Apologies for the lack of updates. I’m on hols, visiting with my family on Prince Edward Island, and I’m taking a break from everything (including writing).
I have been taking pictures, though, to document some of these people and places for those from my other world. I’ll post them after I get back to Scotland on Sunday.
Apparently my driver misunderstood my directions; he showed up in Glasgow the other day and had some trouble finding a parking spot.
I’m writing you from a coffeeshop in Toronto, one where I used to sit and write chapters of my other books. It’s bright and sunny and hot, but still on the reasonable side.
Lisa was away in New York City for a workshop, so Alvaro picked me up and we went to a friend’s backyard barbeque party. We left fairly early in the evening, and I turned in right away to have a big sleep. I hadn’t slept at all the night before, so I’m still feeling kind of shattered today, and I’ve got a wee bit of a cold that I’d managed to stave off until now.
It’s nice to be here; feels like a summer vacation.
There’s a temptation while walking around these streets to just shop and shop and buy thing after thing to eat. I did just buy a bunch of shirts, but I’d planned on that. American Apparel has some outlets here — they make non-sweatshop clothes — and the Canadian price is about 2/3 what they cost to order in the UK.
As for food, happily this diet thing I’ve been doing where you tinker with your body’s “set point”, or your natural appetite level, and it’s really been working. So pizza slices, slushies, ice cream… Walk on by.
Okay, great experience: I just bumped into the guy who was my first fan, a really lovely guy who’s a primary school principal and was hugely supportive of the play that Cosgrove and I put on here. Ironically, he studied at Edinburgh University back in the day, and still goes back and forth to Scotland. So I may see him over there next month.
He’s gone now, and I’m sitting here waiting until 3, ’cause that’s when I told Cosgrove I’d call him. I just leafed through Fab!, Toronto’s glossy wee gay magazine, and am happy with my reaction to it: “kinda fun”. Pride is on next weekend — I didn’t realise it would be on while I was here — and I find myself not resisting it. No, I don’t have much time for the go-go-party-boi set. Yes, much of gay culture is utter shite. But there’s no reason I have to keep forcing myself into a position of not-belonging just to hold onto a sense of personal taste and discerning.
In other words, I think it’ll be fun.
Likewise, making all my connections yesterday, taking off my shoes, being seated next to someone for seven hours, all that travel-stuff — I didn’t resist it yesterday. It just was how it was, and as a result it was all just fine. I was allowed to smile and be in a good mood. I’m really aware lately that every moment has this binary sort of nature: How do you want it to go?
It’s time to go outside and play.
I’m sitting in the café at The Filmhouse, waiting to meet a friend for a coffee. It’s blazingly sunny out, and all the people I passed on the street coming here seemed to be breathing a collective sigh for the good weather.
I can’t believe I’m off to Canada in a week. Happily, this time I’m not experiencing any of my usual angst about leaving Scotland. I don’t love Scotland any less for it, but I’m really looking forward to seeing my friends in Toronto, getting into the urban culture there, and sitting in on The Strategic Coach’s workshops — which not only helps with my work, it invariably fills me with ideas for the rest of my projects, too.
Then there’s Prince Edward Island, which is just a joy in the summer. Talking to my folks this morning, I made plans with them to see some theatre there and go to a lobster dinner. Mom also suggested going to the beach, which will be fun. I’m going to book the whole time off and have a proper summer vacation.
As for staying in Scotland, this week I went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to speak to an immigration advisor, asking for some direction about what the next steps are for becoming ‘naturalised’ and getting my passport.
It’s pretty involved. I’m eligible for it all, and can do it, but, aside from all the documents I have to fill out (when have I been out of the country? I haven’t kept any of those dates) and get notarised (where do I find a solicitor?), there’s a test. “Life in the UK”, it’s called. I had all the study material already, but it’s been a while since I bought it, and they’ve revised the test material. Apparently it was pointed out that it wasn’t really fair to test new immigrants on questions that most Brits couldn’t answer.
The handbook is written in ultra-PC speak, describing the UK in a kind of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” way. I can see how that might be necessary and desirable, laying the groundrules for people who might come from more militant cultures or cultures segregated by race or sex, but it hardly reflects the reality of life in Britain, where people regularly call a cornerstore “the Paki” without blinking.
So this will be the first test I’ve taken since graduating from uni in 1989. I’m confident I can do it — I’ve learned an awful lot since then. But stuffing facts into my head for regurgitation on a single occasion is something I haven’t had to do in a long time. I haven’t even learnt lines in over a decade.
And, to cap it off, applying for naturalisation costs — wait for it — £655.
Yeah.
With my “Right of Abode”, I could stay here the rest of my life without having to do any of this. I just couldn’t live anywhere else in the EU. But I intended to stay in Scotland. So, while I want to be able to pass this test, just to feel like I’ve done the work officially required to belong here, I’m wavering on dropping that much cash for no perceptible benefit.
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I originally articled a bunch of stuff that’s come together for me in the last few weeks, but I woke up this morning (Sunday now), and felt a little queasy about the blog becoming a “Yay me!” parade. Suffice it to say that things are working. They’re still work, but the work is working, if that makes any sense. So my overall experience is one of making progress, which is encouraging. I am encouraged.
Oh, and I wrote Chapter Four of Finitude. I’m having fun with this book. It’s been easy to knock out a chapter a week, though I’m not sure how much, if anything, I’ll be able to get done while I’m in Canada.
Chapter Three is now posted. I wrote it this afternoon, looking out from the coffeeshop at the castle in the sun. I finished, walked home. When I was cozy inside, a thunderstorm rumbled over my little stone cottage and the rain resumed. It’s been raining a lot lately. I’m generally not fussed about the weather, but days and days of full-on rain gets annoying.
A few weeks ago, flatmatebestmate Patrick won a bunch of Starbucks swag at a jazz bar, and, since he’s someone who shoots up brews his coffee at home, he gave me all the coupons and gift-cards. So for several weeks now, I’ve been going to their coffeeshops to work. Normally I wrestle with the whole globalisation thing when trying to decide whether to go there or not, but they do know how to make a good space (except for their tendency to play their music too loud and to play Reggae; I hate Reggae).
I’ve been reworking my finances this week, and in budgeting for the future, one of the luxuries I want to afford myself is “office time” in coffeeshops. I really like working this way. It helps to get away from the house, and — I dunno, I guess it’s part of living the life. So that’s going in the budget. Not that it amounts to much, buying a tea a couple of times a week.
I’ve switched to chamomile tea, because I’ve realised I can’t drink coffee, I just can’t. It messes with my brain chemistry too much. The only problem is that every time I go to order it I forget the word “chamomile”. I don’t know why.
I also stumble over pronouncing “Strategic Coach” every other time I have to say it, even though I’ve been working with them for about nine years.
I just finished writing Chapter Two of Finitude this afternoon. Wahey!
I’ve decided that the right way to manage comments on the chapters is… not to. I’m just going to be quiet, take the feedback and be grateful for it, not try to filter it or to explain anything, when the story should do that. So even though I’m quiet, trust that I’m getting it.
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In other news, a lot of things are coming together for me right now, like money, diet, fitness, and my personal life. There are some times when everything just flies to the four walls, and other times like this when everything just clicks.
I think it might be a corollary of that old axim “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” I’m a writer, and I’ve got writing to do, so there’s a feeling of orderliness, purpose, and momentum that goes with that. It’s not surprising that it should pull other things into line, too.
My friends Gordon and David are visiting from Canada. Last night we met with my friend Alison at Baraka on Infirmary Street (a nice wee place where the lighting was mellow, the music not too loud, and the bartender nice to look at). Before long, the four of us dropped into a chasm of a conversation about supernovas, the nature of relationships, rainforests, and that gravity is, apparently, about to be rejected as a physical theory.
Somewhere inside this chat, Alison informed me that “Finity” (or rather “Finity’s End”) is the name of a spaceship in a famous Science Fiction series by C. J. Cherryh. So, to avoid confusion, I’ve changed the book’s title to Finitude — which I’m liking more.
Chapter One is now online for the advance readers (just e-mail if you’d like to join the group).
Yesterday afternoon, sitting in a coffeeshop while it rained outside, I finished Chapter One of Finity. All that pressure, fear, and resistance beforehand gave way in the end to the simple act of telling a story, which is just fun.
I have Strategic Coach work to do today, but I’m going to figure out how best to post the serialised chapters, then send this first one out to the readers as soon as possible. Trust me, I’m not going to sit on it at this point. I was starting to feel like one of those people who talks about the book they’re going to write and keeps describing the plot to test it out on other people, but never actually sits down to do the work. But no, I am the king cat of self-discipline (which, to give away the secret, is always about finding the fun in the task).
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My friends have been great lately for listening to me and handling me gently, talking me down from my tree. On Friday, though, I had a conversation over Skype with Cosgrove that was one of those Big Talks, the kind that alters the whole trajectory of life after it. He really unravelled my whole relationship thing, and, at the end of an hour, something completely different was possible. What a relief.
What’s great is that Patrick is also getting very skilled at listening through what I’m saying and calling me on my junk. It’s annoying, because it requires me to be the best potential version of myself instead of the lazy, automatic, reactive human machine I can default to.
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On Saturday, Chris and I went out wandering in the rain and did a photo shoot. I always get horribly self-conscious during these things and end up making funny expressions unintentionally as my face tries to deal with the scrutiny, but I think we got a couple of useful shots. And the cover of my most recent book no longer has a nine-year-old portrait on it!
I’m coming face to face with stories in my life — things I’ve been repeating about myself and the world — that I’m discovering aren’t true.
Some of them are mild shifts, like discovering that, despite the fact that I’ve been saying for years “I hate to cook and have no confidence in the kitchen”, I actually can cook. Recently, I’ve had a number of occasions on which I realised I’d just cooked something good. I really enjoyed what I’d made, and so said several other people, like my parents and Patrick. (And my parents were still relating to me through the filter of “he eats pasta every day”, which used to be true about ten years ago.)
Then today, Chris invited me to the theatre. My first instinct about theatre is “Don’t go. It will be disappointing and make me angry.” This was my experience of it for a long time: people overacted in completely soulless, disconnected ways, the staging was bad, the play was obvious, and so on. I trained and worked for years as an actor, and had very high standards for myself and what I thought it meant to do justice to the possibilities of theatre — rules which I’d seen violated too many times.
But when Chris asked today, I thought, “What the hell” and said yes. He provided me with a totally different experience. The play was incredibly clever, and each of the four actors was wonderfully subtle as well as fully able to make their character’s emotional journey in a believable way. And we were even sitting close enough for me to get splattered with stage blood! (Okay, just a drop.) So the story “I don’t like theatre”? Not true.
Then there are other, more deeply-rooted stories, and with the help of friends and other important people, I’m learning that they’re also total rubbish that brings me no good.
So, as I finalise the outline of my novel, I see that it’s time to take responsibility for the authorship of my life, too, and be more careful with the stories I tell myself about the way things are. Some of the old ones are closed-minded, angry, and not very interesting.
So this thing I’ve been imagining for a month finally turned into an actual date on Saturday night, and it did not go as I’d hoped. I left feeling like I’d fallen down the stairs while trying to hold onto my heart (and dropped it through a grate at the bottom). So I spent yesterday feeling sorry for myself, and pretty down on myself for managing somehow to go in the course of an evening from being someone this guy thought he might like to being someone he didn’t. Or “might, later”, which is essentially the same thing, because it doesn’t ever work like that in reality. Attraction is a binary thing in my experience. Only on sitcoms that have run too long do people later discover that they’ve always loved someone.
Geez, what happened to my rule about not talking about this stuff on here? Ehh, I need the catharsis. (Will anagnorisis follow?)
Today, though, I find myself feeling a lot better. It helps to have such good, supportive friends — who pick me up and brush me off time and again. I like that they also don’t resort to name-calling about the other guy, ’cause I still think he’s great, and that kind of sour grapes never works anyway.
It also helps that I figured out the plot of the book and got a big fat pay rise last week!
I’ve managed to recycle romantic discouragement into lots and lots of written pages in the past: even negative energy is still energy to use. I missed my writing session yesterday, though, ’cause I just couldn’t muster up the spirit to do anything but lie in bed, and watch Thelma and Louise with Patrick over dinner. (Note: this movie is hard drugs to the mind of someone who’s just been unlucky in love. Happily, I don’t have a driver’s license and am nowhere near a desert.)
Today, though, I feel worlds better. Maybe it’s ’cause the situation existed so much in my imagination. I just feel kind of stupid for having spent so much mental energy on this. I scorn people whose lives are so predicated on romance that they feel empty and bored without it. But here was me, getting all dreamy, thinking of travel and domesticity and… And I suppose it says good things about me that I can still care.
Maybe someday. In the meantime, I have a world to destroy. Chapter One is not far off.
“Yeah, yeah, your psyche, poverty, blah blah blah. What’s happening with the book?”
Funny you should ask. Over the past few days, I’ve been wading back in, going through all my notes, which suddenly didn’t seem so diffuse and complicated. Everything came together, and I find myself with one single plot-thread that ties everything together.
I don’t know that this one is going to be particularly deep. It looks like it’ll be significantly shorter than the last one and less — I dunno, epic. It’s got less interiority. But it should clip along and be fun. That’s my commitment.
So I’ve got the arc, and this afternoon I did a rough plot-point breakdown. Soon, very soon… actual chapters. Send me an e-mail if you’d like to be an advance reader (if you haven’t already).
I’m totally high on coffee. How do people drink this stuff regularly?
This morning I drew a map of the world my book takes place in, I went to a coffee shop and wrote an article for work (a neat Strategic Coach take on motivation, for Strategic eNews, which I write for them), then I mapped out the story-arc of the book, came home and cleaned the bathroom, hoovered the carpets, and…
What? Now what? I’m vibrating.
Tonight I’m going to the movies with the Friday Gang. Whee!
