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A safely forgotten memory
Ghosts don't wear silk stockings
Neither do they fly spitfires
With their snug cockpits that fit so well
Like that old dress you never parted with
The one with the timeless style
And a grace channeled out from within
The glamour girls of the air
And such a great deal more besides
The pictures empart half a story
The rest needs words
The tales spun of time measured in hours
And lived in weightless, breathless moments
And memories that are yours alone
That only a solo flight can awaken

A life laid trustingly in the oil smeared hands of engineers
A risk taken every second spent moving through the air
A target to enemy and friend, and a slave to human fault and error
No weapons, nor any radio contact to speak of
Surviving through wits honed in years of practice that paled time spent in training
The case of lucky escapes and determination to do your duty
To keep the appoinment for delivery - are concerns that come second
On the the all night train home do you breathe a sigh of thanks for reaching safety
Or do you yearn to return to the air immediately
And wonder how others can stay so grounded

If I love the scattered remnants of humanity that strove to survive odds and punishments pitted against them countless times, would I send a single white dove to bear witness as I prove the worldwide wave of peace has quenched my rage and they are all forgiven?

If I love the touch of another's skin, invariably warm against my constant cold, can I not enjoy giving myself to the sheer, sharp moments of passion or do I feel inevitably dominated?

I had a feeling that a christmas at home with my family would recharge my batteries and I wasn't wrong. Yes my parents are getting into nag mode about finding a job but they are doing the same thing to get my little brother to revise for his GCSEs, so that just means they care about us both and want us to do well.

Earlier this month I talked to an admissions tutor about starting an English course at the same university that I've been doing my chemistry degree. He says that he will accept my application as long as student finance will fund me for the three years of the degree. My stepmum was skeptical about how easy it was for me to get an unconditional offer, even though I have the A level English grade they ask for and one year of successful study at university. I haven't been able to get up the courage to get in touch with student finance yet, so things may still fall down there even if I decide to go with what I want. What is really frustrating for me is that they are now suggesting that I see about doing an English course with the open university rather than going back to my old university with the ridiculous new fees. I tried to suggest this to them several months ago and they were having none of it. Grrr and, as they say, Arrrgh!

Anyway, apart from my parents occasionally being hypocritical nitwits and nitpicks, I'm having a lovely christmas break from my home town of two and a bit years. I've been having a hard time keeping up with my writing since November melted away into December, taking away my ability to work productively.

On christmas day night, my writing part of my brain suddenly started ticking again and gave me what turned out to be three pages of a Pan Am fanfic, which I've added another couple of pages to tonight. In the notebook pages between those I have what might be the actual beginning of my nanowrimo novel, a fragment of memory of a bad day in the lab when I was supposed to take a reading from a mercury barometer and could not make any sense of what I was looking at, and a couple of scraps of my novel.

Things are looking up and I know my batteries are still charging even if I'm not always feeling confident of that fact.

I am looking forward to seeing November out and coming into December. I'm carrying on with this first disconnected and discombobulated draft of my novel until I reach 50 000 words but my realistic view of this is to aim to get there before the end of December. And even then I want to have better handle on plot matters and take a break from it before I tackle rewrites.

There are also other things (shock horror!) to do in December. I want, nay need, to direct the obsessive and motivated spirit I've felt during nano into finding myself a job. I want to throw myself into more research for my novel, research that I can again pick up and expand on during continuation, edits and rewrites next year. I want to tidy my room, hoover the stairs, blitz the bathroom and clean the kitchen before my mother comes up to stay at the weekend.

I also want to get myself back into reading for fun. Yes, the research I've had time for this month has been fun but I think most will understand that I mean specifically novels. The problem with me is that I'll want to read a dozen different novels at once and find it difficult to stick with the book I'm on and see them through to the end when I'm in a particularly down state of mind. It's understandable then that I've fallen out of reading during my uni struggles.

What I want to do for myself in December is to get myself reading and focus on finishing the book in a decent amount of time before I drift onto the next. I'm giving myself a five book limit for the list of books I want to read and get through them before I let my mind wander over to others.

Here's my list, with the three WWII related books first, though this is not necessarily the order I'll end up reading them:

- Spitfire Girl by Lily Baxter
- Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings by Julia Stoneham
- A Game with Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton
+ this one is about Schrodinger in Ireland during the war. You may just about be able to picture my excitement when I spotted this on the charity shop shelf!
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
+ I've listened to the abridged audiobook (on cassette tape, no less) countless times and stayed in Whitby a good deal of times too but I've never yet got myself round to reading the full book
- Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Current Music: Eric McKeown - Distillation

I'm making a final two day push towards 50 000 words. I may not make it but the panic and the need to get something written has helped me break out of my little cocoon of first person perspective that I've been building around myself. I've finally screwed up the courage to say sod it, let's give Erica a bit of a rest for the last couple of days and find out who these other characters are.

I've ended up writing about Simon de la Mare. He was originally called Simon Tavener but this name fits him better. It was on a webpage listing common names in the channel islands and there is the obvious connection to Walter de la Mare, whose poem The Listeners has resided firmly in my head since we learned to recite it at school a decade ago. And while I try not to feel old, I want to plough on and add that the name means 'pond' so there's the obligatory Doctor Who reference without me ever intending it to be. It also feels very suitable for a man who has spent all his life living by and more or less in the sea.

Anyway, this is what I've written about Simon in my fevered nanowrimo catch up tonight. I must warn you that it's rough, repetitive in a few places where I was looking for ways to express certain thoughts, typos probably abound and there aren't any paragraph breaks bar one near the top, so I'm sorry for any injuries to tired eyes that might cause.

( Read more... )
--

We at the very least I know Simon better and that's exactly the sort of help I need from my frantic scribblings at this moment.

25565 / 50000 words. 51% done!

I've solved my title problem for the time being by taking one of the thousands of titles shared on the nanowrimo forums.

My story's title is now:
Circumnavigate Infinity

I'm starting to get a better hold on some sort of plot, though it may turn out that what I've been writing this month is a smaller slice of the whole story than I expected. It was already alongside the Greek Myths stuff, which was supposedly being narrated by my main character. It's possible that I may have a third section on my hands that is more science fiction, though again possibly a science fiction story written by my narrator. I don't know.

Talking of my main character, she's carrying off a romance with someone she wasn't supposed to be interested in or even particularly like. Maybe I should have expected that. I did have the idea that he was interested in her but now it definitely seems to be a mutual and genuine attraction. And yet she's still marrying her fiance for some reason.

I was actually quite shocked at how tense things have become between her and her fiance. I really liked the first scene idea I had with the two of them - meeting in a cafe and swapping postcards before they even talk talk to each other. So the question I'm asking myself at the moment is how do they go from love at first write to a long term romance and engagement to wanting to get married to growing frustrated and resentful to her falling in love with a German army captain to them (possibly) getting married after all. And then there's beyond that point, because there definitely is a beyond.

I've got 20000 words of my NaNoWriMo novel written so far. This is not at all bad considering I'm an expert in the arts of procrastination and oversleeping. It does mean that, if I want to hit the target of 50000 words, I have to pull my finger out and write over half the book in just over a week and considering I'm meeting with someone for coffee on Thursday and going shopping in Leeds with someone else on Saturday, there's a slim chance that 30000 extra words is not the most realistic goal in the world. However, if I push myself to get as close to that as possible I'm more likely to give myself the extra push on to reach it.

Regardless of whether I 'win', I've still got 20000 words of a story set during an historical event that I knew nothing before I started trying work out where the lighthouse in my story was supposed to be and ended up placing it on a rock a few miles off the coast of one of the channel islands. The rock is at the moment vaguely based on Les Casquets which is 13 km off Alderney, while my island is probably not Alderney. My lack time time to research thoroughly means that the island I'm keeping in mind is the fictional St Gregory from Island at War with some details borrowed from Whitby, Reeth and Huddersfield. Once I can get into describing it a bit more, I'm sure I'll have a much better mental picture of it to work from.

What was I forgetting? Did someone say plot? I'm sure there is one… somewhere in that mass of words. It's a little lost at the moment but it'll pop up when it's needed.

A lot of what I've written is snippets of scenes and scraps of sentences. I jump around my various ideas a lot and often go back to those old ideas later and write most new stuff to the end of the document, unless I'm purposefully going through to see what I can add to certain bits and pieces. Yes, the editing is going to be very fun indeed… um… okay… Don't Panic!

20161 / 50000 words. 40% done!

(I do wish that my macbook wasn't making me want to tear my hair out. It keeps highlighting things randomly as I type which is not what I want at all.)

Daedalus, Demeter, Minos
Icarus, Persephone, Ariadne
You can't take the sky away from me

I'll forever fly regardless
I'll learn more than you can teach
I'll overcome the darker days
And try to live the rest
Please don't pretend I can't

Don't ever forget I'm young
I live to be confused
Confounded, dumbfounded

Daedalus, Hades, Prometheus, Theseus
Icarus, Persephone, Pandora, Ariadne
They all cry
Don't you dare
Try to take my sky away from me

Poor Icarus perhaps
Should have heeded
His father's words of waves
And harmful heat
For he skimmed the salt spray
And rose through the air
As he flew toward his beacon
Daedalus was forced to watch
As the sun snatched those crafted wings
Forged from feather, wax and fear
And freedom hopes
And plunged his son with fateful hand
Down into the boiling sea

Icarus, Amelia, Amy
You lost your sky
You lost your lives
You know the water cannot keep you

Neither can the ground lay claim
To Ariadne
Nor could the dead river and snow
Trap Persephone
Never could a simple lock upon a box
Lay waste to Pandora's
Fruitful curiosity

----
With all due nods and thanks and all to Jos Whedon (Firefly Theme (Ballad of Serenity))
Vixy & Tony (Mal's Song, Persephone)
Andi Neate (Icarus)
and Wytchcroft (daeda)

Up stairs and down stairs
Thin stairs, wide stairs and side stairs
Trip stairs and slide stairs
Forgotten how to climb stairs
Steep stairs and shallow stairs
Take me to the gallows stairs
Two by two only in pairs
Lose my balance and too late
I'm gone from halfway down the stairs

Daedalus, father of Icarus, presented his son with his greatest invention: a set of wings constructed painstakingly from the fallen feathers of the birds in the skies over Crete by day and sealed to the wood and copper frame with the wax of the candles that lit the workshop by night. Daedalus gave his son freedom in the form of flight. His breath caught as Icarus bravely stepped forth, up the steps to the window.

( Read more... )

This song has been lodged in my head since I heard a character singing it in an episode of Island at War, so naturally it must be shared. It's a very good series, by the way. It's set in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation (which turned out to be the setting for my NaNoWriMo novel and is the reason I found the series in the first place.) And it also stars Philip Glenister!

Current Mood: cold

Les Phares (and three translations as The Beacons, which are curiosities in and of themselves for the way different translators handle the poem):
http://fleursdumal.org/poem/105

And where were all these fascinating poems when I was actually studying French (about seven years ago, maybe)? If I'd been tempted with this I probably would have stuck with the language for GCSE. Quite a bit more interesting to sink my teeth into than explaining what I like to do with l'argent de poche.

Black and biting night
Gunpowder thick in the air
New stars bright and brief

Northern lights shimmer
across condensation on
my window and fade

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Antje Duvekot - Reasonland

I've made a start on my NaNo novel. I'm nowhere near the word count at the moment because I've been poorly since I got home from a friend's house on the last day of October. What I don't have in words at the moment, I'm making up for with an almost crystal clear image of my two main characters exchanging postcards in a Paris bar or cafe and carrying on a whole written conversation before they ever meet face to face. My next idea was of the man (a keen pharologist and later a lighthouse keeper) trying earnestly to convince the woman (a flyer along the lines of the lines of Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart) to marry him while she avoids answering but at the same time persuades him to let her fly him back home.

I've been glancing over Amy Johnson's wikipedia page and it tells my that her husband (another famous pilot - Jim Mollison) proposed to her mid-flight, eight hours after they first met. The parallels seem to be drawing themselves without me even knowing the original circumstances all that well. This story has to be worth sticking with, I'm sure of that now.

I have a couple of different ways the events that follow could affect the rest of the story but what I'm going to do as I write on with both in mind. Eventually I might see if one explanation is favoured or if the ambiguity works best. There's even a possibility that I'll discover whether it's me or Schrödinger devising this plot.

I have just two more things to add for now. One is another interesting fact about Amy Johnson - she went to University in my home city of Sheffield and the other is that when Tuesday arrived, the actual beginning of story turned out to be my flyer telling the story of Daedalus and Icarus. I still have this first part to pick back up when I have energy tomorrow. At the end of her telling the myth, my idea was for her to talk about her father, who was very important in inspiring and encouraging her to fly. It's possible that throughout the story she'll paint herself in the role of Icarus and she at last feels a connection to Daedalus when she says goodbye to her lost plane.

Current Mood: sick

I told myself I mustn't keep staring at John. Even as he rested his hand on Patti's bare waist to draw her closer for their next dance, I knew the best thing would be to look away. I should rest my despairing gaze elsewhere.

Elsewhere became the enormous bow atop Lulu's hair and it trembled along with her tight, beautifully styled ringlets with all the rage she was feeling on my behalf. I had to watch as she declared that she was going to give my husband what for, swiped her giant lollipop from our table and stalked toward the dancers.

And so I was witness the the whole surreal scene, though rather lovely in its way, of Shirley Temple lecturing the tough and greasy Teddy boy of John's young days. Patti stood beside him, effortlessly sexy in her seven-veils-and-not-much-else outfit. John's hand remained firmly in the not-much-else region.

The only place to look now was down and even there the haze of embarrassment clouded my vision. A flash of coherent thought saw me asking myself if we were all now living in John's baffling and bewildering film, the one tonight was supposed to be honouring.

"Would you like to dance, Cynthia?" a polite voice asked.

( Read more... )

I seem to have just fallen down the rabbit hole of old and forgotten writing that is my google docs. I've just been reading a short Cynthia Lennon/Joan Baez fanfic that I wrote a couple of christmases ago. It's all but finished in one way and yet in another it's a fragment of a big long complicated story I had swimming around my head for a while two or three years ago. Which is why it never got tidied up and posted anywhere.

I'm tempted to dust it off, give it a bit of an edit and a proof read and post it up here at first and then other places a short while later - such as disappointingly quiet

beatlewivesfic (wink wink, plug plug).

I am trying to keep up with my writing after my burst of wild scribblings happened at the end of September and beginning of October. And I'd really like to do NaNoWriMo again, though I don't have anything approaching a definite idea for it. I need the excuse to make good use of my Moominpappa (dreamwidth) and Douglas Adams quote (livejournal) icons and what better excuse than this.

The Moomins voyage to find a lonely lighthouse.

The Lighthouse

The Day the Lighthouse Lit Up

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Alicia

January 2012

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Page Summary

January Fragment Two: Ghosts Don't Wear Silk Stockings, Neither Do They Fly Spitfires
January Fragment One, If I Love...
December update
Looking Forward to December with Books I Want to Read
NaNoWriMo discussion and extract: Simon de la Mare
Circumnavigate Infinity (story title and tired, possibly incomprehensible, musings)
NaNoWriMo Progress
take the sky (for example)
a quick scribble about stairs
NaNowrimo 2011 Extract 1 (Daedalus, Icarus and Ariadne)
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)
Judy Dyble - (In the) Dreamtime
Les Phares by Charles Baudelaire
Bonfire Night Double Haiku
Tired ramblings about my novel
Magical Mystery Tour Christmas Party 1967
Writing Old and New
The Moomins: The Lighthouse
The Sun Also Rises - Part of the Room
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Walt Whitman's Niece

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Page generated Jan. 28th, 2012 11:43 pm

Plastic Lions & Fantastic Phantoms

Recent Entries

January Fragment Two: Ghosts Don't Wear Silk Stockings, Neither Do They Fly Spitfires

January Fragment One, If I Love...

December update

Looking Forward to December with Books I Want to Read

NaNoWriMo discussion and extract: Simon de la Mare

Circumnavigate Infinity (story title and tired, possibly incomprehensible, musings)

NaNoWriMo Progress

take the sky (for example)

a quick scribble about stairs

NaNowrimo 2011 Extract 1 (Daedalus, Icarus and Ariadne)

Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)

Judy Dyble - (In the) Dreamtime

Les Phares by Charles Baudelaire

Bonfire Night Double Haiku

Tired ramblings about my novel

Magical Mystery Tour Christmas Party 1967

Writing Old and New

The Moomins: The Lighthouse

The Sun Also Rises - Part of the Room

Billy Bragg & Wilco - Walt Whitman's Niece