Pea Arts About

With my mum in hospital and the uncertainty around her care, and then all the running about that having a close relative in hospital involves, it has been difficult to find headspace for writing at all, and writing for my DYCP project specifically. Rather appropriately, I started vaguely reading Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (Abacus, 1997) in which Dyer wants to write a book about D. H. Lawrence but finds himself doing anything but writing a book about D. H. Lawrence. This is my current experience with my Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable project. At least my ACE grant is about developing practice and doesn’t expect a big shiny outcome other than a report on the development of your practice. But I do really want a manuscript to come out of it. So I’m carving snatches of time between hospital runs to write something , even if it’s skirting the edges of what I really want and ought to be writing about. Plus it’s cathartic, getting stuff out ...

It's just gone 3pm on Thursday 21 July 2022 and I'm on a coach waiting to board the Stena Line ferry home. I'm feeling quite panic-stricken at only having my telescopic keyring pen (an excellent gadget gifted by my dear friend Fran) with no refill or back-up. It'll be fine. There's pens at home, sure.  But what if it runs out now? Have I used it enough?  How tedious it is having an anxious brain. It takes my mind off being the only masked person on this nearly full coach, I suppose. We didn't reach Port Ryan quickly enough to get out for a breath of Irish Sea air (I know we're not quite there yet, but practically).  That wasn't why I started writing in my DYCP notebook. I've just read, today cover-to-cover, Diana Athill's late-life memoir Stet , or Somewhere Towards the End (2008). No, I'm not sure about the abbreviation. It's been an enthralling read. I have felt as if she's been telling me her life story and about all the people s...

I've just finished the last session on the Biography Writing class I've been taking with City Lit as part of my Developing Your Creative Practice project and it's all been fantastic experience. The writing exercises set by instructor Robert Fraser have led to me having an outline, trajectory and core themes in mind for my book, which I feel I can begin to draft now. As a special treat, Robert invited the author of our focus text, Xanthi Barker, to join us, and she managed 15 minutes from her lunch break. We got through quite a lot actually, and she was generous with her answers to our questions. It was particularly useful to hear about her writing process for the book in question: Will This House Last Forever? * about her relationship with her father, the late poet Sebastian Barker. As a school teacher she mainly wrote in the summer. She wrote in the mornings, then gave herself the rest of the day to swim or be in the sun when possible. It was too much to be in all day. ...

Prompt 1: Half-way through the year... and things are finally moving. Just four weeks ago I got word that my application to Arts Council England's Develop Your Creative Practice grant scheme was successful. It has been a busy time getting the paperwork sorted to secure the money, then waiting anxiously to make sure I'd done it correctly, then seeing it could take up to six weeks when my schedule had already begun and it's been a tight few years, and the relief of a big wad of cash landing in my account. I'm typing this on my new computer that I was finally able to get. Let's see, it was 2019 when Violet (my HP Pavilion) had a total systems failure and was essentially rebuilt by not-da-in-law (well, he installed an SSD with Linux Mint and I immersed myself in the joys of open-source software).  Things are also looking up on the growing front. In the May Writing Hour I mentioned that this year's peas process had yielded nothing. I was mistaken. Amongst the weeds t...