Vivat Libertas

That quotation from Ovid (who must have been incredibly annoying as a person, but damn  his poetry was good) roughly translates as something like "I shall be read on the lips of the people" - a pretty classic and incredibly elegant statement of writing for posterity, and one that got me thinking. These days, ask people about writing for posterity and they'll probably say that it's a bit arrogant. Some will laugh. Some will shuffle away nervously, afraid of being contaminated by anything remotely unconventional. Some clever cynic or another will let out a bitter cackle and point out that everything crumbles and decays eventually - people, governments, societies, even paper and ink - so there's no point in writing for future generations. I'll admit, some of those criticisms do sting. I'd hate to be arrogant or big-headed, and likewise, if everything is going to crumble (and it is - it doesn't help that I think we're in real danger of all dying fr...

A very short, random poem I wrote about the effect Pablo Neruda's poetry had on me. It was kind of just a spur-of-the-moment thing and I hadn't posted in ages, so... Neruda With your pen and voice and sheer poetry You touched my heart, softly stroking it - Sounding a string or two, deeper and richer Than I thought I'd know. On a starless English night You swept away the clouds And let me see the bright pinpoints of a lover's dreamworld. My heart and mind were wrenched, I didn't care, I fell to it like some lovesick maniac and let loose the feelings I'd kept hidden for so long. That night, I held the pages, more fragile than a wing, between my fat fingers and came so close to love I felt I could touch its face: To me, nothing mattered More than words.

So V. S. Naipaul , the Nobel laureate, has caused quite a stir by claiming that women writers are inferior to men. Of course, some people have been up in arms about it. Some people have just laughed it off . Some people have applauded Naipaul (here's a free sick bucket). Before I start, I am female and a batshit insane liberal, and sexism gets me mad. So no, I'm not your average bigot. Not at all. (In fact, I'd hesitate to describe myself as a bigot.) And, for all this, I'm forced to admit that he has a point. "YOU SEXIST!" you cry. "YOU TRAITOR TO THE FEMALE SEX! HOW DARE YOU!" "Hold your horses," I say, "and let me explain my point." Yes, there are good female writers out there - there's Doris Lessing and Agatha Christie, for example, and I'm a Jo Shapcott fan (I know that that's technically poetry, but still). Hell, I've been tipped off that Vera Britten's very good as well. I've got nothing...

I call myself a writer - not necessarily a good one, that's true, and not one who writes or updates frequently, but a writer all the same. Why? Writing's a part of me that I can't get rid of. I've been reading this article recently (yes, I know it goes to deviantART, yes, there are nice people and good art over there, yes, you just have to look really hard to find them), which talks about what good writers wished they had been told when they first started. I've been writing since I was umm...about six, and I've no idea how long I've been writing well  for - or if I can write well at all. Mainly I learned through teaching myself and paying little or no attention to anyone who tried to teach me things, which isn't always the best way... ...Looking back on it, I think that one of the things I wish people had told me, or that someone would tell other people, is that no-one can tell you how to write - only you can change things . It's a very trite ...

I don't like to pad things out. To those who will laugh at me and point out the fact that my blog posts are generally quite long - I did notice the length quite some time ago, thank you very much. Part of it is because they're written like informal essays and part of it is because I like waffling in my introductions. However, the main points I make are generally quite succinct and waffle-free. Why? Because I like my points to be understood  and recognised for what they are. Evidently, this isn't a very good writing style when trying to comfort people and...oh darn it, it's happened again. The few readers of my blog (hello there) may be wondering what the hell's up with my writing today: it's disjointed and not as snarky as it usually is. Without revealing any more about myself, it's because I'm bloody miserable and annoyed right now due to family troubles. I'm bloody annoyed for a couple of reasons, which end up forming a story which I'll...

A story I wrote on a whim. Remember, everyone is Jesus in purgatory . No, I was not on drugs when I wrote this - but I had read The Master and Margarita beforehand. (It's a good book and y'all should read it.)  They sat together like that, man and woman, watching the sunset. He gestured to a decanter on the table, a jug of clear water next to it.  “Wine?” he said. “I’ll water it for you.”  “Thank you,” said the woman, passing him a thin-stemmed glass. Elegantly the man poured in equal quantities of wine and water; her worn hands trembling, she took back the glass and drank deeply, the dying sun shining through the red liquid. “Excellent...is it Falernium?”  The man laughed and shook his head, golden hair flying. “No, it’s Cecubum.”  “It’s really very good.” The woman paused.  “It’s the same wine that your ancestor drank while mine died on a tree.” He pointed to it: an ancient, wizened thing with what looked like bloodstains on its trunk, brownish-black i...

I'm not a complete Shakespeare nut. I don't argue that he's the greatest writer ever to have lived (that spot is reserved for Tolstoy; I haven't decided on the best playwright, but my favourite is most definitely Anouilh, and my favourite poet is Dylan Thomas), and neither do I believe he should be studied to the point of excluding almost every other English writer - give us a break and let us read some Spenser or Milton ( Paradise Lost  can be pretty hard to get through if you're not well versed in the Bible, but it's worth it). However, saying that Shakespeare is bad  is on a whole other level of wrongness; Shakespeare's writing is many things to many people, but it's not bad - not even by the standards of other great literature, and not even by the standards of his contemporaries. His works have survived and etched themselves into our literary consciousness; can you say the same for, say, Marlowe? Unless you study English Literature beyond GCSE level ...

So you really  want to write a medieval European fantasy. You have everything wonderfully planned out: the characters, their clothes and facial expressions, even the drunken antics they got up to at a bar 15 years ago which, unbeknownst to them, started them off on their mysterious quest to get the MacGuffin and save the world as we know it. And then it hits you: you don't actually know anything about  medieval Europe! What do you do? Never fear: just make it up as you go along. I mean, as long as you don't throw in references to computers or phones, you'll be OK. And it's not like they didn't play basketball back then, right? Thing is, I'm quite sick of seeing "medieval" settings which are either LOTR ripoffs, have had no  research done on them, or both at the same time. It shows lazy thinking on the part of the author and disrespect for history and logic. "But it's in a fantasy world! I don't have to be completely accurate!" ...

First off, I saw my friend and his sister today. I don't see them a lot and it was good to talk to them again - they're probably the people most on my level in my social circle. Anyway, we had a good time and during the course of the day my friend asked to look at some of my writing. He knows how I write loads and loads of stories but run out of steam once I reach the middle (sometimes I don't even get past the beginning...), and I showed him part of a story I'd written on one of his prompts. We both had a good laugh at its general crackiness (I may post it up here one day, but it was a story about a French intellectual being kidnapped by a chair from IKEA who wanted to search for his lost love...yeah, it was weird) and my overblown style of writing (I was trying to parody bad romance novels and failed hard). So, this friend suggests I combine three of my stories (beginning, middle and end) and I suggest that since there are three of us we could each take a part of th...