After not getting a response from a certain record company, despite a second request for permission to use some song lyrics, I’ve had to rewrite one of my chapters. You’d think a small independent label would be only too pleased of some free publicity but apparently not. So, sod ’em. I’ll leave the name of the band in as it’s not their fault their permissions man CBA to respond to my mails.
It was only a 110-word rewrite but not having touched the chapter for a few years it was weird, and a little unnerving, getting the pen out again. I’m a great believer that a writer gets on a roll, that it just flows, and that once a particular creative episode has ended it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to bring it back to life. I’d compare it to waking up during a nice dream, and trying to go back to sleep again so you can pick up where you left off.
That said, the little voice in my head, the one I thought I’d got rid of, reminded me of a couple of sub-plots that it wasn’t entirely happy with. Several of the chapters have multiple time-shifts, jumping back years, jumping forward again, and it’s important to get these right. It sounds easy enough, but it’s actually quite a hard skill to master. Films tend to use captions that say things like ‘Seven years earlier’, ‘fifteen years later’, or whatever, but it’s harder to pull off these shifts in prose. That, allied to the sub-plot not being quite right, and I knew I needed to look at it again. Fortunately, after a couple of hours of 228-word rewrite I’m happy that one of the last nagging doubts has been removed. I’m readier. Almost ready to roll.
On a completely different note, I usually couldn’t give a monkeys about the Oscars, I find the whole thing a bit nauseating and narcissistic, but as much as you can be pleased for someone you’ve never met, I was pleased to learn Eddie Redmayne had done the business yesterday evening. If you could tell how nice a person was just from looking at their face, and I’m quite sure you can’t, then I reckon Eddie R would be a pretty top bloke. I’ve not seen the film, and don’t intend to, but his performance opposite Clémence Poésy in Sebastian Foulks’ <i>Birdsong</i> was outstanding. I rarely eulogise over such things so that really is praise indeed coming from me. Out of all the films I’ve ever seen, the on-screen chemistry between Redmayne and Poésy was, to use a cliché, electric. Actually I’m not sure you can have electric chemistry, that seems to be conflating two sciences, but you know what I mean. I’d go as far as saying it’s the only time I’ve ever watched a film and believed that the actor and the actress were in love with each other. Maybe they were. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a must-watch.
Sean McCann – author 