Thursday, March 08, 2007

Writing in Cafes

I love writing in cafes. Writing any old thing, prose or poetry or articles or personal letters. I even enjoy doing my Ancient Greek in cafes, if I can manage to haul all the books I need along to the place in question. Prose can demand research materials to hand, earlier pages, or a synopsis to glance at now and then. But when writing a poem, all you really need is some paper and a pen or pencil. It's the ultimate portable art.

I usually write poetry longhand these days, using a proper ink pen, a fountain pen preferably, with strong black ink, something that will sink into the paper. And the paper doesn't have to be in some beautiful arty loose-leaf book, though I do occasionally use those. Often I find the best poems emerge out of scribbled lines on tattered envelopes, with many false starts and crossings-out, developing later into something worth saving.

I used to write all my poems straight onto the computer, even at the very start of my writing career when I was hammering away at some archaic Amstrad, but at some stage I started to enjoy writing whilst sitting alone in my greenhouse or my camper van and that slowly changed the way I worked. I no longer have either a greenhouse or a camper van - alas, I miss them both terribly! - but I still tend to write first drafts of poems longhand now, usually in a cafe.

Today I was working on a poem for teenagers that I've been commissioned to write. It didn't quite come right, but I've made a start on the idea and there are odd little shreds in this first draft that may appear later in the final poem.

It would have been nice to finish that new poem today. But I've not been well this week - a bad chest cold and a threatened ear infection - so I don't blame myself too much for not getting a poem right at the first attempt. Sometimes you do have to worry at poems, let them go for a few days, maybe chip away at them from time to time, not force them to emerge before they're ready.

So instead I came home and started to draft something up for one of my other blogs, the one I use to document the home educating of my three youngest children. We went off to visit the Anglo-Saxon Reconstruction Village at West Stow in Suffolk last month, and I've now finally posted up the various photos I took, plus some general information about the Anglo-Saxon village, on my 'Home Schoolers in Warwickshire' blog.



If you're interested, you can find that blog at everydayschool.blogspot.com.

6 comments:

ivoryfishbone said...

funny old synchronicities ... i like to write in cafes too ... and with a proper fountain pen and black ink ... your post made me grin ...

i loved my camper ... sigh ...

xxx

Jane Holland said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jane Holland said...

said...

I think writers do tend to have similar habits - it's that need of ours to get away from 'other people' or at least from 'people we love or have to answer the phone to' in order to write with any degree of fluidity. Greenhouses and sheds also figure large in other writers' admissions of places where they like to write. What is it about watching plants grow that makes people more creative with words?

I remember, back in the days when I still had an agent - who retired, sadly - she always seemed to ring when I was in the greenhouse, a fact which amused her tremendously, being a real city chick, motorbike rider (something I only learnt later from an editor of mine who knew her of old!) and an inveterate chain-smoker. But that steady drip-drip-drip of newly-watered plants just seemed to turn something on in my head, bring things into sharper focus. Maybe I didn't do much actual writing there - rather an uncomfortable business, balancing a book on your knee for long periods of time - but I certainly edited and constructed plots there, not to mention tweaked poems. Those were the days ...

And as for my darling camper van. Oh, why did I ever decide to part with her? That was the ultimate writer's getaway.

When I was younger, I always said I would never regret anything. That everything happens for a reason. But the older I get, the more I regret things. Too late to do anything about most of them though, of course!

Thanks for stopping by!

ivoryfishbone said...

hmmm now i have greenhouse envy ... i do have a shed though but it is more for mosaics and so on - and was to escape into when i had a partner living here ... haven't been in it since he went ...

my regrets centre mostly on not having treated my children well enough when they were little - my eldest has buggered off to london now and i hardly see him - looking back i would def. do things differently ...

writing outside the house is good - being anonymous in public - i like that ...

Jane Holland: Editor said...

Eldest children often bugger off at an early age and act like it's your fault. That everything's somehow your fault. I shouldn't stress about it too much. With first children we're necessarily learning as we go along and mistakes get made. Sometimes big messy irrevocable mistakes. But when kids grow up, some of them eventually become parents themselves and discover WHY it's so hard getting parenthood right first time. Then - hopefully! - they begin to forgive the mistakes you made. Either that or they end up with loads of cats and hate you forever. I'm leaning towards the cat outcome with my own eldest. But there's always the hope that she may meet the right man one day, someone who can handle how prickly and defensive she is, and then ... bingo, grandchildren!

Middle children are probably the best off in a family. I was a middle child. That's why I'm so well-adjusted compared to my insane and cat-laden siblings!

Jane

ivoryfishbone said...

my eldest is apparently engaged to be married (to someone 12 yrs his senior) and so perhaps i don't need to fear a cat laden future for him!

but you are right and i don't tend to stress about it very much - just when i see stout little boys of two or three ... then i come over unneccessary with regret ...

other than that i just bumble through ...

agree about middle ones too - my middle one seems perfectly buddhist in his approach to life ...