Neanderthals

 Well, if you’re locked up, down and in, it’s good you wound up here. 

This is where the past comes to life and our ancestors are given a nod. 

I’ve had an incredible week, I worked so hard and last week too.  

My Neanderthal short story is finished. Exhausted I watched a documentary on Harold Shipman on iplayer, three episodes, unbelievable.  So the next day I got up early and.....you guessed it, I did a short story on him too.

I had quite a bit of material amassed so it wasn’t a situation of the horror of the blank page.  I corroborated a bit of this and that and basically got to work.  I’m happy but not thrilled, with the results so far.  I like some but not all of it.  I need to bring in some more texture, sort of thing.

It’s a shocking story, but because we’re told he was always really nice to people, it’s hard work him out.  As we all know, he committed self murder in prison with some sheets, so we’ll never really  know why he did what he did, but my short story takes place when he was 16.

I suppose I’ll have to change the names again etc, or publish on a writer’s website.  I don’t really care too much about that.  It’s not about fame and fortune (although some kind of payment would be nice) it’s about expunging the emotion.  The trouble is, it doesn’t really end the emotion it just calms it down for a while, I suppose.

So here is a very quick and somewhat disastrous drawing of a Neanderthal skull.  

It’s the illustration for my short story.  I don’t like the drawing, it’s not good enough but even so, the essence of my first impression is there.  I’ve actually thrown the image away, as I felt I could do better. Now I’ve started it again and just look at what happened....

You see... it’s static, completely unanimated, it’s like a diagram. It says nothing.  There is no feeling. It’s just fact: a skull.

Technically I understood the angle of the head better this time but what does one do with this?  Marks communicate something, this drawing is not communicating a single thing to me now.  

How can I bring back the original energy and wonder - to this?  

So as I was walking in the rain I decided I need to distress the paper then reinstate the image.  It works in my head, we’ll see if it works on paper. 

* One day things will be normal again but it seems a long way off.  I’m going to need a trip to the sea again soon...