Things from yesterday
#ThingsISawTo(yester)day
By Wiener Strasse, two benches side by side. On one bench sat two old Turkish men. Suit jackets and white shirts, leaning back, legs wide. They talk in occasional heavy sentences, slow nods. On the next bench three old Turkish women, with heads scarfs, dark clothes, socks and sandals. They too lean back, legs wide but they talk faster, add hand gestures, over-step each other’s words. All five are short and solid looking, they make me think of pigeons, sitting and passing the day in the sunshine, trilling away, tired of the city but still in love with it enough to sit and watch it pass by them. I listen to the men’s short slow sentences combined with the women’s more energetic conversation. I think they’re making a kind of music and probably have been for decades in the same way on that same bench. Without any obvious reason it’s time to leave. They stand slowly, hands on knees. The men walk one way, the women they other.
#30kin35
1671 words yesterday. So basically that’s me kicking the novel’s arse after a long weekend in London where nothing got written (except in my head (which doesn’t count for these purposes)). The simple truth is the more you write the easier it becomes. The more you let the story you are trying to conjure inhabit your real life the easier that becomes. The more you respect and commit to your project the easier it becomes. It’s never easy (not for me anyway) but it does become easier. I tell writing students this all the time while often forgetting this myself. It is good to remember.
Before yesterday…
I wrote a review in The Guardian of Emma Jane Unsworth’s outstanding novel ‘Animals’. Getting to write a review in the Guardian is one of those surreal happenings that I thought would never happen in a million years and then suddenly do and from nowhere. There’s a lot of instability in a writer’s life (more than most would imagine - I might write about this at some point) but the adventures, these sorts of strange opportunities make it well, well worth it. Anyhow, read the review if you’d like and definitely read the book. You have my word that it’s a corker.
