Rumination and germination

I love that moment when a seed of an idea falls from a star and plants itself in your brain waiting for a point of germination. The point of germination comes when a story is ready for it and only then. The other components from the story whether plot or character feed and water that germinating idea until it blooms into a fully formed thought ready for rumination.

Rumination is the point when you take the idea and roll it around like a boiled sweet in your mouth. It starts to fit properly in to your story but then comes the hard bit, you have to get that fully formed idea that you have honed impeccably on to the page. The words you use need to paint the image exactly as it is in your head. It needs to live as much as it does there so the reader gets to see your picture too. This I think could be tied in with Meg Rosoff's idea of 'throughness' and writing as a reader.

I have one of those little gems of an idea rolling round my head at the moment, it dips and dives as it develops ready for ruminating. It comes from all the books, music and films that fill my head. But it is an idea on its own belonging to no one else and ready soon to appear on the page. To create a special moment for the reader...or so I hope.

Enjoy catching your own ideas as they fall from the stars, germinate them then when fully grown ruminate with them until they are ready to be painted on your page.

I have used this song purely because of a conversation with someone who had a life size cardboard cut out of Bruce in her office (connected with work). So this if for those moments past H

Throughness and Ambivalence

This is a beautiful picture by George Kennedy of a horse doing dressage. Why? Well apart from the fact I have loved riding since I was very young I read the most wonderful and enlightening piece by Meg Rosoff in her blog on how she discusses a term used in dressage - 'throughness' and applies it to the connection between writer and reader - see her blog on http://www.megrosoff.co.uk/. 'Throughness' is a dressage term that describes that perfect communication between rider and horse. She perceives that it is a communication that is also achieve able between reader and writer. Where something she has written she knows is so good that the reader will understand exactly what she means. Meg suggests that she knows which pieces in a book will be used in a review and the considers that they often come from one of these 'throughness' moments where her writing has almost come straight from the subconscious.

I think this is the most wonderful concept and defines something I have been thinking about for several weeks not just as a writer but as a reader as well. We all know the best books to read are the ones we fell like we have walked into. As a reader you are so totally immersed in the story you become part of the plot with everything going on around you fading into oblivion. As a writer it is that moment when the words just fall out of the end of your fingers and you almost have no control on what is being said, it is the writer deep inside that doesn't have to think too much that has made a rare trip to the forefront of your brain because it is has something really important irresistible to say. This state either for reader or writer cannot be forced not can be it be predicted.But it is a moment of pure 'throughness' where the writer and reader are connected by a pulsating umbilical cord of understanding, they could be perceived as one at that particular moment.

I have one of those glorious weeks where I have had the opportunity to discuss my own work quite a bit. It is very self indulgent but also very useful when doing a creative writing PhD. It gives ideas that have been fermenting away a forum allowing those concepts, now fully formed, to make an entrance into the real world. They become clear and focused when verbalised.

This leads me onto another word I have been exploring this week and that is 'ambivalence'. Both Angela Carter and Freud suggest that ambivalence allows something to move from being 'othered' to being 'normal' implying that the more something is written about the more ambivalent people become to it. It seems a bit of an oxymoron in that ambivalence means to me that someone doesn't care but by writing about it a lot surely implies that you do care. However, as a concept it works and works well. It makes it to explain that sort of movement - for example in Melvin Burgess's Junk in 1996 uses cannabis and heroin to illustrate drug use. Now cannabis has become invisible and part of the plot, just every day life, whilst cocaine is used where cannabis was previously. It is often the drug of choice by writers to highlight drug use now.

Throughness and ambivalence two words I need to do more thinking about...I will let you know.

Chaos and connections

I have had one of those days. I started off doing a 'to do' list which was quite disturbing in itself as it was very long and all needed to be done in a very short space of time. I have to say there was enough there to make me want to sit in a dark corner and weep - 'I can't do it.' And then more kept coming in and with deadlines that were just as tight and required so much research- aargh.
However having kicked a few desks and screamed loudly that I can't do this as well, plus various other things that cannot be put here. I sat down, added to my 'to do' list which was very depressing and then slowly worked my way through it. I am going to be working some very long hours for the next few days and be very grey and tired by Friday But I began to see connections in the things I was doing. I could see links and opportunities to prove my point in the various bids, research, lecture prep, RIT prep, supervision, marking and oh yes....my PhD.
This blog will be quiet for a few days as I have other things to do...will let you know how the lecture goes. Harrumph

sadness at the world

Munch's The Scream (or The cry) couldn't be more applicable to the way I feel about the world and the people in it at times. I find it sad that so many people think it is acceptable to be rude and arrogant. There is no excuse or justification for it. Maybe there would be less animosity, selfishness and possibly even poverty if we learnt to be generous of heart instead of being totally wrapped up in the self.

We all have pressures whether they are family, work, financial, health or a perceived lifestyle that needs to be achieved but these pressures do not give anyone the right to stop thinking of others and of caring. A smile, a please or a thank you cost nothing but can lift someone's day enormously because you don't know what they might be going through behind that facade of normality.

I watched the news tonight, it is full of flood and tempest and yes the Biblical reference was deliberate. I do think someone/thing/whatever is sending us a message. It is saying 'sort yourself out' to society in general. Stop being greedy and self-centred. Stop destroying each other and the world we share. In fact it is just saying STOP AND THINK before you do anything - could you hurt someone/something either physically or emotionally by your actions, could you make someone feel better by doing something different?

memories

This is the woman who gave me life and lost her own fight for life on Saturday 10th April. I started this post when she was poorly in the hope of inspiring her to fight. She did for a very long time but just couldn't quite beat it at the end.

She was a strong character with a sharp brain. When she was tiny she was given a live baby penguin for Christmas. She came from a family who built a lot of Croyden and had a mother who worked for the speaker of the House of Commons. She danced almost from the moment she walked. She was sent to school in Belgium to stop her wanting to be an actress...she never stopped wanting that.

During the war she was a naughty WRN, thrown over fences when she was back after curfew amongst other things. Handed out sweets and cigarettes to all the soldiers the night before the D Day landings. She saw things people shouldn't see. She refused to marry someone because he was too high class. But then married someone she loved dearly and her parents didn't approve of. She acted in a film with Laurence Olivier briefly. She and my father knew how to party with a variety of people some famous, some not so but all good friends to them. On her 60th birthday she and my father decided to go to Brighton Nudist beach, just because they could and because they had never done anything like that before. Good thing her birthday was in July. These are just a mere taster of the things my mother got up to.

She did her bit to populate the world as there are five of us, fifteen grandchildren, six great grand children and three step great grand children. She was a very special woman to us all and we will miss her but we do have to make sure our lives are as full as hers was.

I will put her favourite songs here tomorrow

weakness

 My own weaknesses have been highlighted to me yet again this week. I am planning on going on a research trip for my PhD novel, it was suggested and then confirmed by the medical profession that I should not plan to travel alone. I need to be accompanied by someone who is willing to act as a support/carer if required. That was a shock! I know it is all with good reason and I know they are right - the joys of having a body that doesn't work properly. But I am now grieving yet again for a perceived lost of potential life. The first time I grieved was when I was first taken ill and I lost my identity. I went from being a successful and vibrant businesswoman to someone who couldn't get out of the house without being exhausted.

Then I had to grieve the fact that my social life would never be the same - I can't eat - at my age most of our social life was based on eating - either at restaurants or eating at friends house. I have no problem sitting with people who are eating but it is very difficult for them and often they have told me it makes them feel guilty and uncomfortable. So I avoid those situations now as I feel guilty for making them feel awkward. It is difficult also to explain in restaurants why you don't want to eat anything so why are you there or if you try and save embarrassment you order food and then only take a mouthful you then have to explain that there is nothing wrong with the food (often to the chef personally as they have taken personal offence).

These were times when I would go back to my writing as it was cathartic and it was a place where I could write the truth as I knew I would never show them to anyone and to this day I haven't and never will as they are from desperate moments.

BUT this weakness allowed me to make the most important change to my life and not many people get that chance. I went to university. I found a life there where they welcome people who are different. I found the passion of my life - writing and reading and the chance to share that with others who are equally passionate. And now as a lecturer I get the chance to try and inspire others. It is a good life and I am very lucky despite the googlies that are sent my way on what seems to be quite a regular basis.

I will deal with not being able to run off on my own on the spur of the moment...you never know a knight in shining armour may ride up and take me away so I still get to do it on the spur of the moment. In the meantime I am lucky I have a family who are willing to be that carer so whilst I wait for that knight I will enjoy my time with the people I love and who share my passion for my writing. But most importantly my writing will become stronger and deeper as a direct result of my weaknesses and the support and care of those who surround me both at home and at work. Thank you one and all x

Connections and circles

During last week I was looking for an image I could use in a lecture. I came across this photograph by Martin Parr - one of my favourite photographers. He was at Manchester Poly along with my sister where they both studied photography together. Her life followed a very different path to his but I still see her as one of the best photographers I know even though her current career bears no relation to her past studying. I love the simplicity of her photographs and have a series of them on my wall that she gave me. Why am I mentioning this - well she was the first to introduce me to true creativity. I was very young when she was studying but I can still remember the power of her photographs - a simple green apple in a frosted glass to a stripper emblazoned across a curtain. At that point I started to understand what impact images can have, it was the beginning of one of my circles. I often use photographs to inspire my writing or I give students a selection of photographs in order to make the connection between a photo and a narrative because that's the point, every photograph has a story - real or fictional - it is just waiting there to be told.

The simplicity of my sister's photographs belies the richness of the images plus the (often) hours of thought behind them. It is this that I have been trying to achieve with my writing but have found recently instead that there is a fine line between no atmosphere and gag-enducing purple prose! I am looking for that balance.

My search for that balance has included loking back through some of my favourite books in order to try and make the connections between images that are barely there but are powerful enough to fill the reader's imgination and those that are blatant and blunt but just as effective. Several books came to mind including Cosmicomics, Holes, Palace Pier Blues, The Book Thief and The Bloody Chamber, All of which achieve to varying degrees the balance of simplicity and richness in their descriptions.

The Bloody Chamber came to mind as it is a book that I am lecturing on next week. This has lead to further connections as I have been reading about Angela Carter this afternoon and apparently with my PhD looking at the representation of sex entitles me to label myself a 'moral pornographer' (an image I quite like if I am honest). In that it is my aim with my thesis novel to construct a text where the woman's sole purpose is not to just gratify the man, instead it is the demystification of flesh and a reflection of the real world where all are equal and desire is not shame-faced. I felt that sort of connection this afternoon.