Project Failure

Yes, I wrote haiku in a spare address book.
Wasting stationery is a sin, damnit!

Just to clarify; this post is about a project that failed, not about 'Project Failure', which is something entirely different... By the way, if one tries to fail, and fails, has one succeeded?

Enough! On with the post:

You may have seen me talking about my 'yearly projects' before (I've done 'diary a day', 'line a day' and, last year, 'haiku a day'. Well, basically, I'm declaring last year's one a failure. Although I'm guessing I wrote well over 365, the aim was to write at least one every day. It was more about the discipline of sitting down every day to write, not the amount I produced. As usual with these things, I ended up messing up here and there, having a few days where I hadn't written anything, then having to catch up. I came to accept 'slipping' as part of the process (hey, life gets in the bloody way, alright!), but I knew there had been a lot of slippage since I last looked. About a week ago, I thought I'd go back and finish it off. The last entry I made was on the 15th of November... I decided not to carry on.

On the plus side, I think there's a couple of decent haiku what I did. However, my tendency to make them 'about the day', i.e. 'plot-based' (rather than about the image or setting) often hampers them. I realise, when I go back to reading other people's, that there's a massive gulf between most of what I write and the potency of the form done competently. The same can be said with respect to most writing, but there's something about this whole 'daily thing' I've been doing that can make it hard to see the wood for the trees. You know, you sort of spiral down into a 'just do it' mentality, rather than what normally happens spontaneously which is more, you get an idea every so often and think 'I might have something here', then you put it down on paper. But again, I suppose reading is a good guard against that 'spiral', and conscious concentration, so it comes down to my personal incompetence, really.

I find the whole analysis of it more and more distasteful as I try and look at it. What's wrong with intuition, just doing things? Well, that doesn't seem to be enough for me... I can at least say that writing a lot, regularly, is good for stamina (or rather, I've found it to be so). The real problem here is that I can't comment on much else, because I'm hardly in a position to say 'my writing's getting better', and even if I was, I don't think it has. And that's the big issue for me; I was less concerned with how these projects turned out - whether they could be deemed a success in and of themselves - but was hoping it would have wider-reaching implications for my writing as a whole, and I don't think that's the case. The 'haiku' thing may have been good to try and sharpen my viewing [of the world] process, but it didn't encourage any serious engagement [with poetry, or writing, as a whole]. And yes, I can use these haiku for another project [collaboration with the self, as Richard Barrett had it], but I want to stop building this material up and kidding myself that, if that's all I've come up with, it's been worthwhile. If I make a good poem out of it, then groovy, but right now my effort has been poor and I've got little to show for it.

Since giving up on the latest project, I've still been writing. Not enough, I'd say, especially given that hours in my job dried up in January, so I've had more time to do what I want (what's necessary, even?). I think the idea of putting tasks into your diary is good, as it can help you 'ring fence' time. In this respect, I need to take my own advice, because I do suggest it to others, but haven't done it myself. Then I wonder why I hate myself, and why I have to write another blog post like this!

 

This year I was going to plan something, like a poem a week (finished, that is, or to a decently-edited degree), or something like that. That's a good target - more than, on average, what I would normally be doing (I can write new stuff at that rate, sure, but it's the editing where I come a cropper). Then I did nothing. Had no specific, long-term fixation. I want to say that not having a project has felt liberating, or I've put more energy into something else, but neither's true (well, except for more social pursuits and the recent collaboration).

It must be time to wrap this solipsistic sh1t up... I never think I'm doing enough. I find targets helpful but sometimes I set myself big and slightly inflexible ones. So maybe I should do a weekly quota/target? Something less rigid, with more chance for affirmation (things are lonely enough without doubting yourself...). I know some people might find it pathetic that I have to go through all this, but then there are other writers that I speak to who find they need deadlines and extra motivation to get to solve their craft problems. I'm struggling a bit, for sure, but at least it's not a struggle from the bottom (i.e. doing nothing) up. It's a struggle from the near-bottom up. Hey, that was almost positive!

 

I always try and find justification for my posts, otherwise (by and large...) I don't publish them, and I think that is why I write about these projects. Anyone reading can see another perspective on the struggle for production, and certain other aspects of the work. Hope this one's helped, even if only in a small way!

Peace, love and light.

Line a Day 2015 - The Final Word[s]

I've only recently realised that I didn't 'wrap up' my last 'year project', which was essentially writing a sentence a day. I called it 'Line a Day 2015', which soon became a bit of a joke because the sentences were often longer than a line, but I digress... I suppose the fact that there was no real impetus to blather on even more about this simple discipline is telling, i.e. there's no big story here. But at least that means there's not gonna be a shedload more rubbish to read for you, dear human.

So I wrote these three-hundred and sixty-five sentences throughout the year. Some were poetic and imagistic, some were merely straight diary-tic style. Sometimes I yearned to break lines like mad and make the form something special, whereas other times the content got the boring shape it deserved. Most of the time, I used punctuation like Scarface uses coke. A chaos of commas.

I don't know... It was fun-ish. Really I wanted to foster a sense of hygiene, summing up entire days in one 'breath' [again, not strictly true as it turns out, but I'm trying to be romantic], and basically training the eye and the mind to work more like a venus fly-trap - waiting long periods inactive before SNAPPING on something that sustains. And when I say 'inactive', I don't mean I wasn't doing anything else, I just mean in terms of my 'centring project', if I can be call it that. Either way, I failed. I didn't even hit on the rigid habit that I wanted. I had periods of a week and longer where I left my entries unfilled, and caused plenty of other headaches along the way, and to top it all, I don't believe I've enhanced my technical ability that much more. But hey, it was better than doing nothing.

I'm in the process of typing it all up now. I envisaged trying to get it published somewhere, the aim being to show a poet's year, unadulterated, in its naked journalic persona. Of course, there are temptations to edit on levels of lexis, sentence, form, structure [inter month, inter year etc], but that's not what happens with our diaries, is it? Anyways, watch this space if you got time to spare and an appetite for disappointment [in which I am a specialist :-) ].

By the way, and this'll be my only Blogtastic word on this until the end of the year [and maybe not even then...]; this year, I'll be doing a haiku diary. Not necessarily just one a day, but as many as I can, again with possibility to publish, but I'm not bothered. Will have to see what the quality and radicality is like. And no, before you ask, they won't necessarily be 5-7-5s. I want to do at least one of those a day, but in general I favour the Kerouacian 'pop', which lets the snapshotting mind breathe and dwell on the beauty of imagery more naturally. Form can be tinkered with and 'metre' can be negotiated, and that's always good.

Anyways, have a happy future full of peace, light and love,

M x

Oh No! It's Another Update Post...

I've got no choice, I had to write this because I was annoyed at myself for doing it again. No, I'm not making a vague Britney Spears reference, I'm talking about my 'line a day' commitment. I've had a couple of patches of leaving it to pile up. Yes, only for three to four days, and yes I caught up easily enough, but why can't I just do it properly? I can't come up with any reasonable excuses for not being able to write one measly diary-style line in a little book each day. I guess it comes down to apathy, more than lethargy or anything else. I've been busy of late, sure, and 'over-indulging' in certain things, but it's my choice at the end of the day [literally at the end of the day, I'm not just wasting words here] when I say 'sod it, I'll do it tomorrow'. Has anyone achieved success by doing that, outside of the field of Procrastination? Ah well. It's been logged and analysed now, so I suppose I can move on.

Other than letting that slip, production's been up lately. I've written a number of poems, including one about kicking a ball, a short story, about unwitting cannibals, and seemed to be on a roll until I tried restoring some papers of mine that were damaged by a leaking radiator [when I say 'restoring', I just mean trying to fathom out what the words were before the ink was washed away]. By sheer luck, the papers affected weren't completely full of writing, so I've not lost a whole book or anything, but one had an interesting and dark short story on it, and the other was part of the Sci-Fi novel I'm working on, so they're important enough. I've found it hard going so far, and may even go into it in further detail later, since it's been an interesting process, but I'll carry on with it after writing this and hopefully get it out the way.

Reading-wise I'm still finding time here and there. Currently enjoying Calum Kerr's wonderful worlds of Flash Fiction - all from his collection of collections The 2014 Flash365 Anthology.

One thing I didn't mind myself indulging in was the latest Storm and Golden Sky, the Liverpool reading series. While in the city, I went to The Bluecoat, visited one of my favourite pubs - The Swan Inn - and found one that had been recommended to me by a Liverpool Museum volunteer that time I went to see the dazzleship at Albert Docks. The pub she said to visit was 'Ye Cracke', just off Hope Street, and lays claim to being where John Lennon set up his 'other band' - The Dissenters - who never played a note. Picked up a copy of The Skinny to read while I had a pint there. Good times.

But the poetry itself was even better. Natasha Borton was reading her work, and I usually rather like it, so there I went to hear her pieces inspired by the tragic intentional flooding of Capel Celyn. Such a wonderfully provocative collection, covering ideas and themes from all angles, going into the history of the town, the post-history [after 'Capel' had been changed to 'Llyn'], the emotions, the images and the sad, sad music sung by the place and the events that happened there. The second reader, John Redmond, was less well known to me, but, as always at SAGS, I was more than merrily surprised by the quality of his work and performance. Fruity babies indeed! Everything seems so right in there, even if the poetry's dark or challenging, it's all groovy. Love it, especially when I get to catch up with some ol' uni pals, and general poetry pals.

I still don't have a job and am running out of savings, so if you have an opening at your place I've got skills ranging from proof reading and editing, through to original content and creative collaboration [as well as boring stuff like pulling pints and making customers happy...]. Still not got my website up and running and, whilst I'm under no illusions that it's going to instantaneously solve all my problems, I still hope it'll create some interest in who I am/what I do [in a career sense].

A bientot, friends!

A Line A Day Keeps... Me Busy

Last year, I started a 'diary a day' thing. It was essentially an exercise in writing fitness, but I also had other hopes, such as examining/enhancing the way I look at and process the world. Anyway, whatever the results, I'm glad I did it, but this year I've been on a different 'adventure': a line a day. Already that's not accurate, because actually it's a sentence a day, but 'line a day' trips off the tongue a little easier, and in general I'm into that whole 'brevity' thing, man.

So, what's the thinking behind this? I wanted to move from writing lots about each day, to writing just a little. The idea was to 'become more poetic' - to be hygienic in my expression, but stronger in spirit. I wanted pith, humour, drama, formal inventiveness [as is always the wish], rhythm, music, soul... so many things, and so much, all inside a singular sentence. And, sure, I've bent 'the rules' a wee bit, vis-a-vis grammar, utilising ellipses, dashes, kerazy kommas and line breaks to cram in a lot, but I think I've already managed most of my original aims. Making long sentences isn't what I wanted the project to be about, originally, but it's fine that that's krept in [sorry, I'll stop using ks instead of cs now]. I still get days where I want to be 'plot focused' and record as much of what happened as I can, but then there are times where the 'more poetic' instincts lead me to express my summary in a natural breath, rather than mechanically ground out.

Another hope of this project was that it would take less time each day, therefore allowing me to crack on with other creative works [you may remember me wondering if the full diary a day doofer was sapping my time and energy each day so that my production of, say, poetry suffered]. Well, my production in that respect is still not really where I want it to be, although I have got a few new drafts to work on. I guess I can pretty definitively say how much work I do's got nothing to do with my little forays into life recording.

It has occasionally been the case that even this diddy-diary was 'too much' for me to do. I think, at my lowest point, I've let eight or nine days go by without writing anything. If I remember rightly, I was quite depressed at that point, but I got out of it at least. Other than that, at most it's been two days, and not very often at that. I've only managed to confuse myself once with respect to 'what day I'm on' [in my notebook, each sentence is literally just numbered. In hindsight, it would have been much more pragmatic [though 'less poetic' imho] to date them, so there would be no doubt, but then I guess I assumed my discipline would have been perfect for such a seemingly easy task], but I can at least say that, so far, my discipline has been better than last time. Would be a bad job if it wasn't, like, but I digress... I don't really want to dissect how/why I've not managed to diligently do every day as targeted, but I will say that life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

Another way in which this year's project is the same as the last is in what I might do with the resulting mess. After seeing Richard Barrett's collaboration with himself [not a euphemism] at an Edge Hill symposium, I was really intrigued by 'processing' one's diaries, reforming, regurgitating, repurposing and examining what remains. My hope with this, as you can imagine if you're familiar with certain language poets [or prose poetry?], is to turn it into a poem. In fact, in many ways it already is, always was and was always going to be a poem. I like the idea of it completing itself, maybe as twelve individual poems or a twelve-stanza 'mini-epic', or even something between the two. I can already imagine it being published, and where, but that'll obviously depend on the quality of the material I end up with etc. Watch this space...

But more on what's different. Of course, I don't get that hand-numbing marathon sensation that I used to. That was quite something, burning through, what was it, eight sides? Did I get up to sixteen once? Writing that much in one sitting was, as I say, somewhat wearying. And it was interesting mentally, because you got into a flow state - always nice - but one that was less dependent on outright creativity. Sure, memory in general is a creative process, but with the memories often being less than a day old, I didn't really need to stretch the truth to fit the day-sized gap. It made the flow feel a bit more... tranquil, I suppose, than with fiction, say.

With this 'line a day', however, memory plays a different process. I have two main sentence types - the one I write at the end of the day that I have just come up with on the spot, or one that I've formed and drafted in my head, either earlier on in the day, or just before I've picked up my pen. The latter is often less of a 'did x, y and z' type report, and more of a sweeping sentence. Especially if I've come up with this relatively early, the process of memory is more about remembering the words, rather than the experiences - so that's a strange kind of inversion that's interesting to note. Speaking of notes, I believe I note that this project slots into my life easier than the last, doesn't get in the way, and also makes me feel like I'm appreciating my awareness of what's going on in life without having to obsess over every little detail and, in doing so, be blocked from enjoying things as they happen. The contemplative processes of the two activities is radically different and - apologies if I'm overusing this word and/or its concept - this year I feel it's 'more poetic'

Speaking of 'more poetic', next year I think I'll do a haiku a day, just like Neil Schiller's done. That's actually a pretty decent challenge, I'd imagine. Haiku[s] are tough to get right at the best of times, so doing them in bulk could be worse [or the practice could improve your skills?], but I'd allow myself more editing freedom than I have done these past couple of years, so that'd be cool. But hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Last thing to say is that I feel there's less to analyse about my journey this year. I think the reason is as simple as I'm writing less, the process is less arduous... there's just not that meat that there was last year for my masticating molars to malform. Or maybe I 'got it out my system' last time [lol]. Either way, good for you guys 'cause I won't be boring you with loads of posts on the topic. Although this one has built into an overly-long post. Sorry about that...

This Isn't Very Interesting, But...

I've got a lot of things on my mind at the minute, a lot of things I want to do, and I just want to let you all know that I'm hoping to getting round to being more active soon.

It makes me smile that I managed to blog fairly effortlessly for twenty-three days straight back in January '13. It was a really 'meaty' time, in the sense there was plenty to chew over, lots of flavour and purpose, and I enjoyed it. I've recently started a new job, so have a new routine etc, but I think I'm getting back to a place where I can get cracking more readily with writing projects here and there. Yesterday after work, in fact, I had a nice wee sit outside in the sunshine, bourbon in hand, and wrote out a little scene. Would've got more done had my pen not been so temperamental, but that's neither here nor there...

One of the main things I'm missing is giving you updates on how certain things have been going. I don't mean in a general way, like I'm doing now - I mean with stuff like last year's diary project, this year's 'line a day', what blogs I've liked recently, reviews etc etc. I don't think there's anyone out there that's worrying whether I keep them in the loop or not, but hey, as I've always said, ruminating like this is at the very least useful for me. Above that I hope that it gives other folk [writers and 'civilians' alike] a sense of affirmation, or even inspiration. Maybe some amusement too.

So yeah, this isn't very interesting, but I'm still here [somewhere], I still want to do things [some the same as before, some different] and... well... I'm bimbling along. Maybe not bimbling 'nicely', but bimbling nevertheless.

P.S. I'm thinking about setting up a website for myself soon too. It's not as narcissistic as it sounds, and could actually be useful in looking for other work and whatnot. Got the idea from an old school mate, whose site you can check out here.