If you're interested in the craft of writing and a bit of autobiography you will find this bit interesting. Otherwise it will read like pretentious drivel. Don't say you weren't warned.

 

Spending a lot of time on trains give you the opportunity to observe people. One of the things which has struck me on this trip is how much attention people seem to give their phones. But when you see how they are constantly flicking between screens and messages you realise that the attention is more like that of a bee moving from flower to flower to suck the nectar before moving on.

 

I watched a man scrolling through Tiktok. He rarely watched any video for more than thirty seconds and it was fascinating to see how, within a few seconds, he would decide whether he was interested in a video or not. It brought home to me the reality of the attention economy where advertisers are fiercely competing with each other to capture eyeballs. People seem to have a very short attention span and I wondered how Shakespeare would have got on this world of limited patience. His sonnets are constructed to lead us through a carefully constructed route to the pay off, which usually comes in the last two lines. I suspect even 7 lines would be too much for the jaded eyeballs of the modern audience. By the time you get half way through this sonnet you'd be forgiven for thinking the Bard was a miserable old bugger. But persevere to the end and you see where he has been leading you.

 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievences foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I now pay if not paid before.
But when I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

 

Reading the sonnet makes you realise how much Shakespeare builds a carefully constructed route map of words to lead us where he wants us to go. More than that, he compresses a huge amount into a very limited space. The sonnet only has 115 words and yet there is a world of introspection and emotion packed into those few words.

 

I love the experience of writing because it's like fashioning a shape from a raw block of wood. When you choose a topic there is usually a jumble of thoughts that have to be shaped into a narrative. That narrative is composed of a sequence of words that has to be comprehensible, and palatable, to the reader. As in carpentry, the shape has to have structural integrity and also has to look good. Then you have to do a lot of polishing.

 

My journey towards understanding the complexity of prose and poetry began when I went to France for a year before going to university. I was a very callow and naive boy of 16 when I left Ireland on the ferry on my first big adventure away from my parents. To this day I marvel they they had the courage to set me free on my own. I wasn't part of a study group. I had simply picked Lyon as a nice place and sent off an application to take a course in French language and culture at the university.

 

One of our lecturers was a fierce Spanish woman who always wore deep black eye makeup and spoke French with a Spanish accent that made it almost impossible to understand her. For about a month I attended her lectures and didn't understad a single word. Slowly, I began to deciper what she was talking about. At the beginning of each lecture she would hand out a printed extract from a well-known French writer and we would then examine it in detail.

She would stand behind a heavy wooden lectern above which her head would nod quizically and fire off questions with machine gun rapidity.
'Why did he use this word?'
'What other word might he have used?'
'Why is this sentence longer than any other in the paragraph?'

At first I had no idea how to answer these questions. But listening to others answering gave me an inkling of what was involved in writing good prose. Once we had stress tested the extract she would start asking if we saw rhythm and balance in the prose. Suddenly, a huge light went on in my brain and I realised that she was leading us inexorably to the understanding that writing was an activity that had much in common with composing music.

One of her favourite questions was, 'Does this sound right'. She would explain how writing has tempos and crescendos. She would talk about the power of pausing and giving space for the reader to digest the narrative.
Most of all, she insisted that great writing is the product of carefully crafted narrative and a cadence that allows the reader not only to understand but also to enjoy the experience of reading.

 

She taught us that writers have their own identifiable style just as Mozart or Bach has theirs. She explained to us how to dismantle a writer's prose to underdstand what elements made their style recognisable. I regret that I cannot remember the name of this remarkable teacher but I am grateful that she led me to a well of learing from which I was able to draw more deeply when I went to university.

The other person has who taught me a great deal about writing is Gillian. As an academic editor she helps writers to be precise, unambiguous and gramatically correct. If I started a sentence with the word 'this', for eample 'This was something I disliked.' she would pounce and ask what 'this' referred to. She also taught me about dangling modifiers. 'Walking down the road, the sun was shining.' No, the sun wasn't walking down the road. She gently pointed out that I had an unhealthy love affair with the passive voice that needed to be abruptly broken off. Most of all, Gill made me understand that there is no easy route to writing. It takes constant revision and self-criticism if it is to carry the weight of the mind's desire to express ideas in written form.

 

What I also like about writing is that you never arrive at an end point where you can say that the words you have composed are exactly as they should be. There is always an improvement that can be made but there comes a point where you have to let the child walk away, imperfect though he or she may be.

I'm signing off now and FXXX the revisions. I'm too tired!