MourningSorrowfulMother

Both ancestrally and currently, I belong to a musical extended family, but I'm not talented with music myself. When my mother eventually managed to afford some music lessons for me, in piano, it was late in my childhood and I felt like a failure in comparison with how extremely well my similar aged cousins were doing in piano and other musical instruments, even though they had been learning them for many years, were allowed to focus on music, and in some cases actually attended a full-time school dedicated to music. I worried I'd never catch up with them, that it was all too late. My parents weren't reassuring about that because I could never really confide in them, for various reasons - if I confided in my parents, their responses, it seemed, always totally weren't helpful - they "hadn't a clue" what to say or do, they couldn't emotionally cope with me not being happy, they didn't believe what I was saying, it was a case of rules were rules and pu...

 In order to write, I have to be in a relaxed state, sort of in a trance. Maybe actually in a low beta, trance state. Then the scenes and the dialogue - tons and tons and tons of dialogue, so fast I can't get it down on paper - it usually only works with pen and paper - appears. I hear the dialogue in my mind, just not with my outer ear - with my inner ear. Sometimes it's an intro to the characters. "Let that be a lesson to you Stanley" = terrifying, icy Granddad Golden. " You tell that disgusting nephew of mine! ... Go die in a ditch!" = super-bitch Granny Sue. "Mother isn't very sympathetic" = angelic aunt Goldie, (Marigold. Marigold Mercy Stratton).  And so on. More often it's just reams and reams of dialogue that is so much I have to leave it after a while.  That's all good. It's obviously stuff that needs to come out. Maybe the characters are facets of my own psyche? But what happens when I've had a stressful day and am not...

 After my previous blog entry made me remember my one-time creativity friend Gary McMahon, I wondered what had happened to him. It must be about twenty five years, roughly, that I last chatted to him in some coffee shop or possibly a regular city arty haunt bar, where he was, when I knew him, writing his really interesting, fab book Camp In Literature.  When you are as old as I am - I'm not going to say how old, but suffice it to say I'm on the other side now of a very late menopause - people you knew in the past, who were older than you especially, have a high chance of being dead. I do not know what happened to Gary but I have found a website: http://www.garymcmahon.com/ It's here on Blogger. Looks cool. Not all trips down memory lane are good. The ones with Gary do make me smile. I loved sharing the progress of Camp In Literature. It occurs to me that my own novel in progress is actually probably what Gary would call camp. If by some miniscule chance you ever see this Ga...

One week ago I managed to find some time to work on my novel again. I took the start of “Part One” of it and tweaked and rewrote that to be more how I like it. I enjoyed doing that. I regularly make entries on here of ‘Goldilocks”, but I don't publish them, as “Goldilocks” is nowhere near finished, and, whenever it is, I feel sure that I'll go back and edit nearly everything that I've written of it so far, if I don't edit stuff beforehand. But I don't know why, but I think I will publish this one. I know nobody ever reads my blog and I have no time and not much interest at the moment in getting an audience to it. I need to research how to self publish a novel and publicise it if my work on my novel ever gets that far. I wonder if anyone would ever want to read any fiction book I’d written. Probably not, but I can’t know that for sure? I joined a writers circle decades ago when I was young - had to leave it, as it was full of antagonistic women - and the woman who ru...