books deeply engrossing. The graphic novel is a powerful medium often used to tackle difficult and dark themes, both political and emotional. The genre seems to allow apt exploration of the dark and often repressed or less talked about face of human nature. The patchwork of words and pictures together provides a channel to focus in on these dark subject matters in a thought-provoking, but simultaneously, somehow lighthearted way. The books themselves (at least the ones above that I have read) are not depressing. Perhaps this is because descriptions in words are often kept to a minimum, with emotive but simplistic pictures weaving together the narrative. This allows for subjects that are often too atrocious to be described or adequately approached in words to be explored effectively, without tip-toeing or excuse-searching. These books are raw and vivid. I realise that I may well be generalising in a big way and these statements are rather sweeping, but I speak of the books I have read. And I urge you to pick up a graphic novel that grabs your interest and give it a go!
I have digressed. I wanted to talk about graphic novels. I have only recently discovered this medium of literature and I am hooked. I was always put off before by the comic book look when I flicked through. The first graphic novel I gave in and read was 'Pyongang' by Guy Delisle. A friend recommended and leant me the book so my curiousity caved and I succumbed. (Thank you Sophie)!
The book unravels Guy Delisle's experience as an illustrator working on a project in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. He is assigned a 'guide' upon arrival to North Korea and is not allowed to leave his compound without his 'guide'. There are pictures of Kim Il-Sung (the deceased, but "Eternal President") and his son Kim Jong-Il (the current Leader) on every wall of every public space.
Delisle is taken to 'The International Friendship Museum' - a hilariously conceived example of propaganda imposed upon the North Koreans to convince them of their own regime? The museum is full of valuable gifts of 'thanks' bequethed upon Kim Jong Il and the late Kim Il-Sung by leading figures from countries all over the world. Gifts are displayed from over 146 countries - a supposed show of reverence and adoration to the North Korean Leaders from around the globe. (Of course, the fact that this gift-giving is mere protocol for any official visitor entering the country is a small-print fact of little relevance).
Delisle probes a little to try and dig beneath the conditioned veneer. Are the North Korean population actually convinced? Brainwashed? Too afraid to speak their true minds? He lends his guide a copy of Orwell's '1984' to see if he can open up a dialogue. I won't give anymore away...have a read.
The book is simple, funny, moving and a really interesting and eery insight into the workings of North Korea, possibly the most isolated country in the world in a day and age where people read all the versions of 'the truth' they can lay their hands on and blab their opinions in blogs like this all over the internet.
I have since read other graphic novels too. Some of Marjane Satrapi's books (Thank you Mike), including the highly acclaimed 'Persepolis' (which was also made into a film in 2007, co-directed by Satrapi). The three books I read were set in and around Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. They are based on Satrapi's own experiences growing up in Tehran and Europe. 'Persepolis' (Parts 1 and 2) are highly personal and I love the quirky, insightful and intelligent perspective cast upon life and the important political events of the time by the confused and rebellious adolescent Satrapi, who narrates the story.
J.P. Stassen's 'Deogratias, a tale of Rwanda' provides another interesting read. It was first published in Belgium in 2000 and tackles the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. The tale focuses on Deogratias, a young Hutu man who has been driven crazy as a result of living through the genocide, which saw longstanding tensions between the majority Hutu tribe and minority Tutsi tribe explode in the most tragic way. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in roughly 100 days. The story takes place before, during and after the genocide and traces the struggle of genocide survivors to continue living 'a normal life', having witnessed such atrocity.
I have just read 'Stitches', by David Small, another fantastic and highly original creative accomplishment. This chunky volume is made up more of pictures than words. Small's autobiography recounts memories of his grim childhood and strange, shockingly unaffectionate parents. The terrifying facial expressions of the Mother and Grandmother stuck with me. Small's drawings are so vivid that we experience this tale very much through the eyes of Small's young self.
I found all of these books deeply engrossing. The graphic novel is a powerful medium often used to tackle difficult and dark themes, both political and emotional. The genre seems to allow apt exploration of the dark and often repressed or less talked about face of human nature. The patchwork of words and pictures together provides a channel to focus in on these dark subject matters in a thought-provoking, but simultaneously, somehow lighthearted way. The books themselves (at least the ones above that I have read) are not depressing. Perhaps this is because descriptions in words are often kept to a minimum, with emotive but simplistic pictures weaving together the narrative. This allows for subjects that are often too atrocious to be described or adequately approached in words to be explored effectively, without tip-toeing or excuse-searching. These books are raw and vivid. I realise that I may well be generalising in a big way and these statements are rather sweeping, but I speak of the books I have read. And I urge you to pick up a graphic novel that grabs your interest and give it a go!
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Long time, no see
After struggling to figure out what my password was for this account for a good 10 minutes and finally caving and resetting it (I know it was 'Pancakes' related, but just couldn't remember the finer details), I had to laugh at the one single lonely post I had put up here. In November. 8 months ago. It is now August. The snow has melted, England is past its most bitter winter in 20 odd years and thawed out again into the summer heat of the inane teenage hoody riots. During this time I could pretty much have created and fully grown a baby.
If it's any consolation (to myself), I'm almost certain I started out like a million other bloggers did. With a post about my good intentions and my love of words and my 'meaty wisdom' to all wannabe writer's to get on and just bloody write...and then...of course...by being mute for 8 months. If I had created a baby fair do's, but I haven't.
So, password reset (nothing to do with pancakes, it was making me hungry anyway), I am up for giving this another go.
Have just finished reading 'Under the Jaguar Sun' by Italo Calvino. A fantastic little book made up of three short stories. He died whilst writing the book, which was intended to be a book based on the five senses. The three stories are all consuming. They do not describe or focus on senses. They are the senses. Calvino writes through the organs of the mouth, the ears and the nose in his three pieces. The writing is unusual and fragmentary, but oh so flowing at the same time - if it can be these two contradictory things at once, which it seems to achieve. Fragmentary perhaps, because it disclocates us from the whole body. It hones in on that one sense like it was the only sense. The only perception. And then the writing, the story, the ideas, the feelings flow beautifully and intrinsically through this single organ. There were many sentences that struck me. I love books where a sentence, or a few lines here or there just stick out. A piece of art in their own right. A little truth in amongst the lovely jumble sale. Here are a few lines, precisely like that from the first story in the book 'Under the Jaguar Sun':
"Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents' - serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinago a la vera cruzana, and enchiladas."
I even love the end bit, where Calvino drifts off into what seems like a Mexican menu. Somehow it just fits. Mouth, teeth, chewing, swallowing, consumption. The need is basic and everyday. We need food - to survive. The need is based on emotion and yearning - we need sex and comfort and intimacy. The need is greed - we desire beyond our means. Our desire leads us on an endless bid for consumption. One that can never satiate our hunger.
If it's any consolation (to myself), I'm almost certain I started out like a million other bloggers did. With a post about my good intentions and my love of words and my 'meaty wisdom' to all wannabe writer's to get on and just bloody write...and then...of course...by being mute for 8 months. If I had created a baby fair do's, but I haven't.
So, password reset (nothing to do with pancakes, it was making me hungry anyway), I am up for giving this another go.
Have just finished reading 'Under the Jaguar Sun' by Italo Calvino. A fantastic little book made up of three short stories. He died whilst writing the book, which was intended to be a book based on the five senses. The three stories are all consuming. They do not describe or focus on senses. They are the senses. Calvino writes through the organs of the mouth, the ears and the nose in his three pieces. The writing is unusual and fragmentary, but oh so flowing at the same time - if it can be these two contradictory things at once, which it seems to achieve. Fragmentary perhaps, because it disclocates us from the whole body. It hones in on that one sense like it was the only sense. The only perception. And then the writing, the story, the ideas, the feelings flow beautifully and intrinsically through this single organ. There were many sentences that struck me. I love books where a sentence, or a few lines here or there just stick out. A piece of art in their own right. A little truth in amongst the lovely jumble sale. Here are a few lines, precisely like that from the first story in the book 'Under the Jaguar Sun':
"Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents' - serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinago a la vera cruzana, and enchiladas."
I even love the end bit, where Calvino drifts off into what seems like a Mexican menu. Somehow it just fits. Mouth, teeth, chewing, swallowing, consumption. The need is basic and everyday. We need food - to survive. The need is based on emotion and yearning - we need sex and comfort and intimacy. The need is greed - we desire beyond our means. Our desire leads us on an endless bid for consumption. One that can never satiate our hunger.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Why words are wonderful...
I decided at an early age that I wanted to become a writer. Naturally, this was just after the consecutive dreams of becoming both the elusive voice drifting out of the intercom at a McDonald's drive-thru, and a famous trumpeter had been played out and exhausted on the creative stage inside my little dreamy head. We are talking roughly age nine I'd say. Yet this is a dream that, however flippant and childish it and I was at the time, has not altered much since.
So...after years of chasing the elusive tail of the magical, rainbow-scaled, monacled kimodo-dragonesque Writing Oracle who I imagined would possess all of the answers and divinely inspire me to write my first bestseller, I have decided this is silly. I have come to the conclusion that if I want to be a writer, it is probably a bit important to just write. I think that is a good meaty piece of wisdom for any wannabe writer. Simple as it sounds this is actually the hardest part of the process. Just getting on with it. Do not put it off or delay, just write as much as you can whenever you can and whatever you can.
I am sure all writers get scared of the absolute rubbish they might spout. I think writing is a process like any art. You have to do a lot of it and then sift through the crap to find the shiny pieces you want to harness that reflect what it was you were getting at or what it is that has come out if you were not getting at anything in the first place! The pen of a writer unlocks a lifelong stream of consciousness that must be edited and worked on over and over.
So yes, perhaps I have always been afraid of trying. Or, more aptly, of finding miserable failure in the ink on the page and falling flat on my pretentious writing spectacles (which I do not actually wear or possess...but pretend I do ok). I realise now (and probably always did) that you cannot fail at writing or any art. You may not succeed or gain recognition but as long as you simply keep doing it, the words are there on the page. Forever. They are in the world and you have given expression to that part of yourself in a tangible way. Good, bad or ugly. For better or for worse.
So I am starting this blog in my attempt to do just that...
Words about anything and everything and whatever. But words all the same. Because I quite like words.
So...after years of chasing the elusive tail of the magical, rainbow-scaled, monacled kimodo-dragonesque Writing Oracle who I imagined would possess all of the answers and divinely inspire me to write my first bestseller, I have decided this is silly. I have come to the conclusion that if I want to be a writer, it is probably a bit important to just write. I think that is a good meaty piece of wisdom for any wannabe writer. Simple as it sounds this is actually the hardest part of the process. Just getting on with it. Do not put it off or delay, just write as much as you can whenever you can and whatever you can.
I am sure all writers get scared of the absolute rubbish they might spout. I think writing is a process like any art. You have to do a lot of it and then sift through the crap to find the shiny pieces you want to harness that reflect what it was you were getting at or what it is that has come out if you were not getting at anything in the first place! The pen of a writer unlocks a lifelong stream of consciousness that must be edited and worked on over and over.
So yes, perhaps I have always been afraid of trying. Or, more aptly, of finding miserable failure in the ink on the page and falling flat on my pretentious writing spectacles (which I do not actually wear or possess...but pretend I do ok). I realise now (and probably always did) that you cannot fail at writing or any art. You may not succeed or gain recognition but as long as you simply keep doing it, the words are there on the page. Forever. They are in the world and you have given expression to that part of yourself in a tangible way. Good, bad or ugly. For better or for worse.
So I am starting this blog in my attempt to do just that...
Words about anything and everything and whatever. But words all the same. Because I quite like words.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)