Category Archives: Alternative Pursuits

Snow simplifies

Posted on by
4

I’ve been visiting Art Galleries a great deal this last year- a pursuit I intend to keep up in 2013. One of the things I do there is to observe which works have an emotional appeal for me. I try, as best I can, to get over whether I ‘ought’ to like something or not,  and go for the immediate heartfelt response. Recently, I have noticed I am drawn to winter landscapes.

Winter in the Ryburn Valley by J.W.Saltonstall (The Hepworth Wakefield)

I believe it is the plainness: the almost abstract simplification of the landscape down to its bare bones. There is not much in the way of colour to distract, and the purity of line comes through powerfully. The artworks I love manage to convey a precise place and mood  through very little.

The Downs in Winter by Eric Ravilious1934

I like to believe it’s the Northernness in my soul that swells up when I see a broad expanse of pale moorland, that some flicker of Viking inheritance glows when I feel the thrill of the bleak and the bare. Truth told, I don’t want to be out there for too long – but I do love walking by the winter sea or in breezy leafless woods.

Dawns a new day by Ashley Jackson

And I aspire for my writing to reflect that. Not just my love of such things – but for the stories to be strong and bold enough that they don’t need prettiness.

Winter Landscape by Stephen Neal

It’s ambitious – I am all too much of a magpie, easily seduced by the sparkly and the curious. But it’s wise to dream. To see, at least in my mind’s eye, a perfect sparse and bold image.

Starlight Landscape by Edward Stott

Which season does your writing favour? They all have their magic.

Getting it in perspective

Posted on by
7

This last weekend I went up to the wonderfully sunny (and cold) Northumberland coast. We had to leave at cough of sparrow and I spent the whole of Friday Saturday and most of Sunday away from the Internet. I sang and talked and ate and walked. Fantastic.

Seahouses Harbour, Northumberland, by Simon Swales

It all kept my mind off the Mslexia Shortlist. I made a conscious decision not to fret or attempt to find out  – my focus would be on the Seahouses weekend. My career/vocation  is important to me – but the results weren’t going to change by me looking.

When I got back, it was a different matter. I checked my emails. Nothing. My focus dissipated and I was left with voices going off in my head.

  • the mopey, whingey one – you’re useless – it was a fluke you were even long-listed
  • the high-pitched, hopelessly optimistic one – it’s an oversight – you’ll get the email on Monday
  • the quiet, sober, realistic one – pick yourself up and carry on

At the bidding of the self-pitying voice I looked on Facebook. I could punish myself seeing who else had been short listed. No one I knew, it seemed.

I went for Twitter. Again, radio silence. Whiny voice: they all knew and I didn’t and who was I to dream? You’ll look a needy idiot if you ask.
Sensible voice: calm down and get on with your writing.

So I did. I wrote about how I felt and after a lot of tears, decided I would not let this stop me.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
(Kipling, If)

I would keep on writing regardless.

The little child’s voice, the one who hopes for wishes come true, squeaked at me. I told her to shut up. She persisted. I read the Terms & Conditions Yes, I was supposed to hear ‘whether or not’ I’d been short-listed.

With every bit of emotional armour I possessed bolted round my rather giddy heart, I emailed Martha Lane at Mslexia.

She replied. Her previous email had gone to my other account and thence into the ether. I had been short-listed. I am one of twelve and I should hear in mid-to-late February.

I am surprised how much this means to me – and how unreal it still seems. Someone who knows about these things actually likes my story. Gulp.

But I still remember my vow to myself. I shall keep on going, regardless.

Good things come in threes, too.

Posted on by
4
Number One
I’m off to Chi-Scbwi tonight, thanks to a lift from my good friend, Kathryn Evans. Several times a year a bunch of us local writers and artists get together and have a chinwag. It’s great – we are all at different ages and stages – and we support each other as only creative types can! ( make of that what you will)
Number Two
I have finished the first draft of Georgiana and the Municipal Moon (working title) today. 86k all told – a lot of which is piffle – but now I can have my own NaNoEdMo, if you see what I mean.
Number Three
My MA novel,  The Selkies of Scoresby Nab, has been long-listed for the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition. Hoorah!

It’s not me. Honest.

A bit at sea

Posted on by
3

On Tuesday at 4pm I launched the shared website http://seamagic.org/. I decided not to wait till it was all organised and perfect but to plunge in.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

It has to be said I have a lot to learn. I’m only the curatrix and do have the wonderful technical support of my son, but I do find not being in complete control rather disconcerting.

You can’t box-in the ocean

I shall have to trust that the collective purpose of all the contributors evolves over time. I shall have to trust that readers will enjoy what we are doing and return often to see the daily new posting – and I will have to trust that there will be material to curate day after day.

I have to trust because I can’t and I shouldn’t do it all. I would end up stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread* . I worry about too much multitasking and I tend to agree with this article about the benefits of focus. All I can do is trust in my instinct that since my Work-in-Progress comes from the core of my being, all the other things are peripheral – satellites, if you like.

How many ways would the tides be pulled here?

So  all you writers, scientists, poets, painters, jewellery-makers, photographers, wild swimmers, scuba divers, fishermen & sailors who are fascinated by the sea …

Come on in, the water’s lovely!

*This week’s LOTR quotation for fellow Tolkienites.

 

 

Mapping out the territory

Posted on by
4

Swaledale Barn by Andy Coulson

A few years ago, we went on a giant pub crawl around the Yorkshire Dales. There was lot of laughing, rain , sheep, quaffing, rain, sheep, drystone walls, scenery and rain. My part in this adventure ( Four Go Mad in Swaledale sort of thing) was to mark out the route. Continue reading →