Tango travails

Had a difficult start to tango this week which sent me into a mini depression. At the Practica on Monday I couldnt lead 3 women in a row...not properly...and it got very frustrating because the teacher was trying to work out why and I couldnt understand. The style he is teaching seemed a variant of what I know/am learning. I left feeling very inadequate and downtrodden. Tuesday evenning wasnt much better -I went to my usual class at Salon Canning with Javier and Monica - v good teachers, friendly class but all in spannish and so many beginners - I felt I was not really able to practice what I know as beginners dont know what to do always...so I have to keep it simple - which is ok up to a point. After a rest and dinner I went to Tango Queer - meet M as arranged - had one tanda with the Swede I meet rcently at La Marshall - then M told me he'd been ordered to leave immediately by his ex - who runs virtually the entire queer tango scene here ...lovers hate/jealousy ! But so petty(apparantly they split 18 months ago and are both with other partners now, so I dont see the problem). I did stay but didnt enjoy myself as the dances I had werent very satisfactory - though not my fault .I came away feeling it was all my fault, that I will never get the hang of this or break into the local scene. M is a very good dancer/follower and a real pleasure to dance with and I was looking forward to progressing by having the chance to practice with him twice a week - now it will only possible when he is out of his Almighty ex's range- which is on Sundays at El Monita(the only other milonga where men can dance with other men, though its not a gay milonga)_. Tango can really get to you - make to feel as high as heaven or as low as so you feel almost suicidal when things arent going right. My teacher has been great and offered 'tango counselling' along with the teaching and hopefuly I will overcome all of this tango scene paranoia. Its hard. A friend in London is having similar issues there and I have just been trying to persuade her not to give up. I have to keep on going - tango is like a class A drug - once its taken hold of you, youve had it...!
BG

Maybe I'll wait a bit

write some more scenes - take a set back for a few more weeks. I think thats best.
BG

I am ready to begin the redraft but, oh...

its like I am sitting my finals again ...if I bit my nails there'd be none left by now...its just that initial picking up the pen and going back from the beginning again..I really want to do it, it just seems hugely daunting.
BG

Its odd being fiftytwo

Half way almost through this 3 month trip to Buenos Aires and have been reflecting on the water under the bridge since I last did a 3 month trip away. That was 20 odd years ago 1990. I had just finished my M.A. degree in Social Policy and Research and remember finishing off my dissertation at Brisbane airport and posting it back to the UK for typing up. H hand delivered it a few weeks later - no email or skype back then. But that trip - which I did completely alone, taking unpaid leave of absence from my job as an OT with Tower Hamlets social services, was amazing and life altering. I spend most of it hiking in Australia and New Zealand. I fell in love with New Zealand and its natural beauty and a year after I got back returned as a Polytechnic Lecturer to Otago for 12 months. Here I am two decades later - and my life has taken different turns and twists. Ill health and bereavement led me to begin writing creative fiction(I lost my mum, two friends and then my best friend Uschi all within 3 years when I myself was housebound with CFS/M.E. - a terible time when I was hardly able to walk let alone dance tango). Being 52 feels odd compared to being 32 but it still feels good to be here.
BG

Is more, less?

...when it comes to writing intense emotion between characters. I hope that it maybe so, atleast sometimes. I have just spent the best part of 7 hours over 2 days writing one very tricky scene - staring at the page and thinking about what my character/s are thinking, going over and over and over it until I feel I've captured what it is they are feeling.Writing and re writing as I go. Atempting to show and infer (by leaving out more than perhaps I leave in sometimes)a shift in the intensity of emotion between the two of them and, therby a shift in the nature of their relationship which has hither to just been about sex and playing sport together.

Its been a slow day really, after my morning writing session and lunch cooked by H we went to the Museum of Decorative Arts - which I found mostly rather tedious. The humidity of the afternoon made me feel very flat and irritable. I was thinking all the time about how I might progress and conclude the chapter I was working on. We sat in the Square infront of the cemetery in Recoleta, under an ancient rubber tree whose branches were propted by iron stays, eating ice cream and fending off beggars and hawkers of one kind or another.Then came back to the flat where I had a nap before starting my evenning writing session. Pleased to announce FINISHED THE CHAPTER. Made a quick salad and ate it watching a clip video on my notebook of our friend Claire being inaugurated into the House of Lords. Sent her a congratulatory email. Going out for hot chocolate and cake now. Tomorrow the tango routine begins another week at 10pm when I go off to practice at El Monito with Miguel. Want to start a new chapter tomorrow if I can.

BG

How plot changes

I looked at my original synopsis from 12 months ago and although the core story is still there, intact, gone is the opening melodrama of a major street accident involving a baby,gone is the Trudie character and her brutal mugging and Julie has a much lesser role/prominence. I deleted the original synopsis from this blog because I think it also told too much. Its interesting now to look back on how far I have come in the process of devloping the characters and plot. The characters I now know much better and much of the story is about close observation of their relationships with each other and the world rather than a heavy reliance on melodrama. The characters drive the plot and not the other way round.The original first chapter has gone completely and a new one wriiten but only a few months ago - entirely different from the original.I feel this is much stronger. Goes to show you dont really know your novel until you are in deep.
BG

on keeping it real and being fumigated

Having begun my other new chapter about showing a kinder, caring side to my protagonist Almir - so that his lover Roland sees something more in him and is drawn deeper into their relationship inspite of Almir's other shortcommings - I thought I had better seek further advice. After all I am making it up as I go along, more or less. Would a traumatised war veteran be able to show this other side to his personality - and in the way I am writing it/ I mean - I think so but...SO...I have contacted my psychiatrist friend for another character behaviour profile check in on Almir. She is writing her first novel too - partly set in Buenos Aires - so I may have to be her research agent by return. My other friend(NOT a writer of fiction)- I just skyped to chase him on my required contact with the U.N - to do more research about witnes protection in Kosovo a decade ago at the end of the war there)... says he is on the case but "had to fly because about to interview the head of war in Afganistan">>>well, I have the best possible links dont I!

Went to Tango Queer last night..met Miguel again who is back from his hols with his boyfriend....also danced with a Swede I meet last week at La Marshall, who complimented me on my lead and musicality - a real boost - stayed till it closed at about 2.30am. When I got back to the flat my landlord had bolted the door from the inside so I couldnt get in...OMG! Eventually I managed to rouse him and was let in and he apologised. Neither H or I slept last night and today, the icing on the cake, our apartment is being fumigated.
BG