Emotion Overload

The novel rewrite I'm working on at the moment is a tricky one. Of course, I didn't realise it was a tricky one until I got about 10,000 words into it. That was about the moment when I understood the mood I was going to have to get into it in order to make this story work properly. It needed resonance, emotional power. I've got through six drafts with this one but I knew there was something missing. It could be that I just didn't want to go to the place it took me to, but now I don't have much of a choice. Because, after all, if something is this painful to write then some good must be coming out of it, one way or another.

One of the central themes of this novel is rejection, which works on several levels. It's a dual timeline narrative and to say my protagonist is damaged in the front story would be an understatement. However, it took this draft for me to realise how damaged she is in the back story too. I suppose this is what happens when you spend five years with a character - it's a slow process of revealing the layers and reaching the core. The fact that I finished the first draft of this novel in June 2010 is scary, but it's one of those I'm determined to work on until I'm happy with it. As with all my novel drafts, even if I don't get them published, I want something that I'm eager to read every now and then.

As ever, I took refuge in music to work out what's going on with my protagonist. There are a couple of songs that fit where I'm heading with this story and how she reaches the end she does. One of those is 'Reason to Believe', my favourite version of which is by the wonderful Bobby Darin.

"If I gave you time to change my mind,

I'd find a way and I'd leave the past behind,

Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried,

Still I'd look to find a reason to believe..."

The other song, unsurprisingly, comes from one of my favourite musical scores, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. It's one of the most gut-wrenching songs I've ever heard and Bernadette Peters makes you feel every spasm of pain. In the end, the conclusion my protagonist comes to is that, once anger fades, the emotion it was concealing still remains. Because time heals everything except...

I'd better get back to work. If I don't finish this rewrite soon I'm going to be a wreck.

Escaping the Reeds

There's a moment in one of my favourite films, The African Queen, where Rose (Katharine Hepburn) and Charlie (Humphrey Bogart) are suffocating. The titular boat has been travelling through reeds and, despite their best efforts, they get stuck. They use the oars to try and launch their way through, they get out and pull, only to be assaulted by leeches. Even after this discovery, they are forced to get back in the water, just to have another shot at getting out of there. All the while, they're finding it close and hard to breathe.

If anything serves as a metaphor for how I've felt this week, that scene does it. Trapped, overwhelmed, lost: as though every breath was an effort. Each time I made an attempt to move, each time I dipped my toe in the water to try and navigate an escape, the leeches got me in the form of a memory. Sitting at my computer on an evening has been a device of torture. Far too many connotations and links. But, here's the rub, it's very difficult for me not to sit at my computer to work. All my thesis stuff and writing drafts are on it; my life's work, if you will. But little point in being at the computer when all I do is burst into tears. That's not focusing, in any sense of the word.

Yesterday became my 'getting back in the water' moment. It was my first Sheffield trip since all this kicked off and it was a doozy. Looking at it now, it's probably best to define it as a three hour panic attack that lasted from mid-morning until I got to my meeting at two. It involved some rather unpleasant scenes at the train station where I paced around and looked thoroughly crazy then one of those embarrassing moments on the train itself where I'm standing in the vestibule weeping, just weeping. With the aid of a friend, I made it up to uni and my meeting but I felt as though the life had been sucked out of me again.

My meeting went well, very well. Some positivity began to creep back into my mind, the possibility that I can get through the next few months. Though, when one of my supervisors asked me to think beyond that, I couldn't. With everything that's happened over the last few weeks, I don't have that ability. I just need to look at the smaller picture. The bigger one terrifies me.

Travelling home, I tried to think of ways I could force myself to work. Because the reeds are still there, threatening me every time I sit down to work. So what could I do to turn things around? Well, how about actually turning things around? By the time my dad got home from work I'd made a start on turning my desk around. For four years I've been staring at the same blank wall. That wall has been the scene of many hopeful projections, none of which came true, so perhaps it was time for a change. This is what my view was before:

Turning the desk around has had a few unintended consequences. I feel hemmed in with my chair but, bizarrely, not as hemmed in as I did when I had half the room to kick back in. And, also, I'm now facing my iPod. It's a funny thing, the music coming towards me instead of creeping over my shoulders. It's almost like hearing it anew. This is the low quality version of my desk now:

Of course, Rose and Charlie escape from the reeds in The African Queen. But the reason is largely beyond their control. The rains come, lifting up the boat and transporting it to safety. Maybe that was my meeting yesterday; the thing out of my control that grabbed me and yanked me through. For the moment, I'll ignore the fact that when Rose and Charlie reach safety, they blow up their boat... That may be a metaphor too far right now.

A Song for a Moment

I frequently say, both aloud and in my head, that there's a song for every moment. As a rule, I've found it honest enough. There is generally a song that, if it doesn't encompass the moment, at least makes the moment bearable. That's why me and my iPod are pretty much inseparable - it can get me through the stickiest spots. There are a few songs I can usually rely on to make me smile with their energy; for instance, 'A Parade in Town' or 'High Hopes' or 'Our Time'. These galvanise me, dupe me into thinking I'm okay when I'm not. Sometimes they even manage to alter my mood properly.

But this time the old remedies aren't working. Me and my iPod aren't getting on. Oh, I'm still listening to it when I'm out because otherwise I'd have to deal with people and I listen to it at home to try and fool myself (Marni Nixon is currently singing 'I Whistle a Happy Tune' at me, for reference). But, for maybe the first time, music isn't really helping. Not music I know anyway. There are connotations there, links that would once have made me smile and now bring me perilously close to tears. Most of my Judy songs are off-limits. You can forget all about Liza and Ella Fitzgerald is breaking my heart daily. Everything I used to find comfort in is now increasing my pain.

So I've taken to YouTube a lot. My reasoning is that I'll listen to songs I don't know that well, then they can't have any resonance. For the most part, this has been working; however, when a song hits me, it really hits me. The other night though, while I was scrabbling around for another artist to search for, I landed on Anthony Newley. Of course, I wasn't about to click on 'What Kind of Fool Am I?' but there was one that drew me in, knowing it vaguely and wanting to be reminded. 'Who Can I Turn To?' is from The Roar of the Greasepaint - the Smell of the Crowd, a show I'm fairly unfamiliar with. I'm no longer unfamiliar with the song.

It's no exaggeration to say that I've listened to it thirty times now and sung it myself over and over and over again. It certainly sums up how I feel but I'm not sure it's doing me any good. It's crystallised my problem again, perhaps drawn me back into it (though that suggests I got away from it in the first place, something I don't believe).

There's one thing for sure - I can't stop listening to it.

'Who can I turn to

When nobody needs me?

My heart wants to know,

And so I must go

Where destiny leads me.

With no star to guide me,

And no one beside me,

I'll go on my way

And after the day

The darkness will hide me.

Maybe tomorrow

I'll find what I'm after,

I'll throw off my sorrow,

Beg, steal or borrow

My share of laughter.

With you I could learn to,

With you on a new day.

But who can I turn to

If you turn away?'

Climbing Back to Progress

The other week I went indoor climbing for the first time in six months. Prior to that, I hadn't been for about eight months. So I was somewhat out of practice. Add to that the fact that my fear heights usually consumes me each time I manage to get a few feet off the floor and you'll understand why I was apprehensive. However, after conquering my first (very high) wall by nervously singing songs from Sweeney Todd under my breath, I did something I'd never done before - literally threw myself into climbing until everything hurt and I was dangling precariously on a rope while reaching for a hold I could never get. Previously, I wouldn't go for anything remotely out of reach, my fear of slipping and bashing myself was too vivid. But I actually did slip and bruise my knee quite badly. The worst sort of happened and I was still climbing.

This past weekend I opened up a WIP I abandoned a few weeks ago when my PhD schedule became all-consuming. I'd left it at around 28,000 words. I'd finished Part One (of three) and faltered as I couldn't fathom how to progress. Taking a leaf out of climber-me's book, I just started writing. I knew my characters pretty well; I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go - why shouldn't I write? Well, on Saturday I added 3,500 to my word count and at least another 1,000 on Sunday. By forcing myself to begin writing, much as I forced myself to begin climbing, I found that I soon got into the swing of it.

One final note: after climbing I was in agony for two days. My forearms burned to the extent that reading a book was painful. When I awoke one morning I thought I was fine, then I moved and pretty much started crying. I've experienced something similar with the writing: by devoting my weekend to this novel I woke up on Monday utterly drained and lacking a weekend break. My head feels like sawdust and, I suspect, my PhD work thus far is demonstrating that. Still, progress in one area is better than progress in none...