Evolving projects

It's a strange thing how one idea can lead to another and another... like stepping stones across a changing landscape. I'm enjoying 'finishing' the Twins Book, although finishing is putting a rather glossier gleam on it than what it really is - completing the first draft. There are people who write perfect first drafts, I don't, I'm over it. The book already has the seeds of exciting new directions in it, like forking over the compost heap and finding a peach stone growing. Or an avocado, which would be unusual since I don't like avocados and never throw stones away. But, anyway, new ideas spring up, especially about The Project, which is gathering pace.

The writing is slowly evolving, from what I thought could be a novel about a therapist exploring the rants of an angry, possibly mentally ill woman, to considering autobiography/biography. I realised my fictional character was grieving for a significant loss trying to make sense of her own feelings and those of her loved one. She was even the same age as me when my sister died, for goodness sake, and the character name was one letter away from Sarah. I accept that I am as bonkers as Lorina and rapidly unravelling as I stitch but there's something very therapeutic in that. Of course, the big debate is whether a reader might find a fictional character more interesting (and more believable) that a real life, even told in fragments. Not to mention most people find it hard to weigh and edit writing about themselves in the same way they sort out fiction. Anyway, the stitching is a bit addictive so I'll see where it leads me.

The bird decided to join us, I don't know why, the original figures were appliquéd, and a fox is going to join it soon. It's a bit disturbing when a project takes over but that's what books do, too. It's all go here, one daughter has moved into her first house, another has got into college - all in the same few weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing my brother and his wife next weekend, and I'm teaching character, which is disturbing in itself. 

'Let's make up some people who can do crazy things in our heads...' 

The Project

Despite the rest of my world still needing attention, I've managed to make a start on The Project. This is me attempting to write a novel about a not-famous person but a fascinating record of her inner thoughts, stitched into an amazing rant from the injustice (as she saw it) of being dumped in a workhouse as a lunatic.

I've started by sewing together some strips of cloth and having a go at embroidering words on them. One thing has become obvious - it's hard to hold focus on a rant when you're going at one letter every two minutes. I'm already choosing words with less of those pesky curves in (O takes seven stitches) and more angular words with A and W. She wrote entirely in capitals which is interesting too, it feels like she's shouting it, screaming it even. I find myself getting wound up inside pretty quickly, just because the letters are so big and - shouty. 

This is a bit of the big piece. 

She didn't punctuate at all. This makes it really hard to read but when you sew, it creates lots of short phrases, odd combinations that you don't expect, as you stitch it very s l o w l y. 

So I'm writing very slowly, without many little words like 'and' and 'the' so it's already open to interpretation, and finding odd connections. I find myself using a lot of verbs. Yesterday I wrote (in slow motion) WATER SKI ON ROUGH SEAS SHOCK ICE SALT IN MY FACE DOWN MY THROAT BURNING CHOKING. It's a fascinating project, and as I sit over my stitching I find myself brooding and wondering how to get ideas down in as few words as possible. REB CROSS GET CHOCOLATE seems to be the end point.  

Lorina Bulwer found a lot of rhymes too, they're a bit addictive, along with words that morph into new words. STITCHING BITCHING IN THREAD NEEDLE SLIPS SILK CUTS COLOURS BLEED WITCHING STITCHING INTO CLOTH WINDING IN WORDS WORMS WORLDS (my words not hers). 

This was my first sampler.

I'm starting to feel the need for illustrations too, just like she did, although I haven't managed to work out what her pictures were for. I wonder where it's all going, but it does seem to be going somewhere. I feel like the needle thing is so moreish it pulls me into the fabric. Maybe I'll be found dessicated, neatly stitched into a quilt. 

Head buzzing with ideas

I don't sleep amazingly well, and I don't seem to need that much anyway. But recently I've been up, tired and grumpy but wide awake at 5.30. Since I can't get to sleep before 12.30 at the earliest, sleep is in short supply. The reason is two-fold. I've been given a baby dose of thyroxine to counter a slight shortfall, and like all hormones, it has a strong effect. At least I'm not feeling cold all the time. But the main reason is that my brain is buzzing with ideas.

As a writer who is a bit compulsive about writing (yes, I'm back writing everyday like a word junkie) I want to write the twins book. I'm working on a local writers' anthology, which is coming on well but I always forget just how much work these are. And I'm contemplating The Project, complete with possibilities of PhD etc. I don't know what I should do, but my time seems split between different projects and all I want to do is write.

I've been reading books on 'hermaphrodites' and intersex (or disorders of sex development) through the ages. While the historical picture is predictably blunt and shaped by patriarchal societal norms (some boys with very small penises were 'adjusted' to look more like girls), terrifyingly, the picture in the 1980s and 1990s wasn't much better. Babies with 'ambiguous' genitalia and/or chromosomes were operated on so they would look normal at school. I'm glad to say my genitals were not, at any time at school, shared with the class. And if they were, if a wide range of 'normal' genitals were accepted and the person's own feelings on their gender (or not) were considered, how many children would have avoided being mutilated? The picture has improved: as long as a baby can pee and poo, time is now allowed to explore physical development, the hormonal picture and how the child self-identifies. Fascinating stuff but more work needs to be done to allow people who do not choose a polarised view of their gender, whether intersex or not, to be themselves. All grist to writer's mill, though.

Otherwise, we're worried sick about an older relative. It cuts at our family, even our sixteen year old (who has just got into college without a GCSE to her name, go Rosie) and is probably one reason I wake at 5.30 and lie awake thinking about being old. “Old age ain't no place for sissies.” ― Bette Davis     

Developing an idea and finding it has wings

I love it when my brain gets fired up with a new idea. I'm presently paddling in the very fertile waters of imagination, research and art, a great place to be. It's hard holding all the elements in my head at once - so not much sleep - but words and picture ideas are pouring out and I've pressed them into a project book like wild flowers, like butterflies. (I would never press real butterflies into a book, but idea butterflies are fair game. Anyway, they still get away, they refused to be limited by the thin range of words I have to play with. They are the flat ghosts of butterflies). 

I'm at a crossroads with ideas at the moment, looking for studio space in my head and maybe for real. The house is TOO SMALL to contain all the work and the living and the kids and cats and furniture. I need an overspill space, and I'm looking for somewhere else. It's that or turf Russell's beloved car out of the vast and top-lit garage and convert it.  Not his first choice.

I've been looking at research about Lorina Bulwer, This has sparked a renewed interest in patchwork - the letters are embroidered into patched fabrics, although it's not clear where she got them from. Maybe her pre-workhouse wardrobe. 

I've been looking at the text itself, and wondering whether anyone has ever tried to use a grounded theory analysis approach to it, or whether it is seen as entirely within the arts and as a medical artefact. From my brief look at it (having not studied grounded theory for a gazillion years) I can already pull out themes, just reading it every day for a few days. Fascinating stuff, and those themes could inform the book. 

I also came across a fascinating document by Elizabeth Parker, a servant girl raped and beaten by her employer, driven to the edge of suicide then taken in by a kinder woman. She wrote about her life in an amazingly complex cross stitch piece. This was from 1830, another group of women with no voice crying out in the only way acceptable to others. Samplers and stitching were used to demonstrate domestic skills and 'a proper disposition', as well as teaching a range of stitches. This one seems purely cathartic. 

The embroidered letter

I've been looking at teaching jobs, at lecturing in creative writing (which is why I studied writing in the first place). But the strange things about going on a journey like a job application is it leads to other things, wandering about touching on other things that matter. Several things have come up for me this year:

• I will stop home educating this year after 22 years, my youngest is off to college
• I love writing more than I expected and I'm writing easily (and stuff I like)
• I need an adventure
• I miss the Isle of Wight and my friends
• All the time I've been a creative writer I've been creative in other ways e.g. textiles
• I'm fascinated by psychology, and the social construction of 'madness'
• Looking into a new job made me look at THIS

The embroidered letter of Lorina Bulwer

This is the rant of a middle aged woman locked up in the imbecile ward - full of dementia patients, alcoholics and mentally ill and learning disabled people - of a workhouse. She came from a middle class, well educated background,  and lived with her mother until the latter's death. Her rants reveal evidence of sexual abuse, that was not acknowledged at the time (her abuser is named and was suspected of abusing another 13 year old. He confessed to having written the child a number of explicit letters but denied touching her).Then her brother placed her in the workhouse.

I'm itching to use this amazing story in a project, so I have looked into this course. It inspires me as the sister of someone who wrestled with mental illness and had her voice taken away, as well as an artist and writer. Who knows? I'm also in the strange position of having some money to invest, so there might be a little income to spend.

I have no idea where this idea will take me, or whether it's a step in the direction of something else, but it's great to feel like we're moving forward again! 

When is poetry good poetry?

This question came to me a couple of times when I was sorting through a stack of entries to a North Devon anthology. As usual, the standard is very variable, with a lot of very accomplished pieces of fiction and memoir. Writing groups in North Devon have a high standard and are happy to critique constructively, most aren't of the 'well, that's lovely dear' variety. (There's a place for them too, I know). Consequently there is a marked difference between the poetry and the prose entries.

Which is what I'm thinking about. Writing fiction and poetry is so cathartic for many people, so satisfying - does it have to be 'good' as well? If the writer likes it and their family and friends like it, is that enough? What standard do we judge to?

Of course, there's another element here, people want to be read, they often want publication. And mainstream publishers are extremely fussy, they can afford to be. For them to hand over hard cash it has to be a) well written b) saleable and c) turn up at the right time. But in pursuing publication, are we overlooking the value of all of that less 'good' writing out there?

I enjoyed working through the anthology fiction pieces and discussing them with my other judges. Generally, we agreed on what should be included and when we didn't, we included as much as we could. But the poetry creates a dilemma. For me it's simple, put the best of the poetry in, but home-grown poetry isn't like literary poetry. Where a short story in a  magazine and short story submitted to the anthology aren't that far apart, the poems are much further from the literary ideal. Perhaps this is because there are lots of outlets for fiction in popular magazines, and few for poems, but I think at its heart the problem is one of reading. Amateur poets don't read the same poetry as published poets, so their idea of a poem is different. Here's some advice on telling the difference. How to tell a 'good' poem from a 'bad' poem. 

The problem for me is I see lots of poems that by those criteria are pretty good. They lack focus very often, the biggest problem with most of them is they need a lot of editing and development to get to their best. But they have the right stuff in them, they do the job. They evoke a feeling or an event in an interesting way, they connect people. but they aren't good poems by literary standards.  

So what do we do with the not-literary poetry, the poems that don't look or sound like the ones in the poetry magazines and collections? Some of them are just too sentimental, some lack structure or timing or include clichés, but they are still full of emotion and imagery and heart.  Perhaps we should call them something else, spoken songs or poetry of the people, because I think they are an important part of the total scope of creative writing in this country and we need to cherish them. In the meantime, I shall encourage local poets to keep reading, not just the popular poetry but some of the literary stuff as well. Here's a sample of poems to read that will start you off - and entertain you. They run in the poetic veins of our culture, but are they all 'good' poems?

Moving in to a new house

It's taken me eight months to move house, even though we actually moved at the end of August last year. I've been trapped by stuff in boxes, stuff waiting to go into storage, stuff to go in furniture and on shelves. And I couldn't face doing any of it. I just couldn't imagine living here. It feels weird to be here, surrounded by the familiar books and belongings, my special people, yet feeling like we were temporarily waiting for our new house to be available. If I had been plonked down on the pavement surrounded by boxes I wouldn't have felt less at home. It was someone else's house.

This weekend something shifted. Something in me, I suppose, even though it felt like it was driven entirely by Russell. My 'study', the dumping ground from the move, started to shift. 

'I could move your desk if you like.'

That was all it took, really. I had three bookcases in the corner, and I asked him if he could change them around so I could slot my (huge) desk in them somehow. Within two minutes of looking at the bookcases, sucking a pencil and a bit of measuring, he announced that he could, so I called his bluff. 

'Go on, then.'

Anyway, he did. This necessitated me packing up all the books I had moved (but will never read again), reference books that are redundant thanks to the internet, kids' books that can just go into storage waiting for grandchildren and anything I really don't need (800 A4 envelopes that don't stick any more, anyone? Eight almost empty boxes of matches with none of that striky stuff on the sides? Half-eaten feathers that the cats have chewed?).  

Now I have room to write, enough storage and room to teach from home, getting around the problems of finding a space cheap enough to rent. That will keep the cost down to writers. One problem was the large chest of drawers we had in the room, which had everything from maps to candles to batteries, wrapping paper, string, scissors... you can understand why I wasn't sure we could get rid of it. But it's been emptied, relocated to the youngest daughter's room, her room given a makeover, a new bed and it's tidied up. Now all I have to do is tidy my desk, always difficult. The truth is, I write better when my desk is clear (I know, I know, but...) so it's a good thing to do. It's still the hardest bit, even though we must have moved seven or eight hundred books and a lot of furniture this weekend. But I've done my words for the day so I have to tackle it. I'll post a picture to prove I did it!

I did it! Notice I don't show the floor...

Getting more organised... Russ put my pictures up too.