50,000 words. Fifty thousand. In twenty-four days. I'm going to take tomorrow off, I think.
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Finished!
50,000 words. Fifty thousand. In twenty-four days. I'm going to take tomorrow off, I think.
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Nearly almost there!
Well I have been slightly quiet about Nanowrimo but tonight I passed a MASSIVE milestone: I wrote more words today than I have left to write before I reach the 50,000.
This does not mean I'm going to get there tomorrow necessarily, but it does leave me a mere (ha!) 2328 words shy of the grand total with seven days to go.
This is an achievement I am happy with. The writing, well not so much. Actually that's inaccurate. I'm very pleased with the writing - it's just the words I have a problem with. The process of thinking, persevering, setting aside time, repeatedly hitting the keys, sitting down when I didn't want to, when I didn't care, when I had no idea what to say, making myself do it and make words appear, make people say things, do things, just to fill a relentlessly endless page - that has been totally awesome and has transformed writing for me from something abstract into a real physical activity. I am delighted with the writing.
But yeah, a LOT of the words, sentences, whole chapters are awful. Utterly, indescribably bad. I know you'll think I am not a fair judge of my own work, but I can be really very objective when I want to and a good 20,000 words of what I have written is unremittingly foul. That's okay. It meant that when I wrote something good (or well) then I really noticed and that was also delightful.
I started off trying to novelise a dream I had had. You might not be surprised to learn that I now think that was a dumb idea. It went well to begin with but it was unsustainable without some serious planning. At about fifteen thousand words I began to worry that I was running out of story. But I persevered. I extrapolated. I lensed in, exploring relationships between characters. I added twists. Moved locations. At all costs, I swore, I would not give up! I banged my head on kitchen tables. I drank coffee. I drank bourbon. I drank tea. I drank beer. I wrote in the garden. I wrote at my desk. I wrote in Starbucks. I wrote on the plane, hunched over a laptop that was so squashed it was nearly folded shut.
It was horrible. Painful. Dispiriting. I still kept going. It got a bit better. I had already written up the dream, in incredible detail, much of it twice and then much more. But I was breathing stale air into a dead story.
At 28179 words and 17 days I stopped writing that story. I switched. I dusted off a plan for a novel I had made several years ago, and written only a few hundred words of. I scratched those and I started again. I wrote 5000 words the first day and I've almost hit 20,000 a week later. Having a plan makes an enormous difference. But so does writing something that is supposed to be a story, rather than a dream.
I'm not abandoning the dream story. It's no more than a distended metaphor, but I think there's a very long short story/ very short novella there. It's not uninteresting, just unformed. I'll go back later and polish and cut and so forth and at some point during that process I'll nail the focal length of the thing and it will be fine. And in the meantime I will continue with my new work in progress until I hit 50,000 total for the month and then I'll submit.
No, it's not an ideal first Nanowrimo, but in a way, it has been perfect. They talk of there being two kinds of writers for this thing: planners and pantsers, the latter being those who just wing it by the seat of their pants. Well, at my first attempt I've tried both approaches and learned an awful lot more as a result.
This does not mean I'm going to get there tomorrow necessarily, but it does leave me a mere (ha!) 2328 words shy of the grand total with seven days to go.
This is an achievement I am happy with. The writing, well not so much. Actually that's inaccurate. I'm very pleased with the writing - it's just the words I have a problem with. The process of thinking, persevering, setting aside time, repeatedly hitting the keys, sitting down when I didn't want to, when I didn't care, when I had no idea what to say, making myself do it and make words appear, make people say things, do things, just to fill a relentlessly endless page - that has been totally awesome and has transformed writing for me from something abstract into a real physical activity. I am delighted with the writing.
But yeah, a LOT of the words, sentences, whole chapters are awful. Utterly, indescribably bad. I know you'll think I am not a fair judge of my own work, but I can be really very objective when I want to and a good 20,000 words of what I have written is unremittingly foul. That's okay. It meant that when I wrote something good (or well) then I really noticed and that was also delightful.
I started off trying to novelise a dream I had had. You might not be surprised to learn that I now think that was a dumb idea. It went well to begin with but it was unsustainable without some serious planning. At about fifteen thousand words I began to worry that I was running out of story. But I persevered. I extrapolated. I lensed in, exploring relationships between characters. I added twists. Moved locations. At all costs, I swore, I would not give up! I banged my head on kitchen tables. I drank coffee. I drank bourbon. I drank tea. I drank beer. I wrote in the garden. I wrote at my desk. I wrote in Starbucks. I wrote on the plane, hunched over a laptop that was so squashed it was nearly folded shut.
It was horrible. Painful. Dispiriting. I still kept going. It got a bit better. I had already written up the dream, in incredible detail, much of it twice and then much more. But I was breathing stale air into a dead story.
At 28179 words and 17 days I stopped writing that story. I switched. I dusted off a plan for a novel I had made several years ago, and written only a few hundred words of. I scratched those and I started again. I wrote 5000 words the first day and I've almost hit 20,000 a week later. Having a plan makes an enormous difference. But so does writing something that is supposed to be a story, rather than a dream.
I'm not abandoning the dream story. It's no more than a distended metaphor, but I think there's a very long short story/ very short novella there. It's not uninteresting, just unformed. I'll go back later and polish and cut and so forth and at some point during that process I'll nail the focal length of the thing and it will be fine. And in the meantime I will continue with my new work in progress until I hit 50,000 total for the month and then I'll submit.
No, it's not an ideal first Nanowrimo, but in a way, it has been perfect. They talk of there being two kinds of writers for this thing: planners and pantsers, the latter being those who just wing it by the seat of their pants. Well, at my first attempt I've tried both approaches and learned an awful lot more as a result.
Don't kiss that baby, we're all going to die!
I don't even know where to start with this so randomly I shall just go ahead and say that I don't really get ill. Maybe one day or a half day a year I will feel tired or crap or I might have to put up with a mungy cold for a few days and, of course, if you are within earshot I will moan about it but let's say I don't tend to succumb to whatever it is that is 'doing the rounds'. Similarly my children are very infrequently ill. I think W has had one half day off school in two and a half years, possibly longer. Perhaps we are lucky, or just plain old healthy, I don't know; it's something I'm grateful for, to be sure, and just watch now as I develop symptoms of Syldavian Lungworm over Thanksgiving.
But the community I live in seems to be utterly terrified, not only of casual illnesses but of any kind of concession to the idea that we all might be ephemeral mortal flesh.
So there are legitimate and sensible reasons to protect your, of course - especially in a country where you pay for your own healthcare. And so, to begin with, I found it merely amusing that there were sanitising wipes at the supermarket for you to wipe the handle of your trolley before you, ugh, have to touch it. Or sanitiser dispensers in the walls of the hallways at school, so you don't have worry about, ugh, infecting the poor children. But when someone didn't shake my hand on the grounds of hygiene, I stopped being amused.
Children here do not get 'sore throats', they get 'strep throat' because, you know, this is an infection caused by something invisible that can be cleaned, for goodness sake. And the kids get antibiotics of course and flu shots - well, actually, everybody gets flu shots because catching it would simply be intolerable, wouldn't it.
Okay, still not completely beyond the pail, but it gets weirder. The word 'kiss' is a banned word at my kids' elementary school, let alone the action itself. Because kissing is disgusting, you see, because it spreads germs. Presumably the word 'fuck' is taboo for similar reasons. One parent told me, horrified and apologetic, how her child and mine shared food from their lunch boxes at school one day. I thought she must be worried about life-threatening allergies and was prepared to be sympathetic. But then she explained just how disgusting and unhealthy it was. Funny that her children get sick so much more often than mine...
I have this pet theory that we're healthier because my house is dirtier than theirs. There's no evidence for it, but I like to think that living in a dust-ridden cesspit inures us to bacteria and grime and gives our immune systems a rigorous regimen. That's my excuse anyway.
So I find this either amusing or disturbing depending on day of the week, but just this afternoon the dentist was telling us about a new product. They're called Spiffies and they are antibacterial wipes for babies' mouths. Here's a choice quote:
Hooray, something else to clean! I'm sure this offers some help with regard to protecting milk teeth from possible cavities but I was happy when it was just the outside of the babies we were supposed to keep clean. It's as if we're hell bent on breeding out any resistance to infection whatsoever. Anyway, the reason the dentist got onto the subject of Spiffies, is that the key (I think he used the word 'miracle') ingredient is Xylitol, the stuff they put into sugar-free gum. He has a gynaecologist friend who as started prescribing Xylitol to his mothers-of-newborns. You know, because they can't help but, ugh, kiss their babies and their mouths are, ugh, full of germs.
This blew me away. Is it really germs or bacteria that is the concern? Or is it the dreadful inevitability or our own mortality that they are worried about being passed on to the beautiful brand new baby? I can't say for sure but I have my theory.
Whilst we're on the subject of Americans and hygiene and disgust I have to share this article from the New York Times last month.
In a nutshell, it discusses how political views and disgust are related. The killer quote:
Absolutely fascinating. Especially living in a conservative state where there are (as discussed) hand sanitizers everywhere! There's no real way to tell how precisely these concepts are inter-related but there is, apparently, a connection. Beneath all this behaviour and these attitudes, whether against people who are different, or in favour of our own precious bodily fluids, there is an unshakeable fear, an anxiety that cannot be assuaged.
In fact, I find it kind of scary. I hope it's not contagious.
But the community I live in seems to be utterly terrified, not only of casual illnesses but of any kind of concession to the idea that we all might be ephemeral mortal flesh.
So there are legitimate and sensible reasons to protect your, of course - especially in a country where you pay for your own healthcare. And so, to begin with, I found it merely amusing that there were sanitising wipes at the supermarket for you to wipe the handle of your trolley before you, ugh, have to touch it. Or sanitiser dispensers in the walls of the hallways at school, so you don't have worry about, ugh, infecting the poor children. But when someone didn't shake my hand on the grounds of hygiene, I stopped being amused.
Children here do not get 'sore throats', they get 'strep throat' because, you know, this is an infection caused by something invisible that can be cleaned, for goodness sake. And the kids get antibiotics of course and flu shots - well, actually, everybody gets flu shots because catching it would simply be intolerable, wouldn't it.
Okay, still not completely beyond the pail, but it gets weirder. The word 'kiss' is a banned word at my kids' elementary school, let alone the action itself. Because kissing is disgusting, you see, because it spreads germs. Presumably the word 'fuck' is taboo for similar reasons. One parent told me, horrified and apologetic, how her child and mine shared food from their lunch boxes at school one day. I thought she must be worried about life-threatening allergies and was prepared to be sympathetic. But then she explained just how disgusting and unhealthy it was. Funny that her children get sick so much more often than mine...
I have this pet theory that we're healthier because my house is dirtier than theirs. There's no evidence for it, but I like to think that living in a dust-ridden cesspit inures us to bacteria and grime and gives our immune systems a rigorous regimen. That's my excuse anyway.
So I find this either amusing or disturbing depending on day of the week, but just this afternoon the dentist was telling us about a new product. They're called Spiffies and they are antibacterial wipes for babies' mouths. Here's a choice quote:
What is it about wiping and babies? We wipe their bottoms (a lot!) and their hands and dirty faces. Of course if you watch a baby, you’ll notice everything goes into their mouth including yucky bacteria...
Hooray, something else to clean! I'm sure this offers some help with regard to protecting milk teeth from possible cavities but I was happy when it was just the outside of the babies we were supposed to keep clean. It's as if we're hell bent on breeding out any resistance to infection whatsoever. Anyway, the reason the dentist got onto the subject of Spiffies, is that the key (I think he used the word 'miracle') ingredient is Xylitol, the stuff they put into sugar-free gum. He has a gynaecologist friend who as started prescribing Xylitol to his mothers-of-newborns. You know, because they can't help but, ugh, kiss their babies and their mouths are, ugh, full of germs.
This blew me away. Is it really germs or bacteria that is the concern? Or is it the dreadful inevitability or our own mortality that they are worried about being passed on to the beautiful brand new baby? I can't say for sure but I have my theory.
Whilst we're on the subject of Americans and hygiene and disgust I have to share this article from the New York Times last month.
In a nutshell, it discusses how political views and disgust are related. The killer quote:
Consider recent experiments by the psychologist Simone Schnall and her colleagues: people who were sitting in a foul-smelling room or at a desk cluttered with dirty food containers judged acts like lying on a résumé or keeping a wallet found on the street as more immoral than individuals who were asked to make the same judgments in a clean environment. This general finding has been replicated by other psychologists using a variety of disgust elicitors and moral behaviors.
Subtle cues about disgust and cleanliness can affect social and political judgments as well. In an experiment conducted recently by Erik Helzer, a Cornell Ph.D. student, and one of us (David Pizarro), merely standing near a hand-sanitizing dispenser led people to report more conservative political beliefs. Participants who were randomly positioned in front of a hand sanitizer gave more conservative responses to a survey about their moral, social and fiscal attitudes than those individuals assigned to complete the questionnaire at the other end of the hallway.
In another experiment one of us (Dr. Pizarro) was involved in, a foul ambient smell — emitted, unbeknownst to test subjects, by a novelty spray — caused people answering a questionnaire to report more negative attitudes toward gay men than did people who responded in the absence of the stench. Apparently, the slightest signal that germs might be present is enough to shift political attitudes toward the right.
Absolutely fascinating. Especially living in a conservative state where there are (as discussed) hand sanitizers everywhere! There's no real way to tell how precisely these concepts are inter-related but there is, apparently, a connection. Beneath all this behaviour and these attitudes, whether against people who are different, or in favour of our own precious bodily fluids, there is an unshakeable fear, an anxiety that cannot be assuaged.
In fact, I find it kind of scary. I hope it's not contagious.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
San Francisco
Wow, different again.
San Francisco, with its peculiar topography, bridges, bays, parks, architecture and myriad forms of municipal transport, looks and feels more like something from Sim City than any other place in America. It is beautiful and odd and foreign and familiar all at the same time.
Thanks to some hefty frequent flyer miles L's acquired, I got to tag along for this leg of her November audition tour. Whilst she was stuck inside working, I got a day to myself to zip about. Impossible, of course, in such time to get a proper insight or understanding of a whole city, but it is possible to form some first impressions.
So, firstly, density. How wonderful and thrilling to be somewhere squashed up, where every square foot of ground counts. Houston is so lazily spread out that the very air is thin, but San Francisco is piled high and squeezed in, from the bay to the ocean and therefore immediately has the air of a properly exciting city.
Secondly, the hills are spectacular and stupefying, just as they seem to be in Vertigo, or Bullit, or the Dirty Harry films, or even Crazy Like A Fox (don't tell me you don't remember that, I know you do). In fact watching the streets bend up and up, the impossible angles rendered by sedate lines of traffic, it's hard not to feel part of a vast optical illusion.
San Francisco feels like a city that's happy to play up to its reputation. The cable cars and trams are all carefully preserved from classic eras whilst the buses proudly proclaim their zero emission status, the overhead cables clicking and singing with juice. The architecture varies enormously with white-cubed casas in the hills near the airport, grand and ornate Victorian town houses in the heights, immaculate classical civic buildings around (and including) City Hall and everything else, scruffy and smart in between. Every single billboard I saw was an advert for iPad, but at the same time there is a faded resort charm to the place, rather like Brighton I suppose.
It's a very diverse city, a broad mix of white, black, hispanic and asian Americans; the kids are very cool and there's plenty of delicious individuality on display from all walks of life. But, in some senses, San Francisco is very much the end of the line. There are certainly more homeless people there than anywhere else in America from what I've seen. And, perhaps not coincidentally, plenty of people who look like they are headed in the same direction: young men with wild beards and ragged clothes, ranting at nothing. I wonder if there is a current in this country that pulls or pushes people out west to California. Maybe people end up here simply because they keep going until they hit the ocean and then there is nowhere else to go.
We made our way back into the city and took a cable car up into Chinatown. Getting off the cab and suddenly being surrounded by Chinese script, lanterns, restaurants, shops and people was a reminder that there really was something across that ocean after all.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Bang. Crash.
This is the somewhat predictable "I've hit a wall and can't write any more" post. Suffice it to say that I have no idea how to keep going from here.
I managed to write 20,000 words in 8 days which is wonderful. I am delighted with the fact that I can do that. I have managed about 1500 words in the last three days however and this is not good.
I have written the story in to a ditch. The characters, who've been stuck in more or less the same place for the entirety of proceedings, are bemused and exhausted to the point that they can't express themselves any more.
I can relate to that.
Another problem is that I have nearly exhausted my plot ideas. I did expect this to happen, but I thought I might get another 10,000 words done first at least. Perhaps it is in anticipation of this that I have slowed up.
I want to reverse out of the hole, work backwards until I find the problem and fix it. I think that won't work. This is sausage-factory fiction. I guess I just have to plough on and start really making stuff up. The important thing is the word count and the deadline. I have to keep going, no matter how turgid my prose becomes, and just, argh, you know.
I managed to write 20,000 words in 8 days which is wonderful. I am delighted with the fact that I can do that. I have managed about 1500 words in the last three days however and this is not good.
I have written the story in to a ditch. The characters, who've been stuck in more or less the same place for the entirety of proceedings, are bemused and exhausted to the point that they can't express themselves any more.
I can relate to that.
Another problem is that I have nearly exhausted my plot ideas. I did expect this to happen, but I thought I might get another 10,000 words done first at least. Perhaps it is in anticipation of this that I have slowed up.
I want to reverse out of the hole, work backwards until I find the problem and fix it. I think that won't work. This is sausage-factory fiction. I guess I just have to plough on and start really making stuff up. The important thing is the word count and the deadline. I have to keep going, no matter how turgid my prose becomes, and just, argh, you know.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Intense
I've finished writing for the day feeling very smug to have hit 10,000 words. Twenty percent of the way there!
Writing this much this fast is strange. I'm working in the mornings and chipping away at targets: 300 words until I've hit the 1667 or 450 until I've managed 2000 for the day and so forth. This seems very effective in keeping me typing, but the resulting prose is very rough - certainly lots of polishing needed to get it up even to a first draft quality.
But that can all happen later. Right now I'm enjoying the intensity of a writing marathon comprised of lots of little sprints whilst also desperately trying to keep hold of my story by my fingernails.
Writing this much this fast is strange. I'm working in the mornings and chipping away at targets: 300 words until I've hit the 1667 or 450 until I've managed 2000 for the day and so forth. This seems very effective in keeping me typing, but the resulting prose is very rough - certainly lots of polishing needed to get it up even to a first draft quality.
But that can all happen later. Right now I'm enjoying the intensity of a writing marathon comprised of lots of little sprints whilst also desperately trying to keep hold of my story by my fingernails.
Monday, 1 November 2010
Day 1: 1667 words gets me a Jaffa Cake.
I'm not going to post EVERY DAY about how well or badly I am doing at this NaNoWriMo thing, but I'm going to do a Day 1 blog because my enthusiam levels are still relatively high!
So far, I have written 1742 words - just over the given daily target of 1667 - so I'm going to stop for a bit and interact with the children, cook dinner and so forth. This is a good progress I think and I'm surprised that it has come as easily as it has, especially considering the hangover I started with this morning. I certainly haven't been sat here crying against a blank Word doc, which is what I was afraid of.
I've been writing in bursts, trying to get between 250 and 500 words done at a time. This is great for fitting in the writing between chores and dovetails very nicely with an online app called Write or Die which lets you input a time limit and a target number of words before gently nagging at you when you stop. Surprisingly effective. Obviously, not having a day job puts me in a rather luxurious position for this sort of thing. If I were to actually write all day, like it was a job or something that I was good at, then 1667 would be a feeble effort. But it isn't just about smacking your fingers against the keyboard. The words still have to come from somewhere. Again I've been pleasently surprised.
The two short scenes I've written today were both entirely new to me and they have allowed the rather cardboard characters from my vague plot outline to begin to push back a bit against my expectations. This has got to be how it works - whilst I do have a plan, I can't have everything exhaustively mapped out. If I knew absolutely what is going to happen then I wouldn't need to write it.
Hopefully I haven't stopped for the day either. Any word surplus I can build up this week has got to be a good thing, especially with some of the upcoming November fun I have to look forward too.
Above all it is a relief to be writing and it feels wonderful to have the time officially ring-fenced for writing in. And Jaffa Cakes are great motivators.
So far, I have written 1742 words - just over the given daily target of 1667 - so I'm going to stop for a bit and interact with the children, cook dinner and so forth. This is a good progress I think and I'm surprised that it has come as easily as it has, especially considering the hangover I started with this morning. I certainly haven't been sat here crying against a blank Word doc, which is what I was afraid of.
I've been writing in bursts, trying to get between 250 and 500 words done at a time. This is great for fitting in the writing between chores and dovetails very nicely with an online app called Write or Die which lets you input a time limit and a target number of words before gently nagging at you when you stop. Surprisingly effective. Obviously, not having a day job puts me in a rather luxurious position for this sort of thing. If I were to actually write all day, like it was a job or something that I was good at, then 1667 would be a feeble effort. But it isn't just about smacking your fingers against the keyboard. The words still have to come from somewhere. Again I've been pleasently surprised.
The two short scenes I've written today were both entirely new to me and they have allowed the rather cardboard characters from my vague plot outline to begin to push back a bit against my expectations. This has got to be how it works - whilst I do have a plan, I can't have everything exhaustively mapped out. If I knew absolutely what is going to happen then I wouldn't need to write it.
Hopefully I haven't stopped for the day either. Any word surplus I can build up this week has got to be a good thing, especially with some of the upcoming November fun I have to look forward too.
Above all it is a relief to be writing and it feels wonderful to have the time officially ring-fenced for writing in. And Jaffa Cakes are great motivators.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Small Talk
Believe it or not I quite like small talk. At the school with the Moms, or with the opera people at shows and parties, I quite enjoy the inconsequential chatter with which we try and fill the micro-longeurs between this and that. I'm not saying I'm any good at it. And it's not entirely stress-free either. Especially with people I don't really know, it can feel like a determined act of transmutation, grasping the wordless nothing that we have to say to each other and spinning it into a conversation about nothing instead. But then I like it because of the inconsequentiality. It is possible to talk freely because I am saying precisely nothing.
So, speaking the other day to someone I've met only a few times, I was not in the least uninterested, despite being heavily disinterested. At least I was until they started talking about me.
"Oh yes," they said. "Someone was saying about the November book writing thing. What a wonderful idea! I can't wait to read yours!"
With these words, my coffee turned to cold, slimy dread in my throat. Read my story? I don't think so! If the prospect of writing 50,000 wasn't daunting, then the idea that they might have to be 50,000 readable or interesting words certainly is. In fact given the parameters of the competition (an average of 1667 words a day for 30 days) I'd be amazed if I produced anything which made any sense whatsoever. What it will be, hopefully, is extant, possessing a beginning, middle and end. This is the lowly state of my ambitions.
Like my small talk, the story I'm going to write came out of nothing. One morning, about a week before I found out about NaNoWriMo, I woke up having literally dreamed a book. It was a very strange feeling. I often remember my dreams and they are regularly vivid, albeit normally fragmented and surreal. This dream was oddly organised and comprehensive, filling like a thick and hearty soup, and it stuck with me long enough for me to scribble down a summary. It was all there, unfolding in order, protagonists, antagonists, imagery, conflict and something that certainly would have done as an ending if I wasn't worried that it might need a bit more. As I mulled it over I even realised that there was a crude allegory to it: the damn dream even had subtext.
But that makes me nervous: if it ends up being a story 'about something' then it stops being small talk. The more consciously I think about it, the more contrived it feels and I realise that I only want to write the story because I have so little investment in it. By writing the dream story I have deniability. I am insulated from some of the responsibility for it if it turns out to be rubbish whilst still being able to take all the credit if it is actually, you know, good. Hopefully I can write freely enough that I can take a dream, the most insubstantial nothing, an unconscious notion, and spin it into the comparatively solid nothing of a story, even one that is not to be read.
As for the person I was chatting to who scared me so, I don't think they'll be disappointed if they don't get to read it. It was just small talk so, in a nice way, I take great comfort from the fact that they weren't really interested at all.
581 words. Hmmm.
So, speaking the other day to someone I've met only a few times, I was not in the least uninterested, despite being heavily disinterested. At least I was until they started talking about me.
"Oh yes," they said. "Someone was saying about the November book writing thing. What a wonderful idea! I can't wait to read yours!"
With these words, my coffee turned to cold, slimy dread in my throat. Read my story? I don't think so! If the prospect of writing 50,000 wasn't daunting, then the idea that they might have to be 50,000 readable or interesting words certainly is. In fact given the parameters of the competition (an average of 1667 words a day for 30 days) I'd be amazed if I produced anything which made any sense whatsoever. What it will be, hopefully, is extant, possessing a beginning, middle and end. This is the lowly state of my ambitions.
Like my small talk, the story I'm going to write came out of nothing. One morning, about a week before I found out about NaNoWriMo, I woke up having literally dreamed a book. It was a very strange feeling. I often remember my dreams and they are regularly vivid, albeit normally fragmented and surreal. This dream was oddly organised and comprehensive, filling like a thick and hearty soup, and it stuck with me long enough for me to scribble down a summary. It was all there, unfolding in order, protagonists, antagonists, imagery, conflict and something that certainly would have done as an ending if I wasn't worried that it might need a bit more. As I mulled it over I even realised that there was a crude allegory to it: the damn dream even had subtext.
But that makes me nervous: if it ends up being a story 'about something' then it stops being small talk. The more consciously I think about it, the more contrived it feels and I realise that I only want to write the story because I have so little investment in it. By writing the dream story I have deniability. I am insulated from some of the responsibility for it if it turns out to be rubbish whilst still being able to take all the credit if it is actually, you know, good. Hopefully I can write freely enough that I can take a dream, the most insubstantial nothing, an unconscious notion, and spin it into the comparatively solid nothing of a story, even one that is not to be read.
As for the person I was chatting to who scared me so, I don't think they'll be disappointed if they don't get to read it. It was just small talk so, in a nice way, I take great comfort from the fact that they weren't really interested at all.
581 words. Hmmm.
Friday, 15 October 2010
NaNoWriMo - WTF?
One of the things I don't write about is writing. And one of the reasons I don't write about writing is that I don't feel I do enough writing to write about. There are other reasons too, not least of which is my assumption that writing is a solitary pursuit, something to be done in private with the curtains drawn. When people ask how the writing is going or, hell, even what it is that I am working on, I feel embarrassed and unworthy of their interest. Compared even with the average Brit I am allergic to the notion of self-publicity; here in America, I might as well be a ghost.
Anyway, it is slowly dawning on me that I may have got a lot of this wrong. If I am lacking in confidence, it may have something to do with the fact that I am only asking for my own opinion on what I have written. Hopefully. And it may also be the case that talking about writing, writing about writing, and (gasp!) socialising with writers might be beneficial. I'm queasy having typed that - stay strong Michael.
So what has brought me to this? Well, mainly it's the fact that I've been (re)writing the same story for four or five years and I'm no closer to understanding where it is I need to go with it next. And going round and round with it is making me like it less and less. That's a heavy hat to doff at passers by.
Luckily that's just the dull side of a coin that also has a very shiny side. One point of light is my incredible friend Chris has, through hard work and natural brilliance, had several books published since he began writing full-time a few years ago. His success shows what can be achieved and, whilst I am happy for him, I am also grateful to him for setting such an example.
Another sunbeam struck earlier this year when Chris, my just-as-incredible friend Jamie and I were able to work together and entered a short story into a competition, only to be selected as one the winners. Our (excellent) story will be published early in 2011 (I think - still not taking to the self-promotion) but I didn't enjoy the winning as much as the process of collaboration. Sharing the words and ideas was wonderful and perhaps it was this that made me appreciate that it doesn't all have to happen in my head.
And then here in Houston I have my friend Caroline who is also writing hard, albeit in a more organised fashion than me. Now that school has started back up, we are both shot of our children during the day and we've started meeting up to write, not together, but at the same time. It's extremely helpful, applying just the minimum pressure, enough to make us sit down and do some work, even if we're not in the mood. Even better, it's fun too.
Because Caroline is organised (she may dispute that, but in relation to me she is) she recently spotted another competition.Something with the unlikely name of NaNoWriMo. This is National Novel Writing Month which, despite my initial cynicism, seems to be an utterly altruistic exercise. The idea is that you sign up to write 50,000 words between during the month of November. From scratch - it's not supposed to be something you have been working on previously. The thinking is to promote unfettered creative writing: have an idea and just write it without worrying about revising, editing or questioning it. By setting aside one month to do it, the participants set themselves an intensive challenge. I suppose the organisers are providing a false deadline for people who endlessly mull over the thought of writing a book without ever achieving it. People like me, in other words.
There's no cost and no prize. At the end of the month you submit your novel and they validate the word count. Then they delete it. The books are never read. But what you do next with what you have written is up to you.
Last year, 165,000 people took part from all over the world and 30,000 ended up writing 50,000 words or more. This year 57,000 people have signed up with little over a fortnight to go, but the writing itself is only part of it. It also serves as a way to get writers together, both online and in the Real World, to support each other, to socialise and to swap ideas. There are, amazingly, 1772 in Houston alone and Caroline and I are two of them, which is both very exciting and ever so slightly scary.
So there you go, I'm going to write a story from scratch. I'm telling you because I'm worried that I might not manage it but also because I'm going to try to be more open about my writing.
If nothing else, it should be something to write about.
Anyway, it is slowly dawning on me that I may have got a lot of this wrong. If I am lacking in confidence, it may have something to do with the fact that I am only asking for my own opinion on what I have written. Hopefully. And it may also be the case that talking about writing, writing about writing, and (gasp!) socialising with writers might be beneficial. I'm queasy having typed that - stay strong Michael.
So what has brought me to this? Well, mainly it's the fact that I've been (re)writing the same story for four or five years and I'm no closer to understanding where it is I need to go with it next. And going round and round with it is making me like it less and less. That's a heavy hat to doff at passers by.
Luckily that's just the dull side of a coin that also has a very shiny side. One point of light is my incredible friend Chris has, through hard work and natural brilliance, had several books published since he began writing full-time a few years ago. His success shows what can be achieved and, whilst I am happy for him, I am also grateful to him for setting such an example.
Another sunbeam struck earlier this year when Chris, my just-as-incredible friend Jamie and I were able to work together and entered a short story into a competition, only to be selected as one the winners. Our (excellent) story will be published early in 2011 (I think - still not taking to the self-promotion) but I didn't enjoy the winning as much as the process of collaboration. Sharing the words and ideas was wonderful and perhaps it was this that made me appreciate that it doesn't all have to happen in my head.
And then here in Houston I have my friend Caroline who is also writing hard, albeit in a more organised fashion than me. Now that school has started back up, we are both shot of our children during the day and we've started meeting up to write, not together, but at the same time. It's extremely helpful, applying just the minimum pressure, enough to make us sit down and do some work, even if we're not in the mood. Even better, it's fun too.
Because Caroline is organised (she may dispute that, but in relation to me she is) she recently spotted another competition.Something with the unlikely name of NaNoWriMo. This is National Novel Writing Month which, despite my initial cynicism, seems to be an utterly altruistic exercise. The idea is that you sign up to write 50,000 words between during the month of November. From scratch - it's not supposed to be something you have been working on previously. The thinking is to promote unfettered creative writing: have an idea and just write it without worrying about revising, editing or questioning it. By setting aside one month to do it, the participants set themselves an intensive challenge. I suppose the organisers are providing a false deadline for people who endlessly mull over the thought of writing a book without ever achieving it. People like me, in other words.There's no cost and no prize. At the end of the month you submit your novel and they validate the word count. Then they delete it. The books are never read. But what you do next with what you have written is up to you.
Last year, 165,000 people took part from all over the world and 30,000 ended up writing 50,000 words or more. This year 57,000 people have signed up with little over a fortnight to go, but the writing itself is only part of it. It also serves as a way to get writers together, both online and in the Real World, to support each other, to socialise and to swap ideas. There are, amazingly, 1772 in Houston alone and Caroline and I are two of them, which is both very exciting and ever so slightly scary.
So there you go, I'm going to write a story from scratch. I'm telling you because I'm worried that I might not manage it but also because I'm going to try to be more open about my writing.
If nothing else, it should be something to write about.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
1998 and All That
When writing the history of things, beginnings are nearly always murky, confused and badly documented. But eventually the historian can latch upon a key first date, an anchor that can be relied upon as a sign that things had irrevocably changed.Today is the anniversary of such a date. On this day, the 14th of October, an historic and fateful encounter took place near Hastings in Sussex. The year was 1998.
No, for once I am not talking about the history of England, but personal history. For whilst my relationship with my then wife-to-be was already a few months old and had already had its fair share of Athelstans and Canutes, it was the day we accidentally spent at the site of the Battle of Hastings that I now look back on as a key moment.
I say accidentally because it was pure coincidence, or serendipity if you will, that took us there on that particular day. At a loose end with spare time together during what was then an uncertain and somewhat loose association with each other, we found ourselves driving around Sussex in an October fog looking for something to do. One of us, I forget who, mentioned Hastings as being nearby and it turned out that neither of us had visited the famous battle site. And then, as one, we both remembered the date of the battle and we turned to each other and said in unison, "but hang on that's today!"
To demonstrate the same knowledge simultaneously to each other was a thrilling moment of connection for a pair of nerdy show-offs such as us and after that we had a wonderful time. Being a drizzly Wednesday, we all but had the battlefield to ourselves which made it beautifully empty and evocative. After stomping around we eventually came to a large stone slab that had been laid to mark the spot where Harold II was supposedly killed. Totally spurious of course, but someone had left a bunch of yellow flowers there, the only bright colour amongst the mist and the October afternoon shadows.
As I get older, memories become increasingly blurry and I am appalled at how often people remind me of things that I have utterly forgotten. But I don't think I will ever forget those flowers, or that day together with the wonderful woman who is now my wife.
Nor will I ever forget that everything we have here - our lives in America, our marriage and, of course, our children - are all as a result of what happened at Battle on the 14th of October.
Oooh, Blogging.
Why am I not writing? Or, specifically, why am I not blogging more? Why not flood these pages with all the little details and incidents of my life?
Well, largely because I don't do very much and my life is currently luxuriously easy and therefore devoid of interest. I can't really bring myself to describe how lovely the weather is or how much improving reading I have undertaken. It is not, I am not, blog-worthy.
But there have been things that I have nearly written. I drafted something about the Chilean Miners' rescue for example, and I was temporarily inspired by the death of Dame Joan Sutherland and by the US school systems' notions of patriotism - but no postings will come, I promise. Why not? Because I dursn't. I have a deep-seated horror at the thought of causing offence and little confidence that a clumsy rant (inevitably directed, largely, at people I love and admire) could be justified.
In an email to a friend recently I was very rude about the extreme right-wing of American politics (the Republican party they're called). "You should blog that," he said. I don't think I could. In private conversation I will often overstep the mark, especially amongst friends. But this is a public forum: I am basically standing in my garden and shouting things at passers-by. In itself, such activity might be enough to alarm those within ear-shot; I'm not going to compound the sin by being interesting.
Well, largely because I don't do very much and my life is currently luxuriously easy and therefore devoid of interest. I can't really bring myself to describe how lovely the weather is or how much improving reading I have undertaken. It is not, I am not, blog-worthy.
But there have been things that I have nearly written. I drafted something about the Chilean Miners' rescue for example, and I was temporarily inspired by the death of Dame Joan Sutherland and by the US school systems' notions of patriotism - but no postings will come, I promise. Why not? Because I dursn't. I have a deep-seated horror at the thought of causing offence and little confidence that a clumsy rant (inevitably directed, largely, at people I love and admire) could be justified.
In an email to a friend recently I was very rude about the extreme right-wing of American politics (the Republican party they're called). "You should blog that," he said. I don't think I could. In private conversation I will often overstep the mark, especially amongst friends. But this is a public forum: I am basically standing in my garden and shouting things at passers-by. In itself, such activity might be enough to alarm those within ear-shot; I'm not going to compound the sin by being interesting.
Obligatory Chilean Miners Post
I feel that I have to state this for the record because I might have appeared slightly curmudgeonly yesterday. Whilst I was glad of the rescue I didn't seem to feel quite so emotional as others, but anything less than full-heartedness seemed to be an inappropriate reaction. Partly, I have become cynically dubious of any event which seems to be so perfectly suited to 24-hour rolling news coverage, as this was. Partly, I was wary of the massed collective response: Twitter, Facebook, emails - not to mention Real Life People - everyone seemed to be overcome. I seemed only to be merely happy and this seemed to be deemed an insufficient response.
What was actually happening was a re-enactment of the most profound kind of human drama, perhaps the oldest story, redolent with primal imagery. Descent into and escape from an underworld is a cornerstone of many early myths, some of which date back to the earliest European societies whose rites of passage, like modern shamanic practices, achieved re-birth by ascending from the depths.
In 'A Short History of Myth', Karen Armstrong discusses the role of caves such as Altimira or Lascaux in Paleolithic spirituality.
These grottoes were probably the first temples or cathedrals. There has been a lengthy academic discussion of the meaning of these caves [...] but certainly they set the scene for a profound meeting between men and the godlike, archetypal animals that adorn the cavern walls and ceilings. Pilgrims had to crawl through dank and dangerous underground tunnels [...], burrowing ever more deeply into the heart of darkness until they finally came face to face with the painted beasts.
Armstrong also emphasises the role such places played in initiation rites.
Initiation ceremonies were central to the religion of the ancient world [...]. Like the journey of the shaman, this is a process of death and rebirth: the boy has to die to childhood and enter the world of adult responsibilities. Initiates are buried in the ground, or in a tomb; they are told they are about to be devoured by a monster, or killed by a spirit. [...] The experience is so intense and traumatic that an initiate is changed forever.
The link with surviving shamanic practices provides this thought (here Armstrong includes a shaman's words quoted from 'The Power of Myth' (New York, 1988) by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers):
Like the dangerous expedition of the hunter, the shaman's quest is a confrontation with death. When he returns to his community his soul is still absent form his body.and has to be retrieved by colleagues who 'take hold of your head and blow about the sides of your face. This is how you manage to be alive again. Friends, if they don't do that to you, you die... you just die and you are dead.'
These brave men have descended into the utter darkness and confronted their mortality. They have passed through death and have risen, miraculously, from their underground tombs. But although reborn, they are not yet fully alive. As they return to the world, it is the job of their families and friends to hold them and to breathe life back into them. Their journey back from death has not yet ended.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Highs and Lows of Chicago
The actual flight was ridiculously easy, despite having to get up at 5am. For one thing, I keep forgetting how straightforward domestic flights are here in the USA. For another, suddenly sitting still for two and a half hours en famille is easy-peasy after all the crazy cross-country driving we have done. Almost immediately we were descending into a Great Lakes rain storm and a few minutes after that we were in a taxi ploughing through the downpour to Downtown.
The city is beautiful, naturally: an uproar of towers and skyscrapers from the last 100 years, steel and glass and stone and brick, blending and reflecting off of each other and looming over the broad streets and spacious parks. Through all this weaves the 'L', the elevated railway with its silver rolling stock. It completely covers some streets, making the sidewalk feel like an undercity from a 1930s dystopian version of the future - which it probably is to be fair.
Our time was limited so we tried to cram in as much as we could. On Saturday we did the Art Institute and managed to impress Christopher with some paintings - albeit only because he recognised them from Doctor Who. Still, he got a real frisson out of seeing Van Gough's bedroom and his self-portrait, so well done the BBC. Bless him, he does think Van Gough's first name is 'Mister' though.
On Sunday L had to some actual work so we left her behind and caught the bus to the Museum of Science & Industry. More on that, and the
Our flight times on Monday allowed us just enough time to have a stab at the Field Museum, Chicago's answer to the Natural History Museum. Again it was astoundingly good - excellent evolution/life on Earth/dinosaurs exhibition, wonderful recreation of an ancient Egyptian tomb and a great set of rooms on pre-European American civilisations. Then it was back in the taxi, back on the plane, 'oh, we've landed' and then back home for dinner. Bang, job done.
Now rewind to Sunday for the highs and lows.
Highs: Ha ha ha! Did I mention how clever I am? The high point was to be found down in the bowels of the Museum of Science & Industry where they have the U-505: a 250ft long, 750 tonne German submarine that was captured by the US Navy off the coast of Africa in June 1944. The boys may be able to cope with heights, but they clearly didn't take to the claustrophobia-inducing interior. With the doors shut, the lights dimmed, and the recorded noise of the engines echoing through the hull, our short guided-tour was very atmospheric. In hushed tones the guide describes the location and capture of the sub as if it were happening right now, above us. Chilling.
Unusually, the 54 crew members were captured/rescued after the sub was depth-charged by Hunter-Killer Task Force 22.3. Even more unusually, the Germans failed to scuttle their ship resulting in a great intelligence coup for the Allies. U-505 was disguised and towed to the Bahamas to be pored over by Naval Intelligence; her crew were sent to a POW camp in Louisiana, just for them, where they played baseball and picked cotton for 25 cents a day. At the end of the war they were all offered American citizenship and six of them took it. Meanwhile, the U-505 was scheduled for use as target practice as German military assets were put beyond use. But the captain of the US task force that had captured the sub intervened - he pulled some strings and got it saved, and he was able to donate it to his local museum in his home town of Chicago.
There it sat, on the front lawn, until a purpose-built underground chamber was constructed for it in 2005. It's amazing, straight out of The Spy Who Loved Me. Most beautifully, one of the six Americanised crew members moved to Chicago, just to be close to his old ship. In fact, he became a volunteer at the museum and himself gave tours of the vessel for many years until he died.
Of the 1200 U-boats that survived World War Two, there are only 5 left in the world. And the U-505 is the only one outside Europe.
As you might be able to tell, I was suitably impressed.
We can't all be victims, can we?
I do get angry. I try not to, but I am weak and I get very, very cross, especially when people disagree with me. It is a terrible failing, perhaps, but it might seem occasionally that it is born out a very real and sincerely held belief that I am right about everything. I promise that - on some level at least - I do accept that other people are allowed to disagree with me and that they may even be correct to do so. What actually infuriates me is the possibility that they might be unable to concede the same point to me.
Take, for example, his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who swept into the United Kingdom this week. Infallibility is in his job description, for Darwin's sake, so it's inevitable that he is going to upset people whilst he's lecturing to them about the evils of their atheism/homosexuality/feminism/AIDS prevention methods. To make matters worse, his (literally) dogmatic approach to these issues has caused his opponents to adopt similarly uncompromising attitude, with 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins now leading a cadre of hardline extremists. Both sides are now well dug in to increasingly entrenched positions.
The same thing has been happening politically here in the USA for years, of course, but the divisions have widened dramatically since the election of Barack Obama. Without a Republican president, the right has no responsible authority figure to keep it on the leash and so various unpleasant types like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party movement have seized the opportunity to push their more extreme agenda. Last month Beck led a rally of, possibly, several hundred thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC - ostensibly to reclaim the civil rights movement for white, right-wing Christians.
What disturbs me most is that all sides, in all these conflicts, see themselves as the victims. The leaders, possibly, are overstating the perceived threat posed by their opponents so as to energise their base, but the effect on their supporters is dramatic. Here Tea Partiers are genuinely afraid that the gays and the Muslims and the socialists are coming for them. Liberals feel swamped, scared that the political system is being run by Big Money and Fox News. Muslim American citizens have to put up with the terrifying antics of half-wits like Terry Jones and his mooted Qu'ran burning, whilst the non-Muslims majority is largely horrified by the thought of a mosque at Ground Zero. In the US, atheism is a dirty word whilst in the UK blasphemy is still a criminal offence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the same time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Pope does genuinely believe that his religion is under siege by the forces of "aggressive secularism".
I can't say how many of these myriad fears are justified, but it can't be true that all sides are simultaneously so greatly threatened. But this is the nature of the debate: polarising and utterly poisonous.
And I'm guilty of it myself - I read the news I want to read, because it reinforces the positions I've already decided to adopt. I forward on opinions and stories, but I only send them to friends that I know will be predisposed to like them too. And if I do get into a conversation with someone who thinks differently to me, I've already closed my brain down to the possibility that I might be persuaded.
But then, the only other option would be to get very, very angry.
Take, for example, his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who swept into the United Kingdom this week. Infallibility is in his job description, for Darwin's sake, so it's inevitable that he is going to upset people whilst he's lecturing to them about the evils of their atheism/homosexuality/feminism/AIDS prevention methods. To make matters worse, his (literally) dogmatic approach to these issues has caused his opponents to adopt similarly uncompromising attitude, with 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins now leading a cadre of hardline extremists. Both sides are now well dug in to increasingly entrenched positions.
The same thing has been happening politically here in the USA for years, of course, but the divisions have widened dramatically since the election of Barack Obama. Without a Republican president, the right has no responsible authority figure to keep it on the leash and so various unpleasant types like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party movement have seized the opportunity to push their more extreme agenda. Last month Beck led a rally of, possibly, several hundred thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC - ostensibly to reclaim the civil rights movement for white, right-wing Christians.
What disturbs me most is that all sides, in all these conflicts, see themselves as the victims. The leaders, possibly, are overstating the perceived threat posed by their opponents so as to energise their base, but the effect on their supporters is dramatic. Here Tea Partiers are genuinely afraid that the gays and the Muslims and the socialists are coming for them. Liberals feel swamped, scared that the political system is being run by Big Money and Fox News. Muslim American citizens have to put up with the terrifying antics of half-wits like Terry Jones and his mooted Qu'ran burning, whilst the non-Muslims majority is largely horrified by the thought of a mosque at Ground Zero. In the US, atheism is a dirty word whilst in the UK blasphemy is still a criminal offence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the same time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Pope does genuinely believe that his religion is under siege by the forces of "aggressive secularism".
I can't say how many of these myriad fears are justified, but it can't be true that all sides are simultaneously so greatly threatened. But this is the nature of the debate: polarising and utterly poisonous.
And I'm guilty of it myself - I read the news I want to read, because it reinforces the positions I've already decided to adopt. I forward on opinions and stories, but I only send them to friends that I know will be predisposed to like them too. And if I do get into a conversation with someone who thinks differently to me, I've already closed my brain down to the possibility that I might be persuaded.
But then, the only other option would be to get very, very angry.
Monday, 1 March 2010
St. David's Day
It turns out I am in an abusive relationship – with Texas. Our new home
has showered us with friendship, generosity and hospitality and in
return we are flaunting our sense of belonging… to Wales: red rugby
shirts are being pressed into service for the national day. It’s a
little like moving in with a new girlfriend and then throwing a party
for your ex-wife’s birthday. Possibly. And as we are actually English,
wilfully commemorating another nation’s holiday might seem like the
height of churlishness. But to top it all, we wouldn’t dream of doing
anything for St David’s Day if we were in Britain, let alone Wales
itself. What’s going on?Britishness is complicated, but more so for the English than for the other nations. The received wisdom would appear to be that, having had a thousand years or more in which to define themselves as being Not English, the Welsh, Scots and Irish contrived individual cultural identities in the 19th century, a period that saw the invention of, amongst other things, the kilt, and druids. The truth is that it is the English – or rather the Anglo Saxons – which defined themselves as being Not Celtic. The Welsh word ‘Cymry’, which those Celts took to describe themselves in post-Roman Britain, has some link to ‘community’ and means ‘fellow countrymen’. They called us ‘Saesneg’: the Saxons. The English word ‘Welsh’ comes from the Saxon description of the same people: ‘walha’, meaning ‘foreigners’ or ‘aliens’. The Welsh called themselves ‘Us’. We called them ‘Them’.
 |
| A 1,000 year old grudge match. |
God help you if they actually win that game of rugby.
It’s fair to say that the thirteen years I spent in Wales reinforced my sense of English identity. But somewhere in the middle of all this our boys were born. You can argue that there’s not a drop of Welsh blood in either of them, but you can’t deny they have a claim on Welshness. They were obviously born in Wales. William (you can tell we thought he was English at the time) was born in Cardiff, but Christopher was born up Caerphilly Mountain which meant we had to drive to Ystrad Mynach to register him. If that doesn’t make you Welsh I don’t know what does. And of course they arrived at the end of February and the beginning of March respectively, just either side of St David’s Day. Critically – and this is the acid test – they qualify to play for Wales.
Undeniably, they have claim on a Welsh heritage even if we, their parents, do not. Whilst we lived there, it was easy enough for the schools to nurture this on our behalf. But now we are in America, there’s a definite sense that it is our job to ensure that they have access to this Welshness if they so wish. Some of my attempts at this have been laughable – does making them watch Ivor the Engine count? – but William got packed off to school in his jersey this morning, just like all the boys (and some of the girls) in Cardiff. It feels odd that it matters and I worry, in case I am actually doing this for my benefit and not his.
Weirdly, because this is also the time of year for Rodeo, Friday was ‘Dress Western’ day at school, which means that all the boys and girls wore they ‘duds’, i.e. dressed as cowboys. In a sense, this is just the Texan version of St David’s Day, and Rodeo is just the equivalent of rugby. Instead of daffodils, we have blue bonnets, or will in a few weeks. But there’s something missing here. Why does the Reliant Stadium full of Texans not feel more like the Millennium Stadium full of Welsh people? The difference, I think, is that to be English here is nothing more than a passing novelty in a nation of people that nearly all started off as something else. And our role in the creation of America is largely meaningless 200 years later on. Whereas in Wales, to be English is to be the thing that they are not, the very opposite of Cymry and our role in shaping and defining Them from the outside is still at the centre of our relationship with each other, after over a thousand years. Strangely, perhaps, I think this makes Wales an easier place to love but, then, we are back to abusive relationships aren't we?
Happy St David's Day to all our Welsh friends and, er, family. You'll be simultaneously appalled and delighted to know that I was cheering you all on against Scotland and France but not, of course, against England - better luck next year!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)