 |
| Canterbury Cathedral's Green Man |
I was going to write this week about how busy I was last week with various business trips - but now that they're all done, I can't find any enthusiasm for blogging about them.
Instead I’m going to write about an idea that has unexpectedly taken over my mind. It keeps nudging in when it isn’t wanted, and won’t go away.
I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago, thinking about it. You ought to make, it said, a Green Man face out of papier-mache.
But why would I want to? While having nothing against Green Men, I don’t want one. I didn’t know I wanted to make one.
But the idea won’t go away. When I’m trying to concentrate on other things – like writing a blog, or finishing the Sterkarm book – it sidles in. You could use, it says, one of those cheap plastic face masks as a former… Where did that come from? I hardly even knew those masks existed - though there they are, on Amazon, 99p
I dismiss the whole notion. It’s a waste of time. But it won’t go away – The leaves could be different colours, it says, as I wake on another morning. As if the year was turning: some bright green and spring-like, others yellow and red. There could be berries.
But I don’t want to make it! It would take a long time, it would be messy – and what would I do with it, even if I finished it? It would be big, and heavy and utterly useless. I couldn’t sell it: I wouldn’t even want it myself.
But still the idea won’t go away. Try, it whispers. See if you could do it. You’d have to look at different leaves – it’d be interesting, something different. Go on…
 |
| Norwich Green Man |
My aunt laughed when I told her. The Prices are all the same, she said. They just want to be making something. Don’t care about it when it’s made – they only want to make it. Your grandfather, she said, when he worked at the brickyard, used to make animal figures out of clay and fire them along with the bricks – and then would give them away. He wasn’t interested in them when they were done; he just wanted to see if he could make them. Look at your brothers, she said, always drawing, painting, modelling, carving... Can't help themselves.
But where do these ideas come from? Why are they so insistent and hard to dismiss? Why are they there waiting when you wake up? Why a Green Man, of all things?
So that’s where I am at the moment – trying to finish the Sterkarm book that might make me some money, trying to publish my backlist as ebooks, and trying to fight off a Green Man…
I also blog over at Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?
And if you love books, and have an e-reader, you might like to rummage through this goodie-bags of books.
