Well, I'm back in Devon to the joys of central heating and a cosy Aga heated kitchen (well, it's an Esse but it heats the room up a treat) but I have no concentration for work. I don't know what happens when I miss a day's work but it takes me so long to get back into it it runs into the journey back...I should be writing the book, reading off my reading list (I'm tackling Incarceron by Catherine Fisher - amazing book, scary world though) but I'm mooching about ridiculously easily distracted. Oh, the cat's scratching himself, how interesting. I could go and get an apple - maybe not. Oh, all right then, just one. Ooh, clementines... I don't know how to get that mind set back again. I'm going to sit down at chapter 9 for ten, long minutes and see what happens. I shall report back. Am I the only person who does this?
OK, ten minutes did turn into an hour of editing, I can see where I have to go and have found a major cock-up along the way. But I don't seem to be able to write anything new. I have to look at these structured poems and I just need some sort of freewrite or starting point. perhaps I should write a poem about blocked creativity but hasn't everyone? And I'm hungry again. This much fruit may not be safe.
In the meantime I can rest my fuzzy brain against the stove and stay warm! Back to the reading list.
My OU scores have slipped below a distinction - that's how hard this bloody course is and the critique especially! I wrote it (OK, really quickly) but got penalised for not including enough examples from other people's work. Now I have to get a good mark (over 80) for TMA 5 and better still for no. 6 though I'm fairly confident about the EMA and the last assignment. On the plus side, the big assignment - TMA05, is open, you can do short stories, poetry or drama or even life writing (though I can't cope with life writing) and I thought I might have a play with some poetry after all. If it doesn't work out I'll write a short story, it's not like shorts aren't fun to write although I know my long fiction is much better. But I fancy writing sonnets and sestinas, I like rhyme. I just need to keep the scores up, though I don't really know why since I don't need the qualification at all and the book, though good, isn't the inspiration that the BRB (big red book) was. A215 was such a brilliant course, it's hard to top that really. If the diploma wasn't being withdrawn I would have done the course next year and probably got more out of it. Heigh ho.
Having my bear here is lovely, and going home will be a nice break for a few days. Then I'm back to do battle with the next modules.
Well, the critique is in and despite all my avoidant tactics, it wasn't bad when I came to it. My fellow student had written something that was sufficiently ripe for improvement for me to come up with a few ideas. The one thing he didn't do was identify a main protagonist early on. Now the course talks about Tobias Wolff's story Bullet in the Brain, and it's clear from the first word who the story is about. I think that helps you identify with the character, are more willing to suspend disbelief and go into that world when you care about (or in Anders case, are interested in his fate). I was surprised by the exercise, it did make me think about the role of courses and writing books in the development of my own writing. Sometimes, you feel like you're out on a limb doing something creatively different because that's where it took you, but often you find that, actually, you've stuck to the basic format. You've internalised all those 'rules' and 'suggestions' that books and courses provide, and that makes it more accessible to the reader. By the way, I liked the story and the second half was excellent, once I was involved with a character.
Meantime I've been left with nothing apart from the novel to write and a long list of books to read. I did a bit on the novel, that was fun, and have read White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick. It's a gruesome Gothic horror for kids that takes three points of view - in different fonts no less. One, a 1790's cleric, a new girl in a seaside village, and her contemporary, a strange little character. I loved it, though the head swapping is a bit much between the girls sometimes, especially at the end. It does say something about how complex we can get with the more sophisticated young audience. It's really dark, but not gratuitous though I did get a bit spooked out in the dark with Rebecca, in the horrible mansion with all the deaths. What can I say, I'm easily spooked - I worried myself writing bits of Borrowed Time.
After much hassle and gently thumping my head against the desk a few times, I have completed all assignments from semester one for the MA. I've also started (but not yet finished) the critique for A363 and the end is in sight! 5 assignments, 18 thousand words. Phew. It seems strange, but I don't have any reading or writing to do (especially) so I will just potter on with the book. I think I need to get to the halfway mark to put it in for the dissertation but, ideally, I will submit the second half if I've got that far. I'm reading children's books on the reading list at the moment. I can recommend My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick especially.
I'm a poem short for my assignment. I'm happier with my work now, and they sound good (the acid test, for poetry, and for fiction really). But they have shrunk as I cut out the predictable, the clever-for-its-own-sake stuff, and various cliches. Which leaves me about a poem short. My instinct is to bypass the 'good' stuff' that's been peer reviewed in the past and go for something a bit more personal. ('good' being a relative term here!). Meanwhile, I'm living on way to little sleep. The word starts to look strange and dangerous when you're tired. I did manage six hours last night but still had to get up to send no.3 son off on the bus because the previous night no.1 son headed off at 3 in the morning to go skiing. His clock didn't go off but that was OK, I was already up. I wish I could say all that extra time was spent writing but sadly, I'm too tired to be able to concentrate most of the time. I'm going to try and catch up tonight and get back on with the novel.
This is my November walk poem, written in one of those 'got to write this down!' frenzies after a lovely walk along the Tarka trail towards Woolacombe.
Life and Death in November
We walk, descend into valleys
creased onto glacial curves,
speckled with sheep.
Rams, indigo raddled,
scent the armchair ewes,
trying the nearly-in-season
and the just-out-of-season;
blueing their backs with attempted lambs.
We creep past the bull, massive
behind the squat fence of wire and posts,
buttressed by blackened thorns.
One horn scratches an armoured shoulder.
Crows swagger after beetles or mice,
wing feathers clattering like ash keys.
Magpies cackle in stereo.
Goldfinches arrive in serrated flight,
dropping and rising onto teazle heads.
The wind rolls over the cold-stalled grass,
strips trees and impregnates the sea
with jagged surf.
Walls of un-mortared slate
perch on banks, anchored
with shrub roots and skeletal nettles.
Berries incandesce in scarlet and purple,
shrivelling in the frost.
A sparrowhawk claps from an oak,
indifferent, amber-eyed,
looping into the next killing tree.
Mole hills erupt, earth swelling,
and wrecked shells band the footpath.
A blackbird turns splinters over
for writhing snails, bubbling in the air.
A spider hurries ahead, back to her killing tree,
mugwort, hung with seeds, belled with webs,
mazed with silk wrapped carcases.
A late butterfly loops from plant to plant,
a magpie follows, eyes on her egg filled belly.
A raven, big as a buzzard, gazes out to sea.
I have now finished chapter 8 and am slowly writing chapter 9. No. 1 son says he likes the pace and tension, and my last draft of the books died in the middle so I'm thinking about new dilemmas and dangers for the characters. I'm also doing lots of research on things like John Dee's books and ceremonial magick, which is fascinating, especially in the old English.
e.g. ...and for as much as, many yeers, in many places, far & nere, in many bokes, & sundry languages, I have sowght, & studied; and with sundry men conferred, and with my owne reasonable discourse laboured, thereby to fynde or get some ynckling, glyms or beame of such the foresaid radicall truthes.
Me too, Dr. Dee! I just wish I had more of an ynckling, glyms or beame of inspiration for another poem.
Amongst all my efforts, my children stand as the work I am most proud of. Oh, I know it's not fashionable to celebrate our work as parents, but I think that's short sighted. So, today, I want to celebrate the latest child to make me proud, Sophie B, who is finishing her degree this year and has a lovely, lovely boyfriend and to cap it all, has a plan to go WWOOFing with him for the summer before getting a proper job/flat/debt/life or whatever the future has in store. This means they have applied to various smallholdings and farm to take them on for a week or two or a month to teach them about sustainability and being grownups in our deteriorating ecosystem. Hard to believe she was just a bouncy, noisy little scrap a few years ago. She's my inspiration...well, one of them, anyway!
On a lighter note, I'm blazing away on the book, ramping up the tension and finishing chapter 7 with a cliffhanger. I'm very pleased with myself, I've been working all day. This is because (I think) no-one has spoken to me all day, so my concentration has remained intact. I'm ridiculously easily derailed. Now the boys are home it will end, but I'm enjoying the story again and even know where it's going!
