Okay my lovelies, I need help. And not just in a men-in-white-coats way. You see, recently I've been somewhat obsessed with names.
I love both my parents, I really do, even if I don't like them that much very often. But, for various reasons that you may or may not know (if you don't, don't worry – if you need to know I'll tell you), I feel incredibly uncomfortable at the notion of writing under either of their names. At my birthday party in January, I approached the amazing Beth Webb to ask her if I could use her surname instead of my own. She told me that I was welcome to it, but that I might well not want it. And then she explained that, as a writer, the alphabetical position of a name is the most significant part. If you're standing staring at a great big bookshelf in a shop, your eyes are inevitably drawn to the bigger displays, to the titles by authors who are prominent in the literary market. Beth's advice was to go along to a bookshop, analyse the shelves, and see which letters are the best. So, yesterday, I went into town, visited the bookshops, and cross-referenced. Using three shops and every genre I thought I might one day write in. For several hours.
The end result of my research? The best letters for me are P, R and S. T is good, but occasionally it gets skipped and ends up in the wrong place. After this, I read through the phone book. I could hear the voices in my head, emerging like an XKCD cartoon.
1: So, what did you do on your Sunday?
2: Well, I cross-referenced three bookshops, and then read the phone book.
1: Wow... when you said you were giving up the internet to get a life, I never thought it would be so fulfilled...
Needless to say, I have not given up the internet. Nor am I planning on it. Even so, I occasionally worry about the ways I chose to pass the time. Fortunately, Babiji and I had a very fulfilling evening in compensation. Unfortunately, none of that is relevant. This post is, after all, about Names.
Eventually, I narrowed an infinity of possibilities down to five. Prior, Ruskin, Swallow, Sparrow and Stanton.
I've put a poll up on my livejournal, so please - go along and vote.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Monday 23 June 2008
Wednesday 18 June 2008
Once upon a time...
I have spent the last few days locked in tense warfare. At war, that is, with my tenses. The book I have been working on gradually for the last three/four years is taking shape slowly before my eyes, but getting the tenses sorted out has been an utter nightmare. Throughout the last few years, you see, I have been writing this in 1st person present. And I love first person present. It's immediate and personal and stops things feeling too contrived. It fits with my words, and they all flow together into prose. I'm quite tempted to give it a fetching nickname, but, since all I could think of the last time I tried was Percy, I gave up. But anyway – I love it. The only problem is that the novel is not only recounting past-events, but recounting them in varied chronologies, with different times and fragments interweaving. Its confusing enough for me trying to keep track of it, and I'm the writer. I don't want to lose readers, and I cant help thinking it'll be easier to lose them if I pretend its all happening in the present. So I tried using present and then past for flashbacks, but that felt inconsistent. I tried using present perpetually and italicising flashbacks, but that was too... italiscied. And doing everything in past tense was clearly wrong.
So for the past few days I have been running around like Goldilocks, only there was no preferable porridge. My lovely housemates of the moment, Babigi and Essy*, have got used to me flapping about with big cups of tea and dry cereal, muttering darkly under my breath. My head has not been so thoroughly massaged since I left the Thai hairdressers behind. I have written, deleted, and rewritten the same few paragraphs c.fifteen times.
Today, thankfully, Essy caught me. She practically had to tie me down in the kitchen to impart her particular brand of wisdom. Such as go away, write something else, and come back to it. I went away and ignored her... for approximately two hours. Then I wrote something else. Suddenly, everything slotted into place. If that went in there, then that went in there, and that went in there. And then this bit fitted with that bit, which meant it could be past and present for the first section, and then present for the rest, and...
Before I realised it, I was flying high on the euphoria of eureka mode. I had rearranged 5000 words and written an extra 3000. I had switched the entire order of all I had written. I could hardly speak without using excessive exclamation marks! All I can hope now is that I haven't slipped on the Snakes'n'Ladders ladder by tomorrow...
So, to distract myself from the fear, I took pictures of my wall hanging. I painted this at the end of last summer, but have only just found a wall tall enough to hang in on. I'm very pleased with the addition of The Veils' butterflies
my tree, my desk, my mess, my mirror and Bat For Lashes :)
xxxxxx
*Babigi & Essy – two examples of my housemates choices of pseudonyms. Others include Isaclue and S'bean. I do love my housemates. And, after all, I can hardly talk when mine is hattie ghandi on my mum's blog...
(cross-posted to parenthesised)
So for the past few days I have been running around like Goldilocks, only there was no preferable porridge. My lovely housemates of the moment, Babigi and Essy*, have got used to me flapping about with big cups of tea and dry cereal, muttering darkly under my breath. My head has not been so thoroughly massaged since I left the Thai hairdressers behind. I have written, deleted, and rewritten the same few paragraphs c.fifteen times.
Today, thankfully, Essy caught me. She practically had to tie me down in the kitchen to impart her particular brand of wisdom. Such as go away, write something else, and come back to it. I went away and ignored her... for approximately two hours. Then I wrote something else. Suddenly, everything slotted into place. If that went in there, then that went in there, and that went in there. And then this bit fitted with that bit, which meant it could be past and present for the first section, and then present for the rest, and...
Before I realised it, I was flying high on the euphoria of eureka mode. I had rearranged 5000 words and written an extra 3000. I had switched the entire order of all I had written. I could hardly speak without using excessive exclamation marks! All I can hope now is that I haven't slipped on the Snakes'n'Ladders ladder by tomorrow...
So, to distract myself from the fear, I took pictures of my wall hanging. I painted this at the end of last summer, but have only just found a wall tall enough to hang in on. I'm very pleased with the addition of The Veils' butterflies
my tree, my desk, my mess, my mirror and Bat For Lashes :)
xxxxxx
*Babigi & Essy – two examples of my housemates choices of pseudonyms. Others include Isaclue and S'bean. I do love my housemates. And, after all, I can hardly talk when mine is hattie ghandi on my mum's blog...
(cross-posted to parenthesised)
Sunday 15 June 2008
Growing Pains
Ironically, I have spent a large amount of my life obsessed with growing up. When I was younger, wrapped up in books and writing pleading letters to Peter Pan every summer, I was terrified of it. Growing up was a little like dying - an inevitable ending I was desperate to starve off and knew I couldn't. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, who was the 'type who wanted to grow up', was clearly an idiot. I couldn't imagine it. Even now, the end of Peter Pan leaves me in tears for this very reason – they have grown up. And, once you have grown up, that is it. There are no more trips to Never-Never-Land.
Well, that was what I believed then, at least. I remember howling while my mother tried desperately to tell me that this was not necessarily the case, but I never believed her. It is only now that I find myself wondering whether she was right all along. You see, on some levels, I may have, finally, grown up. But whenever I cone to think of it, I find that I'm no longer sure exactly what growing up entails. When do we, finally, grow up?
British society suggests that you have magically become a grown up by the time you reach eighteen. True, there are a few previous rites of passage to move through before this. At sixteen, after all, you can legally abandon childhood by having sex, which is (in my experience) at once anti-climatic and empowering, while at seventeen this new power in your life is taken further still, you are trusted enough to drive a vehicle, and therefore given some degree of power over the lives of other people. At eighteen, you are not only allowed to drink (although why you can have sex before you can buy alcohol is beyond me, but I think legal ages are probably a matter for another day), but also get your say in running the country. However the situation is, inevitably, more complicated. I was a very young eighteen. I was responsible enough to think very carefully about how to react to my various rites of passage (aside from the drinking one, which had clearly been happening for years), but I was by no means adult. I had not grown up. I went halfway around the world for two months, came back and went to university, and I still had not irrevocably grown up. The only answer is that growing up seems to be an individual process, dependant upon upbringing and personalities, as unique as fingerprints. And, just as when growing up occurs changes for each person, so too does the nature of the beast.
As I sat happily watching anime the other day, someone suggested that you have grown up when you no longer cause unnecessary worry for others. They can worry clearly, and indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without consummate worriers, but there is something about inspiring anxiety that does seem a uniquely childish/teenage state. I clearly remember various occasions where I was desperate to make someone worry about me. I think in some ways its almost more accurate than classing certain behaviour as a “plea for attention”. You want them to worry, because if they worry then they care. On this basis, growing up perhaps requires realising that you can be cared about without requiring constant proof, and means that the focus has mostly shifted from the self to everyone else. You are aware of them, both through analysing their opinions of you and through thinking about the affects your actions will have on others before you act. If you are actively trying not to worry them, then perhaps you have grown up, in some ways at least. And maybe it is only a maturity that can fully occur when you have children, or are in a very close relationship?
But I don't think that this can be the whole story either. The problem is that I'm really not to sure what the whole story is. You're supposed to just Know when you fall in love (although actually I disagree. I only realised I had probably been in love with one person months later, after it ended and I told him that I didn't love him) but growing up is probably different. And I was really wondering what you all thought about the issue. There doesn't seem to be any real emotional or intellectual cut off points, after all, only bureaucratic ones. I'm not too sure if I've grown up yet, or if I'm any closer to getting there. All I'm really sure of is that, at the moment, I can still visit Never-Never-Land whenever I want.
xxxx
(cross-posted to parenthesised)
Well, that was what I believed then, at least. I remember howling while my mother tried desperately to tell me that this was not necessarily the case, but I never believed her. It is only now that I find myself wondering whether she was right all along. You see, on some levels, I may have, finally, grown up. But whenever I cone to think of it, I find that I'm no longer sure exactly what growing up entails. When do we, finally, grow up?
British society suggests that you have magically become a grown up by the time you reach eighteen. True, there are a few previous rites of passage to move through before this. At sixteen, after all, you can legally abandon childhood by having sex, which is (in my experience) at once anti-climatic and empowering, while at seventeen this new power in your life is taken further still, you are trusted enough to drive a vehicle, and therefore given some degree of power over the lives of other people. At eighteen, you are not only allowed to drink (although why you can have sex before you can buy alcohol is beyond me, but I think legal ages are probably a matter for another day), but also get your say in running the country. However the situation is, inevitably, more complicated. I was a very young eighteen. I was responsible enough to think very carefully about how to react to my various rites of passage (aside from the drinking one, which had clearly been happening for years), but I was by no means adult. I had not grown up. I went halfway around the world for two months, came back and went to university, and I still had not irrevocably grown up. The only answer is that growing up seems to be an individual process, dependant upon upbringing and personalities, as unique as fingerprints. And, just as when growing up occurs changes for each person, so too does the nature of the beast.
As I sat happily watching anime the other day, someone suggested that you have grown up when you no longer cause unnecessary worry for others. They can worry clearly, and indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without consummate worriers, but there is something about inspiring anxiety that does seem a uniquely childish/teenage state. I clearly remember various occasions where I was desperate to make someone worry about me. I think in some ways its almost more accurate than classing certain behaviour as a “plea for attention”. You want them to worry, because if they worry then they care. On this basis, growing up perhaps requires realising that you can be cared about without requiring constant proof, and means that the focus has mostly shifted from the self to everyone else. You are aware of them, both through analysing their opinions of you and through thinking about the affects your actions will have on others before you act. If you are actively trying not to worry them, then perhaps you have grown up, in some ways at least. And maybe it is only a maturity that can fully occur when you have children, or are in a very close relationship?
But I don't think that this can be the whole story either. The problem is that I'm really not to sure what the whole story is. You're supposed to just Know when you fall in love (although actually I disagree. I only realised I had probably been in love with one person months later, after it ended and I told him that I didn't love him) but growing up is probably different. And I was really wondering what you all thought about the issue. There doesn't seem to be any real emotional or intellectual cut off points, after all, only bureaucratic ones. I'm not too sure if I've grown up yet, or if I'm any closer to getting there. All I'm really sure of is that, at the moment, I can still visit Never-Never-Land whenever I want.
xxxx
(cross-posted to parenthesised)
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