2015 The Resurrection of Focus. (Careless Talk Costs Lives).

Reality Redefined.

The mirror glass is still intact
Dividing us from all there is…
No metronome controls the tune:
The podium seems vacant, but
All clamour and would fain conduct.
The score mislaid, and not yet bowed,
The key itself is undefined…
The concert now is being tuned
By discordant soloists
Trumpets blown are all their own…

Not being a proficient musician I have only the currency of words. They are plucked out of silence. When I christened this blog ‘Careless Talk‘ it left the more important part, ‘Costs Lives’ implicit. That was because I hoped the life of writing, and other writers would complete it. It was an invitation to those who understood silence to gather round and illustrate the ‘cost of their lives’ from which were derived decisions to write. Instead I suspect it was misunderstood as the sanctioning of the trivial or ill-considered. So perceived, so it appeared, a soliloquy diverting at best, but inconsequential. No programme, no benefits, no bullet lists, little relevance. There is no time, these days, simply to be amused or diverted, or even provoked. All must be to some gain, or some progress. We are all in such a hurry going nowhere, elbowing our way as nicely as possible.

As the observant might notice my site is no longer ‘ Mavericks and Inspiration’ or ‘Quite Serious Fun’ but re-christened ‘Reality Redefined’. What I hope to keep in focus is the gulf each of us steps across to render wordless experience into words. Experience is wordless. It is the silence that gives shape to words, poetry most tellingly, but even the podium on which prose holds forth, around which characters strive to ‘reach goals’ plots ‘turn pages’, or polemic bangs its drum, starts with the first word ‘Once…’ or variants thereof.

Our voices are shaped by our lives, our words by the fit between the reality of our unique journey and what we distil as worthy of offering, valuable, quirky, creative or escapist. Choices govern. As writers we have a mission (though few would be brave enough to admit it.) Affirming our identity, our unique vision we set words down, and hope for one other to say ‘I get who you are, and what you are about.’ In writing we first find out about ourselves; in publishing we look in the mirror that reflects back.

It does not always reflect clearly. The perception in the mirror might be fogged due to the indiscriminate and clumsy words themselves, or, more often, the angle of light, the disposition of the glass slanted against a clear reflection, or a failure to stand still and let the image focus. Or it is just not what we expected, so we do not see at all.

If I have a passion it is to stand clear of coercion. If I have a skill I hope it is to make space for the perfection of the individual. It is why Involution- An Odyssey, a history of Western thought, tells the rosary beads of genius, on which our seeming certainties all rest. We have been indoctrinated by the soulless narrative that we have arrived here by accident, our ephemeral short lives meaningless in the greater scheme of creation. No wonder we all shout to contradict. Before we drown in the story we have collectively agreed upon, and make it true.

I disagree with almost all of it. Reality is not that story (or that stony). That is only the perception.

This blog will explore the difficulties of a Reality up against that Perception; how it occasions compromise, subverts the original, feeds on competition, persuades the unique to dress more soberly to pass muster. My invitation now is amended from the ‘careless talk’ to the ‘costed’ lives. Join in and shout, interrupt, contradict. Suggest guest posts or interviews that affirm your unique experiences and how (if you write) it shaped that writing? If you read what changed when you found that reflection? If consciousness creates then you share the responsibility of assent. Amend that assent, give us your caveats.

Post the provocative, the prescient, the perceptive.

The spiritual is not a sentiment, or a posture, but a vigorous affirmation of your place in the symphony of consciousness. I hope to reaffirm. Please join me? Subscribe and add weight, every little helps.

Trivial does not make much sense
In symphonic consciousness…
Relationships are intricate.
A piccolo will penetrate
The deep ocean of a unison bass.

2014 Reviewed-Current Consciousness of the Prevaricating Author.

The Year Passed (2014) Reporting Back to Myself.

In this hiatus between Christmas and New Year I must refine almost everything. Take stock of stony failures, acknowledge some small shoots of promise that need staking and decide upon the reality of any ambitions. I have been a lifelong writer, but an ‘author’ for 1/74th of my life. Net result is I have more WIP than there will be time to finish, publish, and wave about. Too busy being mother for far too long, and probably missed the sell by date on almost everything, particularly in discovering what I might be of value to others.

What takes priority? Life? Remembering to notice the new? Returning with a dodgy wrist to rescue what little remains of cello playing? Drive my patient husband occasionally to see a view? Or slog on with the dubious business of keeping up with the literary Joneses, doomed, I fear, to certain failure.

The Works in Progress? None shout ‘best seller’ or Amazon Rankings, yet they whisper some merits when I attend to their claims.

I genuinely share this reflection for clarity in myself and advice from any who care to offer it. I mean that, I welcome any detour!

Small Successes

The past year has seen some successes. Involution was reviewed in four print Journals, articles (on its seeming insanity) commissioned in two others. Yucatan almost got a prize (I think- nobody really confirmed it) and two short stories were Stories of the Week in Narrative and one among the Five Best of the year. Another was shortlisted for the Rubery prize. None of that has made the slightest difference either to sales or building confidence. Only readers do that.

We, authors, are told that winning things matters. Does it? Piled high and stamped with badges in W.H. Smith or B&N maybe, but mentioned on Facebook or Twitter merely irritates! And embarrasses. Even adding comments stating more of the obvious now becomes more difficult, and who asks to be ‘liked’?

Smaller Successes.

Mastered WordPress, learned to be merely adequate at editing graphics, written some reviews that have given pleasure and assisted others, written five guest posts, and been interviewed on specialist audio shows four times. All pleasurable, made a few loyal friends, enjoyed feeling less alone in the corridors behind the Bull Ring’s real stage where performances need capes and swords, speed and deft footwork.

Large Failures.

Mostly in the arena of giving hope precedence over experience; paying for short cuts and assistance, taking workshops, buying software and believing I will (one day) use it. Mostly ceasing to write anything new ( until pushed into NaNoWriMo at the eleventh hour) and parched for want of creativity; and watching the last remaining life ooze away without sufficient attention to glory or the sun rising.

Some Impulses Arising. ( Not Exactly Resolutions because I know my recoil from any imperatives- even self induced!)

The First has to do with FOCUS, and Making the Rock and the Hard Place comfortable and making life easier for my followers on the matter of reflection.

This Blog (Careless Talk https://involution-odyssey.com/blogscribe/) will get less careless. More reflective, perhaps a kind of Philosophy of Ordinary Life. Not evangelical, but related to why I write what I do, who for, and what may be of value in more general contexts. I have had a very interesting life, and I have scarcely touched upon it in books ( A ladybird has this moment crawled upon my keyboard and settled briefly on the Ctrl key- see?) Lots like that! Motherhood to the power of twice (2 x 2) taught me much about getting it wrong. Belief in academic dispassion showed the ugliest qualities in people far from dispassionate about the ownership of ideas! I can tell those stories and with some disparagement I hope.

My other site’s (http://philipparees.wordpress.com/) blogs will be for others, good ideas, reblogs, guest posts, interviews, things of interest, a few poems, and unfettered impulses to share with friends. It will also carry reviews ( the one contribution I can make to the struggling self-published but only as gifted, never requested because again compulsion renders me impotent, verbally and emotionally!)

I will map across as appropriate! Apropos of this new kitchen cupboard where stores will be more ordered, if you are a ‘follower’ please subscribe so that I can gift you with stories, pre-publication offers, (and persuade a publisher I might be worth a punt on books I can’t manage on my own). You will never be plagued or inundated or asked for anything! Of an alleged 787 followers I have but 13 subscribers. That’s my fault in asking for ‘Friendship’ – an onerous demand from a stranger. I have changed that and much else on the welcome mat.

Clearer Intentions for 2015 On Publishing and Creativity

I intend to publish perhaps ten short stories that reveal the indefinable differences between Old and New World Characters, ways of being. I hope to put both Yucatan and Involution out in audio books, and rewrite Acer- the mythical fantasy I wrote for NaNoWriMo. I am also seeking a publisher for another hybrid book- a fictionalised biography. I might set up some kind of recording booth at home since recording can only be managed for an hour at a time, (after a lifetime of smoking the voice gets manly which can be advantageous, the breath in short supply- definitely the opposite.) Now the ladybird bids me cease and sits upon a finger-tip.(‘Your house is on fire, Your children are gone’)

I wish each and all a very happy New Year.

A Troubadour’s Haunting Lament

Writing: Why Do We Write What We Do? – The Compulsion of A Story

by Philippa Rees on November 20, 2014 in Writing (Thurs) This was first posted last Thursday in the Alliance of Independent Authors Newsletter.

In a moving post about the inspiration behind novels, indie author Philippa Rees describes what triggered her remarkable literary novel A Shadow in Yucatan: an experience so profound that it ultimately made her question whether she could regard herself as the true author of the book.

Why do we write what we do?

A prolific Canadian writer friend accused me (in a kindly manner) of trying to ‘write for immortality’. ‘Nothing lasts, except you’ he said. I think he hoped to persuade me to make my life easier, and write forgettable vampire books that might have a hope of readers. So why did I republish a modern Under Milkwood after it had languished unread for eight years? Was life not difficult enough?

Let me take you back to its genesis so you might understand this resurrection of a favoured child.

The Story Behind the Story

In 1969 I was living is a windblown shack on a desolate beach in Yucatan with two children, both under four, sleeping in a hammock and keeping a bottle by my ‘bed’ that I could smash against a wall as a weapon in an emergency. There was no electricity, but a Stygian darkness after sundown. The bottle also held a single candle. My nearest and only neighbours were members of the Tonton Macoute, the Haitian henchmen of Papa Doc Duvalier, known for easy murders, gang rape (and voodoo). I was hanging out for a divorce and waiting for a summons when it had been achieved. The sharks that cruised past with scimitar fins were waiting too. For me. Every night black hand prints, dipped in pitch, were left on the shutters of the shack.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, a family arrived to set up tents nearby. It afforded great comfort. They looked like ordinary people, an American couple with a cluster of small children, minded by a ‘nanny’. She was neither family nor friend, and too mature to be a minion. Puzzling. Her hours ‘off’ were late at night when we got talking, with wine if we struck lucky.

Then she told me her story which made my own, comparatively, a walk in the park. It was a story so unlikely, so mythical and personally tragic that it lay untouched in the mind. My divorce came through. We kissed goodbye, and I never saw her again.

Ten years later I had remarried and had a child; a last ever child. In that post-delivery haze of delicate and transparent euphoria, floating above the ground, in the attic of a modest Victorian semi in Wiltshire, I remembered that blazing beach of light and terror in which a young woman told me of the loss of her baby. My own lay in a Moses basket at my side.

So I wrote it for her, a tribute to her tragedy, and it flowed mixed with milk and gall.It was the due paid, and yes, I wanted her mythical story as immortal as modest words could make it. I was blest, she bereft. Her suffering was mythical. I still hope one day she might find it.

It almost wrote itself over a compulsive three weeks of sleepless nights, and I hardly changed a word. I am still far from sure I was really the ‘author.’ If you read the book you can decide who might have been.

To follow that generous coverage can I add an equally generous dollop of cream in the form of a review by Chris Rose. One of those ‘pinch-me- don’t- quite- believe-it reviews that vindicated the madness of belief that a poetic novella written in the hope of a BBC still remembering Dylan Thomas might try again some long- form poetry.Still I’ll settle for ‘a masterpiece’ for now!

To read Chris Rose’s Review travel here

To read others (equally generous) go here.

The book is among those offered for free for one day December 9th (Read Tuesday) You can find the authors contributing their books here

Reason for Hope?

This Ted talk revives a little hope that all is not entirely lost! Eight minutes of inspiration by ‘democratising access to information’ about the vitally alive young group who devised a ‘space program’ in a garage. Wonderful. Do watch!