Perhaps this means I'm softening. Becoming "lovely" as The Crow so hideously suggests.
I get up at 6.25 am. Precisely, of course, because by now I'm obsessional. My mind's sharper; my writing's technically better, invention arrives less grudgingly. I know these things even though I know I'm Boastful Brit for saying so. Where's the stiff upper lip, the sense of restraint?
I use this sharpness to cut into whatever needs to be written: presently the final 500 words about two spies fencing with each other, or the final 8000 words of Blest Redeemer. That's the theory. But first and fatally I access LiveMail to find out if anyone's responded. If they have I'll often use up the two hours ostensibly allocated to novels, short stories and schlock verse to being clever-clever with my correspondents. My wider social circle. And commenting on their blogs too, of course.
Receiving an email is almost the equivalent of a letter in the old days, a privilege, a gift despite the technology. Runes to read. I'm in danger of getting sentimental.
So can Amazon, INKcredible (printer inks), Dawson (sheet music), The Marquise at Alkham (swanky food), First Direct (a bank), Santander (another bank) realise how TRULY DISAPPOINTED I am to receive their huckstering blandishments instead of something from a live being in, say, Pennsylvania. How full of bile, how resistant to their products and/or services, how mulish, how trigger-happy, how bloody-minded? How utterly put out? Well now they know and the hell with them.
BOOK NOTE For most people these days Hemingway's down the terlet. Wanting to swim against the tide I'm re-reading A Farewell To Arms. Two extracts:
The town was very nice and our house was very fine.
and
"Wine is a grand thing," I said. "It makes you forget all the bad."
Hmm.
Arising from a distant purchase of which I have no memory I receive one every few weeks from “Amy at Rubbersole”; I do not open it, preferring to let the mystery of that intriguing introduction tantalise my imagination for a brief moment as I hit the delete key.
ReplyDeleteAlter Coot and Conrad:
ReplyDeleteI see it's time for me to start writing erotica again and sending it out in thinly disguised emails under some intriguing pseudonym.
Most of my fans from before didn't have names, only numbers, and resided in American penal colonies. Perhaps I will do better this time?
Sir Hugh: During the next heavy winter at Arnside when you're down to tinned goods and showing signs of scurvy you're going to open that email.
ReplyDeleteThe Crow: Porn corrupts while erotica is said to arouse. Erotica's supposed to be harder to do but makes more economic sense: an aroused reader may come back to the well, a corrupted reader may not be able to do. Writing porn may shrink your social circle; writing erotica may widen it. Erotica's harder to spell (correctly). I take it you've looked into all this.