Back to the Grindstone

After a longish gap for reflection and battery charging, I'm just about ready to get writing again.  I think many years of meaning to write and not quite getting round to it is a hard habit to break and it's one of the reasons why I enjoyed my OU course so much.  There's nothing like a looming deadline to concentrate the mind - especially when you've paid good money to have someone hassle you.  I'm just beginning to see some results though, small but positive nonetheless.  This week I was told that a story I submitted to a flash fiction website months ago is going to be published in an anthology available on Amazon.  It's a teeny wee story and the sales of the anthology will probably be immeasurably small, but it's a publication all the same!

I also heard this week (why everything at once?) that my poem 'Wise Wirds' is going to be included in a poetry anthology published by Fife Book Fest.  Again, a prospect of tiny sales but a publication.

I've signed up for the next level of Creative Writing and just had a look at the volume of work they're expecting to see.  It's quite daunting.  It's also exciting though and takes me in some different directions.  Watch this space for news of how I get on with more short stories, longer poems and a plunge into the world of script-writing.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Fiction-World-ebook/dp/B0096QHYA8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347021341&sr=1-1

Inspiration for creation

What kind of inspiration do we need to start a new creation?  I've tried beautiful, peaceful locations but tend to find the views a bit distracting.  I've tried a darkened room with minimal external stimulus but the ideas don't flow to order.  It seems that inspiration will still strike at the most inconvenient moments - in crowded public transport.  I was on a tram in Lisbon recently.  Not one of the picturesque, rackety, pre-WW1 trams that wind through the impossibly steep and narrow streets of the Alfama (see above), but a new Siemens, double-length tram full of sweaty commuters on a busy stretch of road in the commercial centre.  I was jammed against the door on one side, a waist high glass partition on  the other, close enough to my fellow passengers to surmise a great deal about what their personal hygiene routine was like and what they enjoyed for breakfast. I had a sudden idea for a story.  Being a conscientious student of creative writing, I now carry a notebook almost everywhere I go.  Unfortunately on this occasion I could not move my arms, let alone reach for a pen.  So, while the tram stuttered along between traffic lights and inexplicable hold-ups, I tried to hold that thought.  Fifteen minutes later, finally emerging from the tram outside the Monasterio de los Jeronimos at Belem, I joined the queue to see inside the wonderful 16th century church and, by the time I wandered back outside, blinking in the sun, my story had dissolved away to nothing and the strongest idea in my mind was how to get back into the city without having to travel on the number 15 tram.

I recently discovered a new way of working on a story.  Much helped by the fact that I was frantically trying to finish for a deadline, I took the laptop with me on a camping trip.  Camping?? I hear you say, how did that work?  Well, it helps if you have a folding camper and electrical hook-up and, I've also found, it helps if you can't access the internet and get fatally distracted.  With the side wall opened out, a glass of wine beside me and the table set up for typing, I sent the boys out to guddle in a stream and just got on with it.  Job done, deadline met, and a smile on my face every time I looked at the view.  Thoroughly recommend it.

My favourite place (well, one of them)

http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/myfavouriteplace/stories/croft-fire-on-tiree

Writing from life

We're on to a new theme on the OU course - Life Writing.  Sounds deceptively simple but the hardest things often do!  I don't feel that I have any shortage of material in my own life but it's a fine balance that makes it interesting to others while keeping it close to the truth.  What is the truth after all?  There's my version of events and then a myriad of other versions from others who were there but seeing things from another perspective.  There's emotional truth which sometimes requires a re-jig of the facts.  There's sensitivity to the other people who share my own stories - especially if they can't answer back.  So, all in all, no pressure.  I'm working on some tales from childhood and may have to change some names to protect the innocent!

poem no. 2 from my assessment

This one is based on a sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci

The Mind’s Eye

Flimsy as the ochre smear

on the page, wrestled from the earth

to give shape to the imagined.

Sturdy as the wooden frame

wrenched from the tree,

to hold the idea for a perfect, tense moment

Light as the inky sketch

of a man, perched like an anxious bird

on an unhinged swing.

Swept along on the canvas sail

of a mind that sees realities,

and dreams through other eyes.  

Poems from my latest assessment

This poem is inspired by a photo of Barbara Hepworth in her studio (no implication that she is any kind of a witch in person!)

The Secrets of Sculpture

‘Come in,’ she said, ‘or go out, all the same to me.’

Gnarled, witchy fingers grasping the frame,

she pursed her lips and smiled.

‘The stone was hewn from such as you,

Join me and live, or die.’

Tiny, like a red-capped finch,

furred as a brown bear,

she was the organic centre of the room.

Gouged from the softest chalk

and weathering all too soon.

I hovered, uncertain at the threshold,

eyes drawn to the door with no handle.

‘Where do we go from here?’ I asked.

Her wrinkled eyes darted to the stone,

‘Back where we came from.’