Travel Realities and An Experiement

Well as expected my flight to the UK tomorrow has been cancelled and rescheduled for....28th of April. To be truthful I had expected worse. DS2 is due to fly on Tuesday and I am now doubtful that will happen. So dd is going to missing the French trip and I will get to play home schooling with her - not a role I want in any way and God help me if I have to do it for ds2 - I might just be qualified to teach him English but only just.... Thankfully we are 'home' and don't have the difficultly of many others catch up in the travel nightmare.

Now back to things writing related...I had all those revelations in York and haven't been able to do much with them because the kids were still here...so today I did a writing exercise. I took the opening of August Rock which I haven't looked at in over a year, a notebook and a pen.

Those of you who read my notes on Martin Amis will have noted that he writes in long hand but he feels the computer is suited to writing. I certainly agree with the later and since my university years I have composed on the computer. With my dyslexia this has been very helpful with things like spell check (sometimes) and my hands can begin to keep up with the racing of my brain.

So taking pen in hand I began to rewrite the opening and to be honest I have to confess, at least to me, something magical happened. Because of the slower method more pictures formed in my head and I felt closer to the work.

So I will put both the orignal and the hand written (obviously retyped) up for your scrutiny and I would be grateful if you told me which you preferred.

The Nare, Cornwall, England, 27^th March 1846

Tobias Trevenen stood on Nare Head looking at the waves crashing onto the rocks below. The wind tossed his brown hair side to side obscuring his vision. In the distance, he watched the four mast barque fight its way toward Falmouth in the heaving water. The sky was increasingly grey as the weather closed in. Toby came here most days to watch the sea as that was where his mother was.

Time was short. Visitors were due from London and he must be at home when they arrived. Father was in a dither and everyone in the house was out of sorts. The approaching storm was peaceful compared with the tension enclosing the house. Mrs. Williams, the house keeper, had hit Toby with a cloth as he had crept out. Her anger with him was rarer than the treasure he had found on his outings on the river. There was treasure at August Rock, but thus far no one believed him. Soon it would be time to look again but not yet.

Now for the new...

The waves crashed onto the rocks below Nare Head while the wind blew Tobias Trevenen's hair side to side obscuring his view of the four mast barque as it fought its way to Falmouth through the heavy water. The sky was increasing grey as the weather closed in.

Time was short. Visitors were due from London and he must be at home when they arrived. Father was was in a dither and everyone in the house was out of sorts. The approaching storm was peaceful compared with the tension enclosing the house. The housekeeper, Mrs. Williams, had hit Toby with a cloth as he had tasted the cream sauce on his way out. She was rarely ever cross with him.

He scanned the mouth of the Helford River seeking the telltale jagged protrusion of August Rock that hinted at the deadly reef that stretched below, but all was hidden in the swell of the storm. He would have to wait for the August spring tides before he could search again for the treasure at the base of the reef. He hated waiting for no one would believe that he had found anything at all there except muscles and seaweed. He played with the gold coin in his pocket.

I think I may be only to a new working procedure for me - draft one on the computer, draft two long hand, draft three computer...anyone work this way?

Emirates Airlines Literary Festival - Martin Amis and A Wonderful Prize plus Travel Troubles

As is always - these are just my notes and a totally flawed - please forgive the many mistakes

Martin Amis in Conversation with Paul Blezzard

Paul opened with – language was closest to Martin’s heart and when did it begin?

M- it began in adolescence and he hopes the ‘book’ will never disappear. He was very self aware and articulate and during adolescence is when you begin conversations with self in a notebook, diary…we commune with ourselves and the book is a perfect self companion.

Writers never really grow out of the phase – the process of self communing – all writers are adolescents to a certain extent.

His early works were hopeless.

PB – Writers and age?

M- he feels that the talent will die out before the body and he can’t find many exceptions to the rule. He pointed out the Shakespeare and Austin died young. There is the haunting spectacle where different things go wrong with age – Updike…his ear went. Nabokov …loses his moral compass with his signature joke of a 12 year old girl

Exquisite tragedies – to live with words and to be deserted by them yet he will go on as long as he can – not giving up

He quoted Cheever – everything I read is not short enough

500 page novel is very different from the shorter one – the mass is more difficult to master

P. Roth quoted – harder to keep the whole mass in your mind

Writing is connected to Eros

The tactic of writing the short he feels is fine

not to lose the musicality- the paragraph that comes out of nowhere – decreases with age but you gain craft – early book deficit in expertise.

PB - Craft is the greatest pleasure?

M- no, it’s more general than that.

Quoted Saul Bellow – see the universal in the particular

He said the rest of us work the other way. Life is dead –a huge dead novel – it is not faithful to our experience – artifice gives it life – mirror experiences don’t breathe life into a novel – real life…nothing happens

P Roth – write fiction about what didn’t happen or what might have happen

It is a very English book – very diffident

When in Italy he kept feeling like he was in an oil painting

Wring is mysterious – only a writer knows how mysterious

Decide is never a groping process

About is wrong

Around is better

Subconscious does a lot of work for you

There aren’t many sad things about being a novelist, but you have to spend time over dead things

Writer’s block is when the subconscious is switched off

PB – Can writing be taught?

Quoted Nabokov – there is only one school of writing and that is talent.. but then went on to say you can teach craft and habits. His 19 year old self would have loved to chat to his 60 year self

He has learned to walk away when he comes across the slightest impediment – he reads

Writing is a physical business not just the mind – the body and the mind combined in a way

He described a writers life –

-writing

-living – not very relevant but necessary but does provide inspiration – brith, death...

-reading – fuel – influence/stealing – his are Nabakov and S. Bellow

The pleasures of writing and reading are the same – solving difficulties – readers create as well as writers – writers invite the reader to create the character in their heads...osmotic ..guest/host

He was asked how many words a day? Some days none, but never a week without – 500 words of fiction takes a lot of thinking time.

..Darker aspects of human nature – is he an optimists or a pessimist? All writers are lovers of life and the urge to put it down is a loving one

How does he physically write? The mechanics of writing...ritualized...talisman...he writes in long hand however the computer is suited to writers as writers need to insert. He writes in long hand – a flow of ink like the flow of love.

Asked about rejection...the treadmill of rejection ...embittering...like having your child criticized and that’s why he doesn’t admit to a favourite...it’s like your child and their is nothing you can do about it

What’s he working on now? He’s just finishing one and knows the next...senility and dementia have not got him yet...

So today has been a bit up and down to say the least - the volcanic ash is causing some serious nail biting here and a possible melt down of my complex travel arrangements. I am due to fly to the UK with dd on Monday so that she can make her class French trip which leaves by coach and ferry early on Tuesday morning...as each housr clicks past this is looking less and less likely. It will also mean i will miss out on The London Book Fair and the subsequent tweetup....We also still have ds2 here and he is due to fly on Tuesday...

However today is not all bad news because the wonderful Caroline Smailes was running a competition on her blog which I won! So soon I will be or more correctly one of children will the proud owner of a signed copy of Jon Mayhew's new book Mortlock!(‘Mortlock’s’ dark and alternative Victorian world is unforgiving as it pulls you into its grasp, snagging hold and refusing to let go until it has disgorged its gruesome secrets.) So today is good and let's hope my luck continues to success with flights.