Organisation: A Mess of Files to Sort and a Global Pandemic to Boot

Portrait of writer Henry James, hard at work

Well, now! Aren't these interesting times. Just a couple of weeks after the rest of the world began some serious self-isolating, Australia has followed suit at last and now it's go-time for creatives of all stripes.

I hope so. Worldwide pandemics aren't necessarily soul-enriching times, but with a little imagination and a whole mess of things to do and learn, I hold some hope that these trying times might induce some pretty creative material from artists the world over.

Time! We've all got a lot of that now.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me, that's for sure. I've recently moved into a new apartment, and now I'm finally getting things to where they need to be. My timing is impeccable, it's never been said, but here I go.

I'm comfortable enough to open my Documents folder and take stock of where I am regarding Babushka. And it's a bit of a dog's breakfast, I must admit.

Now, I'm not a linear writer at all. When I began writing Babushka back in late 2016, it was merely a snapshot of protagonist (and narrator) Sergei Orlov's childhood, told in a flashback. Here's a recent edit of the very first words I wrote in this world of concrete, ice and madness:

Here, one of my earliest memories. The water mains, even for those in the vaunted halls of the Upper Airs, were finicky at the best of times. The hissing stream that beat down on my naked body as I raked my skin raw with volcanic soap vacillated wildly between subarctic and nearly boiling.             

But scrub I did with that misery soap, its unforgiving flakes rendering my skin a mess of abrasions, cuts, and scrapes. I needed to be clean for my progress report.             

My father was a firm believer in progress reports.             

The butler’s bell in the toilet clanged its warning, and I leapt from the prostitute bath like a coward cat to prepare myself for appraisal. I chose a linen kosovorotka shirt, dyed bright red, and a pair of scratchy grey trousers that rubbed against my penis without mercy. I had to ignore the pain; it was forbidden in this house to show weakness or discomfort.             

I clenched my teeth and hastened to my father’s study, pausing to peer out my chambers window, down at the frozen city stretched out below. Gorod Zubov, the City of Teeth, was a concrete monstrosity, its manoeuvres cruel and unyielding. We were well insulated, however, by virtue of wealth-height and of having been borne in the frozen skies above all the suffering below.

This isn't the beginning; it's merely where I started writing. Once I opened my Documents folder, it became apparent to me that organisation is going to be high on my to-do list: There are no fewer than nine different segments of Babushka that I've written at various times, either on my own or for school. Files titled 'BABUSHKA', 'Babushka 1', 'Babushka Fragment 2', 'Babushka Murder City 2', 'Babushka_Assessment_3', and on and on.

Seeing as I've nowhere else to go at the moment, getting these files sorted into one 'Babushka Master Version' will be my first port of call.

Stay safe, whatever readers I have, and I'll post more later on today once I've a master version I can work with and assess.