The NC

just had broadband turned on in this house & i'm doing the rounds of all my blogs, posting away...

i just wish to say that the novel still lives in my mind... i'm still in the creative, smoking in the cemetary, zone of novel creation... i haven't yet started writing... i suspect that i won't be smoking once i've started writing...

it's working well though.. i've realised certain key things about each character which will inform how i write them... the overall structure as time moves from the past to the future i've got... but exactly how i'll be telling it i'm still unsure...

x

still here

just to say i'm still in here... the novel lives still in my mind... & in many different pieces of paper... many different video's pointing @ my face... many different audio files recorded onto my phone... many different libreoffice documents...

one of the projects is to get all the different things in one place... digitised and in one form... (the libreoffice document)

another is to go & sit in my favourite places... smoke a little something & flesh out certain moments in the thing... (this generates more documents...)

finally it is to pick a place & start actual writing...

i'm still in it is all i'm saying x

finished telling i reckon - writing group - storybook

told B - another refugee worker - very good telling & response... much encouragement... more thoughts on how to keep the final kicker a surprise...

then told another B - artist - while he was performing his end of the day packing up... which wasn't such a good telling... i didn't have his full attention...

so i decided i was probably through with telling... on to the writing...

but i went to a writing group last night & whilst i didn't have anything to read i did tell it to the organiser of the group over a beer later... actually i had 2 listeners - we were all quite drunk - 2 C's...

i got a good response... although at the beginning T from the bookshop was there & that made it a little difficult... also male C has written a novel recently - is working on the 2nd draft & has an agent... so he was very much in "sell it to me" mode... which i'm not quite ready for...

C put a structure on it that may or may not fit it... i found it a little like teaching... many people will tell you that you need to know what you're aim is in a lesson, be very clear in your own mind what you're getting across - & what is most important - i follow this in my teaching but i also like the stumbling, getting there in one's own time approach...

C seemed to be saying i need to know what my aim is... what's most important? quite possibly all good advice & relevant... but i'm not there yet...

female C listened well & asked a some good questions... we chatted a bit afterwards, walking homewards...

so i will be going back to the writing group i think - i have 2 weeks... in that time i want to have written something to read...

and then storybook... it's an open source writing thing... uses databases to track characters, locations, scenes... i've started using it... i've mapped out all or most of the events that i currently know about in it... i haven't yet decided which order to put all those events, but i can do that within storybook...

it might be yet more displacement activity - but i find it useful right now x

DL, a bit to Bo,

told DL - my partner in refugee work, over a cup of tea in san marino... he was enthusiastic.. told me he'd buy that for a dollar... (3-2-11)

then i told the very 1st scene to bo (5-2-11)... in the kitchen of baby robin's birthday party... positive response...

went into the big green bookshop yesterday (6-2-11) & T told me he'd been thinking about it... even told me he'd been thinking of writing it for me, which i really don't want him to do... i wasn't quite thinking properly & didn't express this to him, but i don't think he will... good that it was in his thoughts...

i told my friend Josiah that i was writing a novel, but i hadn't written anything yet... she laughed & said that meant i really was writing a novel...

x

bookshop hat trick black scientist

told T @ the Big Green Bookshop yesterday - although with M there also chipping in tiny jokes every now & then - T himself not averse to a bit of gagery also...

it was good - a bit daunting because both other times i'd told that story in that bookshop i'd had some kind of negative appraisal - (or at least i'd seen it that way)

& about midway through T was looking a bit weary...

but it worked - it made me wonder whether it has enough momentum... but telling people while they are working in a bookshop is not the best judge of things - they are keen to get on with whatever they're doing and the story is quite a lot longer than you 1st realise....

told with the tube train up front, then clara sitting on the train platform thinking back... then the scientist thinking back... but with facts in both cases that that character doesn't know about...

i realised that the scientist character is becoming art terry... the recording artist & piano tuner... lovely man... black, american... the scientist may or may not be american...

at the moment he has links to the indian space program... of course he could be from india... but i don't think he is...

the trouble with writing characters who aren't from where i'm from & don't look like i look like - is can i write them? the problem of not writing any characters who aren't from where i'm from & don't look like me is... i suppose self evident...

i suppose i want to get away from the mad scientist cliché & art is one of the coolest people i know... so at least in my mind the scientist is cool - just how i get art's lovely nature down i don't know - but of course i don't have to - art is a model for the scientist - he isn't the scientist...

still telling people - there's an art teacher (another one) @ one of my works who i want to tell...

x

brother - back to M

hmmm...

have i missed anyone? could be, anyway, i told my brother D - whilst @ home last weekend, and that was good - it became apparent that the 2nd payoff had to be a different kind of payoff to the original payoff... the truth that becomes apparent slowly and fairly easily, as opposed to what may become the final payoff (the end of the book) which has to come much harder & more suddenly...

i've been thinking about it alot, (even though i have a mound of marking to get through right now), & i even started thinking that maybe... aaah... but how much do i tell you? do i describe events that the reader will find out later?

tricky... ok - so  let's leave it for now,

i met someone today - a bus driver - who writes, i wanted to tell her - but i didn't get the courage together to ask for her number or give her mine - and she was only on a tiny break & couldn't hear it there & then...

also i went back to the big green bookshop today - saw T's bicycle outside & was ready to tell him, but he wasn't in, M was there - who i've told the story already to, so we had a chat & it was helpful to talk it over with him again, with less detail... although honing in on a couple of details...

x

told to... resisted or not

sister K... who listened carefully & warned me of the danger of too much dialogue with too many assumptions that the reader knows what's going on in the character's head... she wrote me a bit of advice into my computer that i'll put here perhaps...

then on thursday night i told E... she listened very well & made a few suggestions which i resisted... strange how some suggestions i welcome, and some suggestions i resist... is it about girlfriends?

then friday night i tell R - bass player in the new covers band.. this after a rehearsal, over chinese food,

for him i tell it starting in the same place, but going all the way through the outer things before coming back...

he mentions the danger of there being too much logic... or rather, because at the moment it's all logical... the danger that certain readers will arrive at the answer too soon and not bother reading on... for me it brings to mind the different kinds of learners one has when teaching - and the need to say the same thing in many different ways to reach all different kinds... so here we have different kinds of readers... & looking after the more astute readers who will work stuff out quicker, just as you need to look after the less astute...

R: what murakami would do... introduce other storylines that either do or don't intersect with the main story... that perhaps don't reach resolution... mentions hard boiled wonderland & the end of the world & the wind up bird chronicles...

R also suggests an angle that i do like and do not resist... in the same world that E suggested her idea...

R: what drives the scientist?

also... just got to the big green bookshop & am about to tell lovely S... but he's currently speaking to a couple of costumers... thankful for this tiny laptop so i can tap away while the people in this shop serve customers... of course i want all their attention... but i understand commerce does recquire attention...

ok.. so i told S... a version with the tubetrain... then clara... scientist... cat horror... photograph throwing... meeting simon (S's name for our guy), story of their odd time together up until tube train... then back to scientist... et al... this version had the ages a bit rejigged & telling it, it was odd that the girl is so young on the train on her own...

he hung on until the end, but at a certain point i think i lost him,.. and i don't know that he liked it...

he said:

there have to be reasons why people are doing things,

i know scientists are mad but WHY is he...(kittens)

...

it's not so easy telling it to people who aren't enthusiastic about it... and lo & behold, the proper book people (well. the people who work in the bookshop, of which 2 out of 3 i've told the story to - the 3rd i will tell when i see him) are harder, 

emotionally it is hard, but as that book that i read decades ago said:

1st you persuade yourself, then you persuade a friend, then you persuade an enemy...

and it has to work for even the most critical of audiences... at this time... when it's so vulnerable... i think i need positive people to tell it to... (not that you can predict either way)... when it's stronger in my mind i need more critical people...

so... i'm writing a novel

as of yesterday,

i started writing it down,

i'm still plotting out sections of it, and i'm telling the story to various people...

right now this blog is about who i've told:

so... i told a version of the story to GG many times when she was my girlfriend, and indeed afterwards,

the same version - perhaps slightly different - i told to ES when she was my girlfriend (for that blink of an eye)

this current version i told to K & S (with baby R in tow) at the V&A on saturday (8th january), they encouraged it,

then on monday i told it to GG, she looked quite underwhelmed,

that night it told it to JF, old old friend, (artist) he got really into it, we were talking about different approaches to telling it, perhaps graphic novel... JF mentioned various graphic novels

on tuesday i told it to HVB, CG & DS, (artist, guitarist, saxophonist) HVB said i was nuts, laughing (i took that as encouragement), CG mentioned sirens of time by vonegut... (which right now i don't want to read), DS mentioned bulgakov, master & margarita, (which i have read & loved) all very encouraging,

by "this current version" i mean starting with the birth/ tube train incident,

today i told M in the Big Green Bookshop, he was patient, but quite hard, i found it a bit difficult when he was telling me what he thought... "so you're relying on coincidence there?" & "do you need the cats?" "do they serve the story?"

i intend to tell K (sister) later...

ok thanks... this is all for my own benefit, i don't ex[ect people to read this blog x