Burning Bridges

 In the process of spring tidying, I unearthed some notebooks full of angsty poetry and notes from my adolescence. They're embarrassing. They're cringy. But, my word, how much we fudge our memories. I think a lot of people forget what it was really like (honestly, without the gloss or protection of time's passage) to be a kid. Those who have kept similarly cringy notebooks might identify with this. Flicking through the yellowing pages and feeling the stab of things you hadn't quite remembered right; the complex friendships, obsessions with (mostly unsuitable) boys through endless reams of imitation poetry. I discovered Adrian Henri when I was in my early teens and much of the writing in these little notebooks has his stamp all over it. I am blushing just writing this...  

I decided they had to go because I would be mortified if anyone ever read them. They're intensely personal, aching with hormonal over-emphasis of probably insignificant situations and events, but when I wrote them they were important to me no matter how petty the content seems now. They're informative of who I was then, and ultimately make a piece of the picture of the adult I am now and will be in the future. This is not for public consumption. It is boring to anyone except me and perhaps those who really (really) love me.  Writers, you know that moment when you're at a creative writing workshop and someone is reading their piece of fiction and you realise with sickening certainty that what they are reading is autobiography thinly veiled as fiction? That.

Also, they're not reflective of the writer I am today. Every time I write, I try to get a tiny bit better at it. To see these early awkward attempts is painful... there is a need to let go of it. Move on.

So I burnt them on our BBQ. I know - a bit dramatic for some stupid teen scribblings. But it felt right. Besides, our shredder is broken and bin day isn't until next Tuesday. So. Funnily enough they didn't burn that well, as if they were resisting it. A bit of lighter fluid did the job (pyromaniac at heart...) but I lost my nerve when the smoke started getting a bit thick and, panicking about neighbours calling the fire brigade, I doused the lot with the hose. It could have been a romantically poignant moment, but it became a bit of a farce. That will teach me to navel gaze and to just get on with writing.

Writer's tics... and finding my lobster

Lobster by Stacy Lynn Baum on Flickr

I've been thinking about writing tics. In fact, I've been thinking about one specific tic that seems to be cropping up in everything I read. I'm finding it really very annoying. It is this:

"And yet... and yet,"

I know. It's a petty thing. There's nothing really bad about it. Used correctly, it's quite an intelligently snazzy conjunction. It has been used by such literary greats as Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde. Indeed, until the overkill set in, I'd aspired to its confident little stylistic rhythm. And yet... and yet, this is the very reason it has started to get under my skin. It is like that person who talks too much, only pausing at the point at which you can't interrupt, and then presses on with another self important stream. You know how Mrs. Thatcher used to? It is tired. Overused. The sparkle has gone.

Two other things that I'm reading a lot in books that I'm Bored Bored Bored of are: writers writing novels about writers, characters who are writers, navel gazing novels about writing...(you get the picture) and things 'nestling' (phones nestling in bags, chocolates nestling in choc boxes, objects nestling in drawers) Its true sense has been lost. Please say it differently.

But, um, it would be unfair to criticise without acknowledging some of my own tics, too. I'm probably more annoyed by my own, to be honest. The worst offenders? There are always birds in my stories, usually sparrows. Often dead... My characters have names like Bea, Frank and Pete, an unhealthily narrow menage trois of names, clearly, who frequent 1920's styled independent coffee shops and drink far too many cappuccinos. When they eat out, they often order something stewy or casseroled that they dip bread in. They play with their food. And man, are they clumsy? Unable to keep the wine in their glasses. Also, they smile at each other. Far, far too much.

This week I'm trying to write something really really fresh. I heard a fantastic story on BBC Radio 4 last week.  Jenni Mills read her story 'Cleaning the Silver', an actually chilling tale with visceral descriptions of eating lobster. The lobster was a tremendous hook into a dark narrative read for International Woman's Day. It was inspiring and has set me searching for my lobster; my fresh hook. Writing tics be ware...

Does it make me a bad person...?

Image by Mia Eley www.coffeeandsnow.com/

I know I care far too much about what people think of me.

With that in mind, for ages (since roughly a week after my last post) I've been Very Bothered about not having written another blog post. I always get this nagging feeling. A bit like when you know you should have called a friend back but keep putting it off and you don't really know why.

I won't make excuses (I could... but you see, that's the whole point...) I am delighted to think people might read what I write here. But I know their world won't fall apart if there is nothing fresh on my blog for a while. Equally my world won't end, a fairy won't die, I won't suffer seven years bad luck, Santa will still come at Christmas, I will effectively still exist, even if my internet self is set on ice for a bit.

I know of many writers and bloggers who worry about this. And it eats at creative energy.

Kona MacPhee sums it up beautifully in her article 'Blogaholic' in the latest edition of Mslexia magazine. Particularly where she quotes poet and novelist Ros Barber who says "Now I blog once or twice a month and it's more like breathing on the glass to prove I'm still here."

I will probably be breathing on the glass in the next few days. But I won't worry too much if it takes me a bit longer.

Back home to a crisis of identity... or two

And I'm home from an amazing 'research' trip round South America. And it was nice while it lasted! Oh well. 


But I have a notebook full of illegibly scribbled ideas for me to decipher! Sitting back down at the laptop to write was very strange. I'd forgotten how to do the simplest thing... like access Twitter. So much for neural pathways. I now have the attention span of a cat with ADHD, but I'm forcing myself to sit back down and type words one after another until I get my writing mojo back and can be creative again without feeling drawn away to make coffee, empty the dishwasher, check twitter... But it really is a joy to be home and getting stuck into some projects I'd put on hold before leaving the country last September.


 I've also finally had a chance to read through my short stories that have appeared in women's magazines while I've been away. On the whole it is delightful to see the latest batch in print. And I am slightly bemused and cheered by the some of the artwork crafted to go alongside the pieces... funny seeing someone else's interpretation of the characters. One mag, though, has changed the name of one of my characters... obviously, the happens all the time and in itself is no problem at all... except that they only changed the name halfway through the piece. Hilariously, the main characters husband starts as one person and ends as a completely different one. I was slightly concerned readers would think it was MY error. But more troubling was that they would try to factor it into the plot and think that the main character had two men on the go... And it's definitely not that kind of magazine. But hopefully it brightened up someone's day!


Today I've been working on a piece for The Writers and Artists Competition 2012 to flex my creaking creative muscles. The theme is 'identity' which sparked some ideas... I spent a lot of the day researching arson, rats, water voles and bad taxidermy. I'm so glad my work adds so much richness and useful stuff to society... hmmm.

Booked Up: the joys of book swapping around South American hostels.

It begins as a mild gnawing panic that grows as your fingers flick quickly - counting the pages remaining of your current book. It's your last one. You're in a bus terminal in Uruguay with a 22 hour journey ahead of you.


I've become a junky - I need to know, as we travel, where my next bookshelf hit will come from. I need at least one book stashed in my backpack incase I can't get to the next supply in time. 


Before going travelling I thought of myself as a 'slow reader'. It took me, for example,three months to finish Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' loving every slowly digested sentence. But outside the rhythm of my usual life I'm gobbling down a book every few days.


Delightfully, most hostels have a bookswap shelf. Occasionally dusty, yellowing titles in a frustration of German, Swedish and Spanish. But often flourishing with a gorgeously eclectic selection to choose from. And always at least one book I've always wanted to read and not got round to or something I would normally not touch with a barge pole. Reading, at home, is a precious investment of my 'slow readers' time not to be wasted on rivolous things (I'm only going to live so long and there's too many amazing books to squander on badly written ones) But travelling, with my newfound speed-read skills I've got freedom to read anything on offer. Even the trashy stuff...


I've swapped my way through hostels in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecaudor, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. I sucked up my crime fiction snobbery and thoroughly enjoyed a Kathy Reichs and developed a girl crush on Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta. I finally got round to reading David Nicholls´ ´One Day´ and Marquez ´One Hundred Years of Solitude´. Both brilliant. the list goes on....


There is a good earthliness about book swapping. And, better to give than recieve,  there´s something wholesome about leaving a cracker behind you. I don´t know what writerly stance to take on this circulation of a book for free. As someone who shuns illegal downloading (morally... and also because I´m afraid of the internet police) is this a tiny bit similar? But no... actually if it was some book I´d written, I think I would be pleased. My story, travelling around the world like a little stowaway, languishing in hostels until jumping the next appropriate backpack out of there. 


Right. Off to the beach with ´The Talented Mr Ripley´. A Caipirihna and some casual psychopathy; what a perfect way to conclude our travels. Home in just a few days... when my snail pace reading will surely resume.

Kindled Spirit

I'm coming round to it... Before we left for South America husband fulfilled his threat and bought a Kindle. I rolled my eyes and muttered something about making himself a target as a robbable gringo in a third world country and about not being able to share books nicely.
"But there 'll be extra room in my rucksack..." He raised his eyebrows at the pile of books I'd not managed to squeeze into my pack. 
 I nodded grudgingly and insisted he download South America on a Shoestring. I already had a paper copy scribbled in post-it noted and corners folded and I was sort of glad to not have to share it. It would only have caused squabbles. 


But now, having spent a couple of months with Kenny Kindle it hurts a bit to admit it but he is pretty good. He's not amazing to read from, no better than normal paper and lacks the subtleties of books that I love. But slowly... slowly... I´m seeing a few benefits. When the Manbooker was announced I mentioned in passing how I would love to read the winning novel when I got home. Five minutes later Kenny slipped himself into my unsuspecting hands with Julian Barnes´s ´The Sense of an Ending´ flashing innocently up at me. Apt. I thought, as I read warming to the plastic casing in my hands and the nonchalant page turns with their mildly satisfying thumb click.


And, wonderfully, I was able to download ´Quickies: Short Stories for Adults´ produced by the brilliant collective #Flashtag featuring some of my most favourite writers. Had I not been travelling I would have gone to the book launch to hear readings back in September. So being able to read the book was fab. In this saucy tongue-in-cheek... or elsewhere... collection of flash fictions the writers have created saucepot stories that they probably wouldn´t want their nans to read. They´re fabulously varied. Think Anais Nin-Jilly Cooper fusions with the smutty pages that fall open in public library books... My favourite tales are David Gaffney`s ´What Happened to the Girl´ and Kim McGowan´s ´Tuffnell´s Toffees´. Definitely a book to buy in whatever format tickles your fancy. 


The only sad thing, and I know I´m harping on a bit, is that in its digital format I can`t book swap it in a hostal for someone to find. I like to think who it might have been. A foreign student wanting to learn the finer points of english usage tempted in by the seeming innocence of the short stories, or a kid on a gap year who thought they knew it all... 


So, yes. I admit it. Kenny is growing in my estimations. and I´m using his clever brainbox to download relevant books for each country I end up in. Rusty Young´s ´Marching Powder´ for Bolivia, `Don´t Sleep there are Snakes´and ´Lost City of Z´ for Brazil, some Mario Vargas Llosa for Peru... and while I sit reading them, in the corner of my eye I see husband twiddling his thumbs. His expression as he glances longingly at Kenny is somewhere between annoyance and vindication.

South America: Argentina and Chile.

I'm taking four months out to travel around South America. This, honestly, is purely for story researching purposes...

I won't go on about it, I promise. Having read some vomit inducing blogs about spiritual journeys whinging about how hard travelling is and transversely some amazingly articulate and fascinating travel blogs ( you know who you are...) I've decided I can compete with neither. So I've simply broken the first month away into a series of concise statistics as follows.

• Countries travelled through: 2. Argentina and Chile.

• Baby-sized Argentinian steaks eaten: 11

• Hours spent on buses: 64

• Hours spent asleep on buses: 10

• Books read: 5

• Spanish speaking fails: Countless. Actually, I quite enjoy muddling through - it speeds up learning. However, one waitress in San Telmo, Buenos Aires seemed to relish asking questions we didn't stand a chance of grasping, then bringing a variety of unasked for extras we were sure we'd never consented to. On one occasion "Dos cafe con leches, por favor..." yeilded three croissants, one orange juice, one milky coffee, one espresso, a cheese and tomato sandwich and what can only be described as a smirk from our waitress.  

• Churches / cathedrals / graveyards visited: 7. Anyone else inherit this tic from childhood family holidays? From being dragged around places of foreign ceremony and death as a child now I can't stop myself. The favourite so far? Cementeria Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Visitors wander between the mighty tombs for hours looking for Evita's grave which turns out to be as underwhelming as the wooden chalice chosen by Indiana  in Raiders of the Lost Arc. The cemetry is an incredible place, arranged in rows and blocks much like the city it is set in. Each sarcophagos has windows through which you can peep morbidly at the coffins stacked and draped with lace cloths inside. Cats stroll disarmingly between these blocks, rubbing up against the enormous weeping angels, horses, ships and urns.

• Narrowly avoided volcano eruptions: 1. passing over the Andes on the Argentina-Chile border the eruption from the Caulle geofield is still smoking. Whole towns including Bariloche, Valdivia and Puerto Montt are caked in thick ash from the eruption in June. In some places entire forests are submerged in the stuff. The dust sticks in your throat and resettles just minutes after being wiped from surfaces.  My first reaction was sympathy for the areas affected. Although no one died in the eruption, it caused massive disruption. Then a Chilean friend pointed out that the ash will make the ground incredibly fertile in a few years time. So actually, good stuff.

• Stories written: None. There is too much to see and experience. I'm struggling to focus on any one close idea. But I'm sucking it all up. Hopefully there will be lots that will prove fertile when the dust settles.