A Neighbourhood To Call My Own…

Nostalgia is a funny thing – it’s always there, and so much seems better than it really was, in memory, but when you actually sit down and examine in it, suddenly it’s not so rosy. Like watching that old television show you remember as a kid, it might have seemed fantastic, amazing plots, brilliant characters – but in the light of day it was actually pretty shit. Of course, this is not always the case, and when it is not, it is a wonderful thing.

Right now, I am watching Magnum P.I., which let’s face it, is crass populist television, but at its best. I remember watching this show as a kid, and I’ve got to admit the Ferrari helped (I loved cars as a kid, mechanics son and all that), but even now it seems quite fun. It has aged better than say Knightrider.

That is not the reason for this post however, I am sure I could fire up a poem – but I ended up watching it after flicking through the channels in the mood for something nostalgic. It all started with an email, from Yahoo, they are closing down Geocities, and it was their umpteenth reminder that I should go and download my website there, or transfer it to their paid for hosting service.

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Still struggling…

I’m still struggling with writers block. It’s spread from my ability to write fiction, to my ability to write poetry, and write here. It is having a decidedly melancholy affect. I’d hoped a bit of travelling might snap me out of it, but no such luck.

I think I need a crisis, I had a crisis this time last year, and coming out of that crisis I started writing again. However, the new improved me deals with problems a lot better, so few even get close to a minor crisis, never mind the life altering ones from last year.

I am now quite scared of NaNoWriMo looming over me, I’ve got the ideas, but without the ability to actually write, it’s fairly meaningless.

I could create a crisis, however that doesn’t fit with the new me that works hard not to get life in a state. I’ve gotten into pretty bad financial trouble this year (after years of owing no more than £400 at anyone time), however I’ve even dealt with that so that I’ll be debt free again in by this time next year, and am comfortable with that.

I could quit my job, which does have double benefits, it would be a major crisis, I wouldn’t be able to fix easily, and I would have time to write. However, I’d have nothing to write on, never mind anywhere to actually write – so possibly a level of crisis too far.

Likely, it’s still temporary, and that once November hits, I’ll be flying. I’m actually planning on doing something insane for NaNoWriMo (assuming I can find the ability to write again), and that is enter NaNoWriMo twice. That’s right, I’m aiming for the 100,000 words in a month bracket. I’ll be doing it with two different stories – however I personally feel that 100,000 in a month, on one story, that could retain 75% to 85% of it’s words after editing, might be worth pursuing. I was tempted to do it one story, however, I worry that I’ll balk under the challenge and settle for 50,000, I don’t want to settle. With two entries, settling is still a win and a failure, to have a true win, have to achieve both.

What I’ll aim to do, is get the first one complete in the first fortnight, and the second in the second fortnight, so I’m not having to switch between stories (which I can do, but might cause problems).

For now though, I’d settle for some good writing for the rest of September, and through October.

Another problem with writers block, it forces you to analyse every idea, as you seek the in roads to it, that will allow you to translate imagination to words on a page.

I just had a brilliant idea for a poem, for about a second, before I realised it’s a subject that’s been more than adequately covered in myth and legend.

There was tiny spider (but with long thin legs) in the bath, and it was stuck, but kept trying to get up the sides. It’d get so far, and then fall, but used it’s web to limit it’s fall, then tried again, then the web broke – so it started over, and nearly gets to the top, and then falls again.

Eventually, it drifts along the length of the path, trying to find a decent climb, and it makes it! I actually felt quite happy for it (even as I don’t have any like for spiders after being bitten by one, yuck). Then the damned thing, not satisfied with it’s monumental climb (they’re not after all known for escaping baths), then proceeded to climb a shampoo bottle. It must have realised it was disappointing when it get to the top, as it got back down again. Teetered on the edge of going back in the both, but instead choose to use the grouting to climb up to the ceiling instead.

It was amazing to watch. Unfortunately, it’s already a well observed phenomeon, kind of – Robert the Bruce famously is supposed to have seen a spider trying, and failing, then trying again, to get a web from one side of a cave to another, and it inspired him to try again and rebel against Edward. He still failed, but the moral is no less true.

As I said, it was amazing to watch – even more amazing, aside from this ickle spider, there was a much bigger spider (where the ickle one had legs no thicker than a hair, this had legs that were like 0.5mm – and a much bigger body and mandibles that were very visible (shudders). To be fair, I suspect they were the same breed, but probably the bigger one was considerably older (I believe a week might be descriptive enough of age in the life cycle of a spider – but I’m no arachnologist afterall), just sat there watching. I couldn’t decide if it was keeping the little spider as an emergency meal for later, or not. After the little spider escaped the bath, it turned and was facing the wall (it had been facing the length of the bath for the entire time little spider had been trying to escape), so I wonder if it was thinking, damn – if only I were smaller, and lighter, with legs that could find every tiny bump and gap to get me up – I could make it. Or maybe it was just cursing it’s luck, as the little spider succeeded, while it had sat and done bugger all.

Well there you go, like Robert the Bruce (allegedly), that little spider has inspired me too – because I’ve written a few words. Maybe I will write a poem about the two spiders… it’s a subject that may have been covered, (but then, lets face it what hasn’t?), but it was a pretty major thing for me.

I love moments like that, I once wrote down a few pages about a pigeon with a clubbed foot that I saw at the train station while travelling to work once. Still have it, might share that too. In fact, I think I might share inspirational animal stories everyday next week, I’m feeling well and truly inspired.

Thanks for reading, if you did

JL Legend
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Where’s the Inspiration?

A man walks onto the scene, he strolls with forced assuredness, yet you can read in his body language he’s not as confident as he’d like to be, he eyes the megaphone in his hand cautiously, before coming to a step. He lifts the megaphone up, taps the small end, then raises it to his mouth, before clearing his throat, “Ahem!”, then he queries, “Is this thing on?”, his words boom out of the megaphone’s big end. He laughs nervously in response to the annoyed stairs he receives.

The man stands there a few moments before finally seeming to get the confidence to raise the microphone to his mouth again, as he megaphone reaches position this time his cheeks take on a bit of velour, and his eyes seem ablaze, he takes a deep meaningful breath, and speaks into the megaphone,

“Right, listen up,” now all eyes are on him, only they’re attentive rather than annoyed, “I demand to know where my inspiration is! I think it’s wholly unfair that you’ve abandoned me right now. I need you, I can’t write without you. Without you these pages are blank, and what words come are empty.
“Inspiration I’ve never needed you so bad, I’ve got all these things to do, and you’ve abandoned me, given up the fight, and now I stand alone against the tide of battle.
“I beg you return to me your charm, your talent. Words are meaningless without you!”

The audience looks rapt, his words have moved them, they feel his desperation, and they ponder borrowing the megaphone.

The man looks down upon his audience, upon their swept up faces, he watches the emotions play across their faces. Then a thought dawns in his mind, a realisation, maybe even epiphany.

What the man realised was this – inspiration is hard to achieve, but it can hit at the strangest moments, and all you can do is find the nearest waiting apparatus and take advantage.

Everyone has different things that inspires them to write, and inspires what to write. For myself these are most often two different events, for others they might be most often the same.

There is also another possibility one without the other, which can either be liberating or frustrating, for example:

• I may have a brilliant idea what to write, but no inspiration (will) to write it – so it all plays out in my head because try as I might I can’t convert it into words. Obviously a form of writers block.
• Something may give me inspiration (the will) to write, but without any inspiration. Here my mind, and the paper is ab empty canvas, and I can just let my thoughts flow freely. Probably doesn’t make for great reading, but it’s fun and liberating for me.

Everybody is different when it comes to inspiration, I know all too well what holds true for me, is complete gibberish to another. In broad strokes, I have probably captured the general forms of inspiration.

In terms of what inspires me to write (gives me the will), it falls down to three categories: the outdoors (nature, weather, scenery, architecture, etc…), other people’s creativity (a book, a film, a piece of music, also biographical information about a creative person, or someone who’s faced adversity in their life), and challenges (nothing gets my creative juices better than a bit of competition).

Sadly these things aren’t guaranteed to get me writing, but most often once I start writing it’s because I was inspired to by one of the above.

In terms of my inspiration what to write, it’s usually something close to hand, something I’ve imagined happening, my emotional state (yes, I can be a bit emo in my poetry), or a need to impress others so I can belong, and validate myself.

I’ve written about many things, from religion to coke cans, from fantasyic tales to mundane moments of life, and from historical events to nature.

Sometimes my indpirations puts me on the path to something specific, sometimes it’s just the starting point, or catalyst for a cascade of ideas.

I will say this, whatever the idea, I do love it when it happens, it’s a veritable joy to let poetry over take me, a joy and love that only falls short of sex.

As I’m getting older, inspiration is getting harder – dry spells last longer, but when the floodgates open, I feel sure the joy is deeper, as I come to appreciate it more.

Still I would live in those moments more if I were able to, giving myself over to the wild abandon of inspiration.

So I feel abandoned when inspiration doesn’t come, and call to it from my megaphone, hoping to attract it back. For me my megaphone is going to beautiful places, reading and listening to music, and entering challenges – hoping beyond hope, inspiration heads my call and answers.

That’s what inspiration is to me.

Favourite Writing Moment

I’ve been trying to be a writer for about nineteen years. I was about six or seven when I first said “I want to be a writer,” which is a lucky and wise choice. Had I said “I want to be an astronaut,” or “I want to be superhero,” only by changing who I am physically, and mentally, achieving the top in every course I was not great at, at school – could I have hoped to be in the long list of eligible hopefuls trying to get on the very short list of astronaut, or I could have been waiting around for the meteor with mystical powers to fall and grant me my super powers. Because I always wanted to be a writer, a poet, even a journalist – I have always been able to be what I wanted to be when I grew up.

You see, wanting to be a writer, is as easily achieved as writing. I am a writer, I’m not a rich or successful writer, I’m not even published, but no one can ever take that dream away from me. I didn’t need qualifications, and you can get by with minimal education – you don’t even need good language skills really, cave painting is as valid a story telling form as good old ink. Even as I progress in my career as a business analyst, my day job does not affect my dreams outside of work. Unless it distracts me with the stresses and pressures of work – but that’s the grind stone we carry.

It is a very charmed path in that sense, one for which I do feel privileged every time I’m moved to put pen to paper, or sat in front of a keyboard with a word processor open.

With nineteen years of desire and action behind me, I’ve written a lot – a handful of novels (sadly I most admit most unfinished, at the moment), dozens of short stories, hundreds of poems, and in recent years, a piece of fan fiction or two. Some of these are more successful than others, some of been technically brilliant, some have been naive in their inception at best, and some have really meant something to me, or to others.

I’ve had lots of fantastic writing experiences, I’ve met some truly fantastic people in the writing world, and I’ve achieved things that I consider special. Despite the fact that I don’t have the moral fortitude to test my theory that I lack the talent to be published (whether a novel with a publishing house, self publishing, or a short story or poem in a magazine), I am really happy with where I am as a writer, and where I could go in the future.

I found myself asking a question today, of myself, “What is your favourite writing moment?” (well to date, I’m really hoping my ride continues).

This is far from an easy question to answer, there are many moments in my life that I will treasure as a writer. There are many reasons for treasuring them. There are events outside of writing, that make me treasure a writing moment more, than just for the moment alone. How do you pick and choose these great moments? Can I measure a moment from when I was eleven and felt fantastic because I’d written something to be proud of at eleven, against another moment where I actually won an accolade for something I’ve written? To answer the question I have to. “Life is about choices, suck it up boy”, clearly my inner drill sergeant agrees.

However, before coming to my answer, I’m going to explore a handful of my cherished writing memories, to help me weigh up and decide.

What is my Favourite Writing Moment?

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Poetry Practice: Day five

As part of my aim to enter some poetry competitions, I have been practicing writing (I’m a touch rusty). Today (Monday 18th May) is day 5, so here’s today’s poem:

Sleep Protector

Lie down in velvet shadows,
Find warmth in the heavy presence,
Wrap yourself in the love we share,
Feel our protection from the darkness,
I will be there for now by your side,
You need not fear this deep night,
As we rest in peaceful slumber,
Enjoy.

Rise in caramel illumination,
Flood awareness flood to your senses,
Find your way out of your downy care,
Avoid realising your profound cureless,
In your dreams to yourself you lied,
Found comfort away in the fright,
I’m a figment in the dream of forever,
Sorry.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2009

This is a really sad poem, it starts off sounding romantic, but it’s almost unreal. A couple go to bed, nice and romantic, but only one talks, sooths, the other offers no reaction, but to fall asleep. My intention was to invoke the feeling of a night guardian, he stands watch over our fateful sleeper.

I don’t know about you, but I long for that – it’s almost a magical romantic ideal. Which the second verse reveals is the truth. I would feel a prodound sense of loss at realising this dream wasn’t real, but can you be sure can you? The figment apologised – which to me, says that maybe this phantom protector is real, but gone when you awake.

Poetry Practice (four days catch up)

I had intended on posting these daily, however sometimes life takes over the best meant plan.

I have written a poem each day, as I committed to – none of them are really great, one I’ve really struggled with, partly because I was busy, and partly because the ideas just wouldn’t organise themselves into a decent poem. I’ve covered three topics: politics, society, and family (well I can honestly say my interest in sociological topics does in no way affect my writing – okay I can’t say that).

Like I said, none of them are really great, but I don’t think any of them are really terrible. Got to keep it up though, I would love to think that come June 1st, I’ll be confident of my own abilities again, also it’s good to know, even though I can’t write a story (in the traditional sense), it doesn’t affect my ability to write poetry.

What I’m going to do, under the ‘Read more’ link is display each poem, and after each one give a a few lines of explanation.  If you care to read some of my practice poetry,  feel free, comments are always good, if you want to be critical, that’s great – this is practice after all.

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Poetry Practice

So given that I want to launch back into the world of poetry competitions I need to get some practice on.

Truth be told, I’ve had writers block for the better part of six months, which has been phenomenly frustrating, I guess lots of it comes down to having a lot in my life to deal with, it detracts from my will, but not inspiration I have some great ideas. Life isn’t getting any easier.

Thing is, on that note, I’m going to aim to publish a new poem here every day from now till the end of the month. If I can power through this blockage I can unleash my creativity, and I’ll feel better.

So I’m a bit rusty, I’m not going to try for quality or originality, perfectionism is it’s own creative block, I’m just going to write skill be damned!

Pen and paper at the ready!

Poetry Competitions

I must admit I’ve not entered a writing competition since college, it was pretty much the only one I’ve entered. An odd stastic for someone that loves challenges. I managed to come second out of fifty-seven entrants, a laudible achievement I feel.

I don’t know why I don’t enter more, I should do really, but it’s finding the right poetry competitions to enter, then being brave enough.

I did once enter poems on poetry.com, (not sure if it’s the same poetry.com from back then now, I do hope not), and yes I did feel giddy when they started writing to me saying they wanted to publish my poems in an anthology. Even my family were impressed, and wanted copies of the anthology. Being the pessimist it didn’t take me long to check out the company and decide it was a con, that you’d be throwing good money after bad on your route to gaining the mythical anthology, and attending it’s “award ceremonies” in the US. The most telling statistic it was a limited liability company based off shore. Also none of it’s celebrity “sponsors” had even heard of it seemed.

Though I had protected myself and not fallen for it – I did feel sad that it wasn’t real.

It was after that I decided I wanted to help others, I decided to setup a forum at writers-ramblings.com, something I was very proud of, for me it was a success, at it’s peak it had about one hundred registered members, many of whom were active and taking part. It died off after I moved away and didn’t have net effort. It limped on, but eventually I let it go, however I still remember how good that made me feel. When I tried to resurrect it, the domain was no longer available, so I came up with aspiring.org. I never could get a forum setup that made me quite so happy as the first, and eventually I went with a blog, (which of you’re reading.) I hope maybe in some small (even if it’s infintisimal) way this helps the writing world, and a writer or poet or too along the way.

Anyway, running our own forum (with a lot of help from a couple of friends that I have drifted apart from sadly), we ran competitions, there were no prizes, just the warm feeling of having achieved something.

I think the time has come to do something else though and enter a competition or two, and see if I can achieve some luadible again. I’ll never make Poet Laureate if I don’t take risks and let others see what I write.

If I do well, it might give me the confidence to both finish a piece of writing (as in finish writing, revise, rewrite, etic…), and attempt to get it published.

It isn’t fear of being conned that stops me, it is the fear of having my hopes dashed, that is what poetry.com did, yet the college competition put me on cloud nine. Two heads of the same coin we call risk. However if I want to advance myself as a poet, to make my poetry mean something beyond myself, I think it’s a step I need to make.

So having said all that, and concluded I need to do it, now I just have to act. I need to find some poetry competitions, and start writing.

It would probably be helpful to specialise, but I’m a bit of a Jack of All Trades when it comes to poetry. That said my personal favourite (but probably what I’m worse at) are sonnets – so just up the ante on myself, that should get me going.

I can do this, I think.

My Poetry Writing Process

The fabled writing process, everyone has one, or one they prefer at least.

My own process keeps me sane, keeps me trying, and ultimately makes my work better. That’s what I’m going to explore in this entry.

I’ve found, that in the past spending a few moments considering what my process is has made for better poetry. It prevents me trying to force myself to fit molds that aren’t mine, which so far when I’ve tried has led me down paths of frustration. Having the desire to write a poem, and then destroying the will to write is a terrible thing.

Preface: Before I start exploring, it isn’t fair to say I have one writing process, I have several – the aim of this post is explore my writing process for poetry, I will do another blog entry in regards to writing literature.

So what is my poetry writing process?

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A poem very close to my heart…

This morning, I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk. Up the slanting street I went, and found myself by the field behind Osmondthorpe Lane, facing the bridge I’d climbed up after I came back from hospital, the night my Granddad died.

I wrote a poem for him after that, I’d intended on reading it at the funeral – I messed up though, it was the first funeral I’d ever been to, and I left it at home, and even though I’d practiced it, I didn’t dare stand up and read it, in case I spoiled it.

By no means is technically a great poem, but it’s a poem that means more to me than any other. Since I ended up at the bridge, and the memories and chain of thoughts led me to rekindle my blog, I thought it was fitting I put it out there once more.

One of the last great heroes has gone

One of the last great heroes has gone,
A warrior of sea and life,
Lost to us, but for memory,
And love in our hearts,
He will be there for us in the strife,
And always too when life is merry.

But on that sorrowed night I prayed,
Just for two minutes,
Two minutes, to say my love,
To share my heart,
He had given his all to life’s fight,
And from his body he flew, released like a dove.

I wish I could have said more in the time we had,
How much we all cared for the tailor,
I know, I hope,
With all my heart,
That we loved with out failure,
Only with that faith could I cope.

By Jonathan Lawrence, 5th April 2003