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Journal of a work-shy writer
Human peculiarities. One human is incarcerated for killing a human and another is a hero for going to war and killing thousands. 30.6.23 Day16
Marcus Zusak’s character Rudy, in The Book Thief, amuses the reader. He is described as exercising his God given right to be stupid when his actions defy reason. This book illustrates the incongruent actions people of similar upbringing will take under the same circumstances.
Some Germans held on to human instincts others fell prey to heroic patriotism against neighbours they had known all their lives. Compassion led some to help and others to simply look on, in the scene where skeletal prisoners marching to their death were offered morsels of bread by Hans Hubermann. Life was cheap.
So why is it that some were more stupid than others? Why did some band together against the ‘Other’ on a quest for world dominion but others saw the insipid grandiosity of a vapid narcissistic character wielding power and disseminating evil through his country.
Dear Morning Pages,
Is it nurture or nature that shapes each of us? Some are reared from young with animals and grow to love and keep loving animals throughout their lives. Some have no concept of pet ownership yet find an abandoned creature and introduce themselves and their households to pet ownership at the tender age of 12 or in midlife. Where did that concept or yearning originate?
It is a mystery, the intricacies of humans that stir them on to great loves and others caged in prisons of hate.
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Journal of a work-shy writer – The public shaming of a victim.
18.4.23 Wanted: A menial for dog walks.
We all could benefit from the extravagance of employing own personal menials to take on dog walks. The sole purpose of our menial would be to pick up those warm remains our four-legged-friends leave behind. Leaving us to bask in the harmonic calls and responses of the beautiful countryside. However, menials for such jobs are scarce.
Should a dog-walker be publicly slaughtered if they have a genuine aversion to picking up their dog’s liquid faeces? Do we do more damage in dragging them to the public internet square and hanging, drawing, and quartering them? Is this justice system sufficient to bring about a change in behaviour in the dog-poo-criminal?
Nicola Williams’s strong protagonist in ‘Without Prejudice’ is conflicted in representing the suave Clive. The fickleness of the process leaves the reader distrustful of the justice system. The public shaming of the rape victim, an incidental minor plotline, brought about a change in the victim’s own behaviour. The retribution meted out to satisfy their need for justice perhaps caused more damage to the victim by taking matters into their own hands.
Dear Morning Pages,
How does a writer skillfully rant and rage on the internet that results in positive change, allows catharsis, and protects the miscreant? Is it rhetorical devices one should employ, or possibly use emotive language without judgement, better still leave out the torrid stream of abuse and vitriol!
Journal of a work-shy writer – Ted Hughes on Observation and Experience
5.4.23 ‘I made a model of you’ Day 13
What a goldmine learning from Ted Hughes. He reveals how ‘words kill each other’. He teaches that; writing is about the author’s feelings and not a pedantic account of facts, in describing a landscape or the features of a person. A novel should be birthed from the author’s own passions and not borrowed from another’s fantasy. He demonstrates how a family relative can be used to shape many characters. He places significant emphasis on observation, being alert to one’s environment.
Hughes claims that through observing people, subliminal messages are communicated to the world about that person’s story. And writers can steal a thing or two from looking closely!
Being pregnant with a novel has many stages (not Hughes’ analogy), and each chapter should be indulged in thoroughly, as every trimester would. And chapters could then be organised or discarded at the preparation for the birthing stage.
Dear Afternoon Pages,
It is a mystery that Hughes did not read Sylvia Plath’s body language and pick up on her ‘oedipal obsession with her father’ as she made a model of him after her ‘Daddy’.
My goal is to sit in a café and write strangers’ biographies! It would be fabulous entertainment to cross check the validity of these stories!
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Journal of a work-shy writer – Collectivism vs Individualism
31.3.23 ‘I am a nobody! Who are you?’ Day 12
Emily Dickenson strikes a chord in all our hearts by stating the obvious. She identifies this need in us to count for something, to leave a piece of ourselves behind and not necessarily in the embodiment of a mini us but something perhaps a little more.
Anne of Green Gables is apparently loved in Japan because of her selfless giving to her foster aunt. An orphan girl, the lowliest of status, works hard and does not allow her circumstances to hold her back. Instead, she outshines her contemporaries from more fortunate backgrounds.
Our society encourages us to put our own needs before others, some enlightened cultures do otherwise. The collective good takes precedence over the individual. Anne of Green Gables develops from a nobody into a somebody when she is fostered by Marilla Cuthbert and her brother Matthew Cuthbert. When Marilla gets into dire straits, in gratitude, Anne humbly delays her dreams to support Marilla. Her attitude in being the best teacher possible for her ‘insignificant’ community gives her a lasting legacy.
Dear Afternoon Pages,
Surely writers can indulge the whims of their readers? Reading is to escape from reality. The individual wants to indulge his escapism. The collective will always be there afterwards. Fictional worlds do not always have to be instructional?
Many books have been burnt through history for the collective good. Can the burning of books be justified if it is to frustrate the needs of a megalomaniac or the spreading of hate? Who then decides? An individual or a group of individuals? If this group represents a cross-section of society, can they credibly represent the thoughts and sensibilities of any number of peoples?
The individualism of a wide spectrum of writers cannot be confined to the narrow perspective of individual nobodies wanting to be somebody at the cost of many bodies.
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Journal of a work-shy writer
21.2.23 Day 10 We all are Dorian Gray
If there were no consequences to vanity and self-idolisation in pursuing our compulsions would we dip a toe in the pool of selfishness or plunge right in, lap it up to bursting point? Perhaps, if there were no Picture keeping account of our wrongs, or a Basil pricking our conscience, we would have a mind-bending time. We would be seduced by the devil, Harry and become our own creations, answerable to nothing better than ourselves.
Dear Evening Pages,
How Wilde convincingly wove Dorian Gray from an innocent young man to a cold murderer is pure brilliance. The age old symbolism of good and evil in tension is relevant even today. However, should a novel be a pulpit for unsolicited advice? Should characters be redeemable, should they be allowed to get away with evil? Do readers want the despicable running riot on their pages? Does the reader want justice, after all we all expect justice to come knocking on our door if we stray? Should anyone, even fictional characters evade justice?
The Writer should weave their tapestry as they wish, colour clash as much as they dare. ‘Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’ said Oscar Wilde.
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Journal of a work-shy writer
13.2.23 Day 9 Jane Austen the history teacher
Fay Weldon claims you learn about history from novels and not history books. Jane Austen’s situational knowledge makes her books compelling. And if ‘history is written by victors’ (possibly Churchill’s quote), authors of history books must state their affiliations as disclaimers right at the start but unfortunately that is never done.
Austen’s clear illustration of the impact laws had on women, leaving widows destitute, unable to inherit or earn a respectable wage leaves us well educated on the history of time.
It is the application of knowledge that matures a learner into an accomplished apprentice.
Dear Evening Pages,
We meet again, after a long wrestle with Atwood’s Burning Questions and Weldon’s Letters to Alice.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that storytelling, whether prose or verse, is a craft that can only be honed from the sheer labour of grafting. Each sentence, simple and complex, needs to be chiselled into shape, smoothed out, the artist takes a step back and works on it repeatedly, till it is beautiful in its beholder’s gaze. The artist has to be brave enough to look at their work admiringly yet critically, before sharing it with readers and critics.
The only real annoyance is that, it is a life long apprenticeship and just when the artist thinks he has got into the swing of it i.e. ‘found his voice’, he meets word magicians and he faces the truth, he has only just begun. These are ground breaking moments that will radicalise the artist’s writing and drive him forward to become a better educator.
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Journal of a work-shy writer
5.2.23 Day 8 We look away when faced with destitution. Is it ethical to buy a car that has been repossessed?
To keep the wheels of capitalism from falling off and careering down the cliffs, governments bailed many a smug banker. That was 2007-2009. It is 2023, and many a humble nurse, teacher, ambulance driver and the list goes on, are in need of a bailout in exchange for a round of applause on a Thursday evening. Their voices are muffled in the inflation squeeze.
Society evolves and shape its values, decides what is acceptable and what may not be acceptable but is a bitter pill to be swallowed. What level of poverty is unacceptable and must be swept under the carpet. A frog boiled slowly alive is accustomed to its situation and does not realise the critical time to object. We too, are at such a pivotal point, just before 100 degrees and it may be time to raise a warning flag.
Dear Evening Pages,
We have managed 7 days, not consecutively but a week nonetheless. Here is the 8th!
He woke, rubbed his eyes, blinked a few times to get the policewoman at the window in to focus. It was cold. She was reassured he was not a corpse. She nodded, tugged her collar a little closer and continued her rounds.
It was a common sight. Some slept in boxes. Those running from bailiffs, in cars. Work was scarce. Fruit picking could buy a cup of tea, a sandwich with some change leftover but only in fruit picking season.
St. Robin Hood did not live in this side of town.
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Journal of a work-shy writer
31.1.23 Day 7 ‘Can you keep your dog under control! Stop him chasing other dogs!’
We all know that our primitive behaviours in our interaction with our environment, is like a noose slowly sucking the life out of us , yet we persist with vigour.
In the fellowship of dog walking, we share a nod, smile or greeting as we walk our little companions almost daily. Today, an unfamiliar comrade reprimanded me. My dog had taken it upon himself to behave like a dog, barking, chasing and teasing another dog.
We seem to be of the notion that the earth really is ours to dominate. Dogs have their own code of conduct. They sniff, prowl and bark depending on perceived friend or foe. Dog ‘owners’ are to subdue these creatures and shape them into human-like-machines so we can co-exist in comfort. Is it not sufficient that we have bred out their wolf like instincts?
Dear Evening Pages,
Can the life of a writer be laid bare on clean pages for all and sundry? Perhaps we can hide dirty linen in our stories. Here goes.
Orbit is my name. 1 hop and skip through hedges and shrubs, well cultivated agricultural vegetation. None of which challenge my understanding of this territory. The woods offers some diversity and I must settle for this environmentally engineered habitat because the alternative would be unbearable.
On my walkabouts, I encounter strange entities. Some worthy of attention, I may permit a pat or two, they are impressionable. I am charming! Some are terrifying, even from a distance of five metres. My hackles shoot up in mistrust. But there are others who camouflage as safe and on closer inspection turn ugly. They snarl for no fathomable reason. On these occasions I step back, watch, nestle down and cower.
Journal of a work-shy writer
24.1.23 Day 6 Here we go again (Can a toilet be an unusual place?)
And so I continue on this elusive quest. A 30-day-writing challenge is the panacea for a writer’s ailment? The challenge is to write in an unusual place, using the prompt, ‘She said you will be here.’
Dear Evening Pages,
Why?
‘She said you’ll be here.’ He whispered through the dark mask of his balaclava, the heist was to start at the stroke of midnight. The full moonlight sought to betray them in the confines of a male toilet cubicle in the Museum of Fine Art. They spread themselves as flat as possible on opposite walls. The security guard confidently strode past them, his torch lit the entrance to the toilets as they ducked down away from the glass on the door. It would be a trying night, one that would test their infamous skills.
Journal of a work-shy writer
19.1.23 Day 5 Flying boots give me wings
Frantic for inspiration on an old chugging underground train with a free newspaper, I saw Dr. Martens’ boots were floated. 9 karat gold sold as 24. That’s the stock market for you. I imagined wings on either side of each boot float over the heads of their stylish patrons and on to my pages.
Dear Evening Pages,
It should flow today.
The workers were desperate. Mouths to feed, rooms to heat. It was the dark ages. One evening, as Sam read aloud to his family of three, frost biting through threadbare blankets. Reading together gave some comfort. Sam dozed off mid sentence, his forgiving audience resigned to a quiet evening, sat talking through their ordinary day.
A few moments later, he woke up and started reading as though he had been awake all the while. Only, Mark and little Jenny sat with gaping mouths watching boots with golden wings, fly, soar and dip chaotically around the light furnishings, some bumped into curtains and others into furniture.
Journal of a work-shy writer
18.1.23 Day 4 The struggle is real
It truly is a hard life, tied to a diary entry a day to get the writing juices flowing. It’s the accountability of one other pair of eyes waiting for the scroll. Read all about it!
Dear Evening Pages,
It’s going to happen. Here goes.
It was the night before he almost betrayed them. Betrayal to his new love called, The Journal. They had had only three dates but he had been tied up with quite legitimate commitments. A day he almost fell back into old habits. A long day at work and feet up in front of the box. A few more electronic distractions. When suddenly, he turned and caught sight of the flowers he had prepared beforehand to enhance his suave maneuvers. With a sigh and an emotional heave, he made his mind to show up for the rendezvous. Here he is!
‘Life is not a rehearsal.’
I stare ahead of me,
screen of vulgar dimensions
quench thirst. Pause.
‘Not before dusk’, I remind myself.
Seep, seep, trickle, each hour,
the day that went.
I hear old pipes gurgle,
light bulbs hum to a
crescendo, quench thirst.
‘Not dawn to dusk’, I scold myself.
Seep, seep, trickle, each hour,
the night that went.
I fear the cruel silence,
with my soulless companion,
loneliness unquenched.
‘Turn tape off,’ I calm myself.
Seep, seep, trickle, each hour,
the day that went.
I wear serenity bare,
lost duels in dreamland,
unquenched exhaustion.
‘Try next time’, I pledge myself.
Seep, seep, trickle, each hour,
the night that went.
I am spare at sunrise,
an argument with me,
yesterday’s quenchless thirst.
‘Sober oblivion,’ I wish myself.
Seep, seep, trickle, each hour,
the day that went.
Hope, a driver for intimacy,
awake to the needs of others.
Ends quenchless thirsts.
Tape stops. I find myself.
leap, leap, sizzle, each day,
the life that went.
Let’s Eat?
Let’s Eat?: A collection of 55 poems https://amzn.eu/d/fIF96C7
Journal of a work-shy writer – Holy versus Secular Anorexia. How much blood should be shed on the altar of Art?
4.5.23 Day 15.
Hilary Mantel in ‘Mantel Pieces’ one essay raises the issue of women’s bodies being easy prey subject to public scrutiny. Under public ownership, doctors violated Hellish Nell in the name of judging her credentials as a psychic. A working-class woman providing for a disabled husband and children submitted to dehumanising bodily interrogation that would cause ‘prostitutes to blush’.
Her motives were not simply economics but her Art, her vocation. Sue Prideaux writes about Friedrich Nietzsche, in ‘I am Dynamite’, whose health and relationships suffered for his calling. His drive to be who he was becoming led to an all-consuming obsession with his Art.
Dear Afternoon Pages,
How much is too much? Is it all or nothing? Does ‘writing belong to the gods?’ How then do we make sense of the world other than by our Art?
Journal of a work-shy writer
2.3.23 The bewitching act of writing Day 11
Many arts have raw materials to enable the conjuring of fine forms. To manifest worlds, stir thoughts, and shape personalities, sitting alone with a blank page in a broom cupboard, is magic worthy of commentary.
A.K. Blakemore managed with a little help from the history books and the notoriety of a man willing to break all the strict moral codes of the time to expose and manhandle a woman’s personhood in the very name of morality.
Those who think themselves able to big brother the ‘weaker species’ still run rampage today. Some still not permitted to speak in sacred places.
Dear Afternoon Pages,
Women were sacrificed in 1647 for witchcraft by misogynists who could wield power from the lofty heights of education and class. Gallantly, shouldering the burdensome well-being of society, men like Matthew Hopkins hunted and put to death many women for their strength of character. In the twenty-first century, The Essex Girl is still slandered. ‘Her pride, of which she has so much, and which she wants to pass on to me, as other women give their daughters fine linen and pearl earrings’ as stated by A.K. Blakemore, applies today. There is a ray of hope on this path to liberation, light is peeking through the grey clouds of ‘this is the way it has always been’, many factions of society are itching for change.
Patriarchy in its nobility, motivates. Boris Johnson like Hopkins incarcerated innocents for their own good. Shielded them from the plague of autonomy. But all the while used a different measuring stick for his own behaviour. He rationed people’s freedom in the number of walks per day whilst he danced a merry jester dance.
We burnt him at the stake of incompetency and the stake of untruths.
The poetry of life 