The Sunday Salon – Seachanges’ Patch: Crete

 

My Sunday Salon is the balcony of an apartment overlooking the sea and further away a brown and rocky island.  Nearer by rocks jut up from the sea, which today is slightly breezier than it has been.  Already the heat is gaining in strength, but for as long as this balcony does not catch the sun; it is a wonderful salon with sharp bright light and a clear blue sky.  The coast road is much quieter this morning, this is Sunday and only an odd tourist walks along the side on their way to the beach just beyond this apartment. 

This morning I started with my novel – the days have been slipping through my fingers without any serious writing, almost as if in a coma of blissful nothing.  But I’m going to do better from now on and will sit myself down every morning and at least write 500 words, more if I have the inspiration, of course!  But you have to start somewhere.

My reading is going apace however and that has been helpful in its own peculiar way because they have clarified my thinking about how to approach my story.  So what’s in the Sunday Salon?  I have nearly finished Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and this second time round reading the book makes it even better.  I think you read it for the story, the first time round, and only then can you begin to unravel the complexity of the layered stories, that of Mrs Dalloway but also of Septimus and how the two relate, think similarly actually even though they are worlds apart.  This is a novel with very long sentences, the lists, the semicolons and the commas, the thought processes moving from one character to the other, following each other around during that one day, when Mrs Dalloway gives a party.   I am hooked on long sentences, but don’t do it well, I like writing in thought processes, but don’t do it well.  This book is a lesson in itself, in technique and in how to write well, without losing your own train of thought, or rather, the train of thought of the character.   So, I’m going to finish Mrs Dalloway today and will write a proper review some time, maybe after I’ve read The Hours as well.

Looking through my books and papers I realise that I have also got a copy of Raymond Carver’s story Cathedral which I want to read as part of the Short Story reading challenge and Kate’s blog on short stories, a Curious Singularity, for which this is the story of the month.  I should be able to take that in today and then begin to write a review.

Finally, we found the Sunday Times in the local shop, today’s, but I’m not sure whether it has the review section, probably not.

And then of course, I’ll be swimming and snoozing in the sun this afternoon, quite a busy day actually!

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