The garbage continues …

My best piece ever !  (though opinions may vary.)

I have seen the faces of people who died a thousand years ago, copied again.

      In their bitter-sweet, short lives, people think their thoughts and actions original, whereas in truth they copy that which went before them, as nature copied their face, a thousand times before.

I once saw my mothers face, three thousand years dead, on the head of a fish-wife on the docks in Port Glamara, shouting her wares to the passers-by.  A face so long in forgetting, and so quick to bring a tear.

         Of course, the cast and mien on that face were different to my mothers’, for she was missing different teeth, and the fashions of hair and jewellery pulled that face into the present age.  This fishwife had the look of a faded beauty, cheated from the good marriage.  Her mouth was twisted grim, with her cheeks bony and first frosting of grey in her curly hair.  In contrast, few in my tribe survived long enough for their hair to change, and my mother had never washed in her whole short life

      But the face was the same.  The brow, the eyes and the little cleft in the tip of the nose.  I stopped in my journey, openly staring, forgetting every trick in avoiding attention, and felt a sob clutch from my stomach.  It climbed up my throat and erupted into a little pearl of loneliness, out into the noisy, crowded street.

      Though by then I had survived wars and watched famines, seen religious schism and encountered every infamy and cruelty possible to mankind, the child within was still there, undiminished beneath the callus of so much indifference to suffering and grief.  To be told that everything would be all right.  Despite knowing that, usually, it wouldn’t be.

      By then I had started on my mission, and was so consumed with my obsession that I could allow no weakness and admit no failure.  The face of the fish-wife, calling her wears, brought back to me my fallibility, and the possibility that I could be wrong.

      I avoided Glamara for a century after that, in fear of seeing that face again.

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Answers on a postcard to the little box at the bottom of the page.

Well, was that professional suicide?  Publishing stuff for free, just to get a bit of attention from one percent of one percent of the the available hits.  Can’t think of any good tags now …

My publishing campaign produced a fantastic first step this week, in the excellent pages of The Legendary, a poem!!!!!  http://www.downdirtyword.com  Many thanks to Katie, for being a truly scrumptious friend. 

*

Well, I have experienced a three week dry bit.  After the NaNofail, I have had plenty of ideas but little will to pursue them.  Its just more of the same stuff.  Done well, maybe, with resultant pride, but that’s about it.  Gonna have to find something better to say … :@

Also have to write two pages of script for a children’s radio play.  I get to give voice to a boy in a dream, clutching a book, being confronted by a princess and a pirate.  yay

Well, that should be enough for now.  Next, Ill publish my epigram, a post colonial view on Brave New World.  Why not, no one is gonna read it otherwise!

NaNoWriMo fail! Long live the new project! (again)

Yup, my much mentioned and much bragged about venture into wordhoarding gave up the ghost a few days ago.  In the soliloquy over the rotting corpse of this half-hearted attempt I could blame lack of prep, lack of conviction, or the HUGE pile of washing that accumulated during the days that I did write.  So there, take your pick, but I know which excuse I’m sticking to.

Moving on, (still looking for that elusive niche) I think I need to show just what I HAVE to do this year with Uni.  Two portfolios of  creative writing, 5K words a piece, this blog, and a paper.  One part includes  writing two scripts, a children’s picture book (which I have to draw), and a start of a novel … no problems with that, at least!!

Oh, and got a poem published in The Legendary, a magazine that I would put a link to here if I knew how to!  My first poem on the Net!  That’s a nice warm feeling right there!

I recently received advice that I should stick to literary writing, as opposed to genre.  Trouble is, I am torn.  On one hand, I can see the complex interplay between man and woman as they argue over the bills mounting on the table, but love the effect you get when reading about desert scavengers, and a Sphinx-shaman traveling from outpost to outpost, dispensing justice and protecting his people.  Both are valid, both have deep complex meanings that deserve study and readership.  I think that you can address strange issues never challenged with the use of some deft fantasy tropes.  I really do. 

Point in fact.  I wrote a story about a city being drowned by a slow flood, and the god king leaving in abject displeasure of his (perhaps imagined) sky god.  He curses the priestess of the Lady of the Waters, whom he assumes has drowned his city, whom also claims filial relationship to him, as his mother.  The aspects were there, issues challenged.  Male vs. female, a few tarot references to anyone paying attention.  Initial response was mixed, maybe because of a slightly dodgy ending, but otherwise I was told that the story was one of the truest pieces of fantasy read in many a year by an old old duffer on some forum.  Joy.

It now lies dormant in slushpile hell, should get an answer soon. . .

But I have been told to concentrate on the literary, which I suppose I can do, but not sure if I want to.  The problem is that the fantastic lends to my writing.  I can conjure up a setting, and a strange circumstance and a plot twist pretty quickly, but now, here, fills me with a great big so what! 

Which, incedentaly,  is why the Nano corpse-bride is no good for the folio (do’h), which is why I now find myself HAVING to write a literary novel-start (and outline) that I don’t want to, leaving all my good ideas behind!!!!

Yeah, so hail the new project. yay

 

10 Reasons why you shouldn’t read this blog

Well, there are many things I could say here … but this is an honest appraisal of my chances of writting anything worth reading. I am not an expert in any one thing, nor do I have a clearly definable niche (niche-niche-niche – the bloggers cry!)   So, you may well ask, what the hell is the point of this blog in the first place?

Good question.

Firstly, this a is a project for my degree. Since I don’t want to say anything unpleasant about the idea of writing a blog as an instructive part of my degree, I will just leave a pause here …

Despite this, it might be a good idea to just give me a page to shout out into the misasmic pool that is the blogosphere, and just see what turns up. Catharsis or venting rage, or what? I don’t know, but it threatens to be interesting.

 

But only personaly, of course.  This is the main reason for not reading this blog – appart from its inheretn crappness.

Okay, this is not a good job as convincing you not to waste time with this blog, this is almost a plea on your sympathy … don’t like that, stinks of a cheap plot twist, or even worse, marketing …

So, I suppose I should tell you so mething about myself. My name is Gethin Jones, I live in Wrexham, North Wales (that’s in the UK, doncha know). am a recently made single parent of three children, (my ex gave them to me when her bipolar got too much).  I am currently trying to find my feet again, and am now doing a degree in English and Writing.

What else … I was brought up in care mostly, was a boy soprano in a chathedral choir, lived on a farm for a bit, and have read at least two  thousand books.

 

Oh, andf I hope to take part and finish this year’s National Novel Writing Month.  Mmm, that’s something to write about at least.

 

So, now that the subject of today’s post is decided.  Um, I’ve had an idea for a novel, a fantasy story, for ten years.  I has grown in complexity for the last five.  It is a standalone novel, with three strands of storyline, all tying up at the end.  Each strand is very very different, in different grades of magicallity, ranging from the absolute denial of magic, the boder between magic and science, and a strand of totsl scientific, progressive capitalism.  All in the same setting. The unsocially aware quit now!!

Not entirely sure what the above statement says about my politics et al, but after reading China Mieville, I have begun to read books with a more political awearness.  When I read 1984 and Animal Farm I had to have the political side pointed out to me, but China Mieville managed to put those lenses over my reading eyes.  Cool or what!

 

So, (back to NaNoWriMo,) for this year’s novel, I will be writing one strand of the above described novel, the scientific strand, from start to finish.  I don’t  know if this is going to be the right way to contruct this novel, but I suppose I will find out.  The internal wranglings of which wil be vented here!

 

There, that is all the reason you need not to suscribe to this blog.  Got it.  Okay, its not 10, but thats how crap this blog is, there isn’t any carefull editing, long chewed over subjects, or even consistency with which you will spend your hard eared blog-reading freedom

Hello world!

Well, the title says it all, … though I’m still not sure what this is going to be about.    Bear with me.