NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN!

Will get around to writing a new year blog for here soon. But till then here's a link to an interesting post on Ideastap… especially read number 3 on their list of resolutions.

http://www.ideastap.com/IdeasMag/all-articles/the-five-new-years-resolutions-you-need-to-make

Update November 2014

It's been a while, so I thought I had better update the blog a bit. There's a lot to cover, so I am bound to leave some things out.

This year, so far, has been a funny old year. I have had moments of intense activity creatively, and weeks of not quite inactivity but certainly slower weeks. I am not entering as many competitions as I used to and I do sort of miss that - not the cometitions per se, but the push that they sometimes give you.  I came third in 'The Short Story' competition with a piece that is unremittingly dark - 'Keepin The Numbers Down'; and I was second in 'Cease Cows' hallow/hallowed flash fiction competition with another bleak piece - 'Not Finding Our Hallowed Mam'. Both of these pieces were written from a child's eye view. Anyway, 'Cease Cows' have already posted my piece online and 'The Short Story' will do the same later in the month.

I have pieces is new places, and pieces in familiar places. 'Pushing Out The Boat', a really nicely produced print magazine, has me in their currently available publication. And an old piece of mine has found its way into the online magazine, 'Far Off Places' - the 'Under the Bed' edition. Really, I should send more of my stuff out into the world.

I am keeping up with my personal challenge, which I know I have not said much about yet, but I will when the challenge has been fully met.

I have just been invited to talk at a writers' group this month and will be doing a reading at the launch of another venture. So, on top of the day job (which, by the way, is quite different since August and demanding in a new way), I am keeping busy in a writerly way. 

Also, the novel, which feels stalled a little, has just had feedback and there's a whole heap of stuff `I need to attend to in it… which is what I knew and what I hoped to be shown. That will require a substantial block of time when my head is clear. I hear writers talking about fav places they go to as a retreat so they can fully focus on the work… that sounds mighty attractive as a way to tackle this project… which I still have faith in… but when?

The other novels, the ones that have been written and sit on the back burner, are also still begging for my attention. I'd quite like to give some time to them in the 2014.

Yes, so a funny old year. But there it is, so far.

SENT HOME WITH STARS

Last night I attended another Pentland Writers’ Group airing in Carlops village hall. It’s a nice comfortable venue and these evenings usually prove to be very entertaining. But last night must have been one of the best yet. For a nominal charge the packed audience was treated to a free glass of wine, readings from current PWG members and music and song from a brilliant trio called ‘Madge Wildfire’.

Highlights for me included a poem about John Bellamy’s father and poems from Anita John. The bits between the readings were witty and engaging and it was good to see that PWG was continuing in good health. They have been going now for thirteen years and I am glad to have been associated with the group in the past. Being there made me want to be part of it all again.

The evening ended on an absolutely amazing high note when ‘Madge Wildfire’ sent the audience home with stars, a fabulously constructed medley of songs with ‘stars’ in the lyrics. If you get the chance, ‘Madge Wildfire’ are not to be missed.

I can’t wait for the next PWG airing.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS - BUT THEN THERE'S NEWS!

So, the interested agent was not so interested in my subbed piece. It just didn't reach him emotionally. He prefers a more immersive narrative rather than the punctuated piece I sent him. He wondered if I had done anything with a previous subbed piece that he 'hankered after' seeing redrafted. So, my tail between my legs a little, but still trying to be positive, I sent him the piece he wanted to see...

As for the rejected piece, well I am seeking some outside and professional help with making it right - because I really do believe it's the one. I won't give up on it yet.

And stories - I have written nine this summer and that feels good. And my other year-long writing project is still in process and on target (more about this anon).

But there are dark days, in the pit of dark, when a nagging voice at the back of my head says things and they are never good or encouraging. Despite the competition hits, and all the nice things people have said through the years and still say about the writing, there's that voice and I nod and sit silently listening... sometimes for days. And you'd think that giving it up would be easy... but then in the quietest moment, after days of not doing it, when despair makes thinking slow, then an idea... a story... a new voice... and I have to write it down. And when I do, I think I see, just for a moment, what others see... and it starts over again.

Plus I get still get my work into lots of good places and noticed.

And so, in the end, I reject rejection, and that is a writer's job, and I listen harder to what's been said, and I look to improve. That feels positive.

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM

So, if you have visited this blog over the past few years, you'll know that this particular topic is of interest to me and you'll know something of my take on it.

Well, here's a TED talk about the very thing and it impresses on the listener the value of allowing the connecting of ideas instead of the protecting of them. I am not saying that 'innovators' should not be able to make money out of their intellectual efforts. I am not saying there should be no such thing as copyright. But I am saying - and have always said - that once an idea is put out there it should be allowed to connect with the people it comes into contact with because it is from such fertile connections that new ideas are made.

This is something that just happens anyway, but the lone innovator very often credits him/herself with the pure genious creation of an idea instead of realising the thing that is more likely: that the innovated new idea is the product of connections made with the ideas of others.

If you are a person who has ideas (creative or technical) and you don't want them to connect with the thinking of others, then don't put them out there; if you do put them out there, then expect them to connect with others and for others to use the ideas to make even newer 'things'.

Anyway, I don't yet know how to embed a TED talk into a blog page (I know it can be done but am not technically gifted in that area - I will try to find out). Because I don't know, here is the link. Go take a listen.

Steven Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From

There's a book by the same man on this subject.

HAVE YOU EVER...?

Have you ever entered a competition and when the results went up you checked the podium places and the highly commendeds and then skimmed the shortlist and longlist without any real heart? Yes, I've done that sometimes. And today I just happened to be looking over a well-past and very prestigious competition result, re-reading it actually, and lo!... there's me on the longlist and I never knew. Ok, so that's as far as I got this time... but it being such a good comp, I am sort of lifted that I did better than I thought I had.

And I am finding my way into good anthologies, and still scoring competition hits in good places and quieter places, too, and finding some of my pieces accepted into nice online magazines and print magazines, as well.

Am throwing out lots of stories at the moment, a real creative splurge. And perhaps because I am not working on a new novel at the moment, the stories seem to be coming quite easy... maybe even a little too easy? I shall have to send them out there and see how they do.

Yes, so it feels like everything is 'ticking over'... but is that enough? Do I want to shake things up a bit? Should I be working harder to get my work out there and read? Not getting any younger... these are the thoughts in my head.

Thanks for reading.

PUSHING OUT THE BOAT AGAIN

'Pushing Out The Boat' is a wonderful magazine, produced with care given to a writer's words and wonderful art pieces inside and the whole bound up in a glossy package that any writer would be pleased to see their work in. I had a piece in Issue 11 and was thrilled when I got my hands on a copy. I had read Issue 10 and thought it a bit special. Earlier this year a call went out for pieces to go in Issue 12 and they were inundated with high quaity work. I sent them something and they have taken it...

Today, I received the edited proof for a final read. In the proof it looks like it will apear on the page in the magazine; it is amazing when you can say of your own story that it looks beautiful on the page. Issue 12 launches on September 1st. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

WHOOP-WHOOPEE 2

Today I finished tweeking the finished manuscript for my novel - the one I whoop-whoopeed about in April. Today I put the final touches to it and I thought it read well and some of the writing seemed to glitter and gleam and so I straight away got in touch with the agent who had said he was interested in seeing it and he said that he was still interested and even looking forward to it and he used the word 'exciting' and so before I could draw breath I sent it off to him.

Of course, I have been here before and so I will not this time send my hopes soaring like a cut-loose kite, but will just quietly hope that this one has enough to take to the air, even for a moment or two before it is pulled back down to the ground, and if it crashes then I shall rush over to see if it is still in one piece or if it will need tape and a new wooden support and more string before trying to fly it again. 

Yes, so we shall see.

BRAIN PICKINGS

I don't often plug another's site here. Not because there aren't good sites out there, but probably because I'm not very good at finding the good sites or any other sites besides the ones I know. However, I did stumble upon Brain Pickings several months back. It's a great site for bits of reading, thoughtful stuff to get the grey matter working.

Here's something I found there today in an article on Milton Glaser:

'If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be. And I never thought of the universe as one of scarcity. I always thought that there was enough of everything to go around — that there are enough ideas in the universe and enough nourishment.'

I do like this. It says we do not need to be so precious about our ideas and we don't need to feel that they are so scarce and need to be protected. There is a real generosity of spirit in Glaser's thinking that chimes with me. 

He says, also in the BRAIN PICKINGS article, that he never had money as the goal of his work and I really can relate to that. It's what I believe. I'd write for nothing and often do. I give things away for free - advice, assistance, even whole stories. Of course, I have the luxury of having a full time teaching job that pays enough and so my writing doesn't have to feed me... but, if I am being honest, that's how I think it should be. It's that way for many artists, that they work at paying jobs in order to live and in order to fund their art and their doing of art. Doesn't seem to me to be much wrong with that and so it is for writers and that's fine, too.

Yes, so nip across to Brain Pickings every once in a while for stimulating reading. And if you like the stuff there and you visit regularly, consider donating a small bit to them, for no other reason than to pay them back for the gift they give you.

Loneliness and Rejection Can Kill You!

Sometimes I trawl the internet for something interesting to read. I am not a very good trawler, but sometimes I stumble upon something that someone else found.

Here is a link to an interesting article on loneliness: HERE

One of the things I found fascinating in the article is a bit where it talks about the damage that rejection can do. Now, we writers suffer rejection all the time - on a daily basis sometimes, but it is not that sort of rejection it is talking about. It is the rejection where you are excluded from a group that you once belonged to. That stuff can kill... or at least it can do damage. And if you carry that rejection with you for a long time, even for years, then it is sure to do you a deal of harm.

I say all this, because in my life I work against people suffering rejection in this way. It is not always easy. I am a teacher, and I use my skills in peacemaking and in creating a philosophy of complete acceptance in my pupils, to battle this disease - and thanks to this article I can call it a disease now.

I stumbled across this article through another person's blog. I think they are dealing with some difficult personal issues and I instinctively wanted to reach out and offer support and help... but I am rejected from the club that that person is in. I am heartened that at least other members of the club are reaching out to give their comfort and support. If ever that person should stumble along here, I hope that the message is understood.

CLEVER AND WITTY AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING

I remember when I graducated from art college, oh years back, and the thrill of it all and the whole of my future laid out before me. But the thing is, and I only know that now, that I was not an artist... not with a capital 'A'. I made pictures and I understood about composition and I could draw and paint passably well... but I never really used pictures to express myself... I never felt I had something to say in pictures... so I became a writer and found that I had stuff to say there, or at least I found that words and stories expressed my inner self in a way that pictures I made did not.

On Friday I attended my middle son's degree show. It took me back and I felt so excited for him and so proud... so immensely proud, the way only a father can feel proud. And I saw in my son's show what never was in mine. I saw an Artist who was brave and witty and clever and who had something to say and something that was him and was not easy. I wrestled with what he had to show me and I woke on Saturday, and again today, thinking about what he had done. It was someone else who said he was clever and witty and thought-provoking; I only agree.

So, to my grown up boy, with the whole of his future laid out before him, I say congratulations and good luck and thank you for making me see, really see, and for making me proud.

NEW SUN RISING: STORIES FOR JAPAN - AND IT'S A WINNER!

So, you see something in the news and it upsets you and you want to do something to help, but you don't know what. You listen for charity organisations putting out the call and you respond by digging into your pockets. But you don't feel that is enough.

Then you read that some nice people are actually looking to do something. They want to put an anthology of stories and poems together and to sell it to raise money to help. It's a great idea. They want writers to donate their work. How could you not? So you get down to it and you put something together and you gift it to the cause.

Eventually there's an e-book and a little later a hold-in-the-hand book. You buy a copy for yourself and copies for all your friends and you hope that others do the same... there's work in the anthology that you like and so it is worth reading.

Then, quite out of ther blue, there's a bit of a surprise... the book wins a prize... the e-book that is. And it's a gold medal winner and that has to be a good thing... I do not mean for the writers, but for those who made the effort to put the project together and for those who still need the financial help that the sales of the book generate. I am so glad that this gift goes on giving.

Why not do your bit and get an award winning book for your trouble?

Oh and here's a link to the award page.

WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOPEE!!

I am sitting alone just now, at my computer. The cat is alseep and the back door is open to let in the sun and the warmth of the day, and this is everything I wanted today for I have been at work on the completion of a project and I needed the peace and quiet of being alone to do it. Last night I wrote one chapter and today I have written the final three and so it is complete... another novel, and yesterday, just by chance, an email from an agent wanting already to see the new work. That feels good.

I have still to work on a novella I wrote last year and it needs some spit and polish, and its bootstaps pulled up, and its tie straightened. That is my next job, and the same agent wants to see that, too!

Anyway, I have come here just to yell and to say whoopee and to let the world know it is done... the work I have been penning for this past month (in between walking from one side of Scotland to the other and being back at work and getting the classes ready for their big exams)... yes, so it is done... the first draft at least... and now you know and it's not just me that knows.

As promised...

FINDING SHACKLETON IN A BOOK

He didn’t talk much. Not really. Not about things that mattered. Never said anything about who he was or what he wanted to be. He talked so little that even his son sometimes felt as though he sat with a stranger. Now the father is gone and the son wants to know him better and so he clutches at the shadow-scraps of memory.

A book there was, that his father owned. Not the dictionary, but another book, and it must have meant something for it stayed with them when so much else didn’t, was there on a high shelf in each new place they travelled to. It was a prize that the father had won at school; that’s what the son thinks, tries to remember a copperplate certificate that was pasted into the front cover saying as much. Now the son wishes that he’d given that detail more attention, that he’d read the words over and over until he had them to heart; but a careful search of what his memory holds does not offer more than a vague picture of what it was, and sometimes he can even doubt that it ever existed.

The book was real enough. A light-blue hardback cover, like a piece of a cold sky, and the title in silver letters. Silver like needles of frost or ice, which seems appropriate, for the book was about the life of Shackleton and that was all there was running down the spine, his name. Ship’s Boy to snow-blind wanderer, everything that earnest man was had been set down in print, and the man raised to something like hero though he achieved less than many and many of those have been forgotten.

And it must have meant something, that book, though the father never spoke of it or of Shackleton. The book is lost now and the father lost, too, and the son does not know when that happened. He searches old bookshops just in case, years of looking, and never finding the book that exists now only in his head. He has another Life of Shackleton, an old library book that smells of dust and the pages are yellow, and he pours over that book, at night, just before dreaming. And he reads that Shackleton gave up his only biscuit to Frank Wild and afterwards Wild’s diary records that ‘all the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me’. And the son knows his father liked biscuits, with his tea, and he knows his father would have gone without if ever the son had needed for anything.

So he reads on, sifting through every detail, like there might be small gold to be found in the silt of those words. He is carried on the shoulder of Shackleton, almost to the south pole, across glaciers and adrift on floes of ice, and sled dogs dieing, and the Endurance lost to the cold sharp sea, and Shackleton gave up his mittens for someone called Hurley and suffered frost bite for his charity. And the son sees a hero rise up from the pages of the book, walks towards him in his dreams, not bearded or snow-burnt, but something like his own father, upright and loved by the men under him, and loved by the son, too, though that was never said till it was too late. And the father never wore gloves against the cold, the son remembers that, even when he wakes he does. And the book must have meant something then, to the man, and now it means something to the son, even though it is not really same book.

NEWS TO DATE

Seems like a while since I posted anything here, so I thought I'd better bring things up to date.

Have been busy in lots of ways just recently and there is a new energy in my writing after a slow time... I say slow time, but I did lay down the first draft of two novels last year and won a couple of comps and got some nice other prizes... but it felt like it was hard work between those novels. Now it feels like fun again.

I think part of that might be to do with a change in my life. My wife has got me walking... miles and miles of walking... and it's been good for my physical health and for my state of mind, too. It seems to have given me a new energy and a new ambition and a new view of things.

This Easter my wife and I walked from the west coast of Scotland to the east. We did the canal walk, following thr Forth and Clyde canal from Bowling to Falkirk, and then hopping onto the Union canal at Falkirk and walking all the way into Edinburgh... then we tagged a little extra onto the walk by taking our sore feet down to where the water of Leith folds into the Forth... and there I dropped a stone I'd carried all the way from Bowling. It's only about 70 miles in total and we did it over 6 days, but it was our first long distance walk and, aside from the cushioned plasters, it felt like an achievement for us both.

And with the rest of the holiday, I laid down 50,000 words to the 12,000 I already had on a new novel project that feels fun and exciting and even relevent. We'll see what comes of that in due course. And I am writing every day, a small flash of some description, and that's a challenge I have set myself, and that is turning up some good pieces... might display them some day.

And there was some instability at work... all of us in our department having to apply for our own jobs and one of us unlucky enough to not get a job... but I am safe and so we move on... a change to what the job involves, but there's good and bad with that.

So, that's where I am at. I will give more news as and when it happens... and maybe I should post something creative up here soon as that has been absent a while, too... ok, as I write this, a target: to pen an extra flash and get it up here before the end of the week... just because I know there are a few of you reading this blog and I have three followers now... why not comment?

Best to you all.

HANDLING NEGATIVE COMMENTS

I don't know how to embed a YOUTUBE video onto this page... yes, still a techno-dunce... but I can put in a link now, so here's a link... just a witty something for anyone anxious about the negative side of the internet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7IJyRAUxtAQ

I hope I have done that right.

(PS. I'm not sure that I didn't enjoy this piece because of the accidents with spilled wax that distracted the artist from her job, though her spoken words continued to run. Go check it out.)

And in case anyone's interested, I am writing lots and lots of stuff right now and feeling good about some of it. Set myself a challenge, too, to write a story a day for a year... that's 365 stories... set the same challenge once before but my computer crashed at just over 200 stories done... and I lost most of those stories I had written and some other stuff, too. Am being more careful this time round.

SOMETIMES WONDERFUL THINGS...

Sometimes in this world wonderful things happen. Yesterday a pupil of mine got so excited about something she had seen on Youtube and she wanted to show me what she found and she sent me the link and she said to have tissues handy cos I might need them.

And last night, when everything else was done and dusted, I connected to Youtube to see what it was that was so exciting that it could light up a person the way it had that pupil of mine. And my pupil was right... I needed tissues. And you will need them too.

But YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS... EVERYONE SHOULD... THE WHOLE WORLD... AND COMPASSION WILL MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE... PLEASE LET IT MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE... FOR EVERYONE.

CHECK IT OUT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY

(PS - Thank you to a wonderful pupil of mine.)

New Energy

Must be the time of year, for I have found a new energy again and am writing every day and stories are just pouring out of me. Of course, they are not all gold for they are just sketches at the moment, but there are one or two that promise glint and sparkle if they are worked on, so that is very pleasing.

For the first time in a great while I feel there is a strong and powerful energy returning to my writing, and a pleasing inventiveness, and I am getting excited about things again. I have even taken up a challenge, but it is too early to say much about this yet.

When any of this bears fruit, I will post up the results here.

WRITERS ARE SPECIAL

I read an article on a blog recently, about how writers are special. Here’s a response;

Writers are thought of as different. Seeing the world differently. Seeing the drama and the possibilities. Seeing specially. Seeing what only they see. They are a breed apart, observing the world about them and translating these observations into the magic of story and through story illustrating the finer nuances of what it is to be human, nuances that might be missed by the rest. Writers even think of themselves as different, maybe sometimes special and unique.

What a crock!

Have just read a book called ‘The Storytelling Animal’ by Jonathan Gottschall. It is quite an interesting read, full of plain-spoken sense. We are all of us examples of the ‘storytelling animal’. We are hotwired to be storytellers and story-consumers. It is a part of our make-up. In childhood it is evident through the games of pretend that children play, spinning narratives out of their smallest observance of life, creating whole worlds of possibility out of almost nothing. And this continues into the grown up life. We retell stories of our own experiences, but they are almost always a distance from truth, fashioned into something closer to fiction and having all the shape of story rather than experience. We also dream, and in our dreams the imagination plays, shaping fragments of experience into narrative. We all do this.

So what makes a writer so different?

Sometimes writers are individuals who have experienced being on the outside, spending time on their own and in their own heads. That’s being different. They read a lot. They learn words and story traditions and genres. And then, for sometimes no reason at all, they put pen to paper and a writer is born – or is it made? WE don’t all write our stories down and so this makes a writer different. But we can all do it, because at heart we are all disposed to be storytellers. You need to add other ingredients to make the writer, like perseverance and work ethic and the encouragement to continue and all manner of things.

But at the end of the day, a writer is not so special, not so different. Each of our perspectives on the world will be our own and quirky and different, the same for writers and non-writers. Writers are not blessed with greater insight, or greater intellect, or greater knowledge. They just put down in words what the rest of the world speaks or thinks or puts into pictures or performance or whatever.

Once, before I was a writer, I was talking to a class about mobile phones. This was back when mobile phones were as big as house bricks. We were studying Ray Bradbury and looking at his ‘predictions’ in his fictional vision of the future. I was illustrating how Bradbury looked around him (in the 1950’s) and, noting developments in his own world, technological developments, he ‘guessed’ where they might go and this gave him his ‘vision’ of the future. I told my class that anyone could do the same and I held up the mobile phone for them to see (I needed two hands it was so heavy!). I ‘predicted’ then and there (and I am no scientist) that technology would one day make mobile phones so small that they could be fitted into a person’s tooth and that they would then be voice activated and heard through the vibrations sent to the ear through the jawbone. Three weeks after this lesson there was an article in ‘The Scotsman’ newspaper covering a science fair in Edinburgh. In the article there was a photograph of a giant perspex model of a human tooth with all the gubbings for a mobile phone fitted into the tooth like an old fashioned filling. You don’t have to be a writer to have insight and vision… we all have it… it’s creative intelligence you need and writers do not have the monopoly on this. Indeed, we are blessed with it because it is part of what it is to be human.

Go read Gottschall’s book by the way… especially if you are worried about the demise of the novel and books and story… he will offer sensible reassurance to you as a writer.

(PS Of course what I really think is that writers ARE special, just no more special than people who are not writers.)

COMPASSION FROM READING BOOKS

(Just a wee flash. I do harbour the hope that books serve a greater purpose... and maybe it is to make people more understanding of their neighbours. I do hope for that... even when I see writers being like Morag, and readers, too.)

COMPASSION FROM READING BOOKS

She cried. O’er somethin in a book. I watched her, watched the tears creep up on her and one hand raised o’er her mooth in a pantomime o’ shock and then cryin. I dinnae ken what Morag was readin, except it was fiction. A death maybe, or a loss, or a comin together, and Morag was cryin. I was moved to see her like this.

But the thing is, she could be a heartless bitch when her nose was not in a book. Really heartless. Her words all sharp and heavy and thrown, weighted like a stone in the hand afore the violence o’ the raised arm and the jerk o’ throwin.

‘Sticks and stanes may break ma banes, but words…’

I ken the lie in that children’s rhyme. I hae seen the small she could make o’ men and women by the wicked in her mooth. And men big as doors, and she knocks and knocks with her fisted words, till the door cracks and flees open to all the howl and laughter of her wind.

And even her ain mother and her ain father, and she could make ‘em tremble with just the hiss and spit o’ her tongue. And no one was safe. And a man she loved yince, a fine man and upstandin, and yince he put his hand ‘neath her skirt, as a man will do, and he was not ungentle or coarse, but she slapped his face with her words and slapped it soond, and her love and his took frighted flight and awa’, high as eagles until it could no more be seen.

And here she was cryin o’er somethin in a wee book, and I smiled… couldnae help it. I smiled… not to see that there was a feelin heart in Morag, but because she hurt. And I wanted to know the words she had read, the words that could hurt a Morag so, for they words surely had an uncommon power.