It's been way too long, but I am back on, working on my Duras memoir again. My deadline of a year ago has somehow dissolved into other activities: teaching, travels and other delicious distractions. Some pics from the year's travels here.
It's two days before Christmas (we had our family get together a week early) and I have the house to myself. I can spread out my books, my photos, my triggers. I can loll about, move from bed to desk, back to bed again. I can walk into the kitchen, boil the kettle, stare absentmindedly out the window at the avocado tree jiggling about in the wind. I can feel the excitement of immersing myself once more in the MD world, in the mysterious territory of that which still must be spoken, described, dug out of my consciousness like precious rare metal.
I gave my last draft earlier in the year to a trusted friend, Helen Williams, who is also a very precise reader and editor. I value her opinion perhaps more than anyone else. I went off travelling and when I came back, after a few delays due to this and that, we spoke on the phone. I was sitting in the kitchen resting a spiral notebook (I believe it to be A5 size and red) on my knees.
I took copious notes with an HB pencil (now I think it might have been a pen). They were good notes, helpful, like I knew they would be. My trusted friend nailed it. She pinpointed exactly what I knew deep down was missing, what I had been avoiding; the crux of the matter really, the whole reason for writing the book.
She had other useful things to say too and said them all in a positive way. It was a long phone call, and satisfying. I put the red spiral notebook down — on my desk? under the low kitchen table? in my bag? on a pile of other books I was always bringing in and out of my bedroom office?Why was I always bringing them in and out? You may well ask.
Answer: economic neccessity. Not only had I taken to renting out my spare room to strangers arriving from all corners of the world in their dainty Asian slippers dragging their oversized suitcases. I had also taken to renting out my bed and hence my office as well. When one room was light on bookings, I would take bookings for the other, then find myself double booked and sleeping on the living room floor. Ha ha, don't mind me I would tell them, just think of me as the night watchman. I'll be dossing down long after you and getting up way before you. And I did. I even managed to set up a living room desk which had enough room for my computer and my small pile of papers and books. Except that now the red spiral note book, the one I already mentioned with all my trusted friend's notes in it, was completley disparu!
I searched, yes, indeed I searched, even as we are speaking, I think of another place it may may have fallen into and I go to have a little look. But nothing.
Luckily after another few months, another email or two and another few delays due to this and that, my trusted friend emailed me her notes. How trusted and trusty is that!
So here I am, notes in hand, ready for the rewrites.
Of course I have to find the way back in, which involves ferreting around in my old MD books, checking to see if there is any new info on Duras on the net and bingo there is, unless somehow I just missed it before.
A nice film, in English no less, called Worn Out with Desire to Write (see credits here).
which I have to say describes my state quite aptly!
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| MD's house at Prey Nop, Cambodia, from the film Une Barrage contre le Pacifique |
I gave my last draft earlier in the year to a trusted friend, Helen Williams, who is also a very precise reader and editor. I value her opinion perhaps more than anyone else. I went off travelling and when I came back, after a few delays due to this and that, we spoke on the phone. I was sitting in the kitchen resting a spiral notebook (I believe it to be A5 size and red) on my knees.
I took copious notes with an HB pencil (now I think it might have been a pen). They were good notes, helpful, like I knew they would be. My trusted friend nailed it. She pinpointed exactly what I knew deep down was missing, what I had been avoiding; the crux of the matter really, the whole reason for writing the book.
She had other useful things to say too and said them all in a positive way. It was a long phone call, and satisfying. I put the red spiral notebook down — on my desk? under the low kitchen table? in my bag? on a pile of other books I was always bringing in and out of my bedroom office?Why was I always bringing them in and out? You may well ask.
Answer: economic neccessity. Not only had I taken to renting out my spare room to strangers arriving from all corners of the world in their dainty Asian slippers dragging their oversized suitcases. I had also taken to renting out my bed and hence my office as well. When one room was light on bookings, I would take bookings for the other, then find myself double booked and sleeping on the living room floor. Ha ha, don't mind me I would tell them, just think of me as the night watchman. I'll be dossing down long after you and getting up way before you. And I did. I even managed to set up a living room desk which had enough room for my computer and my small pile of papers and books. Except that now the red spiral note book, the one I already mentioned with all my trusted friend's notes in it, was completley disparu!
Luckily after another few months, another email or two and another few delays due to this and that, my trusted friend emailed me her notes. How trusted and trusty is that!
So here I am, notes in hand, ready for the rewrites.
Of course I have to find the way back in, which involves ferreting around in my old MD books, checking to see if there is any new info on Duras on the net and bingo there is, unless somehow I just missed it before.
A nice film, in English no less, called Worn Out with Desire to Write (see credits here).
which I have to say describes my state quite aptly!
Haha! The exact same thing happened to me. I once had a journal so full of good ideas, of special notes and reminders, that it was a kind of literary gold. And it just totally disappeared - I have never been able to find it again, even though I still look occasionally, remembering how brilliant the work in it was :-)
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