Pre-conceived ideas aren't good ideas

Sometimes there are those weird pieces of synchronicity, if you believe such a thing exists. An email came through last week about a visiting writer .....and yes, it really was time I got out of the house, faced the outside world and did something for me. Yesterday I went to a talk with my long-suffering, but thankfully, interested in literature carer. It was given by Scottish writer Ewan Morrison. I’d read about his books and to be honest I thought, this really isn’t going to be my thing. Not sex and relationships and as for the idea of his novel 'Swung.' No I thought, this is not for me, but then I'd not read either of his books. However, I’ve found that listening to writers speak about their process is fascinating, gems can come out of these encounters and Ewan was to hold a master class afterwards and my name was down for it.

I’m eager to learn more about writing. I started to write because I needed to. It was my only way of expressing my hurt; my outrage; the bottling up that was waiting to burst; the things I couldn’t say to people; the time after my fluency had left me and my stuttering was really bad and words went AWOL when I tried to engage in conversation, which to be honest was as little as possible.

My writing from that period is not aired and I have it filed away. The only exception being some poetry from that early venture I made into writing which was taken by the police as evidence for the trial against Carruthers. The officers said it was so strong and that it gave compelling evidence that something drastic had gone wrong in my life and that it was caused by a man and heavily indicated what the event was. Drastic it was and yes, life had gone very wrong, that bast..d had raped me and he was a senior policeman. My beliefs and ideas on trust had been blasted into oblivion in around half an hour of sheer hell. Then there was the head injury and my life took a further nose dive.

We arrived early. I got pick of the chairs and we went into a corner at the back where I felt safest. Ewan Morrison wasn’t what I was expecting. Pre-conceived ideas? No Jane, you should have learnt by now that you don’t have pre-conceived ideas; you take things and take people as you find them. If people I meet seem open, honest, kind, up-front that’s great. If they’re any of the negative things then time to buzz off. The man was a delightful character, showed a warm personality in front of his audience.

Ewan’s reading was superb. Not all sex, rampant hormones, and, after hearing his 15 minute extract, certainly not what I thought it would be. He explored an amazing array of issues from one small part of his novel “Distance.” His reading voice was good; it was clear, intonation great. There was a chance at the end for a Q&A session before the master class.

I had a question. I tried to keep it in my head, not be side tracked by other questions and Ewan’s answers. My short-term memory can be such a pain. I managed to pluck up the courage to ask about his process and just got in with the final question. Fascinating answer about the way he doesn’t want to overly analyse his work or else he thinks he’ll be scuppered (at that point I glanced at a university lecturer who is a specialist in critical writing analysis.) Ewan spoke about his way of exploring ideas and working in beginnings, middles and ends right though his work until it builds up into a composite volume.

The master class followed a short coffee break. Great to have this chance in one way I thought as I do need to improve my writing (even if only for the sake of campaigning), but I always get really nervous about this sort of thing. It can be a real exposure of your inner self and although I knew all bar one of the participants there is that inner fear lurking inside me. Ewan discussed beginnings; we looked at some examples of how writers have started novels, he spoke of the three W’s and ‘Chekov’s window.’ Fascinating stuff. Then the exercise, except it didn’t happen. He set us the exercise to be emailed to him, if we wanted to do it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d do it and the issue of ‘want to’ didn’t come into it. With no time to do the exercise Ewan planned for it was on to the ‘book game.’ I suddenly remembered that I’d played this fun and intriguing game years ago in a wee bothy on Mull when the rain hit the windows hard and horizontally one evening. I got home enthused by the mixture of ideas whizzing round in my head. The tape I had from the master class was helpful to listen to bits of. I’ve downloaded it and will play it again when there’s more time.

I looked up more about Ewan on the net at http://ewanmorrison.com/ and it seems there is a lot more to him than the subjects of his novels suggest. For goodness sake, why shouldn’t there be? I found an article he’d written for The Guardian on stuttering. He wrote about how trauma can start it off and how the discussion rages on about the “why of stuttering.” Ewan was a stutterer, so was his father. The extract he’d read to us, a father shouting to his stammering boy on Arthur’s Seat. It all made sense. That’s how Ewan knew so much about stuttering. He’d been through it. The agonies of not being able to say what you want to say, of feeling the word forming, hearing the word in your mind, but the word won’t come out. Crumbs, how did he cope with me in his master class? Was I an awful reminder of his years of stuttering? I hope not. My speech is much improved from the initial head injury, but I have good days and not so good days and yesterday wasn’t the most fluent day. I’ve got to the stage where I can read my poetry fluently, but it takes a lot of hard work. Stress, being tired, my brain slows and then everything goes downhill; the concentration, the clumsiness and the frustration of non-fluent speech and the crappy communication.

Meeting Ewan was helpful to meet to me as a ‘wanna-be’ writer; learning about some of his processes in writing; the master class exercise, the 'book game' and the nuggets from his writing life experiences were all so stimulating. I found today that there was more to him, the ex-stutterer, the man who overcame his barrier and now …..a man who has the most amazing critiques of his novels that, to be honest, I can probably only ever dream about. So often I’ve thought of writing a book about the last dozen years of my life. For now I’m mostly sticking with poetry and writing for campaigning and this baby blog. Poetry suits my attention span and my joy at playing with words in short pieces. Maybe, maybe one day the book on Jane Dearie’s disastrous meeting will be written.