Discovering David Whyte

Has anyone else discovered David Whyte? Ellie Swoop and I first met him at Ledbury Poetry Festival in 2008. He is an inspirational poet. During his performance, in which he read his poetry in a very different way, he captivated us both.

He reads his poems very slowly to give you time to digest them and he repeats lines which he wants to emphasise. He's also very charismatic and has a wonderful voice. He must have impressed me for me to shell out £20 on his book ‘River Flow – New and Selected Poems 1984-2007’, Many Rivers Press, 2007, ISBN 1932887172, which he signed for me. I have read this large volume word for word and highlighted my favourites with tabs.

In fact, I was so impressed I also purchased one of his audio books, ‘Midlife and the Great Unknown’ and I listen to it at the gym. His voice is so soothing and his words ring the right bells for me and leave me feeling uplifted. He does poetry workshops for businesses all over the world.

My favourite lines have to be:
                                               ‘anything or anyone
                                                that does not bring you alive
                                                is too small for you.’
Extract from Sweet Darkness.

You can read a selection of his poems at http://www.davidwhyte.com/english.html

The Big Question

I think that I have now proved to myself, by taking part in Nanowrimo, that I can write around 2000 words a day towards a novel fairly easily. My big question is – how do I do all of the other things I need to do in the day too?

Serious writers must be superhuman or else need little sleep. Focus on my Nano novel has meant that housework has all but ceased. Standards have definitely dropped. My husband has to keep reminding me about the things he needs ironing (like work trousers at 5.15 am this morning!). My ironing pile is huge. My ironing room, aka spare bedroom, is full. I just hope that we don’t have visitors soon, unless they are champion ironers.

I keep forgetting to get things out of the freezer for tea, resulting in last minute dashes to the supermarket or beans on toast. Luckily here, beans on toast are my hubbie’s favourite boiler fuel.

My hobbies are sadly neglected. Un-knitted wool glares at me from under the table. My family tree is wilting. The massive pile of unread magazines is threatening to take over one side of my study. I’ve bought my Christmas cards, despite having craft materials enough to stock Hobbycraft.

All I keep hoping is that I get faster at writing or else become desensitised to my to do list. Or of course earn a fortune from writing. So how do you do it all?

Writing Class Exercise

I went to my writing class today. The tutor passed round three envelopes and we had to take a piece of paper from each. I got ‘milkman’, ‘hotel’ and ‘bottle of perfume’. It never ceases to amaze me what my brain makes of some of these exercises. Here I was trying to write everything in the vein of my Nanowrimo project to save time, but this exercise refused. For a laugh, I share what I wrote below:-

Slow Burn

I was in love with the milkman. He wasn’t your average hero with his bald head (usually covered with a tweed cap), ruddy face and bow legs. Then, I wasn’t your average heroine, being the wrong side of fifty and rather plump to put it mildly. I worked as a cook in the little Barry Hotel in Broad Street and so, I had every excuse to talk to Alfred (the milkman). He arrived every morning wearing his white apron, breathing a little too heavily due to the weight of the crates.

I don’t know when I realised I was in love with him, but I’d been trying to move our relationship on from ‘Morning, Martha’, ‘Good Morning Alfred’, for a year now. He seemed to resist all of my attempts to be noticed. He didn’t say anything when I began to sleep in curling papers so that even at 6am I had tumbling curls under my cook’s hat, admittedly sugared with grey hairs. He didn’t notice when I began to wear more and more layers of make up or when my skirts got shorter. Maybe he just wasn’t interested.

Still living in hope, I continued with my beauty regime and always made sure I had a clean bright tent under my spruce white apron. Lovesick that is what my mother, God rest her soul, would have called me.

I’d all but given up, but one day as Alfred turned to leave, he said, ‘There be something for you in the bottom crate Martha. Be sure you find it.’ He winked and was gone before he saw I had turned puce.

Wrestling with the crates, I moved them until the last one was exposed. There nestling in amongst the white bottles with silver foil lids was a bottle of perfume.

What Fun

I finally gave in to some new characters. They appeared in my head and demanded that I try Nanowrimo. For those who don’t know, Nanowrimo is an annual writing challenge held in November. The idea is that participants write a 50,000 word novel during the month. It isn’t a competition, rather a personal achievement. See http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano for details.

If I am honest, I was dreading it, as I saw only the pressure to perform and the fear of failure. Three days in and I am loving it. The story is literally coming out of my ears. I think I am channelling! I had completed today’s target by 10am and have made numerous quick notes during the day to point me in the right direction for tomorrow's writing. I expect things might get a bit harder further in, but I’m not allowing myself to think of that for now. The great thing is that loads of my friends are taking part too, so there is plenty support and encouragement around.

The Nanowrimo website is rather annoying, as it does not seem to be able to cope with the volume of users and crashes frequently. It also seems to take forever to change something on your account.

The main thing for me is that I am having so much fun with the writing. Maybe my true voice is emerging at last. I am busy researching in between writing – ancient curses, talismans and herbal medicine. I’m going to pace myself, so I am aiming for 1,700 words a day. Giving myself a gold star for today’s performance.

Rome

We had seven days in Rome over half term. It wasn’t exactly planned, as little one’s passport only arrived on the Monday before! He loved flying. There was me with usual nerves, he was sat cross-legged on his seat and talking non-stop. It helped that hubbie used his air miles and we had Club class seats (real crockery and a lovely meal!)

I wasn’t quite prepared for how exhausting Rome is. The streets teem with traffic, including loads of mopeds. Crossing the road was a case of walking out with your eyes closed and praying, as the traffic dodged around you. We reckoned that we walked further than on our Lake District walking holiday earlier in the year. I have never seen so much graffiti, it was even on some monuments.

The sights are quite widely spread, with lots of modern-day Rome surrounding them. Queues to get into some sights such as the Colosseum were huge, to the extent we didn’t always wait. D got to throw his coin in the Trevi fountain and I got to eat some lovely ice cream – pistachio, coffee and tiramisu. Yum.

Colosseum

Ancient ruins

Constantine's Arch

Trevi Fountain

On the day we went to the Vatican, we got to St Peter’s Square to find the Pope on the dais outside St Peter's Basilica. Daniel was thrilled to see the Popemobile when he had finished his address. We then went inside St Peter's Basilica and I loved the different coloured marbles and the window above St Peter’s tomb.

St Peter's Square

Window above St Peter's Tomb

The weather was very kind, I even got sunburned a couple of times. I could get used to sitting in one of the many street side cafes with my coffee and writing. I did write quite a bit, mainly character sketches for future use.

Piazza del Popolo

Beautiful blue sky

Back From Rome and Some Competitions

A quick post, as my head doesn't seem to have got back from Rome even if my body has! We had a good week. It was very tiring as we walked miles. The weather was very kind. We even saw the Pope and the Popemobile. I'll post some photos over the next few days.

Congratulations to my friend and tutor Sue Johnson on her publishing contract.

Sue's Flash fiction competition on the theme of STARS closes on 30 November 2010. Details at  www.writers-toolkit.co.uk

Another friend is holding a short story and poetry contest with the theme Domestic Violence. Closing date: 30th November. Further details from: ce.apps@tesco.net or http://www.writing-experiment.webs.com/

Back soon with photographs of Rome. Mx

Home Grown

I love growing my own fruit and veg, even if it is time consuming watering the plants. This is the third year running we’ve grown tomatoes on the patio and we had a bumper crop. We tried broad beans, but only got one meal’s worth. My purple broccoli have mainly succumbed to the cabbage white butterflies. How do they find my few plants? They must smell or something, as the patio had been covered in white butterflies. Consequently, only one plant soldiers on supposedly to produce broccoli after Christmas.

Our main crop is chillies. My husband likes everything hot!! We have grown three types this year, long green ones, round ones, which are a vicious looking purple before they go red, and tiny red ones. Those tiny red ones had my husband and son red faced, fighting for breath when they tried them. Oh dear, I gave some of those plants to the school plant stall – someone will have a surprise!

For the last few weeks, I have been busy preserving my crops. We have jars everywhere of tomato and onion relish, red pepper chutney, green tomato chutney, tomato sauce, chilli jam and extra hot chilli jam (eat at your peril). Today I need to pickle the three different types of chilli. My house smells permanently of vinegar and I must have bought up the entire area stock of Kilner jars, but I reckon it will be worth it for all those lovely flavours throughout the year.

If you are one of the people who bought those chilli plants….oops! Sorry I didn’t realise they were quite that hot.