Running To A Standstill

I'm reading Stephen King's 'Liseys Story' at the moment. It's a page turner alright, but his odd ticks and characteristics as a writer, I admit I could do without. Too often he fills gaps with cliches, with sayings, and repeats them constantly in attempts to build up a familiar dictionary of sayings for each character in the book. Instead it makes the story - the idea is a good one - too dull. King reminds me of John Irving in many ways - and if there is a writer more annoying and self-satisfied than Irving I don't know, nor wish to know. I'm also reading John Updike's Rabbitt At Rest, a fine if overrated book. In fact I think the Rabbitt series in general is over rated, and much prefer the style and panache of the humdrum and ordinary life of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe, starting with the Sportswriter and ending with the excellent Lay of the Land. However, Updike has the masters eye for detail, and his English is always spot on if a little too regimented in the Rabbitt series. My own book is now 70,000 words long, about half way, I think towards completion after a good weekend of writing. Another seven weeks, and I should, at the current rate, be finished the 2nd draft, and hopefully a step closer to putting this mother of a book to rest.

A Snails Pace

Well, its Friday and I'm in the Leader office. In reality I suppose I should be answering phones, working my contacts - if I really had any - and covering courts. But I'm a lazy sort of journalist today. The Dungarvan Leader's a weekly newspaper, and so, with most of my work for this week out of the way already, I'm sitting here quite bored, comtemplating - well not much in reality. The meaning of pi, how long precisely it will take to finish my novel, the themes and plot of the work, whether it has depth. Essentially this is it. It concerns a 50 year old who is looking back on an unfufilled life, plotting his way back at those he believes have persecuted him. It tells the story in two strands, the present, and his past misdemeanors. It shows, I hope at least, how his life changes from a fearful youth into a fearsome adult. Much of this transformation concerns his father, a brutal Garda Sergeant, the early death of his mother, his decision to run away from home, and the experiences and people he meets along his way during his period of exile from Ireland. My hope is that it won't be regarded as an Irish novel, but an international one, broad in scope as well as ambition, showing the macro and micro of the changes in a persons life. But as I say, things are proceding at a snails pace around me.
The other night I had a dream which I feel bares significance on my writing (I may well be wrong in this). But anyway the dream begins in this mansion, where I transformed in my dream into a little girl who is the star player of a pro basketball team. In fact I have been kidnapped and held hostage to play for the team. I escape somehow, and am running away down the street. A car comes up behind me, I look back and there's this guy in a balaclava behind the wheel. I keep running, and the car stops and disappears from view. Suddenly I'm in a pub somewhere. I'm with a journalist and an old school friend, who in reality I've not seen for years. They try to bring me home. But the journalist has a better idea. She has looked in this red road map of Russia where the dream is set, and tells me of this place where a journalist I admire went to stay when writing a novel. As I really want to write this novel, I decide to go there. We pace through a number of streets until we come to the right address. The old friend is trying to hold me back, while the journalist is urging me on. Finally I go in, climb the first set of stairs but discover that the second set is crushed down. I spot someone I fear, and starting climbing over broken glass to get in. Then when I'm finally up, I discover this is not a solid building at alll, but a decript bus with part of its roof crushed down. I sit in the seat, and bus takes off - end of dream.
Trying to interpret this I would say that I am talented as a journalist, but the writer in me is saying to take a chance and travel and take time to write. I could be wrong of course.

The First Web Viewpoint

Well I guess everyone is doing it now, blogging that is, so why not me. My name is Kevin Kirrane by the way. I'm a journalist with the Dungarvan Leader where I write the general news, features, and of course my weekly coloumn, Viewpoint which began life last November. Hopefully, it has proved popular: I certainly enjoy writing it. For those who haven't read my column its on the web on www.dungarvanleader.com, providing a humerous look at current affairs and life in general in the West Waterford area.
But that's not what KevinsViewpoint or this blog to be exact is going to be about. Rather it will detail happenings national, local, cultural and social - cultural especially since I am writing a novel called Vermont, which I hope to have finished sometime in the middle of this year. I'm on the second draft at the moment, and have written around 65,000 words currently. I hope to complete another two to three drafts before I dare show it to anyone. Now caught in the throes of it, its easy to be over confident of its success with publishers. I've tried and failed before. This novel is certainly the best I've written, but who can tell its success. Nonetheless, even if its a failure - and I know this will sound sickeningly corny - but I will be happy, because it will be the first novel I've actually completed. Maybe the finished article will lay in its stack of 200 or so pages in a shoe box in the closet, marked failure and rejection, and while I hope that's not the case, my confidence is not completly foolhardy. In any case, let me stop meandering about, and end this, the first of what I hope will become a weekly and sometimes daily blog. Thanks for stopping by. And I'll keep you updated again soon.