Mend me with gold
Mend me with gold
Fill my gaping cracks
With precious metals
And loving care.
Do not discard me
Now the years
Have worn me
From my first creation
Smooth and unblemished
Untouched by life.
See the damage
Not as disfigurement
But as radical sculpture
Of a work in progress.
See every chip,
Every dent, every frayed edge
As a stroke of genius,
Of ongoing art.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch ~ on the rightful exchange of energies.
I’ve seen a good deal lately about free books. If you buy e-books, you’ll probably have gathered a few freebies. Amazon allows its Select programme authors to make their books free for five days out of the ninety day exclusive period. Many authors believe that the exposure having a book available for free brings in sales later, especially if the book charts in one of the best-seller categories that run side by side, paid alongside free. When the opportunity to “sell” your book at the free option first came around, a lot of authors found that their books soared to the top of categories as people in their thousands downloaded it. As time went on, the numbers downloading became lower and the paid sales that came on the back of it dropped even lower too.
Today I came across Erika M Szabo’s blog post explaining how she has people messaging her and asking her when her books would be free http://lovetotalkalot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/free-book.html I’m certain her experience is far from unusual. It would seem that the plethora of books offered for free has meant that a lot of readers now expect books for nothing.
Some time ago I stopped downloading free books, just because they were free. In fact, I stopped doing it within a few months of getting my Kindle. Most of the ones I nabbed remain unread, lost somewhere in the hinterlands of my device. I realised that the books that got put into the folder named Freebies seldom came out again. I have occasionally picked up a book that’s been offered free, but it’s generally ones I might well have bought. Currently I am reading a non fiction book about food in the books of Jane Austen. I’ll probably write a review when I finish it, as a thank you.
I’m sure if people thought about it properly they would understand that while authors do want their books to be read, they don’t really want to give them away. There’s something more complicated going on, something subtle and easy to miss. Giving away books can be part of a strategy to gain more readers: either on the off chance that those who grab it when it’s free will read it (and even better, write a review), or because the book has been given as an ARC (Advance Review Copy) in exchange for an honest review later. I know from other writers than ARCs often bring in poor returns; many readers never get round to writing the promised review. I don’t generally accept ARCs myself either because the time factor is such that if it’s a book I want to read in the first place, I prefer to buy it because that gives it greater weight in the sliding scale of what I an afford to spend time on. In my mind, a book I have bought (exchanged money for) is likely to be read far sooner than one that I have been given in the hope that I will review it. If I have paid money for a book, too, I feel that the basic exchange of energies is in balance. Once I have read that book, depending on how much I have enjoyed it, there is then a possibility that I feel the balance has been upset again. A book I have adored creates in me the desire to share it, to review it and to make up the deficit in energy. So a four quid book that I loved requires something more to settle the scales.
Of all the commodities today, for many of us, time is the most valuable. I’ve read scathing reviews of books that often refer to the time they have lost reading a book they didn’t enjoy, and often it’s only the fact that it was free or cheap that has redeemed it. But my time too is valuable. To write a book takes time and dedication and while you can argue that writers make that choice to use their time to write (and no one is holding a gun to their heads) I do believe that demanding unlimited free books is an obscenity. The motto of my faculty at university was Haec otia studia fovent which roughly translates as This leisure(wealth) fosters/favours study; one could use the same basic sentiment to declare that this leisure fosters creative works. Without the time taken out of other activities few books would get written. There are few authors I know who can write full time. Most of us have day jobs. We write for all sorts of reasons and while there’s some who write in the hope of making their fortune, I think most accept that very few succeed in that way.
My own books are the product of intense, focused periods of creative energy, with all the concomitant hours of extra work to polish and prepare them for public consumption. I have never made any of them free on Kindle and I probably won’t. However, I do happily give away copies to individuals and I have my own code for this. I don’t send out ARCs out before a book is published (but I may do something of the sort one day when I get all my ducks in a row) because I’d rather not create obligation in others. If a book has given enjoyment that is worthy of the very reasonable price, then I think that’s all square. The reviews that come in give me great pleasure and I’m deeply grateful for them.
Every free book has been the product of a lot of work and hope too. It’s greedy to gobble them all up and demand more of the same without offering something in return. An author cannot keep on churning out more and more of the same product endlessly without something going back to feed them, and for readers to see authors as mere providers of their favourite mental snacks will create even greater imbalance. Authors will get discouraged and they will give up. Many already have.
If you enjoy reading, whatever your preferred genres, remember that exchange of energy, especially if you “buy” free books. Make time to review the ones you enjoyed, or buy a book by the same author if you liked their style, let others know about books they may also enjoy.
Why do we care what others think of us?
I sometimes see people declaring that they don’t care what anyone thinks of them. I envy them this, at times, because I do care what other people think of me. I know that can’t change anything, and I ought not to be a people pleaser (and I’m not) but nonetheless, it bothers me what others think of me.
It upsets me when people have a poor or negative opinion of me. I know it shouldn’t but it does. It means that I hate the idea of anyone visiting when the house has slid from being amiably Bohemian to being an out-and-out mess. I have a sliding scale of how far into the house people are allowed to penetrate, depending on how much I trust them not to judge me and find me wanting. There are few people I would allow near the scullery (it’s a utility room but I like the old fashioned word more) because it’s inevitably a chaotic mess of recycling, cleaning equipment and it’s also where the cat litter tray is stationed. Very few people are ever allowed upstairs; not because it’s a mess (though sometimes it is) but because it’s the most private and personal area of our home.
But why do I worry about the state of my home? Surely no one has any right to judge how I run my own house? You’d be surprised how many would consider they have every right to denigrate someone for their lack of pride in housekeeping. That aside, it comes down to shame. I am ashamed of being such a poor home-maker. The script in my head runs like this: It’s not as if you actually work, you’re home all day after all, how can you live with all this mess, doesn’t it bother you that you haven’t washed up yet, what have you been doing with the time, you lazy, feckless waster….
Familiar?
On a good day I can counter this with evidence that actually housework isn’t important to me, that I do what’s really needed, and far from not working, I work very hard. But the script does keep on running and running, and I’m far from conquering it with the realisation that I’m not a housewife and never will be, that I have another calling. Because writing is a vocation and like any vocation it takes more time and energy than those who don’t write can imagine. The end results of writing (like this blog post) are the one tenth of the iceberg that’s visible.
Another area I get upset by is my appearance. I’m never going to be a size ten, let alone a size zero. My illness has meant weight gain, and there are days when leaving the house feels like I am a lone mammoth heading out into the vast empty steppes for hunters to throw spears at me. Of course, the spears are unkind words, and thankfully they are rarely voiced directly at me. Yet the disparaging comments that are directed daily in torrents at the overweight and obese fill up a space that we all hear. The assumption is that fat people are lazy feckless greedy pigs, stuffing their faces and never shifting their lardy arses to get any exercise. It permeates social media and it permeates society. I’ve heard people dismissively condemn the overweight as stupid too, claiming that since the equation is calories in, calories out and adjusting to make sure you eat less than you expend is hardly rocket science, ergo fatties like me are also thick as pig shit. Needless to say, it’s far from that simple but I’m not discussing this right now.
Surely it is easy to say, ignore it all, that people who don’t like me/you do not have opinions worth valuing?
Well, that may be true but it’s been noted that it only takes one negative opinion to outweigh dozens of good ones. Most writers forget about their swathe of five star reviews when the one single starred one pops up. We remember pain and censure more readily than we do approval and kindness.
So. Why do we care what others think of us? Why does it matter so much?
We’re social animals, tribal beings. To lose approval means to risk losing your place in society. At one stage, to be ostracised (here is the definition of it under Athenian rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism) meant certain death. If everyone turned against you, you were doomed. No one would help you, no one would sell you food. You ceased to exist to all intents and purposes.
Most of the research on the psychology of ostracism has been conducted by the social psychologist Kip Williams. He and his colleagues have devised a model of ostracism which provides a framework to show the complexity in the varieties of ostracism and the processes of its effects. There he theorises that ostracism can potentially be so harmful that we have evolved an efficient warning system to immediately detect and respond to it.[29][30]
In the animal kingdom as well as in primitive human societies, ostracism can lead to death due to the lack of protection benefits and access to sufficient food resources from the group.[31] Living apart from the whole of society also means not having a mate, so being able to detect ostracism would be a highly adaptive response to ensure survival and continuation of the genetic line.
It is proposed that ostracism uniquely poses a threat to four fundamental human needs; the need to belong, the need for control in social situations, the need to maintain high levels of self-esteem, and the need to have a sense of a meaningful existence.[29] A threat to these needs produces psychological distress and pain. Thus, people are motivated to remove this pain with behaviours aimed at reducing the likelihood of others ostracising them any further and increasing their inclusionary status.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_rejection )
The anxiety that the first signs of rejection bring to us, are, I believe part of our collective unconscious. These days, it’s unlikely that we could be rejected to the extent to which we would die from lack of social acceptance, but I do feel that a part of us dies or becomes deeply dormant, the further we are rejected and reviled.
It becomes a question of caring, not too much but not too little either. People whose opinion we value will seldom actually reject us, but it’s deeply painful when they do, for a reason that goes beyond the fear of social isolation. It’s because it taps into our fears that those pejorative terms our inner critic hurls at us may actually be accurate representations of who and what we truly are.
I fear that I am lazy, feckless, untalented, a show-off, ungrateful, chaotic, greedy, etc so when this is played back to me by suggestions made either directly or indirectly, it magnifies that horrible inner critic to shouting volume. And that feeds in powerfully to the fear that once one person has rejected me, everyone else will follow.
In the wild, it has been observed among chimps that an individual who is cast from the group will often wander away to lie down and die, even though there is food and shelter around them. Like chimps, humans can and do die of loneliness.
Six blade knife ~ what my writing is to me
Your six blade knife can do anything for you
Anything you want it to
One blade for breaking my heart
One blade for tearing me apart
Your six blade knife-do anything for you
You can take away my mind like you take away the top of a tin
When you come up from behind and lay it down cold on my skin
Took a stone from my soul when I was lame
Just so you could make me tame
You take away my mind like you take away the top of a tin
I’d like to be free of it now – I don’t want it no more
I’d like to be free of it now – you know I don’t want it no more
Everybody got a knife it can be just what they want it to be
A needle a wife or something that you just can’t see
You know it keeps you strong
Yes and it’ll do me wrong
Your six blade knife – do anything for you
(six blade knife, dire straits)
It never surprised me as an adult how racked with angst my favourite song writer Mark Knopfler turned out to be. As a teen I listened to every album, every song, studying the words possibly harder than I studied Shakespeare. During my pre-teen years, I roamed the countryside, climbing trees, damming streams, whittling wood, and one of my prized possessions (much against the liking of my mother) was a pocket knife. It had only two blades, though. These days I have a suitably impressive Swiss army knife at the bottom of my handbag, ready for action. It has rather more than six blades, but you get the gist.
From a shockingly early age (before I could actually properly read, in fact) I wrote stories, so the songs I listened to were both a backdrop soundtrack and a constant source of inspiration. But they were always far deeper, far darker than the young me really understood. That’s why much of the music has stayed with me; I grew into it. (I grew out of Abba, though. I’d only got into it to try and fit in with my peers)
The symbiosis between music and writing is an ancient one, and Roz Morris’s Undercover Soundtrack explores in great depth and details the individual relationships between authors and their music. Yet it’s not music I want to write about today.
My six blade knife is writing. In the words of the song, it’ll “do anything for you.” The addictive, destructive aspect of a six blade knife is much underestimated. People prefer to focus on the benefits, quite understandably. It can be quite difficult to understand why someone would want to be rid of it “you know I don’t want it no more” when they would themselves rejoice in such a gift. Yet there are no unreciprocated gifts in this life: at some level you pay for everything. Exchanges of energy, perhaps, but you still pay. To use a cliché it’s a double-edged sword.
My writing, my books, my poetry come from deep inside me; my desire to share them comes from somewhere just as deep. It’s about balancing the figures, really. I have a gift with words; the price for having that gift is the obligation to share the product of the gift. I believe it’s not just a matter of personal choice. I tried not writing, I tried not sharing. Believe me when I say that my soul shrank and became wizened with both attempts.
When I hurt, I write. I capture the pain in words, and weave it into something that by some unseen alchemy eases the pain.
When I am angry, I write. The words cool and ease the fury, tempering it into something I can handle and analyse without harm.
When I am in joy, I write. I detail the fleeting, butterfly moments so I can remember their colours when the darkness comes again.
When I grieve, I write. By committing memories to paper, the dead can live again.
When I lose hope, I write. Somewhere in the gap between fingers and page, I find enough shreds of optimism to continue. The few seeds are enough to grow good plans.
When I am lonely, I write. The people who inhabit my dreams and daydreams are powerful companions of the soul, and the stories they tell me are meant for more than me alone.
When I am lost in darkness, I write. The spark of light is struck by the forging of words. It may only be a tiny will o’ the wisp, a flickering candle flame but the glow it sheds is warm and spreads wider than just my own fireside.
Words drive me. If you cut me like a stick of seaside rock, there would be words at my core. I see-saw between wanting to write and not wanting to write, to be free of something I love, that defines me and creates me, sentence by sentence. Many of you only know me by the words I put out into the world, the whittled sticks my six blade knife has crafted: knotted, twisted sculptures, that reveal the original shape like a ghost in the machine. So much of my work is about self-discovery and exploration of the soul, but it’s also about self revelation and confession, because I believe deep down that we are not alone, that we are all connected.
My six blade knife is writing. But it cuts deep when it has to. And not merely the wood I carve with words.
If you enjoyed the Otherworldly aspects of Away With the Fairies, and The Wild Hunt, then you may well enjoy the Celtic Myth Podcast Show https://twitter.com/CelticMythShow . I bumped into Gary and Ruth on Twitter and they really liked my poem, The Winter Queen.
Anyway, their winter show is extremely enjoyable and uplifting at this cold, dark time of the year, and they have done a wonderful, spine-tingling reading of The Winter Queen, with the music of Phil Thornton as evocative backing. I confess I was in tears when Gary (one of the presenters) messaged me on Facebook and I listened to the show, because it felt so lovely to have been included in this way. I’m probably a Celt by ancestry, but I am very much a Celt at heart whatever my blood might say.
Do download the show. The Winter Queen comes at around 35 minutes.
http://celticmythpodshow.com/Shownotes/episodeSP38.php
The words to the poem can be seen here:
https://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/the-winter-queen/
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 