I am trying to cultivate new interests and following on from doing both available creative writing courses with the Open University I keep trying to develop my interest in writing poetry and scripts: radio, film and stage.
The tutors and course writers on both courses didn't agree on everything, but one thing they did all agree on was the importance of the writer's notebook. I thought I would give that idea some thought.
Notebooks are indeed wonderful things. Repositories for ideas, quotations, snatches of conversation, interesting facts, new words heard or read or otherwise discovered, character traits, metaphors, similes, other figurative devices and examples. This list is endless. When you think about it, how could you hope to ever be a writer of fiction or poetry without one, or many? Impossible surely. If you go about your life with a mind closed to the colours and the shapes that surround you - or pop up randomly and everywhere. If you aren't receptive to the possible ideas and themes in news articles or travel, or mindful of interesting nuggets of information disguised inside the mundanities of everyday life. If you do not hear with interest yet another new word or an old word used differently, then perhaps the notebook isn't for you because it's unlikely that you'd want to be a writer. but for the rest of us they are vital.
I have several so at last I have done something right. The one I'm going through at the moment (notebooks are like the diary allusion quote about always having something interesting to read) and one is a specific file of what I consider to be interesting words, rarer words, words found in dictionaries of local dialect,words sprung from thesauruses from Roget's to Turd Words: others drawn from books, glossaries and lists of neologisms. Some of them are more appropriate to poetry I admit - but others have been useful in life writing and fiction.
Looking through this notebook today has reminded me of some of these words: Fuscous caught my eye. Dark or dusky. Definitely one for the winter's evening poem. It's accurate and evocative in its own right - but has the added advantage of being descriptive of a bird: the Fuscous Honeyeater, a dark grey bird found in Australia. Fuscous Grey could be considered as similar to Dylan Thomas' Crow black or Kingfisher blue.
There are other grey and gloomy words to consider when writing this non existent drab filled poem: tenebrous is a good start - and under its entry Merriam Webster really goes to town: caliginous, stygian, crepuscular, fuliginous, are the most interesting to me. Caliginous and fuliginous are hardly ever seen, though both do appear in my notebook.
There's some good misty terms too: Glaucous is defined in my notebook as a pale yellow mist. Fulvous as a dull brownish yellow. These have to be worth remembering if i ever dip my uncertain toes into horror genre writing. Glaucous in particular looks as if it would reward the writer when looking for a synonym for pale yellow eyes (of a vampire? a werewolf?) Fulvous may be better in depicting the atmosphere. I can see dangers here though - Gothic horror can sometimes seem cheesy and dated and words like that might be perfect in an Edgar Allen Poe short story, but not in modern fiction, even if writing in a particular period prior to the ubiquity of electric lights and mobile phones (how on earth do you pull off old fashioned chillers in today's period settings?). Probably still good for poetry though. I still think interesting, shocking, surprising words inserted into poetry helps provides the kind of vitality a poem needs to set itself apart from the rest.
I can already see a few more horror words that I might want to use during a Halloween piece (we are approaching the end of October after all) that can be added to those already mentioned. Grume: clotted liquid - think blood and gore. Fleer: to laugh lecherously (unpleasant word with unpleasant overtones) Guttering: That thing that candles do when icy stabs of wind slip through the window frames and act like ghostly breath. Again - lose the electricity - you need to be back 100 or 50 years at least. Gelid means icy cold. lie the silent pants on your neck as you watch the candle guttering. And finally scroop - a grating creaking sound. Is there a better word to end on?
Monday, 28 October 2013
Test Blog
Next month I will be restricted to the iPad for blog entries as I will be away from my PC. Given that I will be spending a month travelling around London, I should at least have plenty to blog about when I do get around to it so it would be really useful if I get used to blogging with the pad - even if I'm writing my notes up at the end of each day. Hence this blog which is an iPad blog.
When this trip was planned it was with the intention of staying in an apartment in Bloomsbury. Not exactly where I wanted to be but with some the help from Google maps and Wikipedia I soon got used to the idea. Using maps I was able to focus intensively using the zoom facility on to a the small geographical area where the apartment block is situated. As with anywhere else maps will then highlight precisely what streets, buildings, and points of interest populate the spot. And with London being London, very quickly I soon began getting excited all over again. There was a pub very close to our front door: the Skinner's Arms: an old pub which this close to the centre of London is bound to have a story, but nearby in Queen Anne's Square - misnamed because a mistake over the statue in the square in the image of Queen Charlotte. The Queen's Larder pub - so named after Queen Charlotte who requisitioned the cellar of the building to store food for the ailing George 3rd who was being treated for insanity at a nearby doctors house (now denoted by a blue plaque).
I also noticed under my virtual microscope one of those Hanson cabman's shelter still sited in Russell Square - one of only 13 hat have survived. Weirdly I have loved the idea of these now, listed building, for years and have never seen one. And there was to one within spitting distance if our apartment.
Within the same square there's a school of oriental studies which displays a plaque to TS Eliot. Not of world shattering interest, but now sufficiently interesting enough to look out for. As is the site, also marked out, of a 1694 sword duel between to noblemen John Law and Edward Bear Wilson which ended in the death from a sword thrust by one or other. There's a house that once belonged to Disraeli's son to look out for and the very statute of Queen Charlotte that caused the confusion between how the square was to be named.
There are buildings in the area that were once used by the Bloomsbury Group, and a statue of Virginia Woolf, another of Gandhi, and neurological hospitals which intriguingly link with the George the 3rd story. A house lived in by the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, and an old foundling hospital with its own museum on Coram's Fields.Nearby Torrington Square has a Thursday Farmer's Market, and of course Tavistock Square which is where the bus bomb went off during the tragic events of 7/7.
And I am sure there is much more in this area to be found under the ant's nest scrutiny of Google zoom and Wikipedia, but any research I have done so far has been, if not wasted, perhaps frustrated as the apartment location fro the visit has changed and it is to the east of London I must now switch my gaze.
I suppose London being London, there will always be something of interest on your door step. I'd better take a look at this next one.
The area around Commercial Road is certainly less interesting at first glance and if trip adviser accounts are to be trusted, not particularly pleasant so to continue the exercise of seeking out London.s secret nuggets of interest I will have expand my compass a bit.
Here's a little list I'm going to work with:
Whitechapel Art Gallery, Spitalfields Market, Aldgate Water Pump, Brick Lane Curry Mile, Christ Church, Spitalfields, the Ten Bells Pub and The Truman Pub (which both have interesting stories to tell )
When this trip was planned it was with the intention of staying in an apartment in Bloomsbury. Not exactly where I wanted to be but with some the help from Google maps and Wikipedia I soon got used to the idea. Using maps I was able to focus intensively using the zoom facility on to a the small geographical area where the apartment block is situated. As with anywhere else maps will then highlight precisely what streets, buildings, and points of interest populate the spot. And with London being London, very quickly I soon began getting excited all over again. There was a pub very close to our front door: the Skinner's Arms: an old pub which this close to the centre of London is bound to have a story, but nearby in Queen Anne's Square - misnamed because a mistake over the statue in the square in the image of Queen Charlotte. The Queen's Larder pub - so named after Queen Charlotte who requisitioned the cellar of the building to store food for the ailing George 3rd who was being treated for insanity at a nearby doctors house (now denoted by a blue plaque).
I also noticed under my virtual microscope one of those Hanson cabman's shelter still sited in Russell Square - one of only 13 hat have survived. Weirdly I have loved the idea of these now, listed building, for years and have never seen one. And there was to one within spitting distance if our apartment.
Within the same square there's a school of oriental studies which displays a plaque to TS Eliot. Not of world shattering interest, but now sufficiently interesting enough to look out for. As is the site, also marked out, of a 1694 sword duel between to noblemen John Law and Edward Bear Wilson which ended in the death from a sword thrust by one or other. There's a house that once belonged to Disraeli's son to look out for and the very statute of Queen Charlotte that caused the confusion between how the square was to be named.
There are buildings in the area that were once used by the Bloomsbury Group, and a statue of Virginia Woolf, another of Gandhi, and neurological hospitals which intriguingly link with the George the 3rd story. A house lived in by the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, and an old foundling hospital with its own museum on Coram's Fields.Nearby Torrington Square has a Thursday Farmer's Market, and of course Tavistock Square which is where the bus bomb went off during the tragic events of 7/7.
And I am sure there is much more in this area to be found under the ant's nest scrutiny of Google zoom and Wikipedia, but any research I have done so far has been, if not wasted, perhaps frustrated as the apartment location fro the visit has changed and it is to the east of London I must now switch my gaze.
I suppose London being London, there will always be something of interest on your door step. I'd better take a look at this next one.
The area around Commercial Road is certainly less interesting at first glance and if trip adviser accounts are to be trusted, not particularly pleasant so to continue the exercise of seeking out London.s secret nuggets of interest I will have expand my compass a bit.
Here's a little list I'm going to work with:
Whitechapel Art Gallery, Spitalfields Market, Aldgate Water Pump, Brick Lane Curry Mile, Christ Church, Spitalfields, the Ten Bells Pub and The Truman Pub (which both have interesting stories to tell )
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Some Words.
It's time I made a start - even though I hardly have time to breath today. The best time to start a new exercise I tell myself, is when you either have no time, or you feel you'd rather do anything else. If you find yourself in either of these two situations I believe you should throw yourself into whatever it is, and in doing so if you feel you have been successful, you should succeed with whatever future venture you're trying to get into.
What exactly is a puckered pouch. It's sounds like something you might do with your lips, when expectant of an a little mouth to mouth affection. Actually, it's a mouth piece for trumpet or horn. Chances are I'll never need to know this again - unless I'm either trying to complete a crossword puzzle: 'It offers a snug fit for two mouthpieces while keeping the ends open for moisture to easily dissipate' two words 8 and 6. Or a quiz: 'ruffle your pocket up for a kiss.' Actually they should be the other way round - note to editor.
But wait - that's a pucker pouch - self explanatory, it had to have something to do with a mouth hence pucker. But a puckered pouch is something very different. So here it is: a puckered pouch is a purse of sorts, with a zipper and a wrist holder. The purse itself is, well, puckered in that when it's empty it shows loose folds that are aching to be filled something. More often than not, by a lady's make up. So it's a little quaint ladies toilet bag. I've never been so surprise by a container word since I learned that an etui is a miniature sewing box.
How about some Gees. Like 'gledge' which according to that veritable authority The Urban Dictionary - a repository of many what might be termed 'dirt words' (it's a kind of turd-words site without the freewheeling anything goes obscenities-only-please house rule). The UD says it means jizz (street slang for sperm) and dirt combined into an unwholesome mix. Charming indeed. But I prefer to see gledge as a form of narrow-eyed squinting which is what it means according to Scottish dialect dictionaries. Whereas 'gloze:' means to minimize or attempt to explain away. Gloze is a good old deceit word, as in: 'When Anthony blunt was exposed 20 years ago, there were some who tried to gloze his conduct'. Grume is clotted liquid, like a blood clot - which could be used figuratively. Imagine clot and grume being used to describe fogs and clouds. I'm sure my fledgling poetry would welcome such unexpected descriptive power.
Thinking about it I should concentrate on the words that would likely be useful in new poetry. I have had time to think of myself as a writer - and although I enjoy dialogue, particularly in script writing, I think of myself as someone who would like to crack poetry and would be more likely to keep at this to enable my poetry as more than any other writing discipline, poetry requires a love of language that verges on the obsession.
In that light 'brume' is potentially poetic word again meaning fog. Heavy mist or fog actually- but brumous is the adjective. Nothing to do with old Scots this time, despite its sound, but from the Latin brumas. Brumous could be used to describe an atmosphere at a party, either physically (in terms of cigarette smoke), or psychologically - as in the air hanging heavy with suspicion or resentment - the air was think with accusation, a brumous of resentment filled every space. All from brume which sounds Scottish, but isn't.
Scrouge: to squeeze, to crowd. Dug up from 1820 this one. I'm reading Peter Ackroyd's London a Biography at the moment and I'll be amazed if I didn't draw it up from that - like water in a bucket at a well. In keeping with the theme really - most of these words could be used somehow to describe something of the streets of London during the 1800s. The brume of the London Particular (known also as the pea-souper) the filth pumped out of the chimneys in clouds that clotted the buildings, the streets and its residents as they scrouged their way through, bumping into one another or even on occasion falling in front of the clattering carriages or skidding in the miasma of horse ordure that covered the roads like brown porridge.
That's it I'm obviously under its infectious influence. But then a theme is probably always needed if I'm to complete a blog entry a day on words. Words that might help me one day write a poem.
What exactly is a puckered pouch. It's sounds like something you might do with your lips, when expectant of an a little mouth to mouth affection. Actually, it's a mouth piece for trumpet or horn. Chances are I'll never need to know this again - unless I'm either trying to complete a crossword puzzle: 'It offers a snug fit for two mouthpieces while keeping the ends open for moisture to easily dissipate' two words 8 and 6. Or a quiz: 'ruffle your pocket up for a kiss.' Actually they should be the other way round - note to editor.
But wait - that's a pucker pouch - self explanatory, it had to have something to do with a mouth hence pucker. But a puckered pouch is something very different. So here it is: a puckered pouch is a purse of sorts, with a zipper and a wrist holder. The purse itself is, well, puckered in that when it's empty it shows loose folds that are aching to be filled something. More often than not, by a lady's make up. So it's a little quaint ladies toilet bag. I've never been so surprise by a container word since I learned that an etui is a miniature sewing box.
How about some Gees. Like 'gledge' which according to that veritable authority The Urban Dictionary - a repository of many what might be termed 'dirt words' (it's a kind of turd-words site without the freewheeling anything goes obscenities-only-please house rule). The UD says it means jizz (street slang for sperm) and dirt combined into an unwholesome mix. Charming indeed. But I prefer to see gledge as a form of narrow-eyed squinting which is what it means according to Scottish dialect dictionaries. Whereas 'gloze:' means to minimize or attempt to explain away. Gloze is a good old deceit word, as in: 'When Anthony blunt was exposed 20 years ago, there were some who tried to gloze his conduct'. Grume is clotted liquid, like a blood clot - which could be used figuratively. Imagine clot and grume being used to describe fogs and clouds. I'm sure my fledgling poetry would welcome such unexpected descriptive power.
Thinking about it I should concentrate on the words that would likely be useful in new poetry. I have had time to think of myself as a writer - and although I enjoy dialogue, particularly in script writing, I think of myself as someone who would like to crack poetry and would be more likely to keep at this to enable my poetry as more than any other writing discipline, poetry requires a love of language that verges on the obsession.
In that light 'brume' is potentially poetic word again meaning fog. Heavy mist or fog actually- but brumous is the adjective. Nothing to do with old Scots this time, despite its sound, but from the Latin brumas. Brumous could be used to describe an atmosphere at a party, either physically (in terms of cigarette smoke), or psychologically - as in the air hanging heavy with suspicion or resentment - the air was think with accusation, a brumous of resentment filled every space. All from brume which sounds Scottish, but isn't.
Scrouge: to squeeze, to crowd. Dug up from 1820 this one. I'm reading Peter Ackroyd's London a Biography at the moment and I'll be amazed if I didn't draw it up from that - like water in a bucket at a well. In keeping with the theme really - most of these words could be used somehow to describe something of the streets of London during the 1800s. The brume of the London Particular (known also as the pea-souper) the filth pumped out of the chimneys in clouds that clotted the buildings, the streets and its residents as they scrouged their way through, bumping into one another or even on occasion falling in front of the clattering carriages or skidding in the miasma of horse ordure that covered the roads like brown porridge.
That's it I'm obviously under its infectious influence. But then a theme is probably always needed if I'm to complete a blog entry a day on words. Words that might help me one day write a poem.
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