juleshorne

Texthouse relaunch!

Exciting times! And what recession? My business writing has been expanding lately - it seems companies are at last wising up to the value of getting a clear, punchy message across.   

Texthouse is soon relaunching with a new website, a new look (thanks to Alan at Lemon Design) and the same old excellence (well, someone's got to say it).

Recent happy customers include the Forestry Commission Scotland, National Theatre of Scotland, Scottish Borders Council, Borders Textile Towerhouse and Atacama Ltd.  

I'm a former BBC journalist, know news from the inside, and have a knack for writing powerful copy that connects with customers.

But don't believe me. Email for some samples!

jules@texthouse.co.uk 

More soon.

Jules

I never win things...

... so how brilliant to win a Matt Seattle CD at a fabulous inaugural concert in Denholm! And be part of Hannah and Dougle's round-the-world trip.

The magic carpet pic is on my office wall.

Hope you're having a great time, guys.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan on tour

Fraser Boyle as Kirkpatrick Macmillan in the recent production of The Devil on Wheels, which toured Dumfries & Galloway as part of the Original Bicycle Festival, May 2009.

The picture below shows Fraser's co-star, the wonderful velocipede created by Tony Dymott.

The play was directed by Kate Nelson of Nutshell Productions, and commissioned by Forestry Commission Scotland.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan - A Biker's Monologue

World Mountain Bike Conference 12-15 May 2009
The Original Bicycle Festival 9-24 May 2009 

Write a monologue for a 19th century blacksmith who lived in southwest Scotland and invented the first pedal bicycle. The audience? International mountain bikers, tourism bosses, schools, local and tourist families of all ages, possibly in a forest. And a castle. And a 300-seater auditorium... 

Creative constraints are brilliant fun. They force you to pare down to the essentials, and really think through the shape of what you're writing. With a blank page and every word to choose from (after all, you're only putting them in the right order, right?), it's easy to get bogged down and muddied.

Standing back and seeing the overall shape is the hardest thing to do as a writer, I think. We generally write in closeup, slowly, feeling our way through. But an audience receives the writing - read or performed - much more quickly. That's the speed we need to tune into for decent editing, which I reckon has little to do with typos, and everything to do with shape.

Luckily, Kirkpatrick Macmillan's story already has a great shape: rural inventor defies ridicule to make a world-changing invention - and then looks on as everyone else makes a fortune from it. Small consolation, but at least he's getting some recognition now!

Photo: Kirkpatrick Macmillan, Mark Beaumont and velocipede at Drumlanrig Castle. Original Bicycle Festival.

Gorgeous Avatar Germany

Gorgeous Avatar has just been performed in Heidelberg by the Schauspielgruppe des Anglistischen Seminars. Great to see another parallel version of Amy and Rafi! Hoping to see some production pix soon...

Credo

This list grows every now and then, mostly in bursts.

1. Words are slippery.
2. People are imperfect.
3. Compassion is a political act.
4. Empathy is impossible but necessary.
5. Solitude is all there is.
6. Writing is a music that chimes or doesn’t.
7. Writing is a net around the inchoate.
8. Writing lets in (transitive and intransitive).
9. Patterns must be made and found.
10. Good writing has a pulse that can be felt beyond itself.
11. Writing is a jazz around the business of living.
12. Drama is everywhere, but mostly hidden.
13. Dialogue is political pinball. It skirts and shoves.
14. Words are flags stuck into experience.
15. Play is a forgotten freedom.
16. The imagination is not a place of safety.
17. Feelings are thoughts with an agenda. 
18. Thoughts are feelings with an agenda.
19. Books are wearable heads.

I Think at First

The 1,000-year-old man furrowed his brow. The furrow – of course – could not be seen among the  many already in place. Such a slight frown could scarce begin to shift the weight of all that practised flesh.

He licked his lip with a slow tortoise tongue. It was bad, this dying business. No one to feed him. No one even to hydrate him. They used to bring occasional sponges – square cubes that soaked up no more than half a teaspoon of water. His daughter used to press them to him. He lapped them like the finest whisky. They made him just as delirious.

Then she died. He was told, though he couldn't hear the words. He knew she was frail. They looked so alike, the two of them. More and more alike, the older they got. Both entirely bald, with the same softened eyes and thinness. Sometimes the nurses pretended they couldn't tell them apart. Thirty years made little difference after a thousand of living.

She simply stopped being there. He was too weak to wheel in to see her. Perhaps they thought it might finish him off? And if they were right?

He'd wanted to die a long time now. He'd stopped accepting the sponges, though he dreamed of them, sometimes. They tried his arms for a vein, but the needle fell out.

Now he waited to desiccate. His heart was horribly strong.

13/3/2008

Faustine

Emma Tennant, 1992

p 55

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm

Le Grand Mystere

'The author is unknown'. So says the gloss in the preface.

So there's no information about the sad sack schufter. The groaning bad-backed misanthrope that chopped out this book. The aching creaking lump of pale flesh that wobbled gelatinously as its thin fingers pianolaed across the keyboard, or etched across the paper, tentatively, crossly, desperately. The frown-furrowed bum-scratcher, the hunchbacked kidney-stretcher, the coaster-rolling ditherer, the pen-counter, the pencil-sharpener, the rubber-rubber, the chin-picker.

Unknown.

Oje!

Don't let on.

Don't tell that crotch-howker, that nose-bohrer. Don't tell that miner of thoughts, that sayer of sayings, that harvester of the gold and the glum. That spinner and späher, that watch-and-listener. That typist. That pianist of the letter-chord.

G minor. G major. G scale, tonic, dominant, tonic, cadence, and almost-cadence.

That alphabet-tease. That word-maker. That anecdoter.

Oje!

Unknown?

Perhaps that's best.

Perhaps that's best.

For all concerned.

4/3/2008

Chateaubriand

Atala, René, 1964

p 111

http://www.lekti-ecriture.com/editeurs/Le-grand-mystere.html

Salix Caprea

They've become a liability. In just two years, they've grown ten-twelve feet. A whole plantation's worth, sucking the ground dry.

She planted bayonets – little six-inch plugs. Didn't know you could do that so easily. Just hammer a stick and the ground and watch a tree grow.

And grow they did. Almost palpably. You turned your back and they were up there, pushing, rising. Thin wands that bent in the wind.

She was going to crop them. They were as prolific as grasses. Willows for baskets. She'd sheaf them up and lay them in water to soften. They'd be bent into rounds, pods, coffins.

And when she died, they just kept growing, quick and on.

She meant to die. She knew.

And now they're ten-twelve feet and a liability. They bud in March, these down-plugs that feel so warm on your lip. Wands in a vase, wands bending in the wind.

We cut them down and they keep on coming.

22/2/2008

George Peterken

Woodland Conservation and Management, 1981

p 163

http://www.british-trees.com/guide/goatwillow.htm

Fortgereiset

'Fortgereiset,' said the sign. Its extra 'e' gave it away as an antiquity. 'Gonne Away', it might have said, in a mediaeval sort of way.

Olesch had gone. There was no mistake. He'd left nothing behind but that sad, tattered sign. The rooms were completely bare, save for dust and flies on the windowsills. Oblongs of dirt marked the places where pictures hung. The walls were yellowed with rising intensity from the forgotten smoke of years. Spiders had hung in the cornices and chandeliers, covering them in filthy lace.

But there was still a smell. Part tobacco, part rosin. It hung there, impregnated. It was the nearest thing to a ghost. A fiddler ghost, his pipe clamped in his teeth, up and down the scales, biting in furious frustration.

And there was still a note in the room. It heard the door click and sang out. Sympathetic resonance. Straight and pure as an open string.

27/2/2008

Heinrich Heine

Atta Troll, 1846

p 143

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/7wint10.txt