Tag: essay

The Writing Comeback (Week III)

Published on by Kevin Bonfield1 Comment

It’s Not All About The Numbers

Ahh, the blog post you’ve all been waiting for.

Here goes – week three of my writing comeback. Not everything can be measured in numbers.

Not for me anyway. Pleasure should not be quantified, happiness isn’t counted. Not in our house.

There’s a great interview with Zac Smith on this week’s Other PPL Podcast where Zac and host Brad Listi talk about how the pleasure of writing comes in the writing! It sounds obvious but, again forgive my analogy, it is just like running – one step at a time, one word at a time – it clears my mind.

Thinking very much counts as writing ✍

What about progress? Surely I’ve always measured my running – longest distances, fastest times, PBs – and I’m guilty as charges I’m afraid. But it is till mainly about the feeling.

This reboot of mine (read this if you fancy) is all about BEING a writer and just as soon as my foot is healed, it will be about BEING a runner too

Of course I’ll be using numbers to measure my progress! Hopefully writing my estimated 90,000 words of the first draft of the novel, tentatively titled Dogs That Don’t Look Like Their Owners (DTDLLTO) by the end of the year. But a good stint of writing will still be successful, if it FEELS successful, regardless of how many words I get down on the page.

SO, for your (and my) pleasure, here’s week three’s progress (and yes there are some numbers!)

Monday: I finalised and posted two, count ’em, TWO blog posts – Click here to read all about the two months since Nicky and myself became vegans or here to catch up with last week’s writing update.

“Making people on paper, much like making them in your uterus, takes a long time, is physically and mentally exhausting, and makes you wee a lot. So brace yourself, we’re going in.“

Writers HQ offering a reality check for the writer!

Tuesday: Busy McBusyface didn’t get chance to add words today.

Wednesday: On the timer, I managed 1100 words of the first draft of DTDLLTO. I also pre-ordered David Keenan’s latest offering today. It is a prequel to the extraordinary This Is Memorial Device (which I reviewed here).

Thursday: Busy trying to keep fit and then grandadding, so little time for words. The wonderful non-fiction journal, Hinterland dropped through the letter box today – I managed to read some of the excellent articles in there while little Charlie (the grandson, not the dog – I know it does make for some confusion having a pet and a 10 month old sharing a name) had a sleep.

Friday: Not feeling great. Ran out of time. Bit of noodling with Writers HQ working out how to join the virtual writers’ retreat.

Saturday: We had a bloomin lovely day out I’ll have you know. You can read about it just as soon as I’ve written the next blog post!

http://www.writershq.co.uk

Sunday: Writers HQ Online Retreat. If you’re fancying doing a bit of writing and find yourself struggling for time (& money) have a rummage around their website. This was the first time I’ve done one of their writing retreats – which became online when that there pandemic arrived – and what a marvellous success it has been.

It just shows that prioritising writing, sitting at a desk which faces the wall, rather than having the laptop on my actual lap and sitting downstairs by a window, works a treat. For me, writing in chunks of time works so well. I did 5 sets of 30 mins of my novel today and wrote 2990 words of this first drafting. I’m just getting the story out and trying not to edit as I go!

Using my desk to lean on, you’ll be shocked to learn, is more productive than my lap!

A big chunk of wordsmithery time today paid dividends in more ways the number of words. I also started to get a richer understanding of the relationship between my two main characters, I found I could tap into a wider range of emotions, hopefully gradually changing between scenes. When I write in very small time windows, I find I force a feeling into a scene without the context of the scenes either side of it.

As the wonderful AL Kennedy says, once characters start developing through the act writing their lives, they will start to live in the writer’s head more. Thus revealing themselves in greater detail. I’m just letting these two show themselves to me as I go. They haven’t been created from nothing, in many ways they’ve been created from everything. And what a privilege it is to be their narrator.

A Certain Thought To Finish

Now here’s thing. A proper thing.

There’s a certain something about a certain writer. Or a certain podcaster. A certain friend, a certain relative or even a certain random character on Twitter. There is a certain something about these certain people which instantly inspires me to write. There certainly is.

You people know who you are 🙏

JEWS DON’T COUNT by David Baddiel

Published on by Kevin Bonfield10 Comments

I really like David Baddiel. His television comedy work was my era. He made me laugh hard back in the day. As a social media user, his wit and comical observations shine through to this day. I was drawn to this book for other reasons though. As I try and read far and wide and learn more about ethnic minorities and their cultures, Baddiel’s voice is strong in guiding me. His extraordinary BBC documentary, Confronting Holocaust Denial left me reeling at the depths of antisemitism exposed.

Jews Don’t Count rummages amongst celebrities, politicians and us, the general public, exposing the hypocrisy in our current world of virtue signalling, identity politics and ‘gotcha’ social media campaigns. It might be true that minorities are thankfully championed and supported in the public domain far more than when I was a young man, yet, as David Baddiel shows, Jews are largely (and glaringly) omitted from the agenda of the anti-racists.

It is a tough and uncomfortable lesson which Baddiel delivers in this short but mightily powerful book. At around 150 pages, it still finds room to pin down every riposte from even the most ignorant and bigoted view points. I saw somewhere this book described as a ‘polemic’. I’m struggling with that as the author’s case building and arguments really do leave no room for doubt as to the experience of Jews.

Baddiel is a great writer and such a persuasive and informative voice. Not that I would want to, but I couldn’t find any counter narratives within my own understanding or beliefs to any of the many cases studies employed here. I would consider myself to be progressive and anti-racist, not to mention left-leaning when it comes to politics. Have I ever been guilty of the dismissive, lazy racism (in the form of antisemitism) which Baddiel points to here? I hope not. But, I’ll be making sure I take my better understanding into the future. I thank Jews Don’t Count for this.

The book is crisp and cutting as well as beautifully elegant in its delivery. Remarkably, Baddiel rarely drifts into raw anger, but is constantly firm and refreshingly open. We shouldn’t need reminding that the Nazi’s (and Communists) feared and hated Jews. Both spread the image of a monied and powerful group who aren’t to be trusted. The modern day left and progressives seem to use the perceived wealth and whiteness of Jews to justify excluding them from the anti-racist and anti-persecution agendas.

Baddiel (very much leaning to the left himself), shows time after time again how Jews are portrayed in political campaigns, literature, the press and in the rest of the media, as being the white, privileged and capitalist enemies of progression. Worse though, Jews are too often subjected to physical, verbal and emotional racist abuse. Racism is not acceptable, full stop, a stand we must all take.

I read this pacey and urgent text in a day and feel enriched by the experience. From football terrace chants to comedy, the racism experienced by Jews simply would not be accepted were other minorities to be similarly abused. I am left with a determination to speak up with more force and confidence and to be brave enough to challenge those of my peers who seem to have (and what a horrible and dismissive phrase this is) a ‘blind spot’ when it comes to antisemitism.

The arguments made in Jews Don’t Count aren’t just powerful, they are essential, but you really need to read this book to understand just how powerful. It is not for me, from my actual position of white, middle class privilege to make this case, but it is for me to urge you to read the book.

Coincidently, I read Jews Don’t Count directly after reading A Meal In Winter, a powerful, pocket sized novella which has The Holocaust and antisemitism at its heart. I recommend both.

ambition

Published on by Kevin BonfieldLeave a comment

For some inexplicable reason, I get Frankie Goes To Hollywood giving my inner ear a tick when I hear the word ‘ambition’. “Whaaaat is it good for…..?” Well…….

A cursory glance at a dictionary (or indeed, Dr Google) finds definitions such as “A strong desire to do or achieve something” and “Desire and determination to achieve success.” 

And dotted around this piece you’ll see a selection of quotes from friends and allies. I used that there social media to ask “what does ambition mean to you, in one sentence?” 

So, where am I with the word?

As is so often the case with my navel gazing, soul searching inner dialogue, it seems to go back to… duh duh duuuuuh… my childhood. It’s almost nauseating how corny that sounds, but that genuinely is where my thoughts arrive from. 

Yup.

A traditional upbringing I was offered. Stable home, stable schooling, stable this, stable that. Which is ironic considering my first memory of ‘running away’ was when my sister bailed out of the family home. She was protesting the fact that putting an actual horse on your letter to Santa was overly, er, ambitious.

We were encouraged to lock in ‘stability’ as an ambition. Do well at school (but university isn’t for ‘people like us’) then get a good steady, stable job. Maybe get a few steady promotions over the next 50 years. Meet a suitable, stable partner for life, a good stable wife/husband. Have 3 or 4 suitable and stable cars and/or children.

Sadly (or not, actually), I was more interested in hearing what John Peel had to offer me when I was a teenager, sampling local cider and mastering rolling a fag whilst cycling were the limits of my ambition.

There was always going to be a clash of cultures……..

But honestly, as an adult, what have my ambitions been?

I never thought I’d find true love for a start, so that was never an ambition. But what do you know, ta daaaaaa, here I am!

Without realising it, I think my main ambition was to never have a proper career. TICK.

But I have *always* wanted to be a writer, a musician, an artist, a poet. I suppose I formed my ambitions based on anything which has a genuine impact on me. Words and music, words and music. 

As it turned out, we can add love to the list.

Does this make my ambition “words, music and love”?

Sort of, but that’s not really the story here. Take love out of the equation – even though I wake up every single day and pinch myself that I get to share another day with the most wonderful human being I’ve ever met. No, love was never an ‘ambition’, it was more like winning the lottery with a ticket I hadn’t realised I’d bought. 

Music and words. Are they ‘ambitions’ though? Not really. I achieved things I never thought I would; played in a band, played my own songs in a band, heard other people sing my songs, I’ve written for magazines (and even started one back in the day), I’ve written for various fanzines (football and music), I had a piece published by Metal Hammer magazine once. 

And in more recent times there’s been so much happening with my writing that I’m extremely proud of. But what makes me really proud. I can’t measure this success, there’s no end game. I can’t see there being any “right, now I’ve achieved that, there’s nothing else to work towards” moments. Because I don’t set any goals. So maybe I don’t have ambition at all. As one popular running podcast puts it, I simply enjoy the process.

Ah yes, running. But what about running? Surely I’ve got running ambitions?

Well yes, for a while back there I was setting myself goals (ambitions?) to run a certain distance in a certain time or finish in a particular position in a race or beat this or that person. And when I achieved any of this, was I satisfied? Of course not, there’s always a different time to beat, a new distance to run, a new person to chase. 

There is a scene in the film Chariots Of Fire where Harold Abrahams has won his gold medal and sits, almost forlorn, in the locker room. When the team quiz each other, they conclude that “he’s won” was the best explanation. His whole ambition had been to win that medal. Having achieved it, the journey was over, finished. What would he do the next day?

Ambition is different for everyone. People are more ambitious or less ambitious. They might be ambitious in some areas of life but not in others. We’re all different and that’s what makes life so interesting. 

I decided to have some checklists for myself this year, so I guess that qualifies as ambitions? Simply a set of ways I’d like to live my life, something to hold myself to account with. Have a gander.

In the mean time, here’s to fair winds as we chase our dreams……..