Start the Week #56
An unusually short edition
Greetings!
I’m knackered. That may come as a bit of a shock, because of my obvious high energy levels, as evidenced by the amount of writing I do. But there’s no getting away from it: I’m knackered.
The reason is quite simple. I had a few errands to run this morning, so I decided to bike it. “I love a nice gentle breeze” I said to myself as I donned my helmet and hi-vis jacket. What an idiot. It was like being in a force ten gale. Well, not quite, but high. You want proof? This is a screenshot from the relevant section of the Met Office’s forecast for today:
Apparently, the wind gust is the highest wind speed at any given time. It’s bad enough being buffetted by (please note the alliteration: I’m not called a writer for nothing) 31 miles per hour winds. Where we live, everywhere is uphill — in all directions. It’s like living in an Escher print. As a rule we don’t notice, but once you get on a bike, oh boy do you know about it.
It gets worse. Around here, whenever it’s windy most motorists go loopy. It was the same when I was a schoolteacher: if it was windy, the kids would be almost unmanageable. I don’t know if it’s the air pressure or what.
Anyway, cycling uphill in a 31mph wind while trying to avoid drivers using me as target practice is the reason I’m knackered, which is the reason that this edition of Start the Week is going to be fairly short.
But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter!
Teacher scripts
Speaking of teaching, someone we know, a teacher, said that her recent training day consisted of giving the staff scripts to use when greeting the children. Excuse me? My “script” was pretty simple. It usually consisted of something like: “Good morning. Tuck your shirt in please.” Simple, effective, and I came up with it all by myself.
Gutter cleaning
What with all the rain and wind recently in our parts (so what’s new?), a whole load of moss ended up in our gutter. Cleaning it out is always a bit of a pain, but I’ve been working on a solution:
Writers’ woes
Here is what F.Addington Symonds had to say:
When an editor tells you your stuff is "not original enough" he means that it is hackneyed. (Editors often talk in near-synonyms, the meaning of which you may possibly learn as you go along. Some editors say a story is "not convincing". No author has yet discovered what that means except that the editor doesn't want the story: the moral of which is, never argue with an editor and never ask him what he means; he doesn't always know himself.)
That’s from the January 1937 issue of The Writer.
My advice to writers
Everyone seems to be offering advice these days so I thought I might as well join in. I did so a couple of weeks ago with three maxims (included in a minute) but I’d like to add a fourth. Here goes:
Having been writing for a while, I find myself more and more adopting the following maxims, given that like lots of people I find the idea of pressing ‘publish’ a bit nerve-wracking and I am a bit of a perfectionist. But such things can lead to paralysis: not publishing anything in case (a) people hate it (they mostly won’t in most cases) or (b) it’s not perfect. Here goes, numbered for ease of reference, not to denote order of importance:
I say to myself, like the Duke of Wellington (albeit in a different context): publish and be damned.
I adopt an approach orginally applied to parenting by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. He came up with the concept of good enough mothering, ie not perfectly good (or bad), in contrast to the ideal of the perfect parent. So, by analogy, for me there comes a point where I either abandon (perhaps temporarily) something I’m working on, or say to myself: that’s good enough. And then go to #1
Once it’s published, if someone is ultra critical but not in a particularly constructive way, I invoke the wise words of the blues singer Bessie Smith: If you don’t like my potatoes, why did you dig so deep?
Following on from #3, I have no truck with people who want to drag me down. Or at least, I won’t share my writing goals or successes (and certainly not failures) with them. Case in point: a few years ago I clicked on a button in Scrivener that tweeted out the number of words I’d written that day, and someone I know responded with “And?”. That was like water off a duck’s back to me, but it was not a nice comment. Sometimes even getting a dozen words down on paper that you’re satisfied with can involve the most strenuous effort. To dismiss the achievement with a “So what?” sort of comment is just plain nasty.
My writerly video
I recorded a brief personal note in a library recently. I was speaking in a voice I borrowed from wildlife documentaries, that is, quiet, because I didn’t want to be thrown out. Apparently,
thinks of me as the bah humbug man, so I just wish to point out that in this video I was in a good mood.If you would like me to star in your own video, please contact my agents:
Links
This is what I’ve published here since the last Start the Week:
My letter to
. Her reply will appear on Wednesday on her own Substack. We write about potholes, tea, books, writing and, of course, the weather. Make sure you subscribe to hers (and mine) so as to not miss any. You know it makes sense.The problems with going viral, in which I talk about why I would prefer to enjoy writing and be true to myself than try to write rubbish so that the post can go viral. I may write a follow-up post to this soon.
Stupid rules, which I seem to encounter all the time. These ones all involved windows for some reason.
Experiments in style: a story in the style of two American TV cop shows from the 1950s/60s. I’ve been writing a very simple story in many different ways. It’s been a really interesting project. People have told me that as well as finding several versions humorous they have also learnt a bit about the craft of writing. (Me too!)
This is what I’ve come across recently:
Substack won’t make you rich, by
in which he discusses the long tail, and the reality for most people in most creative fields.Teachers who shaped my life, part 2, by
. (I wrote about an influential teacher in Dear Mr Dale. The editor I sent it to said it made her cry. I didn’t think my writing was that bad, but still.) Susan has written five of these so far, and I especially liked this one. She writes really engagingly about other topics too.Bookmark #879 by
is strangely beguiling. This was one of the submissions to…… The Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium #19: Windows, collated by
.Finally, Rebecca told me about this in an email, and as always I took no further notice: How I grew my Substack audience by over 1400 subscribers in under two months, by
I hardly ever read posts with this sort of title, but then it appeared on my own timeline so I thought I’d check it out. The suggestions are pretty good, but what I like even more are David’s Saturday Morning Coffee posts, which is a really nice idea because they have loads of useful-looking links. So I subscribed, because I don’t want to miss any future ones.
Well I think that’s enough from me for now. Do leave a comment, subscribe, upgrade or share please.
Wow! Those were some windy conditions for cycling, and good for you for giving it a go! Sounds challenging to me. You would be a great commentator for the Tour de France. My teacher script would be, "Don't slouch. Stand up straight." Also, always love your drawings and creativity in solving problems with the help of your cat(s). My writer's woe: as I'm getting older, and I've noticed this SO much in the last year, I have so many typos, even though I reread things multiple times. 9 times out of 10 I edit everything and update posts. Sheesh.
Still chuckling out loud from your video. L.O.V.E. your wildlife documentary voice and think you should star in your own video, documentary, or otherwise.
If an American decided to start using "knackered" instead of "tired", would that be permissible or would it be Madonna-with-a fake-British-accent pretentious? Asking for a friend.