Month: November 2019

Of course, you can talk about Possession (A S Byatt) any way you want to.

~ Joan Enoch ~ Leave a comment

You don’t have to match contents that are there, or mode, against ways to say what you want to, about it.  You need to watch those ‘have tos’.

I don’t put an apostrophe between the ‘to’ and the ‘s’ above, because the ‘tos’ or ‘have tos’ is plural.

I know there is a convention to put that apostrophe there – in some circles – but I don’t join in with those.

I am old school.

I go by what I was taught in that old school, a long time ago.

I am not always right in spelling and grammar – ‘right’ according to how I was taught.  I make mistakes, and – I know most spellings – that is an old-fashioned way of saying it – I spelt ‘medicine’ ‘medecine’ for years – or was that a mere slip? – because I thought it was spelt that way – and didn’t find out until – oh, was it 1994? – that it wasn’t spelt that way – I do hope that spike has gone from my WordPress – the one that seems to cause pop-ups.

About bit-money and cars, so far.

And, of course, I have dashes all over the place and I am not Emily Dickinson.

I am at a point where I use – oh, what were they called now? – those joining words – those ‘ands’  and ‘buts’ – at the beginning of a sentence, if I want, instead of in a proper place that I was taught about.

I know it’s Thanksgiving over there – gotta mention it.

I’m still mopping up from NaNo.

~ Joan Enoch ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been over to the site again, lost everything I had logged there before, put the word-count in again and I’m still a winner – all my stats are gone so I’m a ‘closed book – any chance I’m writing a mystery?’  They have no idea where in the world I am writing, that stat having disappeared . . .

Oh well, I’m not worrying overmuch – the site asked me to fill in my profile – this was right at the beginning – I did – and then they wanted me to fill it in again – I did . . .

You may need to be a Pinterest person in order to get everything from NaNo.  I didn’t fill that in.  There was something else I didn’t fill in.  Maybe it’s my fault NaNo hasn’t gone straightforward for me in its gubbins.  I now have two progress lines in the stats.

I shrug my shoulders – they ache plenty and that is probably good for them.

I found something else I wrote about how I felt about the validation – in a way, I feel a bit put out that I did all that and – it isn’t there – but I have, in a note – ‘. . . the validation process isn’t available this year . . . .  That is good news for me because, I don’t know why, but I felt dubious about getting my word-count validated.  It was, for me, like playing the game too far.’

And I have, at the top of that potential blog-post – ‘Oh well, let’s get real now.’

I spent much of yesterday sorting out the private diary I have beyond this blog.

However, I’m trying to be honest here, on the blog, as I can (you don’t always know when you’re tricking yourself).

It seems to me that too many people try to string you along.

A post I wrote before . . .

~ Joan Enoch ~ Leave a comment

Yes – after the NaNo finish – I’m still trying to find myself – there was this blank.

I wrote, and didn’t post – ‘It’s getting to be quite artificial now trying to reach the word-count, which is a number more fictitious than the fiction you are trying to create.

‘I’m close to the 50,000 now, and there is no validation process this year, for which I am glad.

‘Put in that para.’

That last part, there – it was a note to myself – i’m not sure where that ‘para’ is now – but I remember I wrote that I would need to think about that – why I did have qualms about validation.

The website was all over the place – and it still is – I’m supposed to get – is it equivalent to some sticker I can put on my site?  And – other things.

And I don’t care.

But the validation – you uploaded your words, they went to their server and back – to be counted – and no human eyes got to look them over.

I still felt as though I didn’t trust the process, and I’m not tech-savvy enough to be able to explain that.

It is very important to me – more than that – it is of the utmost importance to me that my writing remains my own.  It has to be – not for reasons of ‘I am so good’ but because of what I am writing about, only so much of which I have said at this point.

The words I use can say it, in a metaphorical way.

NaNoWriMo – I very strongly felt that I wanted to do it – I’m glad I’m a member of the site and can go back there, when I want, to look around, check into forums, but I don’t care about the winner badge.  I don’t need the outside accoutrements.  I’ve done it.  I know I’ve done it.  This is as much as I can say for now – I’m still working through this huge velocity of space I have found . . .

NaNoWriMo. 44,133.

~ Joan Enoch ~ Leave a comment

I’m flagging.

I feel as though I am scraping the barrel.

I was up half the night again last night.

I thought it was the drug dealer’s motorbike going round and round again that woke me (yes, it is that sort of neighbourhood round here), but – it’s very wet today, and I think it must have been heavy rain that woke me, quite a few times.

I tried everything to sleep – good, thick porridge, tea, pain killers, herbal sleeping tablets – the whole arsenal – but nothing was working.

So I wrote for NaNo – handwriting, which I have typed up today.

And I felt as though what I had come up with was filler – and I didn’t want to be getting the word-count through what wasn’t it.

There’s a difference between leaving notes for yourself and just writing a whole load of rubbish in order to start meeting those numbers.

But it’s okay, what I have written – it has led into questions of world-view.

I can use it – and it has advanced the plot, such as it is.

Another thing. I’m incredibly busy and I have to admit that I sometimes miss something that someone says . . .

~ Joan Enoch ~ 4 Comments

In their blog, for instance, or in a room where I am with that person.

This can get me into hot water.

I respond – I am hardly responding, unbeknownst to myself at the time, to what was said, but rather to what I thought was said.

I’ve just done it – with someone’s blog.

I didn’t notice that what I was responding to was a guest post – and not the person I thought I was responding to . . .

Ah!  Things become clear – but not to the poor person who, in all good faith (as it were) responds back to what I’ve said – me thinking it was someone else – and so the chain of misunderstanding . . .

And instead of saying to that person – sorry, I thought you were someone else (or, sorry, I only heard part of what you said) . . .

 I go along with the latest situation I find myself in!

That I have created!

It is a mistake, dear people.

Come clean!

Admit your imperfection!

Don’t try to cover up!

Sorry, I wasn’t listening . . . I wasn’t seeing . . . my mind was elsewhere . . . sorry . . .

You are on the end of this chain (ah! ball and . . .*) that is dragging  – me – down – let go of me or you’ll drown with me – I’ll go on and go on pretending I haven’t made the mistake!

Does anyone else ever feel this way?

 

*Ah!  Janis Joplin!  Performance at Monterey.

My writing is my writing, you know?

~ Joan Enoch ~ 3 Comments

I had long years at school where I learnt basic rules and regulations about writing.

I’m glad I had that grounding.  It seems, these days, that young people don’t have that sort of grounding any more.  I met a teacher once – oh, in one of those many courses I attended – and she explained that young people don’t get the basic grounding that we got (she was about my age) because there just wasn’t time.

Young people, these days, needed to have computer and IT skills, for instance, which – well, computers hardly existed during my childhood.

We were taught spelling and grammar on a rote sort of basis.

They were keen to instil a wide vocabulary in us – and so we learned more and more words that were not common in everyday speech – and we used them.

When I tried to write popular, genre fiction, I ‘unlearned’ those words, looking for simpler ones that would do in their place – my readers needed to know what I was talking about.

And then I did an academic course, literature and history of ideas, and the words were okay again – and more terms and words implicit with the discussion of those subjects – they might not be easy for a layperson to understand, but they were necessary for that structure we found ourselves in.  Sorry, that was a mouthful.

But I write as I write, and I write in different ways to suit what I am writing about, or to suit my mood – my moods can be varied.

Sometimes, you need to join the jargon.

Sometimes, it’s just the dots.