101 Fiction: Traditional

101 Fiction: Traditional: by Sandra Davies Rise before May dawn, middle of meadow, wash face in dew. Surrender all common sense:  next man met so stunned by my b...

Not idle

Just because I've not been posting here much does not mean I've discovered the joys of housework ...

As well as daily pieces on Thinking Ten - some of which are episodes of  'Just cause' which has reached 10,000 words - and weekly episodes of 'The blacksmith's wife' (2,500+ words) - I have sent my final, fifty-first, piece off to MuDSpots (I think I've only missed one prompt in the year) and am just embarked on a daily post for 100 days of summer.   This is imagery rather than writing, based on Orkney, and I am using the opportunity to revisit both photography and art work and ally it to the poetry of George Mackay Brown, long a favourite of mine but recently neglected.

'Not wanted on Voyage' is currently on the back boiler, awaiting a major re-write - I'm deliberately 'resting' it so as to come to it afresh and have several ideas to move it forward - and the as yet untitled follow-up (filed as 'Susannah') stands at  49,000.

What I am working on, and have been since the last week of June, is 'Moving on', the follow up to 'Damage limitation'.   I've added some 18,000 words and have ideas for more.   Still only halfway at 56,000 words.

What I am not likely to be doing this year is NaNoWriMo - I really do not want to start another novel!

Oh - and I am off to Kansas in just over a week for a third gathering of folk from Six Sentences.

Inspiration

For me, in a word, Orkney.

Initially, and ever after always, for its horizons - a sufficiency of which are sea edged - and for the ever-varying sky above the smooth-edged hills

History too, stone and hoarded, driftwood wood, mysterious and eminently practical - and totally unignorable.

These abandoned creel stones gave rise to three years' work, as did the standing stones at Brodgar, allied to the poetry of George Mackay Brown.

John W. Hedges wrote about the ancient family folk who'd once inhabited Isbister.

He, and the place itself, inspired me to write 'Edge' and illustrate it with work sprung from other Orcadian sources.

This image combines plate and print and photograph, to suggest standing stones and sea and unfathomable horizon.







And this print, one of a series exploring inner stone age cells of Skara Brae, Gurness and Rendall, references the inner chambers of Maeshowe, one of Orkney's many Neolithic tombs.

Maeshowe's walls are overlaid with Viking graffiti, here I've used dying sea-pinks from the windowsill of a Stromness cottage, where we'll be again come September.

This has been accepted for Language>Place Blog Carnival #17 whose topic is Inspiration.  Other posts can be read via this link

What is an editor for?

By which I mean what are their core responsibilities?

I ask because I assumed that ensuring correct use of English (inconsistencies of spelling and matching tenses for example) was a given.

And although I would hesitate to claim that they ‘ought’ to impose a minimum level of ‘good’ writing – for example, by suggesting that sentences flow smoothly or that switching to third from first person and back again in a single paragraph was eradicated – I can see that some might be reluctant to impose (put the work in??)

For a novel I would hope that a nod towards veracity was deemed essential, along with an ironing out of any jerky illogicalities which confound the plot, even if only to uphold their own status in supporting the premise that writer is one worth promoting.

So when I read a book by a writer who highly praises her editor and has seven published books (and a contract for more) and I find it barely readable because of what I deem is its poor writing, is that because I’m picky, or that the editor has failed to do her job?

And further undermining my certainty are the tributes from two non-red top newspapers, and the fact that a friend and librarian said that the writer ‘wasn’t bad’, that she had two of her and had looked to buy a third - even given that reading is subjective, surely there’s a bottom line beyond which one would suppose any competent editor would not sink?

The blacksmith’s wife [part 24]

‘Bewitching?  Is that something you can do?’

‘If necessary, aye, but it’s a skill I rarely use … my mother said it’d more likely end in death than in a pension, given Hopkin's witch-burnings in Bury.’

‘And did you use such tricks on me?’

‘Nay,’ I smiled. ‘T’was never needed, the honey of my body was sufficient tacky for you to stay adhered …’

‘As it was for others, among whom was my brother.   Despite all, I cannot forget he shares my blood …’

‘And lets it too!’

‘Enough.   Time to re-build and ensure you’re kept from vengeful harm.’ 

[Despite the difficult words this week, this one sprung into being almost unaided, except for the need to check facts about witch-burning in Bury St. Edmunds, which took place in 1645, when 120 women were brought to trial]

Memories, one step on

I remember sitting on my Grandad’s lap watching my two-years-younger brother take his first steps, backlit at the end of the hall by the light from the small window beside the front door.

So small an area, that hall, so strongly influential, so readily recollected, it was papered halfway up with bumpy brown and shiny anaglypta.

Above was cream and hung with English hunting prints,  the startling scarlet of their coats buried deep in my subconscious, arc-ing resonance when, half a century later, I discovered in Oxford’s Ashmolean museum Uccello’s ‘Hunt at Night’  

Although the truly horrid under-stairs pale blue china bunny is now gone, a bought-for-sentimental-reason, small brown version lives in a cupboard in my bedroom and will not allow itself to be discarded

The circular barometer, mystic numbers and gold shiny arrow-headed needle a source of fascination, and tapped daily by my Grandad, now hangs in my sitting room:  I still seek understanding.

And just this year, the long-forgotten hallstand, near-black wood, brass hooks and small square mirror, green lily-patterned tiles and tin tray for umbrellas, reappeared in the entrance hall of Luke Darbyshere (my fictional detective)’s flat.

This was a resppnse to a challenge set by Bill Lapham on Six Sentences:  having asked for six sentences beginning 'I remember' we were to select just one and write five more from that, using our imagination.   This didn't quite stick to the rules but is an illustration of how such 'I remember' moments are re-used  in our writings.

The blacksmiths wife [part 23]

Despite three  truly difficult words thrown up by Phil Ambler's book - tacky, pension and bewitch -  I managed to continue this serial:

‘For all he’s a one-legged, pensioned-off foot-soldier, the Constable knew what best to do, organised a line of buckets to the pump.   It’s better than it looks.’

Gabriel had been relieved to see me, I at his survival.   Brick fireplace and chimney were undamaged, the rest a blackened lath-and-plaster-tacky, straw-strewn mess.

‘Your tools?’

‘Mostly salvaged.’

‘Mathias?’

‘Taken.   This’ (he gestured) ‘revenge for what they saw as sanctuary.’

‘They?’

‘Impossible to know.   The message?’

‘Not delivered.’

‘Then his life is forfeit.’

‘As mine when, finding letters missing, they return for me.’

‘He’ll likely claim bewitchment.’

‘Then I must make it so.’