On Chasing Perfectionism

I always have to fight those perfectionist tendencies in myself (and am now horrified to find them emerging in my older son as well).  It certainly does not make for a contented, blissful existence!  So here are some quotes to remind me:

Have no fear of perfection: you will never reach it. (Salvador Dali)

Pleasure in what you do puts perfection in your work. (Aristotle)

When all the details fit in perfectly, there is probably something wrong with the story. (Charles Baxter)

The maxim ‘Nothing prevails but perfection’ may be spelled PARALYSIS. (Winston Churchill)

Just because nobody complains doesn’t mean that all parachutes are perfect. (Benny Hill)

Easier copied out than digested, I know!

Life-Changing Moments

Last weekend I went back for the first time in a decade to Cambridge for an alumni event. When I first got off the coach, I was bewildered by all the new buildings and shops, and promptly got lost.  Later on, I found my department and slowly succumbed to the enchantment of the beautiful architecture and the splendour of the autumnal gardens.  Cambridge was only a brief experience for me: just one year. But its aftermath is still hammering through me, still shaking my being. Many believe that their university experience changed their life.  In my case, it really did change my life forever: opened my mind, changed my career, broke down a marriage, seduced me into love and heartbreak.

My Cambridge was not the one of medieval courts and toga parties, nor of rowing at dawn and wild student pranks.  Not even sustained intellectual debate and lifelong friendships.  Although I encountered all this and more, Cambridge meant much more to me than that.

You have to remember where I came from.  For a while, I had attended an old-fashioned English school abroad, a school where grammar and spelling were revered, where I was taught to speak much like the Queen in her plummier moments, where Cambridge and Oxford were regarded as the pinnacles of human achievement.  A good deal of that washed over my head.  As a grandchild of peasants and the niece of factory-workers, I never quite understood the class system and snobbery implicit in the Oxbridge privilege.  Instead, I asociated it with intellectual achievement (and included Harvard, Yale, Sorbonne and a few others in that list).  I came from a culture that was fiercely proud and in awe of its intelligentsia, even as it spied on them and locked them up for insubordination.  It was to this closed and fearful culture that I returned as a teenager.  And I found it hard.

Brains mattered, I was told.  Yet what I saw, day after day, was that what was really required was monkey-like cleverness, ability to memorise, repeat, be quick and juggle numbers.  Intelligence did not mean curiosity, imagination, asking questions or using simple sentences.  I was being forced back into the mould. So I retreated into my dream world.  Somewhere, there was a magic place where brains are allowed to develop and soar, where they are admired fully in all their colourful variety and glory.

In 1989 walls came tumbling down across Europe and we gradually had the opportunity to see Cambridge for ourselves.  And this is what I saw: that there were fantastic and mediocre brains there, as everywhere else.  That the world of rich ideas and interdisciplinary connections is so powerful in its beauty, so endlessly inspiring, that I wanted to wrap myself up in its cocoon forever.

I began to realise that the well-maintained borders and lawns of the Cambridge colleges, the noble architecture, the self-sufficient simplicity of college rooms, the take-as-much-as-you-need social interaction in dining halls are all designed to protect and nurture the life of the spirit.  You can clearly see the monastic origin of these great universities.  And it’s not hard to understand the urge to devote yourself to that path of single focus.  I have so often yearned for this ideal, but messy life got in the way.

Twenty years on, I have finally understood and accepted that I will never have the peaceful don’s life for which my passion and my gifts might have been best suited.  Sometimes you just cannot follow your passion in life, but Cambridge did clarify for me what my passion was.  Above all, it gave me oxygen to feed my life.

All I need to do, as I rummage through the imperfect, often overwhelming, shapeless lump of mud and gemstones which is my life, is to find that Cambridge state of mind, that inner peace, that source of oxygen which brings forth my best ideas and my most honest self.

 

Girl, Interrupted (by Words and More Words)

This month, and, above all, this past week, I have had to shed my creative self like a snake-skin and slither back into my smooth professional self.  There are many things I enjoy about my work (performing in front of a mostly attentive audience, having my opinions mostly respected, getting paid most of the time).  Yet I can see that it is not conducive to writing.

So diametrically opposed to writing is this kind of itinerant consulting life (there, I’ve said it, that’s what I am!), that I found myself struggling to write even those book reviews I have been planning to write for the past 2-3 weeks.  Not just because of travelling, being tired, faulty or overpriced wireless networks at hotels… but because my words have all been used up.

When you use persuasive language, corporate jargon and the left side of the brain exhaustively, it becomes nearly impossible to fall in love with words again. I no longer want to play with them, soothe them with a lullaby, tease them with a come-hither look, bend them to my will or surprise them and myself.  All I want is blessed silence.

And escapist books to read.

About Inspiration and Awards

Who or what inspires you as a writer? What fuels your passion and your life?  What makes you forget about time, eating, an aching back or even your friends and your children’s supper?  Not that I would recommend the last of these.  And I have only done it very occasionally.  Hardly worth pointing out, really.  Even if afore-mentioned children and friends do remind me of it on a regular basis.

So here are some of my favourite sources of inspiration in random order (ah, but is ‘off the top of my head’ really random?):

1) mountains and seascapes, preferably both together, as in the picture above

2) Shakespeare, especially ‘The Tempest’

3) the music of Brazil, almost any kind of jazz, plus David Bowie and a few other heroes

4) reciting or hearing poetry, the rhythm and roll of the images flooding your ears

5) when reading, finding the perfect phrase, the thought-stretching twist, the heartbreaking confession or the remarkable plot which makes me think:’yes, this is it, this is what life is all about’ and turn slightly green with envy that I could never write anything like that myself

6) the beauty of small creatures and shy buds, everyday things that are the last to be noticed and the first to be forgotten

7) the kindness of strangers, given without forethought or afterthought: things that make me believe once more in the generosity of the human spirit

All this is leading up to the Versatile Blogger Award that Polly Robinson has so kindly insisted I should have.  Thank you, Polly, you are one of the most encouraging people I have had the pleasure of meeting on the Internet.  I can always count on her to read my poems and make some comments.  I don’t know when she does it all, write her own poetry, organise events in her local area in Worcester, United Kingdom, setting up writers’ groups and open mic evenings… she is just amazing!

The rules for this award are typical of many others: share 7 things about yourself (my sources of inspiration, above), thank the person who nominated you and nominate 15 bloggers whom you recommend unreservedly.  I know that to some of them these awards (because they receive so many of them) can be a pain, so there is no obligation.  Unless they wish to leave a small comment below sharing perhaps not seven, but at least one thing that inspires them.  That would be wonderful!

I would so love to hear that from you all, and not just the people I am nominating below.  I am trying to nominate some that I haven’t mentioned before, so they are all fairly recent discoveries to me, although some of them are very well known.

Poetic magic

The Thread Is Red

Marousia

The Wheel and the Star

KD DeFehr

Jeannie Leflar

Stars Rain Sun Moon

Anything but prosaic

Andy’s Words and Pictures

Eric Alagan

Lisa Ahn

Write What You Know

Thought-provoking skullduggery

Crime Fiction Lover – and I loved them even before I started reviewing books for them!

It’s a Crime

Nicci French

Jeff Goins

A picture says more than a thousand words

From the Right Bank

An Afternoon With…

Shedworking

Poems That Mean the World to Me

There are two poems that I would keep under my pillow if I were in the habit of doing that.  As it is, I have them pinned to the noticeboard in my study and below are my favourite fragments from them.  They seem to speak my words, my thoughts, my heart (but so much better than I ever could).  The first one I discovered a long time ago, as a teenager; the second one I came across only a few months ago, but it sparked my creative renaissance. The sentiments seem to lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet, we all have contradictions within ourselves, don’t we?

You said: ‘I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,

find another city better than this one’.

[...]

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.

This city will always pursue you.

You’ll walk the same streets, grow old

int he same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.

You’ll always end up in this city.  Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.

Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

(C.P. Cavafy)

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
If they say we should get together.
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them any more.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

(Naomi Shihab Nye)

 

Blocked

Word by word they sucked it

void of treasure, dry of sap.

The lotus seed burst not into bloom that year.

Bit by bit they chiselled

away at its proud likeness.

How hurtful, how convenient

when friends hurl friends to oblivion.

 

Clenched, jaw-like,

in a world of its own hating,

we shivered with the knowing,

we struggled with the touch.

The gush has settled down into a mere trickle

and mud is silting oddly the channels of delight.

 

We sigh and add more caustic

as inspiration dies.

Now for something completely different…

It seems that no sooner have I finished with one bunch of administrative tasks that I have been putting off for weeks, then it’s time for the next lot to arrive.  I would also like someone to tell me why they always arrive in bunches, like grapes, rather than in single digestible fruits?

However, I still managed to find time to stop and smell the flowers.

The cherry tree in our garden is nearly done with its blossoms, but my favourite flowers are out now:

Yes, lilacs.  I love them in all shapes, colours and forms.  Although I do have a preference for white lilac.

There is something about their scent that no synthetic perfume can capture.  I could set up tent under their canopy for two weeks every year.

And perhaps that is the reason for their magic and attraction: their transcience.  Like camellias or cherry blossoms, blink (or go away on holiday) and you miss them!

So enjoy them while you can. In spite of the rain and clouds.

Writing can wait.  No, I don’t mean that!  But admin tasks perhaps…

Here’s a last one, for luck.

I’ve found my dream location for thinking about writing as well.  Now, if that swing were surrounded by lilac bushes, you know where you could find me for the next couple of weeks!

 

 

 

A Room of One’s Own

Sorry to disappoint you, but I am not going to give you a summary or review or debate about Virginia Woolf’s seminal and polemical essay published in 1929 entitled ‘A Room of One’s Own’.  There is a detailed analysis of the book on SparkNotes, but reactions to this proto-feminist essay are usually mixed.  When I reread it recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find it much wittier and easy to read than I had remembered, and certainly more accessible than many of her novels.

Virginia Woolf's Study, from The Guardian Books website.

Anyway, the title of my post today has more to do with that essential element of a writer’s life: the space where they can do the actual writing.  I have nothing but admiration for those writers (Jane Austen, for instance) who manage to write in the family room, a constant victim of interruptions and misplaced curiosity.  For myself, I completely understand Virginia’s statement:

‘It is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry.’

Except in my case it would probably be a treehouse as far away from friends, family and telephone as possible.  And an income that has kept pace with inflation would be nice too.

I have to admit that I suffer from a particularly pernicious form of property porn addiction.  I can spend hours, both online and off,  visiting writers’ homes and studies, soaking up the atmosphere, touching the desk at which they wrote their masterpieces… As if some detail of that place of creativity, some ritual or talisman that I could replicate in my own abode would make my imagination well up and my writing improve in leaps and bounds? Does genius rub off on those who contemplate it?

Colm Toibin's study, from The Guardian Books website

Alas, no, it just keeps me away from completing my novel and thus displaying any traces of genius at all.  However, if you too are prone to office envy, here are some gorgeous website where you can indulge (the photos are from these websites, thank you and hope I haven’t broken too many copyright issues if I refer you back to them):

The Guardian has a series dedicated to writers’ studies. Here is another favourite I keep handy in the My Pictures folder:

Francesca Simon's Study, The Guardian Books website.

And photographer Michael Mundy has a wonderful series dedicated to writers, artists, designers and other creative people, entitled ‘An Afternoon With…’

Ruth Marten, artist, illustrator. From http://anafternoonwith.com

After studying these websites in detail (and visiting writer’s memorial homes, reading countless home decoration magazines, oooh, yes, I do my research thoroughly!), I have found my favourite writers’ rooms have the following in common:

1) They are large, airy, light spaces, with lots of windows – which may be inspiring, but also distracting.

2) Large desks, crammed full of  laptops, mementoes, writing blocks, pens, stationery – sometimes I wonder if we become writers just because we love stationery so much.

3) Lots of books and bookshelves, sometimes carefully arranged by subject and publisher, sometimes higgledy piggledy.  Will the writers of tomorrow have a more minimalistic space with a few choice gadgets e-Readers, iPads?

4) Practicality and functionality trump aesthetics and value – sentimental value seems to matter more than antiques, IKEA rather than design

So now, here is my dilemma in our new rental accommodation.

Mikael Kennedy, artist. From http://anafternoonwith.com

What can be done with a narrow study leading just off the open-plan kitchen/diner/living room?  Width just 1.5 m, length just 3.20m, neutral white, just one window facing south towards the garden (some distraction from next-door neighbours, who are building an extension), no lock on door.  My old desk doesn’t fit, the filing cabinet must fit, no bookshelves yet (but IKEA here we come), the study also has to accommodate my business books, training courses and articles collected over many years, my accounting and other paperwork (for me and the family), plus  my husband’s endless collection of cables, CDs and other gadgetry.

I know I should be grateful that I have a space of my own at all, and I certainly look forward to actually ‘owning’ it, after two weeks of writing in bed, on the dining table, on my lap on the sofa and so on.  In the meantime, I seek solace in those beautiful, inspirational rooms that seem to recede further and further away the more I grow up (and old).