Generation X

 Generation X 

First published in Column 8 on the 21^st June 1995

(This may now seem a little out of date in terms of its subject matter; it's worth reading still for the alphabetical fun.) 

Courtesy CasetteVHS96

One of the buzz phrases these days is The X Generation. This relates to that up-and-coming group of
late teen to mid-20-year-olds who are just about to take over the world as it were.

I have a lot more contact, however, with Generation Y. Y do I have to go to bed before you do? Y do I have to eat at the table? Y can’t I drive the car? Y can’t you give me the money?

After enough of this (being the elderly gent that I now am) I tend to become a member of the Z Generation, ie, I begin to nod, and finally drop off to sleep….zzzzzz.

The aforementioned members of Generation Y don’t consider that’s good enough, and shake me awake into instant membership of Generation A – ‘Eh? What did you say?’

When they persist in wanting everything NOW, and ignore my refusals, I find myself evolving into yet another generation: B. B-cause I said so; B-cause your mother doesn’t want you to; B-cause no one else does it.

Generation Y now skips a few and winds up in C: C, you always say that; C, you never listen to me; C, you’re not with it!

When I continue to stonewall, they D-part the scene, and, E-ten up with their own insurmountable arguments, they F-ectually cut off further communication.

I flop down into my favourite G generation chair: G, I’m glad they’re gone; G, thank goodness that’s over; G, I wonder if I really won that round?

Since I know I can never completely scratch generation Y where it Aitches, I slide downhill into distress. In order to get some fresh air, I J-walk across the lawn (and into the kaleyard, which, as all you Scots will know, is the vege garden), feeling as though I’ve been the victim of the K-O generation.

‘L!’ I say, in a moment of extreme provocation. ‘M I the only parent to suffer in this way? Isn’t there an All-Hugs and Cuddles Group for Parents of Y Generation children? Don’t other parents struggle with the following demands: “N I want this, N I want that! N I want to go over to my friend’s place to stay the night – N of course their parents will be there! N I’m Never going to listeN to you agaiN!!!”’

O…dear. What happened to those P-wee charmers, the P-kaboo generation? Is Parent now a P-jorative word, and can parents truly be considered P-vish?

‘QED,’ the Y Generation will reply. ‘Don’t you realise you’re R-chaic, they R-gue, and that we’re the R-chitects of the New World Order? (I always think that has something to do with a supermarket.) R-n’t you R-ware, they continue, of your R-rested development and your R-tificial intelligence?’

When I’ve had enough of this R-gy-bargy, I S-chew further debate and S-cape into the sleep-out at the back of my S-tate.

This intergenerational thing is enough to make you un-T-total, but with great strength of middle-aged mind I stick to a cup of T. Just who do these T-nagers think they are, T-ming over my world with their message-laden T-shirts and their fluoride-riven T-th, making us pre-pensioners T-ter?

U-th’s a stuff will not endure, said Shakespeare’s Feste, and the Earl of Asquith claimed U-th would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

Oh, Generation Y, what V-nial sins have we committed against U? Do U D-spise us 4 driving V-dubs?

Generation Y, us venerables have had enough. The time has come for retaliation! Nag me once more and I’ll Double U out the door!

Embarrassing?

 Embarrassing?

 First published in Column 8 on the 10 May 1995, and written by my number two daughter, Abby, as a fun ‘guest’ writer. Surprisingly, this got the approval of my editor.

 Over the past four years, Mike Crowl has been writing interesting and embarrassing anecdotes about us, his family. As one of the clan I feel it’s time to get our own back.

Mike Crowl was born in May five decades ago, and lived the first three years of his life in that small island to the west of New Zealand, Australia. He started learning to play the piano at the age of 8, and his main claim to fame in this area is playing for Kiri Te Kanawa. He’s always talking about it.

At the age of 22 he went to London where he married our Mum. He is now approaching the big half-century.

In his life so far he has done some amusing things. Since he’s paid us out, I should include a few of his embarrassing moments. Shall I mention the time he ran for one of those double-decker London buses? It took off as he was grabbing for the rail, and he found himself dragging along the road, tearing holes in the knees of his trousers.

He claims to be adept with his hammer and other handyman tools. But my mother recalls many a time listening to Dad banging in nails and suddenly hearing a yell of pain, after (I’ll put it charitably) a near-miss.

Or what about the time he asked his bank manager what he was doing in a rival bank? No wonder the bank manager gave him a funny look. He was in fact heading into his own office in his own bank. Dad had forgotten where he was.

There was also a time Dad was left alone on a stage in front of a crowd when the singer he was playing for forgot his words and walked off without a backward glance. Dad didn’t know whether to carry on playing, by himself, or pretend he wasn’t still there.

After speaking to one of the nuns who taught Dad to play, I learned that this brilliant piano player didn’t like practising. This nun said of Dad: ‘He was a nice boy. He didn’t like to practise but he used to bring me flowers – although he made sure he brought them without any of the other little boys seeing him.’

Although Mike Crowl’s family is picked on the most for material in his column, they’re not the only ones. His friends and acquaintances must also watch what they say, otherwise these poor unsuspecting souls may find their words printed in Column 8 the next week.

We kids have learned to try and keep our mouths shut, however, and lead vapid lives.

Sometimes I wonder why we are here. Why did my father have us? Is it just to provide ‘ingredients’ for his column? (I wonder also about the names of two of his daughters – why are they named after two of Dad’s ex-girlfriends?)

Furthermore we have to cope with English teachers using Dad’s column as part of a test or unit study.

And lastly, there is the difficulty we have with inquiries, such as: ‘So who was Mike talking about in his last column?’ or ‘Was that you your Dad said was taking too long in the shower?’ As well as all the people forever asking: ‘Is Mike Crowl YOUR Dad?’

When I was writing this letter, my Dad saw the notes I was taking off his earlier columns. Luckily my life-saver of a mother used one of her diversionary tactics and grabbed the piece of paper before he could get hold of it.

I’d like to thank my Mum and Grandma, my brothers and sisters for adding all their little bits to this. Also all those other people who supplied their special pieces of gossip. And my English teacher, who helped me to put it together properly.

PS: Happy 50^th birthday, Dad!

In my defence:
I only once played publicly for Kiri te Kanawa, as far as I recall. It was a competent performance on my part, no more. 
I can still hammer a nail better than my wife, one of the few woodworking things I can do better than her. 
It's true that I didn't like practising piano much, but I still played it a lot because I could sight-read very well from quite a young age, and so felt practising wasn't really a necessity (!)

Irritable

 Irritable

Published in Column 8 on 12th May 1993. Once again berating some of my children - at least in part. 

 

First issue of the RD, 1922

I wonder how many other people who read the Reader’s Digest are inspired by the suggestions in their How-To articles – but find carrying them out more like a Drama in Real Life.

I read one article about Dealing with Irritations. The reader is supposed to remember and use the several points listed to avoid becoming angry at petty irritations. But remembering the points in the middle of a hassle isn’t easy. (I know that wives/spouses/partners are there to remind you, but often their reminders only make the situation worse.)

Nevertheless, in case some people out there are more self-controlled than I am, I’ll go through some of the points.

The first suggestion is to keep a daily record of what irritates you. That’s fine, but don’t they think I have enough ideas for my column already? And anyway, wouldn’t I get irritated writing down the same things day after day?

However, here’s Saturday’s list – for what it’s worth. Irritations: my children, all other drivers and the bathroom basin.

It’s a peculiar thing that the children one begets are the people most able in the world to rub you up the wrong way. And worse - they bring in other people’s children to help them do it.

The fruit of one’s loins nettle us with their nagging, they carelessly collect boyfriends of all shapes and sizes, and infuriatingly, they eat the food and don’t clean up afterwards.

‘All other drivers.’ This may be a slight exaggeration. One driver particularly took Saturday’s provocation prize. I was about to turn left into a park at the supermarket when s/he tried to pass me on that side. The other drivers merely pestered me as usual by having no idea of the road rules, or of where they were going, or what I expected of them.

Thirdly, after months of deliberation, I’d spent the morning clearing the bathroom basin drain pipe of its accumulated hairy gunk – and prying broken bits of toothpaste tube out of the overflow. But when I tightened up the joint again the connection started to leak, one petulant drop at a time.

Huh! So much for listing the irritations. Just listing them makes me cantankerous and dyspeptic.

However, this peevish RD article next suggests taking the Pollyanna approach to irritations: When Pollyanna was sent crutches instead of a doll in the family’s missionary parcel, she was able to be glad. Why? Because at least she didn’t have to use the crutches.

Can I be glad about that exasperating driver? At least s/he didn’t hit me. (I can do $800 worth of vexating damage to the car on my own.) But how do I take the Pollyanna approach to the drainpipe leaking? Or to being swamped by kids?

I should be glad the joint didn’t crack with plastic old age when I tightened it up again, or screw itself on awry – permanently. And glad that the kids occasionally eat, sleep and block the doorways at other people’s houses.

The article next says you should Do Something. Don’t let irritation stop you in your tracks.

Well, I could order my kids to each write me a 500 word essay in triplicate tabling their complaints and listing 50 qualities their friends might have. And I could put a bucket under the leak and hope it won’t fill up before I next have the energy and inclination to do something about it.

Next on the list is to accept what you can’t control. This means accepting that the girls’ boyfriends will probably continue to fill up all available corners, which may at least stop the draughts. That other drivers will never be as perfect as me, and that when they make mistakes on the road I should just close my eyes and keep driving.

And thirdly that leaks are part of nature’s way of reinforcing the second law of thermodynamics, and I may as well live with it.

Finally the article tells me to keep my perspective – what will all this matter in eternity? I guess in eternity there’ll be plenty of room for stray boyfriends (or non-stray husbands as they may be by then). And there’ll be plenty of parking space, because there’ll be no cars – which suit the greenies fine.

As for leaking pipes, they’ll be of no importance whatsoever. Since there’s not time in eternity a bucket ought to be able to fill as much as it likes, and never overflow.

Cynicism

 Cynicism

Published in Column 8 on 13 May 1992, on my 47th birthday.  The column focuses on the loss of the America's Cup, something that came as a shock to the 'country' after thinking we could never lose it again. Crump and Scotty - one a real person, a popular writer, and the other an actor - bewailed the loss...or at least Scotty did. Unfortunately I can't find a link to it on the Net. Various politicians are mentioned here, along with well-known sportspeople. The programme, More Issues, a satirical series often included real people as guests, actors pretending to be real people, and occasionally some puppets. 

 After my Clayton’s column of last week – the column that wasn’t a column – I’ve decided to tackle (round the neck if necessary) one of the lesser issues of which I spoke. 

I know I’m not alone in having a facet of my personality that I need to keep under strict supervision. However, cynicism (that facet) still creeps in the cat-door even after I’ve locked it. 

I was relaxing – but only for a moment, mind – in front of the television (actually, I was supposed to be washing the dishes but my neck wouldn’t stretch far enough round the corner) when I saw the Crump and Scotty ad in which the latter mourns New Zealand’s loss of the America’s Cup.

Cynicism bowelled up from the depths. I tried to thrust it down, without success. ‘This ad must have been made before we lost,’ said Cynicism. ‘And if that’s the case, there’s an alternate version, in which they celebrate the win.’ 

That version, of course, will now be locked away in the agency’s vaults. Participants may carry the guilty secret to their grave. The ad may only see the light of day if a thesis-lacking student discovers a need to investigate ‘Ads which never made it.’ 

Cynicism, however, gave me some idea of what it would contain. 

First, Scotty and Crump return to the pub, an admiral’s uniform replacing the sailor suit. Along with a champagne-swigging cast of thousands, who only manage to inhabit this building because the walls stretch, they perform a new and improved – and even more uplifting – rendition of Side by Side. 

This time the words centre on such Kiwi-magical concepts as a humbled world bowing at the feet of a NZL-20 T-shirt. 

The ad then uses cleverly spliced film of Mr Bolger handing over his job of Prime Minister to Michael Fay, as a result of the overwhelming gratitude of all true-blue New Zealanders. Schoolchildren’s happy faces are seen in montage as the crew distribute miniatures of the Yacht That Won. 

Jenny Shipley and Ruth Richardson appear to congratulate the crew (although it’s a moot point as to whether the ladies themselves are visible or their lookalikes from More Issues.) 

The ladies good and true hand out large amounts of money to all and sundry (sundry debtors?). Why?, you ask. The implication is that now the cup is ours the economy must bloom; no one will ever cry poor again. and the two First Ladies can stop taking all the flak for their supposedly callous decisions. 

In a variation on red-nose day, imitation bow-sprits appear on all vehicles. John Kirwan and Martin Crowe sing a ditty which implies that anyone who doesn’t put one in place will be considered a piker lacking national pride. 

The advertisers thought this idea could be taken up as a road-safety norm because it would encourage vehicles to travel a a safer distance from each other. In their enthusiasm they hadn’t considered problems with parking. 

During the two full minutes that this ad lasts, the entire history of the race is seen in potted form, and every mug shot of Denis Conner is in place. 

In fact, his rude words during the previous race are formed into a kind of rap with repeated shots of his snarling, and sudden head movements. Again the advertisers had high hopes for this aspect of the ad, thinking that Michael Jackson might use it as a basis for a major hit. 

Television NZ, being so grateful for all the advertising revenue they’ve received as a result of the cup ‘fever,’ would have shown the ad free. None of this is to be. Instead we must face, interminably, a post mortem 30 seconds’ worth of maudlin Scotty and Crumpled cold duck.

Disappointing movies

 Looking back through older posts I find that I use to review quite a few movies, mostly those that turned up on TV. Occasionally something I saw at the movies. 

I don't go to the movies that much anymore, especially since streaming arrived in full force. I don't feel quite so bad about watching a movie that turns out to be a bit of stinker if I haven't paid for it up front - and spent almost as much on getting an icecream. 

We have a small cinema here in Oamaru. It was recently sold and is now called The Riviera. Its seats are large, as though everyone was outsized, and it's advisable to take a cushion, since the seats' designers also assumed everyone had long upper legs. Apart from that it's comfortable enough. I think the only film I've enjoyed at this cinema was Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Three hours of solid entertainment: suspenseful, funny, clever, full of wonderful stunts and with a great cast. 

On the other hand, we saw a film in which Michael Caine was the only saving grace: The Great Escaper. Based on real life story that was only eventful in the mildest way, and though the film tried to inject some additional interest in it, it had the feeling of everyone trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Sadly it was Glenda Jackson's last movie; she has hardly any scenes with Caine, and has to carry chunks of the movie by herself when Caine's abroad. 

We saw Thor: Love and Thunder which in spite of director Taika Waititi once again at the helm was another noisy, cluttered piece full of CGI and a number of nonsensical scenes. Disappointing after the sheer enjoyment of Ragnarok.

Most recently we went to see Wicked, partly against my better judgement, hoping that when my daughter said she nearly fell asleep during it she meant that it was because she was tired rather than because it was boring. Unfortunately it was the latter. With the first act of the original stage show extended to something like three hours, it was stretched out beyond belief, and only served to show up the fragility of the musical's original book, which presumably worked well because it was shorter. 

The two stars were certainly excellent, but everything else was so overdone, and so geared towards DEI that after a while you began to count the white faces in the cast. Weirdly the Munchkins were pretty much full-sized adults, the talking animals seemed to make no sense except to introduce some political point and every dance sequence was full on and superb and EXCELLENT!!! But left you feeling disconnected. 

Elphaba's journey from unwilling witch to wicked witch seemed to be missing a gear or two. From the beginning she was drawn as a sympathetic character; by the end you wondered quite what had happened to her. 

Except that it wasn't the end. The second act is presumably in the pipeline somewhere, but I don't think this moviegoer will be drawn back the theatre for it. 

So much money spent on so much clutter. 

Incidental Music

 To my great surprise it's now around six months since I abandoned the book I was writing. It would have been number five in the Grimhilderness series. 

So what have I been doing with my time since then (apart from gardening, walking, housekeeping with my wife, cooking meals - between us - performing in three concerts in one week, two of them in different locations, and all the church-connected things we do. 

Being a creative person I found it hard not to be doing something creative, and then out of the blue the idea of writing some 'Incidental Music' related to The Counterfeit Queen - the book I published in 2023 - came into my head. 

The result was eight piano pieces written in the second half of last year. I'm still calling them 
'Incidental' although that usually refers to music that accompanies a theatre performance. In fact that was partly how the idea came about: I'd really enjoyed writing the music for Grimhilda! back in 2011/12; there was plenty of scope for variety, for thematic ideas, and there was the probability of getting the musical performed. In fact, the music for Grimhilda! was probably written faster, proportionately, than this Incidental music. 

With the Incidental Music to The Counterfeit Queen, however, there's no idea of the music accompanying a stage production. In fact the titles themselves show that the pieces have a certain randomness about them: 

Liam
Polly
Toby
Polly's Arrival in TEOTE
The Dwarf Council
Stevedore
Miss Chimble
Coronation March

Anyone who's read the book might note that while three of the main characters have  their own piece of music, the Queen doesn't, nor Onopulous, another important character. (Though the slightly pompous Dwarf Council might be said to include him.) Stevedore, the dog (who also appears in The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret) has only a few scenes in this book, and again provides a surprise at the end, and Miss Chimble, while an important enough character, doesn't really come into her own until halfway through the book. There are also some hints of the Dragon in three or four of the pieces. 

The music wasn't written in this order - the Coronation March was the first one off the ground. Polly's Arrival in TEOTE picked up on a theme from the March, as did Toby. Polly herself arrived late on the scene, and Miss Chimble was the last. The ear-worm-like theme for The Dwarf Council - another march - arrived in my head while I was hanging out the washing. And Stevedore just came out of nowhere, and worked. 

I'd like to perform the eight pieces later in the year, perhaps with appropriate extracts from the book read by someone. I'm thinking of combined them with The Fence piano duet, which also has a children's book connection. 

Meanwhile, I'm practicing the eight pieces regullarly (along with other pieces), partly in order to keep my fingers agile, and partly to enable myself to play some of the more difficult spots that I wrote. 

I'll keep you posted. 

Finding the Father

While reminding myself of this poem by Robert Bly this morning, I came across the notes I'd made below it. I thought they might be enough of interest to add to this blog. 

 FINDING THE FATHER by Robert Bly

My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing ˗ as the ocean carries logs.
So on some days the body wails with its great energy;
it smashes up the boulders,
lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door.
We do not have time to dress.
He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets,
to the dark house.

We will go there, the body says,
and there find the father whom we have never met,
who wandered out in a snowstorm the night we were born,
and who then lost his memory,
and has lived since longing for his child,
whom he saw only once...
while he worked as a shoemaker,
as a cattle herder in Australia,
as a restaurant cook who painted at night.

When you light the lamp you will see him.
he sits there behind the door....
the eyebrows so heavy,
the forehead so light....
lonely in his whole body,
waiting for you.


Some reflections on this intriguing poem.

Being someone who grew up without a father (after the first three years of my life) this poem has always resonated with me, though it’s hard to put my finger on quite why.

The poem, at first sight, appears to be about two different things: the body and the father. Not only
that, it’s unusual to have the sense that it’s the body carrying the soul/spirit, and even making a major decision: we will go there, the body says. Many philosophers would claim that it’s the soul or spirit that animates the otherwise lumpish body.

It’s as if the body is being proactive (the anonymous knocker at the door only suggests going; it’s the body that says ‘we will.’ And there’s a final reference to the body ˗ not that of the main ‘body’ but that of the father. It’s like there’s some final connection made, though plainly there’s some way to go after all these years!

So what is the first stanza about? Is the body’s wailing and smashing indicative of some crisis in the spirit, or is it the body itself trying to arouse the spirit to action, to reconnect with the lost father?

Then there is the anonymous knocker. This could be interpreted in a variety of ways: some might see it as the voice of the Holy Spirit, arousing the writer into action, an action that he doesn’t appear to have considered before. There’s perhaps even a link with the picture of Jesus knocking at the door in the Book of Revelation: behold, I stand and knock. There may be other explanations. Whoever it is that’s knocking, he’s insistent: he doesn’t let the writer even have time to dress. This call for action is absolute: do it now, or perhaps this chance will be lost.

And the journey will take the writer through the blowing and rainy streets ˗ this isn’t a daytime journey (at least in my understanding); this is a journey taken in the dark, in inclement weather, for a dark destination. It’s a journey down into the psyche to find something that’s been lost and can only be restored by the writer taking a step. As we see, the father has never managed to do this for himself.

So the writer goes, and is told about the father ˗ whether it’s by the body or the anonymous other doesn’t matter. The writer is given understanding about why his father hasn’t been present, and what happened to him and where he’s been.

Except that things in the poem are unlikely to be as literal as they might appear. On the surface this could be the literal truth; in reality it’s more likely to be a picture of the father’s spiritual/psychological state. What do we learn, or what can we discern.

This father may have always been physically present (even in spite of the various ‘jobs’). But he’s never been present as himself, he’s never given himself to his son. I write son because Bly is a male poet; I guess it could just as easily apply to a daughter.

We’re told several things about this father: we have never met him. He’s never shown his true self to his child. (Note that Bly uses the first person plural throughout; he may be talking about the body and the spirit, or it may be an inclusive ‘we’.) The father wandered out into a snowstorm the night we were born. The writer has just journeyed through a blowing and rainy night, but the father went into something much more severe. Where the writer has to run out dressed in his nightclothes, perhaps, and might catch a cold at the worst (!), the father wandered into something that could have killed him. The snowstorm seems to me to signify a blanking out in his mind of what’s just happened: the birth of his child. This father has allowed his selfishness to overtake the new person he has given life to, and he has cut him out of his mind.

No wonder the next line is about the father losing his memory. In a sense he’s not just lost his memory, he’s lost his mind. He’s done something that is un-fatherly, he’s effectively rejected his child. This is a heightened picture of the ‘absent father’, the one who puts the bread and butter on the table but never puts his arms around his child, the one who pays the bills, but never pays his dues.

But maybe the father isn’t all bad: he has lived since longing for his child whom he saw only once. But what’s stopped him coming back? What’s stopped him being present? Plainly the longing was never enough to change his attitude ˗ or at least not until now.

The last three lines of this stanza also imply that this man has provided. We could assume that he’s lived on his own, far away from his family (we hear nothing of the mother), or we could assume that he’s faithfully worked at whatever he could put his hand to. But something was always missing.

And so we come back to the writer: when you light the lamp you will see him. This is no literal lamp; this is illumination that has to happen for things to change. The writer himself has to make a breakthrough, because without it, there will be no reconnection. But at least once the lamp is lit, the writer will see the father, in every sense.

The father still remains in hiding: he sits there behind the door, and has obviously been sitting in the dark as well, if a lamp needs to be lit. The lamp lightens the room, and Bly gives a wonderful couple of lines that sharply show what the writer might see by the lamplight: the heavy eyebrows, the bright forehead.

And then the man himself, lonely in his whole body, waiting for you.

There has to be forgiveness here, I think. The father has spent his life being absent, not giving of himself except in the most material sense. And this is an altogether different body to the one we met at the beginning with its energy and smashing. This is a pitiful body that’s wrecked itself by its refusal to connect. Though the poem ends at this point, it ends in hope in my eyes. The writer has made the decision to follow his instincts, to change things, to bring something vitally important to pass.

Abandoning the book

 I haven’t written anything here for a just under a month. For those who are still interested, that may seem like a long time between posts. You may be wondering what the hold up is in regard to the book I’ve been writing.

Well, I did continue to do a lot of work on it. Wrote a long chapter – nearly 3000 words - which explained things that had happened before the book opened. This was a chapter, however, that I didn’t intend to include in the book. It was for my own understanding of the background of the story.

And I continued to work out how events happened prior to the story, and during the first chapters. I made a kind of timeline in order to get my head clear of wondering when this or that happened.

And then I came to a stop. Not because of procrastination, but because something was disturbing me about the story. It may have been that the villain arranged for someone to die very early on in a nasty way. And that later there would be the attempted murder of probably three, maybe four, of the characters, all in the same scene.

I felt I was heading towards a much darker story than any I’d written before, even though there were deaths in the other stories too. Something in me felt wrong about this book, however. As a Christian I see it as the Holy Spirit warning me against going down the path of this particular book. Others might just consider it an intuition.

I haven’t had this feeling about any of the other books, and I got the sense that I was being warned off going along the track I was headed. It’s worth paying attention at such times. I’ve enjoyed writing the other books even though there were dark moments in them. Somehow these didn’t go against the grain. Whatever it was that I was being ‘warned’ about, I felt that I definitely had to take hold of that warning.

It may even be that I have something more important to do in the near future, and the book will have too much of a hold on my time. At this point I don’t know what that 'more important' thing might be, but I’m waiting.

So there’s no new book in the Grimhilderness series on the horizon.

When I told my wife about abandoning the book, she said, ‘Why don’t you write something completely different?’ I said, ‘I’ve tried other books in the past, but they always come out with me as the main character - and I’m always perfect.’ (I meant that the character who narrated the story, or who was the lead, always seemed to be too good to be true.) With a grin, she said, ‘Well, isn’t that the case?’

Abandoned house - similar to an abandoned book...
Photo: V.B.Speranza

 

Do I ever stop writing about Procrastination?

Procrastination takes all sorts of forms.

I’ve written about some of these before, and about we can do about them, but I want to mention a heavyweight one that arises.

This is where you find yourself saying that the story just doesn’t have the wings to fly, that it’s too much like everything else you’ve written, that the complexity of it will never make sense. Might as well abandon it.

That there are better things in life to be doing.

This is a tough one to deal with, because there are always ‘better’ things to be doing. If you’re of a hedonist mode, this can mean spending more time enjoying yourself, not struggling with some half-baked story.

Or more altruistically, you know you should be helping other people, you should be making the world a better place. This doesn’t need to be on some big scale: it can be as simple as getting a housebound person from A to B.

Or, for a Christian who writes, you can find yourself saying you don’t think this is really what God wants you to do with your time. Check out this essay by James Sinclair for some good thinking on that.

Any one of these seems like a valid excuse, but the result is that even if you put your story metaphorically in the bottom drawer, and cover it with a heap of other things so you don’t see it, it will still nag away at you.

Be brave and tell yourself the truth. You’ve mostly stopped because planning the story, even at a moderate level of planning, is extremely hard work. Your brain doesn’t like hard work, therefore it would prefer you to make seemingly valid excuses to stop.

So what to do?

The answer is simple, but needs courage. Tell your brain that nothing is ever achieved without hard work, and remind it that you’ve been through this before, and you may have to go through it again. But abandoning the story is not the answer to your problem.

The answer to the problem is…hard brain work.

Get on with it.

Mike Crowl's latest book, published late 2023, took five years to write. A good deal of that time was spent in overcoming procrastination. 

The one ton cartoon courtesy of Re-artur

Play and fail

I've been reading the book, Shakespeare - the man who pays the rent over the last several days. In it Brendan O'Hea interviews Judi Dench on the Shakespearian roles she's played over her career. It's full of insights into character, acting, rehearsing, understanding how people behave and much more, along with a few sniffy moments from Dench when O'Hea asks a difficult question or makes what seems to her to be a squishy statement. 

I've made a  note of two particular comments I appreciated, though I could have copied dozens more. 

On page 216 she responds to a comment from O'Hea, who says, 

Sinead Cusack once said: ‘Acting is the shy person’s revenge on the world.’  

Dench responds: ‘Absolutely true. I couldn’t agree more. What a brilliant thing to say. Much easier for a shy person to walk out onstage pretending to be someone else than to enter a room full of people at a party as themselves.’

The last sentence was what most struck a chord with me. When I did some acting over a period of ten years or so I found it interesting that I could get up on stage and perform with ease when I was playing a different person. If asked to get up and make a speech, or present something as myself, or walk into a room full of people and be the centre of attention, I became nervous and stammery. In other words the real me doesn't like to show off. Once I'm hidden behind a character, I'm happy to be as big a show off as the next man. 

The other comment relates to all manner of creative tasks, including the writing of books. On page 226 Dench talks about the director Trevor Nunn, after a general discussion of how it was to work with different directors:

'No, give me Trevor Nunn any day. I’ve seen Trevor speechless with laughter in the rehearsal room, and it only makes you dare to do more. Dare to do things that may be outrageously wrong. But at least try them. Get them out of your system. And also that kind of relationship engenders playfulness and invention. Because you can’t be creative if you’re frightened and anxious. You have to be allowed to laugh and play and fail.'

You have to be allowed to laugh and play and fail. As a writer you have to allow yourself to laugh at your work, to play with it, and to fail - and start again. No writer worth his or her salt can afford to take their own writing too seriously. 

Photo courtesy of imdb.com

Progress again!

 Finally I’m making better progress on my current book, and it’s very satisfying to be doing so.

I had to go back to the beginning and start again. This didn’t mean I dumped everything I’d previously written, it meant that I got the focus right: now the main character isn’t just narrating the story, as he was before, but the story is focused on him as well.

He doesn’t just do ‘stuff’ in the story – the story doesn’t exist without his actions, and in fact we’ve learned that he’s the cause of something in the plot he wasn’t even aware of in the previous two drafts.

Is all the material I wrote previously thrown out the window? Nope. I’ve just spent the last couple of days revising a chunk of the previous material because I’ve reached the point where it’s being sewn back in. It’s not being sewn in as it was, but with the new or different earlier chapters taken into account.

With some regret the major opening incident in the two earlier drafts has been removed. But with it in place there was too much collapsing of ‘buildings’ going on, and in the first instance, without any point. It was an exciting way to start, but it didn’t connect with the rest of the story.

It’s important to remember, as you read this, that I’m still no more than a few chapters into the book. The most chapters I’ve written in any draft has been seven. Many of the ideas and characters that arose out of the writing have survived and will be used as I move forward.

I opened my file the other morning to find a letter from some of the characters saying they’re grateful that the author has taken the time to consider their concerns, and that he’s attempting to wind a stronger story around them.

Just kidding…

Children making a sandcastle, Brighton Beach, South Australia. 

What has a sandcastle got to do with the story? Find out in due course. 

Photo: The History Trust of South Australia, Wikimedia Commons 

Goodbye, DailyQuordlePoem - I think!

Joshua Ryan

Around April 2022 a tweet suggesting writing a Daily Quordle Poem appeared on Twitter (or X, if you prefer the simpler title). Whether the idea came from Kyle Edwards or David Wright, I’m not sure,* but the aim was to take the four words that were the solutions to the Quordle puzzle of the previous day and use them as the first words on each line in a four-line poem.

These are the original rules as set out on Twitter.

This form’s rules:

Write a poem, lines starting with yesterday’s Quordle words (don’t “spoil” today’s Quordle for others).

In one tweet!

Use the #DailyQuordlePoem hashtag.

Have fun playing quordle.com to get the words!

Initially a bunch of people were involved. Some dropped off quickly, some stayed longer before vanishing, and a few remained until late 2023 or early 2024.

The form appealed to me, and I could play around with it since there was no big gatekeeper saying I couldn’t. So sometimes I used the four words at the ends of the lines. Sometimes, if I got a day behind, I combined the words from the two days into one poem, some at the front, some at the back, mixing and matching as it suited. (Which usually broke the second rule above.)

Some poets had used the Quordle words as part of another word, or in different ways played around in their use of them. I adopted most of these techniques as well.

Somewhere along the line David Wright (@ohthatwright@mas.to) set up DailyQuordlePoem.com, and would give us yesterday’s words onsite so that we didn’t have to go and find them. (Or do the Quordle itself to find them, which I found a bit time-consuming.)

By 2024 David would sometimes get behind posting the words, and we might get four or five days’ worth altogether. So I wrote several ‘long form’ Quordle poems, using all the words from those days in four line stanzas.

To challenge myself more with the four-line poem, I’d put the words in alphabetical order. When the long form ones came along, I’d put all the words in alphabetical order, thus forcing myself to be as creative as possible with a restriction. And it worked.

But by this time there was hardly anyone else writing the poems, and David had pointed me to a website where I could pick up yesterday’s words on my own. Occasionally he’d catch up and post two or three poems at a time, but obviously life took over and he became too busy. I carried on, only taking a break when I went overseas in April of 2024.

Finally it became a bit lonely being the only person visible on the site, and a couple of days ago, after trying to write a Quordle poem or two and feeling quite dissatisfied with them, I decided it was perhaps time for me to call it a day as well. Previously the restrictions of the form had inspired creativity. Now it just wasn’t working.

The good things about the Quordle poem were its short form, its given words as starting points, its flexibility. Working at one of the poems for a quarter of an hour was a good way to stimulate the brain for other writing work.

I’m sorry to leave, but there’s not really anyone else to talk to anymore. And seeing others being challenged by the words was stimulating. Maybe there'll be a revival at some point...

OPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP

*Kyle Edwards, if the Intro page to the DailyQuordlePoem site is correct

Fast versus slow

 

I’m currently reading a biography of Terry Pratchett called Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes. It’s written by his former Personal Assistant, Rob Wilkins. The writing is excellent, all the more helped by Wilkins’ close association with him and his love of Pratchett’s writing.

I’ve been focusing a lot in these recent blog posts on slow writing. The only time Pratchett could have been considered slow in his writing was in his late teens/early twenties when he not only worked full-time (mostly as a journalist) but also, once married (quite early) he and his wife were into all manner of hobbies, particularly in the gardening line. During this period he only wrote three books, spread out over several years.

And then suddenly, when he decided to make writing into a career (although he didn’t quit full-time work for several years after that) his writing went from slow to super-fast. He could turn out two adult books a year, and often wrote kids’ books as well. In the end he produced forty-one Discworld novels, and at least thirty-five other books.

However, there were innumerable editions of many of these books, plus adaptations as plays, TV series, calendars, figurines – you name it. He kept an eye on almost everything that was produced.

He attended book-signings, sci-fi conferences and many other events. He wrote to set office hours, and though he and Wilkins had time to ‘play’ within those hours, he seldom took time off that wasn’t work related.

Should I, or you, emulate Pratchett’s output? I know I can’t (I’m too old, for one thing, and started too late) and I suspect few other people would work to the same high energy level, even if they were full-time writers.

Does it matter? Nope. We should work at the level where we produce good work. Forget these writing books that push us more and more into producing two or three books a year. Work to your own level, your own pace. If that includes times when work just doesn’t get done, that’s okay. Life interrupts everyone. Aim to get something done as often as you can, and be content. An unhappy writer doesn’t produce good work.

Taking a lesson from the past

 Still struggling to get moving after being overseas. It’s not the fault of ‘overseas’ but just a lethargy that seems to have taken over after I’d recovered from jet lag and general tiredness. Did I mention that on one part of the trip I was awake for something like forty hours straight, including the 17-hour trip from Dallas to Sydney?

Anyway, yesterday I read back through some notes I made on my previous book, the one that was published late last year. The file was entitled: Notes on The Counterfeit Queen - if I were to start from scratch.

That file was written in 2019, four years before the book got published. So, if you think you’re a slow writer, you can see that I can be a really slow writer.

Anyway, it turned out to be a more encouraging document than I’d have guessed. It showed me that even if my method is slow, it produces results.

In this document there’s a lot of discussion of what I’d already written as a draft, showing the so-called First Draft wasn’t really a draft at all but merely a framework for the real discussion with myself that took place once I’d got some material to work with.

This is where a lot of writing instruction books fall down, for me: they assume you can sit down and write up an idea and turn it into an outline, with character biographies and themes and a proper ending all set up and ready to go.

I don’t find this realistic at all. To produce a real draft I need much more than an outline produced ‘cold.’ I need a ‘draft’ in which things happen, in which characters appear that I didn’t know existed, in which all sorts of clues arise as to what might happen in the story (even though I don’t appreciate that at the time). This draft may wind up being seven or eight or ten chapters long. By that time I know I’ve got a sort of story, but it’s a story without its proper shape. Things may happen, but I don’t necessarily know why. And everything may change.

By the time I realise I need to stop and take stock in relation to this draft, I may have done a lot of work on it. It may still regard itself as the real First Draft.

But now that I do have something to work on I discuss it and discuss it with myself – driving myself crazy in the process. I attempt to iron out all sorts of plot problems that have become apparent, and in due course find myself writing an entirely new version. This may use elements from the original, but may not be anything like the original.

Sometimes this whole process may have to happen more than once, as it did with The Counterfeit Queen. Which is daunting to contemplate.

But what I realised, again, from that Notes on The Counterfeit Queen file, was that all sorts of new ideas came into the picture through the discussions, and weak and pathetic ones quietly retired. Many of these new ideas actually became part of the final book, even though in the discussion I still hadn’t necessarily got a handle on how they’d work - or whether they’d work.  

Last night my wife and I watched a new film on Netflix called Ticket to Paradise. In spite of the fact that it starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, it was dull, and the characters these two played were initially ugly people without any endearing qualities. It never improved.

I wondered afterwards if the script wasn’t written in the way that many writing books suggest: get an idea, outline the characters, the storyline, the ending, etc. Get it all off the ground as quickly as possible.

The result is evident. Nothing shines in this movie. In spite of it being a comedy, almost nothing is funny apart from a couple of scenes with Lucas Bravo as an airline pilot, who after being bitten by a snake, gets some delightful off-the-wall lines as a result of his thinking being affected by his medication. The romantic reconciliation is hurriedly sorted out in the last section of the movie and doesn’t feel real. It proves yet again that even the best actors in the business do far better if they have a literate and intelligent script to work on. One that has been written and discussed and rewritten and discussed until it really works.

Like my book.

Coming back home

Coming into Manly Beach, Sydney, on the ferry. 

 An overseas trip is great, especially if you’re catching up with grandchildren you’ve never seen face to face before.

It’s not so good when it completely takes your attention away from a work in progress, and you come home feeling you have to start from scratch.

Which is what’s happened in my case. All my creative energy has gone into getting to know little people I’ve never met before, or ones who are now several years older than the last time I saw them. Or spending spurts of time in unfamiliar cities, finding my way around them. Or sitting long hours in airports surrounded by thousands of people I don’t know and will never know.

It’s a week since my wife and I returned home, and the creative brain is still saying I’m too tired, I’m jet-lagged, I can’t be bothered…let me sleep!

No doubt many travellers recover from long flights and unfamiliar places in a day or three. I’m not quite as young as I was – who is? – and for me and my wife, the recovery process has seemed much longer than we’d have expected.

So what to do? Submit to procrastination or work out a way to make some progress again? The lazy brain would be happy to go with the former. The soul that’s made of sterner stuff says something along the lines of ‘seize the day’ and makes me uncomfortable if I dare to lay my head down for a moment or two.

So…I can say to myself:

'One option is to read through the draft as it stands. Make notes. Say what you like, what you hate. Remind yourself that before you left for overseas you were already thinking that what you have in hand isn’t the way to go and that a rewrite of these early chapters is necessary.

Don’t berate yourself. Life always gets in the way of creativity.

Do say, as you sit down and scroll yet again through Twitter-cum-X that you didn’t miss the news while you were away, so why do you need to know so much about it now?

There’ll always be news. There won’t always be time to create.'