charles barrow's writing

...on shifting sand Photo is the author's own

Is it possible to get Editor's block, as opposed to Writer's block? An anxiety about taking words off of the page as opposed to putting them on? If so then I am suffering from it at the moment. I know what needs to be done (I'm sure I do), I know what needs smoothing out (or think I do), what needs close attention (or maybe not), and slimming down (or leaving well alone).

Went to an Orlando vigil last night. Forty-nine names were read out. Forty-nine. I was enraged and heart broken and attending a vigil scarcely seemed like an adequate response but I wanted to do something, I wanted to stand in solidarity. And maybe thoughts and prayers can cross oceans to reach those who lost a loved one.

I've been reading a lot of American novels recently, or America-set novels is probably more accurate. So I've been tuned in to an American sensibility, and partly daydreaming in one (although not even in my worst dreams do I get any understanding of the Trump fiasco).  What all this inspiration has done is, simultaneously, make me long to visit the States again at some future date, and cast my mind back to a New York trip I made in 1989/90. I visited over New Year and so spent the very last few days of the Eighties and the very first few of the Ninties there. I ticked all the tourist boxes; Empire State, World Trade Centre, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Broadway, the Guggenheim, Christopher Street, Tribeca, I stayed in Brooklyn, I rode the subway, smoked Marlboro, tipped the coat check, watched cockroaches in the appartment, ate Chinese take away (or was it take out?) from white folding top cartons, and I watched the Big Apple come down at the stroke of New Year in a...

I didn't enjoy my recent moaning posts and today I'm happy to post on an upbeat note. I traded in my Apple products for Samsung, phone and tablet, and all is right in my blogging world again. And to prove the point I am uploading a photo, because I can, because it's now easy to do.  I like this photo a lot, and I'm proud of it. This is a Black-headed Gull and it looks as though I must have been 300 feet in the air, flying alongside it, but I was standing at the end of Yarmouth Pier. I have more seagull photos which I'll post. Bird pictures sit well within the world of John Mann. Photo is the author's own.

This post could be read in conjunction with angry post below. I've just spent the past four hours trying to upload a photo from my new iPad onto this blog. I couldn't manage it. I tried every trick that I know and then spent a very long time looking for forum posts on the topic, time I could have spent writing several blog posts. Finally I find a forum discussing the fact that you cannot upload photos from an iPad to Blogger. I don't believe it. Someone else suggested that in fact it is possible but you have to use the Blogger app. I go to the iTunes Store. No Blogger app. It is no longer available at the iTunes Store. I can hardly believe this either. My angry post detailed my frustration that I'd bought an iPad and it no longer allowed me to do certain things that my old (cheap) Asus tablet had allowed me to do without any problem. To that list can now be added, my iPad won't allow me to blog as I want to. This brings much anger, sadness and frustration. I...

Do you ever notice a theme connecting the books you seemingly choose at random to read? I have a major theme running through recent reads and I've only just realised it. I keep reading writers who are writing about writers - and in one case a writer who is writing about a writer who is writing about a writer. It's like a nest of Russian dolls, one inside the other. Perhaps, subconsciously, I am choosing books with this theme, in fact the more I think about it the more likely it seems. In a previous post I wrote how much I enjoyed Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, a book about an author with writer's block who teams up with a would be young novelist. Since then I have read The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer about a boy who deals with his mental health issues by writing and sketching in a journal. Then I read Oracle Night by Paul Auster about a writer who buys a blue notebook to begin writing again in order to help heal himself after a terrible accident. He writes a story a...