Singing, writing, and ballet

It’s raining again.  It occurs to me that I’ve probably been rained on, either coming in to, or going home from, work (or both) about 40% of this year.  That is way too much rain.  My brother Steve, down in Bath, has seen the river Avon flood his garden three times in as many days this month.  It’s cold and wet and it seems to be dark all the time, and it depresses me.

We had another choir rehearsal today for Kew's Christmas carol Service; Nigel has rejoined the choir and is alternately playing the piano and booming away richly from the back, while a chap called Tim with Burne-Jones hair, has taken over the conducting.  I am now in my regular annual state of nerves regarding my singing, coupled this year with a vague desire to throw something at John Rutter.  He cannot leave a tune alone!  Why can’t we all just sing parts and harmonise in a normal way?  I have enough trouble with that, after all.  But no, Mr Rutter wants us altos to do a syncopated descant with massive intervals and lots of sharps and flats.  I know it isn’t in the Christmas spirit of me at all, but drat the man! 

I’ve been looking at my notes for “Gold Hawk; the nameless sequel” and trying to be realistic about them; there are some fun ideas there, but it isn’t cooked yet and it’s silly to pretend it is.  I want to spend more time with Thorn and Anna, but I’ll lose them if I try to force them into a story they’re not ready for.  So my next projects, when I get back from my week in Cyprus (can’t wait can’t wait), will be a) start typing “Gold Hawk” up, and revising as I go, and b) go back to either “Midnight in the Café Tana” or “Fortitude” and finish one or both of them.  Probably starting with “Café Tana”, since that’s the most coherent.  I’ve left Mel, David and Yaz in rather a ticklish situation, and things are due to get worse before they get better.

I sent “Gabriel Yeats” to the last agent on the initial shortlist 2 months ago, and have heard nothing back.  Sigh.  I wish I were getting somewhere with this agent business.  The idea of dispensing with one altogether and trying to do my own thing lurks in the back of my mind, tempting me.  My relative lack of computer skills holds me back (I have never figured out how to drive eBay, after all, so the idea of me producing a properly formatted e-book is frankly asinine).  And I know that for 99.9% of electronic publishing, this is the quickest way to sink your work without trace.  The odds are worse than the odds for keeping going as an artist (apparently an average 96% of Fine Art graduates – that’s me, folks - give up practising as artists within two years of leaving art school). 

The first thing, the foremost thing, the thing that drives me, is the writing itself.  If I can keep going with that, then at least I am generating new work.  Hopefully the more I write the more fluent I get as a writer; hopefully...  Meanwhile I guess I need to find another agent to try.

What else is going on?  I had an evening at the ballet last week; a triple bill, and the second cast, so a chance to see several young hopefuls in action.  Much though I love Marianela Nuñez, in “Concerto” she gets partnered by that sweet-faced blank Rupert Pennefather, and I find his gently void expression distracting (at least in the second movement of “Concerto” the chap is meant to be blank).  Besides, when Melissa Hamilton is on stage my eyes always slide towards her; she is completely electrifying whenever and wherever she turns up.  The final movement brought another bright spark in Claire Calvert, one of those dancers who make everything look easy.  I am quite certain it isn’t! – but there is a casualness in her grace that conveys almost luxurious confidence.  

The second item on the bill was “Las Hermanas”, featuring plenty of MacMillan’s signature ballet sex-and-violence.  It’s based on “La casa de Bernada Alba”.  Mysteriously the sisters have lost their names  - Angustias, Martirio and Adela have become simply The Eldest Sister, The Jealous sister and The Youngest Sister, which feels odd when you know the play – I kept thinking of them as Angustias etc.  No matter; it was still a striking distillation, though the introduction of Pepe as an on-stage figure weakens the sense of bottled-up tension Lorca creates.  But of course, one couldn’t have the aforesaid signature sex/violence without a male character on stage, and Thomas Whitehead overcame his very unpleasant wig to make a striking icon of machismo.  It’s lovely to see Alina Cojocaru get to sink her teeth into something dramatic occasionally – she embraced Angustias’ repression and agony with poignant force. 

The final item was “Requiem”, heart-breakingly sad with its dying Everyman and floating consoling angels, led by the luminous Yuhui Choe.  Not much one can say about “Requiem”; at the risk of sounding facetious, it does what you’d expect.  And at the risk of sounding kinky, it’s always great to see Edward Watson suffering (blimey, yes, that does sound kinky; oh dear, what a pity, never mind).

I haven’t much else to report.  Off to “Carmen” tonight; possibly to a talk tomorrow night; probably to another talk Thursday night; packing Friday night; off to Cyprus at crack of dawn Saturday.

Luvverly Bit Of Kit, Missus?

I've been given a gadget, and it has made a small revolution in my life.

Normally I'm not a gadget person; my father was, Baby Bro is; I'm a bit gadget-shy and also not at all keen on the "latest must-have" side of the consumer society I live in. I would literally never have gone out and bought one of these things, because a) I'm gadget-shy, b) I would have expected it to cost £200, and I could get a long weekend in Paris for that, and c) I didn't know they existed in the first place.

It's a thing called a portable diskette drive (I think that's the right name). It's a wee black box with a bit of cable hanging off one end and a slot for a floppy disk on the other. And using it, I can take the floppy disks that are all my ancient laptop at home will use, and transfer material from them to this slightly-less ancient computer at work. So I no longer need to trail out to West Ealing to London's scrubbiest internet café in order to upload or print off any writing I've been doing at home.

This probably wouldn't mean much if I weren't steadily trickling my way through typing up and revising "Ramundi's Sisters" and working on two other magnum opuses (magni opi?). But to a writer with out-of-date equipment, being able to get those bits of equipment to talk to each other is wonderful. So I love my gadget; it's a lovely Bit Of Kit! And if anyone wants to read two thirds of the aforementioned sicilian romantic epic, or fancies about half of the very loco real-world/fantasy clash "Midnight in the Café Tana", or the first four chapters of fairly straight (if slightly talky) SF "Fortitude", just let me know...

A nervous night at the Internet café

I am sneaky; I do stuff (like this) in my lunch hour on the computer at work. But there are jobs I can't do at work. Chief among these is getting written material off my dear old antique laptop and into a form where I can actually get at it. The computers here are (probably only just) new enough that they don't take floppy disks. My laptop won't handle anything else. So to transfer anything I've written on the laptop into a form I can use online, I have to put it on a disk and then go to the one internet café I know of that is old-fashioned enough to still have machines that will take floppies.

I guess it's inevitable that said internet café is scruffy and underresourced. They can't afford to fix their computers, after all. Or their carpets; or the holes in the wall.

So there I sat last night, clutching my precious disk of "Gabriel Yeats" in my sweaty paw, in quite the scruttiest internet café in West London. The first machine I sat down at promptly crashed. The second had sellotape over the slot for floppy disks. The third had no mouse and with the fourth, the keyboard didn't work.

By this stage I was starting to feel as if the Almighty had leaned down and marked me with "Today, Imogen, you are going to scramble all computers" magic juice. Luckily the fifth computer worked. Almost hyperventilating with excitement, I uploaded the whole of the final revision (for now) of "Gabriel Yeats" into a draft email. Then I did each chapter separately. Then for good measure I also uploaded the existing material for one of my Works in Progress, tentatively titled "Fortitude". It all went in, and it's all still there in my yahoo email drafts box today. Hurrah! I have an electronically accessible ouevre!

Afterwards I was in a slight state of shock. I've been trying to get this done for months, finding internet café after internet café had modernised and couldn't help me, and getting increasingly worried that I was in real trouble. Now I wandered out and down the road, and in a daze I got on the wrong bus and ended up in Brentford. Nobly, I resisted the urge to go in the Magpie and Crown and get drunk, and waited for a 237 home.

So anyway, if anyone would like to see the final-for-now version of "GY", or have a first sneak peek at the first draft of "Fortitude" (an attempt, heaven help me, at genuine SF, complete with space ships and everything), let me know.

Another little bit of progress...

I actually had enough energy yesterday evening to do some typing after work. I no longer have to type completely one-handed - I can now use the side of the middle finger on my right hand as well. This speeds things up considerably. There is a downside, unfortunately; I've got so used to typing with my left hand only that my bilateral thinking is a little askew, and I find some very odd spelling errors appearing as the two hands sometimes get out of synch with one another. Thus "cosnitsnet" for "consistent" and "etdnecyn" for "tendency".

I rather like "cosnitsnet", actually; wonder if I can find a use for that one? If it were "cosnitset" it might be something statistical...

Anyway, I turned on the old laptop, opened up one of the Works in Progress, and moved things on a little. I had been thinking about "Fortitude" and it had occured to me that one other character was as important as the three I had been forgrounding, and that he needed to be a pov character. But he was being sidelined - as things stood Iain Siward's lawyer got more "screen time" than him. So I have left Iain & co chugging through space and gone to see how James Fairlight is coping. And he is having a rough time; aliens who meddle with your brain (not from sadism but because they are trying to figure out how your species communicates when, bewilderingly, you appear not to be telepathic) are pretty hard to cope with. So it was an interesting evening's writing.

New Year, New Me; or, better still, can I just have the Old Me back, please?

I have already noticed it’s a new year; in fact I don’t think I’ve forgotten and written last year’s date once, which I’m rather proud of. But my chief focus at present is on getting back the use of my right hand and arm, and I hadn’t really thought about New Year’s Resolutions, New Year New Me, etc. Time to rectify that, maybe?

Of course, getting my arm back is a Resolution in itself. I gather that it can be anything from a couple of months to a couple of years to recover fully from a broken wrist and the associated surgery. So that is Resolution no. 1, then; getting back my right arm, flexible, strong and fit. I’ll never be able to lift a fully grown woman over my head, I know, but I’d like to be able to play badminton again, and swim, and use a handsaw in the garden, and knead bread dough, and return to my Scottish Country Dancing group able to cope with a fast swing in a right-hand hold…

Resolution no. 2; I want this to be the year of actually looking for an agent, instead of simply talking about it (& then panicking). Gulp. I’m panicking slightly just thinking about it; but writing needs to be read, otherwise it is just distilled daydreams.

Resolution no. 3; do more drawing. I was having so much fun in November, drawing at "Re-Rite" and working from my drawings, and now I have lost momentum, for unavoidable reasons, but I had managed to remind myself of what utter bliss it is, and I want to do more. This is dependent on Resolution no. 1, above, of course. Get arm back, then draw.

Resolution no. 4; see all the cultural events I want to get to. Don’t look at brochures and websites and then say “Oh, I can’t afford it and I’ll probably be too tired anyway.” A great concert, exhibition, ballet or theatre performance boosts me up and fires my spirit. Embrace it. Living in London has its down-sides, after all; so enjoy the rich and hugely varied up-sides as much as possible.

Resolution no. 5; more time out of doors. Seeing the beauty and the sweet ceaseless changing cycle of the natural world also boosts me up, and fires my spirit, just like watching dancers or listening to great music.

I don’t think I need to resolve to write more, since until the broken wrist I was getting on with that fairly steadily. Typing since then has been such a drag, and writing by hand almost impossible, that I have stopped writing temporarily, but I am itching to get on with things. The protagonist of “Café Tano” and her tree surgeon friend have been stuck in a fairly sticky situation for the last seven weeks, and I want to get them out; “Ramundi’s Sisters" is three-quarters typed up/revised; and Iain Siward, Aietes and the android professor are sitting in a shuttle, deep in outer space, worrying about who they are, where they are going, what has been happening, and why Iain is still alive (well, Professor Maddix isn’t worrying exactly, being an android; she’s just terribly, calmly, unexcitedly interested).

Oh, I want my life back! I want my right hand back! I want my arm, I want my arm!!

I am working like mad at my exercises, and the residual post-operative numbness is fairly minimal now, and all my tendons except the one in the thumb seem to be working fine. It’s not long now; on Friday the cast is due to come off. Gods, get me through this last push, these last few days of prison; get me through, get me through…

Better...

I now have eight tiny weeny baby tomato seedlings through – they are about five millimetres high and look like bits of green thread. It’s so hard to believe that actual whole tomatoes will come eventually from plants so miraculously small and delicate…

I had a good weekend; went to the Wetland Centre in Barnes to sketch birds and enjoy the sunshine (and a disgracefully indulgent lunch out); did some gardening; did some sewing; got on with the typing up and revising of “Ramundi’s sisters” and wrote a big chunk of “Café Tano” (the last was done under the influence, but this is actually quite appropriate as the narrator is in a fairly weird state of mind and is recounting a vision). Also made some more headway on “Fortitude” but as this is currently onto a prolonged conversation taking place between two people who are rather awkward with one another, it is proceeding rather awkwardly! However I feel I achieved a good deal – and I even got an early night last night.

Thoughtful on Tuesday

No progress on the messy business with solicitors and wills; possible progress on the somewhere-to-live front (I’m going to look at a place in Turnham Green after work tonight); steady progress on the typing up of “Ramundi’s Sisters”. I’ve also been back to the new piece (must give this a working title – GY is an abbreviation of “The Eternal Love of Gabriel Yeats”, so why don’t I follow the same principle and call The New Piece “Fortitude”? Okay, that’ll do for now) – I’ve been back to “Fortitude” and tidied up some typing errors, and I think I see how it goes on from where it got stuck. I had a brainwave relating to another story this morning while walking to the bus stop, so am now wanting to get going on that. And I’ve restarted another piece, which had been started and abandoned twice before, when I suddenly realised it would work better as a first person narrative.

Good grief. It’s a bit scary; I’m typing up “Ramundi’s Sisters” and working on two other written projects, and contemplating starting on a third, all at the same time. Will this work, or will my brain collapse under the strain? Watch this space!

It’s odd how it comes and goes like this, in phases. I feel at the moment a bit as if I’ve opened a door and found a lot of things crammed in behind it, squeezed together to the point of severe compression; suddenly there’s space to expand into, and everything comes bursting out. My problem is to keep up with the onrushing flow of ideas coming through this door (sorry, slightly odd mixed metaphor there) while still holding down my job, having some sort of social life, etc. I have a ballet ticket this week, and two evenings I’m meeting friends for a drink, and tonight I’m going to look at some prospective digs, and I do want to do all of these things. But I want to be sitting down at my cranky little old laptop, writing, too. Because when it’s going, and it’s flowing, like this, there really is no feeling as good as this. Creative work is more precious and more exciting to me than almost anything else I’ve ever done; better than getting drunk, better (just) than swimming in the Mediterranean, better even than being in love… Admittedly being in love is the route into all sorts of agonies (or it always has been, for me, at any rate, largely because I am a complete idiot in love). Doing creative work is pure, consistent bliss. If only the aftermath weren’t sometimes such torture…