Scorched Earth - Fortnight #4 of the Burns

Waves, The Catlins

One: Status report (textual/confessional)

How do I feel about my novel after four weeks of solid work (and a good 18 months of sitting on the first 7,000 words and all the research that went into getting that far)?

Well, I'm not glad you asked, but I'll try and answer anyway. I feel pleased to be where I am (actually working on it! Go the Burns!), but the novel itself, the 30-odd pages it comprises right now, it feels flabby. That's okay, I guess. I can put it on the treadmill once the first draft is done and I know what's really important. But I have to get to the end (the first end of many).

One problem is I think this flabbiness might be part of what I'm going for, in this first section at least. The risk of doing a book about people who make art (in this case: film) that you expect the reader to take seriously, and also bringing in historical and religious aspects, is that it gets very po-faced, very quickly. So my protagonist is actually a bit of a fuck-up, and we meet him in the midst of this moment in his life that feels more like a Judd Apatow movie than something slicker and smarter. And Apatow's stuff is all pretty flabby. It must be part of the formula. The way recipes require a certain amount of fat for flavour. But I'm still figuring out how this works on the page within my particular concoction.

Forest walk back from Curio Bay

The other problem is I feel as if everything I read or watch is somehow talking to me, talking to the novel, and needs, needs, to find its way onto the page. (Look out for my March Consumption Diary toward the end of the week if you want to read between the lines a little further).

It’s not a new experience. Call it extreme narcissim or first draft solipsism. It's happened before and it'll happen again. I know it passes. I

The task is to:
a) resist the urges in the first instance
b) expunge the extraneous material that makes it through the first line of defense in my daily read-throughs
c) expunge the persistent extraneous elements in intensive edit of 1^st draft 
d) repeat c) for 2^nd draft, rinse and repeat until deadline has passed and you throw up your hands and say, I’m done.

Knowing this, I’m able to keep perspective. 

I’m able to be genuinely happy with making my manuscript grow by 1,000 words a day for a string of days, even if I know the net remnants of that week may be far far smaller when the book is finished. 

Or, shock horror, that this thing about a bit of Apatovian flab being necessary is a massive error of judgement and the first 30 pages wind up on the cutting room floor.

Oh well. It’s part of the process.

Truth is, I love editing the most. It’s easy to see the book getting better, hour by hour. But you gotta have something to edit. And gosh, weeks like the one before the Catlins will get you there (see part 3 below).

And the Catlins trip was work related, too...

Two: Catlins teaser

Hector's dolphin inside a wave at Porpoise Bay

Three: Status Report (numerical)

Total words: 8,702 (novel 7,450; blog 1,092; poetry 141)

* Week 1: 6992 (with an average of 1,180 on the novel Monday to Friday)
* Week 2: 1,710 total.

Why the massive drop-off?

On Saturday of Week 1 we headed down to a house in Waikawa in the Catlins, and got back in Dunedin late on Tuesday, by which time me and my son were starting to feel sick. Wednesday we both were write-offs. I improved, but stayed home Thursday and Friday as Caio was still not up to going back to daycare (double ear infection, fever, general clinginess, a touch of conjuctivitis... y'know how it is).

Four: But the Catlins!

The view of Porpoise Bay from the Curio Bay campground

Looking at Curio Bay and it's petrified forest (partially submerged) from the campground

My son learnt to photo-bomb at Cathedral Caves, bless him

Five: Birds and Boatmen

Apart from seeing the Hector's dolphins cosying up to swimmers at Porpoise Bay, the other notable wildlife sighting was my first Tomtit (actually, multiple) on the 30 minute walk (perfect for with the kids at Waipohatu. I didn't take photos as I had Caio on my shoulders and my camera was in my backpack both times, but I'm sure there'll be other encounters with the South Island's version of the robin over the next 10 months, so you'll live.

Also of note, the Waikawa Museum, with it's trove of family photos and trinkets. All its signs and captions are handwritten - which is both charming and somehow depressing, as if this history is less permanent, less valued, will have a shorter shelf life. I dunno. There was a sign saying don't take photos (not sure I understand the motivation), but I had to take a snap of this father and son (Captain Wybrow and his son David) and the wooden grave marker for Wybrow's wife Temuka (Temuc according to the engraving).

There's lots I could write about these things, and one day I might.

Six: Interlude

Sitting and writing means I eat a lot. I must have some kind of oral fixation. Maybe it’s like ACHOO syndrome, where sudden increase in brightness makes me sneeze. Maybe making shit up makes me hungry?

Maybe I should try gum.

Seven: But was it research for the current novel?

Yes! My trip to the Catlins was fruitful. I'd been casting around, trying to come up with an idea for a low budget NZ film my main character could have made that kinda kickstarted his career, got him on the festival circuit, before it all goes pear-shaped.

I'd had this image of a Western set in the Kaimanawa Ranges, a kind of adaptation of Nigel Cox's Cowboy Dog, but there was a film that was actually made like this (Good for Nothing, filmed in NZ though purporting to be the US) a couple of years ago, so I felt I needed to come up with something else.

So I did. Hoorah.

What's the idea? I can't tell you. But the (imaginary) film is called Curio Bay, at least for now.

Eight: Dunedin institutions

I went to Forsyth Barr stadium for the first time Friday before last. It was for a Warriors game, rather than the Highlanders, because I'm dumb enough to actually support the Warriors. What a bunch of schmucks. But an interesting stadium and an interesting crowd.

This Friday, I'm off to see Nadia Reid at the Port Chalmers Town Hall, which should be cool on many levels.

Fire at will - Burns Fortnight #3

Detail, Otago Muslim Association, Clyde Street

1. Fellows Welcome

This fortnight started hospitably, with an event at the Hocken Library to welcome the University of Otago's five Arts Fellows (visual arts, dance, music, children's writing and, uh, just writing).

Here's the write-up from the Uni's website.

As you can see from the pic attached to that write-up, it was a gloriously sunny late afternoon (last fortnight's good weather stuck around for another week). It was nice that my wife and kids got to come along for the first bit (before bedtime beckoned).

When the Pro Vice Chancellor was reading out the bios of the Fellows, my daughter, Lia (4), turned to me and said, excitedly, "That's you!". But I was quickly forgotten when the bio of the dance fellow was read out. "Ballet! Daddy, he said ballet!"

When it came time for the Fellows to say a few words in response, my wife had to disappear with my son for what turned out to be a toilet false alarm, so I ended up going on stage with Lia. She casually held my hand the whole time and declined the opportunity to say anything, so I thanked the people of Dunedin and the university on behalf of the both of us.

2. Productivity (& spectatorship)

Total words this fortnight: 9,121 (4,896 on THE LOCATION SCOUT, the rest on this blog)

It was a fortnight of two halves again. The first week was solid. I felt comfortable with where I'd gotten my short stories, and was itching to start my novel before February was over, so I started (techincally restarted, after last working on it in earnest in 2015) a day early.

The next four days I made good progress, averaging an additional 933 words to the manuscript per day. That's passable for any point in the novel, but pretty darn good for the first ten or so pages. This reflects the fact I had a fairly decent (7,000 words) false start behind me, and 18+ months to mull over what wasn't quite right. Oh, and in the last week of Feb I had story-boarded out the first three scenes/chapters. So, really, why shouldn't I be productive?

Then came the weekend, and my brother came down from Wellington, so I had to show him around and generally have a great time. See part 3.

Later in the week, I tried in vain to resist the combination of sunshine and test cricket occurring a 5-minute bike ride from my office. So productivity suffered. But, as I told my wife, watching test cricket by yourself is great thinking time. I think it set me up pretty well for fortnight #4 (at least the first week... I sure hope this won't be a pattern!).

I'm off to the Warriors vs the Bulldogs at the stadium this Friday. Probably won't be as much deep thinking going on there!

3. Tourism

The Mole at Aramoana (the black line across the path is a fur seal)

Looking back from the end of The Mole, with terns and gulls

White dots = albatross (including parent with chick if you zoom into the 'dot' that's just right of centre),
Harrington Point viewed from the end of The Mole at Aramoana

Fur seal and Harrington Pt Lighthouse

The view from Signal Hill

Snack at St Kilda Beach

4. M.O.R.

Something that happened in Fortnight #3, but I only properly reflected on afterwards:

People talk about two Dunedins. The students and the locals. Or maybe it's Dunedin during term time and Dunedin during the holidays.

Before Orientation started, I felt young. As in: below the median age in town.

After Orientation: way old.

That influx of 20,000 18 year olds (okay, they aren't all that young, but...) sure is noticeable. Of course, working (I'm trying hard to leave off the inverted commas) at the university means I'm at Ground Zero for the change.

What influence will being around so many people born when the Y2K bug was a thing to fear have on my writing / me? These young people fall into my generational blindspot - too young to be siblings or cousins (or direct reports, just yet), too old to be kids of mine or my peers. What interaction will I really have with them, beyond reading Critic and trying not to run over them on my bicycle?

Time will tell.

5. Open to the universe

One good thing about having had some halfway decent productivity to start my fellowship is that I feel I can start to say YES to things that pop up.

Event formation seems to be quite organic down here. At the Fellows Welcome I was asked if I want to take part in three separate things (a theatre thing, a library thing, a creative writing thing). No firm dates. No firm anything, really, but I said Yes, because that's part of why I'm down here.

(I also found out one of the University's leadership team is reading my blog - though maybe he was just cyber stalking me in the lead up to the Welcome and will stop now - and got invited up the clock tower in the iconic admin building. I said something about that being a great setting for a murder mystery. Who killed the Vice Chancellor? Quick, barricade the stairwell. Now I'm not sure if that invite still stands.)

Doing a stonking job with a novel manuscript is my primary objective, but doing things that make me feel like a writer again (or, heaven forbid, a thinker) should help with the novel and life beyond it. Because, hard as it is to conceive of right now, there will come a time when I need to move on to other projects. If I keep adding to the reservoir this year, I should be spoiled for choice in 2018 or 2019 or whenever I finally put THE LOCATION SCOUT to bed.

Since the Fellows Welcome, I've said yes to two events for the Dunedin Writers Festival in May, and another thing for the Dunedin Amenities Society. (Next fortnight I might share with you my theory about why it's better to live in a town that's seen better days than one that's still growing, but suffice to say one reason is things like Town Belts and Amenities Societies exist)

I still feel like I have capacity for more. In fact, I have an idea for something that I'll probably need to drive if it's to become a reality.

And I like surprises. So hit me up, universe.