A Sparrowhawk ate my homework...

... and other excuses. It sometimes doesn't take much to disrupt the writing. The appearance of the Sparrowhawk on the garden bird feeders did just that and my compulsion to video it (See it here). Then of course I had to tell my friends about it and Tweet about it, followed by a celebration coffee in Kitsch (My coffee shop of the moment.)

Fortunately, I had produced a significant amount of writing yesterday, as well as making some important decisions re: the structure of The Key to Finlac. A day off then is excusable.

This though is the stuff of writing stories. It is the accumulation of small things, the looking and the excitement of it and the desire to tell people about it in a way that is fresh and conveys the wonder of it all...

House Martin - The Bringer of Stories.

The other day I stopped on the way to my destination and stood stock still for ten minutes. A group of House Martins were feeding over a wild patch of water, bog plants and reeds close to the path. Flying fast at shoulder level they spiralled around me. To them I could have been any inanimate object. For me it was as close to airborne birds as I am ever likely to come. I could have looked them in the eye if they hadn't been moving so fast.

The air is light, the sunshine warm. Following small speeding bodies in flight with only one's eyes, the bright background a wash of colour, is disembodying. Such is the lightness of being. Gone is the weight of the world. And so is time. For a moment. This is close to flying.

Ariel.

How to tell of this? Find the right words and pictures to release something in the imagination. This is why children need to learn to love language and illustration from an early age through picture books, songs, poems and nursery rhymes. It is why children need to read and be told stories, and it is why it is beholden upon us to encourage them to enjoy the written word as they grow older.

Seeing a House Martin is one thing, being able to tell someone about the joy of it is another.

Back on the road thanks to Cormac McCarthy

What is my impetus to write? I certainly know what the barriers are. That's easy. A glimmer of sunshine in a wet summer, a trip to the coast, the prospect of new birds on a SW gale, sitting in cafes, fiddling with technology - which still seems like magic to me.

I've had a writing lay-off for about two weeks, for all the reasons above in no particular order.

SUMMER!

So I'm back to my revisions of The Key to Finlac today and it has gone reasonably well. Up early. A fresh look. New ideas. An impetus. Clarity. For now.

So what was it that brought me back to the desk, apart from the remnants of discipline? I think it is because I believe that fifteen year olds are better off reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, than they are The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. If you want to read about the human spirit in a dystopian setting, better off taking a journey on The Road, full of challenge and in the end enlightenment about what is of value in this world. And then there is Ray Bradbury. He wrote so much, and if there was ever a cross-over author it is him.

Writing is the thing; literature is what matters. It's worth spending the time. And the effort. Of course it helps to have role-models and a little inspiration.

Hey, Ray Bradbury... you left somethin' behind.

On 27 March I wrote in my blog entry titled "Sunshine Stopped Play": I have ordered a second-hand edition of Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine" (my copy has long gone - and you can't get it on the Kindle.) I want to read the scene again where Douglas Spaulding puts on his new tennis shoes and races off into summer.



And now Ray Bradbury has gone, in body anyway. The sound of tennis shoes on gravel remain. Why is Ray Bradbury more important for me than many other other writers? He straddled the past and the future; he recognised the present. He captured childhood in a jar, let us look at if for a moment and then released it to fly wherever. He looked at the stars through the lens of a soda bottle and saw things clearly. He saw people as they are. Ray Bradbury's stories, however disturbing, always left me feeling that we have it in us to do better, to put things right if only we can come to terms with our restless yearning and realise that we would never have all the answers. Because there are none.


Ray Bradbury was an influence and still is. In that sense he is there I'm my Timeline with Dylan & The Beatles. 


My secondhand copy of Dandelion Wine did arrive. It looks as if it as never been read. Shame. I shall pick it up, read it, then pass it on. Ray Bradbury still has something important to say.