I’ve spent most of the month since I last posted sitting out under a sun umbrella either reading or trying to write. A lot of the reading has been research for the writing, and has included spells in the National Library, Edinburgh Central Library and the National Records. In terms of fiction I’ve been deep diving once more into Dorothy Dunnett; I really enjoyed her second series of historical novels, the House of Niccolo series set in C15 but have always found her earlier series, the Lymond novels (C16) harder to get into and that’s my current task. So far so good.
I thought writing would flow more naturally once the worry about cancer receded but I’m finding it tough to get back into it. My process is to turn up for work every day with notebook or MacBook and trust that sooner or later the Muse will come and join me. I’m getting there but it’s slow going.
***
I have occasional conversations with other men who have been through, or are still in the middle of, the prostate cancer experience. Those of us who have had the hormone treatment tend to gripe about the inexorable weight gain that is common amongst us. One chap said that he had named his moobs Thelma and Louise and I got to thinking about mine – Agnetha and Anna-Frid? Althea and Donna? Suggestions on a postcard, etc.
This is something I posted at the weekend over on Substack and thought worth cross-posting here. I’ve edited it lightly and also added a link to the song from which the title comes.
In the newfound reverie Of quiet peace I found Freedom comes from being unafraid Of the heartache that can plague a man
===
I haven’t posted here for a while; I have been caught up with treatment for early stage prostate cancer and my focus has meandered. Some initial reflections on that are what I want to sketch here, fully conscious that these are neither well-formed musings nor decided positions.
When I was coming to terms with the diagnosis, before I knew details of the staging and treatment, I had plenty of time to consider personal mortality and also to determine, firmly, that creativity is resistance. That conviction remained, and remains, even after it was determined that my cancer (bog-standard, no funky stuff, per the Clinical Nurse Specialist) is eminently treatable. What has changed over time are the ways that creativity has manifested as my treatment has progressed.
A key impact has been on my ability to focus on my novel-in-progress – that focus has come and gone; in parallel my reading has shifted back and forth between books that require concentrated attention and books that don’t. For a while I had that sense of guilt usually expressed as hashtag I should be writing. I was conscious of every day that passed without my putting forth a thousand words or so. I still am. On the other hand, somewhere along the way I have worked out how the novel will end and how that ties to what I’ve already written and thus how my existing draft should flex to accommodate it.
And I have generated a load of running notes of ideas and scenes to write, plus I’ve had plenty of time to consider (and reconsider) the overall shape of the book and the ineffable something that I’m searching for in the first draft, the ghost in the story that animates it.
Even though I expected it, I have been surprised by the extent to which my reactions to treatment have affected my focus and stamina for fiction; it is as though concentrating on the realities of life has got in the way of my ability to live in a fictional world of my own devising. Conversely, I also think that sharp focus on the mundane is shaping my approach to the prosaic, and that this will be manifest in my writing once I have a first draft and can get down to the hard work of turning words into writing.
In the meantime I have channelled creativity into other activities: I tried my hand at verse that occasionally aspired to poetry (and in the process read a lot of poetry); I learned to stitch and bind my own hardcover notebooks; I began the process of remembering how to play guitar; and, as sales of my existing books have fallen to zero, I have pondered what that means for the one I am writing, the scattered short stories sitting unpolished in folders and the stories I hope to write when the current one is done.
Somewhere along the way my mindset shifted. Or perhaps something that has always been there crystallised and the title of this piece frames it: although the realities of treatment get in the way of some aspects of creativity, they will pass. I have reached an uneasy détente with mortality that frees me to articulate to myself the things that are important to me.
The renewed story I tell myself of who I am is shaping the fictional worlds I create.
Today marked the halfway point in my planned radiotherapy. As ever it was quick and easy and the radiology team at the Edinburgh Cancer Centre were a cheerful, professional delight. Significantly, it also marks the point at which I no longer have to self-administer an enema to ensure the bowel is empty before the daily dose of radiation. That may not sound like much but it is.
At my preliminary meeting with the oncologist in September he said that there would be side effects but no one can predict in advance what those side effects will be or how severe. In my case I have had weight gain from the hormones (because testosterone production is effectively shut down) and I am now beginning to experience regular fatigue caused at least in part by my body’s defences trying to repair the impact of the radiation. Less obvious is that both the radiation and the daily enemas disrupt the normal daily digestive process, and that is why the end of that particular routine is a relief in more ways than one.
On the subject of enemas two cautions:
enemas and white underwear make a dubious combination, though I got through it largely unscathed and unstained, and
as my neighbour Sandy who has also been through this said, ‘never trust a fart.’
The trick is to keep as active as possible. I try to walk my 10,000 steps every couple of days (I know the target is arbitrary but it is a decent rule of thumb, and also includes Kaimes Road as a touch of cardio.) and I have some dumbbells here, mainly used for bicep curls.
It occurred to me earlier this evening that, although I have tried to be as open as sensible here there is one topic I have hinted at but have not written about at any length, and that is the long nights of the soul that followed the original suggestion that I might have cancer. It is a big subject and one that I do want to write about because it is foundational to how we as individuals react to a potential diagnosis and intimations of mortality, but haven’t yet found the words. A year on from the original discovery is quite some time to wait before finding the words, but I have private journals and notes to remind me. What I remember very clearly, though, is that there was a distinct ‘before’ and ‘after’ sensation when I got the ‘phone call from my doctor.
***
The road goes ever on
In amongst all this stuff I have managed the occasional paragraph or two of the novel-in-progress and have also compiled an expanding set of notes on to work on once I feel more focused. I do not for a moment compare myself to JRRT but I find this extract from a letter to Auden reassuring as a first draft slowly reveals itself to me.
I’ve mentioned JRRT a few times recently. I am not an uncritical admirer: I enjoyed The Hobbit, and LotR astonishes every time I dip into it. I never got on with The Silmarillion. I enjoyed his translation of Gawain and the Green Knight and am currently working through his unfinished The Fall of Arthur which is fine but was abandoned and is thus neither finished nor polished. Even so, I think he has a stature that goes well beyond the confines of the genre he inspired but of which he was not himself a part.
After the prostate stuff on Wednesday I’ve been focusing on my novel-in-progress and taken a detour, for reasons that will one day be apparent, into English alliterative verse and specifically Middle English alliterative verse with its distinct scheme. This stuff is hard to write. I don’t need to write proper Middle English verse – I don’t have the vocabulary for one thing – but I do want to it to be more than a rough pastiche.
The verse is driven by the pulse of the alliteration on the stressed syllables rather than by formal meter or a rhyme scheme and that gives it a distinct flavour. I think it lends itself much more to recitation in a predominantly oral society as opposed to a form of written literature for quiet reading to oneself. I hope it becomes an exercise of getting one’s ear in after a while, but getting to that stage is work, though it also means diving into some truly great historical material to get a feel for the rhythm of it.
Anyway, the process is to work out what I want to say and then wrestle it into the proper form and part of that is being up in the shed reading it aloud to see if the syllables flow or jar. That should all keep me out of mischief over the Christmas period, or most of it: I make my mince pies on Christmas Eve and I prepare the meal on Christmas Day.
I probably won’t be online much so I’ll take this opportunity to wish a Happy Christmas to all my readers. Here are two of my favourite Christmas tunes: Dr John and the great Leon Redbone, and Steeleye Span..
It isn’t quite a month since my first hormone implant and I’m beginning to feel its impact now in two ways. The first is that I find myself getting tired by late afternoon. I keep active, but a weariness descends; I do pick up again after supper though: the second is that it is changing trips to the bathroom – I’m peeing a bit more often and with greater urgency. I’m due another implant in January and I’m told that further and increasing weariness is an expected side-effect of the radiotherapy, which starts at the end of January and runs through February.
The idea, by the way, is that the hormones block testosterone which starves the cancer (and shrinks the prostate) and, under radiotherapy, cells are damaged but healthy ones grow back whereas cancerous ones don’t.
***
I continue to write despite tiredness and make a point of writing at least a paragraph a day. In practice I find I have two or three productive days of several hundred words followed by a couple of days off during which I read. I’m quite happy with the direction the new novel is taking, albeit that it is in first draft and it will need a lot of kicking into shape when the first draft is done, especially around pacing and structure. How to fix both of those becomes clearer when the whole story is told and I can take a big-picture view. I don’t expect to get to that stage until later in 2026 once the radiotherapy is over and I get back to my normal routines.
***
Meanwhile, I’ve been watching assorted programmes (online) including a spy series produced by Yorkshire Television in the late 1970s: The Sandbaggers. Unusually for a spy series, and possibly taking its cue from Len Deighton, it spends a lot of time on inter-Whitehall rivalry and manoeuvring, only occasionally venturing into action sequences and cynical brutality. It is undoubtedly ‘of its time’ in production values, stuffed full of tobacco products and, of course, rotary telephones with never a mobile or laptop computer in sight. Enjoyable.
That was a rough couple of days. I was a little tired from the hormone implant, I wasn’t sleeping properly because of a heavy cold and then, yesterday, I had a COVID shot. Usually I don’t react to vaccinations but this season’s COVID shot (mRNA) hit me for six last night and this morning, though I seem to be coming out of it now.
***
I’ve started up an occasional Substack for snippets about writing and self-publishing. Some of this is recycled from earlier attempts but brought up to date where appropriate. The difficulty with these things is always keeping up a pipeline of worthwhile material. I probably have enough to run through to the end of November and into December but that buys me time to put some other things together. It’s free, so feel free to read and comment and share if you feel so inclined, or not if you don’t.
Some weeks ago I was collating some random thoughts that occurred in the wake of the initial cancer diagnosis, a diagnosis that focuses the mind even if it’s caught early. I make no claims for the thoughts except that I thought I might expand them into posts here. In fact I have mentioned implementing some of them recently, notably to do with cutting back on news and social media. Most of them play one way ot another into my long-standing notion of reinventing yourself every decade or so.
Social media detox: what is important and why?
Analogue living
Focus on the now
If it’s toxic, leave it. Don’t fret, don’t worry, just walk away.
Drift, don’t plan. Focus on life not artificial ‘life goals.’
Walk; write.
Health not faux fitness.
Don’t consume what is pushed: pull what is interesting or entertaining or both.
Obviously it is a rough list, perhaps a naïve list, but it sums up where my head is just now, especially drifting rather than planning, by which I mean following my interests and my whims.
Recent Comments