Fourth funeral of the year

The Minister read out this poem at a funeral I went to on Tuesday. You can substitute 'he' for 'she'

You can shed tears that she is gone,
Or you can smile because she lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back,
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left.

Your heart can be empty because you can't see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she is gone,
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on,
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back,
Or you can do what she would want:
Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Life's Mix

Yikes. Just re-read the last entry. It doesn't sound like me at all and also I'm re-iterating things from other people which I'm not sure I agree with. I talk such nonsense at times...at times?
Well. Fourth funeral of the year tomorrow. It could be the set up for a play for today, tomorrow's funeral, over in Yorkshire again, but the lady involved was a person worth remembering so we'll put aside the background drama. She wanted to be a missionary and probably because of her modesty and small stature, she was turned down. She would have been ideal. Very strong willed underneath a gentle persona. Setting off today, visiting my godmother, the widow of the 100 year old gentle, kind, highly intelligent man who died not so long ago.
Back Wednesday evening and think I'm going to an erotic flash fiction night as part of Didsbury Festival...

Just started re-reading A Kind of Loving. The voice of the main character, Vince, reminds me so much of a friend it makes me laugh. Smile and laugh. Vince is very funny. That's the key. You follow him because he is funny in a very northern way.
I've been sounding angry lately. Humour is the key. Laugh and the world laughs with you...
Life is about living.

Explanations

"What has what 'they' think got to do with my life? They'll think what they like whatever you do and some might be right and some might be wrong. But they can't know because nobody lives inside your skin but you.
In the last resort you're on your own. Nobody knows but you. It's you who makes the decisions and lives with them.....
....So am I expecting approval for what I'm going to do? Do I send a memo round explaining, so I won't be misjudged? And if I do and manage to get it all down accurately, will they understand then?'
Stan Barstow.

I know, I know, I'm quoting someone else, but I want to. I was asked to justify myself at the weekend. No.

Writers' Groups

It's great the writers' group is so successful that the number of members has swelled, but less good in that we now read out more intermittently which means the process of writing or editing work slows and threads are less easy to follow. In some ways, I'd like to pick and choose the ones I follow, but that is not how it works. We could splinter into smaller groups, maybe chosen by genre. Maybe that way advice would be more pointed. But then I wouldn't hear genres I wouldn't naturally pick and that would be a mistake.

Mmm.

Didn't get to read out Chapter 3 of Monster Belt. Can you tell?

Writing

Chapter 3 of Monster Belt ready for the writers' group tonight. Chapter 26 of Erosion with its emphasis changed. Trouble is, swapping between the two on the same day, will Lizzie merge with Jane? I don't think so, they are very different, but my female characters are very contradictory in everything they do and think. But then, isn't everyone?
No.
Better if characters in books are though.

Going to make an apple crumble in a bit. Apples from the garden. And custard. Winter food in autumn. Jacket potatoes are in the oven now.
Didsbury Arts' Festival starting next week too. And the Manchester Literature Festival looming.
And currently, Musicians Without Borders. Juba gig Friday. Great stuff.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I think it gets to the point when you need to quieten all the voices and noises around you so that you can hear what's going on inside yourself.

Screenwriters

Read an ex-student's short film script this morning. It is uplifting to see talent. A story told simply, from the words could see the visuals on the screen, realistic dialogue and the events flowing naturally, imaginatively, and giving that tug to the emotions that we know what is happening, will happen, but it's right we know and that the inevitable is the right end. And we feel satisfied.
And I know she isn't the only one who can do this. The future of film is in safe hands.

Friday afternoon

Downstairs, Miranda is playing the theme music for Amelie on the piano. The sky outside threatens rain. The air hangs with that autumn grey quiet. A lamp illuminates the computer screen. It's a time for tea and crumpets and butter and snuggling on a sofa to watch on old black and white.
What's that word? Languishing. Despondent? Without thought. Drifting. The keys ring out from downstairs, upwards, along the corridor.
Comforting.

Death

Paul, the guy with the red hair, died on my uncle George's birthday, 26th June, 2001. I think that's right. Paul was forty. My uncle George died shortly after his 100th birthday, 26th of June, 2011. This is the first year I forgot the anniversary of my father's death, 29th August 1991.
Don't let anyone tell you that death brings people together. It doesn't. It blows you apart.

The Monster Belt

Here's a first stab at the synopsis of Monster Belt:
There are caverns in everyone's head where monsters lurk. And there's a belt between two latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere where flesh and blood monsters exist.

Harris White needs to find the monster that killed his best friend over ten years ago. Two twelve year old boys, out boating as they did every day off the Balearic island of Formentera, drinking a couple of bottles of San Miguel, dive into the cool water. Jonah disappears and Harris stares into the large dark eye of the monster that has taken him.

Jane Clark lives in Hawksmoor, West Yorkshire, the central point of the Monster Belt and home to the annual Monster Convention. She dreams of being killed by large spiked hair curlers and strives to work in London. Fresh from university, the job market is bleak and she agrees to accompany Harris on his quest of the Belt.

What bonds them is the disappearance of a young boy in the local lake called The Mere. Legend has it that a monster lurks there; the Mere Monster. Jane doesn't believe in monsters, Harris believes that is all that makes up the world.

Harris grows increasingly preoccupied and frustrated that Jonah's killer will not show itself and unsettled by his withdrawal, Jane's inner demon can no longer be ignored. Bother their monsters are close to home but they are lodged where least expected.

Returning the following year to Hawksmoor for the next convention, the perpetual downpour floods the rivers which pour down into the Mere, saturating the marshland and as the water floods into the valley, cutting off the Bunkhouse Hotel where the convention visitors await rescue and Harris and Jane sit marooned on the roof, deciding whether or not to jump into the murky water and risk confronting the Mere Monster.

And the real test is how we confront the monster within.

Ever had days like this?

Onwards

I know, I know, I keep saying I'm working on the final edit of Erosion, but this is the FINAL ONE. And so, at Writers' group, I've now read two chapters of Monster Belt out. Focus, focus, that wonderful word.
So, three hundred final pages of Erosion to plough through, holding concentration and the thread.
Monster Belt - well, it's written, but at 62,000 words, it's too short. I hate novels that are obviously padded, so need to start digging down to see what I can discover about Jane and Harris. Jane, fresh from university, believing in her own cynicism and Harris, a hippy child brought up on an island in the Med, is an expert where monsters are concerned.Jane dreams about being eaten by hair curlers in underground caves. She lives in a village that is at the central point of the two latitudes that form the Monster Belt. And in the village lake there lurks a monster that takes children's lives.
She's nothing to do all summer except work part-time in the village pub. Why shouldn't she go with Harris and find out if monsters really exist?

Decisions

Sometimes it doesn't matter what the decision is, it's the making of it. You decide and act on it and then, with your head clearer you can do this, then you do that, could be small things you do, but you do them and it gets easier to do the next thing.
I remember mum telling me about when she suffered from serious anaemia after I was born and she was so, so tired. And depressed probably. She couldn't think or face anything and she remembers standing at the sink washing up. She washed one thing, rinsed it, dried it and put it away. Then a spoon, washed, rinsed, dried, put in the drawer. Then a fork. Then a knife, a plate, following the sequence until all the washing up was done. That's the only way she could do it.
Sometimes that's all we can do. Work through the pile that seems so big, too big, one small step at a time. And then hopefully, it's done.

The sea

I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky.
And all I ask is a fair ship
And a star to steer her by.
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking
And a grey mist on the sea's face and the grey dawn breaking.

From memory, I couldn't quite get it right. I looked it up. This is how it stands now. John Masefield. Something that would be good to do today, good to do on many days.