Tag Archives: editing

Cynicism Sets In

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Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Sorry, several days seem to have passed since my last post, despite my good intentions.

I did try writing yesterday but I had left it too late and was too tired to write. It didn’t stop me spending an hour trying but by the end I had written nothing worth reading.  It’s my own fault. I can still function after midnight if I know what I am doing, but if I just start writing and see where it goes, it rarely goes anywhere useful. I just ramble. Fortunately I usually mange to spot when that is happening and delete it. Yes, about 500 words were wasted, but as I’ve observed before – words are cheap and plentiful and can be deleted without major trauma. I deleted 500 words last night, I will save a few of them and write another post.

However, the good news is that my stats have spiked (he said sarcastically). This has happened several times recently. My month will run along with about 30 visitors a day and 10 or so comments. Then it will suddenly come to life  In the last three months I have had three spikes in stats with a couple of thousand views in a day. Strangely, it’s never accompanied by a rise in comments or likes. In fact yesterday’s spike in visitors was accompanied by poorer than average figures for likes and comments.

Pied Wagtail at Donna Nook nature reserve.

This where the small hours effect takes over. I then suggest that this is WP trying to make me think my stats really reflect something useful, then I move on to suggesting it is possibly a sign of rogue computer power as AI tries to take over the world, or even the US government tracking down enemies of the State by scanning social media. The abyss of internet politics then beckons and I begin to spiral out of control.

There are no real government conspiracies, I tell myself, as governments are generally incapable of organising themselves in a unified way. Even old-style Communist regimes had to have periodic culls to preserve the facade of unity.  More open systems, where you swap between parties, would be incapable of keeping a conspiracy together. I refer here, to normal governments, the current US government, if it had an inkling that Democrats had ever covered up an alien landing or the existence of primitive hairy creatures living on mountains, would be right on it. The former would be deported as illegal immigrants and the latter would be quickly registered as Republican voters.

And that, coming dangerously near to the world of politics, is where I am going to stop.

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Pictures are, in the main, from my favourite duck pond in December 2018.

 

 

 

Poetry and Vegetables

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Despite the arrival of British Summer Time, and the consequent loss of an hour, I woke feeling ready to work, and although I did waste time surfing the web and watching TV, and “resting my eyes”, I have knocked a fair amount of poetry into shape and have sent off four submissions.

I had another rejection yesterday. It was good because it was quick, and because if I intend to be serious about aiming for 100 rejections a year I need more of them. The rejected poems, with a few minor changes, are already out with someone else. They will probably be rejected but it doesn’t matter as I need the numbers, and the second submission needed little work. I feel that each time I edit a work, even if it’s only one word, I am learning how to write better.

I’m sure that I have more than this to write but I can’t remember it. In truth the stuff I forget generally isn’t that important, and would make dull reading if I wrote it all down.

We are starting to list the plants we eat in a week – one recommendation is that you should aim for 30 a week. It’s good to have a variety and I have found that shopping online encourages me to buy the same stuff each week – it’s easier to order and easier to plan the menus.

Brace yourself for a boring list.

Mushrooms. Tea. Yes, tea counts. We eat 50/50 bread so it doesn’t really count, though wholemeal would. Julia says that although brown sauce does contain spices (which do count) she is fairly sure it doesn’t count. Nor does the cereal content in black pudding. Ah well, two isn’t a bad start.

We had coffee, which counts, and green tea with mint, which is debatable. Then we had lettuce, rocket, celery, spring onions, green olives, cucumber and tomatoes.

I’m excluding chocolate because it’s full of sugar, and white flour because it’s processed, so I can’t count the crust of the quiche. Ah well . . .

That’s 10, It’s not a bad start. Only 20 more to go.Looking at the list, it shouldn’t be too hard, though it’s a case of remembering to use them. I meant to add nuts and peppers to the salad tonight, but I forgot by the end of the preparation. It’s a bit like the times I forget I’m not supposed to eat fried potatoes – they just seem to slide down. My bad memory is a cause of many of my problems.

Orange Parker Pen – a shameless attempt to get review samples.

End of Year – Traditions and Thoughts

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As is traditional at this point in the year, I had a look back and muttered a few platitudes on my 3,216 posts and nine years of blogging. I then decided to dump the whole lot and wrote my normal blog on the New Year Honours List. Though I am broadly in favour of an honours system, I’m not keen on what ours has become. It gives me an annual chance to moan about how popular sports attract more notice than unpopular ones and use the words “political lickspittle”. You may not have noticed that over the years, as I dump that too. I find it’s usually good to delete the serious stuff.

Having exhausted my list of thoughts for a blog post I then sat a little, thought about the pointlessness of life, listened to my chest rattling and, as a first in my blogging career, wrote the words “then I took a shot from my inhaler.” I think I’m gradually getting better with the inhaler, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference. However,I know from past experience that I hve to use it so I can tell the doctor it makes no difference. They like to know these things. If you fail to use something because you don’t think the signs are bad enough, you get told off for not using it.

The big inhaler (two shots before bed and two more on waking) does make a difference, I slept for hours last night and would have felt wonderful if it hadn’t been for the dreams about drowning. At about 5.30 I woke after dreaming several different dreams about drowning (fortunately only short ones) and found I was fighting for breath. Clearly I still need to cough while I’m asleep, even if I do find it annoying. I’ve always worried about drowning after falling in a stream whilst fishing when I was about five years old. I was never in any danger as I was with my father, my uncle and two of my cousins, but the memory of sinking under the surface stays with me now, as I write about it. However, it didn’t feature in last night’s dream. I’m fairly sure the dream was out of a film, though I can’t recall which one. I may go without the inhaler tonight, just to make sure I keep coughing to clear my airways. I can do without a repeat.

Dolphin – Sutton on Sea

“The Dolphin” is the name of the chip shop containing the tiles. I thought I’d point this out before someone told me they aren’t actually Dolphins.

More Rejection

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I had another rejection this morning. That’s two this month, though as it was a month of pushing the boundaries it’s not a surprise. I had four earlier in the year (three of which were actually competition entries). Over the years I have not had much luck with competitions – I’ve been commended twice, which is better than  nothing, but not great when you consider the cost of entry fees. As I said before, I have learned to cope with rejection over the years. I’m still no farter on with my thinking about the direction to take and the effort to put in.

I know I should be concentrating on writing haiku until I get better at them but I have two problems here. One is that I don’t actually know what “better” is. A lot of haiku I read don’t seem any better than mine, and in many cases feature things which, according to the various “guidelines” shouldn’t be in haiku (remember they very small poems with very large mounts of rules.) An editor i was in correspondence with recently told me that when they started writing haiku they decided which rules they were going to adopt and just kept plugging away. I might do that. Or I might just relegate haiku to something I do to fill in time on a slow month.

The other problem is that I like being published (though it’s not the driving force it used to be) and I’m lazy. I may as well write what I enjoy and what I’m good at. If I were being paid for poetry that’s definitely what I would do.

However, I don’t need to make a decision yet.

This morning I printed out four poems which I am sending to a magazine that sticks to the old-fashioned ways, including submissions by post. After printing and before sending off, I looked at them and realised the top one was a long way from “finished”. The second one was so bad it immediately provoked me into making notes on it. I didn’t follow up, as I had to get to work, but it was an interesting lesson. I suspect that reading words printed on paper, instead of on a screen,  triggers a new set of critical thoughts. Tomorrow I will set to revising. I may have to start printing everything out in future.

Now it’s time to get some work done and go to bed. I have a blood test at 7am so I need to get some sleep.

My Orange Parker Pen

A Short Productive Spell

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A Correction

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I have forty seven posts to go before I write my 3,000th. This means that my arithmetic was slightly out last time I posted, a fact made more embarrassing by the fact I used it as a headline. If simple mental arithmetic is beyond me this does not bode well for the future. Even worse, I can’t think of much to say. What is the world coming to when all I can offer is a minor mathematical error as the key event of my day?

Things went downhill after I wrote the first paragraph, so I’m going to edit the 500 rambling words which resulted and just leave this as a correction. I say “edit”, but I mean “delete”. It’s often the easiest way. You aren’t missing much, just me explaining why I am confused by modern life. If I’d formulated a plan for world peace or a way to turn rambling blogs into a clean energy source I’d have left it, no matter how inelegant it was. But I promise, there was nothing good in it, and you have missed nothing.

That would be a good world though, wouldn’t it? There would be no energy crisis if you could turn words into fuel. In the event of a war I would merely crank up my production of rants to see me through the cold weather, and would not need to think about the wholesale gas price.  The same goes for car journeys. A trip to the coast? Just slip a few pre-prepared essays into the fuel tank and we’re off . . .

No worries about pollution or the price of crude oil. It might even be possible to plug a keyboard directly into the car and set one of the passengers to typing.

And with that thought I will go away and try to think of a subject for the next blog.

Chancellors, Cuts and Citizenship

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I had a look through some old drafts while thinking about a subject for today. I had 88. I now have 83. Really I shouldn’t have any, but I get attached to my false starts and slightly imperfect ramblings. I may go back and get rid of more, but it’s like clearing cupboards – always the temptation to put it back for later.

One of the newer ones includes a selection of thoughts on poetry, elephant’s graveyards, the racist boys adventure stories of my youth. It wasn’t too bad but it did tempt me into territory. where my old-fashioned view of life might get me into trouble. Another has been in progress for two years and  a third was just a link to something I was thinking of writing about. Strange how my house, my brain and my computer are all run on the same basis – clutter and the products of procrastination.

I’m going to go back now and ruthlessly prune . . .

That didn’t quite go according to plan. Eight hours later I am now having a look at the work I left undone. Instead of pruning like a machine, I finished writing the post about Private Dunkerley’s Plaque. I also find, that as the Home Secretary has resigned today, in a cloud of confusion and stupidity. If you can’t tell the difference between your own email account and the government’s email account it’s probably just as well you aren’t trusted with any important decisions. Just imagine if she had control of the nuclear button. Actually, don’t. It’s not a good thing to think of just before bed.

I will post this, rather than add it to the list of drafts. It is either the second post of yesterday or the first post of today, depending on my mood. Of course, if you aren’t reading it on the day of publication, it will be neither.

The pictures are of the medallion given to people by Harrow Council after their citizenship ceremonies. I bought it from eBay for 1p. It doesn’t have a  date on it, so it doesn’t really fit in my cheap medallion collection, but for a penny I thought I’d have a go.

Harrow Citizenship Medal.

Day 140

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I’ve just been looking at a recent haibun, which I had thought I might reprint it in the blog. When I looked at it I found that, despite it being accepted and published, and despite my various edits and improvements before submission, it still has faults. It’s strange how that happens. There are at least two corrections needed in the space of 200 words. I suppose this will always be the problem with written work. It seemed finished when I submitted it, but the faults are clear and jarring.

Looking at it with fresh eyes shows more clearly what an editor may see when looking at my work. They aren’t even complicated faults – one being a fault with rhythm and one being a repeated word.

The piece I have used, could be better, and I have had a couple of thoughts for improvement, but nothing leaps out at me immediately. I’m now wondering about the idea of leaving everything for an extra three months before submitting it.

 

Quiet Corner

As a child, I attended a village school where the playground shared a wall with the churchyard. On one side of the wall we played and shouted. On the other, a line of small mossy memorials marked the graves of babies. Having grown up knowing that I had a sister who had died before I was born, I accepted, as did most people, that babies died. Years later, staring in wonder at my firstborn, I would think about those stones again, the tiny bodies that they covered, and from a new perspective, the parents.

snail shells
the song thrush uses gravestones
for an anvil

First Published Blithe Spirit February 2022

Day 30

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In terms of creativity and industry things haven’t worked out that well. In other ways it has been  a pleasant and relaxing day. This qualifies it as a tick in the “good day” column of the celestial ledger, and I am now bringing it to a close with a smile on my face.

Normally I like to approach a deadline with plenty of material already written and refined. My deadline is 31st January which is tomorrow (for the next 22 minutes, when it will become “today”.

Fortunately, last time I had a rejection all the ten haiku had been written a few days before submission so I was able to look at them again and make improvements (I know I ought to give time for them to mature, but it always seems like I don’t have enough). I’m hoping that one will be acceptable this time round.

Submitting to editors is an art and not a science. What works with one editor doesn’t necessarily work with another and many of my poems have been accepted after two or three rejections. The best example I have is my haibun about Philip Larkin. I’ll add it at the bottom of post if I can find it. That haibun went out four times and came back four times. I tinkered a little each time to tighten it up, but didn’t change it too much. The fourth time it came back I sent it out again the next day and had it accepted in two days. Which goes to show that you can never tell what is around the corner. I have seen interviews where established writers have sent out poems a lot more than that. I don’t have that sort of confidence. After three or four failures I usually retire them.

However, I’ve been trawling through them today, looking for pieces that are good enough to send out. I’ve found three, polished them, and sent them out and am now looking for three more. After that I just need to write ten tanka in the next 23 hours and I’m laughing.

There are several more deadlines that I decided to ignore. One journal has been rejecting me constantly since a change of editor, for instance, and another is fond of heavy-handed editing. I’m going to give them a miss this month and catch them next time they come round.

In fact, I’d better get back to work – ten tanka won’t write themselves.

Later, far too much later on a work night, I have all three of the next batch of haibun assembled, and I realised I forgot the Larkin piece. I will search it out tomorrow.

 

Writing Haibun – Warning – May Cause Drowsiness

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Saturday 2nd January has proved to be a quiet day. After writing my first post of the day I edited some of my notebooks, browsed some on-line shops and washed up. I moved on to editing my notebooks – typing out three haibun and twelve haiku. They started off as seven haibun and twenty two haiku but some of them were rubbish. I think I must have written one of the haibun while I was asleep as it made no sense at all, and one of the others was so tedious it was probably the one that had sent me to sleep. Several of the haiku were just alternative versions, so one of them had to go.

And, I confess, two of the haiku were unreadable. I think I’ve covered this before. My writing is so bad I( cannot always read it shortly after I write it. Some of these were weeks old and I didn’t have a clue what they had originally been about. I came close to abandoning a haibun too, but there were enough legible/guessable words for me to reconstitute that one.

My Orange Parker Pen

That was all the useful work I did. I made lunch after that, using a pack of four small avocadoes. One, which I had tested, was ripe. The other four turned out to be a bit less than ripe, so needed dicing more than mashing. Julia wanted hers with a poached egg so I boiled the water, swirled it round and gently tipped an egg into it. I think the egg may have been a bit old, and the water may have been swirling a bit too fast as the whole thing seemed to explode in the minute I was away from the pan. I just had a pan of highly dilute scrambled egg. The second, was better, but I cooked it in the bowl of a metal ladle just to be on the safe side.

Fried eggs would have been better but a poached egg seems de rigueur in smashed avo circles so who am I to disagree. I had prawns in mine with a dressing made from ketchup, mayonnaise, lemon juice and black pepper, because I am firmly rooted in the 1970s.

Back to the writing for a moment – for the benefit of new readers, I write using a fountain pen whenever I can, because the words flow better. Even a cheap biro is better than typing. I can rarely type haibun and haiku when I am composing. Magazine articles and essays are fine, but poetry seems to demand a proper writing implement. That’s why I have to accept losing a percentage to illegibility. Better to lose  a few that way than to sit staring at a computer screen writing nothing, or writing things which I then edit into nothingness. It may seem inefficient at first, and I have tried to streamline the process, but it just doesn’t work any other way.

For the rest of the day I watched TV, chatted to Julia and dreamed of pizza. Then I woke up, cooked tea (we had steak as a New Year treat) and started writing this.

Failed Haiku Number 61 is out. Mine are about 40% of the way down under “Simon Wilson”. I’ve got so used to my accidental penname on WP that I feel very dull having an ordinary name. I could make it easy for you by just printing them here, but that doesn’t seem fair to the editor and the other writers. Scroll down until, you see the red feather – I’m a few pages under that. Or you can wait for a month and remind me – I will copy them and paste them in the blog once the new issue is out.

I’m now in what I find to be the toughest bit of the process. Writing is simple. Editing it into something readable isn’t too bad as long as you remember not everything is useful and allow yourself to throw stuff away. Editing for submission – the honing and perfecting, is a bit tricky, as I’m not a great judge of quality. Editing after submitting is quite easy – the editor suggests things and I do them. It’s about publication. I will agonise about my artistic integrity later – there are plenty of words and nothing to prevent me writing another version of the poem I want to write. This one is an example – it’s half the poem I originally submitted and misses out what I thought was an important point. However, it is also good like this and the cut down version is more elegant, so I’m happy to make the cuts.I have, however, rewritten another version of the longer poem, which will be submitted to a magazine this month. Even coping with rejection isn’t the worst bit. It’s an inevitable part of writing for publication, so there’s no point taking it personally.

A Tranquil Pond I once wrote about.

No, the most difficult bit for me is submission. I was sure I’d written about this in the last few days but I can’t find it so I may merely have thought about it, or I may have edited it. Sorry if I’m repeating myself.

Once I have things written and (in theory) edited to near perfection, I have to send them out. There are nearly always more places to send poems than I have poems to send. I have seven places for submissions in january. This means I need 16 haibun and twenty haiku.

In theory I have around 40 haibun ready to go, but in reality some of them aren’t good enough to go. A few of them have been returned by one or more editors, so it’s not just me who thinks that. I have, sensibly, about twenty, but then I have to decide which one suits which magazine. The best ones could go almost anywhere, the les good ones need to be placed where they will be most appreciated. At that point I start to ask myself if I should send anything apart from the very best. It’s like a massive circle. Eventually it all sorts itself out (a looming deadline tends to help concentration) and I start on the next lot.

I’ve now one over a thousand words, which I always think is too many, so I will leave it there.

 

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