I’m very aware of the importance of rhythm in writing (my own as well as other people’s) and I’ve said before that I’m not a poet. But I imagine most writers do try now and then to create something using the stricter disciplines that poetry seems to demand. A few years back, I wrote a blog  which gave examples of some experiments I’d done with the fascinating Fibonacci sequence and, even though I still insist I’m not a poet, those experiments plus some more frequent ones seem to be contradicting me because I’m now officially a published poet.

But I’m only telling you that to draw your attention to a fascinating website devoted to what they call Origami Poems . The mission of the Origami Poems Project ‘is  the encouragement of literature and the arts by bringing Free Poetry to everyone through the printing and distribution (world-wide) of free Origami micro-chapbooks as well as through poetry events, both of which engender an increasing awareness of and appreciation for the art of poetry… and for the poet in all of us’. Their explanation of what these poems actually are is simple and intriguing and even leads you through how to write, print and fold your own work to turn it into an origami poems chapbook. You can also download groups of poems that have already been formatted in the necessary way (including mine)  and fold them into a micro chapbook yourself. And it’s all free.

The website is based in Rhode Island, one of my favourite places in the USA, and I sent them my efforts at the suggestion of Helen Burke, a real poet whom I met at the literary festival in St Clémentin last year. She gave me one of her own chapbooks (all of which are available to download from the site). As I said, she’s a real poet and she’s a great advocate of poetry as fun. Her poems are on serious subjects but there are plenty of laughs in them.

I think trying challenges in other literary forms is stimulating. Irrespective of how successful or otherwise the attempts are, it refreshes your approach to your own genre and makes you think differently about your normal style. The same is true of looking at the creations of others who’ve worked within the constraints of such challenges. So I recommend a visit to the site. You never know, you may find out you’re a poet, too.

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Just three bits of trivia this week.

We quite often hear about novels that have been optioned by one of the big studios and then months, years go by and nothing more is heard of them. So it’s best to be forewarned about the casualty rate, just in case you strike lucky. Even then, however, when the luck does come along, you can’t help feeling that this time it’ll be different. All of which is to introduce the news that, this week, I got an email from a small film company in Los Angeles asking permission to adapt one of my short stories for the screen. Note that it’s not one of the big boys and, if it happens, it’ll be a short film. But that hasn’t stopped me having a big smile on my face a lot of the time since I read it. Also, from my hovel in Aberdeen, those magic words ‘Los Angeles’ lift me, by association, directly onto a red carpet wearing something by Marchesa, naturally. (Can you get Marchesa stuff in Primark?) Seriously, it’s very exciting but, equally seriously, I know that lots of things can happen which may turn it all back into a dream. But at least I have an email from Los Angeles.

And the letter I wrote in reply giving permission to adapt the story produced a typo (fortunately spotted before I sent it) which reminded me of another which I’d previously intended to include in a trivia-type blog. You see, for some reason most of my ‘best’ typos involve the keys in the middle of the bottom row – v, b, n. In this case, it was the story’s title, Love Hurts, which in my hurry (and because I have fingers like sausages), became Lobe Hurts – no doubt a romantic tale about either earache or the devastation  occasioned by an overenthusiastic nibbler. The previous one which I was going to mention, though, was much raunchier. I don’t remember what I was writing but it involved something about food and, when I read through it after I’d finished, it had taken on distinct erotic tones because among the other things on the plate were ‘naked beans’.

But the main news this week is that the 1000 copies of Rory the Dragon and Princess Daisy have arrived and sister Gill has already got Plymouth Library to buy some and arranged sponsorship to get some donated to primary schools in the area. There are also 50 copies of a CD of me reading it. The official launch will be next week but, as with any new book, it’s a great feeling to hold the finished article..

I’ve written about reviewing before but this one was provoked by two things. First, a review I wrote of a book by my friend and a frequent commenter on the blog, Donnie Ross, and second, some remarks in the latest couple of reviews of my own books.

Donnie’s book is called !Leonardo Mind for Modern Times. It’s an iBook and unlike any other I’ve reviewed before because it’s one of the new type of what I think of as extended books. In Donnie’s own words, it’s ‘a semi-interactive novel’, which ‘begins with a series of seemingly unconnected short stories, interspersed with other materials such as videos, photographs, audio clips, paintings and drawings’. So reviewing it was tricky for two reasons. First, it’s written by a friend, so is it possible to be completely objective about it? And second, did my lack of familiarity with the form disqualify me from doing it anyway?

Having now finished it and sent it to Booksquawk, I think I can answer both questions. First the one about objectivity. While it’s definitely a fictional narrative, it’s also unashamedly intellectual. I’ve known Donnie for decades and he’s probably the nearest thing to a Renaissance Man that I’ll ever meet. He’s creative in umpteen fields, makes musical instruments such as guitars and violins, plays guitar and piano to outrageously high levels of efficiency, sculpts, paints, and he now writes, too. He’s also a linguist and has read more than I’ll ever have time to. That’s only part of what he does and so, when you’re reading a book which is a form of meditation about creativity, reality, perception and the rest, your approach to it is bound to be different when you know the writer has such a high intellectual and creative pedigree. (The fact that he ascribes many of his ideas and quips to Coco, his chocolate Labrador, suggests that he may also be mad. And once you’ve applauded me for resisting the urge to qualify that noun with the adjective ‘barking’, you can revile me for pointing out the fact.)

As for the second question, while I don’t see myself trying the new form for a while, I do understand how having to shift from a flash fiction narrative to a painting or a piece of sculpture then back again forces you to keep adjusting your perceptions of and responses to both text and images. It does extend the text in ways I wouldn’t have guessed at before.

Next (and this is much easier), there were the recent reviews of two of my own books. Let me add quickly that, in referring to these, neither of which was complimentary, I’m neither complaining about them nor questioning the reviewers’ right not to like what I write. When I quoted a bit of one of them on Facebook which gave it 3 stars because ‘it had some entertainment value and it was inexpensive’, I did so because I thought it was funny. The words were true, the book is entertaining and cheap so that’s a beautiful example of damning with faint praise. But the comments of some friends were obviously intended to cheer me up by saying whoever wrote it was an idiot. I couldn’t agree with them less. He/she had every right to say that and his/her opinion was as valid as theirs.

I make the same judgement about the second negative review (I say ‘negative’ but they were both generous enough to give me 3 stars so I’m maligning them really). It’s fair comment, the reviewer said exactly what she thought about it and why. The only thing that did disappoint me was that she found the book ‘rather sexist’ on the basis of her reactions to the four main female characters. I’m not querying her reading of them. If that’s how she sees them, fine – but to take that extra step and stick on me a label that I despise at least as much as she does is unfortunate. Again, I’m not whingeing, it goes with the territory. If you can’t take criticism, don’t set yourself up for it.

And that reminded me of something I’ve probably quoted before here and elsewhere. My PhD was on the theatre of Victor Hugo. He wrote plays which violently divided audiences in the Romantic era. The most famous of them was called Hernani and night after night during and after its performances there were riots. In fact the whole thing is referred to as ‘The battle of Hernani’. Much later in life he wrote a poem about it. This is my loose translation of that poem:

‘The book is the author, the poem the poet. Our work is so much part of us, we feel it to be so mixed in with our tears, our blood, so constructed from our pain and sorrow, and so deeply embedded in our bones that, when in 1830 actors first performed Hernani, I felt a shiver of violation. Before then my characters had been my dream and my secret. I spoke to them, saw their lips move. I lived face-to-face with them. When the crowd leapt into that world, it was a sort of torment. I stood in the wings and when the curtain went up, before that vast crowd with its burning eyes, I saw my soul lift up its skirts.’

Fortunately, I don’t believe in souls..