Jogged memory

Found this photograph loose in the back of an album.
Written on the back ‘Scapa Haven October 1997, Sunday lunch.’
Taken fourteen years ago in a house we no longer own.

Table, chair, easel, jug and jar (with brushes) we still have.
No idea where the painting is, my first ever oil painting,
in a style now totally alien.


But the lunch is very familiar indeed.



[This is my submission for Language>Place Carnival #12]

MudSpots # 16 - Burning the candle at both ends

Rightfully named this week since Michael D Brown has added NaNoWriMo to his already over-loaded daily schedule - lots of conversations on MudSpots this week, all of which are worth reading at least once. 

Day 12 NaNo - 30940

Lots of words today, but not ones I'm very pleased about.   A couple of sections are cliche-ridden and boring and I knew this as I typed them, but the idea was to get the episode down, to work through the plot of it - the confrontation, the explanation, the threat, the frightening bits ... and I was surprised that even out of this quite uncomfortable way of writing, a new development made itself known, so that I have this poor girl who may or may not have been murdered, who disappears but it isn't clear who, if anyone, might have caused it to happen.   Was it murder or misfortune?   I don't know yet ...
But what I do know is that I can go back and tighten, improve the words later, provide I don't sicken myself of the characters first.

Day 11 NaNo - 27886

A scratchy, bad-tempered sort of day - sleep patterns all awry, not necessarily because of NaNo - plus I did some research into art smuggling, which, I am glad to say, given me plenty of possibilities from which to concoct one baddie's nefarious activities.   Also I made a decision, for the sake of 'completing' a tale by the end of the month, to completely ignore the additional story to be gleaned from the development of one couple, and just concentrate on the main ones.   So not many reported words, but more written which have yet to be tidied up.
This time last year I was much further ahead.

Day 10 NaNo - 26390

A good, solid day's work, after a late and shaky start.   Mostly come at by concentrating on writing the plot bits, but in a manner which is comfortable, i.e. by developing the characters of murderer/victim and worrying about the chronology later.   I'll keep this up for a few days and see where it gets me, but am accepting that the eventual tale will probably be three time 50K, and will need more research than I've time for here and now.

Day 9 NaNo - 22600

Some timely advice from Bill Floyd via fellow NaNo writer Travis Smith which is to simply write and regard this as a sub-first draft, rather than even a first draft. 
I finished up with cold feet yesterday because I am getting on for halfway through the word count and have barely started on the story.  I consider part of the NaNo challenge to be that I have to have a whole book, i.e. beginning, middle and end.   Today I sweated blood and finally got my first murder sorted, on day 1 of a 10-14 day cruise. 
The rest of the book is obviously going to have to be written as a skeleton, but I do have to have that skeleton otherwise I shall have considered it to be a failure.
So 2/3 more murders, several more red herrings, methods, and motives. in ~30K words.
In twenty-one days.

Day 8 NaNo - probably now less than19436

'That'll learn you' I am saying to myself.   All that printing out of pages and pages.
I woke at 5 a.m. this morning, lay in bed for a bit wondering about the whys and wherefores of the murders I have to put into my tale, now that I have more or less decided on the who.
But I not could not work it out, so I got up and tried some mind-mapping, a brand new pen, a couple of walks, a visit to the gym .   Still nothing.   Eventually, eleven hours later, a sort of mini-glimmer - fragile and barely believable but ...
The net result being, of course, that I have written not one word extra, and quite probably have several to discard.

Day 7 NaNo - 19436

I've realised that the only thing that will prevent me constantly editing and re-editing will be to print sections as I 'complete' them - that should also help with plotting.
Having made that decision I sat for three hours tweaking three thousand words without pressing the 'print' button  ...  I did it eventually, but too late today to see whether or not it was going to be hepful.

Day 6 NaNo - 17802 words

Lots of itty-bitty paragraphs today, one hundred and fifty words attaching themselves to random characters with varying degrees of relevancy.   Written up and 'parked' for future fitting in somewhere.   Maybe.
I find I am being ambushed with these interesting bits, which have much in common with the Bridie series, and are not the voice I thought I was using for this - relationships for example.   At the same time I am perceiving glimmers of possible plot development.   All I can do is follow my nose and see where it takes me.

'Joan alone' at the Camel Saloon

A second poem of mine this month at the Camel Saloon - place of much tasty reading and well worth a visit, with or without drink in hand.   And if you scroll down through twenty or more other good pieces you'll come to my 'Blow the wind southerly' - a development of one of my October small stones.   Much thanks to Russell Streur for compiling the whole shebang.
Joan was my Suffolk born 8 x grandmother and the poem uses information gleaned from her will, written in 1658

Day 5 NaNo - 14515 words

A pretty solid day of writing today - not all of it worthy of being kept, and 800 words which were almost certanly a waste of time - unless I can shoehorn them into .the mouth of another character.   And the tiniest smidgeon of a plot link, which is definitely a Good Thing.

Day 4 NaNo 10,856 words

A couple more snippets of conversation, one very much a propos of nothing but too enjoyable to lose, so it will have to go in somewhere.   Much writing of bits that are subsequently seen to fit nowhere, so progress has been muddled and difficult to count since everything is 'parked' in a multitude of dcuments alongside bits that might well have to be scrapped.   Today's count very much an estimate.

Day 3 NaNo - 8458 words

A couple of conversations got into my head early today, which always makes the writing easier, and both enabled me, once I had the bare bones down, to fit around them some extra information which will, I hope, serve to either muddy the waters or add mystery.

Not wanted on voyage - Chapter 1 of NaNo novel

       Her proposal came, as he later told her, with the felicitous timing of an amateurishly-plotted novel, one which relied over-much on coincidence to propel it to a credible conclusion.
       Following Isobel’s unrealistically optimistic departure, he had spent a couple of hours re-claiming his flat before sitting down in front of the television with a couple of rounds of mature Cheddar sandwiches, half a dozen pickled onions and a couple of bottles of Raven Ale to watch the Belgian Grand Prix.   A moderately eventful start had been followed, three laps in, by a coming-together of a rookie driver with one of the championship contenders, starting from the rear due to an enforced engine change.   No injuries but plenty of debris and, as the safety car was deployed for what looked likely to be at least half a dozen processional laps, his phone tapped out eight seconds of drum beat followed by the lead singer of Editors urging him to  ‘Pull the blindfold down, so your eyes can’t see’.
      There were not many of his work colleagues he would choose to speak to on a Sunday but she was one of them.   ‘Mad again,’ he said in greeting, mispronouncing her name, as always.
      ‘Rose’, she replied, using his surname as though it were his first but refraining, on this occasion, from the more teasing diminutive since she had a favour to ask.   ‘I don’t suppose you fancy being my husband for a couple of weeks do you?’
       He put down the bottle he had been about to take a mouthful from, grinning with delight.  
‘Madigan, my love, what a fascinating proposition!   I am between women at the moment, as it happens ... but I have to admit that while I like you well enough, I’ve never exactly fancied you ...’
       ‘Same here,   It’ll be in name only I assure you.   It’s just that if we’re going on a honeymoon cruise, the assumption will be that we’re married.’
       ‘Yes, I see that  ...  but why a honeymoon cruise?’
       ‘Because there’s been a higher than average number of grooms returning as widowers.   And I want to find out why.’
        ‘Ah!  Now I am getting interested.   When, where and how long for?   A fortnight did you say?’
        ‘Two weeks, yes,   The MS ‘Dunvegan’, departing Leith tomorrow week.   Scottish Highlands and Islands etcetera.   It looks like an insurance scam but there’s also some sort of link with an on-board lecturer on Archaeology, the chef and the croupier.  And when the ship calls at Lerwick ...’
         ‘OK you’ve convinced me, I’m on, so long as you promise that we don’t have to go through all that posh suit, white dress stuff.’

[I posted the first six sentences of this on 6S, and thereby confused several people, so I have done a couple of edits and am putting the whole of the opening chapter here.   Obviously my intention is to intrigue rather than irritate - if you have a comment on this I'd be extremely glad to hear it!]

Day 2 NaNo - 5262 words

Hmm ... plenty of words but I'm not sure how much more I can do before I start to get horribly mired in a plotless - and hence directionless and pointless - tale.
I need a motive or two, I need to write a convincing baddy, I need to decide whether I'm writing a psychological thriller or a simpler (ha!) murder mystery.
Spent much of the day trying to sort what I already had into some logical order, with only limited success.
And actually what I think I need is some time away from the computer, where I am impelled to put words down, so I can doodle and think ...
I have finished re-reading Ian Rankin's 'Resurrection men' novel, and hope not to be tempted into starting another ... he is so dauntingly superb.

Day 1 NaNo - 2616 words

This year is very different to last.   Much more of a patchwork operation.   Last year I had two or three major conversations which had to be connected - and hugely expanded - to form some sort of novel-length story.   This year, beginning with an outline, I have a rag bag of characters - thirty of them, gathered in from myriad places - about whom random, and sometimes contradictory short pieces have been written.   I've spent quite a lot of time trying to plan how these characters might relate to each other but it is clear that I can't start with chapter one and work forwards in a straight line, but will have to keep zig-zagging about to add clues and red herrings to make sure that I create a worthwhile whodunnit.   I have  the first 4/5 days mapped out and have sort of identified one baddy, have one linking goody and so far, one body ...

NaNoWriMo2011 - more pencil and paper

Just musing about the implications of yesterday's exercise, with another blank sheet of A4 at my side, I drew another 'mind map' stemming from this almost brand new character (actually imported from 'Shenanigans') and a linking device for (some) chapters using a series of emails.   There's no doubt they are useful but for me, at least, I had to already have something to build on - not sure it would have been so successful if I had not already got the characters in mind.

One minor mental hiccup is that in other people's books I too frequently don't read these inter-linking, chapter-separating snippets ... they seem to interrupt the story, but then I often have to go back to pick up bits I've missed.

Have to say I am more excited than apprehensive at the moment, but I bet that heavy 'oh what have I got myself into?' feeling wil come sooner or later.

NaNoWriMo2011 - plot progress

Yesterday,  as a result of reading Caroline Green's excellent post 'Let it Snow' on Strictly Writing, I used a pencil and a blank sheet of A4 and made some progress with plotting 'Not wanted on voyage', i.e. I actually formulated one, instead of  thinking up a load of characters, without knowing what to do with them. 

In the middle of the page I wrote "Madigan has discovered ..." and then I asked the questions "How?" and "What does she propose to do" and "What type of deaths?", "What reasons?", "How come people know death is to be dealt on this particular cruise?"

And I came up with 1) a villain, 2) a motive,  3) a red herring and 4) a way of linking them all.

Next thing is to find ways of killing a few off - my youngest son has made some useful suggestions re poisons ... and it starts in a day and a half ...

Willing to conceal

A tale of mine is currently on Pygmy Giant

(orginally written as a prompt for MudSpots - one of those I woke up, thought about and scribled in a notebook at the firt opportunity, in 'The Old Bank' B&B in Wick, last September.)

With the best intentions [Book Blurb Friday #35]

It took Ben less than a month to realise that there were more than two of them in this marriage.   And he did not mean Sarah’s six-year-old daughter Emily.

Calm, caring and loving for most of the time, Sarah had another person buried within her – one connected to something lurking in her past which threatened her sanity and their marriage.

He knew Emily was the result of a mistaken one-night insistently-forgotten entanglement, father un-named on her birth certificate, but from things Sarah said, when in the grip of nightmares, he believed this unknown man was the cause of her distress. 

With the best intentions, and despite her refusal to co-operate, Ben starts digging into Sarah’s past:  his search culminates in a monastery rendezvous intended to allow Sarah to confront – and lay - her ghosts.   Ben’s interference has shocking and tragic results – but for who? [144 words]

This is partly a plot development for someone in my NaNo novel but also Week #35’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge (I've missed a few!) and Ashley Ortiz' photograph,    Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  

http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html

Another cover

Displacement activity doesn't take place only when I'm not allowed to write but also when the words stop flowing.

'Making good' - as with 'Damage limitation', the title came into being while creating the cover - is about thirty-four thousand words done - maybe a quarter of it, and currently I don't know where it is going. 

I've been this way before:  had not even expected to be writing a sequel until halfway through the penultimate chapter of 'Damage limitation' and have enough in the way of other projects for it not to be a problem.   

Yet.  

Fingers crossed it won't be long-term, because I get very ratty if I don't have something in progress.

NaNoWriMo2011

Hmm ...

I'm at the stage where I simply want to get started, have all these ideas which might fizzle into nothing unless I put them down and develop them, marry them to the right character, interject it into a conversation.
In the meantime, I am designing a cover for my novel.   The original BookBlurb Friday cover featured a bar of chocolate (which I simply ignored at the time), and stencil font writing, which I thought reflected what might be seen in the hold of a ship.   However, I got side-tracked by a photo of sand ripples on Warebeth beach near Stromness in Orkney, and played around with that.

It might not be the final one - how commercial 'grab-off-the-shelf' is it for a start? ('not very' I fear) - but beats chewing my fingernails.
And what a fascinating subject is bookjackets anyway - how do they KNOW what will appeal to me?

'Surveillance' at MudSpots

Another week of rich, rewarding reading at MudSpots - 'Surveillance' over as wide a range of subjects, told in 250 words, as you could wish to see.

Road to Spurn

On that occasion we should have done.   Spurned it, that is.

With hindsight we certainly would have done.

Spurn Head – a ceaselessly shifting spit of sand at the mouth of the river Humber, with a fascinating history of defence, defence against the elements. My notebook describes groynes 'like ancient and spear-hit soldiers, armoured squares and wounded stabs' and I'd anticipated using the invasive imagery to inform the World War One work I was at that time intending to produce.

In 2007, with blithe optimism, and blinkered as to the need to make a better check, I had booked the only  cottage there for myself and a fellow artist to spend a week drawing and painting.   A week in June - light, light nights, summer weather, warmth and sunshine ... surely not too optimistic?   

But the cottage was a dump – damp and peeling wallpaper, spiders and a temperamental scalding shower.   The weather dumped damp  too - two days of almost endless rain - just one dry afternoon and one golden evening the second day.   The rest of the time it was too wet, too cold - in June! - to stand outside and hold a pencil.   I drew, as much as the rain and cold allowed, the festoons of nets and wrappings of rags, vainly attempting to staunch wounds, doomed to ultimately fail.   After a day indoors, drawing diligently, we ventured two miles to the pub for a meal - "Sorry kitchen flooded - no food" - and the next morning woke to hear that Hull had suffered floods, as had the road down which we'd travelled - now apparently impassable.

Tempers were fraying too – my fellow artist did not possess the pioneering spirit, and fearful of being stuck there with her for the rest of the week I decided to extricate myself from this particular hole and insisted on driving home.

This is my submission for the anniversary edition of Language>place Carnival #11

NaNoWriMo2011

I've signed up for this for the second time.   Last year's 'Holding steady' was a follow-on to two smaller books, finished at about sixty-three thousand words and needed a lot of editing, minor but necessary, and I shall do a little more work before I re-publish in Blurb.   I've since written 'Damage limitation' (113,000+ words) which for ease of editing I published in Blurb and am currently reading and re-reading.   The follow up to that is at thirty-three  thousand words, titled 'Making good' and currently semi-stalled.

But this year's novel will be different.  'Not wanted on voyage' began life as a response to one of Lisa Richard Claro's Book Blurb Friday photos, will be part-populated with half-drawn characters from Thinking Ten prompts and has barely a vestige of a plot, which is a bit of a draw-back when it hinges on murder and who-dunnit and why and how, a genre I knew little of until recently.

So, twelve honeymooning couples (some true some false) four or five crew members (some good, some bad) and a need to convincingly bump a few off under suspicious circumstances, by person-unguessed-at, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine.

In preparation I am re-reading P D James and Ian Rankin and, following a lucrative trip to the Tynemouth bookfair on Sunday, Mark Billingham and Stuart Macbride, with Michael Robotham and Stephen Booth to follow.   Not to pinch ideas but for some help in  how to construct a plot.

Four past use - creel stones collagraph

[NB this image has the wrong title over-written]

Obsession with creel stones

For several years I was obsessed with drawing these abandond creel stones.   They were stacked behind a derelict house just a stone's throw from the sea in Stomness, in Orkney - I drew them, once in the rain with soluble graphite, loving the blurred and shadowy marks.   Another giant piece measured about seven feet square - cominng across it much-folded and dusty a couple of months ago, in an impatient mood, I threw it away.   A drypoint etching failed to capture the essence of them, but evetually I produced a collagraph which was inked several times, in several colours and proved to be the most successful work done from them.
I think it was the hand-made, bespoke quality, wooden frame to fit found rock, and the enclosing nature which was the source of their appeal.   This photograph shows them  the dry - they were richer when wet.
Three years after finding them, they disappeared.

Promoted by aphorisms

I wasn't sure what an aphorism was - and even after reading this week's selection am still confused, nevertheless MudSpots 009 has a lot of interesting takes on the subject, all in under 250 words.
Have a look at https://mudspots.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/spot-009-aphorisms/#comment-111

Heart of a cultural landscape

Stenness, circle of Neolithic celebration

eleven stones aligned, and twelfth omitted

for the entrance from the loch side village

and to admit the setting summer solstice sun

Angled standing slabs all set for ceremonial

to echo music, recognise the high point of the year

Central square stone surrounded hearth

backed by smaller sectioned pair

which frame the Maeshowe tomb

and with just a semi-circle turn

one would see the sixty stones of Brodgar,

both winter places death associated

aligned with equinox, sunrise, sunset and solstice.

My entry for Language>Place Carnival # 10, which is hosted by Sheree Mack, and can be accessed in its glorious entirety from here

Urban rhymes for modern times [Book blurb Friday #28]

Too often poetry written for teenagers misses by a country mile.  Joshua Waites wouldn’t thank you for country:  his attitude and intelligence re-define ‘streetwise’, his vision is 20:20 urban and there’s hardly a leaf or a blade of grass to be seen.   ‘Rhymes’ is a misnomer too – many don’t, nevertheless his sensitivity and observation is astonishing, not only for a young man (he is not yet twenty-two) lacking much in the way of formal education, but would be equally impressive were he a prize-winning scholar from any of England’s most eminent educational establishments.

 “Born on the streets, lived on the streets and will likely die on the streets” (Beth Waites, wife)

“A Shakespeare for the twenty-first century” (Benjamin Jonson, Minister for Culture)

[Warning for the super-squeamish - contains sex, violence and bad language – all very relevant]

[137 words]

Week #28’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge Joseph Claro’s photograph,    Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  
http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html