Category Archives: writing

Friday

My attachment to minimalistic titles continues.

My tendency to ramble and procrastinate is also well to the fore today. I have started this post twice, done some thinking for two other posts, which may never see the light of day and I have drunk deep from the well of clichés. Sometimes only a well-worn and hackneyed phrase will do.

I’ve just noticed that the evening has almost gone. I have been so busy snoozing and eating our traditional Friday night supper of fish and chips that six hours of my life have just melted away.

Last night, after posting, I settled down to examine a couple of magazines I am thinking of submitting to. One features the more experimental end of the haiku spectrum. I think I’m going to leave that alone at the moment as I’m not feeling particularly cutting edge or experimental. Haiku are hard enough without having to mess about with them.

The other magazine I was looking at tends to be a bit the other way. I spent a couple of hours trying to expand existing haibun to fit the lengthy, multi-haiku approach they favour, and it didn’t work. I then tried writing one from scratch. That didn’t work either.

This is both good and bad news. I have obviously developed a style I am comfortable with, which is good. I have obviously also become too comfortable with it, which is bad. There’s a fine line between developing a style and becoming a one trick pony.

It looks like I may be developing an artistic temperament. I’ll have to do something about knocking that out of me.

On a lighter note, I sat down to write a magazine article last night. Three hundred and fifty words later I finished. That is very short for a magazine article. In fact it’s far too short. It is, however, my typical blog length. It looks like blogging has helped me write regularly, but has developed a habit of writing in 250-350 word chunks. This piece, for instance, will be three hundred and forty nine words when it is finished.

Wednesday (Reprise)

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As I’m becoming more successful as a poet I have decided I need to start using bigger words, so there’s no more (Part 2) for me.

Although, there are signs that all is not well in the land of art and poetry.

First of all we have imposter syndrome. This is the nagging feeling at the back of your mind that things aren’t quite right and you are going to get found out. It’s all very well getting a few bits published, but what happens if someone asks you a question using a Japanese word you don’t understand?

This could easily happen because apart from sayonara, banzai and sushi I don’t tend to recognise many Japanese words. I know there are words to do with punctuation, the seasons and a sense of loss, which are all used in writing haibun, but I couldn’t actually tell you which was which if you asked me.

The main problem is that I don’t actually know how I do it. I just sit down with a pen and paper (it has to be a pen and paper, I can’t generally manage to do it on the computer). This is one of those strange things – I can blog on the computer and I can do articles on the computer, but haibun, haiku and poems need pen and paper. Not only that but a fountain pen is better than a biro. I’m not sure why, that’s just how it is.

I think part of it is that the computer gives me more ability to correct things, which leads to me correcting more than I actually write.

Second – I’ve just had my fastest ever rejection. One of my submissions has been out for six weeks. If they run true to form the magazine will be in touch soon with a gentle rejection. I’m expecting that.

What I wasn’t expecting was one of the others from yesterday to reject me inside 24 hours. You can’t complain about the speed of editors these days – three submissions yesterday and I already have one acceptance and one rejection.

The difference is that the acceptance sparks up the worries about being found to be a fraud. The swift rejection tends to reinforce this. Not only did they not like it, but there was so little merit in it that they had to get it off the premises as soon as possible before it turned any other submissions bad.

If I’d sent it in on the last few days of the submission window I could have said that it came back so quickly because they were full. But when you send it in on the first day and get it back on the second day of the submission window you can feel fairly certain that they didn’t like it.

I suppose you can’t expect too much, as the next acceptance will be my 13th Japanese style poem to be accepted. If it ever is. Assuming that I can’t bring the mood down with imposter syndrome I may as well use superstition.

Rejection!

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The title isn’t quite accurate, but headlines often aren’t. However, there is an element of truth in it, as you will see if you persist.

Despite me rushing to finish last night’s post by midnight, my days don’t really run from midnight to midnight and I often work an hour or so into the night while it is quiet. This is particularly the case at weekends when I can get up later to compensate.

As an example, I did some decluttering this morning then set my alarm to give myself just over an hour at the computer before warming up the soup for lunch. Julia decided this would be a good time to start work on reorganising the kitchen so my writing efforts are now accompanied by the clatter of various kitchen implements (mainly noisy ones) as she composes a symphony for baking trays and raised voices.

I did think of inserting a witty quote on marriage here, but couldn’t find one. I suspect all the wittiest quotes are written by people who aren’t married. The ones who are married just nod and keep their heads down, which is why they are still married.

I’m playing WP Roulette here – if she reads this I’m in trouble. If not I will live to moan another day.

That’s why I work into the early hours.

And that was why, about half an hour after posting I decided to look at one of the magazines that had some submissions from me five weeks ago. I was surprised, and a little put out, to find that they had published the next issue. I don’t mind rejection too much, because it’s part of writing, but I don’t really like being ignored.

Anyway, it is what it is. I read a few of the haibun and decided to see when the next submission window opened. While I did that I noticed a note saying that if you don’t get an acknowledgement within in two days you should get in touch. It was a lot longer than two days, but I double checked, found I definitely hadn’t had one and decided to take action.

Two Cyclists

As recommended in many articles on writing I dropped the the editor a short polite note to check if they had received anything from me and checking the best way to submit next time round.

The marvels of email and the time difference between the UK and USA meant I had a reply within half an hour. It seems the automated submission form is suspected of discarding a number of submissions and is now out of favour.

Ah well!

When it comes down to it I checked the two pieces I’d submitted and decided they weren’t all that good anyway. Internet oblivion is probably the best place for them. Anyway, even if they had been brilliant you can’t turn back time, despite Cher’s singing and the services of a good plastic surgeon.

As time goes on I’m finding that I have more and more sympathy for editors. It can’t be easy at the best of times, particularly when you see the number of submissions some of them get, and when the technology turns against you it must be hellish.

It’s a big day tomorrow – three submission windows open and I have submissions prepared for each one.

The game’s afoot, as Holmes said, though when I check the quote I find that Henry V said it first. Tricky things, quotes.

Quite a Good Sunday

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I had a surprise this afternoon when I switched the computer on and it worked. Sorry, only joking, but based on yesterday’s post I expect some of you heaved a sigh of relief. I did have a surprise, but it wasn’t that. I had been sent an email by Country Life, which happens regularly, and in it they were running a number of articles about Northamptonshire, which is becoming known as the new Cotswolds. Strange, I thought, I’m sure I mentioned that several years ago in a post titled Cotswolds or Notswolds?

Looks like I’m in the forefront of modern trends and thinking. That was a surprise as I’m not usually a trendsetter. However, as usual, I am at the back of the queue when it comes to getting paid for my prescient brilliance. I just hope it doesn’t lead to the ruination of Northamptonshire as it fills up with Londoners.

Then I turned on my emails. I had an email from Failed Haiku. They have accepted a haibun for next month. Out of the submissions I’ve sent out i the last couple of months that now means numbers two and four have now accepted haibun. One and three have yet to reply. Five and six are just submissions of haiku and I don’t hold out much hope for them, but I won’t get better if I don’t try.

I am, as I have said before, not good at haiku, and try to disguise the fact by writing a bit of prose to dress it up, thus creating a haibun.

I once read an article on how you should set yourself up to fail because you learn more from failure than you do from success. Unfortunately I have also seen articles saying you learn more from success than from failure. The only thing I know about failure is that the more you fail, the more you get used to it. It’s all very well telling yourself it isn’t personal or that it’s just an editor’s preference. You can even make a book of your successes so that you can leaf through it to buoy yourself up when things get tough (and I confess that I have done this). But the best thing of all is just toughening yourself up by practicing being rejected.

I am currently employing the same theory that I used when I was a salesman. If you have to make twenty calls to get one sale you need to get the nineteen calls out of the way. So I’ve decided to submit more and see if it results in more acceptances. If it doesn’t I will have to have a serious look at the quality of my output.

Only one photo tonight.A combination of the old editor and an old computer meant it took seventeen minutes to load the featured image. Life is too short to load a second. In fact the day is too short to load another.

Why Bother Blogging? (Part 1)

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I’ve just had a message from WordPress thanking me for renewing and saying “so your site has all its great tools and features for another year”. This is ironic, to say the least, when you consider I’m having to use a version which seems to have been developed by James Watt and has, as a result of WordPress “improvements” noticeably fewer great tools and features than it did this time last week. Having said that, James Watt would probably have made a better job of it.

They then add “Until then, have fun with your site!”. Fun? I had so much fun last week that I nearly cancelled my subscription and gave up blogging. It would have been more fun to insert broken glass into my nostrils.

One thing I’ve noticed on the plug-in Classic Editor is that when I have comments waiting I rarely get a red spot on the bell icon. If it was always absent, I could understand it, but to have it appear once in every ten times I look seems peculiar.

Same goes for my replies. It no longer tells me I have replied. Before I realised this I actually replied twice to something Derrick had said. It was bad enough looking like I am losing my marbles, but he now has the moral high ground in the question of which of us is blogging with fewer marbles. Having said that, his post today, with photographs from his Assistant Photographer, Head Gardener, Driver and Wife (that’s one hard-working multi-tasking person rather than an entourage) indicate that she’s planning an early claim on his life insurance as he plummets to his death whilst photographing storms from cliff tops. That sort of peril just to get a few photographs for a blog is beyond the call of duty.

Summer View Nottinghamshire

Anyway, enough of my adventures with WordPress, it’s time to write a thoughtful examination of my blogging career so far. That’s what I call it anyway. Others may consider it a series of disjointed rants about things I can’t change and things that don’t matter. That is probably fair, but it wasn’t meant to be like that.

Six years ago I dreamed of writing things that mattered and would change the world to be a better place. I wanted to crusade, to be revered as a master of witty and elegant prose and, some months after starting, to be offered jobs writing columns for top London papers. I thought “months” was realistic, whereas “weeks” would have been an impractical daydream. It has proved to be so – seventy months, to be accurate and the London Editors are playing hard to get.

When the call came, I told Julia, despite my probable membership of the Groucho Club, I would try to remain the ordinary, grounded sort of person I had always been. The cocaine fuelled binges, the women, the wads of cash and the free holidays on the yachts of Russian oligarchs, would not change me. So far, I can say that this has been the case. I am unchanged from the idealistic youth of fifty-something that set off to be a famous blogger, with my dignity and integrity in tact. Actually that may not be true. My integrity is still in tact but having written more than once on the subject of the National Health Service inserting a camera into my bladder in a very undignified manner, I feel my dignity may have suffered.

One of several ex-windmills in the area

So that, at least has gone, mainly, to plan.

As for the rest, I rattle on about trivia in a style that relies heavily on a spellchecker, and has only a nodding acquaintance with good writing practice (too many commas and Too Many capitals, for a start) and no longer expect an email from the Editor of The Times.

Looking on the bright side, at least I have not had to employ an accountant to sort out my tax affairs.

Having just checked the membership details for the Groucho Club so I could add a link, it seems unlikely I’d be able to join anyway, and, as several of you are probably thinking, would I want to join a club that would have me as a member?

I think I should end Part 1 here, as it has gone on long enough and I have to cook tea.

Having disposed of the show-biz element of blogging, with the orgies and the oligarchs, I will continue tomorrow with further discussion of the rewards of sitting down at the dining room table and bashing away on a computer that can, like me, no longer cope with the demands of modern life.

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Thoughts on writing

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I missed my deadline last night, just fell asleep in front of the TV as I drank a cup of tea and woke up minutes after midnight. I loaded the photos, posted, and found that although I was annoyed at missing the cut, it didn’t really matter.

I might be finding it hard to cut down on blogging, but I am, at least, managing to keep up the writing challenge I have set myself. One haibun essay, ten haiku and a poem a day. I did try writing a longer blog post on this subject but it quickly became dull, as mentioned here, so it remains in draft. After the 100 Day Challenge I’m only thinking of doing this for a month. A hundred days was gruelling.

The general idea is that I will use the practice challenge to gain more fluidity in writing and to build up ideas. If anything good comes out of it that will be a bonus.The haibun essays are generally usable, and some of the haiku aren’t too bad but the poems are mainly rubbish. With practice this may change.

I seem to remember from rugby training that it’s important to practice doing things perfectly, but with writing it’s slightly different as part of this is about overcoming the internal editor. There are a lot of ways to switch the internal editor off, and many posts. The one I’ve linked to there was at the top and was as good as any.

The best way I have found of switching of the internal editor is to write and keep writing, Don’t go back unless you spot a typo, and if you miss it don’y go back just because there’s a red squiggle in the text. You can do that later. I’ve just been back and fixed five typos in that paragraph. I’m not very accurate, but the inaccuracy doesn’t really affect the sense of the words.

I’ve often thought of writing a post and not sorting the typos. There are always some I miss anyway (I just re-read a post from four years ago and found a “their” where there should have been a “there”). I’m sure if I did that most of you would be able to read it OK. I’m told that as long as you have the first and last letters in place the brain will mostly sort out the rest.

Another thing I find is that the writing equipment affects the fluency of my writing. For haibun and poetry fountain pen is better than biro. Both are better than word processor.

Strangely, I can blog directly from the key board. In fact that’s the easiest way. Same with articles. It must be the way my brain works. Or doesn’t work.

A big stumbling block with my writing is the copying from longhand onto the computer. I really do not enjoy that bit, even though it isn’t really that onerous. It’s a few poems, not chunks of text. It’s not like actually doing any work.

10 Good Things About Breathing

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After the success of my recent post 10 Points about Writing Ten Point Lists and The Ten Best Things About Lockdown I decided to try another ten point list. You may have guessed this from the title. You may also have guessed that I define “success” in a slightly more flexible way than the rest of the world. Twenty views and ten comments are a success to me, even if five of the comments are me replying to the other five.

I did briefly think of writing Five Ways in which Breathing is Over-rated but I find people like the positive stuff. I suppose that’s why my light-hearted articles on modern life are so popular. I say “popular”, see above for “success”.

So, here goes, Ten Good Things about Breathing.

One, blue is an unbecoming colour. It doesn’t suit our modern ideas about healthy complexions and modern make-up ranges don’t cater for it. According to arlingwoman, the correct term for the blue colour is cyanosis, which is far too good a word not to use, so I have come back to add it.

Two, dum spero, spiro, as I remarked recently,. Hope is good, and you need to breathe to have hope.

Three, It is better than the alternative. I have no particular religious beliefs. I may end up as part of the choir eternal, singing hymns whilst dressed in vestments of blinding white. Or I may spend an eternity of regret in a lake of fire. In one scenario I wonder who does the laundry and in the other I can’t help thinking that there won’t be any cold to aggravate my arthritis. Swings and roundabouts…

I may even come back as a dung beetle. You can never tell, though I feel my afterlife is likely to end with a short trip up a crematorium chimney. Whatever happens, I prefer breathing to the alternative.

Four, it gives me something to write about on a slow day.

Five, there are right ways to breathe and wrong ways to breathe, which gives rise to the possibility of controversy and more lists.

Six, breathing through the nose adds moisture, warms the air and allows better use of the oxygen you breathe. The presence of a nose also gives you somewhere convenient to perch your glasses and avoids an unsightly hole in the middle of the face. Breathing through the mouth gives rise to a huge list of problems and makes you look like an unlikely candidate for a top academic job.

Seven, deep breathing is another of those health subjects you can discuss at length. It will cure many of my health problems and improve my posture.

Eight, deep breathing is also bad for you . giving hope to editors who rely on sensational negative headlines for a living.

Nine, it’s something that is, on balance, good for you, and takes no effort. I shouldn’t have searched for more information, because I turned this up. Quite clearly, the person in question hasn’t lost the knack of breathing automatically, as one of the answers points out, or she would have died in her sleep on the first night, but it does show that it’s possible to worry too much.

Ten, it serves to fill a list, to swell a progress, to start a scene or two. See point 4, or for the more highbrow amongst you try this.

However, as you read the highbrow section, remember that T S Eliot is an anagram of Toilets – life has a habit of bringing things down to my level. Perhaps life would be better if all great men had names that were anagrams.

Bonus eleventh point – it’s free. The government can’t tax it, Sky TV can’t charge for it and breathable air is still widely available. Now I’ve said that just watch it all go wrong.

I couldn’t fit that into the ten point list without altering the structure, and there’s something unfinished about lists that have strange numbers of points. Five, ten and twelve seem fine, three seven and nine aren’t bad, but I’m vaguely unsettled by others.

Fresh air – still free! Get yours while it lasts.

10 Points about Writing Ten Point Lists

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I was looking at an article on generating ideas. When you search for “generating ideas” on Google, two trends emerge.

One is a big business theme about generating major strategic ideas to make millions and/or change the world. That’s probably a bit more than I need, though it has its charms.

How about lacing the new corona virus vaccines with fish DNA so that future generations can live in the sea? You could even breed groups of piscatorialy enhanced people specifically to pick plastic litter from the oceans.

Just a thought. But if it works I expect a Nobel Prize.

The other theme is about generating ideas for writing articles. That wasn’t quite what I was after either, though I did spend a few hours reading various sites and seeing how people reused the same information time after time to generate blog content.

Ten point lists seem to be a favourite.

So here’s my list –

10 Points about Ways to Writing Ten Point Lists

Make sure you have ten points. People will notice if you only have nine.

Start with number one. Why re-invent the wheel?

Several of the points can be the same thing written in a different way.

Point four. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious.

Steal it off another blog. That’s how they got theirs.

Don’t spend too much time over it, they don’t give Pulitzers for 10 Point Lists.

Make a general comment on the social,aspects of the list as in ‘I think we can all agree that this is particularly relevant in lockdown’. Hide it a little way down the list so people don’t notice you are being lazy.

Point nine. Add emphasis. Or, in other words, say the same thing again (see point 3). (Or point 4).

For a change, why not try a 13 point list for Halloween?

Simple.

For the autumn I will compile a 13 point list about writing 13 point lists for Halloween. I will use the ten point list, and add three more, change the order and if anyone queries it I will say that this is an example about getting the most out of your research. Or recycling my rubbish.

I think I’m getting the hang of this blogging stuff.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

A Million Words

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I’m sorry if this is old news to you, but I’ve only just found this concept whilst poking around on the internet. It seems that you need to write a million words before you are any good at it.

At 999,999 you are writing unpublishable gibberish then at 1,000,001 publishers will form an orderly queue and start waving cheques at you.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be reflected in reality.

It’s similar to the 10,000 hour rule, where you are judged to need 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something. In terms of napping and procrastination, I have put the groundwork in and can claim to be proficient at them. Of course, whether I’m good at napping because I’ve practised, or have merely accumulated the hours because I was born good at napping, is a moot point.

As I recall the concept from the times when I was coaching the kids. it has to be focussed practice, so just dropping off in front of the TV may not count.

Similarly, despite my 10,000 hours of procrastination, there is a lingering doubt in my mind. If I was really good at procrastination, wouldn’t I still be meaning to get round to it?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

And if I were any good at writing I wouldn’t just have spent ten minutes reminding myself about the subjunctive mood. It’s something that I’ve managed to do without over the last twenty or thirty years, but am having to relearn after an editor picked me up on it last year.

I’ve done about 1961 posts, and those posts have been about 350 words long. That’s near enough 686,000 words. It has, to be honest, seemed like more. That leaves me with 314,000 words to go, and I am sure I must have written them in the last sixty years, so that means I should be ready to start some serious writing.

Again, at the back of my mind is the idea that I really should have had more focus in my blog writing. I have gained fluency and a certain amount of discipline, which will come in handy, though I’m not sure it’s done me a lot of good in terms of quality writing. I have really let things get a bit slapdash over the years and need to get a grip.

Talking of getting a grip, I just wrote a post pretending to be a knitted bear – I think that lockdown is getting to me.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The New Editor

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I just clicked to use the new editor. In trying to get back to the old one I found that they are going to force me to use the new editor from 1st June whether I want to or not. In addition to that I have had to read a load of condescending drivel about the ease and power of the new system. This comes complete with “blocks”, which I don’t understand and have never needed, but seems to come without the buttons that will allow me to add photos and links.

I should have known something was going on because I’d been suffering minor glitches for a week or two and it’s usually a sign that some jiggery-pokery is in progress.

It took me 45 minutes, and many false starts, to get back to the classic editor and despite looking, I am still none the wiser about how to post photos or add links using the new editor. I would have thought that a new and improved editor would have made this easier, not harder. I also can’t find the word count on the new one.

As usual, the words new and improved are used as if they are interchangeable when in fact new is not the same thing as improved at all.

Mencap Garden, Wilford

French Marigolds

Foxglove

All in all, if we have to have a new editor, why can’t we have one with a decent set of instructions sent to us before the thing is rolled out. I know these things happen, because that’s what happens with websites – people keep tinkering with them and other people keep telling you about the new and improved version and how “people” have been asking for changes and giving positive feedback. It’s always “people” rather than actual names.

To be honest, I come on here to practice writing, to put my thoughts and frustrations out of my head, to look into the loves of other people and to have a general chat. I don’t need anything glitzy and high tech.

What I really need is the digital equivalent of a box of old-fashioned printer paper (remember the stuff with circular holes down the sides and perforations at the end of every sheet?) that I can write on continuously and add links and photos.

That is pretty much what I had until a few hours ago and I was happy. Now I can’t add links and photos.

Wood – impersonating a strange animal…

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Life after the Care Farm