The Paradox of Reading - Joan Lennon

Isn't it amazing that anything so outwardly solitary can be so densely populated, anything that we do so quietly can resound with so many voices, anything that we do in such stillness can fling us quite so far?

Here's to reading, then, as the year turns towards spring and blessings get counted. First page of the list, for sure, and not far from the top.

Visit Joan's website.

Visit Joan's blog.

"Caprice. Frolic. Joke. Jest. Dance." - Joan Lennon

Caprice. Frolic. Joke. Jest. Dance. This is the word cloud that takes me to what makes us human. The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said this: “. . . one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”. It is the chaos in ourselves that is divine. We can be trained to do almost anything, harnessed to almost any purpose. But there remains a wayward spark whose unpredictability lies in the fact that it is pointless. That is humanity.

The quote is from a New Statesman article by Matthew Parris, titled What makes us human? Doing pointless things for fun. 

I agree.  (I love his cave painting story!)  And because there is a Shetland-shaped place in my heart, I give you this, as well, in confirmation.

Here's to your Christmas and all your new year being fully flavoured with caprice, frolic, jokes, jests, and dance!


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Dot Dot Dot Dash - Joan Lennon

I love the questions kids ask when you go into schools and libraries to talk about being a writer. If the kids are small it can be a bit surreal. Questions like "I have an Auntie" or "We have a blue car" can be tricky to answer. But get a little higher up in the school and there are some interesting and stimulating queries. I don't even mind "Where do you get your ideas?" And one of these days I'll come up with a really ground-breakingly stunning answer.

But the other day I got a brand new one.

"What's your favourite punctuation?"

I have never been asked that before. I knew my answer right away, however. It's the dash. I bet the teacher wanted to kill me slowly for that, but it's true. Everyone who has to work with me knows I am over-fond of that little horizontal line. I love its breathiness, its pace, its panache and elan and eclat and its je ne sais quoi.

I also love ... By which I don't mean "If you wait a bit, I'll tell you what I love." I mean I also love ellipses. They feel like the white space on a page of poetry. Infinite things can happen during an ellipsis. Where a dash is a race, an ellipsis is a leap ...

And so I began to wonder about Morse code. There are many things I did not know about Morse code. I did not know, for example, that a dash is equal to 3 dots. I did not know that "dash ellipsis" is B, or that "ellipsis dash" is V. But I do know that a language that makes use of my two favourite members of the punctuation family has an enormous attraction. Not to mention how useful it has so often proved itself to be for those trapped in prisons with nothing but a pipe and a tin cup. The next spare moment that comes my way really should be committed to learning this excellent code.

Meantime,
dash dot dash dot / dot dot dot dot / dot / dot / dot dash dot / dot dot dot
Joan.

P.S. Are all forms of punctuation equal in your eyes, or do you have a favourite? It would be interesting to know!

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.

A Common Dilemma - Joan Lennon

Once upon a time, there were two poets. For the sake of anonymity, we will call one Emily and the other Sylvia. They were both extremely good writers - modern yet accessible, challenging yet mellifluous, edgy yet musical. They each kept a wary professional eye on the other’s successes and failures. Because they were decent human beings, they tried to rejoice at the former and not to rejoice at the latter. Sometimes they managed this better than other times, but still, they tried.

For many years their areas of special interest did not overlap, so they did not tend to be up for the same awards or invited to the same festivals. Emily focussed largely on urban subjects; Sylvia’s work was strictly metaphysical. But then – an example of convergent evolution – both Sylvia and Emily became interested in birds. Perhaps they both received literature from the RSPB during the same mailing campaign. Perhaps they both were given bird feeders as Christmas presents by totally unrelated relatives. Whatever the reason, both writers began to produce reams of poems about our feathered friends …

… until the inevitable happened. They were both short-listed for the RSPB Bird Poet of the Year Award.

On learning that one has been short-listed for anything, a writer’s invariable first thought is, What shall I wear? This is because they are not normally dressy people. Pyjamas, baggy track tops, elderly jeans – these make up the usual uniform of work-from-home writers. The two poets hadn’t a thing in their wardrobes appropriate for such an occasion.

So, after thinking, What shall I wear? Emily went out in search of an outfit that would be as beautiful as the subjects of her poems. Something feathery, colourful, suggestive of wings and flight.

After thinking, What shall I wear? Sylvia also went out in search of an outfit that would be as beautiful as the subjects of her poems. Something suggestive of flight and wings, colourful, feathery ...

On the fateful evening, they arrived at the award ceremony, both a little late, just in time to go onto the stage and be introduced to the audience.

They were dressed identically.

Sylvia turned to Emily. “Nice dress,” she said.

“Thank you,” Emily replied. “So’s yours.”

“Symbolic?” asked Sylvia.

“Absolutely,” said Emily with a cautious smile. “The old form and content thing.”

“Where would we be without metaphor, eh?”

“Damn straight.”

There was a short pause. Then Emily crooked her arm, inviting Sylvia to link up with her.

“The grand entrance?” she murmured. “As if we’d planned it?”

Sylvia grinned. “For the cause!”

And so the two poets, in their identical dresses, walked on stage. And in the RSPB magazine the next month, over the article describing the event, this headline was proudly displayed:

BARDS OF THE FEATHER FROCK TOGETHER

Visit Joan's website.

Visit Joan's blog.

"This is not the site you're looking for ..." by Joan Lennon

No, my dears.  You may think you'd like to spend some time on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure this fine/squally/dull/dazzling (choose as appropriate) 20th of November, but you really don't.  THIS is where you want to spend some time ...

Spend some time, spend some money.  Go NOW.  Because this is the very last day of the Authors for the Philippines on-line auction to raise funds for the Red Cross Typhoon Haiyan Appeal.  You have until 8:00 pm GMT - and then it's all over.

Go here for the Home Page.  Go here for the exceptionally useful Index (after all, there are several hundred delectable things on offer - easy to get lost!)  But, please, just go.

The Gap ... Joan Lennon

... is what I'm currently struggling with. Well, we're all ALWAYS struggling with it, but I'm finding it a particularly fierce stushie at the moment. I'm trying to bridge the gap between what's in my head and what's on the page - a sort of mental tug of war - trying to drag the story and the words closer together by brute force and sheer doggedness.

Well, it's my job, when all's said and done, but sometimes it feels a lot harder than it should!

It's that old Platonic Ideal thing - the story exists - it really does - and all I can do is my best to get it (as near as possible) down on paper. I'm never going to find the words to match the Ideal. To match the reality. But I'm bound to try.

Which makes it sound all hopeless and grim. Which is sometimes true. But I'm just about to head out to a whole slew of author visits where I'm going to be telling all sorts of kids that I love my job because it is probably the best job in the world.

And that's true too.

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.

Good Intentions Pave the Road to Chess - Joan Lennon

Here's the thing.  I had fully intended to write a deep, insightful post about dealing with rejection.  About confronting that creeping, debilitating sense of invisibility.  About handling Ode Rage (for the poets among us).  It would have been ... epic.  

Unfortunately, I got so depressed even thinking about it all that I became utterly unable to write a word.  So I turned, as you do, to chess.

But not any old chess.  Chess as it was meant to be played ... 

Says it all, really - if at first you don't succeed, pee on the board.

Advice to live by.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

The Rhythm Method - Joan Lennon

Writers lead multiple lives. Like Doctor Who, we have two heart beats (minimum). We dance to several different drummers at once. While the right hand rubs the head, the left hand pats the tummy, and the feet do a ragtime shuffle.

I just finished re-jigging one book and editing another. They had to happen at the same time if I wanted to dance with these particular publishers. And I did. So I did. A little bit of presto agitato never hurt anybody, right? Things like the state of my desk or my laundry basket carried on a sort of ground bass grumble throughout, but I'm good at ignoring them. Just white noise. Actual people don't fade into the background so conveniently, but with a bit of fancy footwork, you can respond like a human being as well.

But the second - the second - the music stopped (bow to your partner, smile and step away) and those bits of work were sent in, the other books that had been wallflowering all this time leapt onto the floor and into my face.

"DANCE WITH ME DANCE WITH ME DANCE WITH ME!"

All of them. All at once. Factor in this scratchy throat that's been incubating for the last few days, the sudden heart-sinking discovery that I'm meant to be blogging on ABBA today, a neglected internet platform, and the shameful admission that I haven't phoned my ancient mother all week, and there you have it - rhythm AND blues.

There is madness in the method, but what would you choose to say no to?

Ginger Rogers famously said of Fred Astaire, "I do everything he does, only backwards, and in heels."

Add in "and to a different beat" and a writer's life is a lot like that.

Visit Joan's website.
Visit Joan's blog.

The Bath Kidlitfest Big Blog Story: Chapter 14

We were  thrilled to be invited to take part in Bath Festival of Children's Literature's newest project - The Big Blog Story, a rolling adventure written by all sorts of different people on all sorts of different blogs. You can follow the story up till now in order by clicking on the links - it's got some fascinating twists and turns!

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

And now, our very own Awfully Big Blog offering. We hope you'll enjoy this joint contribution from (in order of appearance) Joan Lennon, Linda Strachan, Dianne Hofmeyr and Lucy Coats (there's a different picture to show you where each author begins and ends!)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was a cryptic haiku.

Look! Firework display
in the sky – a brave new moon
ignites jealousy.

    “Blimey. Enigmatic or what?!” scribbled Scribbler. But Mr Catch had lived longer in the world than the blue boy and he knew a thing or two about a thing or two.
     “Did I ever tell you the story of my gap year?” he said. “Some time ago now, of course. ButI’ll never forget my experiences teaching English to the Forgotten Tribes of Zing. Mornings we worked on the difference between fewer and less, and afternoons we worked on building fireworks …”
    Scribble wrote, “?”
    Mr Catch was grinning now, all over his wrinkled old face. “I’ll bet my bottom drawer that this coral’s luminescence is the result of a phosphorus component – and this rope is made of Himalayan hemp – and there are emergency flares in the locker here …”
    A smashed coral, unravelled rope and dismantled emergency flare later, and Mr Catch stood up in triumph.
    “There’s more than one way to make a moon launch,” he cried as he reached for the controls …

Meanwhile deep in the dark murky depths of the ocean Cynthia had made a decision. She was tired of being everyone’s prawn.

 She yearned to get back up into the deep velvet of the night sky and bask in the solar winds, while the tides pulled to and fro at her whim.
    She realised (not that she would tell him this), that Breton was right. Even if part of her longed for a knight in shining…blue fur??... to come to her rescue, she was more of a ‘go get it’ kind of girl. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t do it. All she needed was a little help from her friend Luna, but it had been a long time and would Luna hear her call. And if she did, would she help Cynthia?

    A long way off in the town square all the townspeople people were still gathered around the statue of the mysterious stone lady with long flowing hair. Despite shivering in their nightclothes, they stayed because they were too scared to go home.
    A strange cracking and crunching echoed about the square, shattering the quiet of the night.
    “Look!” said a little girl, pointing at the statue “Luna is smiling!” It was true, and as they watched the statue began to glow with a ghostly moonlight-coloured brightness.
    In the dark depths of the ocean Cynthia was thrilled. “She heard me! Luna heard me. I’ll be home soon.”
    She was so delighted that she didn’t hear poor Egeria squeal….

   

   “Move over twin sister. You’re out of your depth!”
    "Minnaloushe! I thought Doris banned you to the Depths of Sirod?”
    "Hah! Doris Boris… that dried up piece of seaweed with her lack-lustre pearl eyes and her Capetown kelp hair… she doesn’t scare me!"

    "But…?" Egeria shook her head. No light shimmered out from the stars in her hair.
    “Why do you think it’s suddenly so squid-ink black down here?”
    “Moon has sunk below…”
    “Air egg!”
    “Air egg?”
    “That’s what your name spells backward. Air ege! Doris should’ve drowned you at birth. Who do you think snapped out the underwater glow? It was ME.”
    “You?”
    "Yes. Moon has seen her dark side forever. She’s on her way down. I squeezed every bit of light out of her silly little minions. No more phosphorus.”
    “Her minions? You mean you killed the plankton?”
    “Every single one of them.”
    “But Minnaloushe, their phosphorus keeps the world alive. They’re the bottom of the food chain.”
    “Well they’re at the bottom of the ocean now. All dead.”
    “Why?”
    “I was tired of Moon waxing and waning. Every time she turned her dark side she took the light out of my eyes. Moon couldn’t stay constant. I lost interest in her.”

Egeria had never felt such rage. Her shock and fear at her twin’s sudden appearance had quite disappeared. How dare Minnaloushe darken Cynthia’s precious light? How dare she threaten the world’s existence on a whim? How dare she make fun of the beautiful name the moon had given her? She remembered something Moby Doris had told her long ago:
    “Anger is power, nymph girl, and it can be shaped.”
    So Egeria drew on her rage, shaped it into a gigantic angler-fish, and set it on her twin. She just had time to see Minnaloushe’s eyes widen with terror, and then the monster swallowed her whole. With a shimmering flick of its tail, the angler-fish drifted off, bubbling screams of rage coming from its belly.
    “Let me out! Let me out!” yelled Minnaloushe. “It’s all slimy in here and it stinks!”
    “Not until you give back the light you stole,” said Egeria.
    “I can’t,” mumbled Minnaloushe in her sulkiest voice. “At least not all of it. My spell ate most of it up. There’s only enough left to power a crescent moon now.”
    “Then that must do,” came a weakened voice from the ink-dark depths.
    “Give it up NOW, Minnaloushe, or stay fishfood forever!”
    “Oh, very well!” Suddenly the angler-fish’s lantern blazed with a fierce pearly light, which shot downwards, hitting Cynthia squarely in her Sea of Serpents. She hissed with pain, as less than a quarter of her began to glow. Saving herself would be more difficult now. Luna had better reach her soon, or the blue boy would be her only hope....           

Joan Lennon's Website

Linda Strachan's Website

Dianne Hofmeyr's Website

Lucy Coats's Website

The story will be continued on 6th October by Kate Maryon at http://katemaryon.co.uk/index.php/blog/

Namely Tips - Joan Lennon

Naming things - children, pets, characters ... I think there must be a special, bespoke little pleasure centre in the human brain just for that. I love naming things. When I was thinking about writing this post with some sort of title like Tips for Naming Characters, the word "naming" morphed into the word "namely" - and a character was born. He is called Namely Tips. He is a young Victorian artist-in-training. He has pale wavy hair and a soft pale moustache and pale blue eyes and he is nervous around women. I can see him clearly. And there is no other moniker on earth that would absolutely suit him so well.

Children ask me at events about where I get the names for my characters. Telling them that they come out of thin air has never seemed to work as an answer. I do explain that for the characters in my medieval books I looked at lists of names from the period for inspiration. In the book I'm writing currently, I have a Bhutanese dictionary which I'm naming my characters out of. But when I'm engaged in research of this sort, what I'm really doing is skimming, and waiting for the right name to leap out.

So for me it would seem that the key is not being good at making up names. For me the key is knowing the right name when I find it. Recognizing that little buzz of pleasure when the naming button is pushed inside my brain, and then running with it.

There are likely as many different ways of finding our characters' (or pets' or children's) names as there are writers (or namers of any sort). Everybody's buttons will be a little different.

So, how is it for you? What are your naming tips? How do you do it? It'll be fun to hear ... Funter Here ... Herr Gottfried Funter, impossibly tall, painfully thin, piano teacher to Lady Arnica Coldpack and desperately, hopelessly in love ...

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
(Oh, and visit the website of the character named Slightly Jones ...)

The Pain in Your Head - Joan Lennon

There's back pain, of course, and RSI in wrists and shoulders and elbows, but those aside, my guess is that most writers suffer from headaches.  I used to get migraines.  Then I started getting tension headaches.  Now I get a ghastly amalgam of both.  Along with the pain and nausea, I cry, feel suffocating unfocused guilt, and am unable to make decisions.  The headaches wake me up in the early hours of the morning and last from 8 to 12 to 24 hours.  I'm not going to talk about the ones that last longer than that.

I take co-codamol and rizatripin, lie in a dark room and, if I can get my act together, listen to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach.  I'm sure there are other things I could/should do, but I can never remember what they are.  If my children are about, they bring me cups of tea and whisper around the door from time to time, "Are you dead?"  Even with such finely-tuned nursing, having a killer headache can make you feel very alone.

Well, you're not.  And here's a chance to get it out of that darkened room and into the open.  Tell me about your headaches, and what you do about them.  Your pain is my pain.  Well, actually, no, you can keep your pain, but I promise you a sympathetic hearing.  And pooling resources on how to better weather the storms inside our skulls just might help.

I'm listening.

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Just Watch - Joan Lennon

Times are tough. I know you're working as hard as you possibly can, and then some. And I think you need a tiny, perfectly-formed break. So, please, do yourself a favour. Forget your worry and your woe, turn up the sound and just watch ...




Cheers, Joan.

Joan Lennon's website
Joan Lennon's blog

Slightly Jones' Big Day - Joan Lennon

Today is a big day for Slightly Jones, Detective-in-Training. For one thing, it's the very first Slighty event, taking place at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I'll be introducing the series, especially the first book - THE CASE OF THE LONDON DRAGONFISH.

Not only that - it's also the launch day for the brand new Slightly Jones' website - SLIGHTLY'S NOTEBOOK!

www.slightlyjones.co.uk

It'd be great if you came and had a rummage round her notebook - and maybe you know someone who'd like to become part of the Slightly Jones Detective Team. There are mysteries to be solved and stories and pictures and ideas to be shared. Hope to see you there!

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.

Like a Rolling Stone - Joan Lennon

I'd never read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It's one of those books where you think you know the plot and the characters and everything, but you've never actually sat down with any of them. I'm pretty sure I've never even watched a movie version, being of a delicate persuasion as far as horror goes. (The hard-core aficionados among you are now snorting scornfully. "Call THAT horror?!" you cry. Sorry.) BUT I needed a book to fill a particular length of time before going away - I needed something to read that wasn't any of the pristine, unstarted books I was leaving with but something I wouldn't have to leave behind still only partway through. And so I chose "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

And before I'd finished the first chapter I came across the following speech by Mr Richard Enfield, "the well-known man about town". (No, I hadn't heard of him either, but I move in fairly modest circles.) He is talking about asking questions. He doesn't hold with doing that. Too dangerous, he thinks ...

"You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name."

And as I read I thought, "That sounds so familiar. That sounds just like my job. That sounds just like writing stories." It really is like that, at least sometimes, isn't it? That sense of avalanching ideas, unexpected heroes, realities lurching into existence and then it being UNTHINKABLE that they should ever not have been. Gravity is as nothing to a story on a roll. You can no more argue with it than you can argue with, say, a sullen teenager.

It does make me a bit nervous about gardening, though.

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.

St Jerome and the Sleeping Cat - Joan Lennon

I'm adaptable ... ish. I can write in cafes and hotel rooms and in the quiet car on trains. I can even write with music, as long as it's classical, doesn't have lyrics and I have easy access to the off switch. I can write in a house full of people, as long as they're not, you know, in the same room. Or talking just outside the door. Or obviously having more fun than I am.

But really, for me, there's always been a perfect place to write, and this is where it's always been. A room like this, with a sleeping cat (size doesn't matter), cushions, a comfy robe, good lighting (I'm willing to use a lamp - not everybody can produce their own) windows onto a view, a bit of birdsong offstage. And solitude.

You can feel the serenity. You can practically touch the contentment - and the focus. How does Durer do that? I don't know. Art's a mystery.

I wrote recently about how writers are like flamingos, how we need each other. And I still think that's true. But this is the other thing. This room, or as close to it as we can find.

And a sleeping cat.


Joan Lennon's website
Joan Lennon's blog

The Flamingo and the Writer - Joan Lennon

These big birds and children’s authors - what do we have in common?

Is it that both groups are leggy, prone to pink and spectacularly ridiculous-looking? Speaking as a short-legged pink-hater who can only dream of looking spectacularly anything, I’d say no. Is it that people tend to look at us strangely when they meet us at parties? Perhaps, though I can’t remember the last time I encountered a flamingo at a rave. Or, indeed, the last time I went to one myself.

No, I think the thing we have in common is that we are both groups which are better as groups than in isolation. We need each other.

Take flamingos. Flamingos won’t breed unless their numbers are greater than some magic flamingo minimum. Sneaky zoo keepers have got around this by putting big mirrors by their pools so that the birds think there are at least twice as many of their colleagues long-legging it about the place than there really are. And – hey presto – bouncing baby flamingos ensue.

Writers are the same. We don’t thrive in a vacuum. We write better when we are part of a collective of creativity. The more really good children’s books there are, the more there will be. Birds and book-writers alike, we need a community in order to be really pink and glowing.

For, as the saying goes, no flamingo is an island

Joan Lennon website
Joan Lennon blog

The Zoo and the Poet - Joan Lennon

I have a fantasy. Well, I have many fantasies, but this is one of them.

I am Poet-in-Residence at the Edinburgh Zoo. By day, I wander among the crowds, the hosts of golden, er, people, and recite poetry at them/get them to write poems with me/babble enthusiastically about alliteration, haiku, rhythm and only if absolutely unavoidable, rhyme/do more of what I already do in zoos (to the embarrassment of many) i.e. accost complete strangers and say things like, "If you stand here you can see better" or "Look - there - no, there - oh, it just walked behind that rock ..." I would help the keepers muck out and practise spider monkey facial language assiduously and soon get that wonderful inner look of one who can honestly say "I'm not a tourist - I live here." Because I would. I'd have my own enclosure, where the public could watch me write, be creative, hatch out words, just like the blue beauty nesting in the picture above. They (the public) would be discouraged from banging on the glass or passing comments such as "Oh, look - isn't she funny?!" I would reserve the right to throw poo at them if they did so anyway. Or when the writing stalled. Or just for the fun of it. And then, at nightfall, I would stay when everyone else had gone, and find out just what a deserted zoo by moonlight looks and sounds and feels like.

That's it. You can keep your Poet Laureateships and your Nobel Prize-winning - give me the post of Zoo Poet any day.

Please.

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.

In Praise of Ruperts - Joan Lennon

I have just returned from a remarkable experience. I spent March as the Jessie Kesson Fellow at Moniack Mhor Writers' Centre. I lived in a cottage on a hill (1000 feet up), with its very own micro-climate - everything from thigh-high snow, to sitting out in the sun watching the daftness of lambs, to the foggiest fogs I have ever seen - and I wrote. When I wasn't writing, I thought about writing. When I went to sleep, I dreamed about writing. I did a day a week in the schools talking about writing and getting the kids to write. I worked with the Highland Literary Salon on their Writers' Retreat Weekend. I was obsessed. I was, in fact, a deleriously happy Rupert.

Let me explain.

Rupert is a crow. He also lives at Moniack Mhor. He sees life differently from other crows. I know this because Rupert throws himself at buildings. Now, many birds will occasionally be confused by the glass in a window and bump into it. Having done so, they will either a) drop down dead or b) give themselves an embarrassed shake and fly away. Not Rupert. Rupert seeks out windows with intent, and when he finds them he throws himself at them like a feathery grenade, bounces off, and does it again.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

If you interrupt Rupert in mid-attack by, say, opening the door and yelling, he'll only go a little way off and then squat on a fence post and swear at you. You just know he's going to be back. He is on a mission - his tiny demented mind is full of conquest ...

Bam. Bam.

At first he specialised in subduing the windows of my cottage. By the time my residency was over, he had transferred his attention to the big house and was attacking that. There are A LOT of windows in the main building, but Rupert is a bird obsessed. I'm convinced he's happy in his work. I like to think we have things in common.

So here's to Ruperts everywhere. Here's to slant vision, quixotic pursuits, perseverance and a hard head.

Here's to obsession.

Bam.

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.

Unrealistic of Fife (aka Joan Lennon)

I am an utterly lucky bunny. I've been awarded the Jessie Kesson Fellowship, which means I get to spend March in the cottage on the left, working in the schools one day a week, doing some adult workshops and writing my tiny socks off. Please don't worry that I am now going to continue with a But ... There ARE not Buts for a situation like that. The situation is perfect. I, however ...

(See, a However is different from a But)

... have a tendency to be unrealistic. I've blogged about this before - the Bottom Syndrome - and what I'm suffering from at the moment is a version of that dread disease.

"With that much time," I find myself saying to myself, "that much beautiful, inspiring scenery, that much peace, I should be able to write AT LEAST Paradise Lost and Lord of the Rings and 2 radio plays and a short story and a Science Fiction masterpiece. And hike 20 miles a day, like a demented hikey thing. And take award-winning photographs. And learn how to draw. Oh, and I wouldn't mind being a few inches taller."

I lie for a living. But if I don't get a handle on THIS form of fiction, there is a good chance my head may explode, all over the beautiful scenery. Which must constitute some form of littering, and so I am against it.

Realistic aims, then:

I will write ... a moderate number of tons.
I will walk ... weather permitting, and slowly, so that I can take photos.
I will stand up straight ... which is the only way I'm likely to grow.

And if you hear a dull boom in the distance, here's hoping it wasn't me.

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.

P.S. Apologies - this post is meant to be on 28th Feb. but I can't get the delayed posting thing to work (sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't) and I need to pack up my computer now to take north with me ... Lucky bunny - I know!

High Confidence and the Leaks - Joan Lennon

I've been thinking about confidence, and have come to the conclusion that that may be a mistake. My moments of high confidence - during a talk that's going really well, for example, or those times when the words flow like blue silk - don't seem to have any connection to cogitation, anticipation or memory. When I'm in them, I'm in them, full stop. Usually, that's fine, because I'm far too busy doing what I doing to be thinking about doing it. So to speak.

The times when confidence leaks away, however, seem to have plenty of room in them for thinking, fussing about the future and dredging up the past. A recent story rejection is a case in point. The moment the email arrived I became like a confidence colander. Belief in myself leaked out the bottom as memories of past rejections, fear - nay, certainty - of future rejections, and thoughts of the horribly parlous state of my chosen line of work flooded in at the top. All time - past and future, real and imagined, eminently possible and really very unlikely - swamping the rapidly shrivelling vegetables of the soul. Not a pretty sight.

I ought to come to some sort of conclusion at this point but I can't, beyond applauding the kitten above and staying away from kitchen duties. But if you have any insights on the question of confidence or the lack thereof, please share them.

Cheers, Joan.

P.S. Don't you think "High Confidence and the Leaks" would be a great name for a rock band?

Visit my website.
Visit my blog.
Visit Slightly Jones' Notebook.