Tag: writing

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy, Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (1982)

I have a problem.

Dear Internet, I have a confession to make.

My name’s Claire, and I have an uncontrollable addiction to diaries.

At the end of 2010 I bought a small, slim 2011 diary from WHSmith. It had a week to view, with a page for notes facing each week. Small enough to go in my handbag, plenty of room to write. Perfect. Yet within a couple of weeks I’d bought an A5 sketchbook and a packet of sticky squares. I pulled all the pages out of the diary, and stuck each one onto a double page spread of the sketchbook. Much nicer! Still a little organised weekly diary space, but much more room to write and draw and doodle. And much nicer paper to do it on. I stuck to that one for several months, using it as a scrapbook as well as a diary. I glued in flyers and tickets from events I’d attended, wrote shopping lists and drew designs for lingerie.

And then it started to look a bit full, and the cover started to split, and it wouldn’t stay closed, and it looked a bit scruffy. It was much too fat to fit easily into my handbag, and I fell out of love with it. Decided that tidiness was the order of the day, and replaced it (in about July) with an 18-month Moleskine. No doodling in this one, at least not in pen, as the paper’s too thin. But the book itself is nice and smart, with a notes page against each week so there’s plenty of room to write. Except it does than annoying thing of squishing up the weekend days into half a space… and in September I got a weekend job, which meant squeezing a lot of writing into a very small space.

The two diaries shown above, I bought yesterday. The top one’s another Moleskine, this time a brand new teeny-tiny one. (I may have also bought a matching address book and a couple of teeny-tiny notebooks to go with it. As you do.) It has a day to a page, so plenty of room to write even though it’s such a little book, and it doesn’t squash up the weekends when I have a lot to fit in. There’s deliberately no room for notes and tickets and doodles – this is just for keeping a track of what I’m doing and when I’m doing it.

The other one‘s more of a journal I suppose, and I have to admit that I feel faintly embarrassed about showing it to you. Every year those calendar stalls appear in shopping centres, every year I look at the Llewellyn calendars and diaries, and every year I walk away without buying one. Sometimes friends buy me calendars about witchcraft or spiritual inspiration, and I keep those long after the years have passed because the illustrations are so beautiful. (I got rid of all my books on witchcraft a few years ago, although I see them occasionally in Oxfam and toy with the idea of buying them back again.)

I followed The Artist’s Way for a while but couldn’t keep up with the Morning Pages, despite buying a special book in which to write them. A relative bought me a lovely Wellness Journal, but the categories don’t quite fit the things my doctors want me to track. I bought a lovely hardback notebook to write down my tarot readings, but I’ve managed to get out of the habit of making time for readings at all. I’m hoping that this new book will help me to keep track of all these things in one space. It has dedicated pages for tarot readings, monthly and weekly calendars, places to write down goals and plans (which is something I think about all the time), and lots of space for writing and scrapbooking and hopefully clearing out the contents of my brain a little. I don’t think of myself as a particularly spiritual person, which is why I find talking about this slightly embarrassing, but I do find that the more carefully I think about what I actually need and want (as opposed to what I think I ought to need and want, if you understand the difference), the better able I am to cope with life. And writing things down has always helped me with that.

I also have a sort of a theory that once I’ve discovered the mythical perfect diary, my life will miraculously become so organised and uncomplicated that I’ll wonder how I ever managed without it. This explains why I have two beautiful leather Filofax binders (one much too big, one much too small), because I thought the ability to customise was what I needed. Apparently it wasn’t. And it’s why I buy a new diary at least every six months, because it invariably turns out that there’s something dreadfully wrong with the one that I thought was absolutely perfect at the time.

So, here are next year’s new diaries. Let’s see how long they last.

smocks galore!

Smocking

How exciting – I’m in a magazine!

The magazine in question is a brand-new digital publication by Kate Davies, whose blog I’ve been following and whose knitting patterns I’ve been queueing for some time. So you can imagine how excited I was when she asked me whether I’d be willing to talk about smocking, and what I learned from the collection at the Museum of English Rural Life.

Issue 1 of Textisles is available as a Ravelry download, as it also includes Kate’s Warriston sweater pattern. It talks about the etymology of the word “frock” and the gender of a garment, and there’s a really interesting article about the English Smock. Then there’s a “Meet the Maker” section… which is me!

The next issue is due out in August, and will have a nautical theme featuring Kate’s Betty Mouat design. Whether you’re more interested in the textile history or the knitting patterns, Textisles is a fabulously well-researched and thoroughly interesting magazine. I can’t wait to read the next one – and I’m not even in it!

Head in the clouds.

Little fluffy clouds

I started working for myself for two reasons.

  1. I went to an event with a lot of independent traders, and came home thinking “I could do better than that”. And I did. For a while.
  2. I became frustratingly and unpredictably ill. Working for myself gave me the flexibility I needed to work as much as possible when I was well.

For a long time I’ve combined working at various part time jobs with working for myself. This gave me a convenient source of regular income, whilst also allowing me the time to work on my own projects and business ideas. In 2008 I became sufficiently ill (ironically thanks to the medications I was taking) that I could no longer reliably hold down a part time job, so since October 2008 I’ve been working entirely for myself.

My bank balance sadly reveals that I haven’t been making a very good job of it, and so I find myself in the position of looking for a job again.

Unfortunately, the down side of being a “magpie” is that I find it terribly difficult to stick to just one thing. When it comes to getting a job and staying with it, that’s a bit of a drawback in terms of finding something that isn’t going to bore me to death after a few months.

Since I left University I’ve taught myself to sew, to make alterations, to draft my own patterns, researched historical costume and learned to make corsets, studied the Pre-Raphaelites, learned how to use a digital SLR, taken up wildlife photography, learned to knit, written and published my own knitting patterns, taken life drawing classes, qualified as a professional massage therapist, designed, built and run an online shop, made jewellery using semi-precious gemstones, studied historical crafts, written sewing tutorials, volunteered to study 19th century smocks and signed up to give a workshop on smocking, made my own slippers, recycled pillowcases into tote bags, made my own soap, bubble bath and body lotion, taken up clog dancing, researched sustainable textiles and fashion production, started writing this blog, set up my own t-shirt printing business… and that’s just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

On the job front, I’ve designed and built websites using a number of different systems, trained other people to use them, written instructions and documentation, typeset, edited and proof-read all sorts of things, fitted and altered bridal dresses, worked in a library, and sold cosmetics, fabric and books.

The list of things I want to learn is as long as my arm (and growing by the minute), but the three things that are vying for my attention at the moment are training to become a qualified aromatherapist, learning to make my own shoes, and learning to make silver jewellery.

The problem with looking for a new job is that it’s very difficult to condense all of this into a coherent and appropriate CV! The other problem with looking for a job is that I don’t want one. Not a job in any conventional sense that I can think of anyway. The thought of having to pick one thing and stick to it seems completely ridiculous to me. How on earth would I choose what to do?

The primary skill that I bring to everything I’ve ever done is relentless enthusiasm.

I have a peculiar ability to be interested in just about anything – until I’ve understood it, figured out how it works, or learned how to do it for myself. After that I’m quite happy to move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.

Unfortunately, as far as I’ve been able to tell so far, that’s not a job.

I don’t need mountains of money. I’ve never aspired to be especially rich. But obviously I have bills to pay, so I need to earn some kind of a living.

So, I guess what I need to find out now, is how to get paid for being relentlessly enthusiastic about things.

Your suggestions are extremely welcome!

Tom Hunter: A Journey Back.


Image © Tom Hunter

I was reading the Big Issue yesterday, and suddenly did a double-take when I saw this picture. It’s from the “Travellers” series by Tom Hunter, who has several current exhibitions in London and around Europe.

When I was at University I harboured a sort of a romantic notion that I would somehow land a lovely job with a publisher in London, and live in a tiny little flat which I would paint purple. Sadly none of those things materialised in the end, but this picture is extraordinarily close to my imaginary living space.

Occasionally Paul and I will discuss the possibility of getting rid of all our belongings, and living a more minimalist lifestyle. We both like the idea of Container City, and I am madly love with these pod houses, by Eco Hab. They look like something Wallace and Grommit might build!

Usually we end up shaking our heads sadly – we’ve already built a twelve foot square shed in the garden because my sewing had drastically outgrown the house, and one look at our bookshelves will tell you that we don’t really know the meaning of the word “minimal”.

In spite of my over-developed hoarding tendencies, I do sometimes think it might be incredibly freeing, to just get rid of all the things we collect and hold on to but don’t really need. There’s so much unnecessary consumerism in this world that it might be nice to somehow step outside it and start again.

Value versus Cost.

So, we’re in a global recession. A couple of months ago I had a surprising number of orders cancelled, all at once. Most of them were for party dresses that people simply couldn’t afford to pay for any more. Never mind that the dresses were going to be hand made from beautiful fabrics, one of a kind and made to fit exactly… if the money to pay for those dresses is no longer available, the orders have to be cancelled.

This is a bit of a problem when you’re a one-woman business with bills to pay, so clearly I need to do something about it.

One solution might be to concentrate on items with a smaller price tag. If customers have less money, then it makes sense to sell items which are cheaper for them to buy. Except that I still have the same bills, so I’d need to spend more time and money on marketing and materials, for an even smaller return on my efforts.

So, what I’m seriously considering instead is going the other way, and selling items which are much more expensive than I would normally offer. This seems counterintuitive, but if I can demonstrate that these items have a much greater inherent value, then the actual cost becomes secondary.

What do I mean?

When I graduated, I worked for a small publishing company. My job was to bring the typesetting processes in-house, and thereby save the company money. They published a lot of books of “Your Town In Old Photographs”, and they were paying £7 per photo to have them all scanned. This cost roughly £1000 per book, in scanning costs alone! I suggested buying a high quality scanner, but the one I needed to do the job cost £1500. Because the price of the scanner was more than the cost of having the scanning outsourced for the next book, the company refused to pay for it. They were trying to compare £1500 to £7, and they couldn’t see past the cost of the scanner to its value for the business in the longer term.

To come back to one of my favourite subjects, shoes – Dr Martens have recently launched their “For Life” range of footwear. They’re offering a limited range of styles and colours, with a lifetime guarantee. Subject to a few conditions, when your boots wear out, you pay £20, and Dr Martens will repair them for you. MBT have a similar arrangement, where you can pay £38 and have the soles replaced.

Now MBTs are expensive – in the UK they cost up to £170. The Dr Martens For Life boots cost £110 – more than double the price of their similar non-guaranteed styles. In the current economic climate, it would be easy to think that the best thing to do is simply to buy cheap shoes. But if your cheap shoes cost £25, and they fall to pieces after three months, then you have no choice but to buy another pair. In eighteen months you’ll have spent more on cheap shoes than you would have done on one pair of Dr Martens For Life, and you could have had them repaired. Twice.

I don’t know that offering a repair service or a lifetime guarantee is the way forward for the things that I make. But I do want people to understand that my new clothes will be made from beautiful fabrics, to a very high standard, with a great deal of hand work involved. These things take time to make, and they deserve to be looked after, not cast aside like some fashionable thing that’s fallen out of favour. If I can make clothes that will last a lifetime, be passed on, and mended, and loved, then that’s a value which goes way beyond the price tag.

Whether people will be able to understand that in a time when money’s tight, is another matter entirely.

Making a CV for your “Right People”.

This week I got myself into a terrible state trying to write up my CV for the Museum of English Rural Life. One of the difficulties with being self-employed is that it’s often necessary to take part time or seasonal work, to make sure you have some form of income during those quiet patches. Unfortunately, when you put that on your CV it looks as though you’re forever chopping and changing jobs, and it can be difficult to explain what you do all day in your own business.

The standard format of two sides of A4 paper detailing your education, employment and interests just wasn’t suitable for the way that I’ve been working for the past eight years. I received an offer of help from an old school friend who is now a Recruitment and HR Consultant (thank you Facebook!), and she advised me to emphasise my skills rather than my employment history, and to relate those skills to the context of the position I was applying for. But I was still trying to do that on two sides of paper, and it just wasn’t right.

So I thought about Havi, and everything she says about finding your “Right People”. And I remembered that I have a degree in Graphic Communication. So, why not communicate my CV in a more graphic way? That’s when the penny dropped, and I decided that the proper format for my new CV was actually a magazine.

It’s just 3 sheets of A4, folded in half to make a little 12 page A5 booklet. That sounds like a lot of CV, but all the important information (contact details, qualifications, job history etc) is on the first two pages, so if anybody really doesn’t want to read beyond that, they don’t have to. Following on, each page has a big photo at the top, and a little paragraph of text underneath. Kind of like this blog.

In each section I’ve tried to make the subject link back to the kinds of work I would be interested in doing for/with the museum, so they can understand clearly what I can do. (Interest in craft & costume history, self-directed research, that kind of thing.)

I wouldn’t say that this was the ideal solution to applying for any creative job – there’s no point in being quirky just for the sake of it. In my case, everything I’ve written in the CV is condensed from something I’ve written about on this blog, so there was no need to try and talk myself up, or make my interests seem relevant – it’s all there already. The magazine format simply presents the information in a handy package, which should hopefully be memorable.

And if it’s memorable, then hopefully I’ll be remembered when they’re looking for someone to give a lecture or teach a workshop or do some research.

 

Speaking of which… I’m going to be teaching a workshop in smocking, in September!