NaNoWriMo

November is the month of Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month. It is 30 painful days where writers write like crazy to reach a fifty thousand word goal. That works out at just over 1600 words a day. Putting it this way sounds a lot more doable no?

So, dear reader, I have joined up - six thousand words in and I am loving it! There is a wonderful sense of community, with local forums with regular chats and meetups. It feels great knowing that thousands of other people over the world, too, are staring at a blank screen struggling to get started. The forums offer a great place to share ideas, discuss worries and just to have a general vent.

Writing a novel is a dream for many; Nanowrimo provides us with a target and reminds us that this dream is possible, you just have to get your head down for a few hours a day.

This concentration on quantity means you cannot get caught up on the quality of your writing - JUST WRITE. It may be crappy, but having thousands of crappy words is a better start than an empty page. This is exciting. Let's see if I feel the same way on November the 30th, rushing to reach that 50K mark.

Here are a few tips on writing a first draft (because that is what Nanowrimo is all about) from a creative writing cheat sheet:

Writing Your First Draft

Writing a first draft of your creative writing project – whether a novel, short story, poem or play – can be a bit daunting. Follow these handy hints to help you organise your thoughts and manage your time:

• Don’t worry about a great opening line yet. Simply start writing wherever you like.
• Keep the flow going in the early stages – keep writing without stopping, going back, re-reading or changing what you’ve written.
• Remember to show not tell – think about how to dramatise what you’re writing about and create visual images.
• Start somewhere else and get going again if you become stuck on a particular passage.

From reading to writing.

I am stepping into the unknown. Having read fiction for years I've come to the point where I say to myself, why not me too?

Creating a piece of readable fiction is my dream. Actually writing it is my nightmare. 

Thank god for motivational infographics, writers' forums and TED. Yes, TED, my favourite place to learn awesome stuff and to generally feel better about the world.

This video in particular is especially apt. 

David Kelley - How to build your creative confidence.

Thanks, Mr Kelley. Now, back to the notebook...

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891, was a response to aestheticism. This movement supported the ‘art for art’s sake’ doctrine – that art needs to serve no moral, religious or political purpose and it aimed to free art from responsibility. This book is by far one of my favourites.

 Firstly, the preface. It is a list of aphorisms dealing with art; Wilde states the ‘all art is quite useless’ and warns against reading too much into art (as we all know some of us quite often do) that ‘those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril’.

 This is exactly what Dorian Gray does; he treats life as if it were a work of art and places too much importance on maintaining this belief. For example, when Sibyl Vane ceases to be interested in art (when she acts badly), Dorian ceases to be interested in her.

 There are two important works of art in the novel, Basil’s painting and the Yellow Book. Despite the belief that art should not serve a purpose – Dorian finds a purpose in both. The painting acts as a mirror to his conscience, Dorian constantly finds himself compelled to keep looking at it. This echoes Wilde’s statement in the preface in that ‘it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’. Dorian sees himself in this art he finds so beautiful and it is his vanity that one could argue to be the cause of his downfall.

  The role of influence plays a huge part in this book. Both Basil and Lord Henry have a large influence over Dorian, and both contribute to his ruin. Dorian is first introduced to us as child-like; the narrator describes him as a lad ‘swinging round on the music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner’ – presenting as a child like this suggests that Dorian is more susceptible to manipulation than others may be. Basil completely idolises Dorian Gray, he puts him on a pedestal and in his eyes Dorian can do no wrong. By admiring his youth and beauty, Basil teaches Dorian that this is all that will be important throughout his life.

Lord Henry has the most influence over Dorian; he damns conventional morality and is constantly bombarding him with all his theories, not to mention it is he who introduces Dorian to the yellow book. Lord Henry is a really strong, influential character but is ultimately quite static and boring, he doesn't actually do anything. Throughout the novel Lord Henry is always lounging about, relaxing and playing with inanimate objects whilst he is talking. Talking is all the Lord Henry does, and by the end of the novel he becomes quite shallow; both Basil and Dorian undergo changes but Lord Henry is just the same at the beginning of the book as he is at the end. Because of this one can probably blame Dorian for allowing himself to be influenced so much by this personality.

 People’s reactions to Dorian in the novel constantly highlight the superficiality of Victorian society. Because Dorian always looks innocent, most of the people he is in contact with assume that he is a good, kind man. We know this is simply not true. Dorian literally gets away with murder because people are more willing to believe their eyes than anything else, to look upon Dorian as a piece of art, instead of looking beneath the surface.

King's Pet Sematary

Stephen King. Whatever your opinions may be (and I have heard a few, surprisingly a lot are negative), I quite enjoy snuggling up on a dark night and tucking into some classic King horror. I lost a whole day reading 'Misery' recently and it has indeed whetted my appetite.

The following exert is taken from The Guardian's blog section. A brave writer taking on King, one week at a time...


"King's introduction to this novel tells a cute story: about how he wrote it, then found himself horrified by it. It was so wrong, so dark, he put it into a drawer and thought he'd never publish it. It was, he claims, too horrifying to put out into the world. Then he reached the end of a contract, and he needed to publish a novel. There was only this one left, and his wife persuaded him to publish it, maybe against his better judgment. But he wondered if this was right; if it wasn't just too unpleasant.

It's a good story: the master of horror finding something too scary to exist. Doesn't matter if it's true or not; what matters is, it's part of the mythos. If you read that proviso before you read the book itself, you're in the state he wants you to be: ready, willing, but apprehensive, slightly on edge about what exactly this book contains – the perfect state to read some horror.

Horror has something of a bad reputation these days, surrounded by constant claims that, as a literary genre, it's on its last legs: there are, after all, only so many ways you can tell a ghost story. King has a curious relationship with horror himself. While his work moves between genres and styles, horror – in its truest sense – is what underpins much of these early texts. The Shining, Salem's Lot, Cujo, Christine: they're all horror novels, in the most conventional sense of the word, the kind that is so unfairly maligned: haunted houses, vampires, possessed whatevers. But King knows that horror can be something else. It can, at its best, make us reflect on the darkness of the human soul. Sure, Pet Sematary is a story about evil from beyond the grave, reanimated animals, terrible physical injuries … But more than that, it's about what happens when we want something so much we don't care about the consequences."

Pet Sematary is the next one for me, but I must remember to leave the hallway lights on. There is something about horror books that make them so much more frightening, and they stay with you longer, than films. It's your imagination - there is no quitting, turning off the telly and putting it to bed until the next time you press play. The book stays, those images you create, stay. Spooky. 

The writer goes on to explore his views on Pet Sematary: to read the rest of the blog - go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/feb/21/rereading-stephen-king-pet-sematary.

Happy Reading.

Dystopia - 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale

Both Atwood and Orwell present the idea of new worlds as a dystopian society. Orwell describes his New World in Nineteen-eighty Four as a restricting dictatorship by an omniscient ‘Big Brother’ where Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale presents an almost jail-like situation with many references to the Old World.

 

 The beginning of The Handmaid’s Tale uses comparisons of the old and the new worlds which, when describing the Old World, accentuate the unhappiness of the main character and the controlling conditions of their new world. Atwood refers to the ‘gymnasium’ where ‘games were formally played there’ and continues with a list of all memories surrounding the gym including the ‘mini skirts’ and ‘green-streaked hair’. This list is also used to portray how the girls’ identity has been taken away from them going from one extreme of expressing themselves to another where only in secret are they allowed to learn each other’s names. This use of binary oppositions is not used in Nineteen-eighty Four where most of the descriptions given are negative such as the use of pathetic fallacy; the ‘vile wind’ and the ‘cold day in April’ have negative connotations. This reflects the continuity and monotony of Winston’s lifestyle in the new world.

Simple sentences are also used frequently in both of the novels. This constant structure of both texts accentuates the uniformity of the characters’ lives.

Orwell states that ‘it was no use trying the lift’ of which the tone is very matter of fact and conveys the dull monotony of the New World.  Atwood’s uses simple sentences to express the character’s longing of communication with ‘the angels’ and how that was ‘[their] fantasy’. Also, the lack of dialogue in both novels, especially in The Handmaid’s Tale,  depersonalise all of the characters from each other and highlight the cold, dystopian views the authors are trying to convey.

Orwell uses sensory descriptions of the ‘hallway’ which ‘smelt of boiled cabbage’ throughout Nineteen-eighty four. This is used as a way to portray normality and how this dictatorship has become part of Winston’s everyday lifestyle. This idea is also conveyed to the reader when ‘Hate Week’ is mentioned without explanation, assuming the reader is aware of it and positions them in the same world as the character.  The imagery of the helicopter ‘[hovering] for an instant like a bluebottle’ reflects death and decay and also be an allusion to ‘big brother’ being pest-like. This technique of sensory description is used by Atwood when describing the old gymnasium. She describes the ‘sweet taint of chewing gum’ and the ‘pungent scent of sweat’ and although is not appealing imagery it is used in a positive way, as the protagonist reminisces about the old world. 

The theme of vision is used in both The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen eighty-four where the prevention of sight is used to convey the dystopian society in which the characters are living. The girls ‘learned to lip-read’ in the ‘semi darkness’ as a way to communicate and in Nineteen-eighty four Orwell refers to a ‘dulled mirror’ which symbolises how, in the new world, you are unaware when you are being watched and that ‘you had to live in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and every movement scrutinised’.

 The way other characters who have most power over the protagonists are refereed to as family members creates a more sinister feel to the beginning of the novels. Ironically those in charge in The Handmaid’s Tale are named ‘Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth’ who patrol the gym with ‘electric cattle prods’. From this the reader is given the impression that these women are the closest the characters will have to family and also can be seen to show the amount of power they hold upon the girls. ‘Big Brother’ in Nineteen-eighty Four however is less of a character and more of a presence and when he is described as ‘watching you’ ostensibly it seems in a caring, brotherly way but when put in the context of a dystopian society becomes much more sinister.

Wide Sargasso Sea - the unfamiliar and the strange.

The characters’ reactions to the unfamiliar and the strange in Wide Sargasso Sea

‘I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from strangers’ Antoinette.

         Wide Sargasso Sea is rich with symbolism, which often serves to accentuate the cultural gap between characters of different nations, and to highlight the lack ofunderstanding between them. By looking specifically at the characters of Antoinette and her un-named husband – who, for sake of ease I shall from now on refer to as Rochester.Rhys uses the fear of the unknown as a barrier preventing the coming together of these two characters.

     Wide Sargasso Sea,is important as a title; each of these words hold significance, the connotations they evoke foreshadow the major themes of the work. ‘Wide’ describes distance and separation, both spatially as well as psychologically; with different upbringings in entirely different countries, Antoinette and Rochester are polesapart. By naming a specific part of the world, the ‘Sargasso’ sea, Rhys places her novel firmly in reality, she is writing about real historical issues. This sea is without shores, with floating boundaries it is unstable, and endless. The Sargasso Sea infamous as a mysterious place with mysterious forces, part of theBermuda triangle. Antoinette’s belief thatthey got lost on the way to Englandand instead landed in a mysterious place relates to the myths of the sea, it embodies the unknown. The ‘Sea’ has multiple personalities; it is volatile, dangerous and beautiful, a natural powerful force. The wide Sargasso Sea is the entity that occupies the space in between Antoinette and Rochester. It is a symbol for the distance between them and their prejudices about each other.

       The safe and the stable are located within the familiar, when taken into the unknown; both Antoinette and Rochester become uncomfortable, using defence mechanisms to deal with new, unfamiliar surroundings. Antoinette, in England,describes how ‘I open the door and walk into their world. It is, as I always knew, made of cardboard’ the physical act of entering into the unknown creates a sort of temporary, theatrical world for Antoinette.  To make the strange less daunting she removes herself from reality in order to not deal with her situation emotionally she conjures a world that is dream-like, a show that can easily end. The cardboard is lifeless, lightless and easily destroyed by fire or water. 

 Light and colour, for Antoinette represent home, the familiar. In contrast to the weak, ghost-like Antoinette presented to us in Jane Eyre, Antoinette finds comfort in the vivid, as she looks up to the red sky towards the end and saw that ‘all my life was in it’,the sky, like her home is too far away to touch, to be in it. This cardboard world of Englandhas neither light nor colour. For Rochester thecolours of the Caribbean are strange and chaotic, ‘everything is too much...Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near’ Rochester isoverwhelmed by his senses, by the intensity of the colours almost blinding him.Whilst Antoinette feels at home within the world colour and light, Rochester is disturbed by it, feels enclosed by it.  On becoming paranoid, influenced by Cosway, his fear/ intrigue quickly turns to hate: ‘Iwas tired of these people. I disliked their laughter and their tears, their flattery and envy, conceit and deceit. And I hated the place.’ Like Antoinette he views objects and people, when distressed, very much in the same way; ‘I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all, I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness’ Antoinette, for him, is the Caribbean. 

The magic and secret excluding Rochester impels his needto gain control further. His hatred stems from fear, his fear from the unknown.The landscape is mysterious to him and by refusing to give adjectives, all colours are worthless to him, he detaches himself from his surroundings. For Jamaica to Rochester‘it was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me.Nor did she, the girl I was to marry’.Whilst Antoinette uses escapism to deal with the unknown, he resorts to anger and hate. When thinking of England he‘[thinks] of my revenge and hurricanes’, anger is familiar to him, much like the virile wind, the ‘howling, shrieking,laughing the wild blast passes’  relates very much to Rochester’s hysterical state of mind at this point in the novel. Rochestergains more pleasure from the howling English weather than the intensive,oppressive colours of the Caribbean. In expressing his hate for the island he also expresses a jealousy of the‘loveliness’, he is not, and never will be part of its mystery and beauty;despising and envying Antoinette because it is so much a part of her.

       In uncomfortable situations, the feeling of claustrophobia takes over. Rochester feels suffocated by the richness of and thestrength of the colours in Jamaica.Nature is too powerful, too present for him that it bears down on him: ‘I wokein the dark after dreaming that I was buried alive, and when I was awake thefeeling of suffocation persisted’ finding themselves, in a foreign place throws their senses into chaos, sense ofpanic. Antoinette, even predicts this for herself, stating, ‘I will be adifferent person when I live in England and different things will happen tome…England, rosy pink in the geography book map, but on the page opposite thewords are closely crowded, heavy looking’understanding that one has to change in order to adapt to their surroundings, butis still daunted by the seeming oppressiveness of this country so mysterious toher.

   As the novel progresses into the psyche of the characters, Rochester draws ‘a house surrounded by trees.A large house. I divided the third floor into rooms and in one room I draw astanding woman – a child’s scribble, a dot for a head, a larger one for the body, a triangle for a skirt, slanting lines for arms and feet. But it was anEnglish house. English trees. I wondered if I ever should see England again’. The house, and trees, are discernable as English. The objects take precedence whereas the woman is merely a scribble; reduced to shapes enclosed within the‘English’ house. The English trees surround the house, showing his true desireto be surrounded by the familiar. Rochester’sthoughts turn to his own desires, wanting to have complete control, over people and objects. This is an exercise in control; he is the creator of this house,the controller of its inhabitants.

     This is a novel tinged with extremes, of binary opposites. The sea is the boundary; it divides these two opposite worlds. In Antoinette and Rochester’s eyes, the worlds of evil and good, the worlds of love and of hate. There is also the male and female, the truth and the imagined. It can be said that the novel‘deconstructs the oppositions that it establishes’as the juxtaposition of the opposites brought over the sea into close proximitybring chaos, they work as a magnet, they are equal forces repelling.

 Antoinette and Rochester are equal in their feelings about the unknown, Rochester states that ‘desire, hatred, life, death came very close in the darkness.Better not know how close’. Perhaps only in the darkness, everything at once is unknown, drawing thecharacters in their only shared experience. The crossing of boundaries means an intrusion of the familiar and an exploration of the unfamiliar.  Like Rochester, Antoinette isseen as a remnant of a former intrusion, to the other characters she is a constant reminder of the past, preventing her from truly feeling belonged, evenwithin her comfortable surroundings. Rhys herself crosses boundaries, crossingthe established barrier of the reader/writer – she moves from reader into writer, actively reading between the lines of Jane Eyre to construct a life for Bertha and to create her novel.

      Distances play a key role in WideSargasso Sea; there are the spatial distances, between countries, between bedrooms, and the psychological distances that serve only to make larger the misunderstandings between ‘ranks’, national identities and race. BothAntoinette and Rochesterfeel comfortable only in what is familiar to them, the mysterious and strange present danger and fear. The refusal to become familiar with the strangeprevents any relationship between them. Rochestermakes note of the sea dividing them, ‘the sea was not far off but we neverheard it, we always heard the river. No sea’ the space in between these two people is a lurking presence throughout, an unseen barrier. 

It is a constant reminder in the novel, highlighting these differences, this distance. Antoinette embodies the symbol of the sea; she ‘wasstaring out to the distant sea. She was silence itself’ the silent sea, she gets lost by its mystery. The crossing of the sea, anexploration into the unknown, equally an invasion into somebody else’s familiar domain. Rochesterultimately fears her, fears the place –because it is so uncanny – the unknown,but recognised.

Rhys, Jean – Wide Sargasso Sea (London:Penguin Book Classics, 2000 c1966)

---

---

Delve into the Life of Pi.

Should you read it? Yes!
Before you venture to the cinema to see Ang Lee's adaptation, take the time to find a copy, have a sit down, and read.

Discover the incredible story of Pi, the only survivor of a shipwreck. Well, at least the only human survivor....
This imaginative young boy takes the reader on a beautifully well written and constantly surprising adventure. I loved it.
The best thing about getting to read this book before you see the film, is that it allows your imagination to take the reigns. You can play with the scene laid in words before you; you can picture the mysterious moving island and share the wonders, moments of fear, pain, happiness and outright awe with Pi and his companion, Richard Parker.
This book takes you on a journey, whilst reading one cannot guess the next occurrence, adventure. It is wondrous. An extraordinary tale. One of those books that, once you finish the final page, you need to spend the next few minutes reflecting, soaking the whole thing up. After a few days, it's still there. And what a great thing to be able to continue the experience in the theatre. This is a celebration of the power of imagination, the power of a great story.

I shall leave the final thought to Mr Martel himself who so eloquently remarks, " if we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." Imagination, truly, is worth hanging on to, grasp it with both hands, and don't let go.

Martel, Yann 'Life of Pi' 2002, Canongate.
If you enjoy 'Life of Pi' - I'd recommend Rushie's 'Midnight's Children' too!