When evening falls...

After a month of blogging/writing properly, it was awful not doing it. Even if it was too tiring to do. Last Sunday, as you know, i went out to buy a few plants from IKEA and the local garden centre. We got hyacinths and some more exotic spiky things. And we dotted it about the house. It looked really well and i was pleased with the results.

I have read two books since, though, as if to make up for the dearth of not writing. The first was The Valkeries, by Paolo Coelho. It was quite awful. It is supposed to be some autobiographical account of his life looking for his guardian angel. It's about a man who wants to meet his guardian angel face to face and goes to the Mojave desert to find it. I think it was just that it was badly written. And perhaps such a personal quest should be kept personal. How you can put meeting a deity into words without it sounded corny, i do not know. It was a reverse horror movie when you wait for the monster to appear and inevitably it always disappoints - that's because the imagination is always going to be far better than reality and i think that angels and devils belong in the imagination. Wanting to meet one face to face is simply relating to your own reality and it will always jarr with someone else's. So that was a bit crap.

The other book which i'm halfway through is Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. It's beautiful but it looks like i already know the twist in the end, and i'm only halfway through. The untrustworthy narrator strikes again. However, because it is well written and i love reading about Old India, and Old Europe, i'm perfectly happy to go along with the story...

So why was i so crap blogging this week? Because of the course i went to at the Lodge - the RSPB HQ. It was about copywriting. It was a very good course, but it was too far to travel for. So essentially, it wasn't worth it. However, there was a phrase i did learn which was very useful. 'Murder your darlings'. Interestingly it was not from the course, but what creative writers have to do. If you have a darling - a favourite passage that you've written and it's sole purpose is to show the reader how clever the writer is, then it has to go. It was something which i had never considered before.

The other thing that did learn was - every word counts. Every word means something, so don't write to fill out space. Don't write sloppily.

Put together, that must be the essence of good writing.

Put together, that is what sets of bullshit detectors faster than a field of freshly spewed slurry. So perhaps it wasn't such a waste of time after all.

I must wake Ghin now. We're going to pick up Oisin and then we'll go to Lidl to get things like sponges, etc. It is cold cold cold outside today. I have taken to wearing leather gloves. I know i am growing old. When i leave the hourse without them i feel naked. Today at the doctor's as i read this mag, i found myself squinting at the print. Then as everyone does round about this time of my life, i began to pull away from the page. Oh my god! i said to Peter. I'm really getting old. I think i am on the verge of needing reading glasses.

And so Barak Obama. I listened to the inauguration as i drove back from Sandy towards Luton. There were tears in my eyes. This has to be a turning point. This is about people power...oh must go now. Ghin's crying.