Here, there was only the small day, which can turn on a pin: (a sentence in progress, a work in progress)

I am practising writing through time. My intention is to try and replicate those large and small fluctuations in human thought as they jump from one consideration and qualification of an idea to another. All this takes place in time, however we imagine time to exist, or however we imagine ourselves to exist in time.

The only way I can do it is to think of my sentences as forms of fabric; something I am making, moment to moment, like my breathing. I thread patterns through my fabric; pulsations, images that jump and turn. In short, I am trying to get my sentences to pay attention; to arouse what is the life-force of my characters as they explain themselves to themselves: that sense of self-summary we all practise in order to make sense of ourselves.

As I write, half conscious of where I’m going, certainly with the thinking-volume turned down because I am very aware over-thinking never helps my ability to create — only impedes it — I attach my sentences to a kinaesthetic force: my fingers moving quickly as I type, my diaphragm lifting and falling, my breath rising and falling. I am generating energy, and so I must allow in whatever comes along.

I loosely stitch together aspects of my subject. Here, in this sentence, ‘the small day’, to a set of qualifications which ‘turn on a pin’, which is to say my commas. Look at them, strewn across the page, aka the screen! But I am gathering momentum, I am gathering thoughts with my character, whose name is Marc, and he lives in Northern France in a region called Picardy. Most other facts about him come only from his mode of thinking and behaving within a narrow territory: a field of crops lined in rows; a field with crops lined in rows running into a small stream. We haven’t even got to Marc’s house yet.

As I write I add one new aspect to his environment, and my sentences do the same. It is a process of slow accumulation of knowledge which I must be able to control, so I work unit to unit, small space to small space, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. These map onto spatial units as I devise my fictional world.

I believe I am writing a fable, a sort of myth, a sort of history. I do not schematise because I find that does not suits this form of writing, which must allow for surprise; absurd forms of surprises that come to all of us, everyday, when something new or unexpected upsets or disturbs us. ‘You mean to say you put the cloth back there! That cloth, my cloth!’ The cloth must have a very particular significance for the speaker, but to you or I they sound positively barmy. If I were to qualify the cloth a little more I could tell you that the cloth was lace and woven uniquely on the last loom ever made by hand in a town in Northern France — although that would be absurdly portentous - but that is my point.

My story, for I shall call it that, considers why people are so put out by newcomers or alterations in their habitual patterns; their way of seeing the world. In this sentence, below, I am trying to get at the basic unit of knowledge, of habitual knowledge, of self-ordering and self-realisation, that allows us all to know and account for ourselves. That is the small day, which currently, in the bleak midwinter, feels very small indeed.

One go at a sentence:

Here, there was only the small day, which can turn on a pin, one small alteration of details and arrangements, one new incomer, one separate and different source of flux. I like the image of the pin partly because I have spent the last day or two pinning up a dress that was a little too large for me in precisely the way my mother told me never to do; my mother was a seamstress and a painter and I learned to write by watching her careful and exacting measuring of part-to-part of a dress. A pin is a crucial point of contact between one piece of fabric and another; when you pin something together you build a source of friction and potential energy. I think of sentences like this. And as for the flux, well, much of my writing is about water, rivers, the sea. I grew up by the sea and I swim (or splash) in the river. I associate the pleasure and depth-release of writing with submergence, and the setting of this fable-novel necessarily includes a stream. Apparently, I cannot write without some body of water. ‘Flux’ is also a very useful metaphor for life. To go under water is for me a way of escaping the horror of the superficial life, today’s life.

But to return to the pin: I place it in the middle of my sentence, or part-way through and I am glad to see it there confidently gleaming at me. The subject of my sentence is the small day which the pin somehow seems to hold in place. I have fixed it there with a comma and the relative pronoun ‘which’, that lovely qualifying grammatical structure we call a relative clause. Comma + which is a pleasing relative coming to visit with useful gifts (i.e. a good Christmas!)

Another go:

Here, there was only the small day, which can turn on a pin; one small alteration of details and arrangements, one new incomer, one small shift in the flux. I am thinking here again about the work of a seamstress in altering her garment. I have added a semi-colon here as a second pin, but I don’t want to overuse semicolons because they can stultify movement unless used sparingly. I am repeating ‘one’ over and over for effect because I want to emphasise the unity of lived experience: we all share the same day but our version of it is myriad.

One more go:

Here there was only the small day which can turn on pin, one small alteration of details and fine arrangements, one new body or face to see or not see, one small shift in circumstances that make up the supervised day.

Supervised here suggests that someone is in charge, a particular individual, which we like to think is ourselves but in fact is day and night, the diurnal rhythm of our body clocks which may or may not be well attuned to Day and Night, those ancient guardians of our outer and inner life. This sentence introduces the idea of another person with demeanour, a face, which we may or may not choose to see. This sentence is building towards the introduction of another character who has already burst upon the scene and caused much annoyance and resentment in a tight knit - almost implausibly tightknit - community. Ironically, and I like this, this sentence only employs commas( as with the first sentence), which seems to make it feel less starchy and matronly and more fluid. But this might just be an illusion on my part.

In the end, I am trying not to think about what might be correct or incorrect grammatically. I can worry about that later. I am also not, at this point, particularly interested in correct forms of grammar and punctuation (although I hold them in high esteem and I do relish a creative solecism), but rather with pushing beyond the impediments of commas, colons and semicolons, full stops. I think of them as little dams whose flood gates I open to see what rushes through; strange fish and amphibians I have never seen before, sparkling weeds. What will I catch, I wonder?

I began with a fragment of sentence. Here, there was only the small day, which can turn on a pin:

Here, I use a colon, and I now realise the colon sounds rather portentous, so I’m going to close its mouth, so to speak, because it feels rude and entitled. This is hardly surprising as I have been writing about entitlement. Sentences can sound very entitled, so I am going to close down my sentence after the tightening, sharpening image of the pin.

Here, there was only the small day, which can turn on a pin.

Now I sense a small reprimand - my full stop — but it is also a form of encouragement to continue beyond the tightening pin.