Shift to winter - then somewhere else

It's been, I realise, nearly three months since I last blogged.  During that time we've had something in the way of - if not an indian summer - then most definitely an absent winter.  As I write, the ski fields in the southern lakes are still almost bare, well past opening day.  The water hasn't remained warm though: it's now at the temperature when forays into the life aquatic become dependent on it not being too big (for me in these temps, read nothing over three feet.  I've ceased to see the fun in being hit by frigid lumps of watery concrete, a lapsing in my hardcored-ness that I make no apologies for whatever) and on finding somewhere to get changed out of whatever freezing wind happens to be blowing.  That's not really been a problem this last week - there's been a run of small waves on the east coast just big enough to offer a few fun ramps in windless conditions under clear blue skies: my definition of perfect winter waves.  The only thing to give away the presence of winter, in fact, is some of the wildlife - and even that's been sunbathing.

This side's almost done.

Various factors have contributed to my lack of blogging recently, chief amongst them the hard work of getting our house down here ready to sell.  The move to warmer climes is still very firmly back on - but it would be good to get some skiing in before we go.  Are you listening, mother nature?

There's been a very definite shift in the weather over the last couple of weeks; winter suddenly feels imminent.  I drove over the hill to check Murderers this morning and there was snow on distant peaks.  The wind that whipped underneath my towel while I was getting changed at Aramoana (Murderers wasn't looking tempting) had little of summer in it either, and I pulled on a hood for the first time in a few months, looking after those ears.

I'm still looking to consistently click with the waves around here.  There's nowhere where I ever feel at home, on top of what's going on.  I've never been the best at reading beach-breaks, but I would still have expected to find a corner somewhere that I could have made my own.  It's yet to happen, just one of many things that has the warm song of the North getting louder.

I have far too many computers.  One effect of this is that I have folders with my writing in it spread around the house.  So when I pick up a different laptop - sometimes for the first time in months, for reasons too boring to go into here or anywhere - I get to see stuff that's been sitting, waiting for me.  Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad.  This time it's been good - I picked up something I'd sketched out which has a very different voice and feel to the story I've been working on recently, and it excited me.  I saw new places it could go, and the change of language is refreshing.

So I've picked that up for a while, and I'll run with it a bit longer.  I wonder how many other writers wok like this - flitting between one unfinished project and the next, sometimes seemingly never closer o finishing any of them.  Is it just a reflection of who I am - a damning reflection,at that - or a valid way of keeping what I produce - I don't know, passionate isn't the word...somehow less mechanical, truer, containing more of me?  Either way, even if only intuitively (obviously, as I can't even find the words to describe it logically!) I think it's important, part of the giving process of authoring, and for that a more rewarding, if less productive way of writing.

Sick...

Waves today out along the coast.  Unfortunately, I've been hammered by the flu, so although I took a board out looking with me today, the fear of getting cold and sick again kept me out of the water.  I've lost about half a stone in sweat and vanished appetite, so jumping into sub-ten degree water is probably not high on the list of things I should be doing.  There were some guys on it and having fun though, and I took a few shots.  It's definitely harder trying to take decent surf pictures with a compact as opposed to an SLR - shutter lag, struggling to make out an LCD in daylight - still, got a couple of frames to make something of...

Plenty of grunt on offer today, for sure.  Beautiful blue skies and sunshine, and the headland at Blackhead is still just about big enough to keep the north-easterly off it.  It's vanishing surprisingly quickly - it's been quarried out for road stone. I can't help but think it's a little unnecessary to take an entire headland out.  

Smooth as a baby's bottom.

And here's the token arty attempt.  I can't wait to get back on it.

The surfing's not the only thing that's suffered.  Along with my physical energy, my creativity seems to have been well and truly sapped.  I keep resolving to get up at stupid times of night and write - just to harden the creative muscle, as it were.  (Stop sniggering at the back.)  Unsurprisingly, bed always seems to win.  Perhaps it's indicative of just how drained I am at the moment that I can't even link those two thoughts together properly.  Best stay away from pen and paper then, because it's never good to look back at past efforts and realise that yes, it really was utter crap.

Getting ready for roadtripping...again

I had another OK day of writing today.  I'm still at a point where I'm going over what has gone before - no teasers yet - but where I'm laying foundations for what's happening next.  Seeing as how I really haven't mapped this bit out, it's exciting, although slow writing.  The plot as it stands so far is pretty detailed and intricate - there's a lot of historical references, which I hope both add interest and authority.  The need to appear authoritative isn't a vain thing in writing, it's essential - it establishes the trust the reader has in the author; and also, as Flaubert said, God is in the details.

I picked up some oil and bits today for servicing the kombi.  I'm planning a roadie on my own down to the Catlins sometime in the next couple of weeks, should the surf and weather co-operate.  The days are pretty short and the nights long, so it'll probably be a one or two night deal, I think.  I'll take the laptop and write while the battery lasts.  My writing career began travelling: I consciously started pursuing this writing dream when I worked out at sea as an observer on Spanish fishing boats on Newfoundland's Grand Banks.  Over four months I penned the bones of what is probably the world's worst novel.

I vividly remember taking this photograph after a morning's writing; on the morning of the first day of the new millennium, feeling the ache of missing my eighteen-month old daughter and wife. I finished that novel two years later, and it occupies a proud position on my bookshelf from where it never moves.  It sits there taunting me really - I am your work.  As a motivator it's quite powerful:  there's a strong sense that in this awful work is something I have to atone for. Yet I'm equally proud of it: it's the stamp that marks the beginnings of my apprenticeship.

The first sketches of that novel were done a couple of years before, on my own again in a plain pension on the small island of Graciosa, just off Lanzarote. In between picking urchin spines out of my feet and trying to stem the flow of blood from scalp wounds - all marks of honour from tackling a heaving left-hander five miles daily walk away - I started writing out characters.  I would never have thought then that Graciosa would be the birthplace of something that would stick with me and possess me like writing - trying to tell stories - has done ever since.  Funny and powerful things happen on the road.

So when I travel solo I always look for and make room to discover new things in my writing.  Hopefully it'll be the same going down to the Catlins.  I'm timing this because I think that I'll be running into blockages soon, and the trip might just head those off.    But before then, I need to change the oil, adjust the valves, fix a couple of leaking pushrod seals and change the dipstick boot, a task which promises to have me swearing in new and interesting ways.

Slowly goes it...

It's definitely shaping up to have been something of a slow week.  I think I'm going to have averaged about a thousand words a day, which isn't really where I want to be but progress is still progress.  I've been distracted by many things: money worries - which aren't immediate yet but who I know are lurking somewhere over the horizon, my wife's job interview, solo care of the kids for a couple of days, and staying up together with all the things I've been selling off on trademe / ebay - so that the first worry stays less immediate; and also that when we come to move back to Taranaki we take a whole let less crap back with us.

As far as the book goes, it's been a relatively easy last couple of days as I'm at a point where I'm essentially recapping what has already been.  I'm feeling the breadth of choices I have from here spreading away in front of me like an ocean: wide, intimidating, and constantly shifting.  If it's not to labour a point too hard - which it is - my confidence in my literary sextant is wavering somewhat.  Best hurry up and get lost, I think.

I've finally accepted that I won't ever build another darkroom and put all my film stuff up for auction, so I've been playing around with black and white conversions in Photoshop to see if I can get anywhere near what I can do with my hands.  Not yet, but I'm excited by the potential.

I've also been trying to evaluate freelance web writing opportunities like suite101.com.  Some people seem to say OK things about this sort of thing, but it seems to be a second income strand rather than the main one which I know I'm going to need before long.  Still, I won't get anything if I don't try, so they're on the to-do list for once this first draft is done.

And finally, the surf's crapped out.  I had a fun wave down the coast yesterday, all to myself.  That little right point is, I think, going to be my salvation while I'm here.  The work I've been doing on my core strength seems to be paying off - I feel like I'm moving lighter and quicker than I've done in - well, years really.  I've frightened myself too, with just how quickly I'm losing pounds now I've decided to watch what I'm eating.  I think I may have more to come off than I thought, although judging by the way it took me ten minutes to get my claw-like hands to cooperate in taking my contacts out when I got out of the water, I'll be burning a few extra calories staying warm real soon...

A New Day...

I was full of trepidation this morning, after the scare of finding myself so blocked yesterday.  I sat down at 9 am this morning wondering what the hell I was going to write about.  When I looked up an hour later, I'd done a thousand words. Another half-hour and I'd added another four hundred.  Amazed, is the word. 

And yet something's changed:  I know full well from past experience that nothing is guaranteed in writing, certainly not that a stories' end will ever be told.  Yet I'd begun to imagine that this one was so different.  So yesterday was a wake-up call - never to take another day's writing for granted. 

I'm telling myself too, that I can't go back to Taranaki until this book is written, trying to use my homesickness positively.  The temperatures are dropping outside, down around the freezing point at night.  The ski season can't be far off now: once that's started it'll feel like only a matter of weeks before we're getting ready to head north again. 

Small waves again at Blackhead this morning - weak, clear and cold.  I felt cold for the first time in my 4/3, and questioned whether I'd really be able to keep the motivation to keep surfing through the depths of winter.  Fielded phone calls from friends up north last night, stoked that the drought up there has finally broken: surfing good sized waves, warm in their summer suits, well into the twilight.  It's enough to turn anyone into a wuss.  One of the benefits of taking a camera with me is that I can sit and look again at the waves I'm surfing now, in this life, in the warm.  And I really mustn't grumble, must I?