A Strange Flash of Revelation

 

On the day I reached 124,055 words of the first draft, at the point of crafting the finale (and a whisker away from completion), I experienced a truly strange flash of revelation.

I was standing in the kitchen, holding a tea-towel.

It was subtle, intense.

The towel I held was green and white and I was drying a pan. What happened next was unexpected: I didn’t go looking for it; it just came to me from nowhere. And it was real, and it was right. I knew its inherent truthfulness. I understood in completeness something so very, very important as I approached the final chapter – as to why this book was so dear to me.

(Disclaimer: I originally wrote this blog on 9^th November 2021. I started writing the novel at the end of March 2020.)

The ‘pandemic’ months/years, for a vast amount of us, were like been fast-track along a street called desperate, in a town named despair, with back-drop of constant apocalypse. Each and every day, part of the world was outside our reach. The sun grimly shone, and every evening the moon was our silent companion.

Our minds, and our bodies were fighting against the unspeakable, invisible assailant. Life opened up to us our own personal paths of anguish that we often frequented alone… sometimes, fearfully alone. Well-meaning people tried to help, but were coping with their own emotional, social and physical traumas. Their occasional words were like a postcard from a distant relative, from a far-away land, arriving battered and bent – and for all the best intentions - with writing smudged beyond all comprehension. It was a good message that our heads could neither embrace, nor perceive; far gone to accept the healing words of hope - day after gruelling day, isolated in the lockdown.

Writing this book is my own way of dealing with the pandemic.

This was my tea-towel revelation: I had to do something to get through. The book was ‘that’ essential, something.

To be honest, I don’t think I had a choice. It had to happen. I had to write it. Another example in my life of: do, or die.

I can’t tell you how much this book saved me in the last year and a half. It was a vision of hope, but I’m absolutely fascinated about how and why it happened, or how it even came into being. This is the truth. I felt so ill on the day I conceived the idea in my mind; awful in fact. Looking back; it was a case of beauty from ashes – my self-help manual written and acted by myself.

To quote Arthur Kingsley McFadden from Mis-fit, Misplaced, Miss Shelly Clover:

‘The beauty is in the process, not the prize. It’s about the passion, not the patent!’

This novel was conceived in pain, delivered with joy… and when I look back, and it was my hiking boots, compass, water bottle, crooked stick and fleece through a dark, treacherous mountain pass; this and so much more.

When I hold a copy now and flick from front to back, and really look at the words dancing by, it 100% brought me through so much: Christmas alone; my neighbour dying (I can see her walking to the ambulance even now); my key-worker letter spread out on the passenger seat of my car, should I get pulled over by the police; the truly horrific abuse from a hacker in an online ‘live’ lesson (“I know where you live.”); the confusing physical pain; the one-way blue arrows in the corridor, and despite government denials, the unequivocal anger that the next lockdown was incoming.

Do you know what? I’m super grateful I got to write this. I really am. I thank God for it, I really do. It’s made the last three years mean something. And to have meaning in life – in whatever capacity – is what it should be all about. To think, if I hadn’t used Google Earth, and scrolled down on the beck on that fateful morning…

Take care, folks. All the very best for your creative lives; please don’t neglect it.

 

James Steven Clark

Writing in this "Scorching" British heat wave.

 

I write on a leather sofa that I stick to. That's pretty uncomfortable - truth be told.

At the back of my mind, I’m thinking about schoolwork; the creation of a brand new Sociology GCSE without reasonable time to manifest and deliver - as always - trying my best for great students. I worked in the first week of the holiday, so I’m ‘entitled’ to cast you (work) aside for now.

In the meantime, I’m writing and I’m being faithful to it.

I love how I feel compelled to write even when this unusual scorching "British" August dulls my senses into submission. I battle back. I open Scrivener. I start typing. The sun beats down and fights my resolve to write and create. Ha Ha, I win again today. I win big time.

Oh, to do this full-time: what.a.joy! If only.

Me -prolific? Potentially anyway. What do I do to make this happen, to make this continually happen?

Pipe-dream.

Maybe…

For now, anyway…I take heart in accomplishing another 1,000 words, and I drive forward, remembering the 5 star reviews, rationalising the 3 stars and never,giving.up.

Never.

Heat – you are but a momentary distraction; I welcome you. I approach you with fortitude and undying resolve.

 

 

Making Life that Little bit More Worthwhile

I do think three quarters of the battle in this life is finding a wholesome passion to pursue.

Something so worthwhile that it moves your soul and consumes it; You feel it richly igniting.

Writing does it for me totally. It’s therapy. It’s productive. It re-aligns my head. It nourishes my creative urges. It makes life a lot more worthwhile.

I used to love writing stories as a kid and I’m so glad I rediscovered my long, lost passion. (Glad I found this treasure again with a better brain and a richer understanding of human experience.) I’m lucky to have a passion…but I don’t believe its out of reach for anyone on this planet if they just keep looking, keep turning over life’s stones, and clearing the mud off the underside.

Selfish ambitions and vain conceit simply DO NOT cut the mustard for me: what’s the point in doing something for those reasons? Yet, we’re all wired differently, and some would disagree.

Even if my books are never discovered, I had a heck of a fun time writing them, and I showed great resolve and patience in completing them. I know I can look back on my life and say; at least I made the most of my little talent and tried to nurture it to flourish even if it was only a tiny flower in a garden of abundance.

Night is darkest...just before the day

Truly bitten by the bug at the moment.

Ideas coming thick and fast.

You know a productive day lies ahead when every sinew and morsel in you is planning meals around your writing schedule. Fun activities pale into the back-burner in comparison. Writing consumes you.

I have this one scene; dear goodness...I'm about 4,000 words away from writing it. I can't wait. I will craft it. I will make it poetic. I will do it justice.

As I think I mentioned in a previous post; at my Gran's funeral (she lived to 100), a random person at her wake said, I read your book; I really like how you capture the light-hearted moments and then throw me into the dark without warning. 

I think I'll try that again. Can't wait.

The title for this book - btw - is: The Children at the End of the River.

In a dark place, when I had the virus back in March; and I'm talking the nadir of nadir's...this idea came.

I was taking a trip down memory lane, using google maps to scour places I'd visited as a kid. Forested places. Country roads that wind to nowhere. I was thinking about my Grandpa who passed away on Christmas Eve and, I guess - in my malaise - using happy memories as some kind of comfort blanket.

Then I scrolled down from above on to the river I used to play in as a child.

Instantly there.

I hope I look back on this profound moment of darkness in my own life and realise that I was actually being thrown into the light.

The Writer's Confidence

At this moment in time I have three unfinished books.

One nearing a hundred thousand words, one on 27,000 and the other (the latest) sitting on 32,000. (I’m really driving with the latter.)

All in all, that’s nearly 60,000 words for this year alone, which isn’t bad I guess.

So, what exactly stunted the progress of the first two as I know I’m not done with either, and I will revisit them both.

Confidence.

Self-belief.

Listening to the very top athletes – and I mean those who are in the peak of their condition – I never cease to be amazed by the following fact they reiterate time and time and time again…

5% of their success is to do with their physicality and 95% is to do with their mind.

95% is to do with their mind. That's whopping. The best of the best say, it's majority mind.

So, I’ve written and published two books but I don’t feel like an author.  I don’t remotely feel like an author. I’ve never taught English in secondary school (apart from a term for year 7's). I don’t have a lucrative book deal in the pipeline. I don’t stick to a manicured and methodical writing schedule. I don't have people queuing for signatures or interviews.

Weirdly, I don’t exactly need an extrinsic form of recognition to keep writing, or an external candidate ‘validating’ that I have written a good book because, regardless, I always see the process of creating and crafting a story as a beautiful labour of love in of itself. So, what’s preventing me from pushing some projects over the edge? How do I build my writer’s confidence?

Countless times I have started writing a segment that took me in such a vibrant and glorious direction I was left thinking: ‘where the heck did that come from – that is stellar stuff!’ It’s happened frequently and recently too.

So, why is it that when I open the document I occasionally feel like the previous material wasn’t really from me; like I’m a charlatan; pretending to be something I’m not? Or, that I’m not worthy enough to find and deliver good scenes/moments even when they explode in my mind. How odd is that?

As a writer I need to take great heart from the top athletes who have fully grasped that putting one foot in front of the other (and just keep doing something like that over and over) is sometimes all it takes.

So, I didn’t write any words for the latest novel today because I did not possess the writer’s confidence to pursue a line or ten. Yet, paradoxically, I’ve written 400+ words for this blog post.

I’ll keep working on my ‘winning’ mentality along with you all. Wish me luck.

 

 

For what it's worth...

I love being a teacher; I really do.

I get to positively impact the lives of children on a daily basis - challenging but surmountable 'even' in a British lock-down.

What a year so far: what a crazy, crazy year?

For some bizarre reason, I haven't touched Shelly Clover 2 (90,000 words and counting) in nearly two years. I'm neeeaarllllyy there with that. Is it confidence issue as I approach the finish line? Is it subliminal procrastination? Goodness only knows.

What I do know - despite Stephen Covey's assertions surrounding 'circles of influence and circles of concerns' in his book,  'The 7 Habits of highly effective people'  - is that life throws some substantial  roadblocks.

I can also unequivocally and categorically state that our privatised education system here in the UK is so consuming, so exponentially consuming...that my dreams are on the back-burner.

I will return to Mis-fit, Misplaced, Miss Shelly Clover part deux, I will, I will, I will...

Back in March, I'm convinced that I had the dreaded 'C'. KO'd for two weeks I was. The unearthly fatigue, conjunctivitus, change in taste and utterly bizarre 'cytokinin' response were horrific. Two weeks of hell and ALWAYS in the 80% (as it turns out), not like these poor souls who were tipped over the edge.

In the midst of a 'very' dark place I used google maps and found a place of sanctuary I visited as a youth. I think it was a longing for my homeland, perhaps even a virtual comfort blanket for my exceedingly troubled and anxious soul. Again, goodness knows.

But whatever: 'BANG!'

Like a lily in the dirt at the bottom of a pond, slowly rising to the surface, and blossoming...this moment of map searching triggered an idea that I cannot get out of my head. The long and short; there's a new idea, a new book.

I want to share it with you; put it in your hands, put it in your heads.

I can only hope, this time, that our neo-liberal education system - based upon callous quantitative data and actuarial analysis (and largely overseen by Sociopathic ladder-climbers) - does NOT prevent me from delivering this.

It could be good; really good.

Much love.

Left Brained/Right Brained

Left-brained/Right-brained.

So, it appears as if nothing’s happening; nothing’s going on.

But, I have been a busy little beaver…

2018 marked my first new year’s resolutio

n in a long time and I have been largely faithful to it. Namely, finish part two of the series. Of course, me being me, I’m invariably the typically stoic Yorkshireman and I have kept tight-lipped about this to everyone.

To this end, I have been quietly industrious for the last five months. As I write, I’m finishing editing chapter 13 and there’s 90,000 words so far.

Ultimately, I love writing. I adore the right-brained creativity of it all, but I also love the left-brained meticulouslyC methodical part to it all as well. Who wouldn’t? (….or, is that just me’)

Tentative release date - 24th October 2018.

The reason: It’s the week running up to Halloween (And, this is the time period when the book is set.)

I’m aiming to finish during the summer holidays - get the project proof-read - edit again - and then release it in the week running towards Halloween. This has been so cathartic.

Don’t forget: you can pick ,up Mis-fit, Misplaced, Miss Shelly Clover for free at SmashAZwords.

All the love,

Jim