Love+trunk blog

Trunk blog: noun. A previously published article that I feel I have to share. I keep a few of these tucked away (trunked) and rip them out whenever the mood strikes.

Feeling literary?

I have often considered writing a novel, something that will at least get some attention from some people – a rather ambitious idea, and if you are anything like me, also a rather rubbish idea. Why?

Well frankly, it is possibly one of the most difficult things to do. In fact, a novel is a difficult beast to tame without getting famous for your efforts. And besides that obvious set-back, I have a sneaking suspicion that most people at some stage consider trying their hand at writing. Everyone has a story to tell and, it would seem, a desire to tell it.

What that means is that anyone considering the task of writing a novel is in the difficult position of competing with every novel that has been written, is being written and is likely to be written in the future. And it is pretty hard to be significant in literature, when it has already been claimed by the greatest minds on earth.

That is the playing field, now for the game. A novel is an extended, generally fictional, prose narrative. This implies that a novel is the creation of an organism in itself. It is a world, with geographical specifications, in which characters (people, animals, aliens, deities, robots, spirits, various forms of machinery and sometimes talking household goods) exist (unless it is post modern, in which case it could comprise a series of articles from Homeless Talk and still win a Booker award). These characters should be in some manner unique, to enable the reader to tell them apart. The novel should have a sequence of events, or plot conveyed coherently through the vehicle of narrative, thereby creating the story (once again, barring post modernism).

Once all of this is achieved, the novel should be in some way appealing to some people. Close friends and family members are usually willing to buy the work of fiction, and speak highly of it. Literary critics will also invest in a copy and will speak of it, but with varying degrees of benefit to the author.

With all of the above in mind, I have in the past (several times) set myself to the task of writing a novel. Several fundamental problems always crop up, much like a recurring nightmare: my inner narrator (in a hazardously annoying voice) would use words such as teetering, precipice, moribund, wanderlust and other examples of deeply contrived expressions that we expect in magazine short stories.

At some point during this saga, it will occur to me that I am trying to do what everyone tries to do at some point…and what has been done remarkably by other, mostly smarter, people.

This being said, it is not an impossible task, but it remains one that demands a lot of time and dedication. I have resigned myself to the fact that I may never be a novelist; I simply do not have the patience. I do, however, encourage anyone with a desire to write to do so. Whether it works out or not, there is nothing quite like taking some time out to feel literary.

24hrs of strange world

A mate of mine was thrown out of a doctor’s office for saying ‘oh crap’ on the same day that I read about PETA being up in arms over the Super Mario games. PETA claims that these games condition us to be cruel to animals and the doctor’s office…well goodness knows what they claim.

Having been a wild child in my youth I have been thrown out of a great many places – serious places, like airports – but to be unceremoniously told to leave a health professional’s practice for saying ‘Oh crap’!? It makes little sense to me. They would do better with a swear jar or something.

In other news (all in the same 24 hours) an ex varsity professor of mine died – he died in April already but I only read about now. He was terrible to me, and was subsequently involved in a literary scandal that had the local academics in a frenzy of squinting-eyes carefully combing argument and counter-argument, picking out the bits that proved or disproved to write it all down again paraphrasing for their own benefit. This prof failed me for a subject I earned a first-class pass for later in my Honours year, and a subsequent bursary to Masters (the dreaded thesis I am now so deftly avoiding). I wrote him a very nasty bit of literature this year that I had every intention of not only sending it to him, but to everyone he had offended. Thank goodness I didn’t! People have short memories: they wouldn’t have remembered me as the wounded student who bravely leapt to the defence of the brilliant famous authoress – but instead the viper-tongued little witch who insulted an ill man (with all past indiscretions promptly forgotten). The main reason why I only read of his death recently is because I decided to look him up so that I could get his email address and send him my vitriolic input anyway. Thank+goodness I never save anyone’s details.

The headlines worried me: 'In Memoriam', 'Melancholy and light', 'Stephen Watson, guide, teacher, friend', or worse the Times blurb that one of 'South African's finest writers and poets has succumbed to cancer'.  Regardless of his treatment of me, and others of my gender who speak my language - we owe the man a bit of respect. The sort of respect that we illustrate with good grammar and no cliché's. As for the idiots at the Times: the greatest respect you can pay this man, the least you owe him, is to learn to English please.

Still in the same 24 hours I tracked down a friend who I had last seen six years ago, and had little hope of ever finding again. A maze of Womens’ Union members, small-town promotional websites, a complete stranger who hadn’t lived in the area for 40 years and finally a local pastor – paid off. Who would have thought?

The strangeness finally reached a culminating point when I picked up the rubbish bit of fiction I am currently reading in an effort to avoid my thesis and read the following line: ‘No makeshift weapon could hope to be as deadly as the well-flexed hands of an angry baker.’

It is 2hr17 in the afternoon – we have some ways to go yet.