Frydmania

Read one of the library books today which was mentioned earlier in the month: The Lying Carpet, by David Lucas. It’s a long format story, in several parts, with illustrations on every page. Several per page, in fact, including some lovely ‘close up’ (and labelled) pictures to underline certain aspects of the story.

Metaphysics for kids? I don’t know what my audience thought, exactly, but I was transported by it. By the notion of being a statue that has come awake, but cannot turn its head. It relies for advice on a tiger carpet behind it. But is the carpet telling the truth? Different versions of the truth? Multiple truths? Or is it all lies?

I won’t spoil the plot by explaining further – go and read it for yourself. I found myself caught up in wondering what it would be like to be the statue – or the carpet – with a limited view, and limited mobility. Having not been well in the last week or so, and having met elderly relatives recently, it took on a more personal meaning to do with life with limitations – and how one might deal with that.

What really caught me was the line ‘…the right words in the right order at the right time’. Isn’t that what we all long for as writers? Both for us to find them, order them, reveal them, all a-right, and, even more miraculous, for the audience to perceive them as such.

I have a copy of The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde. I find I am unable to read it aloud without crying before the end. There is something so powerful in a metaphor – metaphysics even – wrapped in a children’s story. I am adding The Lying Carpet to the same category – less crying, perhaps, but no less profound, in a different way from Wilde’s tale.

I realised also, in reading the tale, that writing is equally about something of us remaining. The statue Faith implores the carpet:

” ‘Tell me I won’t be forgotten,’ she said,
‘tell me the door will be opened and someone will find me
and hear me and believe that I’m under a spell.’ ”

Whether or not we see ourselves in either character, the writer longs not to be forgotten. That instead of a door, their book, their article, their work, will be opened, and someone will find it and hear it – and believe the words within it.

Reading a few other blogs more regularly, I’m starting to get a sense of rules of engagement.

1. Don’t write every day. I can’t keep that going for now, because of the writing every day bit. But perhaps I should rephrase: don’t post every day.

Keep ’em coming? Let them think you’re not just churning it out? Not quite sure, but I’ve seen a few blogs that do post deliberately every second day, and it works. Enough that you’re satisfied, not so much that you take it for granted.

2. Have themes. Some have different themes for different days of the week – on occasion, with their own titles. Not sure whether I’m going there or not, on the titles. But I can see the point of it, when you’re interested in lots of different things, and want to give equal space to them.

So I’ve been thinking over what I would do as themes. Book reviews might be one – or book appreciations, to be more accurate. Reviews sounds like I’m trying to rate them, and be critical of them.

In fact, I’m more keen on the book-reader interaction. Not quite How This Book Changed My Life. But perhaps How I Loved This Book (And You Might Too, But I’m Not Going To Force You).

Given my huge love of children’s books, I could probably do a year’s worth of blog posts without much recourse to the library, but that could be overkill. Which would be a great shame, for something so special. So maybe alternating children’s picture books with others could work.

3. Add pictures. There I need to do some thinking. There are quite a few blogs which add loads of pics. They are generally personal pics, pics of family – and/or of products, if it’s that kind of lifestyle site. I like taking photos, but I need to think about putting them up as part of posts, particularly if I want to do more travel writing.

It’s also about appealing to different ways of looking at the world. I’m fairly wedded to the words version, as you can tell, but I recognise that others like pictures more. I’d like to win them over with my prose, given time, but if they’re not prose people, it’s not going to work so well. But a batch of pics, and THEN some prose – it might.

4. Add a bit more theming. This blog is a very simple one, in terms of look. And it has been for c. 6 years. Admittedly, I didn’t write on it for nearly 3 years, but if I want it to change, as the blog writing is changing, then a blog look and feel that works for the subject matter would be good.

That’s about as far as I want to go for now. There are blogs out there that are about making money for the writers, and maybe I’ll go there at some point.

But for now, it remains very much about the writing – with some extra tricks to make the writing stand out better.

I sat in a room with quite a few people tonight. Most didn’t know me, I didn’t know them. And I told them that I was feeling nudged to do creative writing again.

Luckily, that was all that I had space to say (when we all had to say what we did in our free time) or needed to say. But I knew I was saying so in front of a few people who do know me well. Who thankfully also have my interests at heart. But it was still a ‘gulp and keep going’ moment.

I seem to be finding it easier to tell people that I do writing for a living. It’s true, I enjoy it, and my ‘other’ writing can hide behind it, which is fine for the time being.

I am happy with the awareness that Dorothy L. Sayers, crime writer and creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, was a copywriter for an advertising firm before becoming a novelist – and I’m pretty sure there were/are some other great writers who’ve been down the same route.

To say I do creative writing…well. I still don’t know if I’m sure what that is. I feel like I should be doing a course to say that. Have assignments which I read in front of the class. (In fact, I do ‘read out loud’, it’s just called putting it on the internet. And I set the assignments myself that way.)

What interested me was the finding myself talking about doing it. Something has shifted, it seems. Perhaps I have reached a stage of life where I am choosing not to hide – myself, my stories, my writing – and so the words seep out when I have a space in which they can do so.

I am still keeping a distance from too much control over it, though. That would spoil the fun – and the purpose of the 31 days, and my intentions around it, is to keep that fun.

To slightly adjust a quotation, ‘if you love something – set it free’. I have no intention to batten down the hatches again. Because I am rediscovering just how much I love writing.

As ever, there are more than enough words. It will take time to whittle them into a form that suits them, that makes a tune of its own, like a reed being cut and adjusted into an instrument.

For now, I am gathering them, spreading them out, looking for patterns. I am letting them fall through my fingers, and gathering them up to begin again.

Sometimes they may fall a different way, cast a different shadow – and I am trusting myself to relax, to enjoy the moment, and also to take notice of the patterns when they happen.

Out in the open, others can see me hunting for sticks. Some may call and wave, perhaps. Increasingly, I am a writer because that is what I find myself doing.

And in doing so, I find myself again, in the reeds, and the patterns, and the whisper of the air around them all.

I’m trying a new trick to kickstart the writing. Read, then write. There’s something about taking in words, your own or someone else’s, to remind you about how they’re meant to sit on the page.

I realise it’s not so new, for the paid daytime writing. A little run round the Facebook block often does the trick. But it worked this morning for some web writing where I’d already written bits and pieces, and didn’t know what to do next. I went back to reading – a new set of sites and pages on the same topic – and then found my own words.

In the world of website copy, read then write is becoming more and more necessary. The website worlds I need to inhabit can vary wildly. Getting my head round the benefits of solar power one day, and the delights of alpaca wool another. Neither places I had visited before in writing, and ones where I needed to jog alongside the natives who could already talk the talk, before I could have a go myself.

How do you warm up for your own writing? Part of the rule around the 31 days, for me anyway, is limited planning, and going with what seems right on that occasion. But it’s hard to write when you don’t quite know what you’re writing about…until you start writing about it. See what I mean?

Perhaps some of it is reminding yourself of what your own voice sounds like. The cadences, the sentence lengths, the patter of words the way YOU do them. Just as in other professions I’ve been involved in – teaching, counselling – part of the point, I think, is that you convey yourself in the way you work.

What does that mean when your writing takes many forms? Part of me enjoys the linguistic stretching that comes from trying a different vocabulary area, a different way of conveying information. But when I come back to write for myself, which ones are my words? My subject areas?

Perhaps one way of answering is to look at the family cookbook project. I spent two nights this week writing and writing, and clearly didn’t seem to be asking myself too much what words to use. Some of that is a subject area I’m comfortable with – food – and elements that are easy to include, because I just have to run through what I cook already, and how I do it.

To return to some of yesterday’s sporting metaphors: in real terms, I’m a sprinter. It’s my build. It was my brief moment of sporting glory, aged c. 9, when I could actually run fairly fast for my age. Middle distance had no interest, because I got puffed out far too fast.

What I want to write – those short pieces – are probably the equivalent of a sprint to read. But in training, I’m discovering I can write ‘middle distance’ just fine, when it’s MY race to run. My thing to write. Who knows, maybe I’ll find I have a sprint finish in there somewhere – then maybe I can convince the man and his dog that it’s the whole race.

And one worth watching.

I was reminded this morning of one of the quotes that came out of the Olympics, for the Brit who won the gold medal in trap shooting. He was stunned by the response to his win, saying that normally, when he trains, he only has a man and his dog for company. No limelight. No sponsorship tie in.

Various magazines are saying similar for the coming back down to earth bit for athletes just now. There is a slump when the next big event is a long way away, when the crowds have gone home, and when your sport goes back to minority interest standard, as far as TV coverage is concerned.

Now you can claim that blogging is the equivalent of 24 hour, multi channel TV. It’s always on. Given the huge numbers of people online, around the world, there’s presumably also an audience. And when you link your posts on Facebook, for example, you have a ready made audience. Should be easy, no?

Some of the others out there doing the 31 days of writing are saying: no. It isn’t.

Because putting writing, any writing, online means that others can like it. Or not. Comment on it. Or not. Forward it to friends. Or, indeed, not. It’s the or nots that are the sapper of souls, because we get caught up in whether we get a response of any kind, rather than in the sharing of the words.

So for me, and for others blogging today, we are likely to feel like we’re only writing for the man and his dog. And the dog wanders off every now and then. But, as I’ve hinted at before, we are also writing for ourselves, the improvement of our writing, the relief of setting words on a page (or screen) and knowing that we said what we came here to say.

Tomorrow, even the man and the dog may not be there. But we will. It’s about the training, the showing up, first.