San Francisco

Wow, different again.

San Francisco, with its peculiar topography, bridges, bays, parks, architecture and myriad forms of municipal transport, looks and feels more like something from Sim City than any other place in America. It is beautiful and odd and foreign and familiar all at the same time.

Thanks to some hefty frequent flyer miles L's acquired, I got to tag along for this leg of her November audition tour. Whilst she was stuck inside working, I got a day to myself to zip about. Impossible, of course, in such time to get a proper insight or understanding of a whole city, but it is possible to form some first impressions.

So, firstly, density. How wonderful and thrilling to be somewhere squashed up, where every square foot of ground counts. Houston is so lazily spread out that the very air is thin, but San Francisco is piled high and squeezed in, from the bay to the ocean and therefore immediately has the air of a properly exciting city.

Secondly, the hills are spectacular and stupefying, just as they seem to be in Vertigo, or Bullit, or the Dirty Harry films, or even Crazy Like A Fox (don't tell me you don't remember that, I know you do). In fact watching the streets bend up and up, the impossible angles rendered by sedate lines of traffic, it's hard not to feel part of a vast optical illusion.

San Francisco feels like a city that's happy to play up to its reputation. The cable cars and trams are all carefully preserved from classic eras whilst the buses proudly proclaim their zero emission status, the overhead cables clicking and singing with juice. The architecture varies enormously with white-cubed casas in the hills near the airport, grand and ornate Victorian town houses in the heights, immaculate classical civic buildings around (and including) City Hall and everything else, scruffy and smart in between. Every single billboard I saw was an advert for iPad, but at the same time there is a faded resort charm to the place, rather like Brighton I suppose.

It's a very diverse city, a broad mix of white, black, hispanic and asian Americans; the kids are very cool and there's plenty of delicious individuality on display from all walks of life. But, in some senses, San Francisco is very much the end of the line. There are certainly more homeless people there than anywhere else in America from what I've seen. And, perhaps not coincidentally, plenty of people who look like they are headed in the same direction: young men with wild beards and ragged clothes, ranting at nothing. I wonder if there is a current in this country that pulls or pushes people out west to California. Maybe people end up here simply because they keep going until they hit the ocean and then there is nowhere else to go.

The ocean was my favourite thing. It really does feel like the end of the world, the outer limit; especially if you are keenly aware of the time zone you are in, knowing that there is nothing beyond that is not Tomorrow. The beach itself is vast and empty, fading in each direction to a pale mist that allows mere hints of distant objects. But the sea is even bigger, of course, and emptier and the only sound is that steady insistent drone of waves and motion that becomes almost a lullaby, because no matter how large and savage are the waves that crash upon the black/gold sand, their ferocity is nothing in relation to the size of the ocean.

We went for the sunset and were not disappointed. The sun sinks fast and cleanly out of a cloudless sky and plunges in the endless waters, extinguishing itself. The last of the daylight leaks away immediately and within minutes the world is dark.

We made our way back into the city and took a cable car up into Chinatown. Getting off the cab and suddenly being surrounded by Chinese script, lanterns, restaurants, shops and people was a reminder that there really was something across that ocean after all.

Bang. Crash.

This is the somewhat predictable "I've hit a wall and can't write any more" post. Suffice it to say that I have no idea how to keep going from here.

I managed to write 20,000 words in 8 days which is wonderful. I am delighted with the fact that I can do that. I have managed about 1500 words in the last three days however and this is not good.

I have written the story in to a ditch. The characters, who've been stuck in more or less the same place for the entirety of proceedings, are bemused and exhausted to the point that they can't express themselves any more.

I can relate to that.

Another problem is that I have nearly exhausted my plot ideas. I did expect this to happen, but I thought I might get another 10,000 words done first at least. Perhaps it is in anticipation of this that I have slowed up.

I want to reverse out of the hole, work backwards until I find the problem and fix it. I think that won't work. This is sausage-factory fiction. I guess I just have to plough on and start really making stuff up. The important thing is the word count and the deadline. I have to keep going, no matter how turgid my prose becomes, and just, argh, you know.

Intense

I've finished writing for the day feeling very smug to have hit 10,000 words. Twenty percent of the way there!

Writing this much this fast is strange. I'm working in the mornings and chipping away at targets: 300 words until I've hit the 1667 or 450 until I've managed 2000 for the day and so forth. This seems very effective in keeping me typing, but the resulting prose is very rough - certainly lots of polishing needed to get it up even to a first draft quality.

But that can all happen later. Right now I'm enjoying the intensity of a writing marathon comprised of lots of little sprints whilst also desperately trying to keep hold of my story by my fingernails.

Day 1: 1667 words gets me a Jaffa Cake.

I'm not going to post EVERY DAY about how well or badly I am doing at this NaNoWriMo thing, but I'm going to do a Day 1 blog because my enthusiam levels are still relatively high!

So far, I have written 1742 words - just over the given daily target of 1667 - so I'm going to stop for a bit and interact with the children, cook dinner and so forth. This is a good progress I think and I'm surprised that it has come as easily as it has, especially considering the hangover I started with this morning. I certainly haven't been sat here crying against a blank Word doc, which is what I was afraid of.

I've been writing in bursts, trying to get between 250 and 500 words done at a time. This is great for fitting in the writing between chores and dovetails very nicely with an online app called Write or Die which lets you input a time limit and a target number of words before gently nagging at you when you stop. Surprisingly effective. Obviously, not having a day job puts me in a rather luxurious position for this sort of thing. If I were to actually write all day, like it was a job or something that I was good at, then 1667 would be a feeble effort. But it isn't just about smacking your fingers against the keyboard. The words still have to come from somewhere. Again I've been pleasently surprised.

The two short scenes I've written today were both entirely new to me and they have allowed the rather cardboard characters from my vague plot outline to begin to push back a bit against my expectations. This has got to be how it works - whilst I do have a plan, I can't have everything exhaustively mapped out. If I knew absolutely what is going to happen then I wouldn't need to write it.

Hopefully I haven't stopped for the day either. Any word surplus I can build up this week has got to be a good thing, especially with some of the upcoming November fun I have to look forward too.

Above all it is a relief to be writing and it feels wonderful to have the time officially ring-fenced for writing in. And Jaffa Cakes are great motivators.

Small Talk

Believe it or not I quite like small talk. At the school with the Moms, or with the opera people at shows and parties, I quite enjoy the inconsequential chatter with which we try and fill the micro-longeurs between this and that. I'm not saying I'm any good at it. And it's not entirely stress-free either. Especially with people I don't really know, it can feel like a determined act of transmutation, grasping the wordless nothing that we have to say to each other and spinning it into a conversation about nothing instead. But then I like it because of the inconsequentiality. It is possible to talk freely because I am saying precisely nothing.

So, speaking the other day to someone I've met only a few times, I was not in the least uninterested, despite being heavily disinterested. At least I was until they started talking about me.

"Oh yes," they said. "Someone was saying about the November book writing thing. What a wonderful idea! I can't wait to read yours!"

With these words, my coffee turned to cold, slimy dread in my throat. Read my story? I don't think so! If the prospect of writing 50,000 wasn't daunting, then the idea that they might have to be 50,000 readable or interesting words certainly is. In fact given the parameters of the competition (an average of 1667 words a day for 30 days) I'd be amazed if I produced anything which made any sense whatsoever. What it will be, hopefully, is extant, possessing a beginning, middle and end. This is the lowly state of my ambitions.

Like my small talk, the story I'm going to write came out of nothing. One morning, about a week before I found out about NaNoWriMo, I woke up having literally dreamed a book. It was a very strange feeling. I often remember my dreams and they are regularly vivid, albeit normally fragmented and surreal. This dream was oddly organised and comprehensive, filling like a thick and hearty soup, and it stuck with me long enough for me to scribble down a summary. It was all there, unfolding in order, protagonists, antagonists, imagery, conflict and something that certainly would have done as an ending if I wasn't worried that it might need a bit more. As I mulled it over I even realised that there was a crude allegory to it: the damn dream even had subtext.

But that makes me nervous: if it ends up being a story 'about something' then it stops being small talk. The more consciously I think about it, the more contrived it feels and I realise that I only want to write the story because I have so little investment in it. By writing the dream story I have deniability. I am insulated from some of the responsibility for it if it turns out to be rubbish whilst still being able to take all the credit if it is actually, you know, good. Hopefully I can write freely enough that I can take a dream, the most insubstantial nothing, an unconscious notion, and spin it into the comparatively solid nothing of a story, even one that is not to be read.

As for the person I was chatting to who scared me so, I don't think they'll be disappointed if they don't get to read it. It was just small talk so, in a nice way, I take great comfort from the fact that they weren't really interested at all.

581 words. Hmmm.

NaNoWriMo - WTF?

One of the things I don't write about is writing. And one of the reasons I don't write about writing is that I don't feel I do enough writing to write about. There are other reasons too, not least of which is my assumption that writing is a solitary pursuit, something to be done in private with the curtains drawn. When people ask how the writing is going or, hell, even what it is that I am working on, I feel embarrassed and unworthy of their interest. Compared even with the average Brit I am allergic to the notion of self-publicity; here in America, I might as well be a ghost.

Anyway, it is slowly dawning on me that I may have got a lot of this wrong. If I am lacking in confidence, it may have something to do with the fact that I am only asking for my own opinion on what I have written. Hopefully. And it may also be the case that talking about writing, writing about writing, and (gasp!) socialising with writers might be beneficial. I'm queasy having typed that - stay strong Michael.

So what has brought me to this? Well, mainly it's the fact that I've been (re)writing the same story for four or five years and I'm no closer to understanding where it is I need to go with it next. And going round and round with it is making me like it less and less. That's a heavy hat to doff at passers by.

Luckily that's just the dull side of a coin that also has a very shiny side. One point of light is my incredible friend Chris has, through hard work and natural brilliance, had several books published since he began writing full-time a few years ago. His success shows what can be achieved and, whilst I am happy for him, I am also grateful to him for setting such an example.

Another sunbeam struck earlier this year when Chris, my just-as-incredible friend Jamie and I were able to work together and entered a short story into a competition, only to be selected as one the winners. Our (excellent) story will be published early in 2011 (I think - still not taking to the self-promotion) but I didn't enjoy the winning as much as the process of collaboration. Sharing the words and ideas was wonderful and perhaps it was this that made me appreciate that it doesn't all have to happen in my head.

And then here in Houston I have my friend Caroline who is also writing hard, albeit in a more organised fashion than me. Now that school has started back up, we are both shot of our children during the day and we've started meeting up to write, not together, but at the same time. It's extremely helpful, applying just the minimum pressure, enough to make us sit down and do some work, even if we're not in the mood. Even better, it's fun too.

Because Caroline is organised (she may dispute that, but in relation to me she is) she recently spotted another competition.Something with the unlikely name of NaNoWriMo. This is National Novel Writing Month which, despite my initial cynicism, seems to be an utterly altruistic exercise. The idea is that you sign up to write 50,000 words between during the month of November. From scratch - it's not supposed to be something you have been working on previously. The thinking is to promote unfettered creative writing: have an idea and just write it without worrying about revising, editing or questioning it. By setting aside one month to do it, the participants set themselves an intensive challenge. I suppose the organisers are providing a false deadline for people who endlessly mull over the thought of writing a book without ever achieving it. People like me, in other words.

There's no cost and no prize. At the end of the month you submit your novel and they validate the word count. Then they delete it. The books are never read. But what you do next with what you have written is up to you.

Last year, 165,000 people took part from all over the world and 30,000 ended up writing 50,000 words or more. This year 57,000 people have signed up with little over a fortnight to go, but the writing itself is only part of it. It also serves as a way to get writers together, both online and in the Real World, to support each other, to socialise and to swap ideas. There are, amazingly, 1772 in Houston alone and Caroline and I are two of them, which is both very exciting and ever so slightly scary.

So there you go, I'm going to write a story from scratch. I'm telling you because I'm worried that I might not manage it but also because I'm going to try to be more open about my writing.

If nothing else, it should be something to write about.

1998 and All That

When writing the history of things, beginnings are nearly always murky, confused and badly documented. But eventually the historian can latch upon a key first date, an anchor that can be relied upon as a sign that things had irrevocably changed.

Today is the anniversary of such a date. On this day, the 14th of October, an historic and fateful encounter took place near Hastings in Sussex. The year was 1998.

No, for once I am not talking about the history of England, but personal history. For whilst my relationship with my then wife-to-be was already a few months old and had already had its fair share of Athelstans and Canutes, it was the day we accidentally spent at the site of the Battle of Hastings that I now look back on as a key moment.

I say accidentally because it was pure coincidence, or serendipity if you will, that took us there on that particular day. At a loose end with spare time together during what was then an uncertain and somewhat loose association with each other, we found ourselves driving around Sussex in an October fog looking for something to do. One of us, I forget who, mentioned Hastings as being nearby and it turned out that neither of us had visited the famous battle site. And then, as one, we both remembered the date of the battle and we turned to each other and said in unison, "but hang on that's today!"

To demonstrate the same knowledge simultaneously to each other was a thrilling moment of connection for a pair of nerdy show-offs such as us and after that we had a wonderful time. Being a drizzly Wednesday, we all but had the battlefield to ourselves which made it beautifully empty and evocative. After stomping around we eventually came to a large stone slab that had been laid to mark the spot where Harold II was supposedly killed. Totally spurious of course, but someone had left a bunch of yellow flowers there, the only bright colour amongst the mist and the October afternoon shadows.

As I get older, memories become increasingly blurry and I am appalled at how often people remind me of things that I have utterly forgotten. But I don't think I will ever forget those flowers, or that day together with the wonderful woman who is now my wife.

Nor will I ever forget that everything we have here - our lives in America, our marriage and, of course, our children - are all as a result of what happened at Battle on the 14th of October.