Mike Crowl's Blog, page 8

Cynicism

 Cynicism

Published in Column 8 on 13 May 1992, on my 47th birthday.  The column focuses on the loss of the America's Cup, something that came as a shock to the 'country' after thinking we could never lose it again. Crump and Scotty - one a real person, a popular writer, and the other an actor - bewailed the loss...or at least Scotty did. Unfortunately I can't find a link to it on the Net. Various politicians are mentioned here, along with well-known sportspeople. The programme, More Issues, a ...

Disappointing movies

 Looking back through older posts I find that I use to review quite a few movies, mostly those that turned up on TV. Occasionally something I saw at the movies. 

I don't go to the movies that much anymore, especially since streaming arrived in full force. I don't feel quite so bad about watching a movie that turns out to be a bit of stinker if I haven't paid for it up front - and spent almost as much on getting an icecream. 

We have a small cinema here in Oamaru. It was recently sold and is now ca...

Incidental Music

 To my great surprise it's now around six months since I abandoned the book I was writing. It would have been number five in the Grimhilderness series. 

So what have I been doing with my time since then (apart from gardening, walking, housekeeping with my wife, cooking meals - between us - performing in three concerts in one week, two of them in different locations, and all the church-connected things we do. 

Being a creative person I found it hard not to be doing something creative, and then out ...

Finding the Father

While reminding myself of this poem by Robert Bly this morning, I came across the notes I'd made below it. I thought they might be enough of interest to add to this blog. 

 FINDING THE FATHER by Robert Bly

My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing ˗ as the ocean carries logs.
So on some days the body wails with its great energy;
it smashes up the boulders,
lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door.
We do not have time to dress.
He wants us to go with him thr...

Abandoning the book

 I haven’twritten anything here for a just under a month. For those who are still interested,that may seem like a long time between posts. You may be wondering what the holdup is in regard to the book I’ve been writing.

Well, Idid continue to do a lot of work on it. Wrote a long chapter – nearly 3000words - which explained things that had happened before the book opened. Thiswas a chapter, however, that I didn’t intend to include in the book. It was formy own understanding of the backgro...

Do I ever stop writing about Procrastination?

Procrastinationtakes all sorts of forms.

I’vewritten about some of these before, and about we can do about them, but I wantto mention a heavyweight one that arises.

This iswhere you find yourself saying that the story just doesn’t have the wings tofly, that it’s too much like everything else you’ve written, that thecomplexity of it will never make sense. Might as well abandon it.

That thereare better things in life to be doing.

This is atough one to deal with, because there are al...

Play and fail

I've been reading the book, Shakespeare - the man who pays the rent over the last several days. In it Brendan O'Hea interviews Judi Dench on the Shakespearian roles she's played over her career. It's full of insights into character, acting, rehearsing, understanding how people behave and much more, along with a few sniffy moments from Dench when O'Hea asks a difficult question or makes what seems to her to be a squishy statement. 

I've made a  note of two particular comments I appreciated, though...

Progress again!

 Finally I’mmaking better progress on my current book, and it’s very satisfying to be doingso.

I had togo back to the beginning and start again. This didn’t mean I dumped everythingI’d previously written, it meant that I got the focus right: now the maincharacter isn’t just narrating the story, as he was before, but the story isfocused on him as well.

He doesn’tjust do ‘stuff’ in the story – the story doesn’t exist without his actions, andin fact we’ve learned that he’s the cause of s...

Goodbye, DailyQuordlePoem - I think!

Joshua RyanAround April 2022a tweet suggesting writing a Daily Quordle Poem appeared on Twitter (or X, ifyou prefer the simpler title). Whether the idea came from Kyle Edwards or DavidWright, I’m not sure, but the aim was to take the four words that were the solutionsto the Quordle puzzle of the previous day and use them as the first words oneach line in a four-line poem.

Theseare the original rules as set out on Twitter.

Thisform’s rules:

Writea poem, lines starting with yesterda...

Fast versus slow

 

I’mcurrently reading a biography of Terry Pratchett called Terry Pratchett: ALife with Footnotes. It’s written by his former Personal Assistant, RobWilkins. The writing is excellent, all the more helped by Wilkins’ closeassociation with him and his love of Pratchett’s writing.

I’ve beenfocusing a lot in these recent blog posts on slow writing. The only timePratchett could have been considered slow in his writing was in his lateteens/early twenties when he not only worked full-time (most...