Notes from the Peninsula
On writing, films and living a creative life
Matrix
Walked to Southside for a coffee. Why? I’m thinking of Gwen Bell, then Neo/Keanu. I deliberately left my notebook at home. I need some time without a pen in my hand. Re-balancing... something. Gwen, Neo and Keanu are seekers of different kinds. I told myself yesterday to put the writing weight down. There is too much else going on to add the pressure of writing a novel. Life before art. Life is an art, yes, but you get my drift. I’m chaining myself to a rock when I need to be swimming.
Hospitals
My father is in hospital again. Both his legs are swollen, which is fairly common with heart failure, which we’ve known about for a few years, but one of his arms has also swelled up, and he’s out of breath doing the slightest things. The practice GPs thought it was better to treat him at home, but the lymphoedema nurse was adamant it was something else. My moderately stressful trip shoehorning Dad into a VW Polo for an assessment in an inaccessible part of one hospital became an eight-hour wait with the triage team in a bigger hospital.
Content apocalypse
This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. The amount of time I have left is constricting, but the number of books and films I own keeps expanding. Something has to give. I need a new philosophy. What I consume (bleurgh) must feed (this is family trauma speaking) whatever I am creating. I envy those who have perhaps always done this. Collecting and list-making is the hoarder’s comfort.
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Emotional weather
I’m staying with Dad for the weekend, and because he’s having some new health problems, it’s quite hard work. My mother was always the anxious one. Now it's me.
Writing jiggle
I’m pleased with how consistently I’ve posted to Patreon, but I feel guilty that I’m not giving enough value to people, so I’ve jiggled things around.
Seen, Read: 2022
All the films seen and books read in 2022. In the spirit of Steven Soderbergh, I decided to pull my own list together, seeing as I had the data in Letterboxd and Goodreads. FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema). Books, by author, on end date (with start date).
Elisa Gabbert on why writers write
Twitter shines at surfacing what I need, when I need it, in this case Elisa Gabbert’s 2022 book list, within which a link to an essay she wrote, Why Write? That essay sings to me. Gabbert says that Joan Didion wrote fiction to find out what the pictures in her mind meant, and she give several examples of other famous writers who start their stories with an image, or a dream, and chase it down in words, including Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis and William Faulkner.
Bedrock
Going into the new year, I’m going to do some gentle excavation into my beliefs about writing, because I’m realising I’ve lost touch with what fiction means to me. If there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose.
Adieu, 2022
In time-honoured fashion, here are my favourite discoveries of 2022, in chronological order of publication or release. It’s been a year of three big creative adventures: getting a new job (first in fourteen years); a family holiday in France (first to Paris for a week, then to Morzine in the French Alps); setting up my Patreon (experimenting with a patrons-only podcast). There was very little fiction writing, but plenty of reflective writing.
Love and breakages
I’m excited about 2023. There’s a lot I want to do next year. (This is the case every year.) I’ve just broken a wine glass. I’m at my father's house, and it feels auspicious, although I don’t know why. He has cheap glasses because we are his only wine-drinking visitors. He rarely drinks alcohol anymore, and when he does it’s either lager or a glass of whatever we are having. Anyway, the glass broke neatly at both the top and bottom of the stem, so there were three pieces of glass on the tiled floor.
A dream with Bob Dylan
I don’t remember my dreams that often anymore, but when I’m particularly anxious, or there’s a lot going on, they tend to stick. Last night, I dreamt I was in a hostel of some kind, and I was feeling threatened by a man-child, who was also my host. A boy crawled into a jacuzzi with me, and there really wasn’t room for him, but then Bob Dylan arrived and started warming up with his band.
Chaotic reading
This morning there was a thin crust of snow on the ground. The car park was empty, and the lines were hidden, so I chose a spot near the meter and hoped.
Website updates
I’ve made some tweaks to the styles and layout of this website. I’m thinking about the future.
The future of my online shizz
I don’t know what to do for the best with my social media. Twitter is all I have. Zuckerberg is worse than Musk in many ways, so I’m not going to those places. Mastodon is not a replacement for anything, it’s a unique flavour of online community that will take effort from everyone who goes there. Blogs are the obvious answer, but who will have the taste for that these days? It’s effort. Twitter removed the work of posting and consuming, a bit like fast food, and now we’re all a bit flabby and useless, technologically speaking.
Image of a wave
In my notebook this morning I was thinking about how tempting screens are. Just having one near me makes me want to look. Today it was a wall of water, either a tall wave viewed from a ship at sea, or a tsunami from shore, I couldn’t tell. It was mesmerising. I was mesmerised by a photo of a painting of a wave on my laptop screen, but the overwhelming fear and awe it created in me was real.
The most important thing to do is
It’s Halloween. My daughter had friends around for a spooky-themed tea, and now they’ve gone out to ask for treats. The door knocking has begun.
Microblogging
I tweet way too much. Longer form pieces go here or on Patreon. Recording the podcast was fun, but not structured enough to stay interesting. I still write in my notebook every day, but recently that’s been less creative writing and more organising the job move. It’s been an amazing year for my software career, but it’s driven my writing practice into a ditch. However, I am still rolling that boulder of a novel up the mountain.
Kardomah
When I visit my father, I always love to walk around Swansea and get an early morning coffee. We used to come as a family when I was growing up, so with my existing morning coffee and writing habit, it’s a double comfort.
Trust your enthusiasms
After fourteen years in my day job, I am finally leaving. My new role is still coding, but instead of being in Higher Education I'm going to be a consultant with a subsidiary of a global corporation. The PRIVATE SECTOR.
ChillerCon UK 2022
ChillerCon emerged from the ashes of the Covid-struck StokerCon 2020, miraculously held together by the heroic organisers who dealt with cancelled hotel rooms, refunds, and much else I’ll never know about.
Kindness in retrospect
My internal critic says I’m being lazy, or disorganised, or just not up to the job, but kinder voices reassure me that there is a season for all things.
An oblique strategy
I’m in Wales with my dad today, Good Friday, taking him for a Covid test before he has a cataract operation Monday. He’s been waiting six years to get both eyes treated
Patreon: one month in
The initial idea for Patreon was to explore publishing short stories behind a paywall, to try to motivate myself to finish smaller pieces because there was an expectation, and to put a symbolic stake in the ground.
Writing short stories on Patreon
I’m thinking about what people might like to see in a writer’s Patreon, and what would be exciting for me to publish.
Films, dreams, fiction and writing
I’ve come to think that films are intrinsically linked to my writing practice, but I’m worried my film-watching habit is more of a distraction than an inspiration.
Farewell, 2021
As 2022 comes into view upriver, the final days of 2021 flow past, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to reflect on what I’ve read, watched and written this year.
The great adjustment
Between January 2018 and December 2021, I watched 569 films. I know this because I track the films I watch on Letterboxd. That’s a lot of films.
Keeping the story alive
I’m looking at my work-in-progress, and it seems to be asking how we got here. It’s a patient and wise creature.
In the Earth (2021)
A fascinating, horrible, blackly funny film about Covid, nature, group dynamics, and how humans exist in relation to other forms of life.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with this, which I can remember seeing in the cinema at a birthday party. The chemistry isn’t the same, and Bill Murray is... unpleasant.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Five years after the killings of Crystal Lake, a new camp has been created, and a killer again picks off the counsellors one by one.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Ten years after the Haddonfield killings, Michael Myers escapes, forcing Loomis to return and protect Laurie Strode’s daughter, Jamie.
Halloween II (1981)
When Michael Myers’ body goes missing, Dr Loomis continues his search on the streets of Haddonfield, while Laurie is taken to hospital and sedated.
Planet Terror (2007)
An accidentally released biochemical weapon turns soldiers into a pack of marauding flesh-eating mutants. Soon the local population swamp the hospital creating a relentless circus of cheesy dialogue and amusingly extreme violence.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987)
Clowns on screen have never frightened me, not even Pennywise, although on the page he was a different proposition. This film isn’t trying to scare you.
Scream 4 (2011)
Sydney returns to Woodsboro on the fifteenth anniversary of the original killings to promote her new bookbut her niece, Jill, is in the High School, which presents another Ghostface with new victims.
Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)
Gonzo decides to miss his friends Halloween party to take up an invitation by The Great MacGuffin, his favourite magician, to stay a night at the most haunted mansion in the world.
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
An abusive husband has writer’s block. When a killer murders a woman he has agreed to meet, and then others are found dead, he forces his wife to help him.