The Perils of Spring Cleaning

The room where I write is small. It was a child’s bedroom. Along one wall is my large oak desk, on which sits my computer. I bought the desk from a second-hand shop in Manchester when I was a PhD student. There is a date-stamp on the underside: 1953. My 71 year old desk is very sturdy and can be dissembled into three pieces; it has lived at ten different addresses with me. Around the rest of the room are four bookcases and two filing cabinets. Over the 22 years I’ve lived in this house, my writing room has accumulated masses of books, folders and papers. Indeed, these became so completely piled up that I could hardly turn around without knocking something over. So there had to be a sort out, and I embarked on it enthusiastically. But when you delve into piles of stuff that have been there for years, you find all sorts of things that you’ve forgotten about.

One of the first things I discovered were my notes from the first session of the Queen’s Writers’ Group that Ciaran Carson ever took. It was 7th October 2009, and Ciaran gave us a talk about Haiku. The next thing I found were notebooks from my first period in hospital as a cancer patient in April-June 2011. These notes were sparse and poignant, they took me back to the City Hospital at a time when I thought my life was at an end. In those dark days I mainly communicated with friends and family by email. I sent out bulletins from my hospital bed and got lots of replies from far and wide, as people were circulating the bulletins. But where were those emails now? Anxiously, I went to my computer and looked back. Yes, the emails were still there. There were hundreds. I read through them. It was emotional and humbling. I was thrust back into those terrible times, where I was the focus of so much care and support.

To be honest, I don’t remember seeing some of the messages before: well wishers from Australia and New Zealand, people trying to find out how the big operation had gone, people who went to Intensive Care and spoke to me... In fact I recall next to nothing of the aftermath of that operation. I was sedated for several days and then I was gripped by severe pain and distanced by morphine. And when I did come out of it, I found myself in a world where everything seemed to have changed. In truth, it had. But in the long run, it wasn’t for the worse.

I’m writing this at my desk. It’s still surrounded by books and papers. Happily there are many fewer piles than there were before, but there’s still plenty to do. So a note of warning about a sort out – you will get waylaid by the past. Spring cleaning is not a short process. Perhaps there is a need to go back, in order to go securely forward.

True

I have a new collection of poetry coming out. It’s called True. The book is published by the Black Spring Press. https://blackspringpressgroup.com/products/true

All of the poems in True were stimulated by real-life stories. The poems touch on themes of love, loss, memory, spirituality, conflict and the environment. They are not ‘found poems’. The real-life story has instead provided a launch point for the poem. Ciaran Carson, founding Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast, christened them ‘discovered poems’. True brings together my discovered poems and is dedicated to the late Ciaran Carson. The book can be traced back to me winning a pamphlet competition in 2018. The first prize was publication, but Covid delayed things and the pamphlet was revised and upgraded into a full collection. So where did the inspiration for these poems come from?

My inspiration came from a wide variety of places, all of them unexpected. I happened upon the real-life stories in news reports, exhibitions, diaries, brochures, sagas, public notices, journals, broadcasts, obituaries and by word of mouth. Curiosity drove me to look into these real-life stories further, and many of them turned into poems.

There will be a book launch in due course. I’m also hoping to read from True at literary festivals later this year. I will keep you posted on these arrangements. In the meantime, you can order a copy of the book from the Black Spring Press. https://blackspringpressgroup.com/products/true

Sod's Law 2

This sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster. But it won’t be featuring an action hero. Most of the footage would show the star lying down, unshaven and with unkempt hair. There would be regular cutaways to him taking paracetamol and cough medicine. In the X-rated version, there might even be close-ups of yellow gunge being coughed into tissues. Whereas, the PG would instead show an improving book being picked up from time to time and then discarded. Yes, I’m afraid that just as I was recovering from my knee injury I got a bad dose of the flu, which turned into bronchitis. Sod’s Law indeed.

However, my illness has had several unexpected benefits. The first of these is that my knee injury has improved at a faster rate than it had in previous weeks, probably due to my enforced rest. The second is that I did read some of the crime novels I’d piled up and not started. I tried a Jack Reacher for the first time: it had an unusual pared-down voice, but was rather repetitious. I read several Inspector Rebus novels: they had interesting characterization, were filled with black humour and were very well plotted. And the latest Graham Norton: it was an odd crime novel, mixed with a family saga, the dead body doesn’t emerge until halfway through. But all of these books gave me something for my writing.

So I did lose two weeks of my life to a nasty virus, and spent much of the time coughing my lungs up. Dearest T looked after me very well and I recovered. That’s life, I suppose. We all have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And if you can gain something from that too, you’re ahead.

Sod's Law

We should now be sitting beside a swimming pool with the sun warming our pallid skin. We’d have already tucked into fresh papaya for breakfast and we’d be looking forward to grilled turbot for dinner in our four star hotel. But instead we are at home with our winter woollies on and a renewed dose of the January blues. We booked our winter holiday to Lanzarote with great optimism. Finally we would get away from howling gales and the freezing cold. But we both got injuries: T a bad back, me a bad knee. So we ended up having to cancel our trip on the advice of our GP. Today it’s 23 degrees there, with a gentle breeze. Perfect conditions for a swim and some relaxation on a sun-lounger with a good book. Oh dearie me.

Lanzarote is a volcanic island that emerged from the sea about 15 million years ago. So it isn’t going to slip back beneath the waves in the next few months. The sun will still be shining later in the year. A happy time when we hope to be fully recovered and raring to go. And then we can set about restoring the Vitamin D deficiency that we’ve accumulated in dull and drab NI.

Old Git Hogmanay

The Scottish tradition is to remain at home until the bells chime midnight. And then to go out and wish all your family, friends and neighbours a Happy New Year.

I lived in Scotland for seven years and enthusiastically did this. But now I'm an old git, I was in bed at half past ten and fast asleep soon after.

So here I am wishing you and yours a Happy New Year.

Greetings

Dear Readers,

Let us seek peace on this earth and give goodwill to one and all.

Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas.

Paul x

Agents Again

I’ve just sent the opening of my novel to a dozen literary agents in London. So my fingers are firmly crossed. It’s almost a year now, since I first submitted to agents. The novel has changed enormously in that time. I’ve rethought the identities of both the main protagonists (a postman hero and a waitress heroine) and the antagonist (a smooth-talking villain). I’ve introduced several minor characters. Key aspects of the journey that the protagonists take have been altered too. And I’ve changed the narrative from the past to the present tense. In effect, the novel has been transformed over the last year. This was needed. The novel I had a year ago was a working draft. Not the more polished product I have now. A year ago it had plenty of flaws, which at that time, I couldn’t see. But I’ve learned so much about novel writing and editing since then. All of it gained the hard way - by making mistakes and later on having to rectify them.

Novel writing is indeed a craft. It requires time, determination and experience to develop as a writer of fiction. I’ve been working hard at improving my novel for a year, mostly on my own. I got feedback from a novelist who read and commented on the manuscript last spring, and from two agents who were generous enough to write and tell me what they liked about my novel and what they thought didn’t work. The others just rejected it: some by a standard rejection letter; the rest by no response at all. Many agents’ websites now say, if you haven’t had a response within two months then you should assume I’m not interested. So among the many qualities a writer has to develop is a tough skin.