Outgrown

When do you know you're outgrowing an author?

When you start correcting them in your head.

Ten Rules for Writing (Fiction)

Came across this article on the online Guardian and thought I'd make my own list. So, my ten rules for writing fiction: 

1. Write. 

2. Read. 

3. Write again. 

4. Read what you've written.

5. Take five months off and come back. 

6. Read what you've written again.

7. Take another five months. 

8. Bunk off writing and move to Manchester.

9. Write about Manchester. 

10. Send updated script (with detailed description of industrial Manchester) to an agent. 

(11). Await rejection. 

--> I can be so bored at times.

The Forest

I think I must go to a forest soon and trek among the trees. Not a garden, not a beach, not a poor river that chokes through the city. I must trek through a proper piece of nature with real trees and uncarved barks and roots the size of a man, and sweeps of light filtered green by the overhead leaves.

Voldemort

Today I caught sight of Voldemort.

I love the look on your face right now. It’s true, I did see him. On a bus, his pallid face looking straight at me, wand raised. It is advertisements like this that remind me that Harry Potter is a story – a very clever one, yes, but still a story.

I used to imagine that Rowling was committing a breach of magical law, that she was telling this story to us Muggles and would therefore have Fudge (or another equally incompetent Minister for Magic) on her heels for upending a long-held secrecy. I suppose this cannot really be real, but just in case she's in Azkaban between interviews –

Thanks, Joanne.

Tree in Garden

The tree is ten yards into the garden, but I see it as though it were in front of me, every detail – the jagged cracks in the bark, the way its arms yawn and sigh – brushing against my cheek like the wind. But what I see cannot possibly be. The tree is completely hidden in the shadows, and it is dark. The entire garden is dark. Oh look, look at my feet, they’re in the shadows too, I can’t see my shoes at all, and look, further up, I can’t see my knees either. I slowly lift my fingers to my face. All I grab is air. There is no light.

The Stench

Death approaches on self-pity
It has a stench, like that of rat-infested longkangs
Strong, silent, of rotten eggs and cow-dung
Filling up the nostrils 'til they fume out

You can smell it, silence puncturing the air,
So you watch how, how it punctures it black
You are terrified it will suck you in
Your eyes limp, faces spent, muscles slack

Why are you afraid?
Life still echoes down your spine
Your brash youth has yet to recede
Why are we afraid?

Perhaps it could be contagious
Perhaps we too could start crying for ourselves

- Shu -

We Fall in a Fountain

All the things I used to believe in fall in cascades around me.

I am one person, in the land of broken spirits.
I stand up and try try try to believe.

All I do is try try try to write.
I tell myself often enough.

But obviously not enough.
Finally, maybe, hopefully.

A bear-hug, a kiss, a warmful of love, and maybe we can heal each other.
This is the day. 

And tomorrow I stop dying.

- Shu -

Buffo

I had wings the other day
With sparkly manik sewn on them
They were pink, gold, green, grey
And ginger for my spinal stem

Like Buffo the Great, the Master Clown*
I wore everything inside outside
So when my soul was beaten down
You could see my bladder all cried out

With poppy seeds the colour of beige
Hanging on my nerve-ends like false earrings
Heavy and strange they made me weigh
But still I made myself back-hand spring

The clown did not smile for me
Neither did I for him
But when she told me she was a lady
I cried and gave her my wings

- Shu -


* Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

Conviction

He has swum far and dived low to be certain of his course to heaven
Certain that the best-kept secret will present itself
Propped like a pearl in an open shell

So he sings to his lady, tells her an oceanful of truths
And she says yes I know
Out of pity

Epic

Shatter like stars pricked off the sun
Like moonlit leaves plucked off the river
Like graffiti spattered across my window

Be aware be very aware
Of this amazing glorious stupendous awesomely intense pain
Of how your insides flare up like sharp icicles
Of the stiff limbs

You know you are still real

It

It is not pretty
It does not have fabulous eyes
Fabulous nose mouth hair

But it has
Bright eyes clean nose glossed mouth
Neat neat hair

We want a bit of it
Post-surreality
For the hollow men

Ivory

The opaque juts out
Like ivory
Under the thin

Where did it all disappear to?
__ loves to ask.

The New Life

Feel it everyday, the humdrum
Of a pain becoming familiar
Ritualise it, make it religion
Make it the Be-all End-all

Get tired of it, the sameness
Of a practice without will
Be angry, slash at it, widen the gashes
Watch it sew itself back

Ask for it, the new living
To denounce this pain
For it is not pain at all
Merely a lost road taken

The Experiment

Warning: This is an experiment.

She walks out the window.
Floats in the air.
Walks in the street, stops for a stare.

She takes a stone, maims that pigeon.
Watches it glide and flutter.
The splinter of its beak bent like a slur.

She is the Lost.
Is there a burial ground
For those not yet Found?

Time is ticking now.
But the hourly chime, simply
Cannot sound for those who cannot mime.

Warning: End of Experiment.

For You

This is for you, after you, you, you.

Because the strands come together over the fretboard.
Cover you, you empty, vast Hole.
Make this sympathetic succession of sounds.
So I strum and sing and belt out the familiar darkness.
Realise that it is you who echo
And amplify my tones of sorrow.

Weave 'em out, them horse-strings.
They are coarse, rough, good.
Hold the neck! Grab the headstock!
And loosen 'em tuner posts.

Now I can play real, real music.
Music without your resonance of woe.

This is for you, after you, you, you.

Close-Up

I am ready for it
Hair to one side
Cue the flash

No wait
Come closer
It is out of kilter

Make sure you get Me right
The important parts
The laugh that resounds

The scent looking crooked
But hold it -
Avoid the eyes

Quick!
Capture my personality too
I seldom get it this right

The Lit Path

it is like a sun, you see
this tenseness in me that grows
north, west, south and east
scalding my face so that i blush

but i've been silly anyway
to think that speaking and reading and writing
could make dim that garish ray
that they could ever be my salvation

you must see, the prose i write
are poems stretched out to make sense
i skitter up words that take me aflight
then have to tolerate that strange suspense

it doesn't solve things, it is simply
a self-absorbing indulgence
this escape from the gritty
this highly priced disappointment

As a Reader

Was at Costa (it's this little chain cafe in the UK) earlier and watching a little girl read her book by the window seat. Made me think of how I used to get so engrossed in a book that I'd feel like I was in another world.

It doesn't happen anymore though. I wonder if it's because I've gotten impatient, or if every story seems to be a repeat of another. I want to say it's because I haven't got time, but it seems too easy an excuse. I find myself making little side notes of the writer's technique, musing over the subtle clues and insights to life, and then skimming through the rest of the book after 'Preface'.

I wonder if it makes me any lesser as Writer when I don't do Reader right.

I'm very comfortable with my style of writing. It's a descriptive sort of prose, more of emotion than of places and sounds and sights, more metaphor than surface value. I like it, love it, enjoy writing and reading this particular style, but I'm beginning to find it very limiting. I'd like to try out simple, factual, teasing writing that doesn't hint at earth-shattering epiphanies. I'd like to try out simple sentences, without commas, each five words long. I need a new angle. Something really new. And fresh.

Hm. Looks like I've just found what I can do. 

In terms of my writing, I am currently in this search for precise words. Words that don't just give a glimpse of what I mean, but are what I mean. Phrases pieced together for both their beauty and political correctness. In short, I am becoming like all the other Literature-ists who become too critical of language, who cut the language apart and seem to overlook the very banal perspective that language can be, above all, merely a language.

See? I'm even finding trouble with that last sentence. Bah.

Derek Walcott

From What the Twilight Says by Derek Walcott:

' ... the manic absurdity would be to give up thought because it is white.'

' ... colonial literatures could grow to resemble [English Literature] closely but could never be considered its legitimate heir.'

'All their betrayals are quarrels with the self, their pardonable desertions the inevitable problem of all island artists: the choice of home or exile, self-realization or spiritual betrayal of one's country.'

'The language of the torturer mastered by the victim. This is viewed as servitude, not as victory.'

WRITE

I don't know if it's the course. Maybe English Literature disentangles you in such a way that you'd never be able to step back and read without analysing and deciphering and taking apart.

Haven't written in nearly three weeks. Everything I write is bullshit. Nothing is new. Nothing is inspiring. Nothing makes me want to write more. And it's all the same stuff, thrown out over and again, phrased differently, phrased more badly, and I'm searching for this string of words to 'punchline' it out, but nothing's fucking working.

It could be that I'm just PMS-ing.