charles barrow's writing

I wrote a post recently (see 'ponder and mull' below) extolling the virtues of staring into space, daydreaming. I'm satisfied to (re)discover that someone I have a lot of time for, Julia Cameron, says we shouldn't feel bad about doing this and we should consider it a way of refilling the well of creativity. That is a great way to think of it, and I like this concept a lot. I would always listen to Julia's advice since I read her book The Artist's Way years ago. She really helped to focus my mind at a time when I wasn't so able to do so myself. I still write my 'morning pages' to help clear debris out of my mind and keep on the right track, I don't write them every day but maybe a couple of times a week. I'd really recommend checking out her books if you are stuck, have writer's block and can't move forward.

I've hit a real hitch. My latest story is written and is being edited now (self edited - yes I own a fine toothed comb). I've been feeling good about the whole enterprise when, boom, out of nowhere I see a book cover that torpedoes my heart. It's the book's title that actually poses a problem for me. It name checks its main character in the title, an uncommon name which, unbelieveably, I've also given to a main character in my story. W.T.F? I'd not seen this book before, so it is a complete coincidence. I might have thought 'Ah well, whatever.' and still gone with the name if the book in question had been a little backwater publication, but it isn't. It's had great reviews, I notice, and some prominent publicity - which makes it all the more weird that I'd not seen it in bookshops or online thus far. Anyway, the upshot is that I have to find a new perfect name. A difficult, fraught, exasperating process which you'll know all about if you...

Who was it said that genius is 99% perspiration? Einstein? I should probably Google that. I don't think it was him, although he'd know better than anyone. I've recently read that Woody Allen reckons that 80% of success is just turning up. He turns up a lot in my local multiplex so I'm happy that he knows what he's talking about too. These are both high percentages but then sometimes the stakes in success are high. I've been turning up a lot at my writing desk recently. My day job work pattern has changed and I have much more time to devote to writing, and I'm putting in the hours. I'm showing up, I'm perspiring (but I'm still no genius).

Gah, I missed my Halloween deadline. Is it too late to post photos of pumpkins? Of course not. These aren't carved into ghoulish and gruesome faces but presented straight off the vine as beautiful as nature intended. Nothing says Halloween like a pumpkin unless you count Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and flesh eating zombies. I don't actually clebrate Halloween. Perhaps 'observe' is a better word than celebrate. It seems to have bumped Guy Fawkes Night right off the calender and I'd much rather watch fireworks lighting the sky than the neighbourhood youth causing havoc door to door. Also I'm not good with horror. Blowing up Parliament? Fine. Who hasn't thought of doing that? But evisceration, murder, black magic, hauntings? No thanks. The last horror film I sat through was probably Friday 13th, the original one, it scarred me for life and I've avoided any scary film since. I read ghost stories occassionally, Victorian ones, I can handle 19th century h...