Aiiiii. It's 7am and cannons are blasting across the valley. The noise behaves like toxic gas in a mine: it fills the space, unseen and odourless, and explodes. A flock of homing pigeons fly in circles above the river - pale silver wings pulsing round and round. Poor creatures - or the fish, imagine the fish darting under rocks.
At 8am, still under bombardment, and now a new layer of sound is applied to the neighbourhood; the aptly called bombos, the village drum band is bringing its full repertoire to your doorstep.
At nine, the drums still parading, we get another surprise. The church sound system comes to life and issues a victorious trumpet blast, a brief announcement and the ubiquitous ranchos. The village celebrations appear to have reached a frenzy, and it's not even 10am. Muito bom dia.
I'm not going to hold forth about my work today (scene outline, pacing, progression). But here's what I learned about writing. At dusk, the sun turned scarlet and slipped in the sky until it reached the ends of trees. A skirting of leaves all around, all touched by a deep blush; but not the olive trees. Olive leaves lit up instead, a luminous silver.
See, how trees take the same light and colour it their way? That's it, my lesson about writing. A fable in which the sun is reality (one sun for all) and trees are writers who give that reality their own hue. They cannot help it - their character, their history, their seasons shape that reality as it goes through them. That's it. I'm not saying anything about writing well or badly, just about the fact that we cannot write against our nature or beyond our wisdom.
Drum roll.
At 8am, still under bombardment, and now a new layer of sound is applied to the neighbourhood; the aptly called bombos, the village drum band is bringing its full repertoire to your doorstep.
At nine, the drums still parading, we get another surprise. The church sound system comes to life and issues a victorious trumpet blast, a brief announcement and the ubiquitous ranchos. The village celebrations appear to have reached a frenzy, and it's not even 10am. Muito bom dia.
I'm not going to hold forth about my work today (scene outline, pacing, progression). But here's what I learned about writing. At dusk, the sun turned scarlet and slipped in the sky until it reached the ends of trees. A skirting of leaves all around, all touched by a deep blush; but not the olive trees. Olive leaves lit up instead, a luminous silver.
See, how trees take the same light and colour it their way? That's it, my lesson about writing. A fable in which the sun is reality (one sun for all) and trees are writers who give that reality their own hue. They cannot help it - their character, their history, their seasons shape that reality as it goes through them. That's it. I'm not saying anything about writing well or badly, just about the fact that we cannot write against our nature or beyond our wisdom.
Drum roll.
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