Discover new ways of blogging (not only can you do cut-ups):
Invent good post titles.
Write them down, i.e. create new posts (consisting only of titles, yes, or if inspiration has really stricken thee, the odd label or two, too), and save for further use.
Come back to your list of posts sometime later.
Look at the titles.
Feel confused – what the hell was I thinking? I remember there was a thought of stuff to go under this, but what was it, what could it possibly have been?
Stop worrying so much; after all, does anything at all hang on your blog posts?
Feel a bit sad that your blog has so little, if any, impact.
Have a split-second of fantasies of delusions of grandeur; how would it be, if the world (or at least something) really hung on your writing?
Remember how you felt envy reading the monthly this-year's-diary of a young Finnish author woman*, the way she described the overwhelmingness of the writing process, the pain and elation of it.
Remember things; how you used to think you would be a writer; how, later, the desire, the plan, the efforts (your desire, your plan, your efforts) became ridiculous, laughable, shame-coloured; how, later again, the shame lifted and you saw you were now too old and someone else and that it was just a child's dream, no more, no less, not laughable as such, just a thing that a certain type of girl dreams she will do.
Note that you are talking to yourself again in that fashion, addressing yourself as if you were another person.
Wonder whether other people do that too.
Remember your childhood-best-friend's mother – also an only child – saying something that sounded like something you knew, too; about addressing oneself.
Wonder where she is now, whether she still lives.
Remember you used to see her sometimes in town, but chose not to go and say hello.
Wonder whether your reasons for doing so were valid, or whether you really ought to have said hello.
Note that even though you seem to be attempting complete immobility, like an enforced paralysis through volition, your mind keeps moving.
* don't worry, she stops talking forrin at around 2:23
Friday, October 26, 2012
The fewer the moving parts…
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3 comments:
Let me just say that reading this in the abominable small hours possibly stopped me from going into a spin of post-3am doom. So thank you. And also: I love this second-person way of writing, do it a lot myself, though not so much on blog. Although it is self to self, it also somehow implicated the reader, which in this case is moi and no doubt a significant number of lurkies. Only thing I didn't like about Finnish author woman's piece was that I couldn't understand a word - but. Anyway, I like this, do more. Etc.
ok well of course I understood it once she stopped talking forrin. So watch it. But I didn't find it easy to listen to, probably because she didn't find it easy to read in non-forrin version You recommend?
Would I recommend? Hmmm. It's very, very hard to say. I have read the book she reads from in the snippet (entitled True, and available under that name, yes), and I didn't find it a poor novel. That doesn't sound like much, I realise this, but it must be taken against the background that I mostly don't like fiction, these days; I've read so much of it in my time that it takes a lot to grab and transport me. But True was not a bad book, so if you're interested in Finnish fiction (it could have some curio value, I suppose), it comes with this statement from me.
On the other hand, there are Finnish novelists who are perhaps better than the slip of a girl in the clip. Sofi Oksanen is becoming quite a big name internationally, with her book Purge (also a play and a film). I think I prolly like her stuff more. There are others, too. I enclose a link for you with tasters from various Finnish writers – some not available translated elsewhere save the snippets translated for the site.
(Don't worry, though – there won't be questions later.)
As for this post keeping you from falling into post-3am-doom – that's fantastic. Totally chuffed if visiting me – even in my absence – made you feel in the company of friends. That's just, well, brilliant. Like. Innit. Don't know what to say, or rather, how to say it. But thank you. And mwah.
x
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