When Less is More...More or Less...

This is my morning. Still working on the revisions to The Key to Finlac. Still trying to reduce the first 45,000 words to no more than 10,000. It's a tough call, but I'm, getting there. The question to be asked all the time is: What is essential to the story? If it doesn't move the narrative forward, leave it out.

But it is also important to remember that 35,000 words have not been wasted. They have not been expunged. Not so much evaporation as distillation.

I write this, so I have the heart to go back to the book again tomorrow. It's a reminder to myself as well as a glimpse into the writing process.

French Lessons with Donna Tartt

Apart from the fact that it is again going to be really hard to get back into the discipline of writing, what have I learned from my visit to France last week?

• Normandy is a continuation of Dorset (geologists may tell me I am entirely wrong) and that is no bad thing. I am still capable of writing an ambiguous sentence
• Red Squirrels abound.
• Driving on the back roads is like being in the 1950's, but you can go faster and engines are more reliable.
• My father landed tanks at Utah Beach in WW2 when he was twenty years old. (But he never mentioned it until I said we'd been there - I wish I'd known beforehand. Do fathers ever talk to sons?)
• Language is not everything - but it helps. A smile goes an awfully long way. It's a myth that the French habitually laugh at the English.

WHAT I REALLY LEARNED is not to be daunted by other writers. Enjoy holiday reading. Come back wanting to write as well as Donna Tartt.

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. 

Robbing Public Libraries to fund the Destruction of Buzzards

(And the latest good news 30.05.12. : Tweet from RSPB - "Defra have dropped their plans for buzzards. We are delighted. And all of you that stepped up should be massively proud - WELL DONE Pls RT"


ORIGINAL BLOG POST -


This has made me really mad. It is not just the threat to Buzzards, which is bad enough, but the sub-text. The pleasure of the many is to be sacrificed for the pleasure of the few. Defra's £400K feels just like another banker's bonus.

In an argument there is more than one side, which is why, although I oppose a cull of Badgers in the interest of controlling bovine TB, I can see that farmers have a legitimate concern in that there is a threat to their livelihoods. Buzzards or any other bird of prey don't pose the same kind of threat to the pheasant shooting business.

The proposal is daft on many counts and the RSPB have put the case more eloquently than I can.  Above all else the proposal is immoral and brings with it more than a whiff of sleaze.

I don't often write to my MP, but here is what I have sent. Feel free to copy it if you want. Do something. Be articulate and make your voice heard through non-violent means.

Dear Mr Carmichael


As one of your constituents I am appalled by DEFRA's proposal to allocate nearly £400k to a trial programme to control Buzzards on behalf of pheasant shoots.


Buzzards are one of the British conservation success stories and any attempt to imprison them, destroy their nests, or relocate them is irresponsible and unnecessary. It sends entirely the wrong message to the next generation about wildlife conservation.


And of course it will have little effect. I quote Martin Harper of the RSPB:


"So how many pheasants do buzzards eat?  An independent report for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) found that on average only 1-2% of pheasant poults were taken by birds of prey. This is tiny compared to the numbers which die from other causes, like disease or being run over on the road (which accounts for about 3 million pheasants a year). 

Even if predation levels are higher in a few instances, there are plenty of legal, non-contentious techniques for reducing predation, which don’t involve destroying nests or confining wild birds to a life spent in captivity. Scaring devices, visual deterrents, more vegetation and diversionary feeding of buzzards could all make a difference, if done well. A few years ago we endorsed a BASC produced guidance note advising gamekeepers on how to reduce bird of prey predation using some of these techniques.


And is capturing buzzards likely to work? If you swat a wasp, but leave a pot of sticky honey open to the air, it won't be long before another wasp takes its place. The same is true of buzzards. Two gamekeepers previously employed on the Kempton estate in Shropshire were convicted of, amongst other things, illegally killing buzzards in 2007. They had killed over 100 buzzards in less than six months in one small part of Shropshire. As soon as one buzzard was removed, another (ill-fated) buzzard took its place. "


I hope you will pass on my comments to Mr Benyon MP, the minister responsible.


Yours sincerely


Giles Diggle