Good Line (1)

Boxton was a tired town, a neglected place that looked as if was in danger of collapsing in on itself.

from Ruby Holler, by Sharon Creech

Culm Banks

An excellent culm bank image from this page. We called them "culm banks" where I grew up, but I like boney piles or gob piles. William W. Lewis, in Black Rock, wrote this:

Now at the lower end of town we used to have culm banks anywhere from seventy to a hundred feet high. We, as young boys in this town, used to go to the colliery and get long pieces of sheet iron. We would curl up the end like a toboggan, put a wire on the back end of it, pull the sheet iron up to the top of the culm bank and then ride down on it.

Yup, only we used cardboard, which was more readily available in my day.

[quotation from Black Rock found on p. 139 of Angus K. Gillespie's Folklorist of the Coal Fields]

Progress Report

So in the last few days I've done some good work on the novel, really just working out the details, chapter by chapter. I'm through 4 chapters now, or so it seems to me, and really just kind of discovering the process. Right now I'm quite happy with how things are going. This is an intermediate stage, not actually writing the novel yet, but working out the wrinkles, as I see it. I can't help feeling I'm being tremendously naive, and the whole house of cards will sooner or later come crashing down on my head.

I also realize that if some stray reader were to stumble onto this blog, it would seem rather strange to have all this talk of a novel, but no sense of what that possibly mythical creature looks like. That's how it shall have to be for now. The blog is just a place to collect my thoughts concerning the process, or my notes concerning some of the preliminary research that the novel requires. Thus the coal mining posts, etc.

Writerly Encouragement (1)

Marilyn, the cleaning lady at my library, is very fond of all things Scottish. She's discovered a Scottish author by the name of Lillian Beckwith, whom she just adores. Anyway, we looked up Beckwith in Contemporary Authors, and found this nugget:

When I am asked for advice by aspiring writers I usually reply, "Put a blank sheet of paper in your typewriter and threaten it with words."