Category: editing

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Work In…

Tomorrow marks the end of the official first quarter of the year (91 days this time). So does that mean that I’m a quarter of the way through the work I need to do to publish my book before the end of the year, as I semi-committed myself to? Probably not – in fact, not by a long way. Since I published ‘Single to Sirkeci’ in 2017, the proposed sequel, ‘The Long Way Back’ has not so much been a work in progress as in regress – or at best, stasis

When I first envisaged turning my blog posts into a book about my travels, I massively underestimated the amount of work and time it would take. By about a year and a half after I got back from the original journey, I’d finished my third editing pass through, and began the process of laying it out as a book. That was when I realised that I still had almost 200,000 words – twice what was reasonable for a book of this type.

Around that time, I had a conversation with my artist friend Douglas Jeal about knowing when a piece of creative work is ‘finished’, and the danger of continuing to ‘tweak’ it, a topic which also came up at a meeting of writers which I went to a few days ago. To me it seems there is a difference between a painting or sculpture and a book, which needs a satisfying narrative conclusion, as well as a recognition of that ‘sweet spot’ where nothing more needs to be done.

I couldn’t help thinking that my book didn’t score well on either of those. I had just said a sad farewell to Prague, and moved back in with my ex-husband in the hope that I could nudge him into finally putting the house on the market (which was still not resolved two years after the divorce was granted), so that we could finally draw a line under our marriage, and go our separate ways for good.

While I continued to hack away at the text, I was acutely aware that life was continuing to happen to me, and that a ‘happy ending’ – or even a vaguely positive and upbeat one – still seemed out of my reach…

…to be continued (perhaps)

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Life and Writing

I was going to go to the beach, out for breakfast and then to the shop on the way home, but it was raining. I got up and went to look out of the window, and thought: ‘That’s a large cat sitting on the flat roof of the sheds behind the back wall’, then it got up and turned so I could see it sideways on, and I realised it was a fox. That’s the second time I’ve seen one in the last few months.

There was quite a storm in the night, I heard the wind at one point, it was really wild. It looked as though the rain was settling in for the day, but now the sun’s shining. Still, it will take a while before the benches dry out, and it’s not worth going out to sit on a damp bench to eat breakfast, plus the cafés will be getting pretty full by this time, so I’ll stay here and write.

I was going to write some more about planning and failing, but in the shower I started thinking about ‘The Long Way Back’ again. I said I would start work on it when I’d finished my proof reading job, then I read a few old blog posts and got very depressed remembering those times, and now it looks as though I’m going to be pretty tied up with family things until the middle of next week (or the week after next, depending on when you think ‘this week’ starts) which gives another delay to getting properly started, and when the cafes are properly open I can take my laptop somewhere to get stuck in, which is always a nice way to do it.

I have been ‘planning’ and procrastinating over this for so long now, years in fact. I came to the end of the pre-Prague section early in 2018, I remember it quite distinctly. I went to the café where I used to go for breakfast on Sunday, before the writing group meetings (not one of my usual writing cafes, but it was en route to the dentist, where I’d been for an appointment) and took with me printouts of the early Prague posts, which is when I had the idea that there was just too much, and maybe I’d write a separate book about my time in Prague. Or was that 2019?

This is the problem with writing autobiography – though ‘S2S’ and ‘TLWB’ are strictly speaking memoirs, the distinction being that an autobiography is the story of a whole life, but memoirs are just a specific part of a life, either in terms of time or of an interest which may cover different periods. But as a memoirist, I find it hard to see how an autobiography can ever be finished, unless the author is still writing it on their deathbed (which in my case might well happen).

Life feeds writing, and writing feeds life, like Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail.

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Life-Writing, Fractals and Plasterers’ Vans

I’ve been listening to Maya Angelou’s autobiographies, which have been serialised on BBC Sounds, each volume in five fifteen minute episodes. I’ve just played the first episode of a new volume, I think it’s the fifth, and I’ve worked out she is about thirty when it starts.  

I’m not going to say any more about it, and obviously I’m not in any way comparing myself to her in terms of either writing skill or inherent interest of the story, but it did set me thinking about the issues of writing about one’s own life. This is of course because I’m psyching myself up to go back to working on The Long Way Back (when I’ve finished with my current editing job, and if I don’t get caught up in anything else). Maybe when the cafés open again, and I can take my notebook style laptop (bought in late 2019 to encourage myself to go out and do just that, hah! What great timing that was!)

The thing about writing about your own life is the clash between the time it takes to write about it and the time it takes to live it- something I remember writing about at the time when I was travelling, and berating myself for not spending enough time writing. Time has this trick of passing no matter what your intentions or what you actually do (or don’t do) with it. And how do you ever stop? How do you write some kind of conclusion? You make a decision, you find a way to tie up the loose ends which are still dangling from the narrative, but if you don’t jump on it and get it done (and I am clearly not a jump-on-it-and-get-it-done kind of person), events overtake you, and how do you account for them?

I just got distracted by a van parked across the road, with the front passenger door open and covering part of the company name, so that it looks like: ‘X&Y PUG limited’ and I’ve been waiting for someone to close the door so I can see what it really is – I keep thinking ‘Pugh’ except that I can see there’s no ‘h’ on the end and there are some letters covered up, so that makes no sense. But when the full name’s revealed, it’s ‘X&Y PLASTERING’, my eyes had just conflated the beginning of the L with the end of the N to make U. How boring.

I intended to carry on what I was writing about yesterday, and not get distracted into life-writing and plasterers’ vans. I couldn’t see the connection between the former and the ideas of granularity and fractals that were rattling around my brain, but then I realised there was a connection. Writing about your own life is like having a hypothetical map of the world on a scale of 1:1 – it covers the whole world. If the grains are fine enough, doesn’t it appear continuous? So how to structure it into a narrative? TBC…

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The Long Way Back

Yesterday was the anniversary of one of my most vividly-remembered days described in ‘Single to Sirkeci’, when I arrived at Port Camargue. Earlier in the week I was remembering Prague, and it all set me thinking about ‘The Long Way Back’, and whether I’m ever going to finish it. I’ve been thinking about it for years – or, more accurately, I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. At first I used to start each year with the resolution that: ‘this is the year I’ll finish and publish it!’, but gradually I got over that, and recently I have been trying to learn to let it go, along with all my other failures.

I spent about six months, from autumn 2017 to spring 2018, trying to make something of it. It started with the ‘rump’ of around forty thousand words describing the return half of the journey from Istanbul back to England, which I’d chopped from the sixth draft of ‘Single to Sirkeci’. Prior to deciding to split the manuscript, I’d spent a couple of years on the herculean task of trying to edit the 200k word first draft down by half, and after brushing off multiple suggestions of chopping it into two books, and stalling at 140k, I gave in to the inevitable.

When I published ‘S2S’ in early 2017, the plan for ‘The Long Way Back’ was to combine the material I had on the return journey with a briefer description of what had happened after my return; my time in Prague; my moving to Southsea; and some reflections on lessons learned from the ‘life journey’ (if I could think of any) – I even wrote an introduction and blurb to that effect, which I must dig out some time when I need a good laugh at the ironies of over-ambition.

Giving myself six months to deal with cancer and chemo, I started in September 2017 to go through blog posts from the time between returning ‘home’ at the start of August 2012, and departing for Prague in May 2013. Rather than the planned précis, I found myself editing a tale of disappointment, depression and yearning, as I struggled to come to terms with life – while, in the present, also struggling to come to terms with moving on from cancer. This resulted in a further fourteen thousand words to add to the forty, and I hadn’t even started on Prague – which, when I went back to it, was also a saga of depression and disappointment, although alleviated in places just by the fact of being in Prague. Then there was the year after, living back with my ex (working title: ‘Madwoman in the Attic’), mystery illness, moving to Southsea – and then what?

For a while I toyed with the idea of turning Prague into a third volume, and spent some time trying to find three–syllable words starting with either ‘B’ or ‘R’ to make a catchy title: ‘Bohemian Something-or-other’ but with no luck.

Then I just stopped. I just stopped writing.

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Apostrophes

I spent my last half hour in bed this morning thinking about apostrophes, and how simple the rules are, and why do so many people have a problem with them, and how can I explain them to people? Actually, I’ve been thinking about it pretty much ever since, and still am.

Because the rules really aren’t that difficult, but I’m just terrible at explaining things, and that’s why I couldn’t be a teacher.

The first, and most common, reason for using an apostrophe is to show contraction – where some letters have been left out: aren’t, I’m, couldn’t.

The other reason (yes, there are only two), is to show possession: Fred’s brother, the cat’s whiskers. And the only part of this which is tricky is that for words that don’t end in S, you add ‘S, but for words that do end in S, it’s usual to put the apostrophe after the S. So, a maid who works for a lady is a lady’s maid, but a college for ladies is a ladies’ college. That’s it.

Most of the confusion comes from the tendency these days for people to throw an apostrophe at any word that ends in S (usually plurals) whether or not the context is to do with indicating possession. They don’t even do it consistently – like a chip shop advertising: fish, chips and pea’s. Why does peas warrant an apostrophe but not chips? They both end in S. Do they think peas is different because it has a vowel before the S? In which case, what about pies and pizza’s? Or even pie’s and pizzas?  

But oh for the days when only the signs outside fish and chip shops – or greengrocers – were affected. These days it happens everywhere – anything you read, not just on the internet but everywhere. There must have been three generations of English teachers since I learnt this 60 years ago, and somewhere down the line the transmission has broken down. And it makes me want to weep every time I see it.

I understand about language having to change, and I break ‘the rules’ in ways that would horrify my teachers, but I do it consciously, consistently, knowing the effect I want to achieve, what’s important and what isn’t. But this has no logic to it, no reason, no consistency. Why bother at all? Why not just abolish apostrophes altogether, as e e cummings did with capital letters, rather than chuck them in whenever you feel like it for no reason whatsoever?

Incidentally, a few paragraphs back, the mighty Word has inscribed a blue squiggly line under my use of it’s in it’s usual (and just did it again). It’s trying to tell me I need to use its – which I would, if I was showing possession. But I’m not. It’s is a contraction for it is, and interestingly it hasn’t underlined it that time.

Yes, I grant you that is the one time when apostrophe might become confusing. But it’s not that hard.

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Routines

My routines seem to be falling apart. For example, I have only written once in the last three days. Last night I went to bed as usual at 11:30, then lay in bed awake for over an hour and a half, woke after five, stayed in bed awake thinking that I’d get up when the heating came on at 6:30, but by 6:40 I still couldn’t hear the boiler. Then I remembered that it was Saturday and the heating runs on a different programme at the weekends and doesn’t come on till seven. I looked at the clock and saw it was only ten minutes away so decided I might as well wait, then dozed off again and woke properly to find it was 7:45. I finally dragged myself out of bed at 8:30, and decided to miss out my exercise routine and first coffee, skipped straight to breakfast, ate my porridge and then made waffles afterwards (this is a good thing – for my mental health, if not my body). I decided to write my blog after all, but on the laptop downstairs rather than venturing upstairs to the PC.

The study is pretty cold. The whole house seems to be cold. Yesterday I thought about turning up the thermostat, then I realised that the radiators were already on, so they weren’t even reaching the thermostat setting as it was. In the hall, I noticed there’s a draft coming through the side door, which is at the end of the hall directly opposite the front door and opens onto the gap between the extension at the back of my house and the one next door. I realised then that the two doors line up directly east-west, so the ‘beast from the east’ type of wind is channelled between the two houses then goes straight through from back to front.

I have started doing some (paid) editing work, which is gratifying and quite fun, and at least gives me the incentive to do something. Because I’m doing it for someone else, it takes priority. Things which are solely for my own benefit, like exercising, tidying away the card-making stuff from the kitchen table (only a month to my daughter’s birthday, when I’ll need it all again) or blogging get shoved to one side in favour of… knitting and sudoku. I’ve impressed myself with how well I’m doing at writing my ‘to do’ lists in my diary every day, but I’m not making much headway with the big stuff.

Just noticed that the coffee cup I’m drinking from is a dirty one from yesterday, which I must have picked up rather than taking a clean one from the rack. ‘Run dishwasher’ is one of the items on today’s list – it really is that banal.

But, I am writing, and will soon have finished with the requisite 500 words, despite my general lethargy. Then, while the laptop is still on top of my lap, I may bring my accounts up to date.