Returning to Schizophrenia and its numerous manifestations.
The next most prevalent variety that besets me would be the type of schizo behaviour my children and my nearest and dearest experience all too regularly. It's the form of WS (Writerly Schizophrenia) of which I believe I am least aware and that occurs when I've spent rather too long in bed with my characters. I emerge from my room and, to all intents and purposes, I am the matriarch, present once more at the heart of my household, capable of communicating with family and engaging in simple domestic affairs, such as cooking supper.
Trouble is there is a timelag (oftentimes significant) between my mind emerging from the story and me physically exiting my bedroom. This causes problems. I call everybody by the wrong name, I think I have said/done things but apparently I have not, I am dazed, forget stuff and am generally useless as wife and companion. It irks me; especially when I find that our meal has been sitting in the oven for one-and-a-half hours but the oven is not lit.... Or, worse, I forget to pick a child up from an after school activity. As soon as my phone blips with that text saying, 'Where are you, Mum?', I'm rocketed back to real reality.
These things happen yet I know I am a well-organised, highly efficient domestic dynamo. It happens because I have developed two realities: Bernie's World of Book and Bernie's World of Unbook. And it's hard to leap from one to the other.
Fragile Conscience has a habit of putting her two-bits in at the most excruciating moments of forgetfulness that occur mid-leap between these worlds. While pointing out that the book may be getting a bit too plotty, or that the dialogue's taking over and the whole thing's looking like a script, she will also take the time to remark to me that I may be failing my family, chronically. But my gorgeous children and my lovely partner step in at these times and help me persuade Fragile Conscience to 'shut it'. There are times when they are not as gentle with her as I would like them to be but their methods generally work and she scuttles off.
If I ever get a book to print (paper or e) I will have to include a long list of acknowledgements as I have five children to mention just as starters.
I'm not sure FC will feature on the list though.
Monday 22 October 2012
Thursday 18 October 2012
The Schizophrenia Bit Explained
Target word count duly clocked up - in fact yesterday was a good day. I exceeded my target. I'm feeling smug.This does not always happen, which leads me, nicely* to the nub of todays outpourings: The Schizophrenia Bit Explained.
Today I am full of drive, ready to open the current draft of the new book, Recycling Dads, and crack right on. Today I love my story, my characters (even the nasty ones) and I can't wait to get with them again, find out where they'll take me. I am happy and enthused and this is good.
But this is not always the case. When 'yesterdays' go wrong and the words jam and those characters just won't commune with me, subsequent 'todays' are bleak; beset with foreboding. I dread opening that draft. It is not my friend. We both, writer and story, are strangers to each other. It's an utterly un-nerving state of being and there's a voice in my head, one that grates and whines, one that undermines Fragile Confidence and screams at me, things like:
What makes you think you can do this writing thing, fool?
Your story is rubbish - best place for it is the shredder
GET A PROPER JOB
Laughable, that's what you are, laughable
You call that a plot? Cat's cradle more like
Then it whispers, Gollum-like:
Give up. Give up. Give up...
But I won't give up. Doing that Gollum impression is always a mistake. It irritates me. Fortunately the voice does not know this.
I shut it out, have a cuppa, go for a walk, employ a few avoidance strategies (but never the ironing) and persuade myself after a suitable period of procrastination that my close acquaintance, Fragile Confidence, needs me to be strong. So I am... and I open up the draft... and I write some words while I murmur my much used mantra, 'any words are better than no words, any words are better than no words, any words are better than no words'.
This is just one form of my writing-induced Schizophrenia. I'll fill you in on its other manifestations (there are a few) in my next blog.
Not wishing to sound unkind, I do so hope some of my fellow writers recognise this condition. If not, and I find myself alone in my writerly schizophrenia, Fragile Confidence may have a break down. She may never recover.
*Am I allowed to use this word, its root being 'nice', if I want to be taken seriously as a writer? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Worry, worry, worry. FC
Today I am full of drive, ready to open the current draft of the new book, Recycling Dads, and crack right on. Today I love my story, my characters (even the nasty ones) and I can't wait to get with them again, find out where they'll take me. I am happy and enthused and this is good.
But this is not always the case. When 'yesterdays' go wrong and the words jam and those characters just won't commune with me, subsequent 'todays' are bleak; beset with foreboding. I dread opening that draft. It is not my friend. We both, writer and story, are strangers to each other. It's an utterly un-nerving state of being and there's a voice in my head, one that grates and whines, one that undermines Fragile Confidence and screams at me, things like:
What makes you think you can do this writing thing, fool?
Your story is rubbish - best place for it is the shredder
GET A PROPER JOB
Laughable, that's what you are, laughable
You call that a plot? Cat's cradle more like
Then it whispers, Gollum-like:
Give up. Give up. Give up...
But I won't give up. Doing that Gollum impression is always a mistake. It irritates me. Fortunately the voice does not know this.
I shut it out, have a cuppa, go for a walk, employ a few avoidance strategies (but never the ironing) and persuade myself after a suitable period of procrastination that my close acquaintance, Fragile Confidence, needs me to be strong. So I am... and I open up the draft... and I write some words while I murmur my much used mantra, 'any words are better than no words, any words are better than no words, any words are better than no words'.
This is just one form of my writing-induced Schizophrenia. I'll fill you in on its other manifestations (there are a few) in my next blog.
Not wishing to sound unkind, I do so hope some of my fellow writers recognise this condition. If not, and I find myself alone in my writerly schizophrenia, Fragile Confidence may have a break down. She may never recover.
*Am I allowed to use this word, its root being 'nice', if I want to be taken seriously as a writer? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Worry, worry, worry. FC
Wednesday 17 October 2012
Welcome to Pyjama Days and Schizophrenia
So - hands up all you writers out there if you spend ninety percent of your lives in pyjamas or some kind of bed-suitable attire.
Aha. Just as I thought. There's loads of you.
I am not alone.
And I was wondering, too, whether you find yourselves muttering far-fetched excuses to parcel delivery men, meter readers and suchlike who knock on your doors at 3.30 in the afternoon because they make you feel mildly ashamed to be in your pyjamas at such a decadent hour? Or maybe you just hide away until they've gone and resign yourself to the knowledge that you will have get into some proper clothes, drive to the main post office, shell out for exorbitant town centre parking so that you can collect the recorded letter... or parcel... or item marked 'insufficient postage paid' just to avoid ever having to explain your state of pyjama-dness to anyone.
Hah - the extremes we go to.
The tactics are many but I have learned from a cousin's unfortunate experience that a mad dash to don one's day-wear doesn't necessarily work either. She's still smarting from the look of shock horror on the postman's face and his wry (and mildly lewd) comments about her state of dress (back to front, inside out and upside down blouse which proved more revealing in that particular arrangement than the skimpiest of negligees - not that she would ever wear one... I think) and, by all accounts, her little episode didn't occur as late in the day as 3.30p.m. I promised myself never to resort to the day-wear dash tactic.
However I digress. For me it was a relief, a HUUUUUGE relief, to discover that this penchant for spending way above average hours clad in night attire is perfectly normal amongst writers. Writing in bed is the in thing. In fact it could be an important step along the path to true professionalism. It's true that there are those who prefer their sheds but beds are up there - right alongside all those famous sheds we are always hearing about.
It would appear that taking to one's bed to write has long been fashionable in the authorial community. While listening to the wonderful Michael Morpurgo speak at Bath's Festival of Children's Literature last weekend I learned that he aped Robert Louis Stevenson's habit of recumbent writing, found it comfortable and relaxing, and stuck with it.
As you can see, it's been going on a long time and I plan to uphold this fine tradition of bed-ly writing and encourage more of it through my musings here in my blog, Pyjama Days and Schizophrenia.
Enough for today though - must get to some real writing. I'll give you the background to the 'schizophrenia' aspect of the blog shortly; once my next word count target is achieved which will be accomplished, of course, whilst snuggled up in the comfort of my lovely, cosy, big bed.
Aha. Just as I thought. There's loads of you.
I am not alone.
And I was wondering, too, whether you find yourselves muttering far-fetched excuses to parcel delivery men, meter readers and suchlike who knock on your doors at 3.30 in the afternoon because they make you feel mildly ashamed to be in your pyjamas at such a decadent hour? Or maybe you just hide away until they've gone and resign yourself to the knowledge that you will have get into some proper clothes, drive to the main post office, shell out for exorbitant town centre parking so that you can collect the recorded letter... or parcel... or item marked 'insufficient postage paid' just to avoid ever having to explain your state of pyjama-dness to anyone.
Hah - the extremes we go to.
The tactics are many but I have learned from a cousin's unfortunate experience that a mad dash to don one's day-wear doesn't necessarily work either. She's still smarting from the look of shock horror on the postman's face and his wry (and mildly lewd) comments about her state of dress (back to front, inside out and upside down blouse which proved more revealing in that particular arrangement than the skimpiest of negligees - not that she would ever wear one... I think) and, by all accounts, her little episode didn't occur as late in the day as 3.30p.m. I promised myself never to resort to the day-wear dash tactic.
However I digress. For me it was a relief, a HUUUUUGE relief, to discover that this penchant for spending way above average hours clad in night attire is perfectly normal amongst writers. Writing in bed is the in thing. In fact it could be an important step along the path to true professionalism. It's true that there are those who prefer their sheds but beds are up there - right alongside all those famous sheds we are always hearing about.
It would appear that taking to one's bed to write has long been fashionable in the authorial community. While listening to the wonderful Michael Morpurgo speak at Bath's Festival of Children's Literature last weekend I learned that he aped Robert Louis Stevenson's habit of recumbent writing, found it comfortable and relaxing, and stuck with it.
As you can see, it's been going on a long time and I plan to uphold this fine tradition of bed-ly writing and encourage more of it through my musings here in my blog, Pyjama Days and Schizophrenia.
Enough for today though - must get to some real writing. I'll give you the background to the 'schizophrenia' aspect of the blog shortly; once my next word count target is achieved which will be accomplished, of course, whilst snuggled up in the comfort of my lovely, cosy, big bed.
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