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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Thinking of the Bard It’s well known that males spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. And I admit quite freely that it’s true of me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of other things too. Only this morning, for instance, I caught myself thinking about William Shakespeare. I do this quite often because he’s interesting, mainly in considering how he worked. His day job was as an actor and, somehow, he found the time in between prancing about on stage, to write a serious number of plays and poetry too. So his copious production would lead us to wonder just how much planning went into his writing. We know, as well, that he sometimes had to dash off a new play to keep the coffers of The Globe Theatre filled in the lean years. Which, in my book, means that he was probably a pantser. Obviously, the likelihood is that I think that because I’m a pantser myself but, when you remember that he handicapped himself by writing most of his plays in iambic pentameter, I really can’t see how he had the time to do a lot of planning with all that already on his plate. But this brings me to the conclusion I’m really driving at. Shakespeare was far less conscious in his writing than you would think we are, judging by the amount of rules and advice that float around in places like WdC. He didn’t have time to consider all the methods and essentials that we love to burden ourselves with. At any rate, none of these rules and regulations had been invented in his day so, if he used any of them, it would have been entirely unconscious and natural to the way he worked. I bet you the one book he’d never have written would be an instruction manual on how to write. He just sat down and wrote. At incredible speed and with amazing insight into humanity. Which leaves me with this thought: If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it ought to be good enough for us. Word count: 346 |
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