I’m working on patience, while D reads and adds some edits to this nearly-nearly finished draft of Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts. To help me, I’ve struck on hunting for an epigraph (and possibly a change in title, something which better reflects the energy of the novel).

It is hard, and I think I have one from Anne Carson, but along the way I found a poem by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, which in its entirety works as an epigraph, with its imagery of nature, death, motherhood and childhood. Though no one has read the novel in its entirety, here is a little of the poem, which is a terrible beauty:

Dead Doe

for Huck

 

The doe lay dead on her back in a field of asters: no.

The doe lay dead on her back beside the school bus: yes.

 

Where we waited.

Her belly white as a cut pear. Where we waited: no: off

from where we waited: yes

 

at a distance: making a distance

we kept,

as we kept her dead run in sight, that we might see if she chose to go skyward;

that we might run, too, turn tail

if she came near

and troubled our fear with presence: with ghostly blossoming: with          the fountain’s

unstoppable blossoming

and the black stain the algae makes when the water

stays near.

 

[...]

The doe lay dead: she lent

her deadness to the morning, that the morning might have weight, that

our waiting might matter: be upheld by significance: by light

on the rhododendron, by the ribbons the sucked mint

loosed on the air,

 

by the treasonous gold-leafed passage of season, and you

from me/child/from me

from…not mother: no:

but the weather that would hold you: yes:

hothoused you to fattest blooms: keep you in mild unceasing rain, and

the fixed

stations of heat: like a pedaled note: or the held

breath sucked in, and stay: yes:

stay

I recently read James Franco’s essay in Vice magazine on Baz Luhrman’s version of The Great Gatsby, and my friend Quintessentially Quirky’s brief take on it made me stop to pause. I do hope she won’t mind me quoting her words:

James Franco’s review of “The Great Gatsby” for Vice reads like your 9th grade English essay with some graphic personal details. This is what it takes to be a Yale PhD candidate, ladies and gentlemen.

What seems to be QQ’s issue with Franco’s piece was that it was very poorly and awkwardly written. You can go and take a look at it if you like and probably you’ll come to the same conclusion she did. It feels repetitious, occasionally jarring, and the arguments aren’t strongly put enough to hold up a washing line of slightly damp socks. I don’t particularly want to write a long post on Franco’s talent or lack thereof. But what I did disagree with was QQ’s last line ‘This is what it takes to be a Yale PhD candidate’.

To be honest, it’s because it stung me. As you might know, I have a PhD in English literature. The journey towards getting that PhD was one of the hardest I’ve ever made. And not, perhaps, for the reasons you might think – that the work itself is hard, mentally wracking.  Which it was, but. This was not a science-based PhD. There was no theorising formulas. No collation. No ethical ramifications. My PhD was 80% novel writing, 20% essay. And while I threw myself into the novel, while I cried and fought to make it as good as it could be (and for nearly a year, failed utterly, before turning it around), it was that last 20% that was the worst.

There is a difference between writing fiction and writing criticism. For some people, there is a huge and unexpected disparity between their ability to write creatively and their ability to write a sharply-tuned, intelligent essay. Just as a writer might be unable to manage their personal finances, or work out how to succeed in business, or (as the stereotype goes) act on reasonable health advice regarding alcohol consumption, or even spell words correctly, so they might be unable to point to a story, any story, and say eloquently what is going on there and how and why.

There is a difference between being able to construct a cogent argument on the worth of a film and being able to write and direct a film. There is a huge difference between being able to read and get a lot out of, say, Wide Sargasso Sea and being able to enlighten someone else’s mind on what you found so wonderful there. I can’t speak much to Franco’s talent, or his particular PhD programme (nor on the American system, which holds PhDs out of the reach of so many through outrageously expense, unlike here in Scotland). But I can say this – it doesn’t take a genius to do a practice-based English PhD. All it takes is drive, and openness to the criticisms of others, and a willingness to find out which criticisms to take into account.

And something else  – I did a PhD because I still needed to learn. Franco, given all his bouncing around and taking up of various degrees, clearly feels the same. A passion for learning. For the process of discovery that he is afforded. Taking a PhD, being accepted by a programme, does not mean you know, nor can enact your thoughts as clearly as some people who will never take a degree. Some people are by inclination critically minded, articulate, devastatingly smart. Some of the rest of us, not particularly.  We might be trying very hard though.

Sometimes I feel awkward mentioning my doctorate. I’ve been given so many opportunities in life, and this is one extra. But more than that, I feel that my lack of eloquence lets me down in the eyes of others. I feel that my talents are not in areas that people expect. I struggle to read theory. I occasionally struggle with my book reviews, when I want to say more than how the text made me feel or what textures and tastes it had, the swirl of believability and linguistic verve. And although I am an ESL teacher, I might not always speak in clear full sentences, because my mind is slower to run with critical analysis. That, and my introversion, and the sense of distraction I have: If I’ve just come out of a cinema, or a theatre, my mind is blazing with imagery. Anything I have to say will take time to come out. Rush, and it will be just as awkward as Franco’s essay. With more pauses and umms.

It takes a rare spark to be both a writer of fiction and an excellent critic. That’s why there is a place and a need for both. A need for someone to create – and that someone might not be the best person to talk about their creation. A need for a critic, many critics, who can draw out all the threads and make them clearer. Enrich the text in a thousand different ways. Personally, I loved journalist Sady Doyle’s take on The Great Gatsby, in which she shows that Luhrman uses the space of his film as a kind of critic of the book. At the same time, I also enjoyed this interview with Franco, and am looking forward to his version of As I Lay Dying when it comes out.

Catchy title, but I couldn’t think of another way to put it. This is a post celebrating and making a wishlist for all the books just out or coming soon by people I sort of know – by that I mean, people I’ve met through twitter or their blogs and admired from afar. In some cases, these are the author’s first books, which makes it all the more exciting.

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Casey Hannan

I know I’ve spoken often of his Mother Ghost (Tiny Hardcore Press). I’m still waiting for it to descend into my hands. You can read some of his flash fiction on his blog and I highly recommend that you do. His works are strange, sparse, vivid. I really cannot wait to read the whole collection.

Katie Coyle

I know Katie through her work with The Female Gaze. It was lovely to hear her YA book, Vivian Versus The Apocalypse (Hot Key Books) will be published in September. From Goodreads:

“A chilling vision of a contemporary USA where the sinister Church of America is destroying lives. Our cynical protagonist, seventeen-­year-­old Vivian Apple, is awaiting the fated ‘Rapture’ -­ or rather the lack of it. Her evangelical parents have been in the Church’s thrall for too long, and she’s looking forward to getting them back. Except that when Vivian arrives home the day after the supposed ‘Rapture’, her parents are gone. All that is left are two holes in the ceiling…”

Kirsty Logan

The one person I’ve actually met, at a reading of hers in Edinburgh’s cafe Love Crumbs. She also works for The Female Gaze. Kirsty won the Scott Prize this year, so her collection of short stories The Rental Heart and Other Stories will be published by Salt in November. She provides a synopsis on her blog:

“These stories feature clockwork hearts, lascivious queens, paper men, circuses, and a gracekeeper; some are queer retellings of classic stories, some are modern-day fables, but all explore substitutions for love.”

Sarah McCarry

AKA The Rejectionist. I’ve loved her discursive, fiery, bookish blog for ages and would place a bet that her YA book, All Our Pretty Songs (St Martin’s Press) is going to be intense and fantastic. Here’s a quote from Elizabeth Hand on the book:

“Sarah McCarry’s brilliant lightning strike of a novel reignites the myth of Orpheus in a blaze of rock and roll, obsessive love, and the kind of all-consuming friendship one only experiences when young. A stunning debut that fans of Neil Gaiman and Francesca Lia Block will devour.”

You can preorder a signed copy of All Our Pretty Songs here!

Hilary T. Smith

AKA The Intern. She too keeps a great blog of her travels and adventures across North America and the world – and back in the day, when I started reading her, of her trials as a literary intern. Her YA novel Wild Awake (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books) wins the award for most enlivening cover. Look at those luscious oranges and purples.

“Wild Awake, the debut novel of Hilary T. Smith, introduces readers to one of the most memorable characters in young adult literature since Holden Caulfield, seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd. With her parents away for the summer, Kiri looks forward to time alone with hours to practice her piano, win the Battle of the Bands, and convince Lukas that they should be together forever. 

However, a phone call from a mysterious stranger changes everything, plunging Kiri both into a seedy world where her older sister had lived and died as well as into a psychological descent, so raw and intricately portrayed,that Kiri simply must prevail or be destroyed. Heart-wrenching, powerful and much more than a coming-of-age story, Wild Awake, perfectly portrays a forced maturity, one in which a strong human spirit refuses to be undone, whatever the cost. Highly recommended.”—Sue Campbell, Book Passage

It’s coming out on the 28th of May but you can get your mitts on it early here.

Michael Wuitchik

Michael has been kind enough to pop his head over here a few times (usually giving much appreciated words of advice) and we share agent Drea Cohane.  His novel My Heart Is Not My Own (Penguin Canada) is out in August this year. Here’s a short part of the synopsis from Michael’s blog:

“Ten years after returning from war-ravaged Sierra Leone, Dr. John Rourke receives a package in the mail. In his hand is the unfinished diary of his ex-lover, Mariama Lahai, the beautiful and charismatic African nurse who disappeared ten years before on the day Rourke was evacuated from Freetown. The journal documents Mariama’s capture, rape and journey at the hands of the rebels but leaves unanswered the question that still haunts Rourke–is Mariama alive?”

Cari Luna

I know Cari from Twitter, where she frequently provides insights into her writing life in Portland. She also has a great interview series on her blog called ‘Writer, with kids’. However, I started following her after reading her devastating short story on PANK, ‘Gone to Water‘. Go and read it and tell me you don’t want to grab yourself more of her work. Here’s a quote about her novel:

“On May 30, 1995, the NYPD rolled an armored tank down East 13th Street, evicting squatters from two buildings. With gritty prose and vivid descriptions, Cari Luna’s debut novel, The Revolution of Every Day, imagines the lives of five squatters from that time. But almost more threatening than the city lawyers and the private developers them are the rifts within their community.” – Amazon

The Revolution of Everyday (Tin House Books) is out in October, but you can preorder it right here.

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I hope some of these books have caught your fancy too. If you are a writer-friend(ish) of mine and I’ve neglected to give your book a mention here, it’s likely that I’ve missed word of your publishing news. Let me know! I’ll happily add it to the list.

Sad to report that Kilea did not make the shortlist for the Dundee International Fiction Prize. No writer’s life is without rejection. But I believe there are still chances for this novel. Somewhere an editor is right for the book, will be touched by it, and will help it out into the world.

Meanwhile I work on Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts and read and write reviews of books and of things that touch my heart too.

In some slightly happier news, Steve Himmer has very kindly sent me my candy cigarette short-short that was published by Smokelong and given out at AWP ’13. Here are the pictures:

I think the object itself is a thing of beauty. Thanks to Smokelong for being so inventive.

The above is Tentsmuir Forest, which bristles along a hump of coast North of St Andrews, and which hitherto I had not known about.

Sadly, there is no overnight parking right in this spot, where the dunes and grassland roll out forever towards the retreating sea, so we drove up to the small town of Tayport and hiked a little way back, camping in a dune edging on heather, in view of the Firth of Tay (the Tay estuary) and the lights of Broughty Ferry on the far shore.

With the tents set up, a barbeque had in the brief but nearly torrential rain, and many friendly dogwalkers greeted, we went out for a walk.

Super-saturation effect – taken at the time, to show how bright the woods were. My camera was struggling to catch their glow.

That big estuary sky. We walked back to camp, then on back towards Tayport, where we had seen some World War Two defense huts still set up to watch the placid horizon.

After a bit of peering and scrambling and wondering, it was time for another barbeque and to watch the sun set (I should add that the first picture of the camp was taken at around 9pm, but we walked out and about earlier). The evening was in perfect light as the sun set and barred reddish gold through the trees.

As we started to get ready to turn in for the night, a fox came close to our tents. It circled twice, eyeing us and sniffing at where we had cooked. It was the only slightly unsettling part of our stay at Tentsmuir – how much difference can a sandy, dry heathland make to our sense of peacefulness. Even those odd remnants of war only seemed empty, catchments for dust and pine needles and graffiti. We slept well on the soft sand, though it was cold. We walked back to the car, lipping the wetlands and the huge sky overhead bore us no ill will.

On Friday as we traveled North-West, the rains came and did not let up. Our plan to camp near Loch Fyne had to be abandoned, but we decided to have a day out anyway. We went into Cruchan, the hollow mountain – a hydroelectric scheme that was built inside Ben Cruchan in the nineteen fifties. Sadly, no photos from there as since 9/11, there has been some reluctance to let people take photographs inside working power plants. Suffice to say – the tour left lots unseen, and what was shown looked very much like a Bond villain’s lair.

But beyond that was Inveraray, a small touristy village that would be in good scenery if the mist had not closed in a little and the colours muted.Though the odd splatter of bloom provided colour against the whitewashed houses.

However, some places look better in the lashing rain. Textures stand out. There are fewer tourists, and the woods stand waiting.

We headed for a garden on the far shore of Loch Fyne that A had visited a year before, Ardkinglas. There was no one in the kiosk on the way in, nor anyone in the garden but us the entire time.

It was a beautiful place, managed but not manicured, full of rhododendron blossoms hanging like powder puffs, and moss and yellow- leaved skunk cabbage (which, D informed A and I, does indeed smell of skunk), a river, old stumps grown over with lichens – all hazed over, all damp and tentative in the late spring.

And this small respite from the rain, a hut full of poems and snippets about trees:

And further along the trail, the tallest tree in the UK, at about 64m in height:

and the widest tree in Europe:

both Firs of some sort, and just sort of there, standing stoic. Us the only witnesses.

I’ll leave you with one last picture of a fairy-like pool, with an odd looking tree in the middle of it. It sums up the mood of Ardkinglas quite well I think. A place to be read on a rainy day. A place hat can bear the weight of a thousand glances and still have something more to hint at below the surface.

We stayed on Friday night at A’s flat, in a lot more comfort than we would have been had we tried to set up camp in the downpour.  We spiked out all hopeful the next day to the East Coast. Tomorrow, I’ll post pictures here of our second adventure of the weekend – and a completely different landscape.

D and I have returned from our adventures. As you can see, the weather was – variable. However, this is just a taster for tomorrow, as I have to go through several hundred photos tonight. You’ll have to wait to find out the full story – a picture does not always tell so much as tantalise.

Some other news – sadly, I didn’t get selected for Black Balloon Press’ Horatio Nelson Prize, so no tour of the US in an eyepatch. I do hope for further luck for Kilea. And I look forward to seeing who wins.

1. My next Supernatural essay is going to be posted on The Female Gaze later tonight – you’ll be able to read it on that main page once it goes live. It’s about Episode 11 from Season 3, ‘Mystery Spot’. My essay likens it to Groundhog Day (for reasons that will be obvious) and also to Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’ for perhaps less obvious reasons. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re on Tumblr, share it around.

2.  I tried to buy Casey Hannan’s excellent Mother Ghost today, wily-like, by ordering with a gift card from Blackwell’s Bookshop. Sadly, they weren’t able to access it, so I shall have to order directly from Tiny Hardcore Press when I have the money to spare. How do I know Mother Ghost is excellent? I’ve read some of the stories – check out the link to Hannan’s blog over to the right>>> and click on his sidebar to immerse yourself in their smoky dream flashes.

I hope you enjoy whatever the weekend brings you, and that I’ll be back on Sunday with photos of the dark woods and the foggy sea lochs of Argyll.

In a week’s time, I’ll hand my file over to D, who will give me some suggestions for tidying it up. That will take as long as it takes BUT after that, after I print it out (for symbolic effect more than anything else, and some final red-penning), I will send the whole thing off to my kind and patient agent Drea Cohane.

That is the plan for the next month. It looks clean, simple. But I am knee deep in words. Yesterday I heavily edited fifteen pages. Today, after D makes himself scarce, I shall try to do the same. As I lie down to sleep, scenes pummel my brain. Scenes already written and things that must come.  Even after the ms is sent off, I know that there will be more to do to it. But all this is the true work of a novel, as far as I have experienced. It’s grubby and exhausting and painstaking. But it is what makes a writer, what makes a novel.

Of course, sometimes I end up fried out and flailing. Of course I need to write here, to hear from you. Sympathy, understanding. I am kept afloat by viewers here and the people in my life who support me in all their different ways. Early in the morning, or right after I finish a huge section I am at my most drained. So I go for constructing pleasant worlds, or, as today, for music.

‘Puts me to work’ by Cate Le Bon. An appropriate choice, and utterly charming.

Now, some tea. Changed from the gym (working out is also keeping my energy up, and luckily I have time for it most days). Then – onwards and inwards and through the white and black until it trembles and so do I.

Sometimes you like to dream a little of the perfect writing life.

Sometimes you feel the need to decorate an imaginary wooden house by the sea and its book-lined study overlooking the long pale morning beach. You have your comfy day bed sprawled with cushions and your windows open to let the gentle salt air in. You create a whole world of useful and frivolous objects that would fit.

Sometimes you do this in idle moments when you should be writing (none of these photos are mine, you can find a link to the source by clicking on them) -

First the desk, right by the shuttered window:

A grand solid thing with room for legs underneath, clutter up the top.

In one of the drawers (next to reams of paper and spare pens for chewing on):

A pile of pre-stamped cards. Because in this writing life, you meet people who might want to know your details and who don’t care much for tapping things down on their phones. Who might appreciate rounded corners and a mid century aesthetic. Put it right there in their copy of your book and say, hope to be in touch soon.

Back to the cabin, back to the desk. On it, well, notebooks. Everyone has their favourite notebooks, but I like them plain and plentiful. A mug of tea and a few big shells. An anglepoise lamp. A tiny aquarium:

Your laptop of choice. Mine would be small and sleek, dark green. With none of the keys missing and not at all prone to crashing, like this one I write on now. On the other side of the desk, a friend to watch over you:

And downstairs your loved ones are calling you to breakfast. You’ve bashed out five hundred words and it’s only ten o’clock. Later you can go walk on the beach and skip stones. Or stay and watch the rain fall against the gorse in your garden. And more writing, and the murmur of music. And more than objects, this particular controlled, scenic happiness.

Though life as it is right now has more happiness than I can just about stand, without cabin, without sea. The only thing is not enough papier mache owls, perhaps.