Alison’s not been writing?

Oh yes she has!  But not the blog.  First off, I was away for a break with no internet connection, no telly, no radio, no personal music system…utter quiet.  Second reason – letting life get in the way.  So, back on track to encourage myself and all you writers!

I had a fun evening at our local library last night where the Bute Writers’ Group was hosting an evening.  Our anthology ‘All roads Lead to Bute’ is practically sold out so the event was more by way of showcasing, not only BWG’s successes, but those of other local writers.  The most recent to have work published is Debbie Wallace whose children’s book  ‘Dragons’ Dance’ is going down well.  She spoke about the roller coaster of emotion when you put your heart into a piece of writing and then go through the mill of rejections.  The upswing of elation when a publisher says ‘yes’ is only the beginning of the next phase of hard work.  But, as she said, when you hold a book in your hand, it’s all worth it.  That’s why I don’t think print format will die out too quickly.  E-books are brilliant for some purposes but folk still like to curl up with an actual book – and read to children!

When in France I emerged from my silence to visit the town of Argenton-sur-Creuse – here’s a pic.

Don’t you just love ‘coincidences’?

I was much tickled to learn today that St Matthew is the patron saint of accountants, bankers, financiers, stockbrokers, bookkeepers, customs officers, financial officers and tax collectors.  Must have had a busy week.

Don’t start at the beginning

Funny how one needs to keep re-learning stuff.  A friend was consulting me about a piece of writing she wanted to do.  What order to put things in?  What tense would be best?  Where would she begin?   I suggested that it was much too early to concern herself with this and that she should get as much down just as it comes, either on post-it notes or by mapping with coloured pens on large sheets of paper.  Whatever technique she uses, the point is to get the flow going, happy writing it’s sometimes called.  The ordering and sorting comes later.   Start writing whatever has the most buzz for you when you pick up the pen or sit down at the keyboard.

That’s why I’ve been stuck she said, I’ve been trying to structure it first.  I remember now being told not to start at the beginning. 

She just needed someone to remind her of what she already knew.

Now all I need to do is take my own advice.  I’m trying to write an article at the moment and I’m a bit bogged down.  I did splurge out ideas just as they came but then I didn’t return to the piece for several days.  I’ve lost the flow but there isn’t enough order yet.  So I’m going back to the drawing board so to speak.  I’ll do a cluster map to find again the heart of what I’m trying to say; I’ll compare it with the material I’ve got and see how I can shape it all up.

Don’t start at the beginning.  Jump into the middle and write your way out.

Apples etc

What’s your favourite season?  My young apple trees are bearing sharp James Grieves.  A bracing antidote to any melancholy induced by departing swallows and the robin’s autumn song.

baby appletree

Sticks and Stones

Folk wisdom isn’t always right.  The old saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me’ has virtue more as a defiant gesture than a psychological truth.  Many of us take years to shake off descriptions earned in our childhood – ‘clumsy’, ‘noisy’, ‘tone deaf’ or worse ’stupid’.  Maybe even the positive ones can be a problem.  If you’re the’clever one’, do you have to live up to it?  If your good looks were your passport to the world, does it hurt when your hair falls out and your chins multiply?

There’s lots of advice around now on how important it is to speak positively to children.  We could all do with some of that.  I was in a conversation recently about how some buildings and places seem to carry an almost tangible vibe.  Somebody made the point that we all leave a trace behind us wherever we’ve been.  The words we say are part of that trace. 

I actually got to thinking about this in terms of the current financial climate and how we all catch the anxiety whether or not it actually applies to our own situation.  Words of doom and gloom can weigh us down even if we’re not personally affected by a downward trend. 

My resolution for today is not to be a self-fulfllling prophet of doom!  (We’re all doomed.  Don’t panic!)

’so shines a good deed in a naughty world’

I know which of you will recognise that!  Who’ll get in first?  It came to mind when reading Tuesday’s Guardian, full of gloom about the rich nations raiding the poor ones for their food via the more ‘respectable’ method of trade deals rather than brute force.  Or the existence of perfectly legit organisations dedicated to ensuring that the wealthy are protected from paying the taxes that might help the low paid. 

The ‘good deed’ is the brainchild of one Jean-Francais Cazenave who started TSF, Telecoms Sans Frontieres (no, I don’t have time to find accents on WordPress).  On trips to Kurdistan and the Balkans delivering the typical emergency supplies, he and his helpers found themselves besieged by requests to ring relatives and friends, once they, the volunteers, returned home.  ‘Every time we saw the same thing – a need for victims to communicate’.  He got hold of a satellite phone, opened a centre and queues would form, 25,000 people in one case,  to make the urgent call.  Now, 10 years later, staff and volunteers travel in dangerous conditions to provide a lifeline and to set up communications for NGOs.  Somebody using imagination and resourcefulness for the benefit of others!  Memo to self: be part of the solution.  Read all about it.

Wet Saturday Haiku

Set no alarm

to lie in Saturday

space for the mind

to wander.

 

She said her mind

was like a bag of weasels

I wish I’d

thought of that.

 

I had not seen that

the cat has

one rogue whisker

above her left eye.

 

The apple tree

is pixilated

by rain running

down the window pane.

 

Is this, then the present?

Rain is so ‘now’

you said to me,

well, it’s ‘here’.

 

Just because you

have seventeen

syllables

doesn’t mean

you’re a haiku.

 

When writing is a grind…

I mentioned writing about the Holy Island experience.  I’ve been struggling with it and now I know the reason.  In order to give a context to what I wanted to share, I was giving some factual background and seeking to work through the various aspects of my time there, to give a picture to a reader who might know little about the Centre.  I was labouring at it and realised that there was very little of me in what I was writing.  So I changed tack and began writing about the personal impact on me.  Within an hour I had written without stopping, almost as many words as it’s taken me all week to churn out. 

 

Now this may be because I’m irredeemably fascinated by my own responses.  But I don’t believe it’s just that.  It’s because it’s ‘facts’ – and they are as it were, ‘there’ so it’s boring to have to restate them.  I remember sitting exams where I deliberately avoided the question I knew most about because I’d be so bored churning out the answer.   I think that may be why I’ve seldom kept a factual journal, something I do now regret.   

 

I write to express what I’m in the process of learning, to share a new insight – well new to me!   But to rehearse facts!  I’m glad some people are wired for that, otherwise I wouldn’t know even the stuff I do know.  But it ain’t my bag.  Now, there’s a useful rediscovery! 

 

Of course, I do still need to write contextual stuff and even a few facts (never let the facts get in the way of a good story) but at least if I recognise which sort of writing activity I’m engaged in at any one time, I have some choices about how I work. 

 

 

Silence

 

silence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I opted for quite a lot of it on a retreat/course on Holy Island, Arran last week.  The Centre for World Peace and Health is a place where people of all faiths and none, can find some P & H and help to spread same.  You can attend a course, volunteer, just book in as a guest.  You can pop across for an hour or so by means of the open motor boat that crosses from Lamlash.  I’m in the middle of writing an account of the entire amazing experience so bits of that may appear piecemeal on this blog. 

I spent several hours a day in silence, in company and alone.  There was no access to email, a poor mobile phone signal and a payphone which I used only once.  No alcohol, no radio, no newspapers.  This made 5 days feel like 10 – in a good way.  Since returning, I have found it hard to know what to say – silenced by silence!  (Family and friends to whom I have babbled incoherently about it, probably have quite a different view!)

Another kind of silence was broken on Sunday at St Mary’s cathedral in Glasgow when Bishop Gene Robinson celebrated and preached.  I was part of the large congregation and proud to be there.  Some of his words have been reported in the press, mostly accurate I’d say.  His conviction that the church would some day be fully inclusive and welcoming to all was not only on behalf of ‘gay clerics’ as one paper said but on behalf of any person or group currently marginalised.  If this interest you, you can not only read all about but watch and listen to clips from the service and from an interview with Bishop Gene on www.thurible.net

 

Hurt Couture

A wee while back I put up a link to a short story of mine called The Tailor’s Dummy.  This prompted my pal, Colleen Magennis, to send me a poem she wrote years ago.  Here it is.

HURT COUTURE or
DRESSMAKER’S DUMMY 

When the high-street fashion
off-the-peg
moral-fibre clothing does not fit
we do not let it out, take it up, tuck, trim.
 
Instead we have alterations made to ourselves
(taking up, trimming, tucking, letting out)
till the dressmaker, mouth full of pins
wipes her scissors and says
Very you, madam, oh -
VERY you.

I can’t believe it’s over 2 weeks since I posted so it seems a bit de trop to say that I’ll be away for the next 5 days!  I hope I’ll have something to come back to over on Frying an Egg (you know who you are!)