Two stories

 

 

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.

Where I go

I’m heading off to the hills with D and A, to camp and walk in the woods. So this space will be quiet for a few days. Before I go, two nice things:

 

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.

To equalise the pressure

Currently I am making a huge push on Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts – nearing the end of an endless draft, which will be the second last.

 

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.

Writing accessories

 

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.

The art of destruction

 

These photos show two sides of the same street in Glasgow. I love the chaos of greys in the top image. The city being edited, the innards of girders and wires on display. Positioned opposite Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, I’m all the more tempted to think of it as art itself. On a grand and messy and impermanent scale. Take your pick of metaphors: Metaphor for creation and recreation. Metaphor describing the limitlessness of art. Snapshot of a day now sealed off (the people hurry on in the picture below, in the top image the wires are slowly carted away. In another hour everything is diminished, differently shadowed, more empty or something has begun).

 

A juxtaposition is trigger for all sorts of thoughts. The child in me just wants to hop the fence and roam around in the rubble.

 

Where have you found art this week?

 

[All this inspired by Hilary Smith's post on mushroom hunting, here]

 

Love letter 7 – stone collisions

 

Because Edinburgh is built over hilly terrain and up against and on the crest of volcanic cliffs, it is often hard to navigate for those who do not know it well. Points of visual reference, such as the castle, prove useless when suddenly you find yourself at a lower level than the street you wanted to be on. Now you’re under a high spanning stone bridge. Now you’re curving round, looping back on yourself. You just saw that infernal castle a moment ago, but now the compass is spinning and wherever you are, it’s oddly dark for a Spring afternoon.

 

 

Pro tip- that’s not actually the castle. It’s the governor’s house of the old Calton Jail, on Calton Hill.

 

At other points, the landscape of the city provides an chaotic but visually appealing collision of stone and texture. Over the years a sequence of building and rebuilding and adjuncts and buttressing has lead to brick and stone insets in the natural cliffsides (ruins of old churches, or stopgaps to prevent rockfall) and to the picture at the top of the page, where an alley smashes into itself as two buildings come to a head.

 

 

It confounds the eye – one building heaving into another. Lights rim the floor so that in the dark there are some simpler definitions for the foot passenger to use as guide. But not all of Edinburgh is like this, of course. There are the grand parades among the frenzy of knots and neuks.

 

 

And then there’s the final image I will leave you with here. One of my favourite parts of the city, where the vistas open  and the cliffs rise in their changing colours over the rough and short cropped grass. Holyrood Park, by the Scottish Parliament:

 

In the late afternoon, hyacinths

 

In the late afternoon, hyacinths. Cut wax curls. A scent of some flower – not hyacinths, which I think smell of nothing but squeaky greenness – in a cloud over the pavement.

 

I think, looking back, of this song, Spring-like, warm: