Tag: nope you do your own labels for this one

Here is the News/Poetry/Writing Projects

Love’s Great Adventure

This week’s been a real Educationfest [TM], not just personally but professionally. The most significant portion of this, in relation to writing, ultimately centres around how I place emotion into work. I’m not referring to the writing, but hope when things get sent away for submissions or competitions that I might win; this could be when everything changes. Expectation is a very cruel mistress. It’s time I stopped bending the knee.

This is the moment where something is created purely for my own benefit, sent to someone and then forget about, because there are more important things to be anticipating. It’s a terrible, destructive cycle of disbelief and anger and it will be broken this weekend, for no other reason than I have decided to produce summat as a tribute to my step aunt that shows a lesson has been learnt.

Writing is not for other people, it is for me.

Channel4jump

Yes, of course it’s great if someone else looks at your work and connects with it and YES it would be lovely to be paid but as I am now actively pursuing avenues where that money is not dependent on a third party facilitator, it is time to accept that expectation and anticipation are under my control now and not someone else’s to dictate. I should thank the people who provided the last form of formal rejection for that poke: when it’s apparent that your work was great, but didn’t fit the frame.

My work’s not here to align with other people’s world views. This is not about being contrite and supplicant when it comes to output. I say what I do, for very good reason, and there is NEVER a moment those words don’t do as I ask them. That’s the whole point with all the dance that is submission and rejection: this is not school. If you’re marking my work on your perceived notion of ‘correct’ then everybody is royally screwed. What matters as much, if not more than the words is the process within each journey.

factsvopinions

Therefore, this weekend I’m making something, just for me, as a result of the understanding that this is really how all of this should work: not writing as obligation, or to appease a deadline. Writing is expression, art, creativity but, most importantly self education. From these process, you learn to be better. Therefore, doing the lines is the equivalent of putting in miles on my static bike or reps with a resistance band. Getting better, stronger, and more capable only comes with practice.

Results are irrelevant if the journey matters more.

Art/Poetry Projects/Here is the News/Writing Projects

Beautiful Dreamer

This week has been significant. Despite the fairly huge amount of flailing that took place, we still have potential to produce a useful work of short fiction to hit this particular deadline. Next week therefore has been slightly re-arranged: I have another residency proposal to collate and submit, alongside which a first draft of something that can then be considered for use in contest will be completed.

It also helps, I now realise, that the pain that was being experienced thanks to an untreated injury (which is now being dealt with) was considerably more distracting than was first grasped. Having begun the process on Friday, today is the rough equivalent of being able to finally sit in silence after having been forced to listen to music you don’t enjoy, non stop, for over three years. Being without a constant niggle of irritation is blissful.

This calm in body and brain are taking a bit of getting used to.

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Therefore, once I’m done here (and the poetry is archived) there can be some planning for the vanity stuff I’ve been playing around with over the last few weeks. Some video tests were completed in the week, and (hopefully) if the weather forecast is accurate going forward, I’ll be making some detours after the School Run this week to do my location filming. Then, it’ll be about recording the audio and then throwing everything together. I have no idea if this will work, but it is worth a try.

Add to that the previously scheduled gubbins, a welcome return to PT, lots of sweating in Gyms generally, the inevitable and persistent spectre of rejection plus the genuine possibility of seeing the surface of my kitchen table for the first time since February and March seems to be going rather well. Oh yeah, it could all go horribly wrong again after Tuesday afternoon, but to be honest that’s not a problem. Change is inevitably a measure of pain.

I am ready for whatever might get thrown at me.

#Narrating2018/General Writing Post/Here is the News/Writing as Therapy/Writing Projects

You Oughta Know :: Two

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Yesterday, quite frankly, was one of the most important days I’ve had since this whole project began.

trapdoor

Progress on the Novel had stalled. Twelve days of minimal movement, if at all. The problem, such as it stood, was my insistence that plot needed to go a certain way because that’s been the plan since I began in 2001. Except I couldn’t write what was needed, the narrative complexity was simply too much for my poor brain to cope with. This week, at the Gym, I’ve been doing negative repetition: this is when you make muscles work in a manner which feels contrary to what would normally build strength but in fact quite the opposite.

It was this reverse approach that finally allowed me to break the writing deadlock.

In the end, all the sparkle and glamour was unnecessary. What was required was understanding that showing and telling are far more flexible constructs than first considered, and I could do both without compromising anything. I don’t need to be at this point in the narrative anymore, and it is time to move on, and the cupboard allows all that frippery to become pointless. One more short scene and finally I’m into a bit of narrative that will be fun to write. That was the big issue: this bit needed to happen, but I didn’t want to.

Without the push to do stuff I don’t like, none of this would be taking place.

wtfishappeningnow

What looked like an improbable finish date of March 15th is now seeming far more doable. It will still require editing, yes, but only the second half. Completion totally with a measure of editing by Easter is now the next goal. This is totally unchartered territory to boot, close to 80k words of original work. I’ve already got people lined up to read once I’m done, too, and there’s no real fear or anguish over that either. Amazingly, I’m looking forward to feedback, and I frankly won’t care if people don’t like it. Right now, the bigger goal is to get to the end.

What matters more to me now than popularity is the completion. Writing has not become a means to change the World just yet. However, in my own part of that whole, it is more significant than at any point in the last 51 years, and that’s just amazing.

A reckoning is fast approaching.

#Narrating2018/General Writing Post/Writing as Therapy

You Oughta Know :: One

I’m not here for your benefit.

The more progress made, the further down the road travelled, comes a realisation that matters to nobody but me. Every time a personal record is bettered, or a target attained, this is not cause for celebration. A lot of the time, it isn’t fun either. Hard work is not, on certain days, its own reward, whatever the fuck the motivational posters might tell you otherwise. Those people who look comfortable and secure in their public personas… I have no idea how that happens. Faking it til you make it is a waste of good time and effort.

areyoufromthepast

I’m here to admit some days this is horrible.

‘If you don’t like cycling, then stop’ my husband says, each time I do a ride where it is a struggle physically. His advice is based on a sound concept: he enjoys what he does hugely, but has never struggled with shortness of breath or a lack of physical strength. He is not stressed by large groups of people or the perception others have of him. He is lucky enough to have that easy comfort in abundance, and it would be fair to state that is one of his most attractive qualities. I don’t, and all the things he takes in his stride can often just stop me in my tracks. Yet, I’ll be back on a bike, and I’ll keep working on all those things that vex me, because I don’t like them.

Life is not just about being happy.

nonofuckno

The most satisfaction gained, ultimately in my own head, is doing the stuff that’s difficult. That never used to be the case, of course, but as I’ve grasped the importance of using time well, that desire has risen and will not be quelled. Sure, it would be fabulous to just sit back and do nothing, but that achieves nothing. The real, tangible progress made on writing is in direct response to my determination not only to get fit but to stay there and do more. Without the physical exercise, none of this would ever have happened.

Sometimes to get what you want, you need to be unhappy.

escalated

There are two parts to this post for a reason, because the flip side of getting upset and angry when things go wrong is not, as my family sometimes believe, an attention seeking ranty pants moment. The oddest things count as motivation for writers, and I am only beginning to grasp the reality of why stories matter so much to me. It is creating worlds where I feel comfortable to live, that make sense in my head as not simply ideals, but what ought to be the norm going forward.

Writing is no longer therapy, but a way to gain long-term satisfaction.

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