Thankful for the bad days

 

Slog is one of those words that fills the mouth like a caramel, like you’re trying to eat a caramel as you say it, pushing it off the back of your teeth. It’s a nice word. Does that bring comfort? Can you really be thankful for a bad writing day. For a week of slowness. thickness. I don’t know, I don’t think so. But I’m saying it anyway. Performative utterance to make something happen. To keep my fingers on the keys.

 

Writing at the moment is so much like a millstone churning round. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a millstone in action, but we can all imagine it. The grooves in the stone catch and crush the wheat. Rasp the casings from them very slowly, spreading their insides out until all that’s left is a fine powder. Is this a healthy process? I’m tapping with blank eyes, with dry lips. I’m cutting the flour with white dirt, that’s what it feels like. Nothing is pure as I want for it. And it’s my own doing.

 

But let’s say that the upside of the imagination currently stalling is that moment to, if not pause, at least look around as you crank the handle, as the internet fizzes about you. Rub your aching hands. Waves hit the sea on a distant beach. The sun lingers a bit in the sky, never quite enough. A cold front moves in West from the Atlantic. Someone sits very quietly in a room, hating their hopefulness and ill at ease with all they have written, and alone with this. And then you find two pieces, one after the other, that help:

 

I am tired. I am tired of speech

and of action. In the heart of me

you will find a tiny handful of

dust. Take it and blow it out

upon the wind. Let the wind have

it and it will find its way home.

 

And then,

 

There are beautiful wild forces within us.

Let them turn the mills inside
and fill
sacks

that feed even
heaven.

 

The first is Tennessee Williams, from ‘Blue Song’, and the second, St Francis of Assisi. The internet gives us the illusion of symmetry which is the truth of sympathetic thoughts, across time, across language, across veracity – who knows if St Francis really wrote those words, I am trusting a random quoter on the internet – whatever form, whatever instability is present in both sentiments shared in the one space, it feels good to have faith in the complicated something they give. In the current that passes through them when you bring them together like this, and let them blow out again.

Looking for Dr Livingstone + interview news

 

Today D and I made our way back to the National Museum of Scotland with the aim of walking through the exhibit on Dr David Livingstone, explorer, missionary and abolitionist. True to his reputation, he was a little hard to find. The exhibit was tucked away on the third floor of the new part of the museum. It was interesting, if a bit piecemeal.

 

Livingstone was born into a cotton mill worker family, and worked at the mill from the age of 10. An exceedingly bright boy, he was taught to read and write, then taught himself Latin. He saved up enough money to go to University in Glasgow, but to save a penny on the cart fare, had to make his way on foot up the river clyde from Blantyre every morning. Good training for his later rambles around Malawi and southern Africa. There was a video, filmed in Malawi, talking to residents there in the Malawian town of Blantyre – they seemed happy with his legacy there, of his pacts with local tribe leaders to end the East African-Indian Ocean slave trade.

 

But I am suspicious of heroes, particularly of strong men of the British Empire who, regardless of whether they were doing good themselves, went into ‘the dark continent’ with the aim of opening it up to Europe.  There wasn’t a lot of analysis, and only one dissenting voice was lightly mentioned, that of John Kirk, the botanist who traveled on one of Livingstone’s expeditions. Livingstone was, it seemed, a hard leader. And then there was that famous meeting with Stanley, where the presumed Dr Livingstone refused to come back to Britain, and later died in a village in Malawi of a nasty combination of Malaria and Dysentery.

 

Well, whoever he was (D wants to read his journals now), we saw his little navy cap and his nice sketch of a fish from Lake Malawai.

 

I enjoy visiting the museum, which has free entry, and it’s a good thing too. Coming in the new year, after I’ve finished this second ms (May at the latest, I hope), I will be going there a lot. And to the grand Central Library on George IV bridge. Research for novel number 3. It is going to be about a strong, egotistic leader and her followers, and set in the wastes of Edinburgh. I’ll not reveal too much more before I have an outline in place. As you can see from the picture above, there’s a certain atmosphere to the city in winter – a soft harshness – which I want to learn and replicate for my postapocalyptic version.  Anyway, that’s enough for now.

 

The other piece of news I have is that Smokelong Quarterly is coming out next week. In it will be my Edinburgh-based flash, ‘Boy Cyclops’, and an interview with me (first ever interview!), facilitated by the excellent writer Casey Hannan. (Casey’s book, Mother Ghost, is available on pre-order from Tiny Hardcore Press. His writing is really beautiful and weird and compelling, and I’ll be picking it up when I can).  When Smokelong goes live I’ll link to it here, and you will have lots to read, should you wish.

 

Finally! Don’t forget to submit your photograph for my competition! The deadline is the 31st of this month.

 

What is worth reading?

What is worth reading?

A book that expands the universe, or shrinks it?

A book that hints at what we have not explored?

Or at the demarcations of what a human is and what a human cannot be?

A book that leaks blood out its corners, and pain, and gorgeous words?

A book with each word precious like a golden pin?

A book that answers, brooking no question?

A book that defies gender?

A book that defies the market?

A book that wants to seed your mind?

A book that thinks it knows your mind to seed it?

A book that is funny, just that.

A book that is cruel but honest and unflinchingly so?

A book that is trying?

A book that has failed better?

A book by a humble man?

A book by a woman who maps whole continental socio political shifts?

A book of furious ecstasy which will be read by 100 people?

A book of stolid depthless good-enough consistency which will be read by a million?

A book with a message?

A book studiously without a message?

A book too in love with language to care if there is a message, though look long enough there might be?

A book with weather inside?

A book that will love you back?

 

With a debt to ‘What is worth knowing?’ by Sujata Bhatt.

 

Steam

I came home from a book swap and tried to sleep. I had exchanged five books from the Endless Reads 2012 list for four others, donated just like mine. Two anthologies, one a great slab of English Literature so heavy that carrying it made me tilt to one side, the other Scottish. Two novels. It was a fine haul, and I was pleased to meet members of the Society of Young Publishers who had organised it, and drink white wine, and banter about books and life.

Why couldn’t I sleep, when I came home?

Something was building inside. A realisation. Perhaps all those books, all that talk of writing. Late at night I lay awake fretful. My current book needed something. It needed relaying of veins and wiring. It needed to glow far less defuse than it did. Luminescence, or aiming for that, anyway. I set to work cranking and adjusting and ripping out and heaving and trying to fire sparks out of my fingers, trying to refine and distill as much as I could. Trying to be a mechanic of words, rather than a painter. I showed what I’d written to D, to see if I was not careening wildly off the mark and he agreed this was far better.

Aida slipped off her skin and underneath was Astral, covered in fishscale silver. Her eyes are slier and her mind more livid. I have hopes for her, energy to devote to her. Those water droplets on the window may in fact be from drying clothes, but feel like they came from the effort of this ondine thing crawling up to be reborn.

World Book Night is here!

 

Nerves!

Full write up of the night later, possibly tomorrow when the adrenaline tsunami has passed.

World Book Night – collecting the haul

A little while ago, I posted that I’d been selected as a giver for World Book Night. Today I picked up the 24 copies of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith that I’ll be handing out on Monday.

First of all I want to say – ouch, my arms! I carried the box they came in from the Central Library all the way to my flat – only about 10 minutes walk, but ouff. Next time I’ll try to recruit some help from D. 24 books are heavy of course – but the box was awkward too. Long and shallow, slippery at the corners. Still, I made it, and this pile artfully arrange on the floor represents half of the books ‘done’. That is, signed with my name – my legal name, in my wobbly, arm-achey handwriting –  the location of pick up, and a unique ID number so that recipients can register their book online, if they like, for later tracking. The hope is that the books will drift between hands, being read and passed on with recommendations to read this, it’s good. Eyes will be opened. People will realise the pleasure of reading, just by being gifted a book of their own. It’s a lovely thing to be a part of.

Now, come Monday the 23rd, I hope for dry weather, and to not be mistaken for a ‘chugger’ (charity mugger, one of those people who harass you in the street for money, while being paid a lot by third-party organisers, so that the original charity doesn’t see the full donation). If anyone is in the neighbourhood of North and South Bridge around 5pm-8ish (however long it takes!) please stop by and say hello – though if you are a reader already, you’ll probably not get a book from me. If you love words already, the magic will not work! However, if you know someone who is a reluctant reader, someone who hasn’t read since school, bring them along and I’ll gladly hand them a copy.

A momentary holding

Just a little notice that the blog is going to be quiet for a few days while I await things, hunker down with reading (hopefully), and editing Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts (definitely). A moment of hush, and fingers so crossed they seem to have grown that way, like twigs in thicket. I hope for straight-backed birches.

 

Anyway, the picture above is of my angel of luck and hope – a carnival schie with attitude, decked in lights. Yes some of her lights are broken or missing. She narrows her eyes in the face of doubt. She will throw down her conch shells and they will bust like smokebombs as she flies off to the sound of death metal. Maybe she will eat a whole funnel cake. You just can’t tell with her.

 

News later, if I have it. If not – I’ll surely have other stories to tell you.

Snippet: The Millennial/Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts

I still haven’t decided on which title. Whichever fits snuggest, when all is done. I’m putting up this snippet as another reminder to myself how far I’ve made it – how much the book has changed already, from when it was a fantastical desert-set piece, to this. Still a long way to go. In this part, the main character, Aida, is at a low point, far from home and alone on Christmas day. She begins to come around when she thinks back to her childhood, the narrative switching to second person to reflect this distancing and awareness (hopefully it achieves this). 

 

One word for those who know me – Non-autobiographical!

 

Draw the curtains, Aida, keep back the light. Walk with your voice back to your cousin, your role model, going towards a receding tide over gleaming rocks, with the light on your shoulder, and everything clear, children shouting to one another. Hurry up, you were always so slow, lethargic, delicate, putting on your clothes, though at that point no one outside the family had ever removed them from you. The purity exists not in the body of the girl you were, nor in memory. You were crude and dirty and stupid, but also you loved your mum, and hated her, when she was there to be loved and hated. You made eyes. You prodded around in the mud. You put the dinner on which was fish fingers and peas, with Maud monitoring the water, lighting the gas. You strove to make. You admired those who tried to obvious effect or none. Plurality exists. Possibility, that this past moment still enacts in you a brightness, a seaside blistering cold.

“The lido’s closed, Mum,”

“Well, there’s the whole sea, still open for business.”

Endless Reads Review: Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns

I was filled with glee when I discovered this little book tucked inside the Hobart Journal parcel, and bumped it up in the reading queue.   No disappointments here – it is a strange, spry, funny and unsettling novel, just what I needed after The Little Stranger.

I don’t want to give much away about the plot, so let it suffice to say that it’s a lot of death and mayhem, in a village in Warwickshire. Which, oddly, is where The Little Stranger is also set.  And most of the action also takes place in a big old house too, with a cast of strange characters, some of whom are magnificently unlikable, like the histrionic, plate-throwing, morbid Grandmother Willoweed:

Grandmother Willoweed was pouring herself a glass of port. Both ends of her tongue were protruding - rather a bad sign. When she saw Emma standing there looking so apprehensive, she put her glass down on the sideboard and said, “Doctor Hatt was called away in the middle of my whist drive. His wife  was worse – her nose was bleeding.” She filled her glass from the decanter and gave Emma a strange glance.

“Well people’s noses are always bleeding. You are supposed to put a large key down their back.”

Emma was rather perplexed at her grandmother making such a commotion about such an ordinary happening. Perhaps she was annoyed about the numbers  of the whist drive being upset.

Grandmother Willoweed took a sip of port, and looked with her lizard-like eyes over her glass.

“Well, my dear, a key wouldn’t have been much use in this case; this was a peculiar kind of nosebleed. It went on and on until the bed became filled with blood – at least that is what I heard – it went on and on and the mattress was soaked  and the floor became crimson; it went on and on until Mrs. Hatt died.”

She took another sip of port.

“Yes, Mrs. Hatt is dead now.”  - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.

I am trying to think of a way to sum up the style of this novel, and distinctive is the word that comes to mind – not quite colourful a enough though. Apt perhaps? Clouds are ‘curdled’ in a storm-threatening sky. Swans ‘excavate’ the muddy riverbed with their beaks. Comyns’ sharp turns of phrase and propensity for grizzly detail remind me of Roald Dahl, but with a bit more of humanity in them. We are shown the desperation behind the malevolence, the sunlight on the slow river that runs by the end of the garden. It’s a short read that packs in a lot of dazzling, sickening imagery. A lemony slap of a book, perfect for long dull winter days.

Giveaway – Here and There in a Hazy World

Here and There in a Hazy World could be yours...

Pictured above is the little booklet of photos I mentioned in a previous post. It arrived in the post yesterday, and while I like most of the photos, I need to think more deeply about layout and really trying to say something with the order and selection: the booklet is more of a mock-up rather than anything else – it has weird white lines and borders have been clipped off, though the pictures themselves are sharp, and some of them are quite nice.

 

SO! I have decided on impulse to throw a grand (!) international giveaway. I will send to the winner the above booklet, along with a variety of secret goodies/random postcards/lightweight objects of Scottish origin. I promise the contents will be interesting, and possibly silly.

 

Even if you have nothing so great to gain, you have nothing whatsoever to lose.

 

To enter, please leave a comment below, and the winner will be picked from a handful of numbers tossed in the bright air, an ancient ceremony I made up for lack of a hat to pull them from.

 

You have until Monday, 30th Jan at 00:00 GMT to enter, and the results will be posted on Tuesday the next day.