second wind in writing

Just as marathon runners have a series of barriers and comparatively easy bits during a race, so, too, do writers. Though every book is different and some are much easier than others, I have found, writing non-fiction that requires research that the below has a rough validity.

0-30,000 words is pretty easy.

30K to 50K not too bad.

Around 60K there is period of resistance; you break through if persistent.

Then it just gets harder. But still bearable until you get to 90K- around 300 pages of a normal sized book.

The 10k from 90 to 100k seem to last forever. The wall.

Just under 100K it seems ridiculous you could write more. You go on.

At 102 or 103K a great vista opens: huge relief- you've broken through and it seems as if you could keep going for ever...

a strange prophecy

For centuries the Ottoman Turks ruled many cities in the middle east. Their government of Jerusalem was particularly hated by the local inhabitants owing to high taxes, corruption and no rebuilding of infrastructure. In the eighteenth century an arab saying gained currency, "When the Nile flows into Palestine, then shall the prophet from the West drive the Turk from Jerusalem." The saying was meant to indicate the impossibility of the situation: obviously the Nile could not change course and obviously there could be no prophet from the west since Mohamed was the last prophet.

However, 200 or so years later, in 1917 the British army, starting from Cairo began to advance on Jerusalem. To water the troops a massive pipeline was constructed that drew water from Kantara on the Nile and delivered it north of Gaza- in Palestine. That Nile water was then carried by camel and taken up the line to troops fighting to relieve Jerusalem. Finally the Turks were driven out and the British leader, General Allenby, accepted the surrender of Jerusalam. His name, Allenby, sounded to Palestinians like 'Al Nebi', which means, strangely, in arabic, 'prophet'.

unfortunate spiders

After mating, the male Malabar spider leaves its two palps behind after inseminating the female ie. loses its balls. It has been observed that genital loss makes these eunuch males more aggressive fighters than virgin males.

poker and life

It’s odd when the only thing approaching sage advice in a daily paper is the poker column- but I’ve found that a few times- and I haven’t played poker for years. Poker Queen, Victoria Coren, today has a few good tips for poker and life- my extrapolations follow.

Every time you are about to call, raise instead. In other words if there is enough in some project to get you interested go the whole hog (including the postage). Be bold. If you think of something do it. Up the ante in a conversation.

Stop playing weak aces. Don’t faff around with projects that have no chance of paying off. It’s a black swan thing: if things are going badly get out, if they are going well pile in. A weak ace is not something going well so get out.

Never show your hand or any part of it. I love this one! Who isn’t guilty of showing their hand? For attention, a pat on the back, that cosy feeling of being wanted, that big feeling of being admired…keep it hidden. Helps build momentum and concentration.

Always know your chip count, and the chip counts of everyone round the table. Chip count is more important than the cards. I take from this: think of the longer term of any project, how it may connect to other things you have done. A one-off success is less useful than the steady building of a body of work.

People are out there playing the world series for a $10 outlay… In other words, just because something has a big reputation doesn’t mean you should exclude yourself.

“As in poker so in life” starts one of my favourite footnotes from the eponymous economics textbook known to all students as ‘Lipsey’ (more readable than its competitor ‘Samuelson’) by Richard G. Lipsey. He goes on to explain that it’s no good reason to keep throwing money into the pot just because of the amount you have already put in there. Each round should be assessed on its own merits, and if it appears your bluff has failed- bail out asap. Conversely, if the reason for making the bet remains, bet your coat on it- don’t pull out just because you’re getting nervous.

So next time, don’t call, raise!

mind control

In the end it is down to mind control. Control of your own wayward brain. Easily distracted, easily blown off course. If you can keep on course while doing what you have chosen to do then you are ahead of the game. The hard part is when you are doing something that benefits from distraction. A buyer needs to be able to see the gems in the trash he is shown. He needs to have a gadfly mentality, hoppity skip and never alighting for too long on one thing and heaven forbid becoming too attached to it. Writers too need to be able to seek out interesting stuff. When you get too focused you miss the serendipitous interesting gems that are waiting for you out there.

But in the end you have to lash that brain down. Tie it down. Focus focus focus. It’s the only way. You have to be able to tell yourself “I can’t afford that thought’ or “That kind of thought will derail me”. If you are used to being led by whatever associative crap enters your head think again. You will have to cut a lot of it off at the source. As soon as you start meandering over the past, daydreaming flipping around. Kill it stone dead. 

three ways to become time rich

1. Travel alone, go on holiday by yourself from time to time. Acres of time await sitting alone on trains or in hotels.

2. Learn a new skill, a language, something that requires practise. An hour learning irregular verbs is a slow hour.

3. Spend a day fasting. You’ll be amazed how much time eating, thinking about eating and preparing to eat takes.

kalila and dimna

Ramsay Woods ‘Kalila and Dimna’- fables of conflict and intrigue has just arrived and I’m enjoying it very much. Wood’s earlier volume, which had an introduction by one of his fans, Doris Lessing, has become something of a collector’s item. This volume- with an introduction by historian and broadcaster Michael Wood- brings many more of the traditional stories of the Kalila and Dimna canon out in the inimitable style of Ramsay Wood.

This collection seeks to put into modern and highly accessible English many of the traditional tales found in the Indian Panchatantra which later became the Arabic collection Kalila and Dimna. Wood retells the tales in an agreeable and meaningful way, keeping to the intended sense of the original yet providing new names and characterisation to better engage the reader.

In this review I want to focus on the self-help angle that all traditional tales offer. Ramsay Wood has brought this out in his tale of the three wise idiots. In this story, four Brahmins are out travelling- three of them have high degrees and letters after their names but the fourth has only common sense. Two want to send the unlettered one home but he is tolerated because they have known him all their lives. When they find a dead lion they decide to use their amazing powers, garnered over years of hard study- to bring the lion back to life. The fourth Brahmin suggests that a revivified lion might be hungry and dangerous and that they would be the first food he would set his revived eyes upon. Told to shut up the wise ones continue with their magic. Meanwhile the ignorant fourth climbs a tree and watches. Sure enough the lion- once brought back to life- eats his ‘benefactors’, whilst the fourth man watches and waits and then makes his way safely home. There are lots of potential morals to this tale (Wood provides three). It’s easy to see its application to technological experimentation where ‘if we can make it we should’ is the current mantra. We can see that common sense in this context means seeing the obvious, something that having advanced skills precludes. Living as we do in the age of the expert it’s not easy to see the benefits of certain kinds of ignorance. Too detailed a knowledge of something without the balancing factor of practical use leads to a distortion in judgement. We can see this when we try to learn a skill. If you read all about a skill you don’t know what needs attention and what does not. By getting some experience of the activity first you learn what to pay attention to. Then, when you later read about the subject, you pick up the extra knowledge you require. The alternative is the method of the obsessive – he learns absolutely everything about a subject- but without knowing the relative importance of each element. His perspective is necessarily always superficial. It’s worth bearing this in mind when trying to ‘master’ any subject. For example, to learn about a country without travelling there leads to making all kinds of assumptions that could be easily avoided. I’ve found that even stopping at the airport in a foreign country makes it ‘realer’ and gives a context to what I subsequently read about the place.

I had a graphic demonstration of the above when I saw an expert Persian carpet dealer in the shop of an English enthusiast. The dealer didn’t know all the names of the rugs- which the Englishman did, with his minute study of all the available literature. On the surface it looked like the English guy was the real expert. But when it came to aging a rug the dealer pointed out that a 19^th century rug on display was actually only forty years old. He could tell by pinching the carpet between his fingers. You can fake colour and aging easily but you can’t fake the loosening that occurs with real age. Because the enthusiast lacked this experiential knowledge- and could only read the colours and patterns he saw in books- he had bought a load of carpets for more than they were worth.

Not that all of Ramsay Wood’s tales require such self-help type interpretation. Mainly they are there to be enjoyed for whatever they offer, remembered, and perhaps retold to others. Kalila and Dimna stories are immortal- and if the only real critic is time, these tales have the highest critical acclaim possible!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kalila-Dimna