My New Camera

My writing has been pushed aside a little lately to make space for a photography project. I am participating in my first photography show in February (2009 seems to be a year for firsts). There are two other photographers taking part in the exhibition, which is entitled Nature, Nurture, Woman.

The photography teacher I have been working with, Adriana, took me out one night to start thinking through one of my themes -- nature in the city (the other theme is about my mother) -- and she asked me how I felt about what I was looking at. She asked me to describe how I was feeling and I found the experience quite difficult, even painful. I had felt emotions when taking photos and especially when looking at them printed, but I had never really placed any value on photography as a cathartic, therapeutic, expression of my feelings. It seemed that photography was all about the external world, and that the feelings it triggered in me were not ones generated from within.

Writing has always been cathartic for me. It doesn´t matter what I am writing about. It is the simple act of writing that leaves me feeling at peace. Perhaps with writing it is that I am the one generating the images, creating them and arranging them using my imagination, whereas with my camera I am capturing what is already there (my photos are rarely posed), seeking out compositions that have already been composed and are just waiting to be snapped up.

But Adriana helped me to see things differently. I saw that in choosing to take a certain picture, seeking out the types of places I go to take photos, choosing to shoot in colour or black and white, I am making choices based on how I am feeling. And I now understand why I feel the same sense of peace after a day out taking photos, as I do after writing a poem.

This realization, I am sure, will open doors for me both as a writer and as a photographer.

A Poem

On Thursday we had our first writing group. The assignment was to translate a poem from a language we didn't know into English. I chose Catalan. I took the first paragraph of Kafka's Metamorphosis, and starting with the last word and working my way backwards I wrote each word out in list form. Afterwards, I "translated" each word into an English word that sounded similar. Then I created a poem using my English words in the order that they appeared in the original Catalan (cheating a little):

Quan, un matí, Gregor Samsa va despertar-se d´uns somnis neguitosos, es va trobar al llit transformat en un insecte monstruós. Jeia damunt l´esquena dura, com una cloaca, i, si aixecava una ica el cap, es veia la panxa de color fosc, segmentada per estreps arquejats, com una volta, tan prominent que el cobrellit, a punt de relliscar del tot, amb proa feines
s´aguantava. Les cames, molt nombroses i dolorosament primes en comparació amb la grandària habitual de Samsa,
s´agitaven indefenses davant els sues ulls.

The Metamorphosis

When undone martyr, Gregor Samsa
vain, desperate,
says dunce psalms
negotiations end in vain
trouble ails yet
transforms into an insect
monstrous, jeer-damned.

The skin endures
comes under cluster
eye sees an ice cave under mica
or else ´scapes via land
pants the color of fossil segment per strip
as architect comes under voltage,
tan prominent,
queer eel cove yet appointed.

They relinquish the deal
that and proud feigned sadness,
wanting ever less games
they moult their numerous eyes dull
or owe cement primers in comparison.

And lad,
grandiose, habitual, the Samsa,
sags it.

Even in defense of deviance
else sows else.

Isolation & Belonging

A few weeks ago I met with Justin Donlon, the director of graciaartsproject here in Barcelona. The project is designed to offer a space for artists to communicate and collaborate with other artists and to share their work with the public -- either on the net or in the gallery. I´ve posted both a photography and a writing profile on the site -- http://www.graciaartsproject.com/ -- and I´ve also been given the go-ahead to start a writing group in the gallery space.

I´ve been in Barcelona for almost three years and it has taken me this long to meet enough writers to start a group. In my first two years I knew no writers at all and at times this created a sense of isolation. When I lived in Vancouver I had lots of friends who were artists and there were always opportunities to talk about writing or to be involved in groups. For me, putting down roots in a place requires knowing people who write. Just knowing that I am now involved with a writing group here gives me the strongest feeling of belonging that I have had since arriving.

After posting a few poems on the website I looked at them with new eyes and I felt slightly ashamed. I´d rushed to put them up and hadn´t given them the careful editing that they needed. There are just small errors that bother me, nothing too serious, but I´m glad this has happened because it has made me realize how working in isolation can lead to laziness. What I mean by this is that the longer I remain in solitude, editing my own work, deciding what is good and what is not without the input from an audience, the easier it is to be negligent. If no-one is seeing my poems, then they only need to be good in my eyes, which, taking my ego into account, may not be that hard to achieve. The reason a writing group is so important, then, is because it will make me responsible for every writing choice I make. I may have to explain the reason I indent a line ten spaces or why I choose a particular word or put something in italics etc. These choices will need to be justified and in justifying them I will have to understand them and take responsibility for them. And it is impossible to be lazy when other people are looking at your work and asking you "why?" You have to be prepared and in preparing yourself for their questions you become a better writer.

Last night I took some photographs of my Piranesi in Montserrat book. This is one that I particularly like.

At the moment I am finding it difficult to find a balance between researching and writing my next book. I´m not sure when to stop doing the research and start doing the writing. There is a sense that if I haven´t completed all the research before I start writing, I will have to go back and edit everything out because it will be wrong. Waiting until I have collected all the necessary facts and details seems like the logical thing to do. However, it doesn´t fit with how I work as a writer, nor with the method I used to write More House, through which I left myself open to all and any influences around me -- what I was reading, who I´d been speaking to that day, what was on the radio, the dream I´d had the night before etc. The plan to use a different method with the second novel doesn´t seem to be working. Instead I just want to write and write about whatever comes up for me on any given writing day, and then afterwards go back and clean everything up.

Perhaps every writer must find their own method and perfect it, rather than trying to write using the methods he or she assumes other writers use. I always picture a writer sitting at a light-flooded desk that overlooks a deserted beach, writing from morning till night. Who are these people? My reality seems so far away from that romantic ideal, but at the same time, unlike what I felt prior to finishing More House, it is not something I lament. Novels get written, with or without giant windows.

More House

I´m new. My first novel is due out in the spring. It´s called More House. On this blog I´d like to record the process of publishing -- what it feels like, what it involves, what I learn along the way, the things that annoy me, the things that please me.

At the moment I am completing an Author Questionnaire. Most of the questions are not questions a writer can answer very honestly -- how does your book differ to other books in its field? for example. I see an array of different influences, most of them not literary, that have helped me to write better, but I don´t have the necessary objectivity to be able to compare what I´ve written to what somebody else has written.

Today I received an email from a fellow writer who warned me of the dangers of speaking too freely during an interview. For him, just mentioning that he was listening to Hendrix on the day of an interview meant that for years afterwards his work was compared to Hendrix´s music. I think his advice is good, but knowing *when* someone is going to take your words and stretch the hell out of them, is not so easy.

Although getting published is mostly a confidence-boosting pleasure, it also has its risks. Knowing that once More House is out there it won´t be mine anymore, scares me. Knowing that reviewers can write anything they feel like writing, also scares me. But, once you have written a novel, if you do not get it published it hangs over you like a dark cloud and blocks the flow of new writing projects. I guess, then, that the risk of being criticized and misinterpreted is a small price to pay for the luxury of being free to write once again on a clean slate.