Spirit of NaNo

I have just eaten a packet of Monster Munch and am suddenly thinking about the woman with selective eating disorder who eats nothing else, and the six-year-old girl whose mother left her alone in the house for five days with nothing to eat but packets of those.  Both survived and survive, though obviously it isn't food.  The young girl's case was clearly one of child-neglect, but the other is a grown woman who seems to suffer no major ill-effects.  We do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of god, so it is written.  Perhaps the woman's faith is very strong or she has another source from which to draw the vital forces one needs in order to live.  I have a healthy diet with organic vegetables, fruit, meat, whole grains and pulses.  But the woman who only eats Monster Munch is stronger and possibly healthier than I am.  All she suffers is brittle nails.  Some things are just mysterious and one accepts this.

Last night was the first Halloween for many years that we did not put a carved pumpkin on the hedge to show itinerant vampires, ghouls and witches that they could come and knock for sweets.  I know this is one of the winter shine-your-light-in-the-darkness festivals, but actually, I should have medals for doing this for, well - much of my life, really.  Last night the wick had burned down to almost nothing.  It revived a bit after the good words of a friend (we do not live by bread alone), chocolate and prescription drugs - good things all three, and I do not despise them.

And now it is that time of year again and I am back in the frolick and fun that is NaNoWriMo.  In my fashion.  One year I nearly killed myself with word-count frenzy, another I came down with swine flu and really, a diet of a thousand words a day is respectable enough in my yet-to-be-written book.  So I will be embracing the spirit of NaNo without the caffeine overload or sleepless nights which, actually, I already have.

It is also the Daughter's birthday.  This, and the fact of her existence, makes me very happy.

Bump in the Night

It's Hallowe'en and I'm unashamedly promoting this lovely vid made by the Zig Zag Birds. It's a band that Son is in, see if you can guess which one is him (clue: torn white T , hollow eyes and you don't see him very much but he looks distinctively intense). If you like it, pass it on.

There is a small but hopeful-looking pumpkin sitting outside in the rain waiting to be given a face. But Mr. Signs is clobbered with a cold, and pumpkin-carving isn't one of the things on my C.V. On the other hand, I have stocked up with a few goodies to give the Hallowe'en knockers - but the kids are polite here and if they don't see a lit pumpkin they won't knock. And if they don't knock, I will have to eat all the goodies myself, which I would love to do but it is bad for me.

Tomorrow is the beginning of NaNoWriMo, which I am signing up for, if only to be along in spirit. There is no way I can bash out fifty thousand words in a month, if I manage between five and ten thousand I will be pleased. But I like the idea of a novel-writing month. It's good to tell stories. It's good to feel one is in the flow and swim of things, and I intend to be. In my fashion.

Postscript: While I was putting up this post Mr. Signs did something to the pumpkin. Punk art, people - and expressive!

Cap'n's Log (2)

Things would be easier if Real Life, in the form of hospital appointment, eye infections, empty fridge syndrome etc. did not get in the way of artistic endeavour. To anyone who has recently tried finding a place in a hospital car park - respect, I know what you have endured and wonder if, like me, you have gone through the barrier of one car park, been unable to find a space and then been unable to leave through the exit barrier because you have not paid. But why should you have paid if you haven't been able to park and need to look elsewhere? Not their problem. Not anyone's problem except yours. At reception you have to fill in a four-page form but pootling around in the freezing rain trying to negotiate your way back to the right department (they sent you a letter explaining how to do that but the letter never arrived - not their problem, yours), feeling like Tess of the D'Urbervilles on a particularly inclement day when Angel is nowhere and has in any case dumped you, takes its toll, makes you late and your varifocals keep steaming up. Everyone in the waiting room looks miserable, in spite of the water dispenser (which has in any case run out of plastic cups), and the copy of Literary Review lying next to the Daily Mail. And it does not make the situation any better, here in deepest mid-Sussex, to know that things are immeasurably worse in London. Just saying, because the receptionist told me that, meaning that I should be grateful and count my blessings. I do, actually. Count my blessings. But no reason to tell her that, especially as there was no toilet paper in the loo.

Anyway, back to the endeavour. Eye infection probably not helped by staring at a screen. The writing not helped by it either, so back I go to the notebook and see how the words begin to flow again, probably helped by the company of my two very trusted writing companions, one of whom is also doing Nano. We have decided to do the thing at our pace. Sufficient unto the month the dedication thereof. I will not be aiming to produce fifty thousand words. Today's output was around nine hundred, which is quite respectable.

Update

Nothing is static and I am changeable as the wind, and probably less predictable. Artist's Temperament, as before, meaning it is a smokescreen and of course I know that what Artists actually do is get down to work, and I have been and will. A little more sanguine about the project today, having had a small pause as Son has been here collecting things for his new flat. One needs the pauses as much as the wordage. The characters need them, as we need sleep in order to process almost everything. Nanowrimo does not really allow for pauses, but that's ok. It's about getting a certain habit of working into your system, and it's about naming an objective and overcoming fear. So it's all good, and I say this because it is almost certain that there will be trouble ahead, and I won't want to face the music and dance. But I probably will.

Cap'n's Log

I have been clocking up the words so all is, one could say, going to plan. But I am not exactly enjoying the process. Truth to tell, other than the grim satisfaction of updating my word count each time I have bashed out the required number, I am feeling quite miserable about it, and the deeper into story I go, the more something or other (I really don't know what) presses on me and in me. It feels strange and personal, like grief - a big word, I know, but I can't think of another that fits. I have not plotted out my story at all but am writing from scratch, working with an idea and allowing it to unfold as it goes along. But it is not a natural, organic unfolding. If nothing emerges, then I make something happen or find something or other to bring to utterance because otherwise I would fall behind, and I have committed to the game, am playing it seriously. There is a sense, though, that in pushing on in the direction it is going I am leaving something else behind, and that something else may be the real, the actual heart of the thing that first suggested itself to me. I am making myself believe that it (the story behind the story) will hold fast.

And I am very tired. It is tiring to do this every day. No strength to spare and the cupboard is perilously bare.

Wide-eyed and Plotless

Back to the dark forest, and it's minus one tonight, damn cold. Less than twelve hours ago I was sitting by the sea front breakfasting on oysters and black coffee, squinting in sunlight under clear blue sky. These shifts from one to another - sea to forest, light to dark, warm to cold - perfectly reflect the the inner condition (mine), which is changeable as the wind. I have sometimes likened it to swimming in a sea where you never know when you are going to hit a cold spot. But that is a gentler image than the actual experience. No doubt about it, the physical condition affects mood, or can render what seems manageable one moment to something quite intolerable in another. The shining moment, when all seems (for a space) well between heaven and earth, can bring a most perilous euphoria in its wake: perilous because the descent may be as sharp and violent as a rollercoaster ride, but without the fun element. We may attribute this to the Artistic Temperament - a useful smokescreen when the truth is something one would prefer not to identify. But actually, I like a good smokescreen, it has all manner of uses. So Artistic Temperament it is. A spell in the army would obviously do me a lot of good, but as this is out of the question (I have flat feet) I have decided to go back to NaNoWriMo bootcamp in November. Last year's attempt nearly killed me and was in any case scuppered by Swine Flu. This year I will come at it totally unprepared - think David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lion's Den. Whatever, it is unquestionably heroic and the angels will therefore be on my side as I enter the ring, wide-eyed and plotless - legless too, if only I were allowed to drink alcohol.



I do love this song.

Coalface

I have reached the half way mark of 25,000 words, a day behind target but still. Apart from the fun of the game (a truly essential element), and of doing it alongside some lovely others (so one is not entirely alone at the coalface) it has been sheer, hard , hacking-a-path-through-mountain slog. This is the long haul, you see, and I've never done that. It's like being in labour, when you suddenly experience a profound respect for all the other women who have been through this. Novelists, both published and unpublished - anyone who has actually done this thing of seeing a story (plotted, plotless, prosaic, poetic, whatever) through to the end: Respect!
And life does its best to get in the way. Why wouldn't it? It is such an unnatural thing to be doing, this out of the body thing with ghostie characters who inhabit one's imagination, take on substance and are unpredictable or too predictable, like people but not. I have been in my red and white pyjamas all day, with chest infection, feel awful and M.E. god has turned his baleful and venomous eye on me. Actually, he has been doing this from the outset, but today he sat on the bed with me and said: think you got away with it? Payback time!

And - get this - the writing isn't making me happy. Well who said that it was supposed to do that? Occasionally I get a grim kind of satisfaction because I can feel the pick hitting the seam, but mostly I feel a bit shite about it all, although not as shite as I would feel if I were not doing it.

I spoke with my London-based writing fiend the other day. She is working on her novel and has expressed how she feels about her particular work-in-progress. She loves it with a steadfast, dedicated and pure love. It is a source of joy, close to her heart, her attention to it has made it so. I can see the potential for this, even though we (work-in-progress and I) are are not at this stage in our relationship and it is an uneven and precarious kind of courtship.

A measure of Blogoslavian distraction feels like a good thing.

Pipework

Two good things. Well, more than just two, but the ones I will mention have to do with The Writing.

For firstly, five of my poems are out in the latest (No. 48) edition of Obsessed With Pipework (subtitle: poetry with strangeness and charm), and one of them is called Reading the Signs. I really like this quarterly, and not just because the editor was good enough to take my poems. It has the look and feel of the kind of pamphlets one used to come across in what I shall euphemistically call a more rockanroll decade - something that has a cobbled together kind of look, but it is cobbled with artistry and soul - not to mention strangeness and charm. I subscribed to it when blogfriend and writer Ms Pants had her poems published there, and I have read every copy since (unusually for me) from first poem to last and been pleased to see some erstwhile writing cronies from Hackney days represented there. With neurologically challenged brain, it is difficult to keep finger on the pulse and read, as well as digest, everything that one would like to. So OWP is a very good thing for me, nicely made, with concentrated poetry nourishment I appreciate.

For secondly, I am - as I cavalierly bragged in the last post - taking part in this year's NaNoWriMo, and I have bashed out exactly 10,0005 words in six days. This is, to put you in the picture, exactly five words more than I need to be on track for my 50,000 by the end of the month. It is testing my strength to the limit, but so far so good, and look - I am even putting up a post as well. Muscles are aching, eyes are smarting, but this feels like a breeze compared to the hacking-a-path-through-the-mountain that is fiction-writing. Someone, but I can't remember who, described it as such and I felt it was, as far as my process was concerned, accurate. I know what is on the other side of the mountain and have a rough idea of what I might need to do in order to get there, but the path is made with much effort and with no guarantee that you are really heading in the right direction, but if you keep going you are going to get out somewhere, and if it is not exactly the spot you intended, never mind. I have written short stories, poems, bits of novel, but never yet actually done the long haul. When I reach the pearly gates I would like to say that I had a go. And this, I suppose, for better or worse, is it.

You will surely be wondering about Shrink, and where he fits into all of this. Obviously I have had to let him go - the road was, in every possible sense, too long, arduous and expensive and, well, all things must end, even psychoanalytic therapy. At the back of my mind, also, was the image of Woody Allen in Sleepers, waking up some time far in the future and working out that he might just, at this point have completed his psychoanalytic treatment. Don't ask me if it has done any good, I probably won't know until half way through my next incarnation. What I do know is that the notion of banging one's head against a brick wall, and how good it feels when you stop doing that, resonates.

Laters, comrades.