November Countdown

The clock has started ticking, nearly one day of NaNoWriMo down, only 29 to go. 

I read through my novel notes at the weekend and was quite impressed - what I've done so far is not bad! Very detailed background to the characters and some story, which I can rework. Nanowrimo forbids pasting old material into the new document, which is fine by me. Rewriting the plot will be good and will freshen it all up.

I say 'will be' because today has been very busy and my word count is only 147. Still, that's ok too, I will make up for this later in the week when I get on a roll. At least I've made a start.....

Self doubt, writing, swimming...

The last couple of nights I've had dreams about my novel, anxiety dreams which seem to be trying to convince me that this novel in a month lark is too silly for words and too difficult,  so just pack it in...

To write 1700 words a day for 30 days I think I'll just (!) have to start getting up earlier, say at 6 o'clock, to get an hour in before the day gets going...

And I recognise that treacherous process - exactly the same as when I face some new stretch of cold water, anxiety and self doubt creep up...the only way through is to lower myself in and silence the voice by swimming...

Perils of the Modern World

The last twenty-four hours have been a bit nightmarish as a spammer hacked my email account and sent a bogus email to everyone in my contact list. Concerned friends and family have rallied to my aid, many believing me to be mugged in Spain...

As we attempt to make things secure again, I've been trying to work out how they got me - was it because I registered with nanowrimo? Funny how everything takes on a sinister look.....Was my address selected at random? Whatever it was, it's a mess and very annoying. And it's knocked me off my stride for writing. But as my daughter said - 'Are you just looking for an excuse to get out of writing the novel in November, Mum?'

Hmmm maybe...

NaNoWriMo

At the side of the blog in the little description of myself, I casually mention how I 'plan the novel'. 

A couple of years ago I had what I consider to be a good idea for a novel. The working title was Yummy Mummy (now a bit out of date as a concept, I fear) and I'd worked out a fair bit of the plot and characterisation etc etc. Since starting the blog, my poetry (and swimming) have come on a treat, but the novel is languishing in an unvisited dungeon of my mac.

Reading Michael Farry's blog this morning I became aware of National Novel Writing Month. What a fantastic, mad idea!! One month to write a 50,000 word novel, where quantity and not quality is absolutely the name of the game! No time for editing, just bang out a draft and if it's done by midnight on 30 November, then you are a WINNER! All of the publicity for it is fun, fun, fun! To sign up, you have to be over 13!!! That alone makes me want to register, if a 13-year-old can do it, then why not me?

So, I've got 7 days to unlock the dungeon, dust off the document, generally limber up and make my way to the starting blocks for 1 November. Anyone else care to join in ?!!

Happy Blogday

Today it's exactly one year since I started this blog! 

During the last twelve months I've written 125 posts and received 95 comments. The statcounter informs me that my blog's had 2172 hits - thank you to everyone who's visited or left remarks!

Since last August I've completed the Great North Swim once and hope to do it again in two weeks time. My commitment to swimming has grown stronger and my technique and stamina improved over the past twelve months, but at times I've struggled to swim as frequently as I'd have liked. Lah de dah..... 

I'd say that blogging on a regular basis has certainly helped me to establish more routine in my writing patterns. At times it's offered a very pleasant means of procrastinating and putting off tackling the job in hand, but on the whole, it's helped me to focus in on my poetry writing rhythms and be more more creative and productive. And one of the best things has been swimming around in the blogosphere and appreciating the quirky uniqueness of all the different approaches to blogging. 

Here's to the next twelve months!

Batteries Charged

My beautiful poetry writing week at Ty Newydd finished this morning, so I'm back in the bosom of my family. More of the course later, I'm sure. 

Instead of rushing home, we're having a couple of days camping in Wales, so I can acclimatise and come down gradually off my cloud. As it turns out, it's a dark rain cloud, so we're sitting in a tent in Welsh Wales with a storm blustering round outside. But I wanted to do a post out in the country in the middle of a field because I'm a modern girl and I have the technology.....

Where the bee sucks.....

This week I'm in a beautiful part of Wales on a writing workshop. I've taken five minutes off to write this post. Now I must get back to my homework poem. Deadline Friday 10am. Buzz, buzz, buzz.....

Midsummer Resolutions

After writing the hen poem into my last post and reading the words - weed your garden - I started to weed the garden, and proceeded to spend the whole afternoon and early evening gardening in my pyjamas. 

What a bohemian bank hol thing to do! Even though I'm already wont to spend large parts of the day in my dizzybelles, as my grandma used to say  - from the French se deshabiller, I believe - my son and daughter number 2 found it tres amusing that I was getting stuck in with a rake and fork in my dressing gown.  

I once read an article about the poet/crime novelist Sophie Hannah in which she said something along the lines that if you are a writer and have children, at least you will have to get dressed occasionally in order to take them to the places they need to go to.....or something like that.....Anyway I took that as encouragement that to develop my writing I needed to keep on spending as much time as possible in my pyjamas.....

I've toyed with the idea of writing a poem a day next month to build up my collection, but as June is only an hour away, I don't know that I can manage to be that prolific. So instead I've decided to go for one every other day. By the end of June I should therefore have the makings of 15 poems to play with. In May I haven't been near a pool, so that also needs to be addressed. These are my New June Resolutions.

Splash by Laurel Blossom

        
'Years ago, not long out of college, I dated a young Floridian who had been a high school swimming champion She kept her trophies in her room - dozens of tiny dime-sized medals hanging from thin ribbons. At the time, I was struck with how minuscule the rewards were for such an exacting sport - the innumerable hours spent training, lap after lap, in that strange, surreal chlorine-scented world with little to see except the tile patterns below. I once asked her if she's ever discovered anything on the bottom. She said she had - a shoe, a pie plate, plastic spoons and once a sodden rag doll - but not enough to make up for the monotony....'

So begins George Plimpton in his preface to Splash - Great Writing About Swimming which plopped through my letterbox today.

I stumbled upon this exciting anthology while trawling about the internet. It combines two of my very favourite things, writing and swimming. American poet Laurel Blossom has compiled a wide-ranging  and very satisfying collection which I can't wait to dive into! There are are 48 pieces of prose and poetry - here's a sample:

• John Cheever - The Swimmer
• Dawn Fraser with Harry Gordon - The Night of the Big, Big Minute
• A E Housman - Tarry, delight
• Annette Kellerman - from How to Swim
• Doris Lessing - Through the Tunnel
• Rohinton Mistry - Swimming Lessons
• Diana Nyad - Mind over Water
• Sharon Olds - The Swimmer
• Anne Sexton - The Nude Swim
• John Updike - Lifeguard                      need I say more?!

Well, yes! I ordered the book from Amazon Marketplace - a great place for finding out of print and secondhand books. The seller was anybook.com. The book cost 1 penny plus £2.75 postage and packaging! It is absolutely pristine - hardback, purple binding, withdrawn from stock at Southampton University. All the labels are intact and show it was never borrowed, not even once! It even smells wonderful, like library stacks! Mmmmmm! Can you hear how excited I am? What a bargain - I'd thoroughly recommend it to all you swimmers and armchair swimmers out there. Must rush off now to start reading and communing with my lovely new book!
I might share some gems with you once I get going.

Outdoor Shower

Still no swimming - might I make it back to the water tomorrow? Who knows. Anyway, my writing's been on a roll, two poems nearly ready for submission, so that is good.

To keep the spirit of the swim alive, here is one of the Sharon Olds poems that I mention on the side of the blog. I love it. And my tour de force - the picture above - which I found on a bathroom fittings type website after scouring the internet. Perfect!

Outdoor Shower


Crusted with dried brack, dusted with
sand, shaking from the cold Atlantic,
hair gristled with crystals, tangled with the
jellied palps of wrack - just step on this
slatted rack, pull the iron
handle of the forged world toward you.
The sluice courses, down your shin,
in a swirling motion, milk smoke, the
silky rush of fresh water, supple and alkaline.
Lids clenched, you reach for the small
oil torso of soap, run it
along your limbs and whirl it over the points of the
three-point shower star of sex:
arm-pit, arm-pit, sex. Then the gritty
dial of your face, lather it, bring it
under the coursing, and open your mouth,
stone-sweet well-water,
and then the head,
delve it in so the sand around the scalp
dances like the ions at the edges of matter,
and the shampoo, mild soldier,
take her by the shoulders and pour the pale eel on your head. Then
      feel them going:
salp, chitin,diatom, dulse, the
blind ones of the ocean. Rinse until
it pours down your head like water, the dark
descendant pelf of the land. Now open your eyes -
green lawn, silver pond,
grey dune, blue Atlantic,
the simple fields of God, liquid and solid.
Turn and turn in hot water,
column of heat in the cool wind
and sunny air, squeeze your eyes and then
open them again - look, it is still there,
the world as heaven, your body at the edge of it.
Sharon Olds


from Blood, Tin, Straw, Knopf.

Going Swimmingly

My last swim was almost two weeks ago as I've been under par - not completely laid up, but not quite up to the joy of swimming either. I spent today with a group of friends whose shared experience is our work. One of these friends swims on a regular basis in Llyn Tegid - Lake Bala in Wales. Talking with her and seeing the weather forecast - 'bright and milder' - made me want to dust off the wetsuit and jump in. Well, getting back in a swimming pool will be a move in the right direction...

And, as for swimming in the great outdoors, I found this fascinating link. It's a memo by Roger Deakin in a House of Commons debate. He cites a passionate, lyrical piece by Kate  Kellaway about outdoor swimming and writing!!

Continuing with my theme of poems by women in International Women's Week, here's the swimming poem by Katherine Pierpoint that Kate Kellaway refers to in her piece: 

Going Swimmingly

The blue-rinsed pool is full of rhythmic, lone strokers.

It drew us in from the edges as though it were blotter-dry and we were rushing liquid.

Swimming, an occasional, unseen toe contact

Seems to come long after the other solemn face bobbed by;

The body lengthens, a pale streamer drifting out under a Chinese lantern.

Standing in the pool,blinking and pinching your nose, brings

A strange, slewed perspective down to the wavering floor -

Firm, cream shoulders, telescoped to no trunk,

Standing on skewing, marbled shimmypuppet legs,

Fatdappled with fallen blue petals of curling light.

Swimming, everything is simplified.

The eye level so low, a baby's out along the drunken carpet.

A rhythmic peace, of rocking and being rocked,

Plaiting yourself into the water,

Ploughing an intricate, soft turtle-track along the undersurface,

Each stroke a silver link in the chain that melts behind you.

Sheer weight and size of water!

Remembering some geography and its clean, cross-section diagrams -

The sea is an upside-down mountain of water,

An up-turned yogi

Alive with pulling, fluid muscles;

A pressing city of water; a universe;

The town pool is an inverted block of flats, something

Gathered and gently milling. Container for a small revolution.

Hands trying to pray. Legs slowly trying to fly.

Simple, straining juxtapositions -

Waterbuffalo! Hovercraft! Starfish!

The water on fire in volcanoes and set in earth in amber!

The swimmer broaches a strange but yielding density;

Leans quietly into a huge, enfolding flank.

Reaches over, forward and out; to re-test the limits,

Smooth the limbs,

Of a rediscovered lover.

Katherine Pierpoint

From 'Modern Women Poets' edited by Deryn Rees-Jones, Bloodaxe

Beautiful, isn't it!!

In The Words Of Hilda Ogden.....

.....the world is my lobster! The essay has gone (met the deadline!) and I'll hear its fate within four weeks.  All being well, it's good enough. Now every word for 2010 can be in stories and poems!

Hurrah!

Digging My Way Out

I am snowed in, so to speak, writing a 6,000 word essay which must be completed and handed in by 4.30 on Monday. There is nothing else for it but to dig, dig, dig until my work is done.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

Every post a winning post

It's like a fairytale. All the confidence, power and rhythm that I establish by the end of a swim have inevitably disappeared by next morning when I hit the pool again. The lengths have stopped swimming themselves and it's like Groundhog Day, or 50 First Dates. Back at square one and facing the same barriers that were there yesterday.....and the day before.....and the day before.....

.....This morning was no different. The alarm went off a bit later but we were in the pool by 7.35, ploughing up the 50 metre lengths. Although the barriers feel the same, I know I have made important changes, which I don't want to discount. Hence the title of this post, one of my dad's wise sayings. For instance, I'm now freestyling and enjoying it. Six - no - three months ago I couldn't have predicted that. I'm swimming three, sometimes four times each week, and missing it on the days when I don't get to a pool. I've lost six pounds in weight and feel stronger and healthier. So what, if it takes me 12 or 15 laps to get settled in the water. Perhaps the next bit of progress will be to see that number decrease as time goes on.

We're having a bit of a swimfest weekend. Last night we watched 'The Swimmer' starring Burt Lancaster. Made in the late 60's, it's strange and compelling, quite political in its way, awkward, but maybe it's meant to be. It's based on a short story by John Cheever and like all good short stories, it leaves you with questions rather than answers. And speaking of short stories, I've received my copy of the latest Mslexia, announcing their short story competition. 2,200 words by January. I've been percolating an idea for some time now - guess what - it involves swimming! Now, maybe this deadline will give me the incentive to develop it.

Crime and punishment

My secret's out and I endured the walk of shame on Monday morning. The kids booed and hissed as I sat down at the breakfast table.

Despite their suspicions that I wasn't a shark wrangler, they'd loyally defended me to the hilt over the years when their friends had dared to question my fighting ability/sanity. Now that the world knows they've been duped by their own mother, I am off the pedestal and they take it as a license to tell lies willy nilly. In addition, my sister is horrified that I've unleashed that picture on the universe, when she's just got used to her new identity. Well, at least we're wearing masks. In an attempt to put things right, here is another picture of us when we were much younger and dressed in a more seemly fashion.

I've been asked by Amazon to submit reviews of two books which appear in the side bar of this blog - Wild Swim and Swimmer. I appreciate that this is not an approach from the Times Literary Supplement and that a computer will have generated the request, based on my previous buying. I nearly dispatched the email straight to the bin without thinking. But then I stopped and reflected that here I am, writing about swimming. So I'll consider it a pleasure to write about writing about swimming for the Amazon readership, particularly as both books are such excellent reads.

Thought for the Day (2)

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

Breaking the silence

When I was little I liked watching Stingray on our black and white TV - I just loved the storylines that featured Marina. For one thing because she was a girl, and incredibly glamorous, for another because of the way she seemed to float through the water - jerky, but strangely graceful, all at once!

I hadn't realised why she was silent, until recently I read this passage on internationalhero.co.uk about Marina and her people:

..........Marina was a native of the undersea city of Pacifica, the daughter of its ruler Aphony. Pacifica was menaced by the evil Titan. Marina, along with the rest of the inhabitants, had been sworn to silence by the villain, on pain of being destroyed if they spoke, and so they used gestures to communicate instead...........

The explanation for Marina's silence struck a chord with me, and set me thinking about my process around creative writing. I love writing and yet.....sometimes it's as if I believe I'll be destroyed if I voice my thoughts this way. Or rather, my impulse is to destroy what I've written before anyone has a chance to read it. This started to change a couple of years ago when I began writing poetry. This blog is another opportunity for me to confront that impulse. I won't be menaced by that evil Titan any longer.

Thought for the Day

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair.

Kingsley Amis

Hmmm........