It was a course on therapeutic storytelling that I had asked to go on. I seen a poster for it in the college holidays and had time to vet it all, look it over on the writer’s blog to check for some semblence of sanity. The college had the same day decided to pick up the bill. Perhaps I would have to review my hatred of certain key people in the organisation who judge people by their spiritual credentials, ensuring that they fulfil certain criteria before extending to them some kind of empathy, or indeed, even greeting them.
I stood around once I had signed in, drinking my green tea and looking out of the open window as others formed into chatting couples and groups around me. I was determined to be standoffish, a writer, as much out of defensiveness, anticipating the social mess I can make out of talking to strangers, something that doesn’t come easily to me, as anything else. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been trying as hard as I can to stick to the one story over the last couple of weeks, and, as I have written elsewhere, I have done better than I usually do, sticking pretty much not only just to the one story, but also to the one book, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. I don’t know how far Modafinil has helped me in this, nor how far I will continue in this vein. I have had such spurts before, finishing the first drafts of a few stories by dedicating myself to them for a while to the exclusion of as much else as possible.
Inevitably when I do this I come across my own weaknesses. Since though my flitfulness has given me something, developing my judgement in terms of story ideas, donnees, themselves, as I pick and choose and refine the stories that constantly force themselves forward again and again, still, it has done nothing for my realisation of those ideas. I have learnt nothing about structuring a story, pacing, ellipsis, still less - since those times I do persist in a story I am ever conscious of the moving of time and so, conscious of not frittering it away or pausing to think of my approach, and consequently too often push on when I am tired or pursuing some less than ideal line - what to leave in and what to include. Read the rest of this entry »
Daisy Chain Mail - Unfinished
“If I get this wrong I could die by my own hand, it’s as simple as that. It’s been killing me slowly for years, this illness inside of me. You’ve seen it these last two years and been powerless to help. And you’ve tried as hard as anyone could. For years I had no one and when the fits took me I tried to struggle on through it on my own. I tried to fill the hole inside myself. Maybe one day I’ll manage. Maybe I’ll manage with this. But I owe you an explanation. I owe you all an explanation. And talking will never do.
I wasn’t there. I was never there. When you spoke to me and when you held me. When you drank with me and when you fucked me. I wasn’t there.
Working in the warehouse in Nottingham. Working with the elf-like kid in jack boots with the pointy beard. The lad who was turfed out of his college for putting up posters for a college election advertising himself as the Trenchcoat mafioso sometime after Columbine, called to the jewish principal to answer to the fears of students and their parents. The lad who had tried to do himself in. The lad who spent his days on Nazi internet forums and writing a novel for the Doctor Who series set in the English Civil War. I wasn’t there. Read the rest of this entry »
I was smoking just now, and thinking about my own fear of writing. This was something I have had cause to think about now and again, that I put off settling down to write because of all of the pain that has come with writing and not managing to get it done. I had been thinking of Modafinil, which I am taking at the moment, and how it seems to have been helping me to focus on fewer projects, reading just one book (!) and more or less focusing on one story for at least a few days, which is more than I usually achieve. It seemed that I would be able to finish something, and that that could free me up to fear sitting down to write so much less. This led me into thinking of a story that I have considered a couple of times before, about a darts player who develops a condition whereby he cannot let go of the dart.
I first heard of this years ago watching the Darts at university while procrastinating, putting off studying for an impending exam or essay. Darts, snooker, even curling became fascinating at these moments, but darts I found particularly funny. Well, funny and sad at times, perhaps, but certainly funny. There was the way the stars of darts seemed to come from another world, one that was unchanged by political correctness and any of the advances of the last twenty years.
It was funny how they promoted themselves and pimped themselves up in gaudy clobber and big rimmed glasses. It was funny how the one guy came on to the BBC to speak about women’s darts and completely ran them down, talking like darts was so physically demanding that women couldn’t cut it in some way, and completely unaware of how insensitive he was being and the protocols of diplomacy that were being demanded of him. It was funny too how one white overweight middle aged New Zealand player came out and did the Hakka before throwing his featherweight darts. And it was funny how this one feller spoke about the tragedy of these players who cannot throw the darts, how it just won’t leave their hands. Read the rest of this entry »
The Fireman - unfinished
Prague, the “magical city” had in the end been a city like any other in this at least, that it was populated with people I couldn’t find it in my heart to love. I was hurt. Some time way back when I had been hurt so deep that I couldn’t find that in myself. In one way or another I had failed. In one way or another it hadn’t worked out. I had no novel. I had no short story collection. I had dissembled and acted out the whole time, just like anywhere else. It was that cliche of cliches: I had gone away and not escaped myself. On coming back, I was going to be a fireman. I had decided. Or rather I had not decided at all. I was desperate. Nothing had come to anything. I hadn’t come to anything. Something inside me had long ago gone wrong and the chances of finding a place for myself were looking slimmer by the day.
I had been a teacher. And not a good one. Native speakers were sought after for their take on life, most came to live a little, and this was reflected in their teaching, which didn’t get bogged down in the usual grammar but was led by conversation. For years I had been depressed by those around me and their limited conversation, but living in these moribund parochial towns had hidden my own shortcomings from myself. I was no conversationalist. Nor was I a natural extrovert. I was bad with people full stop and teaching, I came against this every day. Read the rest of this entry »
My priorities have shifted around again and I may be downgrading my blog-writing activities to times when, like now, I am too tired to write anything important (or remotely coherent). This has been brought about by my frustration with not writing, and, possibly, Modafinil, which may have lessened the clutter of impulses, the invitation to struggle of my executive function (only time will tell to what degree this is so, but certainly the timing tallies for now).
The last couple of days I have stuck to coming in from work and settling straight down to reading my one nominated book. I have tried to do this numerous times in the past but found it then impossible to adhere to. That I have adhered to this for three days may seem little enough. (It is little enough, of course.) But that for years, this was not possible. Read the rest of this entry »
…Ema and ondrej came soon after, and as is usually the case with me I made a great effort at first, going out and taking them to the local, coming back fairly drunk on the few I had already had before decampling with them to the summer house at the top of my parents’ garden with a couple of snails we raced on the glass table, drinking Becherovka, a Czech spirit.
Soon though I tired of it all. I couldn’t take Ondrej and his constant chat, his incessent questions about English pronunciation, and, just being around people. Read the rest of this entry »