(A belated) Start the Week #5

Not much going on, but...

As a rule I write these Start the Week posts on Mondays, but yesterday I wanted to write and publish the article called Bravery. If you read it then the reason for wanting to publish it yesterday as opposed to any other day will become obvious.

Bravery

I hope you had a nice Christmas. I spent Christmas day tweaking spreadsheets and messing about with visual basic for applications code in Word. I know it sounds terribly sad, but despite the fact that I achieved only half of what I set out to, I did enjoy it. I’m hoping to make some files available to subscribers in due course, so it was all in a good cause.

What I want to do now though is try to catch up on some reading and some writing. I have a pile of books that “need” working through, and it is isn’t helped by the fact that there are so many fine writers on Substack that I have to read them. It’s distracting, but in a good way.

One of the newsletters I’ve been reading and enjoying is Catalectic:

Alicia has a great way with words. I discovered her through her article on Mary Tabor’s newsletter. I’m working on an article that will reference one or two things written by Alicia, but in the meantime you can read her article on Mary’s website. It’s a lovely piece of writing, about writing:

On Process

I’ve been working on my own article about my writing process, because Mary invited me to. It’s a daunting prospect. I feel a bit like the Lawrenceman in Stephen Potter’s Superpmanship book. Here’s a picture of him:

The Lawrenceman, © Lt-Col. Frank Wilson

The context is a Lit course at the Lifemanship Correspondence College, in which the students are learning how to be “one up” in the field of literature (defined as the art of being able to talk about books without actually reading any). They are working on their autobiographies as an exercise in the memoirship class. There’s a character called The Lawrenceman, and he, writes Potter, is the most difficult:

“‘My life — what is my life?’, he was always saying; and he strode to the window to stare at the low sun over the corner of the gasometer. ‘To write it in a room — behind glass?’ he said. ‘Perhaps, when saxifrage grows on the walls, and the roof is open to sky and stars — perhaps then.’”

This made me laugh because I’ve just recently been reading some of D. H. Lawrence’s short stories, and one thing I can say is that Lawrence didn’t seem to put much store by the advice to “show, don’t tell”. I mean, in some passages he lays it on with a trowel. So this depiction of Lawrence strikes me as probably quite accurate!

Anyway, the way this relates to me is that, having been faced with the task of writing about my writing process, I realised that I have several writing processes, depending on context. That makes the article something of a challenge. Perhaps I shall send Mary a very short one, along the lines of “My muse, my muse etc.”

One last thing before I sign off (for now). I find the connections here intriguing. I discovered Mary, whose motto is “Only Connect”, through a comment she made on an article by Rebecca Holden, here:

33. Letters to Terry - #1

Rebecca also wrote about her writing process on Mary’s ‘stack, here:

Let's Journal: The writing process

It’s all good stuff. Mary is clearly doing a great job of connecting people.

But enough of this persiflage! Bye for now.

Terry