from Narayani

Just to let you know about that poetry event I mentioned on Tuesday. Its at the LBC which is in Bethnal Green. Its on from 7.30pm on Saturday 19th June and this time the guest poet is Hugo Williams. Its £7 entry and if it takes the previous format there will be a question and answer session first to get a flavour of the poet as a person followed by a reading session. Its a lovely venue and where I first saw Mimi Khalvati whose lovely ghazal we read on Tuesday.

http://www.poetryeast.net/home

http://www.poetryeast.net/News/hugowilliams

I don't know Hugo's poetry but there's a lot of information about him on the web and this event will be a good way to find out more.

Maybe see you there?

Sonnets are back!

Article on the endless appeal of the sonnet in the Times Lit Supplement

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7142497.ece

Proust : 140 characters at a time

For those of you on twitter - you absolutely must follow @proustr . It is Swann's Way 140 characters (or less) at a time. It is absolutely gripping in a way that yaaaawwnn Swanns Way kinduh just... isnt. todays post so far....
"He knocked again" yes thats it. thats all you get. Proust in nano- bitty bits. It is beautiful and I can really recommend it.

Anthony, Burroughs and Sound

HI everyone this looks SUPER interesting- Anthony is a contributor (we will get him to explain more) it runs through june and july and ooks like a very interesting exhibit/experience that makes us look at words differently and how they can be employed.

Here is the link......

http://www.imagemusictext.com/project-listing/deadfingerstalk

Assignment

So, what is everyone's first impression of the second long assignment?
I was immediately daunted mostly because I am doing the poetry option. I want to be tested on both and as the prose has been done.... I spent some time working through some ideas and a lovely little ideas has come through- i love it as a concept but I think the real test for this assignment is technical. It needs to be technically mastered as well conceptually and poetically presented. That said content is in a way chosen by the from. The same was true for the diary prose piece. There are only certain subject matters which will sustain themselves over the course of the 60 lines in a single sentence. The importance of employing rythm, repetition, rhyme etc in order to "fake a break" in this extended piece means that certain subjects will just run their course too soon. The other trap is that the form could encourage wild self indulgent ramblings. An interior monologue isnt any more interesting just because it employs a bit of clever syntax over 60 lines. And interior ramblings can just be lazy writing: emotional subject matter with pretty words does not a poem make. So the concept and word choice and I think very importantly, the narrative drive of the poem still needs to be kept tight for it to make any kind of impression.
For my own part I know I write very slowly because the first flush comes out either instantly or over a few days in pieces here and there which I work through in my head on long walks, BUT, the actual process of honing and finding the exact words in the right place takes weeks and weeks. You remember the "skinless voice" from my fox poem- many of you loved that phrase (thank you) - but just that 2 word combination took over 10 days there were any number of versions before i found 'skinless". I ust dont think words can be rushed. Soooo 60 lines? not so sure.... oh dear.....
What is everyone elses first impression? Anyone got ideas or thoughts? Would love to hear them- encouragement needed over here!

good websites from Liz

From Liz:

I have found a website, www.chapteronepromotions.com which has competitions, events, workshops, short story and poetry critiques, literary agents, writer's gallery, etc. I thought this would be useful to people in our class. They are currently running a poetry competition.

I found this while searching for jobs on Arts Hub UK (a website advertising opportunities in the arts - performance visual, writing, etc. This includes internships, jobs and competitions).

It's www.artshub.co.uk

thanks so much Liz you often find really interesting things for us to look at.

Anthony's Poetry Reading

Anthony is reading from his new volume this friday in dulwich- the details are below including info on Anthony's book and what the other poets will be reading,

http://dulwichonview.org.uk/2010/04/27/poets-and-the-elements-after-paul-nash/

Anthony's next Gig!

The next Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band gig in London is on 27 May 2010 at McQueens in Shoreditch. Its free but you need to rsvp thethrowdownvolume1@gmail.com if you want to come.

Sonnets, workshopping and all that jazz

First up Narayani has sent info on the Poetry Society and Cafe (www.poetrysociety.org) and there some rather fabulous looking events, readings, workshops etc- I might even go wild and leave the wilds of suffolk for a few hours to attend a couple!
I apologise for being so lethargic in writing this blog for the last few weeks- the pressure of time and tiredness have been the victors.
So.... how are we all getting on with the sonnets? I am really struggling to understand the tensions between the formality of the form and the fluidity of how it "reads". Sonnets are so musical and when I read Keats or Wilfred Owen or any of them, they read so musically and naturally, they are very organic in how they flow and yet, and YET they are so structured and meticulous?! how do we do that? and get that balance? So far every attempt I have made just sounds laboured and artificial. Everything I write seems to scream : i'm a sonnett!!! when is should just read easily and beautifully. Some of it has to do with my lack of familiarity with hard rhyming couplets. I worry that no matter what I try and write it will sounds like one of those hideous hall mark wedding card poems (my love is like a red red rose, the more i know you the more is grows etc) or like something we had to memorise as children. Reading more modern sonnets from the 101 Sonnets book and online has really helped. I am still determined to write a formal structured sonnet properly before i write a loser more unshackled on. So far... not looking good.
The other part of the problem for me is that I have a complete mental block that a sonnet is something someone like me writes. Sonnets are what Shakespeare wrote. Shakespeare. So already the bar is set impossibly high and secondly it seems ostentatiously ambitious, arrogant even, to think I could even try. I am sure I wont have a sonnet ready to present in class. I feel this is going to be a slow burning project- but when I do finally have one i will present it here - triumphantly!
On to the workshops. Firstly thank you so everyone who took the time to read my poems. I appreciate it hugely as it does take time to read through someone else's work and come up with thoughtful responses. I took on board all your thoughts and your encouragement has also spurred me on to continue the Animal Cycle - I like to think of the as little messages from the animals, little fables translated from them into our language. For the sonnet exercise I am continuing the theme, possibly with a bumble bee or a falcon - I am working one both and we will see which one resolves itself best.
This week I am in the position of offering critque on other classmates work- Liz and Easlyn. I think it is such a powerful position and thus one which should be used with great trepidation. Because as novices we write so much from our own experience we are actually offering up a piece of ourself for critique. Perhaps this is why what is said without rancour of unkindness can be perceived by another as aggressive/ dismissive etc I can't remember where I read heard it, but i think the expression applies to our workshops: "tread carefully, you are stepping on my dreams". I love that, and think its nice to remember. Having said that- if we want to be mediocre writers we can simply ignore all criticism but if we want to be great writers (and here's a confession: i DO want to be a great writer, i'm not just doing this to pass time) then we need to take it all on board and take stock. After all we write for other people to read the work and if the readers are reflecting back to us that they don't get it/ don't feel it etc then we need to acknowledge that.
Hope you have all caught up on Anthony's performance on Jools Holland? it really made me think about creativity and how we can never be good let alone great writers if we restrict our creatives selves to a couple of hours a week or just between the covers of our note books. Rather our creativity needs to be authentic to our entire way of being. Anthony expresses his creativity in every way possible, words, music, visually etc. If we want to be writers we need to absorb art, music, literature, film, tv- everything! to feed our creative selves.
Hmm im rambling again.... too much time talking to animals does that to you, but at least I get some poems out of it occasionally ;)

Baudelaire Reading! love love LOVE baudelaire!

Thanks (again!) to Narayani for this one.

Thursday 15th April 7.00 p.m.

THE PROSE AND POETRY OF BAUDELAIRE

John Calder introduces reading from the work of Charles Baudelaire,
including from the classic Les Fleurs du mal.The readers are Virginia
Byron and Tony Rohr.

at Calder Bookshop, 51 TheCut, London SE1 8LF

Unless otherwise stated, entry is £6 (concessions £4)

Contributions are invited for wine afterwards

Booking advisable

Telephone: 020 7620 2900

email: amiddleton@calderbookshop.com

no writing ......

I am not writing at all. Snippets here and there but nothing of any interest and no sustained effort. It has made me think about creativity and what is the enemy of creativity? There must be things in each of our lives that tend to stop us from spending time with our creative selves. I know for myself, that not spending enough time alone, walking, or just "being" in silence means that my own "writer" voice gets no air time. things like TV, twitter, facebook, too many friends around etc mean i hvae no space in my head for creativity. Only when i go for long daily walks on my own (at least an hour twice a day) do I start to feel the little whispers coming through- i write things in my head as I walk and then put them to paper a few days later when they have formed into a whole. Of course lots of rewriting on paper over time but they stat as an internal conversation I have out walking. No walks- no writing! I was wonder what everyone else feels is an enemy to their creative self? send thoughts!

Ambit magazine event- looks like fun yes? any takers

Join us to celebrate launch of Ambit 200, a special double issue starring... Jonathan Lethem, Posy Simmonds, Peter Porter, Geoff Nicholson, Fleur Adcock, Alan Brownjohn, Carole Satyamurti, Peter Blake, the *Ambit 200 Competition Winners* and many, many more....

The issue will be launched at The Owl Bookshop, Kentish Town with readings from

FLEUR ADCOCK
Fleur Adcock was awarded the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 2006, and in 2008 was named Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature. Her new collection, Dragon Talk (her first since Poems 1960-2000), is to be published by Bloodaxe in May 2010

SAM RIVIERE
Sam Riviere was born in 1981. He co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives, and is currently working towards a PhD at the University of East Anglia. A recipient of a 2009 Eric Gregory Award, his Faber New Poets pamphlet is forthcoming this summer.

JEHANE MARKHAM
Jehane Markham is a poet, lyricist and scriptwriter. She was commissioned to write On The Rim Of The World by the ROH with composer Orlando Gough in 2009. The Jehane Markham Trio performs poetry and jazz whenever it can.

...and an *as yet unconfirmed* prose writer

Join us to celebrate over 50 years of Ambit with free wine and words!!!

Shakespeare Evening

Here is a very nice event Narayani sent me. The end of term drinks were lots of fun and lets make sure we all do that again sometime soon.

Thursday 1st April 7.00 p.m.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S A LOVER'S COMPLAINT

A chance to enjoy some rarely performed Shakespeare poems (and celebrate his birthday – almost). As well as A Lover's Complaint, the evening will include poems from The Passionate Pilgrim, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music and The Phoenix and the Turtle.

The show has been conceived and directed by Morley College and Wandsworth Prison Shakespeare tutor Sergio Amigo and is performed by Daniel Kelly. It should last just under one hour.

N.B. THIS IS A FULL PERFORMANCE, NOT A REHEARSED READING.

Unless otherwise stated, entry is £6 (concessions £4)

Contributions are invited for wine afterwards

Booking advisable

Telephone: 020 7620 2900

email: amiddleton@calderbookshop.com

still castaway

I may or may not be writing this in a vacuum, but I will persist nonetheless. If you find anything useful or interesting, or indeed if you find it trite and self indulgent, then please feel free to leave a comment. Some of you have already told me you have used the Darfur pictures as the basis for your story or have found some points interesting (which is not the same as agreeing with them!) Either way, you just click on the little "comments" word at the end of the "article" and the box for your comments will pop up- alternately send an email. I will soon also be posting some of Narayani's finds for day workshops and events at Foyles and other.
The Castaway piece is still dominating my inner landscape. I am still unclear on exactly how the narrative arc will resolve itself but I trying to include the few "tools" I have dug up as the preparatory archeology for the piece. Religiously I was raised with a Church of England reference point and so have used the bible (apparently the "greatest story every told") as one reference. I have taken Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights n the desert as the original castaway experience (although it occurs to me that The Passion/ Crusifiction was a much more spiritually isolating experience). During his time in the desert, Jesus was tempted at least twice by the devil, the first time forced him to question his faith and the second tempted him into sin. As such I am trying to incorporate into my story a moment during which the diarist's faith (spiritual or otherwise) is tempted to the utmost, and secondly, he/she is tempted to sin in order to survive (it could be murder, it could be stealing, it could be prostituting oneself for survival etc) I think the sin should be one of the "7 deadly sins" to keep the scope as epic and biblical as the spread "castaway" implies. Either way the castaways moral compass is thrown off course by the need to survive. I haven't decided yet if my protagonist can resist "sinning" or can maintain their faith.
The next device I am using to frame my story are the often-quoted (but till useful?) stages of grief- shock, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I am certain that anyone shipwrecked, or stranded anywhere would naturally go through a process of mourning their former self, their former life particularly as this piece covers a one year period, possibly three, depending on how it is written. the interesting point in the story will be when the protagonist reaches the point of acceptance/surrender. Is it right at the end? is it half way through? Or are they even a person for whom being lost in this way is a release and a freeing up from a burdensome history or life experience in which case there is no process of grieving.
Other than that my research on geography etc has been the utterly invaluable. PArtially this has been because my location exists which has made digging out information very satisfying but I suspect that even if you are writing a Sci-fi story research into the various gasses on mars and neptune and the colours of nebulae would be useful?!
On another note I would be really interested to hear what people are reading at the moment? I wonder if that will influence what direction their writing takes. I remember that like all good angst addled teenagers I read Jack Kerouac's On The Road and felt I would never see writing in the same way again. Less obviously stylised books have also had that effect on me (possibly the triumph of subdued old age) such as Roy's The God of Small Things. Not so much the story but the voice of the narrator completely changed how I thought about a narrative voice. Rushdi's Midnights Children had the same effect again only this time the ray of light fell more on actual story telling and how a written book could feel it came straight out of an oral tradition and lose none of the magical, fable like quality. So what is everyone reading right now?
I am currently reading an SAS survival and special ops training manual (yes i know, its an odd choice but i think good writers need to be open to everything if they are to write convincingly and the chapters on how to choose a good "safe house" and also infiltrate a enemy's desert hideout - very flat, hard to hide your approach - is really very useful!) I am also reading Gideons Spies , a book abour Mossad assassins and how they are trained etc (yes, there IS a theme here, but I decided to stop being myself and read things i would never normally read, stepping into a world as far removed from mine as possible- my writing tends to be very "interior monologue" : fairly languid and poetic but short on character, plot etc so I thought I would force the change by over correcting in the opposite direction- is this a sensible strategy?) The recent reports in the newspapers about Mossad assassinating a Hamas General in a Dubai Hotel was amazing! Hotel security camera footage of wigs and fake mustaches being applied etc proves that the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Thoughts from Liz on castaways

I recently saw your blog and enjoyed reading some useful and helpful bits for the assignment and how you are getting on with it.

I have been researching geography, castaways for the assignment too and found it a bit hard to begin with. I recently found that trying to get into the mind of the character helped. I wrote the name of the character and started to list details what does she like, dislike, fear, dream, ambitions, job, is she married, where did she meet her partner, any children, age, parents, where is she from, lives, pets, etc. I found this quite helpful for me to get into the mind of the person. Then I had to try to think of her partner, who is he, where's he from, etc. This I think I would probably need to do with all of them.

I think it is a bit daunting trying to do the diary trying to add so much detail of these characters plus details of the island and thoughts that they think about when there. I also need to think about where they were born, date, appearance as well and clothes they are wearing and like. So much stuff to think about.

I found the bit about structuring the story into sections, like the weeks, 3 months after that quite useful that you wrote in your blog and was something I didn't think about. This is probably quite important as it makes you think what events have happened during this time and what is the character going to be like now? Have they changed, what has changed? What did they do to survive?

epistolary diary exercise

It is less that a month to go before our long assignment is due- out fictional diary of a castaway. I have changed my mind on this more times that I can count but i think i have now settled on a final course. I have found plotting a time line helps- deciding where at the various points (1 day, 3 months, 6 month) etc various developments will occur. Having the dates prescribed naturally reduce the burden of pace and progress as we have a skeleton on which to hang the flesh of the story.
The nature of the exercise does however have other challenges. The fact that diaries are written in the first person means that the character and their backstory needs to be well developed in the head of the writer before the first word is written. Who is this person? I have struggled to decide on the backstory of my diary writer and it is a strange archaeology. How did they get to where they are now? what are their motivations? I feel in order to have the voice of the diarist be its own voice, and not simply mine, I need to develop an entire backstory on the writer/castaway. The same applies to any other characters that might populate the story. 2500 words does not really give much scope for extraneous detail and i feel quite daunted by trying to give a sense of a fully rounded person within the restraints of the specific genre and the given the length of the project. I have also found that the more research I do on geography, era, clothes, weather etc the more the story becomes real to me. For example, when i try to work through what my castaway is wearing, this immediately alters how they walk and sit and move- how straight their back, or easy their stride. I am finding that the notes I take for purely research purposes have value that goes well beyond pure information. I would really like to hear how everyone else is getting on with the assignment....

American Authors interviews BBC Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/front-row/american-authors/

Some really fascinating interviews here. I loved the Kurt Vonnegut one in particular.

Strange and beautiful inspirations from Darfur

These astonishing pictures were taken in Darfur earlier today by my friend who works with the UN. The landscape is very desolate and the groups of people could easily be traditional castaways. I love how images can be so evocative and can really help a writer tune out all the static and just focus in a suspended moment.

Website from a writing career

www.writersandartists.co.uk

Liz recommends this site as a good portal for those of us hoping to make a career out of writing. Definitely worth a look, thank you Liz.

Castaway thoughts

I am have been trying to think through what it means to be a castaway. For the most part none of us has ever had that experience and as part of my "research" for the piece I am trying to access part in my history that might mirror that experience as well as try to find physical or geographical reference points on which to hang the initial thread of narrative. So far I have found the main tension is the tension between the myopic, neurotic self preservation of such a situation vs the vast openness of solitude (geographical and emotional). It is the hugeness of a desert or a sea scape or a planet vs the neurotic self obsession over how long the pencil will last and how many drops of water are left. To some extent I think this echoes more philosophical points about the futility (or not) of human progress against natural forces. If we we were to really, really think about "the human condition" the futility of our daily struggles and obsessions in the vast inevitable, unfathomable universe we wouldn't bother to try. This is why astronauts suffer from Post Orbital Depression. The sight of the earth from space reduces our lives to a nonsense. So, in terms of the castaway- what is it that drives this person to survive, even prosper? Why does the shipwrecked man, beaten and fragile, continue to try and light a fire? Why does the marooned astronaut on a far off planet try to find a way of sending messages back to earth? I suspect it is one or a mixture of these 1- basic animal survival, we are biologically programmed to seek out life 2 - hope, our human selves (be it quasi religious or humanist based) has taught us to hope and 3- habit, we wake up and move and breath and eat because that is what we do, that is what we have always done.
Last night I watched a documentary on Darfur. Years later, it is still a place of unspeakable suffering. There are emaciated families living in a pile of rubbish in a raging desert. They have escaped murder in the name of ethnic cleansing an survived rape and torture to come to this there is no reason to think this will improve. There in this dustpan of misery women are cleaning clothes and digging for roots and combing their children hair. Why? How?
I watched the Darfur program partly because the idea of a political castaway interests me hugely. Of being a refugee or an illegal migrant worker. what does that mean? to have no home, no country, no identity as "citizen" and all the rights and protections that affords you? One angle I am exploring for the assignment is that of a fictionalised diary of Winnie Mandela during her political isolation which involved over three months in solitary confinement in a cement room 3 meters by 2 meters where she was tortured almost daily, she was released only to be put under house arrest in a town where she was the only black person in a tiny farming town called Brandfort. No one spoke her language and no one spoke to her. The political aim was to isolate her "strand her", cut her "adrift" from the main land of ANC resistance. Here torturers and interrogators would tempt her with freedoms for her and her children and and offer her privileges no other black person in South Africa at the time would have had. While she was confined for more than the mythical/biblical 40 days in the desert there are parallels to th e temptations that Satan used to sway Christ. Christ is one of the original castaways during the 40 days and nights, Satan provides the trigger pojnts to move the narrative forward and we are then offered the redemptive homecoming. So I am playing with ideas around the temptations of christ and Winnie Mandela's political physical, geographic isolation. Yes I have thought about Nelson Mandela on Robben Island as an obvious alternative, but thats the point, its obvious and as less is documented about Winnie Mandela there is more scope to move from a fictional account.
Time for a dog walk across hill and vale, which I find good silent time, and the time when I do my best thinking.

Event

Narayani has sent me this interesting link and event;

http://www.oneworldclassics.com/shop/page.html?id=11

it is a reading at Calder bookshop on the work of Muriel Spark (author of
"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" amongst other works, she was also a poet).
Apparently this is an independent bookshop based in the Cut and to quote
from the art newsletter I received this on

"john calder himself is speaking - now in his 80s - he is a mine of
literary knowledge - catch him while you can - plus brilliant inhouse team
of actors reciting the works - not free- neither is the pub afterwards"

It is £6 to attend and starts at 7pm.

Ambit Magazine Competition

Ambit does have a very good reputation. There are examples of the previous winners work on their site which gives and idea of editorial preferences. I expect competitions are somewhat ambitious at this stage but I feel its worth keeping up with what's out there.

Write 200 words of poetry or prose in any genre and any style for a chance to win £500
http://www.ambitmagazine.co.uk/200words.htm

Code of Conduct for the Blog

I am really hoping that everyone will as far as possible use this blog as a forum to discuss, assist, support and encourage one another. I am very happy and willing to maintain the blog, update it with things that I come across that might be interesting: things i've read, seen or heard or just musings that I would like to share and get feedback on. My wish is that you will all be active users of the site and make an effort to read each others comments as well as offer your own thoughts.

Here is the "Highway Code" for the blog

* Respect. Everyone's voice is valid and important. If we knew what we were doing we would have won the Pulitzer. People who have already won the Pulitzer could however, learn a thing or two from us!

* Every writer needs the support of their peers - be generous in your praise and thougthful in your criticism.

* The two day rule: if you offer to email someone else an article or send them the details of your local poetry competition, do so within 2 days or else explain why you can't.

* I like to share personal stuff in as far as I think it is relevant to the writing process. I hope you will respond with the same honesty. The fact that we are even on the course means we are people who are willing to dig deep to get to the good stuff. Please be respectful of that and go easy on each other. what happens on Virginia's Wolf stays on Virginia's Wolf!

* VERY NB- no stealing ideas. If you didn't think of it its not yours. If we are all too afraid to reveal what our process is, how we are researching characters, where we see our plot going then we can never get feed back from one another and feel free to work through problems we may be having with our plot (such as a story thats called Case Closed but ends with only 2 of the 50 dead bodies accounted for).
I feel we can really help each other out particularly with the longer pieces which are very daunting. I would like to post items on where I am in my process and where my thoughts are going but its only safe to do this if we all agree to play fair.

* Be Free - this is also a place to play and be open and spontaneous with your ideas and reactions.

* Go easy on my spelling and grammar! I write this straight off the cuff and don't have time to edit it. I am dyslexic and so often the most creative component of what I write is the spelling!

Haiku

As part of this weeks challenge we are as a class of desperately relevant and zeitgeist writers and poets are to write Haiku's. I remember being a severely pretentious student, (its true I may well still be a severely pretentious student) stunned by the weight of my own colossal philosophy, smoking roll ups and reading books of Basho's work. The trick to social survival in this dishonestly laid back atmosphere was to find an equally narcissistic boyfriend who himself was struggling with a Cinderella Complex so great that even his parents no longer admitted he was theirs. Hopefully he was a drama student and would read Basho to you and, because he was a drama student, he would know that right before the last line he needed to pause dramatically and then release the poetic nugget in a hushed, important tone. Of course the rest of the assembled crew would nod sagely through the smoke and say things like "Aching, Dude" and "Like, sheewow man." Ahh those halcyon days.

So anyway, back to the Haikus for the week, destined to produce no less dramatic results when we next meet up but these, I am determined, will be Hailkus for grownups. So far i have produced this one, which is all about how I can't write one as I don't find it easy to write in the present tense (yes well done, any hack psychologist can interpret that one) and the resulting anxiety.

Haiku 1

Kitchen table haiku
in present tense
- present, and tense.

I am not sure it fulfills the requirements of the form? It has position (the kitchen table) in lieu of a season. I am hoping the contrast is between "present tense" and "present and tense" ? I cant decide - ideas? Maybe I will be clearer on this if I can find a drama student who smokes roll ups to read it for me. Aching, Dude.

Virginia and her Wolf

This first entry and the title of the blog are the product of my current reading and inner process on writing. Rather obviously I am reading a biography of Virginia Woolf by Hermoine Lee. This is not the first biography I have read on her life but this one has a more immediate quality which many literary biographies seem to lack.
For all her intelligence, forward thinking politics, brilliant, turgid use of language, Virginia Woolf is also exposed as caustic, snide, and (terminally) damaged. As a biography it goes a long way to undermine to undermine the fairly Victorian assumption that a damaged soul is a romantic soul. Whether or not damage makes us better writers will be dealt with on another day!
Much of what Virginia Woolf seems to struggle with, and this is something I can relate to, is the shadow side of the writing process - doubts, fear, self criticism, but more than that, a kind of madness that accompanies the process of writing. The feeling that the story is writing itself without you, a great monolithic beast that simply barrels forward without your consent. poems and words that plague your waking and sleeping mind until they are exorcised onto paper. This is what I refer to as the Wolf in this blogs title, in this case Virginia's wolf, but mine too. It is the Jungian animus.
I work a lot with animal totems, and living in the country spending hours every day walking means I feel very connected to animals as messengers and they inform much of what I write- in whatever form that may take: as archetypes, allegories etc and in this sense the predatory animal: the wolf, the fox etc are my animal embodiment if the shadow writer, the sub conscious part of oneself. It sits below the surface and collects experience, sniffs out words and phrases on the wind, turns an amplifying ear to a half heard conversation, stalks a marginal personality as literary quarry and then chews them over like an old rotting carcass to then finally, with all instincts primed, whiskers erect, nostrils wide, fur bristled and ridged on the ruff, spit them out onto the page.
So, that is Virginia, and that is her wolf. I hope this goes some way to explaining it.