Witold Rybczynski- One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw (2001)

QI type discussion on the origins and development of the screw etc. All to down to your landed gentry looking after themselves. Wonderful detailed case study on unintentional consequence- better screws led to better lathes that lead to factories long before the Manchester revolution. Read and do a Steven Fry.

Rating: 4/5 Really liked it so go and buy!

Thomas M. Disch- On Wings of Song (1979)

Dystopian vision of a Bible-Belt police state America. The economy has collapsed—with millions fleeing their bodies as "angels" set free by music. We follow Daniel's struggle to find his song (and love). Heady mix of 70's social and political satire with SF's weakness of ideas over high quality writing.

Rating: 3/5 Liked it but only read it you can find a free copy,

Soseki Natsume-I am a Cat (2002)

Life in Edwardian Japan from a cat's perspective. Ten story social satire from the period when Japan modernised—think Diary of a Nobody. Probably hilarious if you are up to speed with the period. Otherwise wait to the talking book and see if the actor can breathe life into it.

Rating: 2/5 It was ok but only for a rainy day and if no other books to hand.

Matt Ruff- Set This House In Order (2004)

Oddball romantic-drama. Andy Gage is the key 'soul', managing his household of multi-personalities, working in dysfunctional IT start-up business. Matched up by his kooky boss with Penny, still warring with her 'souls', his life unravels—secrets not faced come back with a bite. Sensitive and funny account with vivid characters.

Rating: 4/5 Really liked it

So why no posts?

I have been enduring the birth pangs of  creative writing since September through a course so composing a lot of poems, fiction and life writing. And also now active in a writer circle. Some of the poems can be seen on the micro random story site which is kept updated. Not sure where to post the fiction as the layout difficult to post. So not a lot of fiction reading at the moment. I am hoping for a Summer burst so will be able to review and discuss books then but I owe a lot of pre published reviews...sigh.

Sunday Salon: The free spirit verus the stern editor

To me at the heart of writing rests imaginative empathy but so often we struggle to tap into this rich source. Roger van Oech's argues that we kill playfulness and imagination with conscious/unconscious blocks such as

only one right answer
it has to be logical
follow the rules
play is frivolous
that's not my area
don't be foolish
avoid ambiguity
to err is wrong
I'm not creative

He goes on to offer a range of thoughts and approaches to break away from the internal censor. Do a google on him, he has a website that shows his approach in action. Freewrite for me is purely that, a means of freeing the imagination. As you learn your craft this may well help shape how your imagination works but you still don't need to pre edit. Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction explains this in a number of ways. First they explore the notion of hard and soft time. Soft time is allowing the seed of the story to grow in your imagination, do the research, have conversations, take notes, jot down fragments, do clusters, freewrites, biographies of the characters etc. You are building the scaffold, living the story. Hard time is actually doing the first and subsequent drafts. The more productive the use of soft time, the easier the hard time.

They divide hard time into two phrases which goes to the heart of writing which they argue is imagination + craft + editing. Without imagination writing is flat, without craft it can be indulgent and boring and without editing it lacks consistency and often sparkle. To start the story you need be a free spirit, who writes what they like regardless of grammar and social niceties but to finish you need to be a stern editor who kills any surplus word or scene and hunts with weapons of grammar and logic. The secret for good writing is know when to keep them separate and when to say who is in charge. So for the first draft let it rip with free spirit, then send her out for a herbal tea to let stern editor in to check out if the plot, characterisation, setting, dialogue, POV etc works, then send him out to check the exact nature of the spilt infinitive rule while she comes back to check it sings to the imagination of the reader. And then call him back and so on until the final draft when he is in complete control.

If you let her rule its nuggets and self indulgent scribbles, let him rule and its flat, hard labour with technical precision but who remembers the story. The twist in this is that once you have learned the craft of writing then you become a reflective practitioner which Donald A. Schon argued for in 1983. This exposed the fact that once professionals such as Doctors, Engineers, Teachers etc have a grasp of their technical knowledge they work best by intuition, imagination and so get results quicker then using this knowledge in a mechanical way. Confirming what innovatory artists and writers have always known.

So in short, I can see the purpose of using approaches to free the imagination and to allow this to create and help process the work at any stage in a writers development and not just a kick start for beginners. I also argue you have to learn the craft of writing which can allow for intuitive leaps or a maturing of how imagination can help create those early drafts. But also firmly agree that the stern editor has the final say in what gets released but never in what gets created.

Childhood Memories

I look around and imagine ahead twenty or thirty years. Will what I see still be there? My home, school or street, someone else’s memories of birthdays, school trips, cosy nights in, when I am a dusty video ghost too old for the shiny new box in the corner. What if it’s all gone? My school, a block of offices, my home a new housing estate. Do I become a Time Team observer looking for a turn in the road, a wall, a street name, anything that echoes that once I was there? Memories of neighbourhoods lost in the deafening roar of duel carriageway traffic.

As a man I look at the child that was me waving and smiling as I stand in the lost square dominated then by the genteel poverty of a Gothic vicarage. A brutal grey block of flats replaced it long ago for a retiree’s haven. Peter and I roll a snowball till it was bigger than us around the square and down the lane to the one cow farm. We run to stare at the large empty white fields with lonely grey trees wearing silver-white garlands. Shouting to the wind, fingers frozen, breath misting we dance. Large winter coats flap over bare knees and green wellies. Now all gone, Peter ten and happy in my memories only. The farm a weekend cottage with empty fields now vast housing estates for the discerning commuter.

On the other side of the square was the house of my birth: measles and whooping cough bedroom fires, frozen window pane stories, secret hideaways for reading. It was a grand house long reduced to paying its way. Its old pretensions could be seen in the washhouse and worksheds stretching down to the stone wall. Dolly tubs, copper boilers, rusting tools benches enabled wars, crushed fingers, and imagined friends. Now torn and twisted into a hairdresser, “highlights half price for pensioners,” jammed next to a bijou café for busy shoppers. The only fragment of the past left, the higlipigly stone wall still sweeps on and down the lane keeping it in check as it rises to twelve or more feet from the ground to end in a graceful corner hook.

At the juncture of the wall and workshop, before the garden proper starts, was a chicken coop: boiled eggs for Sunday treats, chicken dinners for visiting relatives, cockerel sounds beating out the day. Afterwards, the rest of the two acres ran down to the rabbit and ferret cages as a vegetable garden. In its centre was a large leafy cox’s apple tree and running along side the wall were gooseberry bushes. Autumn was spent in picking and storing either gooseberries for jam or apples wrapped in paper for eating wrinkled in the spring. I shake my head: the tree is firewood, the bushes torn up, the chickens flown, the rabbits and ferrets sold. And the garden of leafy cabbages, cane turrets of runner beans, feathery carrots covered with tarmac-a bed for cars.