Staggering through the early stages

If you wonder at lessening blog posts here and there, I have once again joined the fray to write 50,000 words of fiction in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Apparently even more people started this year, it was trending on Twitter (whatever that means), etc.

Family visits, travelling, gigs and various other incidents mean that I have barely kept up the pace as yet, but I have gritted my teeth and staggered on (surely I should feel this way at the end of a marathon?) And although I don't update my word count every day, you can see here that I am making an effort. Some of the shortfall is scribbled in pencil in a notebook, and awaiting typing up...

Handwaving first draft (draught?)

While writing this first draft of a novel I discovered Auto-Summarize in Word. It's a bit clunky, to be honest, but another fun toy like cut-ups, word clouds, etc. These are the 500 words it chose, when asked:

Frank pulled the door shut behind him, for the last time. Another TAZ gallery closed.

People strolled by, and glanced into his room, but kept going. Frank sighed.

“Feel free,” said Frank.

The women fluttered a little, then looked around the room again.

“Sure,” said Frank.

Frank nodded.

The room had begun to become an attraction. For some reason, many people seemed to enjoy his room more than reverently wandering around other rooms in the gallery, discussing the works in hushed tones.

With his folio of material, and his guest book, Frank had little trouble getting another white room in a gallery. “OK, Frank, see you later.” The other two people seemed younger than George. Most of the public rooms are more like a museum, art gallery sort of thing. “Do you mind if I take photos?”

“Sebastian,” he said.

“Not so much a drawing room, as a withdrawing room,” he said.

Frank left the building.

The older man laughed.

Frank paid attention again.

“Frank is bringing to life a room with a future as just one room in an art gallery. “Air.”
“Art?”

Sebastian being oblique.

“George’s three initiations.”

said Mo, turning to Frank. “If we can find the right room,” added Sebastian.

George’s little soirees seemed catalytic for many people. Frank stood next to Sebastian for a while.

Sorry if that sounds superstitious.”

Tina and Izzy had arrived back, having chosen their rooms.

“Wow, again,” said Frank.

Frank had kept his London flat. Sculpture has presence in a room.

Just the thought of art. A room where I can remember other galleries, other rooms. The world already has enough rooms. We can’t all visit all the rooms.

“Never heard of him,” said Frank.

Sebastian smiled. Owl looked sideways at Frank. There were times when Frank sat in his room wishing he had some input. “Meh,” said Sebastian, “it’s just art and money, dancing.”

The L-Shaped Room.

Your room gave him freedom for a moment, from playing the old man.

The art of chess, the art of war.

So you pretend to make art, or you make pretend art?” Frank smiled at the boyish glee. “The art of Buster Keaton?”

“Hey, real art!”

“Yes, I always enjoy it when people play in my room, and make the art for the next visitor.”

Just gimme a white room.”

I’d love a white room with a passive artist in it. Up-time. “Why is it not art?”

Frank just sat.

The Marquis came into the room. “Is Frank here?”

There were times when Frank sat in his room wishing he had some input. The screen effectively divided the room. George smiled.

“Great!”

Frank was astounded and appalled. “George!” “To politics, art and money!” “Okaaay,” said Frank, cautiously. Izzy looked at Frank, puzzled.

“Relax, Frank,” said George, which didn’t help a bit.

“Relax, Frank!” “Frank,” said George. Apart from frivolous art investments.”

Look at the size of that!

check out the NaNoWriMo blog for more details, updates, etc.

2009 Stats:

This year, we had 167,150 participants, up 40% from 2008's total of 119,301.

We wrote a total of 2,427,190,537 words, up 48% from 2008's collective word count of 1,643,343,993.

(that's over 2 billion words from the typing monkeys!)

This averaged out to 14,531 words per person.

We had 32,173 winners, up 48% from 2008's total of 21,683.

This gave us a 19.2% win rate, the highest in modern NaNoWriMo history. (Last year we had an 18.2% win rate; in 2007 it was 15.1%).

Another rough draft completed!

When I used to write articles I didn't even do a 'first' draft, but would start with a 'zero draft' which had no pressure on it at all, just a brainstorm of ideas poured out onto the page.

I guess that's what NaNoWriMo novels feel like - no hesitating, no re-reading, just get it down.

Somerset Maugham, the renowned novelist, once joked that, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.”

So now I have done that, I may take the raw material and try to make a 'first draft' at some point. Perhaps I should put it away, to cool down, for a bit.

But I have 50,000 words to play with, cut-up and mess around with.

I know many people have little curiosity about the game (or not enough time) but if you do want to know more, go to my NaNoWriMo account, where you can see an excerpt under the Novel Info tab, etc.

And please don't, as most people do when I say I have written a book, ask "What's it about?" because I can only at the moment offer a slightly sarcastic, "It's about fifty thousand words long."

[I stole that from Marilyn Monroe, who, when asked about her nude calendar by a prurient reporter, "Do you mean you had nothing on?" replied, "Oh, no. I had the radio on."]

So far, so good...

Having passed 32K, slightly ahead of schedule for us 50K folks (I know others do even more!) I took a moment to make a word cloud of 'Handwaving' so far, I don't know if I have the balance right at all yet, but I have enjoyed a fair percent of the writing - sombunall (some but not all).

Playing with Clouds

I just went off to Wordle, to try making clouds...

Infinitely Monkeying

Have a Little Fun
Make a Little Money
Do a Little Good Christopher Hyatt

I just received a draft of the cover for my recent NaNoWriMo novel, so now I have no excuse to not complete my proof-reading and tweaking and get the finished thing up in my Lulu storefront.
Actually, you could have got the work-in-progress already, warts and all, but now I will try to tidy the whole thing up.

I have spent a little time making small corrections, but have failed to savage it, rip it up and re-write - as all the advice suggest a writer does to a first draft, hey ho. I still quite like the simplicity of the story and style.

I'd rather do another one, and keep going until I get the hang of it.

Even more fun, I don't have to write juvenile novels and shove them in the bottom drawer, as people used to. I can publish it for my own amusement, to learn all the different processes of layout, commissioning covers, and all that.

I have never waited for approval first.

I started juggling to pass the time, rather than go look for a job. Then people stopped to watch me practising, and eventually passed a hat around for me, so then I had a job for a decade.

I'll just keep writing, although I can hear Lou Reed's devastating put-down of an incoherent heckler "If you're a writer, nobody reads you!" But in the modern world of blogs and tweets I don't feel alone in this. Just reminds me of the days of juggling on street corners with busy commuters avoiding my eye, and scurrying past... I still enjoyed myself juggling, even when I didn't get a crowd.

So do if you do it for the fun, even if you don't make any money, you do at least have some fun to show for all the work... Fortunately (or 'like magic') I have found a very creative collaborator, who can do this stuff for me - he's cheap (or rather, I'm poor - I'd pay him more if I could), he's fast, he has fun.

Ever so 'umble

This year the first draft for NaNo came easily, but I intend to give it a bit more time, and really look at re-writing it, editing, etc.

I can already tell (without looking at, or remembering, what I wrote) that this would be a large effort, and I know one has to be able 'to kill one's darlings' (i.e. be ruthless with those favourite phrases that don't fit, or those characters who never went anywhere, and maybe wandered in from a different book, etc) and I still have relatively little grasp of 'page-turning' qualities.

Pulp Fiction in the UK in the 40s would have 12 chapters of about 3000 words, each ending in a climax, apparently. They were short (40,000 words) and aimed at a non-intellectual crowd (cowboys, sci-fi, detective fiction, romance, etc) and hardly feature in reviews of 'literature' at all. That structure (or formula) has worked fine for Dan Brown, for instance, and he's laughing all the way to the bank, about people like me who thought the books a bit thin.

Anyway, I need the practice. I am still working my way towards something between a memo, essay, autobiography, half-conceived at the back of my brain, and fermenting even as I type. After the fermenting comes the distilling, I guess.

I don't kid myself one life is that important. In fact, I first found my feet when looking at the vertiginous nadir picture by Escher (somewhere in Mexico) when I realised that trying to make myself large enough for the world to notice was ludicrous (Pop Idol, and all those other desperate attempts at 'celebrity') as we all remain ants. That picture didn't make me religious, but I saw the market place from above, in just the same way, and realised I needed a little circle of people around me, each willing to help me eat and survive. That's all I needed, not a stadium full of fans, a world-wide audience, etc. And I went out to become a street performer in the markets of Mexico, and never looked back.

I made it, already!

I have no idea quite how (or why) I have managed to write 50,000 words in two and a bit weeks, but I have.

Unlike last year, when I battled along, squeezing out the minimum necessary to make it to the end, this year I always knew roughly what I would have to write the next day.

No doubt the thing is still full of loose ends, ideas started and not completed, characters who either need filling in, or removing, more plot tension (people like tension apparently), and all that.

But that's for the editing and re-writing stage.

Last year I didn't even bother with that, as I knew it was merely a personal challenge, and not necessarily for others to read, or care about. It might have proved an interesting insight into what I can do in a panic, but it didn't seem worth the effort to re-package it.

This year I not only set myself a fictional goal, but feel willing to go back and rework it a bit. Not right now, but later on! Maybe I'll make another silly video!

I have to write an article for Kaskade now, and catch up on my Net Trainers' homework, and look after the doggie on my own (with Julie away for a few days) so I'll probably take a rest from the book for a moment.

But I finished it already! Yahoo and Yippee and all that jazz :-)

Someone immediately asked me what it was about.

What are your songs about?’ Bob Dylan was once asked.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘some of them are about three minutes, some of them are about five minutes, and some of them, believe it or not, are about eleven minutes’.

My book is about 50,000 words...

Bogus takes a break from writing

I have amazed myself by getting in front on the writing numbers. This has even left me time to actually explore a little what other people are doing.

Normally, I think of wandering around forums as the almost perfect procrastination tool! It amused me to get a sound bite into the WriMo radio podcast, so I decided to dig out an old webcam, crash my machine with out of day software, Restore (sigh) download something a little newer, and then rattle off a video for the NaNoWriMo video blog corner.
Why not? I learn by doing...never did seem very good at theory.

How good the first attempts come out doesn't bother me much. Well, I died the death when things didn't work in my show, so did lots of rehearsal and practice, but in workshop situations (which I consider trying to write a book in a month as) anything goes. That's the general principle behind it - Go for it, shut down the Inner Critic, just try stuff out.

So I know how bad this appears. Julie told me the lighting makes me look 100, but I was attempting the Magus in the den look. Perhaps I should have adopted an eldritch voice, to, to make it clear. Sorry Julie, I know I don't really look like this, except maybe first thing in the morning with a hangover, feeling my age! With the Keith Richard craggy lines, and all.

Oh, and the howling fan on my elderly PC just swamped the mic, so Brian Eno's Discrete Music is rather too loud. Hey ho, I'd do Take Two if I could be bothered, but this is a month of not looking back, not editing, just do it and move on.



I'll try to improve on it with the next one, maybe take a little time!

Monkey Notes

Ah, me, what a hectic day!

Julie and Dandy the dog just went back to the cottage to work on it, so I am a DIY Widower again. :-)

I started my new novel-in-a-month "Infinite Monkeys", so perhaps not having to walk doggie for a bit fits quite well with hammering away at the keyboard.

So far I am ahead of schedule, and still bubbling with ideas, but (like any marathon) I don't kid myself that I won't 'hit the wall' at some point.

Last year something like 100,000 people set out, and at least 15,000 completed their 50,000+ word books in the month. I am using the Bogus persona for this...




I gather even more people have started this year! As well as adults, a lot of young people also go in for this...

I love it, it's a project dear to my heart that people should write and have fun!

Today, I noticed they wanted 'people over 50' to talk on the WriMo radio, so I volunteered, and may get transmitted on Wednesday.

Of course, Universe having a sense of humour, just as I psyched myself up for a Skype interview, the door went, and Calum turned up (bless 'im! - I miss hearing someone singing their heart out in the loft) so I ran up and down the stairs, and then hastily babbled down the phone, to Santa Barbara, for 15 minutes. I have no idea how that will sound...

Rather like writing a hasty novel, with no going back to edit, or doing a re-take...

I hope to do even better this year!

I suddenly got very old. I don’t understand. One minute I felt immortal, now I wake up with an aching back, a headache, no energy to face a working day, a general sense of malaise, mouth ulcers, bad skin, etc.

What happened? I feel hexed by time.

Anyway – in spite of having a million things to do – I have decided to have another go at writing a book in a month. I know I could attempt this any time, or spread it out over a longer period, etc – but I enjoy the sheer madness of the project, and knowing that many thousands of others have embarked on the same marathon at the same time.

Whether you want to participate, or just watch, you could contribute donations to the Office of Letters and Light (the money goes to literacy and creativity campaigns). I tend to make a donation (although it's not compulsory, and you can JOIN IN FOR FREE) as a form of commitment to myself - it makes me feel as though I have 'signed up'.

Although I have always wanted to get kids away from sofas and tv (which is why I have spent a lot of energy on promoting community circus projects, etc) I equally would like the kids who rarely do much except kick a ball around to perhaps find the fun of words. And when young I reckon you should try everything (how do you know what you may turn out to have a talent for?)

For old folks, setting yourself a mental and physical challenge can also have its benefits, I reckon.

Nothing original under the sun (stolen from Shakespeare)

Anyway - as I was saying - funny times right now.

I have to know about most internet things as part of my job - so although I run my own life on Gmail, Blogger, WordPress, PayPal and the home space that came from my service provider (even though they changed hands in the last few years) - I try everything out, so I have Yahoo and Hotmail accounts, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

When I joined Facebook I broke some kind of written (or unwritten - I skimmed through the Terms and Conditions - as you do) rule about using your 'real name'. Although I always performed under my 'real name' in a business where people often make them up, or simply work under them so long they become acceptable - 'know as' - and you can even open bank accounts without 'legally changing' your name.

So anyway, I open and kill Yahoo accounts all the time, just to get 3 days free trial of the magnificent XM Radio. No doubt, many Americans listen to one of the dozens of channels while driving. I can only get it on the internet (no satellite signal) and can't subscribe (I asked and no-one replied) so I have to keep inventing new Yahoo addresses just to get another trial period.
I don't want to sound mean about Yahoo's service, but at least I found one good use for them.

But I digress (quite often). I joined Facebook for an exploration, as Sid Scribe. Now Sid has a history. In the early days of email I got several addresses of varying degrees of privacy (to avoid spam) and one I used simply for activities that might generate or attract junk mail - or simply endless newsletters that I had subscribed to. So to subscribe I had an email address of s.scribe@ntlworld.com - just so I'd know the kind of stuff. He became Sid Scribe when 'filling in personal details' and emerged. In Facebook I gave him TJ's avatar, but TJ 'is' someone else again, (ermerging from some collaborative writing by the Maybe crew) so I've added a 'real' pic.

Confusingly, once people 'knew Sid was me' (I wish I'd spelled it Syd, now) through the friendship chains - people kept greeting me on my rare visits to Facebook, poking me, inviting me to games - I dunno. I still really only go there as part of my job...

I have had connections with the 'other' Toby Philpott before, and he seems like a nice guy (we have chatted occasionally, as people still sometimes get confused. For a while he had a link to 'The Star Wars Toby Philpott' on his blog, as I had "The Liberal Legend - Toby Philpott" on mine. Now I find at least two more in Facebook! So, stuck with my cover story, Sid Scribe has now invited the three other Toby Philpott members as friends. Hail Eris! I actually had more fun in MySpace, but that's another sub-personality and another alias. That bogus guy has videos at YouTube, as well, and has written most of OM (Only Maybe) for over three years. With fantastic visual from Bobby, and others.

So, let's face it - I stole Language Is A Virus, and added those arch inverted commas for the E-Prime freaks who know the connection to Korzybski and then Burroughs...but poets don't own words, right? And I have used the damned title since 2001, so I got attached to it (After the other blogs, Spooking the Herd, and Thinking Allowed - up to 9/11 - or as the Brits should think of it, 11/9).

I thought it didn't effect me, but I decided to start blogging fresh. Find myself still here, seven years later.


The website with this title has some word scramblers for NaNoWriMo Writers' Block - which amused me, as I consider that kind of November. The whole site seems filled with treasures, but I have no idea what names or buzz words might make you click that link - Hakim Bey, OuLiPo, Nin, Burroughs, software to play with, articles, even NaNoWriMo widgets and logos, etc.

Oh and I saw Laurie Anderson live once - I loved that mix - it resembled the fringe theatre of the 70s, with all and any elements of theatre and performance art mingled. I loved it.

You have to play to learn.

Book of the month

Or rather, book in a month.

Last November I picked up the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. A crazy thing to do when you only decide to go for it on October 31st, so no plot outline, or character profiles, or story arc or any of that.

Just sit down every day and write 1666.666 words every day for 30 days.

I did it anyway.

Unlike some who started that marathon I did actually finish, as well! Me and thousands of others. Just a personal challenge...





I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. Fred Allen


It sat around for months awaiting 'revision' and 'editing' and 're-writing' and all that stuff. In fact it should probably go in a drawer somewhere to be discovered after my death - and then either read once or burned.

Still, in the modern world I think of it as raw material...and as I want to write a colourful autobiography (now that I lived the life) I don't really want to dwell on this, or get so perfectionist that I hate it, hide it, bin it. And anyway, November fast approaches so I may want to do the whole same thing again!

Why not join me at NaNoWriMo! Ahem.

All sorts of other challenges exist, as you can see on their follow-up page (draw a comic book, write a script, whatever). This also has some very worthy stuff about seriously re-writing if you want to find a publisher. And yes, well, I know all that - I don't think I'm Kerouac or that the zeitgeist needs me.

I decided to experiment with Lulu (reading their How-To descriptions doesn't work for me).

I really don't expect anyone to respect this as anything more than a hilarious rough draft, with flat days of no inspiration, bright ideas never followed up, etc. Still, I wanted to see it in book form. And funnily enough, I noticed that NaNoWriMo have thought of offering a hard copy as a prize to every 'winner' (people who complete the challenge on time) so perhaps it's not such a daft idea.

I asked the magnificent Bobby if he could make me a cover...and he did. I tweaked the writing for typos, etc. I wondered about using 'real people' (as they turned up when my imagination failed) or 'real events' (some of which seem like fiction to me looking back) - but I didn't really have time (at the time) to stop to think.

So (to quote Bob D) "I re-arranged their faces, and gave them all another name". And got it done. For those who care about the Jabba escapade, this describes me back out on the streets, homeless, a year after that high point... Yeah, a little bit of truth...

I have put in an order for one copy of the thing as a 'book' (hard copy) so I can proof-read it and revise if necessary - and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at this point, but I like to share experiences, so this direct URL will already show you the idea, and it would even work to download a PDF version, or buy a print-on-demand copy for anyone who wants to play. :-)

Then I would have 'sold' a book, which would make me jump around like an Olympic champion (just like when I sold my first Star Wars autograph).

You might prefer to wait until I have done more revision. (Second Edition!)

Right now I doubt that I will do more than order a few copies for family and friends, just for my own amusement. Fun though! I got inspired by the thought of receiving hard copy of our online magazine - Maybe Quarterly - a project we ran this summer rather than produce yet another online version (we did 14 so far). One thing leads to another...

Peace Out!

Hard copy - grim determination

As we approach the time when the first hard copy of our online magazine becomes available (more on this soon!) I realised I still like having something paper in my hands - well, I work in a library! And although I recommend online research to lots of people, I certainly don't read fiction on a computer much.

I have decided to investigate Lulu Publishing. Not exactly vanity publishing (you are not paying someone else to produce a huge run) - just Print On Demand. They also offer the option to allow people to buy (or get for free) your book as a downloadable PDF.

Although I hope to complete the book I talk about so much, I did actually write 50,000 words last November (as part of a challenge-to-self writing marathon hosted at NaNoWriMo).

Motivated by our 'manifesting' of a previously ephemeral online magazine I have decided to use this 'hastily written piece' as a sampler to learn how Lulu works.

I have commissioned a cover from Bobby (an artist I have a collaborative working relationship with) and although I intended to publish the piece 'warts and all' I have inevitably started tweaking it. I still don't want to rewrite the whole damned thing, though (even though when I write articles I obsessively rewrite).

It's a test. And it's a record of what comes out of me if I write 1667 words every day for a month! Of course it seems seriously flawed. The tenses keep changing, it has a shortage of vivid description, I spotted repetitions, etc. I don't care.

I want to put more energy into the other book, which has lingered around for so long. Well, since I reached 18 and 'wanted to write'. I realised then that no-one much cared what someone of that age thought, and I had little experience of the world. I looked at dust-covers of books, and read about the colourful lives of the authors. So I decided I'd have to go out and have a colourful life. I abandoned any attempt to go to university, or get a job - just dropped out and ran!

Well, I found my colourful life, and now I would like to capture some of it.

Almost Foolproof

Actually, the 'novel' that I'll Lulu has a certain amount of 'real life' in it, too - almost inevitably when you have to write every day. It became a semi-fictionalised roman- a-clef about a period of my life in the 80s. Still I attributed some events in my own experience to other characters, and made some stuff up, etc. Desperation makes you do these things. I also included, as a character, a late friend of mine, Mick, whose papers I attempted to edit, but I never really finalized the book he had been working on when he died. So I put him in here and wrote him the happy ending he always wished himself.

If this all works out perhaps I will have one more try at completing his book, too, and 'putting it up on Lulu'!

Meanwhile - I have to take seriously my own plan to complete my unorthodox autobiography - for which I do have a working (secret) title - just like James Joyce with his Work-In-Progress that turned out as Finnegans Wake. I wonder if LucasFilms will let me put Jabba on the cover? Hmmm. Things to research!

Virtually foolproof

On the old website I compiled the scattered bits of erratic writing I have done over the years (a meagre haul!) - but recently I have been migrating all that stuff from that rather dated-looking Front Page template to a new set of Writing pages hosted by Google. That also means I can move house when necessary, and not feel tied to those original hosts (although I might lose my Google 1st place ranking for a while - probably a relief to the other Toby Philpott!)

100% foolproof

To document this adventure, I will start by offering you a few links (and storing themself up for myself, too, of course.

Guardian article on Print-On-Demand, from 2006

Lulu Publishing (UK)

Lightning Source (POD publishing)

Writers Services

Society of Authors

Here comes that rain again...

Diary wise - I have retreated to the country with Julie and Dandy for about ten days. After that I zip over to Paris to meet up with the Maybe crew for the annual get-together...where we can discuss the hard copy of the online magazine we have produced for three years...and how best to distribute it around the planet.

I doubt we will have a copy in our hands by then, but it's just possible, I suppose.

And then, having used most of my leave up for the year already, it will be the long slog through the winter. I will 

• continue with my studies (to become an e-trainer, or possibly to get into devising online courses), 
• begin to prepare to move the whole Central Library to its new premises
• maybe write another book in November (NaNoWriMo) because I enjoyed it last year, however hard it is to produce 1500 words per day (well 1667 actually)
  
• carry on maintaining the Circus Arts Forum, in spite of my reduced connection with performing (or even getting to see) new circus
• follow (as a member of the Board of Trustees) the development of a building for NoFit State Circus to use as a base - see the Four Elms blog, here

and so on, and etc.

Don't Ask Me That!

Well, I finished my novel a couple of days early (hate chasing deadlines in a panic) but now the official ending has happened, and we can all celebrate and move on to editing, I guess, in NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month).

Actually, I want to use my momentum to write a shorter piece for Maybe Quarterly, so I may well put it aside for a while.

Why tell you this?

Well, people I have told basically ask me two questions. Friends ask “When can we read it?” and I tend to reply “Er, um, I dunno, I haven’t even proofread it for the stuff spell-checkers miss, I haven’t read it myself” and so on. Although I did send the draft to a couple of fellow conspirators, who may sample it, cut it up, etc. But as we work on collaborative multimedia productions, we don’t have many secrets from each other…

I wrote it fast, as part of NaNoWriMo, precisely to get past the internal censor and critic who so easily stops us doing anything – but that doesn’t mean I feel proud or confident about it, yet. I don’t feel ready for any criticism or feedback either, and I certainly don’t want any ‘supportive friends’ saying “how wonderful” just out of kindness.

The other question, from friends, colleagues, even strangers, I have no answer to.

“What’s it about?”

A killer question, to which I “er, um” even more. I mean – what’s life about, for goodness sake?

If people asked me what kind of book I tried to write I would say something like ‘a philosophical novel’ – no guns, no car chases, no sex – talking heads and minor adventures – think “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or a movie like “Dinner With Andre”. (not that I’m comparing it to those, of course.) I couldn’t choose a NaNoWriMo genre, so elected for ‘other’.

E-Prime

Without going into to my Maybe Logic Academy training too much (which might make it sound like a cult, or something heh heh) one of the basic exercises we use to clarify thinking involves expressing ideas in E-Prime. This simply involves using English without the verb ‘to be’.

I really don’t have time to deal with any readers’ internal cries of outrage, right now, because we have discussed it long and hard, many times, at the MLA.

Some people say they can’t see how such a simple change would change the way you think, others say they couldn’t do without the verb (and invent ugly convoluted examples of language to prove the elegance of needing to continue to use the verb, etc), yet others ‘prove’ to their own satisfaction that the whole exercise seems pointless to them, and archly continue to use it, but with ‘quotes’ signalled in the air, to highlight their awareness (see the title of this blog, for instance), without having to make the effort to rephrase anything.

After getting accused of taking it all too seriously (an E-Prime Nazi) many of us MLA students have tended to settle back into E-Choice, i.e. slackly allowing ourselves to employ the verb in casual conversation or writing, and only bringing out this ‘thinking tool’ when the language conjures up ghosts, illusions and spooks - like "Is There A God?", for instance, or "Are the Beatles better than Beethoven?" - where re-phrasing can remove dispute, or at least clarify that we can only describe what we see and believe, not what 'is'. But I refer you to the literature and debate on the subject (s) elsewhere. In my humble opinion, the E-Prime tool works very well to remove pseudo-objectivity, and reminds the user that opinions and observations remain essentially subjective.

Robert Anton Wilson whole articles on this subject which form good intros,(and he wrote two books entirely in E-Prime, but you wouldn’t notice - I like this piece from Quantum Psychology), or check out the General Semantics website.

So anyway:

“What ‘is’ it about?” appears like a meaningless question to me, which makes it difficult to answer.

Re-phrased as “How would you describe it?” or “What subject did you want to tackle?” or “what kind of characters do you use?” or “What time period did you set it in?” or “Do you hope people will find it amusing, enlightening, cheering, depressing, sad?” or “which point of view did you use?” etc. I might come up with some answers.

• I set it in the 1980s (before mobile phones and internet became widely available) .


• I set it in Spain (a country I love, which contains colourful stuff for writing - paradoxical contrasts between authoritarianism and anarchy, charm and ruthlessness, etc)


• I chose rootless and ‘on the road’ characters from several countries and cultural and religious backgrounds – outsiders, nomads, travelling players, artists, ‘gypsies’, immigrants, sailors, drug smugglers, etc. Some resemble me and my friends.


• I tried to express the possibility that such diverse people can get on with each other, in contrast to ‘settlers’ and ‘land-grabbers’ who seem to spend a lot of time fighting over territory – oh, and hating, or at least distrusting, low-life 'nomads', who don't want the same things that they do.


• I think of the south of Spain as the only part of Europe which didn’t spend two thousand years under Christian rule – and that, under Muslim rule, a period of time elapsed with relative tolerance. Tolerance among Muslims, Jews, Christians and Gitanos (Romany gypsies).



• Moorish Arabs brought all sorts of cultural benefits to our European civilization, which now seems air-brushed out of history, at least as it got taught to me. They translated the Greeks and Romans, worked with glass, chemistry, maths, astronomy, they encouraged learning, artists and scientists, etc. Their calligraphy also gave us the elegant and almost universal numerals - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 - that work across language barriers.


• I think of The Alhambra as a perfect example of elegance, in contrast to the bombastic and bullying Catholic architecture, with doors so big to make you feel small (I guess, unless they expect visits from angels and Gods) and filled with ugly and terrifying images of tortured humans. Islam does not allow portrayal of real beings, or idols, so their beautiful tilework seems modern to my eye. I find the geometric shapes filled with stars very pleasing, and the Arabesques of calligraphy and vines and leaves satisfy my 'Irish soul'.


• By 1492 the Christians had not only destroyed the universities and libraries, but they drove the Muslims back to North Africa (or forced them to convert) suppressed Jews (equally in love with learning) and pushed Gitanos down to where they still find themselves even now – the lowest of the low – untouchables – Beneath The Underdog (to quote Charlie Mingus’ autobiog, a mongrel half-caste, himself). Oh, and they also went to grab America from the natives, of course, at the same time!


• I only hint at that, as a sub-text, of course. And relate at least some of it to the Cathar tradition, too (the first genocide, enacted by ‘Catholic Christians’), in the Provence and Barcelona areas (which links back to troubadours, Sufis, and another period of spacetime in which a cultured and democratic system thrived for a while, with a certain independence for women, a love of learning, a genuine modesty and gentleness among the religious 'leaders', etc).


• I am also aware that a period of culture like that relates to particular leaders, not to a religion. I have no desire to romanticise the Moorish culture. That modern radical Islamics like Al Quaida want to 'reconquer Spain' (considering it 'occupied Muslim land') just proves my point. Everyone rolls the movie back just far enough to justify their own claims to land...because the Moors arrived in 711 and left in 1492...so the previous owners also have a prior claim to the land in my eyes. When do we get the Visigoth resurgencel?


• Anyway - the Moors came in, then the Christians reconquered it, and now the Muslims want to reconquer it, and so it goes on. Hence my 'homeless and landless' characters...
• An old anarchist atheist like me believes we won't get any real peace until we 'strangle the last lawyer with the entrails of the last priest' (I forget who said that) but those supposedly peace-loving religious people would probably want to stone me to death, or burn me at the stake, for that kind of attitude.
• And I have nothing against individuals from these cultures - just the belief systems themselves, and the memes connected to them, which make me feel as though I live on the Planet of the Apes at times. That, of course, gets considered intellectual arrogance. So part of what I wanted to write involves the 'hatred of intelligence'...
  

Of course, by the time I’ve said all that I realise that my humble little book will need a lot more research and editing to tackle so many ambitious themes. And if you read this far, great! Most people wish they had never asked, or have fallen asleep by now, or glazed over at my ‘usual rants’.

I don’t know what it ‘is’ about…or to paraphrase somone (maybe Groucho?) “It is about fifty thousand words”.

For scale: you just read about 1600 words - roughly what I had to write each day.

Life's Sentence

Ah me. Well, today I have completed ten years work for/in the local library.

If only round numbers let you off! But the 'lifers' here sneer at a mere ten years...

At least they are heading for a pension, for all the hard labour.

I fell behind on my NaNoWriMo wordage yesterday, but I figured it might have been inevitable, given the halfway point reached...and still no plot! Just a sequence of events.



But then again, that's how I perceive life. It doesn't seem to have a plot, either, nor an author (of course). I'm not so much an atheist, perhaps, as a non-authorist?

Anyway, on we roll.

And don't forget, if you like these sort of things, that next Saturday is Buy Nothing Day. Well, you can at least try...

write on, right on, write now

So I plough on with my writing project - no idea where I am going, but NaNoWriMo say that's OK!

Curiously, doing a quick bit of research with keywords for 'the story so far' - Barcelona, street performers, reincarnated Cathars, 'coincidence', etc I found that someone had already written the damned book I had vaguely (very vaguely) thought of.

Google is a great humbler, when you think you have an original idea. The library I work in happened to have a copy, too, and I had to decide whether to read it and be influenced, or to not read it until December. I chose to read it.

What puts it into the synchronicity class (for me, at least) is that the author lives in the same city as me, and teaches creative writing at the Uni! He even put a dog in the title.... heh

The colour of a dog running away... Richard Gwyn.

Whether this will alter the course of my own piece I don't know,but I still have no idea what to do. I can't categorize it (they don't have Roman a clef in their choices, so I put Mystery and Suspense (it's a mystery to me what I am doing, and I can hardly stand the suspense of waiting to see if I fail), but I think that would draw me into the wrong group of people, as they seem to find murder interesting...

I could try to bring in a magician, I suppose...and maybe a robbery...

I feel more inclined to relabel it, although 'literary fiction' just sounds far too grand...the other labels seem too specific (Sci Fi, Romance, etc)

And I have opened a can of worms here (or a can of memes).

• NaNoWriMo asks you to start from scratch.


• NaBloPoMo asks you to write a blog post every day for a month (something I often do spontaneously, but not every month).


• nanofimo is set up to finish incomplete works (which may come from November's NaNoWriMo but could be for any unfinished written piece)


• NaNoEdMo is apparently for pieces completed, but needing editing, proofing, tidying, etc


• And there's 24 hour Comics for the graphic artists


• And, in June (but you can visit the site any time) there's Script Frenzy, for you playwrights and screenwriters

PS: my mate Sunshine Gray emailed me to tell me who the woman in that Gwyn book set in Barcelona might have been based on. (!) You can listen to some of Sunshine's stuff (including a comment about the Barcelona Chair (sic) on MySpace. Hi Sunshine!

So Far, So What?

I have kept my number count up for three days now, but the NaNoWriMo server seems swamped. I can hardly ever get into it...especially when America is awake! Like now - 7:30 pm on the West Coast, 10:30 pm on the East).

That's a shame, as I wanted to browse the forums, having hit my target for the day.

I thought the sluggish response could be caused by my PC, or my ISP, but when I did get in one time I could see they had had an unexpected number of hits on Day One, and admitted the server was struggling.

This evening I haven't even got close...

I did come across something more accessible, i.e. NaBloWriMo - which involves posting to your blog every day for a month. It seems weird to pick the same month, as I need to trim my 'other writing projects and exercises' in order to just hit the original target.

Hey ho.

Still, you can always go listen to CS&N on the old (ahem!) hippies page