Happy New Year!

Came home last night after a wonderful and exhausting Christmas holiday.  Lots of family, lots of wine, cookies, chocolates, treats of all kinds, some wonderful gifts, lots of laughter and a huge lot of snow. The best part of all, though, was having the four of us under  one roof for days on end and getting to sit back and watch my two sons make each other laugh.

I now have to rush off and put together an impromptu party for the boys and their friends so they all have something in their stomachs before they do their late night London New Years carousing.  But I did want to stop here for a moment and send you all my best wishes for 2010.  I'll have my reflective moment or two tomorrow (or the day after), but for now...may we all be as healthy as is necessary to reach for our dreams, as full of as much love as we can muster to bring joy into our lives, and may we find as much clear thinking as possible to realize all we have to be grateful for.

Love, peace and productivity to everyone!

Sue

Happy Holidays!!

So this is me signing off for the holidays. I wish you all the best of holiday seasons, whether you celebrate or not.  May all our days be filled with joy, peace, love, health and...if it's not too much to ask, a big dollop of rock n roll.

Here's a little something to get us all in the mood.  See you on the flip side. xoxoxo

Preparing for Inspiration

Hello from cloudy Ireland!
It's been an amazing few days.  I suppose I'm always amazed at how much I accomplish when I come up here to Anam Cara. But this time was even more ridiculously productive than usual.  I came here hoping to break the back of my new play, a piece that I felt might be one of the most difficult and challenging things I've ever undertaken to write.  But after the first day, I had written the first three scenes.  During the second day, I finished Act I. On the third day, the entire second Act came out in one huge burst. And now, having read the whole thing out loud to Sue, the muse who runs this place, I'm confident that it is working well enough for a first draft and for me to send it off to the commissioning actors, which I've done.

Now, I'm not writing all this to you just to boast -- though I admit I am pleased with myself. I'm writing this because all this has caused me to stop and wonder why.  Why does this happen here? And why has it been even more successful this time than in the past?

The obvious answer is that here I have time and space.  I work in a lovely room with a gorgeous view of the sea.  I eat three delicious meals a day which appear without any forethought from me. It is quiet - absolutely quiet unless I cause it to be otherwise.  And here I am surrounded by creativity in its many guises: books, paintings, conversation.  But this time, something else was at work, too.  And that's preparation.

Whenever I come here, I come with a project. I'm either already involved in something or I know what it is I want to write.  But this time I was even more prepared than that, and I didn't even know it.  Over the past few weeks I had been thinkng non-stop about this play, sometimes noting down my thoughts, sometimes not, but always thinking. In the shower, walking down the street, making the bed, emptying the dishwasher, I was continually getting to know my characters and grappling with questions of structure, dramatic tension, theme, dialect, scene - and all without writing a word. Some decisions were made, some weren't, but everything was thought about. But I purposefully didn't allow myself to write any of it, not because of some great plan, but simply because I was busy doing other things and I knew that in a matter of a few weeks I would be able to get down to it.  So by putting it off and putting it off and waiting and waiting, it was all building up to the point where I thought I would explode if I didn't get some release (ok- that's enough with the sexual symmetry).  But honestly, it was almost painful not to be getting all this out of my head and onto paper.  So by the time I was sitting at my desk by the sea, it all came rushing out like a torrent.  And that, I realize upon reflection, is called "preparation."  Anam Cara provided the inspiration as it always does (see pix below). But this time especially, I was prepared for it, really, painfully prepared, and so it felt like an entire full-length play was written in three days.  In reality, though, it's taken two years.

Again, I'm not writing this as a way to brag. But it does show me that after all these years I have learned a thing or two about this crazy thing I do.  Namely, I don't have to have my fingers on the keyboard or wrapped around a pencil to be writing. There are times when I'm really engaged with a project that it's all writing.  It all counts and contributes to whatever it is I'm creating. And when that happens, it's like flying.

So, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared. At least for me, it seems to work better when I am.

and one more thing...

Forgot to mention the next leg of Marcus' blog tour is going on here right now.  It's an interview with RossMagicHoward.  Go on.  What are you waiting for?




                                                                                                                     (image by science.howstuffworks.com)

Gee, Mr Wizard, We Have a Winner!!

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The winner of today's We Need to Talk about Kelvin quiz is Lane.  Congratulations!!!! Your signed book will be winging its way through the cosmos very soon.

And here are the answers in bold:

1.  The scientists who won the Nobel prize for detecting the faint “afterglow” of the big bang thought they had found:

a) The glow of pigeon droppings
b) The glow of street lights
c) The glow of glow worms

2. Einstein’s mathematics professor called him a:

a) Lazy possum
b) Lazy dingo
c) Lazy dog

3. “J. J.” Thomson got the Nobel Prize for showing the electron was a particle and his son got it for showing:

a) It carried a negative charge
b) It weighed about 1/2000 that of a hydrogen atom
c) It wasn’t a particle

4.  The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras thought the sun was “a little bit bigger than”:

a) The Parthenon
b) Athens
c) Greece

5.  According to Einstein, time flows more slowly:

a) In the company of close relatives
b) On the ground floor of a building rather than on the top floor
c) Watching Countdown

Thanks everyone!

"We Need to Talk about Kelvin"

Many of you know that I love science and love reading about science, especially when it's hard to understand. (Go figure...) So I jumped at the chance to have an early look at Marcus Chown's new book, the cleverly titled We Need to Talk about Kelvin.  It's a fascinating and, yes, fun read and one I happily recommend.

Marcus is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. He is currently cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine "New Scientist." He has done stand-up comedy at the Roundhouse and Bloomsbury Theatre, and is a regular on BBC4’s new comedy-science series It’s Only A Theory. His previous books include Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, The Never Ending Days of Being Dead and Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.


The premise behind the book is quite clever,  and I asked Marcus how he came up with the idea.
     The idea to write about what the everyday world can tell us about the Universe came to me in the publicity phase between books. Being an author is an all-or-nothing existence. Much of the time, I am locked away with only George and Reg the goldfish for company (sadly, Laura passed away during the writing of this book). For a brief time, however, during the publicity phase for a book, I get out and about and actually meet people in a whirl of sociability. And the skill required to publicise is entirely different to that required to write a book. In radio interviews, I have at most a few minutes to convey something that will lodge in the mind of listeners. In public talks, most of the audience may not have any science background. So I am continually grasping for new, visual, snappy ways of saying things. And one thing I suddenly realised while doing this - an obvious thing, really - is that, in talking to ordinary people, I tend to latch onto an everyday observation, then relate it to the deep physics it exemplifies.
     At the 2008 Edinburgh Science Festival, for instance, I needed to highlight the basic paradox that leads to quantum theory, our best description of the microscopic world of atoms and their constituents. So I drew people’s attention to a light bulb in the auditorium and pointed out how the light waves that emerge from it are about 5000 times bigger than the atoms themselves. I then took a matchbox from my pocket and said: “Say, I opened this matchbox and out drove a 40-tonne truck. That’s what it’s like for light streaming out of that light bulb.”
     And one day, a light bulb did go on in my head. I suddenly thought, why don't I write a book in which each chapter takes an everyday observation of the world and points out the profound thing it tells us about ultimate reality. Simple as that. Why had I not thought of that before? Suddenly, I could see all sorts of things I wanted to write about coming together. It was a powerful unifying thread.

So now, let the fun begin.  I have in my possession a brand new signed copy just for you.  All you have to do is be the first one to answer the greatest number of the Marcus' questions correctly (photo courtesy of Irkstyle):

1.  The scientists who won the Nobel prize for detecting the faint “afterglow” of the big bang thought they had found:

a) The glow of pigeon droppings
b) The glow of street lights
c) The glow of glow worms


2.  Einstein’s mathematics professor called him a:

a) Lazy possum
b) Lazy dingo
c) Lazy dog

3. “J. J.” Thomson got the Nobel Prize for showing the electron was a particle and his son got it for showing:

a) It carried a negative charge
b) It weighed about 1/2000 that of a hydrogen atom
c) It wasn’t a particle

4.  The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras thought the sun was “a little bit bigger than”:

a) The Parthenon
b) Athens
c) Greece

5.  According to Einstein, time flows more slowly:

a) In the company of close relatives
b) On the ground floor of a building rather than on the top floor
c) Watching Countdown

Okay.  Post your answers in the comments box and in a few days I'll announce the winner.  Good luck!

Random Thoughts for Today

Given that with December comes a plethora ( a word I love to hate) of listings -- the best this-and- that of the year, plus this December we get all those best-of-the-decade lists, too -- I thought I'd put my week's thoughts into list form, just for fun. So, in no particular order:
1.  Michelle McGrane at Peony Moon has collected people's favourite poetry collections of the year here and in several other postings.  Lots of people contributed their ideas, including me, although I found it rather difficult to decide, mostly because several that I wanted to include came from 2008 instead of 2009.  I'm always a bit behind things, I guess....But there are still plenty of wonderful collections to choose from.  Something for everyone, as they say. May your Xmas shopping start with poetry.

2.  I'm finally teaching myself to touch type.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  I type on a lap top which I have sitting up and forward in a special holder in order to save my neck from craning down as I peer at the keyboard.  But while I've been helping my neck I've been pulling my shoulder out of whack.  So, I'm teaching myself (with the help of Mavis Beacon) to touch type.  Did my mother tell me to learn this back when I was in school?  Yes.  Did I listen to her?  No. Now 40 years later.....

3.  I'm off to Anam Cara on Monday for a week's writing retreat.  When I booked it, I thought I'd be there to complete my new poetry collection.  But no, that's done and in the hands of the poet, Katy Evans-Bush,  who has agreed to edit it for me before I start looking for a publisher.  Exciting.  Scary.  And for now, done.  So then I thought I'd go and start work on the new novel idea I've been hinting at.  But no, I'm not doing that either.  Why?  because:

4.  I've been commissioned to write a play for 2 actresses I know and their production company!  Very, very exciting.  I promised them a first draft by the end of February (gulp).  They want to produce it in the autumn 2010.  I do believe this might be the most challenging writing task I've ever taken on.  I must be fearless but not sensational, visual without sacrificing the poetry we find in everyday language.  Thankfully, there's no better place to write this, I think, than Ireland.

5. It's all about theatre right now, because besides my new play, CurvingRoad is really heating up with it's new production of 2 new one-act plays, which we have just confirmed will be presented for a 3-week run this June in London.  The ink is not yet dried on the contract with the venue yet, so no details for you today.  But very, very soon.   I promise.

6. For those of you who may be wondering about my second novel, the Cambodia novel, "A Clash of Innocents," it is still sitting in one agent's office waiting to be read.  This will be a long process, no doubt, but we're here for the long haul.  As long as I keep busy with all my other projects, I shouldn't be driven too crazy by my natural impatience.  As they say, watch this space.

7.  And make sure you come back here on Sunday -- there'll be a prize give-away and a quiz for you.  All I'll tell you is that it will be scratching my science itch...

And speaking of Ireland.  This is for you.  Forgive me, but I couldn't resist.