I'm not sure why the post here, about how to make your Moleskine into a more efficient planner, gave me the giggles, but it's also set me thinking again about notebooks again. My basic notebooks small (bag/pocket) and big (desk/holidays) are not organised in any way, except that I start at the beginning, and fill it from left to right, till it's full. I did once decide to collect my PhD thoughts at the back, but kept forgetting to put them there: now everything gets bunged in together.

In life, I like things sorted and organised by function and logic. I'd rather keep books on the floor and papers on the desk until I've time to put them away in the right place, than have muddle in the shelves and files. I use diaries and to-do lists and shopping lists: even the icons on my desktop are arranged by kind-of-programme. So why am I happy to throw everything into my Moleskine however it falls? (Though I do, it's true, get much more organised once a writing project is up and running.)

Imagination and the storytelling impulse came long before the documentary impulse in me: the first thing I wrote as an adult was Chapter One of a novel. So the only notebook I needed, I thought, was for notes for the novel. Then I realised that documentary writing can be fuel for the imagination; it needn't be an end in itself. But - but - what? Just put everything in? As it occurs to me? An idea for the novel, a line on a tree/smell/shop, research notes from a museum, some words which seem to be part of a poem I haven't written yet, a brilliant story title ditto, an eavesdropped conversation, an expensive book I want... But how do you keep the same kind of thing together and different things apart?

Read Full Post

I’ve always been interested in spirituality and personal development, but there are a couple of things that rile me:

1. Reference to The Universe as in ‘The Universe will provide...'
2. Any mention of The Secret: I hated this film, particularly the angelic chords which accompanied each speaker’s pronouncement, and the way they portrayed The Law of Attraction by showing a girl yearning for a gold necklace in a jeweller’s window, and - having presumably discovered The Secret and applied it - the said necklace being placed around her neck by a tall, dark, handsome man.
3. Being told by people to Just Let Go.

Read Full Post

Over on this thread on WriteWords, children's author Leila Rasheed asked us all

"do people go back to their draft and change the plot of specific scenes while keeping the function of the scene. I think the difference between the function and the plot of a scene is an important one.... it reminds me of the story about the hammer: a man has a hammer; it's the same hammer that belonged to his great-great-great grandfather. In those years, the head of the hammer has been changed many times, and so has the handle, as they wear out. Is it still the same hammer? Is my story still the same story, even though scenes have been replaced?"

I know what she means: for a complex set of practical, storytelling reasons, I'm about to pick up three scenes in the WIP, which take place in the same private house on two different days, jam them all together in a single morning with a chorus of different minor characters, and set them in a building site. And it is about the function of the scene in the story, so it shouldn't matter where it's set or what happens in superficial terms of action, as long as both make this turn of the plot-engine believable (which was Leila's original problem). And yet because setting and action, in the broad sense of "computer-hacking-in-Afghanistan" or "women-winning-in-Silicon-Valley", are two of the primary ways in which we experience a novel, to change the setting or action of a scene can mean that it feels as if the novel has changed.

Read Full Post

Two alternating Shakespeare plays, both directed by Sam Mendes at The Old Vic, brought out clear similarities of theme. Sadly, the productions emphasised darker aspects, at the expense of the lyrical and comic, to the detriment of both.

The Tempest is the more familiar to me. It's one of the 'late' plays, with a main character, the magician Prospero, apparently voicing Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre in his final speech beginning :

'This rough magic I here abjure...'


Read Full Post

2010 has been something of a mixed year for me. In January I developed an unexplained pain in my right elbow. By mid-July I could barely walk. After undergoing a number of tests, I was eventually diagnosed with a bone disorder and started treatment, a bad reaction to which resulted in my being bundled off to hospital in an ambulance!

Thankfully, the necessary adjustments were swiftly made and, despite falling and badly spraining my ankle when first venturing out to celebrate my returning mobility (eye-rollingly ironic, I know, but sadly grace and poise have never been among my strongest suits!), I am now on the road to recovery. It has, however, been a period of time that I am in no hurry to repeat, being mainly painful, depressing, exhausting and, whilst waiting for a diagnosis, at times rather frightening.


Read Full Post

Today's the third birthday of This Itch of Writing, and a good moment to thank everyone who's joined in over the years. I really didn't know, when I started this blog, whether I would find I had anything to say, or anything I wanted to say, let alone whether anyone would want to listen or respond. So it's been a delight to find that I have, and people do. Indeed, it hasn't just been fun: I've thrashed out ideas on here which ended up in my PhD, and your comments have enlarged not just my ideas about writing, but my knowledge of how other writers work, which has been invaluable for teaching. I've had wonderful and useful books recommended, and I've made great friendships and connections. I do know that the blog has rather outgrown the original categories, and one day when I've nothing better to do (or I'm desperately looking for displacement activity) I'll try to extend it. Meanwhile, I thought I'd celebrate by posting links to some of the pieces which have got the biggest response.

When it comes to posts about how you handle your creative self, one which seems to have struck a most resounding chord was on procrastinating: Cup of Tea? I'll Get Going in a Minute.

Read Full Post

"So now the dust has settled, and my story 'Calling', broadcast on Radio 4, has vanished into the ether (except for me, since I've got a lovely CD of all three Lost in the Lanes stories), and my writing brain's moved on to other projects. But there's no denying that even if I'm commissioned again, it's definitely one of the landmarks that will be visible for a long time, when I look back over my shoulder. So what does the landmark consist of? Some of these are my perceptions, some I gathered from friends who listened.

My work read by someone else gains as much as it loses. Coming as I do from a Drama background, I'm always thinking in terms of reading my work aloud, and I think it's a pity when writers don't read well because it always seems to sell the work short. On the other hand my PhD supervisor, the poet Maura Dooley, says that she thinks that even if a writer doesn't read well, there's an authenticity about a writer reading, which transcends technical limitations. Of course Philip Voss didn't read every inflection as I would, and to that extent you could argue that the story was less authentic to my work than if I'd read it. On the other hand, because Philip Voss's take on the meaning and shape of the work was his take, it created a different but still complete whole: the way he read it was formed by the internal logic that he found in the story. And there's another tradeoff of this difference.

Read Full Post