Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Of note taking and writers



11 March

As I settled last night I had a thought come to mind about the Privy Council. I lay there thinking about it so I decided to make a note of it so I could remember it for today. However, before I turned the light on to do so, I had a short debate as to whether it was worthwhile or not. Caution won out and made the note. And yet when I got up this morning I couldn’t remember what it was I made a note about and I needed to read it again to remind me. Now here’s another thought on making notes to yourself. 

Depression …

No, I haven’t forgotten what the other thought is. As I was copying yesterday’s blog to be published I had a thought about depression come to mind; so I quickly typed that single word as above. However, I can’t remember what it was about depression that made me want to make a note of it. So the added thought I’ve just had is that I need to make a longer note than just one word. Note to self … FULL NOTES PLEASE!!!

The Privy Council then … I’ve just had a look at its membership list and it’s a long list, a lot longer than I thought it was. A lot of them are MPs, Sir or Lady or Lord whatever. I wonder though, are there any nurses on it; road cleaners, school dinner ladies, teachers, GPs, posties … There seem to be no so-called commoners on there. I wonder why? Surely their street knowledge would useful to such a council and its deliberations. There’s sub-council on legal affairs; they would certainly benefit from having some input from the working people of this country, people who know how it works at sharp end of life and not in the dreamy towers and common rooms of Oxbridge and such places.

The note I made above the one from last night was of a vision I had when I got up the day before. The vison was of hundreds of words, written in red they were all scattered and piled up around my feet. Very strange, but that also kicked off a few addition thoughts as well. The main was that I need to get and pick up all those words and get them typed up in current novel. Taking that to heart I did manage to get 1200 words written, but that’s as far as I got with it, again!

Oh to be able to sit for hours and write as I used to when I first began to write to any extent. In 1984 I was attending a local Baptist Church and was loving it there, even if I didn’t know what the differences were between our church and Anglican one a couple hundred yards up the road. So I asked the pastor and he invited to a course he was running with a couple of other people. That course lead on to other’s and ultimately to my BA hons degree.

I remember that when I first started writing the assignments they were asking for 250 words … and I was struggling to find 250 words. By the time I graduated, the OU were asking for 4000 on … and I was fighting hard to keep it to that word limit. One tutor advised us that if we couldn’t reach the word limit we had left something out and if we were over it, then we had included something that need not be there. OK, fine … but I still find it fairly hard to agree with that statement. Here’s an example …

Moving away from academic writing now, HP and the Philosopher’s Stone is a fairly small book. By the time Rowling had got to the end of the series they were a good three times the length of that first one. I’ve seen it in other writing too where writers have been able to grow their work as time went on. Part of my studies before the OU was looking at Islam and an additional reading source was a book by a man called Amir Ali, The Spirit of Islam. That’s a very interesting book by the way where he raises some items that most Muslims would reject out of hand. One of them is that the Koran as published today, is not how it was written. Ali claims that when it was first written the amount of writing was short and to the point. He later became more comfortable in his writing and the work count increased. As it is published now, it’s in reverse of the of how it first came out.           

Today’s dinner is sorted already, we are having pizza, well, Kile and I are. He’s due to come to us for this weekend anyway but he’s off school with conjunctivitis, and his little step brother won’t give him and peace to rest his eyes. So we are having from today until Sunday. How will we survive I wonder. And I hope that we don’t pick up his conjunctivitis too!

Today’s photo then … 

A pair of wigeon.

And today’s funny …

Colonoscopies are important medical procedures that have saved lives. And yet they’re as popular 
as, well, a colonoscopy. Here are 
comments purportedly made by 
patients to physicians during their procedures.
“Now I know how a Muppet feels!”
“Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?”
“Any sign of the trapped miners, chief?”

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