Being gripped

In my case by a want to create more art, and writing - a good thing! I think it's been a fallow period while I was concentrating on trying to get our B and B operational. It's almost there, and since we are having biblical amounts of rain currently, I can't venture out to try and redo (bodge) the window frames and shutters that our future guests will be sitting next to - when we've done the terrace area . . . another job. So, apart from dog duty, in tray garbage sorting, house work and all the usual life stuff I have found more time to write and paint.

With an exhibition booked in August - a good continual prod forward, and a desire to complete my third-in-the-series of Londonia so I can get it out to any potential agents/film people I'm busy, and yes, gripped!

Here's an outline sketch of my latest painting  - canvass courtesy of our local recycling emporium for two euros - a rather more apocalyptic work, but with positivity included . . .

Cake, composition and clothes mending

It's minus two here today but not a cold brightness; freezing fog, and visibility down to a few bushes away. Jobs done, enough wood in, dogs walked - reluctantly, yesterday's lunch revisited and a day of inhabiting the kitchen, and there's nothing wrong with that. When I saw the estate agent pictures I knew the kitchen would become the real heart of the home and it's proving to be very true. 

Interior jobs will get done today: mending things, bill-paying, possible gite project drawings started and possibly completed, gamelan parts written up, cake made (and eaten), latest novel moving forward and last one about to be re-examined. Much is going on in the world; huge and worrying goings on and the kitchen feels like a comforting place to be. 

Once more unto the breach . . .

The breach for me, thankfully, not being a battle zone as King Henry was about to enter - more my own tiny inner-brain conquest to get words into some sort of order and eventually become a book.

This time, I thought I'd try and plan it all a bit more but already the characters are running off meeting other people and claiming accents I hadn't imagined them to have.

This idea started after drooling over a particularly beautiful cheesecake - the sort of thing that someone posts on Instagram before they shove a fork in and start chomping - and grew into a bigger idea about the whole look-at-me phase of human history we seem to be in. Maybe it's always been there to a certain extent: the desire to show, to solicit attention, and pump the ego but now the cry to be noticed appears deafeningly loud.

In my last post, I mentioned the effect Social Media has on me if I'm feeling a little low - a quick posting and then too many subsequent checkings. I'm better writing, however 'jumping off a boat into the unknown sea' it feels like. An hour's writing and I feel accomplished, set up for the day and if I can get back to it within a few hours the idea-thread doesn't unravel too far allowing me to press on unto my own personal breach.

A siren Doppler-Effects its way down the street as I shove the covers away and stand up. The phone slips and falls to the floor, skidding on the lino to stop in a slew of dust. Picking it up, I brush off the clinging deposits and glance at the screen. 

A photo has emerged from the library I was mindlessly trawling –  a pot of rudimentary stew balanced on fire-blackened sticks. Before I can click the image away, it, and what happened after on that camping trip is lodged firmly in my morning-empty mind.

A 'bit' from my new novel: Post 473.  Blackcurrant cheesecake with caramel crunch topping.

                                                  

Photo - Amazon

Social media stagnation, removing yourself from it and being productive

                                           

I felt like this yesterday, and the day before - slightly perplexed, slightly anxious, and cross with myself.
The reason was part mega-procrastination due to not being sure about which direction to go in writing-wise and part waiting to hear something positive - or un-positive - about one of my manuscripts. The procrastination element was largely in the form of Social Media. It has its uses, and if you are feeling buoyant and in control, it's great to dip in and out of. If you are feeling rather more unsure, confused and ego-squished it's an insidious, clinging thing that sets up camp in your mind and crushes the creative urge.
I like Instagram - on the whole - mainly using it as a species of diary/journal/instant portfolio of everything I do, but when the doubt starts seeping, I'm on it far more than is healthy - checking likes, comparing numbers of likes other people have, posting something new just to get that little phone-lighting up fix.
FaceBook . . . personally I find it depressing. I've read and listened to enough Ted Talks, etc, to know it's not just me. Posting the odd weird picture, or beautiful landscape, or sharing an unforgettable image works - again like a sort of life-diary but only in homeopathic amounts. After even ten minutes of scrolling I feel empty and dull, even if I was feeling positive before going on the site. It has its uses - announcing a gig that Mark's doing, acknowledging a friend's new baby/business/wedding, etc, but if things are not steaming ahead on your own personal horizon seeing everyone else being shiny and great makes everything so much greyer - if they are indeed having such a great time. Maybe everyone is staring back at their rectangles of blueish light feeling terribly inadequate even while posting pictures of five-star cookery and new patios.
Twitter . . . no idea. Could be useful one day when I get published, (being positive here) so I have my place on the platform and post the odd surreal picture; like a few friend's comments on the state of the world and don't do more scrolling than a couple of minutes.
I think it was Will Self who was talking about reading a book as oppose to S. media screen stuff - the fact that books and articles have natural stopping points allowing you to go and do something else whereas the continual scroll is difficult to stop - just a few more posts . . . Mind you, I've just read Umbrella which has no chapters or breaks . . . but I needed to stop very frequently just to digest the wordage and complexity of the book.
  
This morning, faced with three possible semi-written, follow-up novels, and the procrastination-demon lurking, I started writing a completely new book, the idea of which had been gestating away in a deep recess of my brain for a while. Rather than try and plan anything very much, as is my won't, I plunged into the thing - which is about Social Media - and two hours later the haze of what the F am I doing sloped off. I didn't check my phone all morning. I haven't looked at FB or Twitter. I've written, cleared out the bathroom cupboard (ugh), prepared our B and B room for guests, cleared up my computer files and cut back some of the rampant garden: all stuff I've been meaning to do but had put off while pootling about on Google and my crap old iPhone had seemed easier.
And lo . . . this pro-activeness has somehow produced positive things.
This afternoon, I've had a useful email regarding the manuscript and have been contacted by someone else who wants to talk about my work. Can it be, as I've often wondered, that kicking yourself up the backside mentally and forcing a new direction that other things start to un-stagnate?
Whatever creative things you like doing - painting, singing, gardening, running, cooking . . . do it and maybe don't post it.

                                                   
image: techcrunch

Finally . . .

A recent picture of me that I not only like, but feel looks like ME - if you know what I mean, seated at my writing table in the corner of the front room next to the wood-stove, and map of London/ book-scribblings on the wall above me. Thanks Penny - great friend and brilliant people-photographer.

Leave me a comment if you wish to know more about her work.

Perfect film endings

I was just adding a bit into my current book where, Hamish - main character - is deciding between watching Withnail and I, Singing in the Rain or the above. This must be one of the greatest film endings ever.

'Well, nobody's perfect'.

Living with someone else

And not just with my husband/lad. I assume as with most writers, my current main character inhabits my head quite a lot of the time, including during sleep.
I woke this morning to realise that, Hamish - second-hand bookshop owner and failed poet - needs to actually live somewhere else other than Bound's Green, London, due to certain distances between his various haunts. So, most of the London mapping I had done on my last city wanderings were in fact inaccurate and he should actually be living in Camden. Of course I can travel around the city on Google Earth but it's not the same; I need (and want) to walk the roads he would walk, take the buses and visit the shops he would go in, at least the ones that are still there (book set in 1985).



Time-warp barber shop in Muswell Hill, which Hamish could go in as his lover (taxidermist) lives above her premises on Duke's Avenue (currently a chemist's shop but as taxidermy shops are rare even in London I've had to relax my rules a little)

Reinventing things

Odd how some things just come about: the way one walks, sense of humour, likes and dislikes, and writing style . . .
I can't actually remember deciding on a style as such. I do recall a brief flirtation with italic nibs at school and taking ages over forming a few words but then that changed over time and somehow I've ended up with a fairly illegible scrawl. Maybe it's just that we are lazier now with keyboards and texting; writing, something a little alien and tedious. However! all that has changed for me from working on a script style for the character, Smithi, in my book of the same name.

After escaping from The Domes of Manchestershire (year 2073), Smithi travels the length of Britain, scribbling furiously in notebooks until the pens he has with him cease to function. He (and I) start to use a dip pen and ink. What joy! Writing becomes slower, a little more formed and sometimes a little haphazard - which I like.
Is it odd to reinvent one's handwriting? I don't think so; maybe it is but maybe I don't care. However, I wish I had thought a little more about my spidery, terrible signature - bit late for that perhaps, unless I become incredible famous and decide to change my name to include the middle A as something more than a letter - Alfred, I feel might be interesting . . .
Of course with this new way of writing, one has to have the right equipment . . . cue a bit of internet junk browsing and obsessional ebay tracking for a few hours. The inkwell I decided I would buy zoomed up to over four hundred quid! well, it was Georgian and apparently, and understandably, a rarity, so back to some cheaper options.
Le Bon Coin, in France is a great site for occasionally happening upon things that no one else seems to be looking for, and ancient inkwells obviously were not 'things of the moment' so I managed to pick up someone's bizarre collection for little money, including this rather intriguing 1920s ceramic bird - the inkwell part hidden under the snail shell - and it came with an excellent scratchy pen.



So onward with Smithi's next illustrations and letters.

  

                                              

ten years have got behind you

no one told you when to run . . . a great and poignant lyric from Time - Pink Floyd.
It's true, time does just melt away - hours, minutes, days, months and years. How to remember all the things that did happen, all the greats, goods and downright miserables - photographs, films, blogs, etc, and diaries.
I used to keep a little diary of the days back around the time of Dark Side of the Moon. I found one when clearing out some stuff the other day - tragically boring with mention of platform shoes, Mud and other groups, and occasionally, a reference to some mild groping that might have been going on in my fledgling love life.
Then the habit stopped when I went off to art foundation and never really got taken up again until our son was born on a fouly (if that's a word) dank day in January 1998. Something so utterly monumental (and painful) had to be recorded, along with all the following baby's days, weeks and months of life. And so it continued; the diary habit stuck and a day doesn't pass when I don't dutifully fill in a page, pen sliding across paper sometimes as I head towards sleep.

                             

The first journals were a mix of exercise books, funky handmade things and extra special tomes like the silk-covered one in the photo above, bought at my request when Ezra was born.
In the last few years I have discovered the page-a-week type diary, which although are uniformly dull in appearance, make sense when trying to store all these capturings of the past.
So, what are they like my diaries? Probably like most other people's diaries - a list of daily happenings with occasional excited scrawls at the top of the page: Ezra got a 19 in music, short story accepted for publication, finally understand how to make pastry, been bloody raining for four days non-stop, etc.
In fact the weather thing becomes an important element in later diaries (little sketch of sun/cloud/hail, whatever) along with information: when the first fire of the year was lit or when it was first possible to swim without a limb falling off; when pomegranates were ready for jam-making or when the broad beans were sowed.
However pedestrian the descriptions of each day the fascinating thing is I can open any page of any year and suddenly that day comes back to you, wholly or partially, depending how mind-numbingly boring or incredibly exciting those hours had been.
I'm going upstairs now to unearth one from the attic . . . back in a mo.

Here we are: Saturday 24th March 2012: picture of the sun with estimated temperature of 12 in the morning to 25 in the afternoon. 'Ate on terrace, no fire and the start of the one euro train from Limoux to Carcassonne (an event worth noting!)
'Woke horribly early, went downstairs and tried to sleep with the dogs but Satie (runty dog) snored. Dozed till 6.30, tea, writing, exercises, brek. Loads of jobs, Mark to work, Kim and Chris (friends staying) up at 9.00. Lot of morning chatting which was nice. They left at 2.00 ish, Mark and Ezra went to Carcassonne on new 1 euro train, I did writing, jobs, emptied water butts, weeded, cleaned back of house, phoned Mum. Boys back at 6.30. Writing, bath, Ezra bed, two episodes of Queer as Folk, USA version - brilliant, bed 11.00.'
So, not incredible, but I can remember that day quite clearly and doubt if I ever would have recalled our friends staying in March of that year if I hadn't written about it.
Of course our son will eventually have to decide what to do with all theses millions of badly written pages, but until then, I'll keep a diary, every day.

Me

For various 'getting noticed', or attempting to do so, reasons, in this overloaded world of novels and writing, I've been trying to 'build a profile' (ugh); difficult as many people seem to be called Kate Hardy, and even adding my middle initial doesn't make a lot of difference.
However, I do seem to be a little more visible on paper/screen, so, in order to be up there, face-wise with the other Kate H's I'll try this . . .

                                        

A fairly honest, and recent pic of me looking like a manic owl. Must get some more done - but I'm always behind the camera.

                                        

                 This one's better, and I like the hair.