Time flies when you're doing nothing stag parties, weddings, working full time for the first time in over a year, cutting down trees, watching television...
Looking ahead to next month, when the NBA season is in full swing and my hapless Kings are already floundering but still somehow compelling, I wonder how I'll find any 'free' time to write.
That list of short stories to write when I got to the end of THE NOVEL remains untouched.
The list of strange-but-not-that-interesting things that happened to me at work keeps getting longer.
*
Music. I didn't listen to much in September. My music consumption and writing time are directly correlated.
Here's my Spotify playlist for August:
I am listening to the new Tragically Hip album, Now for Plan A, right now (stream it free here for a limited time). Verdict after two listens: So it wasn't all Bob Rock's fault on World Container and We Are the Same. I'm sure there will be some songs that start to stand out in time, but it's all rather straight ahead rock to these ears.
But then I thought the same about Fully Completely the first five or six times.
I've been wrong before.
*
The day the tea tasted amazing. Like, really amazing.
The day the lifts went slow.
The day a dove landed on the ledge outside my window.
The day I wore prescription glasses for the first time.
The day they announced the Christchurch Education Renewal Plan.
The day I mentioned the day the tea tasted amazing and no one knew what I was talking about.
*
Far from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy
Another audiobook. Perhaps it's because I listened to Jeffery Eugenides' The Marriage Plot earlier this year, or perhaps it's because I'd just gotten to the end of my own novel which does not feature the marriage plot, but I felt conditioned to enjoy Far from the madding crowd.
And I did enjoy it.
I like the way it starts with a very static description of 'Farmer Oak'. I like the way he's had his shot at Bathsheba Everdene early on and the scene where young George drives his sheep off the cliff, reducing him to a shepherd once more.
At the time I liked Hardy's authorly theorising about men and women. The sort of things you could never really get away with in a book today. The sort of things quotation pages lap up, but has the habit of jolting the reader from the story:
"We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in."
“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”
“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”
“We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialised by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.”
I think I liked these readymade pull quotes because they were so barefaced. Oh no you didn't. Oh yes he did.
I went to the funeral of a colleague last Tuesday. Bruce had battled cancer of the oesophagus since September but before that he’d worked at the Ministry for close to 39 years. On my fourth day in the job we both went to Taihape to see how the recently built Area School was working. I drove the rental car and he held forth on the history of the Ministry of Education on the way up and the history of the Property team’s drinks club, which Bruce managed, on the way back. I used to tease him about this later, once I got more comfortable in the job and with my colleagues. Bruce knew he was difficult to stop once he got going, and he sure had a lot of knowledge to draw on when on a roll.
I spent two years sitting on the other side of a partition from Bruce, but one of my most vivid memories of him comes from a conference at Westpac Stadium. It was the lunch break and I was standing in a group with Bruce, another colleague my age and a manager who’d recently stopped drinking wine on Fridays, enough to tell us she was pregnant. As we ate our sausage rolls and sushi, Bruce asked her how the pregnancy was going. She bravely said that she’d had a miscarriage. (This is one of those anecdotes that can be used to speak highly of either person...)
My colleague and I were lost for words. It seemed such a cruel thing to happen to a lovely person. It would have been her first child. Perhaps she might not get another chance. If Bruce was thinking these things too, it didn't show. He wrapped his arm around her and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He said some genuine, consoling words. It was a kind of heroism to see this man rubbing this woman’s shoulder surrounded by bureaucrats struggling to eat club sandwiches.
At Bruce’s funeral we heard from his nephew, his school friend, a colleague (not me) and his daughter. Their stories shone light on new aspects of the man on the other side of the partition – his guitar playing, his teenage entrepreneurism — but also built upon the image of quiet heroism I’d been worrying over like a rosary since I’d heard of his passing.
The manager, who had long since left the Ministry, was there too. So was her two month old son (he cried more than anyone else that day).
It wasn't too late for her.
I’m sure the presence of this new life at his funeral would have cheered Bruce. It cheered me.
One does not expect to be cheered at a funeral, but there's always something uplifting. At least that's been my experience of funerals. The ostensible reason everyone is gathered together in a drafty church in Upper Hutt sucks: a man has died. But the real reason we're there is because he lived and we are drawn to be around others who knew him, if only for one last afternoon.
Out of the blue yesterday I received this email, sent via my Google Profile:
I am a 62 y.o. Grandmother. I am sending you a note to tell you my Son's name is Craig Cliff. That doesn't seem like a common name. I will tell you that my son is an artist. He is older than you but I do notice similarities. We all agree that Craig [Redacted] Cliff can do anything. He is a musician and everyone says he can do everything. I'm a proud Mom and I bet your parents are very very proud of you. My Craig was born Sept. 5, 1973. Just had to communicate with you. Cheerio! [Redacted]
Not all Craigs are created equal
Okay something actually about me, or Status downgrade
I tempted fate, didn’t I? Almost as soon as I posted my wee status report on THE NOVEL last week, things slowed down. I take some solace in that it was not all self-inflicted. My landlords are having a new bathroom put in our flat, which means a lot of sawing gib board and banging pipes outside my office door during my writing days at home. I have headphones and I should be disciplined enough to work through such a distraction. But the biggest problem was they turned the water off to do their plumbing business so I couldn’t make a cup of tea or use the toilet, two crucial activities in my writing routine.
After battling through one unproductive day at home with the workmen, I decided to work the next day in a library. I chose to start the morning at Karori Library as it had free parking spaces nearby and opened half an hour earlier (9.30am) than the other libraries that day. I left the house before the bathroom men arrived (otherwise they’d block my car in with their vans) and this left me an hour and a half to explore before the library opened. What’d I do? Took photos of birds of course!
Pipit on Red Rocks Walkway
Dunnock (not a sparrow, note the narrower beak)
Oystercatchers, post coitus
(I have other pics, but I hope to keep this blog's G rating)
I got quite a bit of work done in the morning upstairs at Karori Library (no internet access for my old laptop is a blessing). After meeting Marisa in town for lunch, I tried Newtown library in the afternoon, but a lack of free parking or anywhere decent to set up my computer put the kibosh on writing there. Over the hill in Kilbirnie, however, I had more luck. Not quite as good a set up as Karori, but I did discover a great stash of NZ Memories magazines (great for research).
On Friday I tried Island Bay, but there was nowhere to set up, so I went back to Karori (with a birdy detour en route).
NZ Robin at the end of Holloway Road, Aro Valley
I spoke with the bathroom man today and it's going to be another week and half (3 weeks all up) before they're done. Karori here I come!
May 21:
Craig Cliff, short story and poetry writer from New Zealand, won the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011 in Overall Best First Book category for his book "A Man Melting". The winners of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced on 21 May 2011 at The Sydney Writers' Festival in Sydney.[5]
I'm the only entry for May 21. In fact, there are only 18 entries total for New Zealand. And what a weird collection of trivia I'm a part of. The rediscovery of part of the pink and white terraces (Feb 2) (but not their initial destruction). Helen Clark recieves a Champion of the Earth award from UNEP (April 22). First sheep introduced to New Zealand (May 20). NZ launches first commercially viable biofuel (Aug 1).
Of course, there are some (some) of NZ's big moments on the list: NZ women getting the vote (Nov 28), Ed Hilliary and Tenzing Norgay reaching the summit of Everest (May 29), Alan McDiarmid winning the Nobel Prize (Oct 10), the All Blacks winning the 1987 Rugby World Cup (June 20).
I'm not one to meddle with wikis, but those who are of such persuasion shouldn't have to look far to find other significant dates that have been overlooked.
(My birthday is 10 January!)
Got a spare $150 bucks?
The trouble with doing a lot of research for THE NOVEL is you're never done. There's always some other source you should have consulted, some other aspect you never got and had to fudge, some book you wanted badly but couldn't justify the costs (even if tax-deductible).
Today's book: The Shipcarvers' Art: Figureheads and Cigar-Store Indians in Nineteenth-Century America by Ralph Sessions. I can safely say this is the only book-length exploration of the link between ship carving and cigar store figures and it would yield very little in the way of my current novel, but I love books like this!
The Ministry of Magic
I’ve been sitting in a different building recently during my two days of paid work and a few people have come up to me in the kitchen to say, “I enjoy your column in the paper.” It’s nice to hear, but I wonder how much of this is down to the Ministry of Education connection? It must be interesting to have someone talking about the place you work (generally; remember this is a whole different building) in the midst of gardening tips, restaurant and book reviews and features about the dangers of sitting down (damn you Tom Fitzsimons, you’ve ruined my favourite pastime).
There are those at work who go beyond the “Love your work” comments and tell me what I should write about next. Most of it won’t fly for a wider audience, though I'm sure it would thrill the Ministry-heads about town (and probably lead to my swift exit from the workforce). However, I am gathering enough Things People Say I Should Write A Column About to write a column about the things people tell me to write about. Phew, I need a breather after that sentence.
Real writing is rewriting, or Recent brainfarts detect while revising
'Right on queue'
'Moving sheik' (instead of 'moving chic')
'Phased' for 'fazed'
Of course, some brainfarts can be useful. Last week I misread the headline of a magazine article as 'Eeling for Daylight' when it actually said, 'Feeling for Daylight'... The image of trying to capture an elusive strand of daylight may just be something I can use one day.
Yesterday was my first day back at work after the Christmas break. Despite my best efforts to be late, I was dropped off at my usual time around 8am, insanely early for a first day back with no managers in until the following week. So I decided to go to New World first and buy a new bottle of water.
I use the water filter at work, but need to refresh my plastic bottle every so often (not so much a fear of leeching carcinogens as a dislike of that fluffy, algal feel older plastic bottles impart). New year, new bottle: it seemed a fitting way to kill the first ten minutes of my working year.
Inside the supermarket, the shoppers were a mix of workers like me, picking up one or two items, and people clearly still on holidays (to the lady wearing a purple t-shirt, gray trackpants with a purple racing stripe, and purple crocs: thanks for the laugh) -- though I cannot fathom why you'd want to go to an inner city supermarket at 8am while on holiday.
Both kinds of shoppers, however, were outnumbered by supermarket staff. They clogged every aisle, it seemed, with trolleys, boxes and step ladders.
Two large men from 'out back' (meaning behind the hanging plastic strips by the deli rather than the Australian wilderness) had a conversation which went something like:
Large Man A: "You put that pallet [loaded with Christmas-themed chocolates] in the warehouse, it'll last a good six months."
Large Man B: "Which won't get it to next Christmas, will it?"
A woman with a large "Visitor" badge pinned to her Bluebird polo shirt fussed along the chippie aisle, straightening packets.
At the checkouts, there were tiny conferences going on at all the manned lanes, so I went the self-checkout route. As I passed the helpdesk, I saw a woman stashing two litre bottles of blue top underneath the counter. In the car park, an older gentleman was washing down the curb with a garden hose.
These activities must be carried out everyday. For the staff there was nothing out of the ordinary. But for me it was a strangely pleasant experience.
Perhaps it was because I had that new year mentality, and seeing the supermarket being refreshed before my eyes synched with this feeling of renewal and recommencement.
Perhaps it was because I was privy to a world that, while not completely behind-the-scenes, goes mostly unnoticed and unacknowledged by shoppers.
Perhaps it is because for one summer while at university I worked in a distribution centre for a supermarket chain, and yesterday morning provided a link back to that kind of labour, and the possibilities that summer.
But it is the experience itself, or the mood I was in which is behind this "strangely pleasant experience"?
Yes, perhaps I was just in one of those moods. I think of them as writerly moods, but I'm sure non-writers have them: those moods where everything is just a skoch more interesting, where everyday items and activities provide a boost which, depending on your outlook, you might describe as stimulation, enthusiasm, comfort, satisfaction, optimism, or inspiration.
As a writer, I tend to fall back on that last term: inspiration.
It's not as if I got home yesterday and scuttled off a short story about a supermarket being restocked. But that experience helped in several ways.
It alerted me to the fact I was in "one of those moods". Not only could I walk about and draw inspiration from the everyday, but ideas would hopefully follow. At lunch time I walked to the library. I saw the fallen stamens of pohutokawa in the gutters alongside the beehive and described this to myself as a "crimson muffle". Now, crimson muffle might be the worst phrase ever concocted in the English language, but I was happy to be concocting.
My experience in the supermarket also gave me pause to actually think about these moods, and how they might be controlled.
If there was a way to harness these moods, to summon creativity and inspiration at the flick of a (mental) switch, I would be well on the way to world domination. But there are some things which tend to increase the frequency of my inspired moods, like travel and good weather. I've done a lot of the first (perhaps too much if my bank balance is to be believed), and I guess you could achieve the second by travelling or immigrating (but then, as I discovered while living in Brisbane, the inspirational nature of good weather follows the law of diminishing marginal returns and, I suspect, also relies on the element of surprise).
Looking back, I've also fallen into inspired moods on the heels of good news. A story is accepted for publication. A nice comment received after a blog post. When I was selected to the Central North Island Debating Team as a sixth former I went home and wrote three poems.
What does this tell me? If I submit stories, be a good little blogger and succeed in my chosen pursuits, I will spend more time being inspired. Sweet. Unfortunately, a base level of inspiration is needed to get the ideas and the gusto to finish the story in the first place…
I may have refined the idea of "one of those moods" a bit more with this post, and what goes into making them, but I certainly haven't happened upon creativity's equivalent of cold fusion. Nor will I. It's a bit like that Mastercard ad on at the moment about skimming stones: Not knowing what goes into a moment: priceless.
All I can do is keep earning those moments (you can't return to work after a holiday without all those days at work; you can't be published if you don't write a story and send it to the right place).
There's one other way to bring on the desired mood which I haven't mentioned yet, because it's a slightly different animal: reading. I'd love to see scans of my brain while reading a great book (or even a great page) versus reading an ordinary book. It certainly feels like there's magic going on up there. Sometimes, before I even close the book I'm thinking creative thoughts (some of which are, no doubt, of the crimson muffle variety), but most often the inspiration arrives in those moments between reading. While working I read at lunchtime and in the evening, which leaves a lot of time not-reading but still involved with a particular book.
I haven't read a really good book in the last two months (an unlucky patch, nothing more) and I've probably been less inspired to write because of it. Or put another way, there's been less magic going on upstairs. *Sad Face*
But what makes a really good book? One that will get my synapses firing even when I'm not turning its pages? The key is perhaps the very moods I'm searching for as a writer.
A piece of writing should place the reader inside the moods which allow us to extract wonder and inspiration from the everyday. Perhaps I should say 'familiar', rather than 'everyday', as a lot of great fiction (especially genre fiction, which is not a bad word around here, capiche?) operates outside the everyday.
If you write a scene set over an evening meal, there better be something about this meal which pushes through the hanging plastic strips to glimpse the mechanics of this ritual and points to the significance of the scene.
If you write a scene about a sentient blue globule from Alpha Centauri, you better say (or show) something that strikes at the heart of what it is to be sentient.
It is one thing to tell the story of a guy walking around a supermarket looking for a bottle of water before beginning another year of work, it is another thing to lead the reader towards that same feeling of renewal, or succour, or inspiration.
And another thing again to take that inspiration and expend it in a groping and overlong blog post.
It's amazing how consuming this 100-word story process is. It doesn't take that long to write the things, but I'm forever mulling over the story of my next Marumaru inhabitant. I'll probably talk about it more at the end of the month, but today I want to talk about the other things I have on the go.
[I feel pulled in several directions at the moment, and hope this post will clarify my priorities and shunt me
onwards. Details after the jump.]
My desk at work is on the twelfth floor. There's a sort of mezzanine-cum-thirteenth-floor above half of the twelfth, leaving the rest of my floor with double-high ceilings. I sit just beyond the point at which the ceiling doubles. It's a nice airy space, this double-high section, but the acoustics are terrible. Conversations within a ten metre radius are impossible to block out (thankfully most of this double-height area is filled by the finance team, so they're pretty quiet souls). Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell where sounds are coming from.
At moments throughout the day, I hear a radio. I've decided it's probably coming through one of the internal windows of the thirteenth floor above me. I don't think this person listens to the radio all the time (though I have no idea what people do on the thirteenth, having never been there), but every now and then the sound of the radio drifts over to me. Sometimes I can pick the song, and based on this sample ('Hey Jude', 'Summer Breeze', 'Do Wah Diddy', 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay'...) I reckon the station is Solid Gold FM.
Ordinarily, I would have no beef with the station but, due to some quirk of the acoustics, certain frequencies reach me easier than others. This, combined with the limited weekday playlist of Solid Gold FM, means I feel as if I am forever hearing the ocarina solo in the Troggs' 'Wild Thing'. It's a shame, because -- and I can say this with some authority -- it is the greatest ocarina solo in rock history, but hearing it disembodied on a daily basis is quickly becoming grating.
The last two mornings, the organ from 'Whiter Shade of Pale' by Procul Harem has caught my ear. It’s another great song (one about which I had a long talk with a work associate in Brisbane, who turned out to be a collector of vintage organs) which seems set to make my Endangered Greatness list.
While the specifics of my situation would not be that common, there is something typically 'office life' about having songs you quite like being systematically ruined by unseen forces.
The challenge, as I see it from the sanctuary of my study during my leisure time, is to notice these snippets of 'office life' and distil them into useable fiction, without letting the office beat me.
Another audiobook. Perhaps it's because I listened to Jeffery Eugenides' The Marriage Plot earlier this year, or perhaps it's because I'd just gotten to the end of my own novel which does not feature the marriage plot, but I felt conditioned to enjoy Far from the madding crowd.
