In November I have mostly been writing. Writing, and not reading it back or editing or even correcting simple typos and words underlined automatically by Microsoft Word in red or green. No time. NO TIME! I shout to myself. I’m doing the NanoWrimo Novel-Writing Challenge.

Words are my friends, they are my enemy. I need to write more, more, more and the backspace button is not my friend. Pruning is not allowed. Quantity over quality is my aim. I think.

It’s not that I want to write crap and congratulate myself at the end when I (hopefully) have 50,000 words in a document, sitting smugly and boasting about my achievements. The idea is to break down the barriers to writing, to get SOMETHING down on the page, which can then be edited and re-drafted at a later date.

Analysis is the enemy of the novelist; too much agonising over choosing the correct word, crafting the most perfect sentence, or browsing the net in the name of crucial research. These things can be ironed out later. BASH IT OUT NOW and then you have a framework to play with.

I’ve heard some talk of a mass re-draft session kicking off in March each year, post Nano, post Christmas, post the depressions of January and the skurge of sales and diets and misery frozen in window panes nationwide. The re-draft is a challenge for the future.

For now, two weeks in, here are the 10 things Nano has taught me about myself as a writer:

1. I’m not a planner
2. I didn’t need to give up my job to write a novel
3. In fact I NEED TO HAVE A JOB to write a novel
4. I can squeeze writing into small blocks of time, like 500 words between Paisley Gilmour Street and Glasgow Central
5. I don’t need silence; in fact I thrive on background noise. It could be some classical tunes serenading me in the background (thanks Cara!), or my Mother chattering to my Auntie on the phone…
6. I am totally comfortable leaving the research until later (preferably to someone else)
7. I feel like writing is my life and my perfect career…BUT I’m glad I have come back to it at this juncture in my life
8. A novel is like an exam question – your mind is working out the answers while you are doing something else entirely
9. If I sit down to write, ideas channel through my finger-tips: I am a vessel for communication.
10. I have punctuation hang-ups since High School English, when I was accused of being a ‘comma splicer’. These are in the main, unfounded and should be wiped from memory.

Onwards with the journey.

18,000 words is not good enough for day 13….

1 Comment | In: Rebecca, Writing | tags: 000 words, 50, nano, nanowrimo, national novel writing month, novel writing challenge, writing. | #

This is a short piece I did in response to my new writing class – Inspiration & Realism for Writers - focusing on using the senses to convey story. We were played a beautiful, symphonic melody with hints of dolphins conversing. At least that’s what I made of it. The emphasis was on the sense of ’sound’.

It was a tranquil moment amidst a busy day, and a chance to let the imagination take over.

At first it made me think of a ballet dancer intent on her poses; perhaps like Natalie Portman in Black Swan. Then came the aquatic overlays which led me to the strict regimen of a synchronised swimmer – acting alone yet part of something bigger.

Floating.

The first notes amplified  in the still water. Water slippery around her face, her skin wet then veiled with fine droplets like lace clinging to her pores, clinging to the tiny hair follicles.

Symbols clashed their signal and the group moved in unison. Limbs pointing straight out, toes primed like a ballerina mid-plié.

Then up, out of the water, the air clasping smooth skin in its embrace. Plunging back down, fanning out, coiling in. Hands together, holding, synchronised. Face submerged. Notes subside.

The water is still again.

I wonder what this week’s class will inspire?

No Comments | In: Writing | tags: inspiration and realism for writers, music, personal writing practice, sound, synchronised swimmer, university of strathclyde centre for lifelong learning, writing practice. | #

Today I found the PVC sheet I made to cover up my bed when I lived with my Mum after university.

The Background

I made it to protect my duvet cover and pillows from the agitated affection of the cat; Mitzi. He (yes that’s right, a male cat called Mitzi. He had gender issues. We thought he was a girl), used to sneak off into my room in the quiet of the afternoon while I was at work. He would nestle at the foot of my pillows, stacked three high, supporting his deviously furry head, and curl around, paws sliding under the cover, claws kneading demonstratively into the thin fabric with its delicate embroidery, leaving dark, pin-prick holes.

Taking action to defeat him, I felt sad at the thought that I’d made his afternoons that bit less comfortable, when not long after I’d devised the PVC cover, he died. I still have the photo of him lying behind my bedroom door beneath the radiator; back paws peeping out provocatively, their pink pads rough and pink like his little tongue. I could have grabbed them and eaten them they were too cute, though his fur had begun to look mangy, yellowing. Was it the nicotine?

However, the PVC blanket was the perfect solution. I would lay it out on top of my bed performing two deterrent functions: it was slippery so would not hold any hairs if he did sit on it, and because it was slippery not warm and comforting, it put him off altogether. Cunning. No-one wants to sit on that kind of slinky-but touch-it-and-you-could-stick-to-it-surface, the kind that grips skin like a painful pinch or the sting of a plaster ripped off too fast. Not at all conducive to an afternoon nap.

Only the PVC alone wasn’t enough. It would slip, by its very nature, down the bed, leaving the coveted pillow position completely vulnerable to feline attack. I would come home from work safe in the knowledge my bed was cat-hair free, only to find him smugly licking his tail and purring in my fresh covers. Argh! So I had to alter the PVC sheet. I had to weigh it down at each end, so that it wouldn’t slide off the bed over the course of the day.

I used a collection of pretty stones and childhood marbles and little bits and bobs that I thought would complement the dreamy-blue hues of my room. I created little compartments so they wouldn’t rush and flood to one end of their ‘channel’, defeating their purpose, and split them into complimentary palettes of weight and of colour. It was quite a performance; a work of great mathematical, scientific and artistic accomplishment.

All worked well and there was only the occasional incident, like forgetting to put the PVC sheet on in the first place or leaving the door of my room wide open to temptation… Read more …

No Comments | In: Lifestyle, Travel, Writing | tags: black obsidian, marbles, PVC, rose quartz, scratch patch, semi precious stones, simon's town, south africa, the scratch patch, tiger's eye. | #

It’s true: my mind is an ever-collapsing sand dune of ideas, inspirations, needy rants and buried treasure in the form of secret, detailed amazing memories that may or may not be completely fictitious. It is subject to the merest hint of a breeze, reshaping thoughts and feelings and plans. It simply cannot focus, instead sniffing and somersaulting into new territories like a greedy ferret.

Recently I have been extolling the virtues to anyone who would listen – and many who weren’t – of OneNote. It comes free with the Microsoft Office suite (2007 onwards, or you can buy it as a standalone package), and has quietly revolutionised my burgeoning collection of ideas, quotes, favourite words, things to do, places to go, secret recipes…everything in fact.

OneNote is an application that allows you to create multiple online ‘Notebooks’, linking pages, ideas and research together. I dabbled with it a few years back but was wary of its ‘handy hints’ and offers of help. Wasn’t a simple word document just as good Actually, no.

I stumbled into OneNote again recently and was re-inspired by notes and tit-bits I had collated in my initial foray, and subsequently forgotten about. I could pinpoint the exact dates too – OneNote automatically saves that information for you. Not just a snappy name then.

*** Disclaimer – I am in NO WAY associated with Microsoft or working on commission *** Read more …

3 Comments | In: Lifestyle, Wannabe Journalist, Writing | tags: brainstorm, creativity, docs, files, google, google docs, microsoft, mind map, mind mapping, notebooks, one note, onenote, organising, pages, planning, tabs. | #

What does the colour red make you think of? It makes me think of a big, blank empty screen. Like when you shut your eyes against the sun and your eyelids glow red inside.

Red makes me think of the word ‘vermillion’ and an all-consuming passion, or maybe just Mars. The fiery planet. How cliche, how stereotypical! Fire Engine red, Post Office red.

Maybe the reddest of red lipstick you’ve ever seen; a red gulf of glistening red micro-beads that last all day, reflecting red beams of light back into the atmosphere. An aura of red around the red-lipped wearer. Red lipstick stains on a white coffee mug or transparent glass or a cheating collar. Red lips. All consuming lips. The colour red and the all-consuming lips of red.

Is any other colour so evocative, so powerful, so in your face as red? It has passion and love and the G-force of its pigment driving it on, forcing it into the consciousness of all, making it memorable.

It’s the colour of danger and the red triangle of warning.

Monosyllabic, simple yet complicated. Roses and poison and hearts and love.

It is the colour of hell and the Scarlet Woman and harlotry and evil. The red devil reigns on in riotus red!

A primary colour, it is cheerful and vibrant and perfect for the festive season. The Crimson Petal and The White, it sits well against the purity of snow but is a crime when coupled with green.

It is a shepard’s warning and the hot, sticky night as the ball of red fire sets in the sky, rippling its death-dance daggers into the horizon.

It is the colour of heat and the opposite of cold. It smacks of sex and adultery and illicit adventure. Long red talons like the bloody claws of a bird of prey.

Glamour and wealth and cheap slutty hooker traits and the grotesque macabre of a clown’s oversized nose. Regal, royal, religious, poppy-seeded hope in a field of faded faces.

Red hair framing a porcelain complexion, or the bullying taunts of being ginger?

It is popular, understood and available. It turns heads and rages ferociously, from nowhere, when emotions collide. Slide. Dangerously. Vindictive, harmful, won’t ever stop until the battle is won. Draws blood. Thick red blood that won’t stop. Congealed life. A pin-prick or a stab wound.

Ludicrous, loud and it won’t go away; can’t get rid of the stain.

Red is volatile. Be careful with it.

No Comments | In: Trends, Writing | tags: anger, colour, danger, devil, heat, hell, hot, love, passion, pigment, red, scarlet, vermillion, warning. | #

Using Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as my source ‘prose’, I randomly – and blindly – landed my finger at a collection of phrases and words from throughout the book, to come up with an interesting if non-sensical paragraph of fodder in which to find yet another intriguing poem, circa October 2010. 

Surmise departing flattery, impossible the baby cried. Quietly waiting for a day, continually knocking. Without followers, quiet, nasal, old-fashioned dolly. Unpleasant orphanage returned superficial pleasure. A mist. Forty paces feel bored. Nothing except hypocrisy. Recognise one’s real daughter had quarrels cordially. Fleecy clouds boiled without water, cheerfully. Errand images altogether different. French cathedral long been married.

Un-named Found Poem

Superficial,

the clouds boiled.

Boiled without departing.

A cathedral of clouds

boiled.

Images recognise pleasure. And

surmise cordially.

Surmise. Superficial.

Departing.

No Comments | In: Writing | tags: anna karenina, clouds, creativity, found poetry, poem, prose, random, tolstoy. | #

After an inspiring and thought-provoking day at the Write Now Writing Conference at Strathclyde University - complete with delicious home-baking and coloured badges – I felt compelled to share this little gem that I ‘found’ last year using random words from my husband’s favourite computing magazine, Linux.

Found Poetry is such an interesting subject and a clever, accessible intro to the world of poetry which can sometimes seem an elitist club for the few who can master Haiku and Pantoums and the inexplicable ins and outs of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, alliteration and allegory.

The concept was first introduced to me when doing an online evening class in Creative Writing, also at Strathclyde.

The idea was to pick words/phrases at random from a magazine you wouldn’t normally read, and shape them, mould them and form them into something resembling a poem, all without thinking too much about it. It’s the ‘freeing up’ of the mind that is the focus, the process, rather than the end result. Though the end result can actually be rather interesting in itself…

The Back-Up

The back-up.

It’s exactly unclear. Rubbish!

Two connections I have witnessed:

Reboot. Gesture. Reboot.

Unclear? Exactly.

Make voice calls. Gesture. Reboot.

The foot won.

I have witnessed the back-up.

Two connections made me

think it’s exactly unclear.

The back-up.

No Comments | In: Lifestyle, Trends, Writing | tags: creative writing, creativity, found poetry, glasgow, linux, linux magazine, magazine, poems, poetry, random words, strathclyde university, university of strathclyde, words, write now, writing. | #