Inside the eye

Without my eyes could I function as a writer? So much of what I write about is visual... I fret when my sight appears to alter - although I'm now used to the increased time it takes for my focus to adjust when I go from distant to close objects.

Yesterday I saw photographs of my eyeballs.  Great yellow-red orbs covered with ribbons of fine red lines, and a white disc on each.  I was concerned by the darkened area - but apparently that was the really important bit - the macula - the part that sees detail - and it was fine.  My blood vessels showed signs of circulation problems - not reversible - and of my high blood pressure.  It was an amazing sight - it does make you recall the line from the Bible I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  We can know so much about ourselves, and yet so little.  

Agent angst

I am having this.  She has had The Romantic Feminist for more than 10 months now.  She said she'd read it in August, she hasn't.  I was very fired up at the conference today to go and tell her to hurry up.  But then I foolishly (?) did the I Ching - and got that rather annoying one called The Marrying Maiden.  The interpretation read:

You are too junior, not yet ready to exert influence; there is no point in your setting intentions or making plans. All you can do is to feel your way, adapt, and find your place, without originating any action or having any agenda of your own.

So that told me.

‘With one eye, can see.
A hermit’s constancy bears fruit.’  
Perhaps it was venturing out of my hermitage today that did it for me!  The other changing line read:


‘Marrying maiden overruns the set time.
Delays and marries at the right time.’
The dear old I Ching is always warning me against harvesting too early etc. so perhaps this is all of a piece with this.

I guess I should just quietly progress with things until I hear - but suppose she forgets?  Actually, it doesn't matter, I am doing what I want to do.  The news from the conference today is not terribly encouraging, but I suppose I need to gain a bit of maturity about what will happen to my "writing career" next.   One has the fond fantasy that one will get an agent, and then the agent will find a publisher and the publisher will publish one's books.   Actually, it won't be like that at all.  Agents give up - publishers change their minds, there isn't a smooth, white-stoned path all the way to the bank and literary respectability.  Au contraire, cher maitre, au contraire.   I knew this of course, but it was slightly shocking to be so firmly reminded of it.

So, the agenda for the moment is Returning (the second hexagram)


‘Returning, creating success.
Going out, coming in, without anxiety.
Partners come, not a mistake.
Turning around and returning on your path.
The seventh day comes, you return.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’

It would be nice if the agent got in touch next week - but, but, but...

Whose writing is it anyway?

I went to a terrific conference today.  I should probably name check all the major participants in the hope of bringing this blog to more people's attention.

I particularly liked a writer called Katherine May - she wrote a blog called 52 Seductions as which was eventually published as a book.  Must have a look at it.  There was a great deal about experimental work that one could do using digital media - such as crowd-sourced writing - but this seemed a bit too cutting edge, and there was a sense that the work that was produced wasn't actually especially good or readable.

I find myself wondering occasionally about writers who want to work in this way - surely most artists want to be in control of their work... to really have something that's uniquely theirs. There was a certain amount of discussion about ownership - and that was interesting.  For example if you use anonymous comments to make a piece of music/writing - don't those people have some sort of right over the material?   I would argue that they don't, if they know it'll be used for a piece of art and agree to it.  Otherwise one gets to the situation where if you transcribe a conversation overheard in a bus and use it for characters in fiction, should you track down the participants and ask for their permission or give them a tiny crumb of the action?

There was a rather horrifying thing about Kindle - apparently if there are contractual issues over a Kindle book it will just be deleted from the device, so if you've bought a book which defames someone it will be withdrawn willy-nilly.

There was also a discussion about piracy - apparently the leader of the Pirate Party in Germany, Julia Schramm described intellectual property as "disgusting" - until she got a E130K advance for her book and didn't want it pirated.  Unbelievable.  The "free content" crowd are definitely out of their heads.  Art does have to be paid for - artists have mortgages and debts.

Imaginary books

Just slugging it out - me versus the world.  I am finding it hard to write, although I have now moved my desk - the window is behind me - all I have to look at is the fireplace, the books on the mantelshelf and the screen, it's good I think. I have rearranged things so that there's more space on the desk somehow.  How long before it turns into the usual chaos of tottering piles, time will tell.

I have struggled to settle to writing today, once I got down to it I managed 2,600 words - mostly acceptable.    However, a lot of time was spent looking up things like a quote from Ovid (hard, I couldn't remember the Latin - so had to find it in an English version... then find the Latin - harder because the English version didn't match line numbers... and then try to find out whether there was any blackout in WW1 - there wasn't apparently, but I am sure there was something after the Zepplin raids in 1915, but couldn't find the book that I would have read it in, then some John McCormack (providing the soundtrack for the hero)..

I have also been doing a lot of seat grooving today - listening to my new dance playlist and wriggling about in my chair - I don't think this is exercise, but it feels a bit like it.  I am annoyed that I didn't go to London today - hope I can go next week - the research is vital.  I want to have a lot of stuff fermenting when I go to the Minster Abbey retreat - in the hope that it will all emerge.   On the other hand, it will be a bugger not having the internet - I am so used to Googling for factoids.    Last week I was reading We will not Fight by Will Ellsworth-Jones - about conchies.  It was helpful, and interesting, but the amount of reading done to get at the half dozen juicy facts I actually needed was shocking.  I'd like to find something more focussed - but it wouldn't make a very interesting book I suspect.  The Indigent Writer's Guide to Historic Factoids gosh, one could have a whole series - like Terry Dreary's Horrible Histories... I am always having these ideas (well, since I was about 14 - when I wanted to write a Who's who of Tudor England - but I suspect that's been done).

What I'd really enjoy doing is a Who's who at the Court of Louis XIV - perhaps I should do it for my own amusement... M le Duc du Chevrefeuil is a name that comes to mind - but who is he?  Chum of St. Simon's I think - his father in law perhaps?   Perhaps this liking for little factual books of biographical nuggets is a bit aspy... Actually, I don't think he was called du Chevrefeuil - because that's French for the herb Chervil...Populating a book with imaginary aristocrats could have a certain anarchic panache, there would be a competition for people who worked out which ones were made-up.  Have to avoid obvious blunders like using actual French nouns..I've noticed that the majority of the leading aristos at Versailles had titles which referred to properties in the Isle de France and the Beauce - presumably where the best land was - or the longest titles (couldn't award titles for places in Burgundy you didn't rule until 15thC), so that would be the place to look: the Michelin atlas..

Thank God for autobrain - if I was using my actual powers of ratiocination at present this would be a very dull entry indeed.  And so to bed.

Slow progress

Conscience is proceeding slowly, and yesterday I did nothing - instead I re-wrote a tiny section of The Tuggses for performance at the Kent Coastal Festival - and did some more editing on Let Her Go for Naomi.  I expect I'll hear from her shortly - on a bad phone line, which clips her words.  Oh dear.  Please Naomi, buy yourself a decent laptop and phone - get your business a website and things will be much easier!

So, there's action.  But I don't think I'll go to London this week, am not quite ready to do the next bit of research.   Perhaps today should be a research day.

Another thing

This has been a spectacular day for writing etc.  Not only did I finish editing the first 12 chapters of Conscience, but I also sketched out a couple of brief ideas for other novels/stories.  There's one idea I particularly liked - called Unseen it is the story of a couple whose child has an hereditary disease which isn't apparently in either of their families - but it is because they are both Jewish... or rather have Jewish ancestors who have been concealed by history... but I need to research Tay-Sachs disease first - think you have to be quite closely related for it to emerge, so maybe we need another impetus to promote the research - maybe it isn't a whole novel - just a theme within one.

When I thought the day was over I went to tidy up some bits and pieces and suddenly had an image - I wrote it, and found it was about Leo - on a plane - so I delicately inserted it in the appropriate place in TRF.  It's good to have more stuff from his viewpoint. So all in all, a very good day's work.   It's strange - last week I felt so exhausted I could barely comment on Facebook - felt as though I would never want to write again (even though I knew I would - there's nothing else I can do).  I think it's partly because I knew I had no appointment today and could choose what to do.  The same is true of tomorrow - so perhaps it will be another good day.

A good start

Today I completed the re-reading/editing of the first 12 chapters of Conscience.  It reads well, almost like someone else's book.  It doesn't seem as "me" as TRF - which is as it should be.  I feel really happy.  I see that I need more research - and probably soon, so I must book a seat at the Imperial War Museum Library to read some regimental history.

Anyway, I now have 48,000 words - and a convincing story - and I need to get on with it.  I am going to try to experiment with a new strategy.  To write every morning from about 9ish to 1.00ish - then lunch, a little light domestic work, and then reading/research in the afternoon.  I will have to start inviting people for tea rather than coffee in the afternoon to keep my mornings free.

Curiously, I think writing the sex scenes in the new version of TRF will help me deal with the dreaded topic of the unsuccessful consummation.  But first I have to decide when his father should die - just after the wedding perhaps?   Or keep him ill, but alive?  Don't want that to become an issue.

Conscience?

It has been some time since I have made an entry on this blog - I should like to be able to say that this is because I have been writing, but actually although I have  been sitting at my desk, I have been merely present, in a state of some anxiety - playing Spider Solitaire and fretting about the Summer Squall arts festival.  None of this has been good for me.

After a really exhausting August, when I barely wrote or did anything constructive (apart from stuff for the Squall) I began to feel I confused and distressed at the thought of returning to any of my novels... the obvious one to work on was 17 Years, but I was not enjoying it - so yesterday I decided to have a look at Conscience - which was a revelation.  After two or three chapters I found myself quite impressed with it - it didn't seem to have been written by me, and all the worries I had had, whether David's feelings for Kitty were understandable, seemed to be resolved.  I had made new, independent characters - and his growing interest in her was following a sensible arc... after reading 5 chapters I got excited about it again.  It is a weird book - it's quite formal, almost as though it was written by a contemporary, rather than a century later, but I still found the odd anachronism... and perhaps not enough contemporary slang yet...

I need to do more research - because I have some conscientious objectors as orderlies in September 1916 and I don't know if that is realistic at that point.  So I am reading a book about conchies and hoping to understand this better - I think I also want to be sure that David's slightly anti-war viewpoint wasn't totally improbable - it was uncommon amongst Anglican clergy - but not unknown and only slightly more common in non-conformism.

But enough - I will finish reading and editing this morning and get on with writing it.