In the airport. My right ear is ringing like a sunuvabitch. Deafness awaits.
Outlined the novel yesterday on fake digital index cards in the Storyist app. It feels so good to have those ideas gathered in a form I can act on. I also made some more edits to Chapter One based on the character work I’d done the day before.
It’s taken me so long to reach this point, but there’s something neat about allowing a story to percolate for so long. Ultimately, I figure it doesn’t matter when I finish it; it’s more important that I have fun being in the story, telling it, shaping it.
Normally, I outline then write a chapter and consider it finished. This time I see this being more of a layering process, adding in detail and (hopefully) humour, rather than feeling it all has to be there in the first draft.
I spent much of yesterday evening in the hotel last night looking for my Canadian passport after repacking my messenger bag for the flight. (Down the other side of the desk, under the curtain.)
Then I tried to watch an Australian film about a secret gay cabal who placed eligible young men into positions of power. It was awful, and deeply offensive; every scene of contact between men was clearly meant to evoke “Eew! Isn’t that eewy?”, like that was a shortcut for evil and depravity. I deleted it rather than subject myself to the rest. (And yes, I feel I can offer comment without seeing it all.)
A thoughtless afternoon coffee made for a terribly restless night, and it was compounded by the steady rumble of the (apparent) battleship engine installed behind the hall cupboard.
Then this morning I turned on the shower this morning, which blasted hot rain everywhere in the bathroom before I could shove it toward the wall.
Now here I am at the airport, actually in fine spirits despite how cranky the above must sound. I kind of like being in travellimbo. It’s raining, not snowing as forecast, so that eliminates a hurdle. Now I’ll just hope for, as my friend Kirsten wished me, “a bearable flight.” That’s as high as the bar goes nowadays.
So this one is “Your favourite place.” If you’ll pardon the expression, when I tried to free-associate on this theme, I drew a blank.
Place is a bit of a challenge for me. I don’t feel like I really belong anywhere, probably because I’ve moved to a new place every ten years, so I’ve never had a chance to really identify with one location. That said, I wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had, and for all that I’ve lost culturally by doing that, I’ve gained a broader perspective than I would have had, and a sense that I don’t have to choose; I get to belong wherever I am at the moment””even if I’m missing a lot of back-story, information, and fitting-in behaviours.
So for this one, I chose something more general: “cafés”. As I’m saying in the doodle below, I love cafés, because they represent the possibility of of doing creative work and not having to be alone to do it””yet getting to be alone!
(Which sounds awful now that I read it. Not that I feel the need to get away from my beloved; one of my most favourite recent experienced was going to the new café at John O’Groats with Craig, drawing and writing while he read and took pictures of the wild Pentland Firth outside.)
The café I drew is one back in Edinburgh, Black Medicine. It got crowded and studenty, but I do remember having a great writing session there when I was working on Idea in Stone. That memory is an important touch-stone today, because I’m using up a few vacation days before I go to Canada, and today I’m in the pub, determined to get back to my novel.
(People keep asking, “How’s your novel going?”, and I know they’re being supportive, but it does put one on the spot somewhat””sort of like when I was an actor, and after a show someone would say, “So what are you working on next?” Usually I had no idea, or I’d gone on some auditions, but talking about that would invoke the dreaded jinx and set up a potentially awkward question for the future. “So did you get the lead in that film you auditioned for?” No, Christian Bale did. But I’m sure it was close.)
The bottom panel is horribly drawn; as I write this, I’m assuring myself that’s okay, because this is drawing practice. In it, I’m saying, Then there are diners, though we don’t really have those in the UK, so my favourite one of those exists in my imagination, where I go to review my projects.
—
So. It’s Canada, 1967. Height of the Cold War. Our story begins in a snowy field, miles and miles outside Ottawa, where cipher clerk Eddie Miller is about to have a job interview at the government’s secret nuclear-bomb-proof bunker. Except he can’t see it, just a little shed jutting out of the snow…
Yeah, I know, I skipped Day Four”””Draw your favourite place”””for now, ’cause today happens to be my buddy Cosgrove’s birthday, so I did Day Five: “Draw your best friend.”
Now, this one’s a bit contentious, ’cause I’m not into ranking things like books and movies, and especially not people. My husband is, of course, my best friend. But my buddy Cosgrove and I have also been friends for a really long time. So here he is:
Then there’s my friend Patrick, though; he and I have been through the wars, so I also consider him a “best friend”:
I once read that doing “extreme” sports doesn’t actually confer any qualities to other parts of our lives (e.g. bungee-jumping won’t make you feel more confident on dates).
But, you know, driving is making me believe that’s not true: Learning to do this dreaded thing””even starting to have fun at it””is a real confidence-booster. What else might I be able to do? I’ll be driving that car around like I’ve got a bloody dragon’s heid in the boot!
I still have a lot to learn, but that nightmare of suddenly appearing in the driver’s seat of a car on the motorway… it doesn’t apply anymore (even though I haven’t dealt with those lessons yet).
Perhaps the oracle at Delphi was wrong. Perhaps knowing ourselves just chains us to a past description””a story””of who we’ve been, and blinds us to our potential.
I don’t think it’s racist to admit that I didn’t realise until last week that fundamentalist Muslim cleric Abu Qatada and fundamentalist Muslim cleric Abu Hamza were different people.
Here’s my doodle for (really non-consecutive) day two of the Thirty-Day Drawing Challenge: “Draw your favourite animal”. I guess this one’s fairly predictable:
And, finally, on Saturday (after driving practice, which is going really well!) Craig and I went through to Thurso for Chinese with our friend Donald. Over dinner, the conversation turned to the weather and how dark and cold it’s getting these days. Donald asked, “Why would anyone live in Scotland?”, and we were all silently stumped for an answer. Then Craig and I went to see the new James Bond film (which I felt was a fun, solid, good, and modern advancement of the stories). Part of the story takes place in Scotland, and as soon as they showed a sweeping location shot in Glencoe, I thought to myself “That’s why we live in Scotland.”
I’d still find it difficult to answer Donald’s question for anyone. It’s really a case of “If you don’t know, then you don’t know.”
I had my second driving lesson today, and as much as it must have seemed like a mess to the instructor, it was full of breakthroughs for me.
I drove around other cars without worrying at all about crashing into them and killing everyone inside. Suddenly it just seemed obvious, like “Of course I’m not going to crash into them.”
Changing gears above first was easy, too (getting into first still poses a challenge, especially when I’m trying to think about other things, like making a right turn). The gearbox in the instructor’s car is much more precise and yet forgiving than our car, but Saturday afternoon was devoted to being “Clutch Day”, and I think I made progress. (I can stop without stalling almost every time.)
Learning to pass the driving test is not my goal. Learning to drive well is my goal. And it’s not even a goal: I understand it’s a process.
Even though the meme is quite old, I’ve decided to do the “30-Day Drawing Challenge“. I just may not do it in 30 consecutive days.
Here’s day one: me.
In my first lesson, my instructor and I somehow got onto the topic of bungee-jumping and other “xtreeeme” sports. I mentioned something I read somewhere, which proved that there’s actually no transference of qualities from that experience to any other aspect of life””in other words, propelling yourself off a bridge with an elastic band attached to your feet won’t make you feel any better about dating.
You know what? I think that might be wrong. Driving is something I’ve avoided for a long time. I’ve even had recurring nightmares about it (suddenly popping into the driver’s seat on a busy motorway but the controls don’t work, I’m surrounded by huge lorries, I’m actually sitting in the back seat but trying to reach the controls, &c).
But I’m starting to get it. Slowly, and maybe it’ll take me forever, but I’m making progress, and that’s a good feeling.
I mean, hell, I learned how to write in shorthand. That was a skill I had to acquire from scratch. But it wasn’t exactly scary (except a few times early on when I’d taken important notes and couldn’t read my outlines after). Driving is still a bit scary, but I’m finding ways to deal with that, like EFT, which may just be hocus-pocus, except that it works consistently for me.
A big part of that may be because the technique gets you to articulate what you’re afraid of. In this case, it’s hurting other people, looking foolish, being overwhelmed and discovering I can’t learn this, or causing expensive car-damage. Oh, okay. And can I trust myself to be a careful and safe driver? Yes. Can I be a patient and committed learner? Yes.
So that’s that. And last week I wrote a ton of copy in the face of some unreasonable deadlines. I hit a wall with that at one point””so I had a nap, then finished the job. Amazing how a nap can reboot your brain and energy.
I just looked over at Craig and said, “It’s nice to have spare time.” I don’t have anything planned at the moment that requires me to use my evenings to prepare for it. That feels really good. I feel like reading, doodling, and writing this.
Yes, this is just what I needed. Driving lessons are enough of a commitment for this month.
I’m travelling back home today, mulling over the weekend and trying to sort out my reaction to the book fair.
If you got here because of picking up one of my cards there, sorry for dropping you right into a patch of angst and a possible sense of ingratitude for the good conversations and interest we shared. In fact, I enjoyed meeting everyone, I have no regrets about my indie-book life so far and would still heartily recommend that path to anyone who feels so inclined, and I really respect the great folks at the poetry library for all they do. I’m just at a crossroads in my creative career.
That said, I’m looking at the next big event in my calendar, and it’s my trip to Canada, which reminded me that, hey, you know, I happen to work as a writer, which was just a dream at one point in my life. Yes, it’s business writing, but that works best when it has the qualities of good, connected, imaginative writing. Plus I have some projects going with my client where I even get to draw. I have great a relationship with my client company and all the people there, and I believe in what they do. Plus they appreciate my abilities and steadily reward me for using them. What more could I want?
So for the meantime, I’m going to give extra focus to that and use it as my creative outlet.
Since my days are already devoted to that, this opens up some spare time, so I can do other things… like learn how to drive.
Lessons begin on November 5th. You may want to stay indoors.
“I quit.” That’s how I felt by the end of the book fair I attended yesterday.
For the past few weeks I’ve been scrambling to make books for the Scottish Poetry Library’s small press fair. I printed and bound stacks of novels, because that’s what sold the most at the last one of these, and after all, publicising those is supposed to be why I’m doing these shows in the first place. And I made various sizes of blank journals. I came up with a few of these I was really happy with; these were more than just nice found paper. Two featured my cartoons for a change, and one was a creative kitchen sink of pages and pockets and slips of paper travel ephemera. So it was a rush, but everything came together. Doing the show would be the payoff for all that work.
I made all my train connections and managed to get myself and my rolly-bag of goods all the way down to Edinburgh, where my old pal Patrick met me at the station. I’ve really enjoyed having a few days to hang out with him, and he’s been showing me around my Scottish home-town, where, aside from the mess of the tram-tastrophe some surprisingly beautiful architectural projects have gone up.
It’s been odd to visit here: the nostalgia of revisiting this city feels less like going back to where I used to live and more like stepping into the pages of my novel about the place. It’d be very easy to slip into a line of thinking like “Oh, what am I doing in Wick? I should be back here.” But I’m not — not out of denial, but because it isn’t true. I could happily live here again, and maybe I will. But our time in Wick isn’t over, and it doesn’t feel like it should be yet. I trust that we’ll know when it is.
So yesterday morning I woke up early and took a taxi to the poetry library, stopping in at a grocery story nearby to pick up provisions so I could sit at my table all day and be with the people. I wasn’t doing any workshops, so I could just chat and meet the like-minded folk who were there, either as presenters or attendees.
The other book-folk with tables were, once again, a talented and friendly group. There’s no competition at all at these fairs, partly because the books we produce are so different, and because these people know from long, hard experience that art is not a competition — despite the public, the media, and the publishing industry being unable to conceive of it outside of a template of contests, sales lists, and royalty figures.
Hundreds of people walked past my table, picking up the books and putting them down, some quietly, some talking to me about my process. Despite what I’m about to say, I did feel honoured to meet these folks, to have the opportunity to share my work with them, perhaps inspire a few, to give them tools for creating their own work or just a book to use. The paper wallets were, as always, a particular favourite.
But as the day wore on, I grew tired — tired of being the guy enthusiastically giving away help and ideas, tired of selling lots of the wallets, the one thing on the table I cared least about. Oh, it’s fun to have figured out how to make them, and I like interacting daily with an unusual thing I’ve made myself. But there’s really none of me in them, nothing I add to them that anyone else couldn’t.
A cute little girl kept coming back to my table, lamenting that she didn’t have the money to buy a wallet. I ended up giving her a spare notebook I’d made as an experiment and wasn’t intending to sell, but had to be firm with myself about not giving away my work for free. But I tried to show her that she could do it herself, which I figured would be much more valuable and fun.
Meanwhile, folks passed by the table, and I sat or stood, trying to measure how much communication was enough to be warm and interesting, yet not so much as to be overbearing or make them feel trapped or obliged. So many people picked up the novels, but nobody bought one. Not one.
My table-neighbour was Joanna Gibbs, who was there with her artist’s books and her own version of the loss-leader: tiny leather books on thongs — which, it turns out, were the ones I’d seen online that had inspired me to make my own. I’d brought a few of mine, but when I was setting up and saw hers out, I quietly put them back into my bag — partly because hers were so much nicer and so much more carefully made, and partly to not appear to be trying to undercut her reasonably higher price.
She and I had been talking earlier, and I quickly got the impression that she was a kindred spirit. Her work is a real exploration, both on the page and in the process she uses to make it, and as we talked I found doors and windows opening in my head, like she was somehow giving me permission and the ability to think differently about this book work.
At one point I turned and said to her out of the blue, “Why am I doing this?”
It wasn’t asking just because I hadn’t sold any novels, though from a practical business perspective the question is appropriate enough. I asked because I felt tired and a bit sad. I still do.
What’s that about?
I made about ninety quid from the day, which really doesn’t justify all the hours of work and travel I put in — though I do appreciate that it’s not nothing; it isn’t an awful result. Last Christmas in Toronto I did much, much better, so that kind of figure was in my head. Yet it isn’t about making money.
Sitting with myself just now, I poked about inside and asked what this was about. It’s that I’m a creative person who happens to be able to do certain things, but I don’t feel like this is expressing anything I’m about right now. I don’t feel like making stuff in an attempt to appeal to strangers — especially when that stuff isn’t even really committed creative work. It’s more like craft, and I have no real investment in being a craftsperson.
The really troubling bit is that I don’t know what my art is. There’s this book I’m busy not-writing, partly because I was occupied with preparing a bookbinding workshop then making books for this fair, which has crowded out any non-copywriting work. I also don’t know what I would express: I live in a place I’m not from, and I spend my days there working in an anonymous bubble. There’s nothing really for me to react to.
Joanna suggested that I’m in transition (and wondered aloud about what she was doing there, too, which was reassuring, like she might be going through a similar period). Getting her permission to just let that be, to go with it and let myself go slow and quiet while I figure out what I should be creating, that was a real help.
So… I quit. No more book fairs. Not for now. If I was going because I felt that was what was required of an indie author/publisher to stay relevant and sell books — well, that argument is blown. I’m just further and further establishing myself as the guy who gives away helpful information for free, and, creatively, there’s really nothing more in that for me. I’ve done it, I’m hugely gratified that it’s been helpful to some folk, and I’m finished. I retire from that.
It’s not enough for me to just live and have a job, though. Maybe it should be enough to just be a good husband to Craig, and that’s certainly a big priority for me. But I also need to be processing and reflecting on my passage through this world and doing it creatively. That’s vital, and seems to just happen as a function of who I am.
The challenge is living in a world where we’re defined by our output, and it feels like we have to keep repeating what I’ve done before. I can allow myself to stop doing that. I don’t need to be “an author” and I don’t need to keep showing face at book fairs, trying to flog may handicrafts. But there’s still that creative urge, and it’s disconcerting to have neither a form for it nor the content to fill a form.
In an infinite universe, I know that I’m no one and nothing, and I’m fine with that. But inside the sphere of my consciousness, I’m the mechanism by which the universe understands itself. And I’m not quite getting it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
It’s a bit like Dachau (I’ve been getting a perverse pleasure from the comic effect of dropping “Dachau” into sentences lately): I’m having these experiences and wanting them to change me so profoundly that they dictate what I have to do next. But if I’m honest, I’m not getting that message.
So yesterday I packed up the books that hadn’t sold into my rolly-bag (most of what I’d brought, including all the novels), and trundled out of the poetry library, over the shining wet cobbles where an Edinburgh Saturday night was just starting to gear up (groups of lads bumping together like icebergs and young women tottering on stick-thin heels). I was finished with book shows, but it was nothing so dramatic as “I’m finished with books”.
“What’s next?” That’s my question. I don’t feel any strong enough pull to be able to provide an answer from myself. I feel like a goose whose magnetic beak thingy isn’t working, so he keeps circling and circling the earth.
For today, I’m just going to land here in my pal’s flat and watch movies.
I’m here at the pub, ploughing through my e-mail, fiercely trying to get to “inbox zero,” and there’s one to-do I’m stumped by: when should I start my driving lessons?
After months of putting it off and genuinely not knowing how to choose, I finally picked a driving instructor. We’d exchanged a few e-mails, so I found out how this works and how much it costs (cue sharp intake of breath at the cost). I’d promised myself, Craig, and the lady who runs the local bulk food shop (we chat when I’m in) that I’d commit to lessons by September””so by contacting the instructor I just squeaked in on that deadline, technically.
Yesterday I was sitting in the living room, typing away, when I saw the instructor sitting in his car outside my window. After a moment of confusion (had he arrived to pick me up? what?), I saw that he’d just stopped there to send a text message””like a good driver””so I took the opportunity to go out and tap on his window. Then it was his turn to be surprised, but I told him who I was and we chatted about my options. His only concern was that I have my provisional licence. (Oh yes, I’ve had that for a year.)
He was really friendly, and that was the little bit of reassurance I needed. Thank you for that, Universe.
Now my conundrum: I’m really busy this month, going away to Germany for a week, then going to Edinburgh at the end of the month for the Scottish Poetry Library’s small press fair, By Leaves We Live. I need to make a lot of books for my table at that event, so it wouldn’t be fair to myself to stack driving lessons and studying for the theory test on top of that and my regular work (which is busy lately).
But that means starting in November. Then I go to Canada for December, and I don’t see myself getting comfortable and ready for my test in a single month. If I put it off until the new year, though, I’d really have to put it off until the spring, ’cause learning to drive in the middle of winter seems crazy.
(If you’re still reading this back-and-forth mental chatter, thank you.)
So what do you think? Is it worth starting””even if that means starting-and-stopping””just to get going? Or should I wait and do it all in a stretch?
I’m gone back to planning on paper. Again. Since getting the iPad, I moved my projects into a program called Things, which is very good. (And I’ve tried a lot of planning/time management programs through the years). But something about the process wasn’t sitting right.
The one obvious drawback I can point to is that this setup meant having to turn the computer on first thing in the morning to start my day. “Oh, I’ll just check my e-mail to see if there’s anything that urgently needs my attention. Oh, and look on Twitter. Might as well catch up with my news-feeds…” And before I know it, I’ve slid into my day with no plan. I need a plan.
Yesterday I drew up a new daily planner and a project planner page, then scanned, printed, and bound them into pads. This iteration of the daily page doesn’t have as many spaces on it as the last one because I found the tendency was to put an overwhelming amount of stuff on it. Really, if I achieve three things a day, I should be happy with myself. (Okay, my happiness-with-myself shouldn’t be conditional at all.)
Best of all, this system is mine. For some reason, that’s important.
