Archive
Rain that is Absolute, Maginificent and Frightening: Heinrich Boll’s Ireland
Heinrich Boll in Ireland | Melville House Books.
Melville House included Heinrich Boll’s Irish Journal in their book bundle for Saint Patrick’s Day. Boll’s book includes a wonderful sentence about Irish rain: ‘The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather.’
Irish Journal covers many places, including my current home place in Limerick where Boll described the Shannon rushing along under old bridges: ‘this river was too big, too wide, too wild for this gloomy little town’. Along with the river Shannon, the image of the ‘snow white milk bottle’ throughout the city lingered with Boll after he left Limerick.
But it was in Achill that Heinrich Boll would make his Irish home in 1950s Ireland, in a cottage not far from the Deserted Village where he once visited for five hours and where ‘in ossified hedges fuchsia hung blood-red blossoms’. He was mesmerised by the ‘skeleton of a village’ that seemed to him like a body without hair, eyes, or flesh or blood.
Plumming
Back in January I committed with great enthusiasm to the post a week challenge. But it became a tyrant. Then, about a month ago, without really planning it, I stopped blogging. I took a blogger holiday. It seems to have worked for this morning the urge was back – inspired by the magic of the plum-tree in my back garden.
It was a morning of black news; it seems that there is a black hole facing the global economy, and riots are spreading like wildfire across UK cities. But the plums gave me a lift. Just as it seemed that I had picked all the ripened fruit off the tree – or that the blackbirds had feasted on it – along comes another bunch where the pieces of fruit just fall off to the touch. The crop has ripened in such a rush that I have had to find new uses like apple and plum crumble.
So this blogger is back – for the time being at least – inspired by a burst of seasonal plums.
Writer’s Block
I love this image of Writer’s Block.
True or False
This is a true story | A guide to reading narrative nonfiction.
It was good to come across this blog for readers of Creative Nonfiction. While aimed at readers, it’s packed with useful resources, tips and links for the nonfiction writer.
I’m wrestling at the moment with my manuscript that is based on true events and deals with a West of Ireland historical crime in the nineteenth century. The research is done and the task now is to dramatise the story using fiction techniques.
This blog is helping me through the maze. Read more here.
Interested in hearing from any writers out there who are working through a creative nonfiction story.
Blogging / Writing is good for your health
I like this post – from a Techie – about the therapeutic effects of blogging and expressive writing.
It seems to be about the process you go through in coming up with and arranging the words. The post has a link to some scientific evidence on the benefits of blogging /writing. And our words create a legacy – leave a trace behind.
Read more here.
Patricia Byrne 
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