I’m stuck on The Novel again, so here I am, back after an absence of over a month, for which I feel bad (as if you were hanging on my every word). Thank you for still being there.
The reason I’m stuck on the novel is that, when I wrote the first draft, I plonked chunks of my autobiography in it in what I thought were the appropriate places. Now, when I come to go through the book again, I find that the chunks are completely unusable. Because they’re ‘true’, they don’t expand and blossom like fiction does. They’re fixed and I can’t do anything with them. I’m going to have to completely rewrite them, using my Imagination. I feel daunted.
Reading Nina’s lovely blog (http://www.ninafenner.blogspot.com/) this morning I was honoured to find a mention of one of my posts. It was about sewing, so here is another snippet.
A few weeks ago when we saw the sun, I was inspired to go through my bin bag of summer clothes. As I tried the clothes on, I realised that I am now too old to wear above-the-knee skirts, so I let down the hem of one dress, sewed a matching band on to another (it was a dress I’d made and I had some material left over) and adapted the two items in the picture.
The band round the bottom of the dress comes from a skirt I shortened a few years ago (talk about ‘make do and mend’). The skirt I lengthened by extending the underskirt with a band of similar material – which is fine until the wind blows.
They look all right, don’t you think?
Another preoccupation at the moment is a course I’m thinking of doing. It’s training in something called the Lightning Process, which cured my niece’s ME. I’m wondering if it will help my migraines. Any comments?
Hey, great to have you back, I was hoping your absence was due to you being stuck into (as opposed to stuck on?) the novel. Having dabbled in the autobiography/novel arena a tiny bit I can relate to true stuff feeling unalterable. But does it have to be, can't the autobiographical bits be altered, drift off into what ifs? love the underskirts, one day I want to get into the 'frilly petticoat' thing, so gypsy/romantic!
ReplyDeleteHello Nina. Lovely to hear from you. Yes, I WAS stuck into the novel but also, like you, I have an ambivalent relationship with blogging.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip about the autobiographical bits. I shall think about what you say.
I like seeing your paintings on your blog too, and I'm (sort of) interested in the sailing bits. I do sympathise with you. We spent most of our family holidays on a sailing boat as my father was a keen sailor. One of my brothers and I were both seasick and one of my sisters was always terrorised with fear. Lovely when the weather was perfect . . .