Almost at once you say that we must go
The furniture has moved, paintings
The gurney
Room Forty-Four
Something has been spilt
Yer Mam & Dad
The two young ones, fed, bathed, zippered
Race For Life
The difference between a man and a gun
You said, lightly, just forget it
You ask directions from a shepherd
Two kinds of dying
A child's handgrip, full of trust
The difference between a women and a violin
The voices don't worm through
I lay the suitcase on Dad's bed
A thumb-sized father climbs the stairs
I though, "He's full of shit,"
You do not do, you do not do
Sunday, 1 July 2007
1st July Prompts at 09.45
Bring me the head of Feliciano Lopez
Mugshot
A murder of cows
A murder at Cowes
My Tiny Hand is Frozen
Behind the Blast
Eric's Extraordinary Adventure
I'll Whistle Tomorrow
I heard you calling in the night
Your pointed tongue
Driving down the Milky Way
Death of the Loch Ness Monster
The People's Sunday
Sod the Barbarians!
Mugshot
A murder of cows
A murder at Cowes
My Tiny Hand is Frozen
Behind the Blast
Eric's Extraordinary Adventure
I'll Whistle Tomorrow
I heard you calling in the night
Your pointed tongue
Driving down the Milky Way
Death of the Loch Ness Monster
The People's Sunday
Sod the Barbarians!
als on blast targets
what's the point of setting targets?
if you feel like writing, you write, right?
and if you don't, you don't.
that's the way i used to write when i started this whole thing of trying - pretending - to be a writer.
i had no idea how much i'd written in a week, or a month, and i had no idea how much i should be writing in a week or a month.
no one can tell you how much you SHOULD be writing. no one apart from yourself.
and that's where targets come in, for me.
it's easy to con yourself that you're a writer, but if you've got records of how much you wrote that week, that month, that year, how many words, stories, poems, how many subs, how many rejects ets then you can prove it. or otherwise.
it helps me to realise that i'm not doing enough, and it gives me a buzz to know that, hey, this month i'm the most productive i've been since january.
this month we're having a blast. personal targets are set for amounts of words, stories, flashes, poems, subs. these targets are posted, made public, and a continuous thread is kept updating how close we get to meeting the targets.
now that's pressure!
but a good, positive kind of pressure. the kind of pressure that inspires you to work, to admit your failures (and successes) to your peers.
the setting of these targets is, for me, important.
no point being all pie-in-the-sky about it. they have to be realistic, otherwise the month is a failure befre you start. but equally, there's no point being cautious, just in case. that ruins the whole point of the exercise.
so i've set realistic but demanding targets for myself. targets i should be able to meet, if i put in some effort. this should mean i get some writing done, more than usual, and get some stories out there, more than i already have.
the big thing is - as alex always says - to hit these targets quickly. a push at the beginning of the blast means that you're never playing catch-up.
personally, i find this almost impossible as i live my whole life around the premise of why do today what you can put off til tomorrow.
but i'm going to give it a go and try for a quick start to the blast, today, and try to hit all my targets early.
so here they are:
4 stories (usual for a month)
10 flashes (usually i do none!)
10 poems (most i've evere managed is six)
20 subs (i struggle to hit 10 usually)
20,000 words (again, i usually struggle to hit 10,000)
these might not seem like a big deal, but they are to me (and that's the point)
so, let's see how it goes.
if you feel like writing, you write, right?
and if you don't, you don't.
that's the way i used to write when i started this whole thing of trying - pretending - to be a writer.
i had no idea how much i'd written in a week, or a month, and i had no idea how much i should be writing in a week or a month.
no one can tell you how much you SHOULD be writing. no one apart from yourself.
and that's where targets come in, for me.
it's easy to con yourself that you're a writer, but if you've got records of how much you wrote that week, that month, that year, how many words, stories, poems, how many subs, how many rejects ets then you can prove it. or otherwise.
it helps me to realise that i'm not doing enough, and it gives me a buzz to know that, hey, this month i'm the most productive i've been since january.
this month we're having a blast. personal targets are set for amounts of words, stories, flashes, poems, subs. these targets are posted, made public, and a continuous thread is kept updating how close we get to meeting the targets.
now that's pressure!
but a good, positive kind of pressure. the kind of pressure that inspires you to work, to admit your failures (and successes) to your peers.
the setting of these targets is, for me, important.
no point being all pie-in-the-sky about it. they have to be realistic, otherwise the month is a failure befre you start. but equally, there's no point being cautious, just in case. that ruins the whole point of the exercise.
so i've set realistic but demanding targets for myself. targets i should be able to meet, if i put in some effort. this should mean i get some writing done, more than usual, and get some stories out there, more than i already have.
the big thing is - as alex always says - to hit these targets quickly. a push at the beginning of the blast means that you're never playing catch-up.
personally, i find this almost impossible as i live my whole life around the premise of why do today what you can put off til tomorrow.
but i'm going to give it a go and try for a quick start to the blast, today, and try to hit all my targets early.
so here they are:
4 stories (usual for a month)
10 flashes (usually i do none!)
10 poems (most i've evere managed is six)
20 subs (i struggle to hit 10 usually)
20,000 words (again, i usually struggle to hit 10,000)
these might not seem like a big deal, but they are to me (and that's the point)
so, let's see how it goes.
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Saturday Prompts 01 08:06
A murder of crows
A widow stands at a window
All my lovers, in alphabetical order
Anger does not arouse a chair, grief, a table
Boys with bread-pudding in the hands, kicking a can
But not the kitchen sink
Driving along the motorway
Grant me good rest tonight, Lord
How d'you get down off an elephant?
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Late afternoon shines through chinks in the barn
Laura sleeping without pants
Marie drives back and forth
The evenings dazzle
The smell of boiling jam
There will be talking of lovely things
Things will be different
What is a room if not its memories?
What we call a beginning is often an end
When a lover dies
Why do they call it ashes?
A widow stands at a window
All my lovers, in alphabetical order
Anger does not arouse a chair, grief, a table
Boys with bread-pudding in the hands, kicking a can
But not the kitchen sink
Driving along the motorway
Grant me good rest tonight, Lord
How d'you get down off an elephant?
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Late afternoon shines through chinks in the barn
Laura sleeping without pants
Marie drives back and forth
The evenings dazzle
The smell of boiling jam
There will be talking of lovely things
Things will be different
What is a room if not its memories?
What we call a beginning is often an end
When a lover dies
Why do they call it ashes?
Friday, 29 June 2007
als on still warming up
last night i got home to discover i hadn;' placed in the top four of the UH competition (top prize £1000) so i have to make do with a top twenty place and anthology publication (which is great, actually, but hey, a grand's a grand)
also got a reject from liar's league, which i had high hopes for.
so not in the greatest of moods.
as part of the warm up for the july blast, i'd written two flashes, both over 1000 words, and a poem i was realtively pleased with. so last night - primaries deadline looming - i got straight down to a story.
two thousand words later, there we go - just finished re-reading it now, a day after writing it. i'm too close to judge the quality, i always need a couple of days, but it feels good to have basically done my primaries story a day before deadline.
also, the warm up pushed me over 12000 words for the month, for only the third time this year, and has produced maybe three subbable pieces.
now we've got the real thing starting this weekend.
bring it on...
also got a reject from liar's league, which i had high hopes for.
so not in the greatest of moods.
as part of the warm up for the july blast, i'd written two flashes, both over 1000 words, and a poem i was realtively pleased with. so last night - primaries deadline looming - i got straight down to a story.
two thousand words later, there we go - just finished re-reading it now, a day after writing it. i'm too close to judge the quality, i always need a couple of days, but it feels good to have basically done my primaries story a day before deadline.
also, the warm up pushed me over 12000 words for the month, for only the third time this year, and has produced maybe three subbable pieces.
now we've got the real thing starting this weekend.
bring it on...
Stats Update
28 June
A string of final places in a number of comps (results TBA)
and another half-dozen publications
two budding poets get into Poetic Hours, TomC appears at Defenestration, Cally has a story dramatised in London at "Liars League", "Rupert"'s stoy "Kicking" and RVJ's story "Soccer, Cake" appear at Flashquake, each earning $25
Reported Publications this year 54
Hits for the year now total 106, earning $3,473
The warm-up to the Jluy Blast has profuced 15 pieces to date
A string of final places in a number of comps (results TBA)
and another half-dozen publications
two budding poets get into Poetic Hours, TomC appears at Defenestration, Cally has a story dramatised in London at "Liars League", "Rupert"'s stoy "Kicking" and RVJ's story "Soccer, Cake" appear at Flashquake, each earning $25
Reported Publications this year 54
Hits for the year now total 106, earning $3,473
The warm-up to the Jluy Blast has profuced 15 pieces to date
Friday Prompts 01 06:30
REMEMBER WE HAVE A PRIMARY (STORY) DEADLINE TONIGHT
FOR STORIES, NOT FLASHES.
PROMPTS
Only the porter could open the lock
I am the bastard William Williams
The hotel manager read it
Well, Bethan, looks like I went and did it after all
He cut through the canvas
She paused and added, 1913
Tents like white commas, as far as the eye could see
I can't seem to find my feet
To understand, you must lose things
Your life is like a house that unbuilds itself
The pellets we are fed
Time explodes like a nail-bomb
My old man said follow the van
Last Orders
Fortress Singapore
Snow is falling again
The woman opposite is dozing, thinking of murders
FOR STORIES, NOT FLASHES.
PROMPTS
Only the porter could open the lock
I am the bastard William Williams
The hotel manager read it
Well, Bethan, looks like I went and did it after all
He cut through the canvas
She paused and added, 1913
Tents like white commas, as far as the eye could see
I can't seem to find my feet
To understand, you must lose things
Your life is like a house that unbuilds itself
The pellets we are fed
Time explodes like a nail-bomb
My old man said follow the van
Last Orders
Fortress Singapore
Snow is falling again
The woman opposite is dozing, thinking of murders
Thursday, 28 June 2007
Thursday Prompts at 22:30
Barking
One man went to mow
Half-way up the stairs is the stair where I sit
Monopoly Wars
Catchphrase
Eating Bush Meat
The man with rubber arms
Conspiracy Fairies
Memories of granny's kitchen
Big Game
In the mouth of the cave
Manflu
Adventures of a Wheelie Bin on a Green island
Cell Block X
The essential uselessness of an uncharged mouse
One man went to mow
Half-way up the stairs is the stair where I sit
Monopoly Wars
Catchphrase
Eating Bush Meat
The man with rubber arms
Conspiracy Fairies
Memories of granny's kitchen
Big Game
In the mouth of the cave
Manflu
Adventures of a Wheelie Bin on a Green island
Cell Block X
The essential uselessness of an uncharged mouse
Thursday Prompts for 6PM & 8PM
Chairs move by themselves, and books
The ferryman lay drunk in his boat
When the heart stumbles
He is conscious only at brief intervals
I did not imagine being bald
Each night eating a little further
An enamel bath
Window frames, pictures
I didn't doubt for a moment you were dead
You could always bring me flowers
Tomcat
What can moonlight do?
An old woman with heavy breasts
A thing to look away from
Immaculate Conception
And wheeled him off
Joe Smith, eight-six-and-a-half
My face catches the wind
Imagine, snapshots of our deaths
I remember the last red rose
The murderer has been patient with his poisons
Their little house has forty rooms
Seventy-nine years in a small box
A groundsheet, a pool of human blood
The trees are careful
The ferryman lay drunk in his boat
When the heart stumbles
He is conscious only at brief intervals
I did not imagine being bald
Each night eating a little further
An enamel bath
Window frames, pictures
I didn't doubt for a moment you were dead
You could always bring me flowers
Tomcat
What can moonlight do?
An old woman with heavy breasts
A thing to look away from
Immaculate Conception
And wheeled him off
Joe Smith, eight-six-and-a-half
My face catches the wind
Imagine, snapshots of our deaths
I remember the last red rose
The murderer has been patient with his poisons
Their little house has forty rooms
Seventy-nine years in a small box
A groundsheet, a pool of human blood
The trees are careful
Thursday 02 12:04
PROMPTS
Give me the strongest cheese, one that stinks
From the window I see horses
By afternoon there were cars everywhere
I was in Berlin
I walked on the tops of trees
A cow is giving birth
What is the smell of being human?
The purple mist of trees upon a mountain
The neighbours heard it
Once, I caught a tremendous fish
When despair climbs into my bed
Coffee, condensed milk, brandy
I can hear humming
Dull, hungry, like a damp dish-cloth
Take another look
Apple
Tell me this is not why you came
What is fucked-up, suffocating
Nothing is known for sure
Give me the strongest cheese, one that stinks
From the window I see horses
By afternoon there were cars everywhere
I was in Berlin
I walked on the tops of trees
A cow is giving birth
What is the smell of being human?
The purple mist of trees upon a mountain
The neighbours heard it
Once, I caught a tremendous fish
When despair climbs into my bed
Coffee, condensed milk, brandy
I can hear humming
Dull, hungry, like a damp dish-cloth
Take another look
Apple
Tell me this is not why you came
What is fucked-up, suffocating
Nothing is known for sure
Thursday 01 07:07
PROMPTS
A crow fished from a blocked chimney
Bud
Hoofprints in sand
Down by the nets
What comes in through a cat-flap
Without oars we rowed for hours
What if a road decided to go somewhere else?
As a dog with two dicks
Karthoum
You might hear, second, third, fourth hand, that I am unwell
He who lives by the sword. Is scary
That night, blind corners could suddenly see
Dream Kitchen
McDonalds as a War Crime
With nothing left I phone you
Concentrate on her various attributes
Behind Blockbuster Video
When they told me I was dead I said, not funny
Omnibus
univented blades of grass
The earth still moves
A crow fished from a blocked chimney
Bud
Hoofprints in sand
Down by the nets
What comes in through a cat-flap
Without oars we rowed for hours
What if a road decided to go somewhere else?
As a dog with two dicks
Karthoum
You might hear, second, third, fourth hand, that I am unwell
He who lives by the sword. Is scary
That night, blind corners could suddenly see
Dream Kitchen
McDonalds as a War Crime
With nothing left I phone you
Concentrate on her various attributes
Behind Blockbuster Video
When they told me I was dead I said, not funny
Omnibus
univented blades of grass
The earth still moves
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Prompts, Wednesday, 22:30
Caravans and Cream Soda
When the Waters Cover the Sea
Bribery, Bilberries
A good laugh and a couple of beers
A million words escape me
Bringing her down to size
What do you eat when the chips are down
The Ten-second Rule
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Behind the Sofa
Smiling Happy Places
Foster's Lair
Death of a Jam-maker
When the Waters Cover the Sea
Bribery, Bilberries
A good laugh and a couple of beers
A million words escape me
Bringing her down to size
What do you eat when the chips are down
The Ten-second Rule
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Behind the Sofa
Smiling Happy Places
Foster's Lair
Death of a Jam-maker
als- more on the pre blast blast
last night was a difficult one
lots of real life stuff to contend with, but determined to crank out a flash or at least a poem...
some great prompts floating around, and i managed just over a thousand words flash, but it happened in two sittings. first thirty minutesor so just took off based on three or four of the prompts, and i didn;t really stop to think about what the hell i was writing.
then real life interrupted and i had to leave the thing for a couple of hours.
not ideal.
came back to it and realised that it was a million miles from what i usually like to write/read.
it's weird where these things come from when you're flashing - if i'd thought about it at all, i can't see me ever writing those characters, pl0t events, that voice.
but that's what was there, and i managed to finish it off in about another twenty minutes.
also managed to crit four other flashes, but only managed tto post one before real life got in the way again.
still, two nights, two passable if not publishable flashes, over two thousand words written.
as a start, it'll do...
but there's subs to think about, there's primaries on friday, then the blast proper starts at the weekend.
but that's the secret, i think.
never stop.
lots of real life stuff to contend with, but determined to crank out a flash or at least a poem...
some great prompts floating around, and i managed just over a thousand words flash, but it happened in two sittings. first thirty minutesor so just took off based on three or four of the prompts, and i didn;t really stop to think about what the hell i was writing.
then real life interrupted and i had to leave the thing for a couple of hours.
not ideal.
came back to it and realised that it was a million miles from what i usually like to write/read.
it's weird where these things come from when you're flashing - if i'd thought about it at all, i can't see me ever writing those characters, pl0t events, that voice.
but that's what was there, and i managed to finish it off in about another twenty minutes.
also managed to crit four other flashes, but only managed tto post one before real life got in the way again.
still, two nights, two passable if not publishable flashes, over two thousand words written.
as a start, it'll do...
but there's subs to think about, there's primaries on friday, then the blast proper starts at the weekend.
but that's the secret, i think.
never stop.
Prompts for 1800 and 2000 Wednesday
They are dancing in Tescos
VW
By now I bet he'd dead, which suits me fine
ABC
He wanted to make us take notice
VC
They are dancing on the tops of cars
XYZ
Two fat girls in tight pants
BBC
The fourth oldest profession
The father gets a bullet in the eye
Sweet Earth
VD
I look at you sleeping
Our trust in art
The moon, bright orange
STD
A man eats a chicken
PARTY!
The green way to cook a pig
White thighs like slabs of lard
He was depressed, so built a bomb
When all the leaves are old
Tread softly, softly
The Man Who Knew Too Much
In order to forgive we must first know
On emerging from a dark tunnel
India, Iraq, Indonesia, Idaho
VW
By now I bet he'd dead, which suits me fine
ABC
He wanted to make us take notice
VC
They are dancing on the tops of cars
XYZ
Two fat girls in tight pants
BBC
The fourth oldest profession
The father gets a bullet in the eye
Sweet Earth
VD
I look at you sleeping
Our trust in art
The moon, bright orange
STD
A man eats a chicken
PARTY!
The green way to cook a pig
White thighs like slabs of lard
He was depressed, so built a bomb
When all the leaves are old
Tread softly, softly
The Man Who Knew Too Much
In order to forgive we must first know
On emerging from a dark tunnel
India, Iraq, Indonesia, Idaho
Wednesday 02 11:00 prompts
Two trees
I watch with my daughter
Hard, heavy, slow, dark
It's snowing down south
It's hard to believe these guys
Must Have TV
Like in a trick mirror
Allesandro the Grape
You see them in bars, eating ice-cream
Blue Sky to the North
Once more I think of you
How to inflate a rock
The boy waits on the top step
A chunk of brown bread
Being Alive
Chicken sandwich with mayonaisse
I watch with my daughter
Hard, heavy, slow, dark
It's snowing down south
It's hard to believe these guys
Must Have TV
Like in a trick mirror
Allesandro the Grape
You see them in bars, eating ice-cream
Blue Sky to the North
Once more I think of you
How to inflate a rock
The boy waits on the top step
A chunk of brown bread
Being Alive
Chicken sandwich with mayonaisse
Wednesday 01 08:00
Four men in orange uniforms, a suit
In the back of a garbage truck
Six blind women
Brutal lips, a slash across the face
It's not a fancy restaurant
Last night I dreamt I was in Vladivostok
That act of love lies somewhere between the belly and the mind
My friends Howie and Francine
In a past life I believed in reincarnation, but now I don't
Woman in a red, red dress
Knock at the door
He was big alongside me, like a ship in dock
Pickpocket
There is no sky today
One morning my father went down the icy stairs
Flowers, red lilies, roses, scarlet petunia
Love is apart from all things else
In the back of a garbage truck
Six blind women
Brutal lips, a slash across the face
It's not a fancy restaurant
Last night I dreamt I was in Vladivostok
That act of love lies somewhere between the belly and the mind
My friends Howie and Francine
In a past life I believed in reincarnation, but now I don't
Woman in a red, red dress
Knock at the door
He was big alongside me, like a ship in dock
Pickpocket
There is no sky today
One morning my father went down the icy stairs
Flowers, red lilies, roses, scarlet petunia
Love is apart from all things else
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Prompts for Ten PM
Dressed for death, and smiling
There is no greater crime than leaving
The Unit
Plastic Coffins, Perspex Windows
You've been a long time making up your mind
As the evening light congeals
I have learned about dying from looking at pictures
HAMMER
The Hostage Reunion
DRILL
I wait in a dive on 52nd street
Pretend You Love
The smell of dead children
SCREW
All I have is my voice
NAIL
I am standing here inside my skin
Picking though debris
Fox, gravel, stink
We are now at peace
Hate them all, hate is good
Down to the seventh level
Night beasts in a winter field
There is no greater crime than leaving
The Unit
Plastic Coffins, Perspex Windows
You've been a long time making up your mind
As the evening light congeals
I have learned about dying from looking at pictures
HAMMER
The Hostage Reunion
DRILL
I wait in a dive on 52nd street
Pretend You Love
The smell of dead children
SCREW
All I have is my voice
NAIL
I am standing here inside my skin
Picking though debris
Fox, gravel, stink
We are now at peace
Hate them all, hate is good
Down to the seventh level
Night beasts in a winter field
eight o clock prompts
shine so bright
i'd like that million dollars
my love lives in the balance
early days, late nights
she fills the spaces
it's not the liquor i miss
a history of lovers who have been here before
cat's eyes trance
silence, and the kettle
hand-picked here and now
i'd like that million dollars
my love lives in the balance
early days, late nights
she fills the spaces
it's not the liquor i miss
a history of lovers who have been here before
cat's eyes trance
silence, and the kettle
hand-picked here and now
Tuesday Afternoon/Evening Prompt Set
Posted at 16:25 but for the 6PM slot.
Whenever you look, you get a max of 90 minutes to flash
No, that's a special connection
Where an honest river runs
Behind a dirty window
I am grass
Who sold you this, then?
Of stone and harsh wind
If you didn't come from your country
Pile the bodies high, paint them white
The janitor disturbed some wasps
She rubbed her legs together as she sat on a disembowelled horse
The lovers disappeared
And voices, lifting
I love Gerry Adams, Saddam Hussein
A Squad of Mothers, prams
I sometimes lie, or bend the truth
I did not choose to be (Welsh)
Whenever you look, you get a max of 90 minutes to flash
No, that's a special connection
Where an honest river runs
Behind a dirty window
I am grass
Who sold you this, then?
Of stone and harsh wind
If you didn't come from your country
Pile the bodies high, paint them white
The janitor disturbed some wasps
She rubbed her legs together as she sat on a disembowelled horse
The lovers disappeared
And voices, lifting
I love Gerry Adams, Saddam Hussein
A Squad of Mothers, prams
I sometimes lie, or bend the truth
I did not choose to be (Welsh)
Slow Start
I's just as well we chose to "warm-up" for a week before the July Blast
Two weeks away for me and Boot Camp got quiet.
Now getting it going again is like trying to move an oil tanker with oars.
3 Flashes and two poems so far.
Let's hope it gets a little better.
alx
Two weeks away for me and Boot Camp got quiet.
Now getting it going again is like trying to move an oil tanker with oars.
3 Flashes and two poems so far.
Let's hope it gets a little better.
alx
Tuesday Prompts 02
11:25
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
The man on the bench in the barn
The Ghost Road
Ambiguity
All the flowers, black
The Sixpenny Show
Wow, I said, I'd love a Big Mac
253
Haunted
Before I knew there were men
24
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota
19
Strange Lolayties
Zanzibar
For all the horses butcherd on the battlefield
Skunk
A cool small evening, shrinking with rain
A snail on my window
Suddenly he is at the centre of a cone of white light
Ideas of Home
PARIS
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
The man on the bench in the barn
The Ghost Road
Ambiguity
All the flowers, black
The Sixpenny Show
Wow, I said, I'd love a Big Mac
253
Haunted
Before I knew there were men
24
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota
19
Strange Lolayties
Zanzibar
For all the horses butcherd on the battlefield
Skunk
A cool small evening, shrinking with rain
A snail on my window
Suddenly he is at the centre of a cone of white light
Ideas of Home
PARIS
Tuesday Prompts 01
and sang the sun in flight
we should have been galloping on horses
are you dreaming of what is lost?
sunflowers outside the window
hauling in lobsters pots, sun gleaming
my brother is here, my sister
stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
The stars are not wanted now
things move
pity the drunks, the old, the dead
the art of blood on snow
she wrote her notes, then blocked the door
Moondust
Little Children
we should have been galloping on horses
are you dreaming of what is lost?
sunflowers outside the window
hauling in lobsters pots, sun gleaming
my brother is here, my sister
stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
The stars are not wanted now
things move
pity the drunks, the old, the dead
the art of blood on snow
she wrote her notes, then blocked the door
Moondust
Little Children
Monday, 25 June 2007
als on the pre-blast blast
thought i'd put down a few words each night (or most nights) as we go through the balst (and the pre blast)
a few people are up for flashes and poems in preparation for July's blast.
good.
i was determined to get something done, and managed to fit somethign in around various life things tonight. 1000+ words of a flash - used the prompts posted, but in the end only included maybe two of them. i usually prefer it when the story starts to eat up all the prompts on the page, almost without me trying. that didn;t happen tonight.
the story isn;t great. ,it's probably not even subbable. but that's not the point. not for this pre-blast, anyway.
the point is to get used to forcing myself to sit down, write something - anything - every night.
and i managed that, at least.
i even started another piece, a poem. didn;t finish because life got in the way again, but i got a couple of stanzas down, and i'll come back to it.
managed to crit the other flash that someone had managed today as well.
it was much better than mine.
so, a partial, limited, tenuous success.
but that's ok.
i wrote one and a half pieces, over a thousand words. and i wouldn't have done that otherwise.
a few people are up for flashes and poems in preparation for July's blast.
good.
i was determined to get something done, and managed to fit somethign in around various life things tonight. 1000+ words of a flash - used the prompts posted, but in the end only included maybe two of them. i usually prefer it when the story starts to eat up all the prompts on the page, almost without me trying. that didn;t happen tonight.
the story isn;t great. ,it's probably not even subbable. but that's not the point. not for this pre-blast, anyway.
the point is to get used to forcing myself to sit down, write something - anything - every night.
and i managed that, at least.
i even started another piece, a poem. didn;t finish because life got in the way again, but i got a couple of stanzas down, and i'll come back to it.
managed to crit the other flash that someone had managed today as well.
it was much better than mine.
so, a partial, limited, tenuous success.
but that's ok.
i wrote one and a half pieces, over a thousand words. and i wouldn't have done that otherwise.
more flash prompts
in case you need any more!
crumbliest, flakiest
brother's on his way
no one wants the job
informed and anxious
controlled and crying
escher block
the corner of helium and green
sandals, size nine
where's the duck when you need it?
one day in, too many to go
crumbliest, flakiest
brother's on his way
no one wants the job
informed and anxious
controlled and crying
escher block
the corner of helium and green
sandals, size nine
where's the duck when you need it?
one day in, too many to go
Flash Prompts 04
at 20:00
Life Support
Out of the Silent Planet
Enter the Dragon
The Kleenex Monopoly
Woman with pitchfork
Potato Digging
Mother Theresa versus Father Brown
The long, slow ache of living with you
The Pride of Lions
Mutual Backscratching
Flashes can be sent by Blasters to me or to Alex for anon posting.
Life Support
Out of the Silent Planet
Enter the Dragon
The Kleenex Monopoly
Woman with pitchfork
Potato Digging
Mother Theresa versus Father Brown
The long, slow ache of living with you
The Pride of Lions
Mutual Backscratching
Flashes can be sent by Blasters to me or to Alex for anon posting.
Flash Prompts 03
18:30 prompts posted on Boot Camp by MP
Panzerman, the valley of ashes
The Hotel
White Van Man Returns From the Dead
My Brother is Out of Bed Today
Seventeen Ways to Advertise
The man who fixed the World Series
The Four Till Ten Shift
The Black Cloud
Gently, Gently Down the Stream
Simply not good enough
The Invoice
Bluetooth and Other Bastards
Swimming to the Azores
Panzerman, the valley of ashes
The Hotel
White Van Man Returns From the Dead
My Brother is Out of Bed Today
Seventeen Ways to Advertise
The man who fixed the World Series
The Four Till Ten Shift
The Black Cloud
Gently, Gently Down the Stream
Simply not good enough
The Invoice
Bluetooth and Other Bastards
Swimming to the Azores
Flash Prompts 02
Midday Prompts
A catastrophic kiss
A drum taps
A week without a moon
All catches alight
and again by the Saturday boat.
and boarding in rooms.
Flags
My wife shook the hand of the pickpocket
She let him tie the black silk over her eyes
Small cheap mirrors with MADE IN TUNISIA written on the back
Driving to the airport along a glittering highway
South of
Number Twenty-One
and I have calculated that absolutely nothing would be saved
as it may become very difficult and precarious
At present I am particularly concerned
by sub-letting the flat (furnished)
For the heart to be loveless
for the Wednesday boat
from America to England.
I am sick for want of sleep
Breaking and Entering
Against
Refreshment
Red Nose
Please Can I Have a Chicken?
A day like any other day
In the corner of the kitchen
My brother's room
My father carries me across a field
Why I Don't Live at the post office
A catastrophic kiss
A drum taps
A week without a moon
All catches alight
and again by the Saturday boat.
and boarding in rooms.
Flags
My wife shook the hand of the pickpocket
She let him tie the black silk over her eyes
Small cheap mirrors with MADE IN TUNISIA written on the back
Driving to the airport along a glittering highway
South of
Number Twenty-One
and I have calculated that absolutely nothing would be saved
as it may become very difficult and precarious
At present I am particularly concerned
by sub-letting the flat (furnished)
For the heart to be loveless
for the Wednesday boat
from America to England.
I am sick for want of sleep
Breaking and Entering
Against
Refreshment
Red Nose
Please Can I Have a Chicken?
A day like any other day
In the corner of the kitchen
My brother's room
My father carries me across a field
Why I Don't Live at the post office
Flash Prompts 01
Use one or more of the prompts below, either directly, or indirectly (as inspiration) to produce a flash. Ideal time-to-write is 45-75 minutes, but if a longer story evolves, then write it. record your time for first draft and add it (and prompts) after the story, below word-count
PROMPTS
Carnevale
Every day I am new
The Unit
Jump off, stand there and gaze
Six Feet Under
and newspapers from vacant lots
The West Wing
the frozen daquiris, talk, smoke
It's not that I'm saying
lay your warm and gentle body next to mine
Who cares what they say of you? You're dead!
Parting is all we know of Heaven
I like you more than I would like; to have a cigarette
Somwhere in clouds
My little pony must think me queer
A Khan or two, a traveller
Axe
When I am even older, I will wear Lycra
An onion, hello?
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Something stinks in the car
Sad, Dad and hopeless to know
PROMPTS
Carnevale
Every day I am new
The Unit
Jump off, stand there and gaze
Six Feet Under
and newspapers from vacant lots
The West Wing
the frozen daquiris, talk, smoke
It's not that I'm saying
lay your warm and gentle body next to mine
Who cares what they say of you? You're dead!
Parting is all we know of Heaven
I like you more than I would like; to have a cigarette
Somwhere in clouds
My little pony must think me queer
A Khan or two, a traveller
Axe
When I am even older, I will wear Lycra
An onion, hello?
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Something stinks in the car
Sad, Dad and hopeless to know
A Few Days to Warm-Up for the July Blast
News on the Blast
The excellent Eclectica Magazine will be taking a selection of Blast stories.
This week we are warming up with regular flash prompts and a writing-subs blast.
alx
The excellent Eclectica Magazine will be taking a selection of Blast stories.
This week we are warming up with regular flash prompts and a writing-subs blast.
alx
Sunday, 24 June 2007
als on a bad month, and keeping going
in terms of writing, this has been a bad month.
i've managed a story a week for primaries, weird range of scores as well, totally not what i expected - some 80s and some (well, one) 110s.
all three of these stories have been forced out with a deadline looming, and in all three cases i thought they were awful.
i've managed a couple of poems as well, and i'm starting to enjoy the process of writing a poem. but again, i'm far from happy with the finished things. at thirty-six, i still don;t know how to write a poem like i didn;t know how to write a poem at sixteen.
subs are down too. i've managed three subs. that's poor. i had a target of ten, and i've got a target of twenty for the july blast. so three, that's just not going to cut it.
i had a hit early on this month, low level ezine. buoyed me up for a few days. it got published straight off, then i had a poem published in a small print mag, so again - a little feel good factor. but they're low level things. just enough to keep things ticking over, but nothing more than that.
also, i've got some stuff out there that i'm starting to fret about - waiting on the results, hoping for a biggish hit. i hate that. i want to just send stuff out and forget about it, let the hit be a surprise.
worst of all is the word count. i'm at less than 7000 for the month i think. rubbish.
so ,blah blah blah, the point of my miserable little rant is this:
keep going.
a bad month's a bad month, and I can feel sorry for myself all i want. but there's a blast coming up. i can either give up, or get my head down, squeeze out some words, get the juices going by DOING not by wondering why i'm uninspired.
managed a poem today. also, read quite a bit. critted three stories.
keeping going...
the story i forced out for primaries, which i came so close to not posting 'cos i thought it was so awful is actually not being totally trashed.
keeping going...
i've got almost twenty pieces floating around, subbed here and there, one of them is bound to hit.
keeping going...
i'm thinking about doing the 'page a day' thing on a novel, just to see.
keeping going...
so if there's anyone else reading this who's having a bad month writing wise, i sympathise, empathise.
but keep going.
a really bad month is the one where you stop writing for good.
i've managed a story a week for primaries, weird range of scores as well, totally not what i expected - some 80s and some (well, one) 110s.
all three of these stories have been forced out with a deadline looming, and in all three cases i thought they were awful.
i've managed a couple of poems as well, and i'm starting to enjoy the process of writing a poem. but again, i'm far from happy with the finished things. at thirty-six, i still don;t know how to write a poem like i didn;t know how to write a poem at sixteen.
subs are down too. i've managed three subs. that's poor. i had a target of ten, and i've got a target of twenty for the july blast. so three, that's just not going to cut it.
i had a hit early on this month, low level ezine. buoyed me up for a few days. it got published straight off, then i had a poem published in a small print mag, so again - a little feel good factor. but they're low level things. just enough to keep things ticking over, but nothing more than that.
also, i've got some stuff out there that i'm starting to fret about - waiting on the results, hoping for a biggish hit. i hate that. i want to just send stuff out and forget about it, let the hit be a surprise.
worst of all is the word count. i'm at less than 7000 for the month i think. rubbish.
so ,blah blah blah, the point of my miserable little rant is this:
keep going.
a bad month's a bad month, and I can feel sorry for myself all i want. but there's a blast coming up. i can either give up, or get my head down, squeeze out some words, get the juices going by DOING not by wondering why i'm uninspired.
managed a poem today. also, read quite a bit. critted three stories.
keeping going...
the story i forced out for primaries, which i came so close to not posting 'cos i thought it was so awful is actually not being totally trashed.
keeping going...
i've got almost twenty pieces floating around, subbed here and there, one of them is bound to hit.
keeping going...
i'm thinking about doing the 'page a day' thing on a novel, just to see.
keeping going...
so if there's anyone else reading this who's having a bad month writing wise, i sympathise, empathise.
but keep going.
a really bad month is the one where you stop writing for good.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
The BC July Blast
We had a "blast" in July 2006 where most of the members went on a writing spree, flashes, stories, a few poems, and a greta effort to submit asap.
The productivity during blasts is amazing, and the quantity is not at the expense of quality. Hit rates RISE. There's something about the energy, the pressure, the community drive that seems to inspire everybody.
We will be posting a set of flash prompts Weekdays at
06:00
07:55
13:00
18:00
20:00
22:00
On the weekends we will post prompts at
08:00
11:00
14:00
17:00
20:00
Each of us will set himself a personal target for the month, word-coun, number of flashes, number of stories, subs.
We will tie up with a good-quality ezine : in the past this has been Eclectica Magazine and all flashes will get brief feedback in BC.
In the past these "blasts" have been joined by a few non-Boot Campers.
If you are interested post a comment here (they go via moderation)
alx
The productivity during blasts is amazing, and the quantity is not at the expense of quality. Hit rates RISE. There's something about the energy, the pressure, the community drive that seems to inspire everybody.
We will be posting a set of flash prompts Weekdays at
06:00
07:55
13:00
18:00
20:00
22:00
On the weekends we will post prompts at
08:00
11:00
14:00
17:00
20:00
Each of us will set himself a personal target for the month, word-coun, number of flashes, number of stories, subs.
We will tie up with a good-quality ezine : in the past this has been Eclectica Magazine and all flashes will get brief feedback in BC.
In the past these "blasts" have been joined by a few non-Boot Campers.
If you are interested post a comment here (they go via moderation)
alx
Wednesday Prompts
That's why the warning light comes on
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Once again I have missed you by moments
The sound of one hand slapping
Which reminds me
General Studies, Upper Sixth, a Doddle
White-faced soldiers
Playing leapfrog
But he did for them all with his plan of attack
Driving Back
Re-inventing the telescope
How wind will always find the cracks
Time, Water
Tommy won't eat his broccoli
Or you may wish to read more widely
This examination may be terminal
I am waiting in the shadows at the dark end of a lonely street
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Once again I have missed you by moments
The sound of one hand slapping
Which reminds me
General Studies, Upper Sixth, a Doddle
White-faced soldiers
Playing leapfrog
But he did for them all with his plan of attack
Driving Back
Re-inventing the telescope
How wind will always find the cracks
Time, Water
Tommy won't eat his broccoli
Or you may wish to read more widely
This examination may be terminal
I am waiting in the shadows at the dark end of a lonely street
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
100
And the 100th is reached.
BB gets 99, and AK himself makes the hit that takes us into three figures for 2007.
Roll on 200, some time in late October, I'd guess...
BB gets 99, and AK himself makes the hit that takes us into three figures for 2007.
Roll on 200, some time in late October, I'd guess...
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
98! 99? 100?
TomC records our 98th hit of the year with an acceptance at Defenestration.
Roll on Numbers 99 and 100
Roll on Numbers 99 and 100
Monday, 11 June 2007
Monday Prompts
From somewhere, the sound of dancing
No blood is flowing, just red birds
Hitler was a British Agent
As if a fire was flickering gently
They bring us crushed fingers
Pigeons
A thousand years ago, the angels say
She climbed to the third floor
Her last words wandered across the ceiling
She glanced up from her creaking rocking-chair
The children work hard
Your return is overdue
Day has cast anchor in the shadows
I have heard the sobbing of angels
Two thousand cigarettes
Now I will change water into wine
A lady lonely as a rat
Birdcages flew open
No fiery writing on the wall
Mad New Zealanders
Above the fields the wires hissed like iguanas
In the name of the father, the son and the holy bank.
No blood is flowing, just red birds
Hitler was a British Agent
As if a fire was flickering gently
They bring us crushed fingers
Pigeons
A thousand years ago, the angels say
She climbed to the third floor
Her last words wandered across the ceiling
She glanced up from her creaking rocking-chair
The children work hard
Your return is overdue
Day has cast anchor in the shadows
I have heard the sobbing of angels
Two thousand cigarettes
Now I will change water into wine
A lady lonely as a rat
Birdcages flew open
No fiery writing on the wall
Mad New Zealanders
Above the fields the wires hissed like iguanas
In the name of the father, the son and the holy bank.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Sunday prompts
They had made love earlier, in the big high bed
Paris from my window
Looking over the polaroids
Once upon a time there was sex and death
About New York
Two for the price of three
In the spaces between the parrots and the fruit trees
I open my skull to your gaze
In my dream my brother gave away a screenplay
The Life & Death of a Pork Chop
Maybe one day I'll have three children, one of each
I said, "Look, this is my house."
The Empire of Child
Your body, I remember, stained my big cream bed
What My Dad Thought of Church
Grey on Grey, Black Upon Black
My mother is downstairs with a saxophone player
Paris from my window
Looking over the polaroids
Once upon a time there was sex and death
About New York
Two for the price of three
In the spaces between the parrots and the fruit trees
I open my skull to your gaze
In my dream my brother gave away a screenplay
The Life & Death of a Pork Chop
Maybe one day I'll have three children, one of each
I said, "Look, this is my house."
The Empire of Child
Your body, I remember, stained my big cream bed
What My Dad Thought of Church
Grey on Grey, Black Upon Black
My mother is downstairs with a saxophone player
Saturday, 9 June 2007
Back? Well, sort of...
I got ahead wordcount-wise last month, and boy do I need that start.
I need to find 25,500 words this month and my brain is mush. I have the head-sensation of a hangover (but not drinking) and I'm completely out of ideas (and not in the mood.) A ton of paperwork, too and a fair few rejections were in the post. Joy!
My head is simply not right, so in all probability I'll crack on with all the domestic, non-writing stuff today and Sunday, then hope to hit the writing hard come Monday.
Trouble is that will be 11th, leaving 19 days (if I don't miss 1-2) to write that 25,500. Plus I have a 4K Open University Essay to write by the 21st and then another due around July 20th
But there again that's just 1,500 words a day. is that so hard?
Looking at Boot Camp hits this year it's interesting how we have stepped up the paper/web ratio to almost exactly 50%. There are a few exceptions, (both ways) but generally paper is a tougher market. I know 2-3 BCers are aiming higher this year and the higher you aim the slower the hits come, but that's a necessary part of upping your game.
Anyway, right now getting that 30K this month looks and feels like a toughie. If I miss out, it's good to remember that I have already written 93K in 3 months
alx
I need to find 25,500 words this month and my brain is mush. I have the head-sensation of a hangover (but not drinking) and I'm completely out of ideas (and not in the mood.) A ton of paperwork, too and a fair few rejections were in the post. Joy!
My head is simply not right, so in all probability I'll crack on with all the domestic, non-writing stuff today and Sunday, then hope to hit the writing hard come Monday.
Trouble is that will be 11th, leaving 19 days (if I don't miss 1-2) to write that 25,500. Plus I have a 4K Open University Essay to write by the 21st and then another due around July 20th
But there again that's just 1,500 words a day. is that so hard?
Looking at Boot Camp hits this year it's interesting how we have stepped up the paper/web ratio to almost exactly 50%. There are a few exceptions, (both ways) but generally paper is a tougher market. I know 2-3 BCers are aiming higher this year and the higher you aim the slower the hits come, but that's a necessary part of upping your game.
Anyway, right now getting that 30K this month looks and feels like a toughie. If I miss out, it's good to remember that I have already written 93K in 3 months
alx
Catch Up 2 - Some Prompts
Break, Blow, Burn
We left before I had time
A Life in Litters
Spineless and eyeless we spend our days
In Defence of the Bastards
A wooden table, a vase of flowers
Number One in Heaven
It seemed the obvious place to go
The Odd Tunnel in Paris
Too pale for these cloud-breached days
Panning for Gold
You ask what I think of your new acquisition?
A Viking Writes Home
From the Direktor Domestic & General Functions
Tell me I'm beautiful, bring me flowers
I came at night to the dark house
The same scene fifty times
Toute-suite or Double-Quick?
We left before I had time
A Life in Litters
Spineless and eyeless we spend our days
In Defence of the Bastards
A wooden table, a vase of flowers
Number One in Heaven
It seemed the obvious place to go
The Odd Tunnel in Paris
Too pale for these cloud-breached days
Panning for Gold
You ask what I think of your new acquisition?
A Viking Writes Home
From the Direktor Domestic & General Functions
Tell me I'm beautiful, bring me flowers
I came at night to the dark house
The same scene fifty times
Toute-suite or Double-Quick?
Starting to Catch Up
08 BC Stories while I was away
10-25 (Crits-Discussion Posts)
09-10
08-63
08-37
08-19
08-13
08-10
08-09
67 Full Critiques (08.38 Average)
186 Discussion Posts (23.25 Average)
05 Stories in today's primaries (14-21 so far)
=======================================
Up to 97 Hits for the year.
Most recent
JUNE
091 TomC story in Ballista (Print)
092 Alex places collection at Salt (Print)
093 Jason Jackson places at six sentences
094 NW places at six sentences
095 Tom places at Underground Voices $30
096 Amy places at six sentences
097 Jason Jackson places at Smokelong
14 Members placed in 2007
02 Members unplaced
05 New members (unplaced)
2007 Publications Update
2007 PUBLICATIONS
January
001 Alex - The Internet Writing Journal - "The Long & the Short Of It"
002 Cedric - Eclectica - "Killing Bulls"
003 MJH - Eclectica - "Geoff Says Farewell"
004 Kenneth Shand - Eclectica - "Ramirez"
005 Cedric - Eclectica - "The Year of the Card Player"
006 MJH - Eclectica - "The Undressing of Ursula"
007 Caroline - Poetry Monthly "Snowdrops" paper
008 Alex - Poetry Monthly "On Greenham III" Paper
009 Alex - Southern Ocean Review "The Ghost in the Latrine" Paper/Web
010 Tom - article at Johnny America
011 Lexie - lead story in Earlyworks paper anthology
012 Chrissie - "Mummy Says" in QWF (Print Journal)
013 Jason Jackson in Scottish Print Mag "Raw"
014 TomC in American Drivel (Paper Mag)
015 Caroline in February Poetry Monthly (Print)
016 Cally published by Espresso Fiction ($30)
017 Lee published at Sussuruss
018 Cally in Slingink Anthology (paper
019 TomC in Sligink Anthology (paper)
020 TomC at Peccary (webzine)
021 Colin First Prize-Winner published at Cadenza (Paper)
022 Caroline, two poems in "Seventh Quarry" ("one pub")
023 TomC article at Johnny America (web)
024 Nightwriter at Flashquake
025 Tom C at Laughter Loaf
026 Colin at Heavyglow
027 Alex in Poetry Monthly
028 Caroline in Poetry Monthly
029 Cally at Chick Flicks
030 CLT at Smokebox
031 Tom at Glass Fire
032 TomC podcast at Bound Off
033 Alex at LitBits
034 TomC at LitBits
035 Alex in Gold Dust
036 JJ in Pen Pusher
037 Caroline, two poems in Southern Ocean Review
038 Jason Jackson in Poetry Monthly
039 Lexie in H E Bates Anthology (1)
040 Lexie in H E Bates Anthology (2)
041 CLT in Word Riot
042 Alex in Espresso Fiction ($30)
043 Tom in Transmission (Print)
044 JPM in Thieves Jargon
Individual Totals (Web-Paper-Total)
007-003-010 Tom
003-004-007 Alex
001-005-006 Caroline
001-004-005 Colin
002-001-003 Cally
003-000-003 MJH
002-000-002 Cedric
001-000-001 Kenneth
000-002-003 Lexie
000-001-001 Chrissie
001-000-001 Lee
002-000-001 Claire
023-021-044 TOTAL
10-25 (Crits-Discussion Posts)
09-10
08-63
08-37
08-19
08-13
08-10
08-09
67 Full Critiques (08.38 Average)
186 Discussion Posts (23.25 Average)
05 Stories in today's primaries (14-21 so far)
=======================================
Up to 97 Hits for the year.
Most recent
JUNE
091 TomC story in Ballista (Print)
092 Alex places collection at Salt (Print)
093 Jason Jackson places at six sentences
094 NW places at six sentences
095 Tom places at Underground Voices $30
096 Amy places at six sentences
097 Jason Jackson places at Smokelong
14 Members placed in 2007
02 Members unplaced
05 New members (unplaced)
2007 Publications Update
2007 PUBLICATIONS
January
001 Alex - The Internet Writing Journal - "The Long & the Short Of It"
002 Cedric - Eclectica - "Killing Bulls"
003 MJH - Eclectica - "Geoff Says Farewell"
004 Kenneth Shand - Eclectica - "Ramirez"
005 Cedric - Eclectica - "The Year of the Card Player"
006 MJH - Eclectica - "The Undressing of Ursula"
007 Caroline - Poetry Monthly "Snowdrops" paper
008 Alex - Poetry Monthly "On Greenham III" Paper
009 Alex - Southern Ocean Review "The Ghost in the Latrine" Paper/Web
010 Tom - article at Johnny America
011 Lexie - lead story in Earlyworks paper anthology
012 Chrissie - "Mummy Says" in QWF (Print Journal)
013 Jason Jackson in Scottish Print Mag "Raw"
014 TomC in American Drivel (Paper Mag)
015 Caroline in February Poetry Monthly (Print)
016 Cally published by Espresso Fiction ($30)
017 Lee published at Sussuruss
018 Cally in Slingink Anthology (paper
019 TomC in Sligink Anthology (paper)
020 TomC at Peccary (webzine)
021 Colin First Prize-Winner published at Cadenza (Paper)
022 Caroline, two poems in "Seventh Quarry" ("one pub")
023 TomC article at Johnny America (web)
024 Nightwriter at Flashquake
025 Tom C at Laughter Loaf
026 Colin at Heavyglow
027 Alex in Poetry Monthly
028 Caroline in Poetry Monthly
029 Cally at Chick Flicks
030 CLT at Smokebox
031 Tom at Glass Fire
032 TomC podcast at Bound Off
033 Alex at LitBits
034 TomC at LitBits
035 Alex in Gold Dust
036 JJ in Pen Pusher
037 Caroline, two poems in Southern Ocean Review
038 Jason Jackson in Poetry Monthly
039 Lexie in H E Bates Anthology (1)
040 Lexie in H E Bates Anthology (2)
041 CLT in Word Riot
042 Alex in Espresso Fiction ($30)
043 Tom in Transmission (Print)
044 JPM in Thieves Jargon
Individual Totals (Web-Paper-Total)
007-003-010 Tom
003-004-007 Alex
001-005-006 Caroline
001-004-005 Colin
002-001-003 Cally
003-000-003 MJH
002-000-002 Cedric
001-000-001 Kenneth
000-002-003 Lexie
000-001-001 Chrissie
001-000-001 Lee
002-000-001 Claire
023-021-044 TOTAL
Friday, 8 June 2007
Three More Hits for Boot Camp!
A few hits to record:
"Angharad Honeybill" at Six Sentences
TomC accepted at at Underground Voices and gets $30
Jason Jackson accepted at Smokelong, somewhere I've never cracked
BC now on 97 Hits for the year
"Angharad Honeybill" at Six Sentences
TomC accepted at at Underground Voices and gets $30
Jason Jackson accepted at Smokelong, somewhere I've never cracked
BC now on 97 Hits for the year
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Monday, 4 June 2007
Monday Morning Prompts
Failed Electrics
The Night of Execution
How to be a Domestic God
The Last Roman
Chalk Circles
Free my fingers
Smashing Butternut Squash
The Wasting Game
Moth Kisses
Understanding Melissa
A glass of water from my well
Death is within
The Night of Execution
How to be a Domestic God
The Last Roman
Chalk Circles
Free my fingers
Smashing Butternut Squash
The Wasting Game
Moth Kisses
Understanding Melissa
A glass of water from my well
Death is within
Sunday, 3 June 2007
'als' on the imperative of words, every day
i just spent saturday to thursday away from home, away from the computer, away from the 'net.
away from writing
i took my notebook, but i was with the family, parents, my wife, my son, friends i haven't seen in a while...
i didn't write a thing
i got back on late thursday, logged on to bc, set my usual targets for the coming month, and thought - right, tomorrow, back to it
i still haven't written a word
you see, i've fallen out of the habit
already, after less than a week, that blank screen looks more impossible to fill than it has in months
i've tried a few times
i've typed words, phrases, sentences - and i've deleted everything
awful
i've fallen out of the habit of thinking - ok the first words might be god awful, but keep going, keep going, keep going, because something, eventually, will stick
so i did my usual putting-off-writing exercises. i flicked around ezines looking for somewhere to sub to. i did other life-things.
i was fine while i was away, because i knew i was 'on a break' but now, these last three days, i've been miserable
i know i have to write, and i can't seem to do it
and i also know that it'll pass, because i've been here before, and i've finally put some words down, got that story out, or that poem, or that flash, and it's usually rubbish, but then the next one is ok, then the next better...
so, what i have to do is stop waiting for that moment when the words come back, and just sit down and write
this is a start. posting here. getting it out. typing words.
but the whole point is i think that i'm in this mess to start with cos i had some days off, where i fell out of the habit, and now i can't get back
i know this doesn't work for everyone, but i still think that 'words every day' is the way to go. because then it just becomes a habit. it becomes natural. at the minute, sitting down and writing a story, a poem, whatever, feels like the most unnatural thing in the world. but once i've done it again, it won't.
i know that 'words every day' is difficult, at times impossible. but so is writing. and at least to try to write every day, that feels like something worthwhile to me.
away from writing
i took my notebook, but i was with the family, parents, my wife, my son, friends i haven't seen in a while...
i didn't write a thing
i got back on late thursday, logged on to bc, set my usual targets for the coming month, and thought - right, tomorrow, back to it
i still haven't written a word
you see, i've fallen out of the habit
already, after less than a week, that blank screen looks more impossible to fill than it has in months
i've tried a few times
i've typed words, phrases, sentences - and i've deleted everything
awful
i've fallen out of the habit of thinking - ok the first words might be god awful, but keep going, keep going, keep going, because something, eventually, will stick
so i did my usual putting-off-writing exercises. i flicked around ezines looking for somewhere to sub to. i did other life-things.
i was fine while i was away, because i knew i was 'on a break' but now, these last three days, i've been miserable
i know i have to write, and i can't seem to do it
and i also know that it'll pass, because i've been here before, and i've finally put some words down, got that story out, or that poem, or that flash, and it's usually rubbish, but then the next one is ok, then the next better...
so, what i have to do is stop waiting for that moment when the words come back, and just sit down and write
this is a start. posting here. getting it out. typing words.
but the whole point is i think that i'm in this mess to start with cos i had some days off, where i fell out of the habit, and now i can't get back
i know this doesn't work for everyone, but i still think that 'words every day' is the way to go. because then it just becomes a habit. it becomes natural. at the minute, sitting down and writing a story, a poem, whatever, feels like the most unnatural thing in the world. but once i've done it again, it won't.
i know that 'words every day' is difficult, at times impossible. but so is writing. and at least to try to write every day, that feels like something worthwhile to me.
Saturday, 2 June 2007
Prompts From the Sun
Me and Cilla
The Life & Death of a Wind-Surfer
The Many Differences Between 96 and 116
The God Delusion
Forth Degree Burns
Adrienne! I've Told You Before; If You Must Use a Broom, Use it on the floor
Why Margaret Didn't
It Came from the Lagoon
Life of Galileo
In a Window, a Television
Green Shorts, Cold Tea
Aloe Vera
Listening to Old Beatles Songs
Google "Two masks"
A train is out of control heading for ten children. You can divert the train and save the children but will kill two nice old men. Yes, No?
The Life & Death of a Wind-Surfer
The Many Differences Between 96 and 116
The God Delusion
Forth Degree Burns
Adrienne! I've Told You Before; If You Must Use a Broom, Use it on the floor
Why Margaret Didn't
It Came from the Lagoon
Life of Galileo
In a Window, a Television
Green Shorts, Cold Tea
Aloe Vera
Listening to Old Beatles Songs
Google "Two masks"
A train is out of control heading for ten children. You can divert the train and save the children but will kill two nice old men. Yes, No?
Subs Targets Met Again
I knew I'd be away for the last 8 days of May and we were a long way short of our monthly subs target when i left, but I'm happy to note that for the third month in succession the subs target has been met and exceded.
It takes 6-20 weeks for the effect of this subbing to show, but it will show!
Well done gang.
Alex
It takes 6-20 weeks for the effect of this subbing to show, but it will show!
Well done gang.
Alex
Friday, 1 June 2007
Prompts for June 1st
City Slackers
When I woke up I was in a forest
Touched by an Angel
Stares on the Bus
Windburn
Muscles I didn't know I had
The Mystery of the Poisoned Wedding Cake
Guts for Garters
Go away until your bones are clean
Bells on Her Toes
Don't let's talk about being in love, OK?
My mother's old leather handbag
Ronaldinho's Ponytail
When I woke up I was in a forest
Touched by an Angel
Stares on the Bus
Windburn
Muscles I didn't know I had
The Mystery of the Poisoned Wedding Cake
Guts for Garters
Go away until your bones are clean
Bells on Her Toes
Don't let's talk about being in love, OK?
My mother's old leather handbag
Ronaldinho's Ponytail
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Thursday Evening Story Prompts
Parts of Speech
Constructing a Pyramid
Sometimes, you never left
Mulberry
This is the last letter I will write
I carry a dead relationship around everywhere with me
Not a roof, but a field of stars
Seven in the minibus
Watching for Dolphins
Pass the tambourine
A soul detached from its gender
A mouth, crowded with pegs
Skin-tight with Longing
Constructing a Pyramid
Sometimes, you never left
Mulberry
This is the last letter I will write
I carry a dead relationship around everywhere with me
Not a roof, but a field of stars
Seven in the minibus
Watching for Dolphins
Pass the tambourine
A soul detached from its gender
A mouth, crowded with pegs
Skin-tight with Longing
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Prompts for Wednesday
Ashes to Ashes
STONE COLD
Under a star-lessened sky
Tree Warden
SATELLITE SUN
Tourniquet wrapped so tight, the veins recite epitaphs
Wet Wednesday in Ebbw Vale
HAIRBRUSH
Half a sixpence
PARISH PLAN
STONE COLD
Under a star-lessened sky
Tree Warden
SATELLITE SUN
Tourniquet wrapped so tight, the veins recite epitaphs
Wet Wednesday in Ebbw Vale
HAIRBRUSH
Half a sixpence
PARISH PLAN
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Some story prompts for Tuesday
A shadow will remain
Cinemas use night goggles to nab pirates
Wet, Wet, Wet
Tabitha lives upstairs
In those days when my father was still big
Keeping in Touch
Alistair, Human Calculator
Pure gravy. And don't forget it.
In the Bag
Putting Down the Cat
Multiple Blunt-Force Injuries
She rings me, all night
I have been somebody else all my life
Cinemas use night goggles to nab pirates
Wet, Wet, Wet
Tabitha lives upstairs
In those days when my father was still big
Keeping in Touch
Alistair, Human Calculator
Pure gravy. And don't forget it.
In the Bag
Putting Down the Cat
Multiple Blunt-Force Injuries
She rings me, all night
I have been somebody else all my life
Sunday, 27 May 2007
Some more prompts
Everyone is entitled to his little bit of weirdness
I am uncommonly nervous
That sanity be kept I sit at open windows
Trundling towards Bethlehem
The wrong metaphor for the job
Singing Hallelujah with the fear in my heart
Samantho re the jam
An unwanted gift from an uninvited guest
Try holding on to my arm
Sandal-wearing fat-cats in jazz
Wah-wah pedalo
I want to cover the world in mayonnaise
Phrenology for the anencephalic
Soul scratchcard
Some people are 78% milk
Rabid otter in the bank
Truth, beauty, love: everything else is just Pizza Express salad dressing
The white noise of your friends
If you hate the taste of wine, why do you drink it till you're blind?
She looked just like a Zoom ice cream
An estimated three billion dead.
Some Sunday Prompts
Church Bells and Chocolate
Under the Volcano
Stumbling Block
Brother Poets, Gather Round
Rape and Pillage
Inventing the Hawk
My soul washed by your most precious blood
Rules of Engagement
biros, scissors, combs, odd socks
Diary of an LBD
The Noonday Demon
Thomas the Trencherman
What girls really eat
Salt of the Earth
Each day, eating a little further into the bone
Hydrotherapy for cats
Under the Volcano
Stumbling Block
Brother Poets, Gather Round
Rape and Pillage
Inventing the Hawk
My soul washed by your most precious blood
Rules of Engagement
biros, scissors, combs, odd socks
Diary of an LBD
The Noonday Demon
Thomas the Trencherman
What girls really eat
Salt of the Earth
Each day, eating a little further into the bone
Hydrotherapy for cats
Saturday, 26 May 2007
Alex Places Collection + One Other Hit
TomC places a story for £5 payment (they all count!)
and Alex has just heard that Salt Publishing will be prinitng a collection of AK short-stories
our 91st and 92nd hits of the years
alx
and Alex has just heard that Salt Publishing will be prinitng a collection of AK short-stories
our 91st and 92nd hits of the years
alx
Saturday 26th prompts
All Points North
All quiet on the Western Terrace
I was demoralised when I left Bradford for Virginia
Scalp, cranium, cap, skull, Sheffield, Bradford, Grimsby, Hull
They were tolerably quiet when I preached; only a few pieces of dirt were thrown.
Raving beauties speeding in the little boy's room
The Pearl of India (Curry Yorkshire Puddings - Our Speciality)
Stretched out on a full length snooker table lies a sleeping fireman
The sound of young Huddersfield
Albert Victor Forgets Himself
Two in the morning, the meat wagon waits for its cargo
Joshua Tetley in stiletto heels and pink pyjamas
Micky Smith, the Charlton Heston of the carpet trade
Blues of the second-hand gun
Ballad of Live Aid, hymn of the slave trade
Meat and gravy. Hindley and Brady
Putting lyricism back into lyrics
All quiet on the Western Terrace
I was demoralised when I left Bradford for Virginia
Scalp, cranium, cap, skull, Sheffield, Bradford, Grimsby, Hull
They were tolerably quiet when I preached; only a few pieces of dirt were thrown.
Raving beauties speeding in the little boy's room
The Pearl of India (Curry Yorkshire Puddings - Our Speciality)
Stretched out on a full length snooker table lies a sleeping fireman
The sound of young Huddersfield
Albert Victor Forgets Himself
Two in the morning, the meat wagon waits for its cargo
Joshua Tetley in stiletto heels and pink pyjamas
Micky Smith, the Charlton Heston of the carpet trade
Blues of the second-hand gun
Ballad of Live Aid, hymn of the slave trade
Meat and gravy. Hindley and Brady
Putting lyricism back into lyrics
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Flying Prompts
Across the tops of cities
Angels staggering on tenement roofs
As the city gleams
Beneath defeat's fire
Burning the money in waste-baskets
Cigarette marks on the arms
Cowered in unshaven rooms
Destroyed by madness
Each square of the window's pane
Expelled from academies
FBI
Fuck Cancer
Her bleak furnished room
Hollow-eyed and high
Hungry, lonesome, not smelling too good
Is. Because
Midnight at the rolling yard
Nights with brilliant eyes
No absence that cannot be replaced
No one goes into the black house
On a hung out shelf somewhere in Mexico
Paint and alleyways
Rose-gardens, public parks
Saintly motorcyclists
Sank all night in a submarine light
Starving, hysterical, naked
Talking continuously
The best minds of my generation
The Suits, the glasses, the number one cuts
The way a cat walks, knowing
Volcano
Windows, high, grime-smeared
Angels staggering on tenement roofs
As the city gleams
Beneath defeat's fire
Burning the money in waste-baskets
Cigarette marks on the arms
Cowered in unshaven rooms
Destroyed by madness
Each square of the window's pane
Expelled from academies
FBI
Fuck Cancer
Her bleak furnished room
Hollow-eyed and high
Hungry, lonesome, not smelling too good
Is. Because
Midnight at the rolling yard
Nights with brilliant eyes
No absence that cannot be replaced
No one goes into the black house
On a hung out shelf somewhere in Mexico
Paint and alleyways
Rose-gardens, public parks
Saintly motorcyclists
Sank all night in a submarine light
Starving, hysterical, naked
Talking continuously
The best minds of my generation
The Suits, the glasses, the number one cuts
The way a cat walks, knowing
Volcano
Windows, high, grime-smeared
Beginning Writing 002 Point of View
So heres Number Two in a series of introductory articles
Point of View From My Point of View
As a teacher, as a judge of short-stories and now as an editor-judge with World Wide Writers I'm constantly being reminded of the poor control of point of view ("POV") in beginner and even intermediate writing. I should be used to it by now, but I'm not. I continue to be surprised by what some authors allow to slip into their narratives, how things occur and are "known" to the reader, when really they should not be, how point of view can drift from the murderer to the victim, then float to an overhead shot, then perhaps to the detective ruminating on the crime.
I have never been a great fan of omniscient (all-seeing, all-singing and dancing, anything goes, "I know what's behind that door") viewpoint, but I can acknowledge that some top-selling writers have mastered it. In the hands of all but the best, however, it kills credibility, makes for a weakening of tension and, for me at least, interrupts the fictive dream.
First person, me-me, seems the most natural (it isn't) but is one of the two best approaches when we are in the foothills of writing. Most of us can quickly learn that if we write "I got up that morning feeling like the cast of Rawhide had been rehearsing in my mouth," that we should confine ourselves to the "I", what "I" can see, hear, feel and think. One drawback to the first person (especially in suspense fiction) is we expect the protagonist to survive (he's writing the story after the event, after all)... This can be overcome with a little artifice, but is still a suspense-deadener.
A second problem with first-person (for some readers and writers) is a sense that the author is or might be present (or at least too close) in the text. I, for example, am very uncomfortable writing a first-person sleaze-bag. I couldn't write, say, of rape or child abuse in the first person, simply because I identify strongly with my characters and write "through" them and "as them." Even writing third-person limited (see later) about a police detective, near the end of a novel I virtually AM the detective! This makes for a fun few weeks as my detective is female...
Most myths and folk-tales are not first person -- it isn't the oldest form. Think of the fables, aren't most, like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" in fact delivered in the third-person? "There was a shepherd boy, and he was bored and..."
Third person is probably the most common POV employed in the stories I get landing on my desk. My Caz Flood stories (the first four anyway) were like this, 3rd P-POV and severely limited, so limited that they were virtually first-person but with certain advantages. For example, in Cuckoo, when Caz is attacked and lapses into unconsciousness I can finish the scene:
A red flash of something that felt like sexual excitement passed through her and she realised she was about to die. It felt not even remotely bad. The world was a black circle coming to a point. As the circle closed, she felt the sudden thump of the knife hammering at her chest. She wanted to smile, but instead she went to sleep.
Winter rain rolled over her in the empty street.
Third-person limited allows the "cheat" of the last line, yet allows the writer and the reader to identify with, to empathise with, the main character. Caz is always present, just like an "I" character, and we see and hear only what she sees and hears and nothing else! This has advantages like being able to "follow" through with Caz in her investigations, to keep the tension exactly so... My advice to most writing students would be to avoid omniscient writing until all the other skills of writing had been absorbed and to use first-person where the 1st person POV character was very distinctive, and had a great voice, like here:
In the villages all down this valley, from Senghennydd down to Caerphilly, they call me Ernie the Egg.
I do not mind this, but for the record, I am Ernest Jones, poultry farmer, son of Robert Jones, Deacon, and they are my hens that run amok on the hill above the town. You may eat whosoever's pigs you wish, but it is my eggs that you shall have on your plate if you sup anywhere in the valley from Park Hamlet right through Abertridwr. My eggs is on the plates for most the best part of Caerphilly, too, though I know of some Cardiff eggs there.
Yes, I am rich, and the boys in the villages, and the old men, make jokes about me. Yes, Ernie the Egg I am, and with a few bob, and sought after by the Revenue, too, but I am wealthy by fortunate accidents and hard work, and with the help of God, and because of a great and ordinary man, Meredith Toop Evans, collier, and because I am shot in the neck in the Great War and because I am a failed scholar.
The hens have been my livelihood but this have not always been so. Once I was to be a teacher, then a collier, then dead underground, then dead from a bullet in the Great War. That I am not any of these things is an odd thing for me, peculiar altogether, but facts is facts, which is why I will relate my story.
Otherwise, I would always suggest seeing if the story will work in third person, and, if it does, consider how limited you would like that perspective. Totally restricted to the main character you have the intimacy of first person but the advantage of being able to write long camera-shots, and occasional lines where the character is "out of it" as in the extract where Caz falls unconscious.
If you are going to allow more than one third-person viewpoint, take great care. If you dip in and out of more than one person's head, you begin to lose the tensions of not knowing stuff. It can be done but it is a very delicate art and awful when done badly. I'm a very experienced writer and I still try to avoid this.
One common technique is to be limited third-person but maybe write the thoughts of two people, often the detective and the serial-killer. This is so commonplace as to have become clichéd, but can be pulled off. I would personally advise against it. In my opinion, it is far better to increase identification with the protagonist and share his or her troubles and bafflement.
But what I see more commonly is slippage of POV where the writer, knowing everything, forgets that the viewpoint character wouldn't know these things. This is only the briefest of introductions to point-of-view, but always think hard about scenes and test them for "would she know this; would he be able to see that?" For example, in the passage to follow, would a man in a bar know from across the room what the woman is drinking, or would it be better to indicate that he is guessing? This was a student passage.
She immediately sensed his vulnerability and though Jeff was surrounded by other men, drinking and chatting at the bar, he looked uncomfortable and a little helpless. he had noticed her, and while the Friday night jokes of his office mates fell on unresponsive ears he let his mind and occasionally his eyes wander towards this woman. She sat alone at the table nearest the door and sipped a vodka and tonic, returning his furtive glances. Because she was dark and rather quietly dressed she seemed approachable; his wife was a tiresome blonde. Beside her to her left, resting on a chair was her hand-bag, her left hand inside, not rummaging for anything, but just there.
Note here that the piece has not been written deliberately and clearly with alternating points of view, but kind of drifts from one to the other. We can produce different stories by selecting who is the most interesting character to "go with." Should we see him wondering about her, or her wondering about him? Yes, both can be done, but remember to do it well.
I wrote: Choose whose POV, his or hers. That gives emotional control. I'll try not to improve the language and use as many of the original words as possible.
Hers
She saw him first, drinking and chatting at the bar, uncomfortable, a little helpless. She immediately sensed his vulnerability and though he was surrounded by other men, she felt he was alone. She knew he had noticed her, and while the Friday night jokes of his office mates rambled on she sensed his mind wander occasionally and his eyes furtively glance her way. That was when she felt for her handbag.
She was sitting alone at the table nearest the door, sipping a vodka and tonic. He glanced her way again and this time she returned the glance, just a flicker or wider eye and raised lashes. She saw him shift slightly so he would be able to look across more easily, then she saw him laugh, a little too loudly, a little too forced.
Because she was dark and rather quietly dressed she knew she seemed approachable. She unclasped her bag. She'd guess - his wife was a tiresome blonde, probably one kid, she'd lost her figure.
Now she had her hand inside the bag not rummaging, just there.
His
Jeff was surrounded by other men, his office mates, drinking and chatting at the bar, laughing at the Friday night jokes but he was uncomfortable and a little lost. He had noticed the woman almost as soon as he came in. She sat alone at the table nearest the door and sipped what looked like a vodka or maybe a G&T. He had glanced her way a few times, maybe furtively, and she had looked back once with something half-way between a come-on and fuck-you. He saw she had her handbag open, her hand in as if she was rummaging for something. But her hand didn't move. It was just there. She was dark and rather quietly dressed. She seemed approachable. He thought briefly of his wife then dismissed the thought. He looked again at the woman. Her hand was still in her bag, not moving, just there.
See the differences in the two passages? Note also that by choosing one POV we can "sit on the shoulder" of the character: to me, the most natural of ways through a story. And if we have one POV, one character's, it's easier to shape the language and tone of the narrative to approach that of a first-person POV; masculine for a male protagonist, not-so for a female...
Point of View From My Point of View
As a teacher, as a judge of short-stories and now as an editor-judge with World Wide Writers I'm constantly being reminded of the poor control of point of view ("POV") in beginner and even intermediate writing. I should be used to it by now, but I'm not. I continue to be surprised by what some authors allow to slip into their narratives, how things occur and are "known" to the reader, when really they should not be, how point of view can drift from the murderer to the victim, then float to an overhead shot, then perhaps to the detective ruminating on the crime.
I have never been a great fan of omniscient (all-seeing, all-singing and dancing, anything goes, "I know what's behind that door") viewpoint, but I can acknowledge that some top-selling writers have mastered it. In the hands of all but the best, however, it kills credibility, makes for a weakening of tension and, for me at least, interrupts the fictive dream.
First person, me-me, seems the most natural (it isn't) but is one of the two best approaches when we are in the foothills of writing. Most of us can quickly learn that if we write "I got up that morning feeling like the cast of Rawhide had been rehearsing in my mouth," that we should confine ourselves to the "I", what "I" can see, hear, feel and think. One drawback to the first person (especially in suspense fiction) is we expect the protagonist to survive (he's writing the story after the event, after all)... This can be overcome with a little artifice, but is still a suspense-deadener.
A second problem with first-person (for some readers and writers) is a sense that the author is or might be present (or at least too close) in the text. I, for example, am very uncomfortable writing a first-person sleaze-bag. I couldn't write, say, of rape or child abuse in the first person, simply because I identify strongly with my characters and write "through" them and "as them." Even writing third-person limited (see later) about a police detective, near the end of a novel I virtually AM the detective! This makes for a fun few weeks as my detective is female...
Most myths and folk-tales are not first person -- it isn't the oldest form. Think of the fables, aren't most, like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" in fact delivered in the third-person? "There was a shepherd boy, and he was bored and..."
Third person is probably the most common POV employed in the stories I get landing on my desk. My Caz Flood stories (the first four anyway) were like this, 3rd P-POV and severely limited, so limited that they were virtually first-person but with certain advantages. For example, in Cuckoo, when Caz is attacked and lapses into unconsciousness I can finish the scene:
A red flash of something that felt like sexual excitement passed through her and she realised she was about to die. It felt not even remotely bad. The world was a black circle coming to a point. As the circle closed, she felt the sudden thump of the knife hammering at her chest. She wanted to smile, but instead she went to sleep.
Winter rain rolled over her in the empty street.
Third-person limited allows the "cheat" of the last line, yet allows the writer and the reader to identify with, to empathise with, the main character. Caz is always present, just like an "I" character, and we see and hear only what she sees and hears and nothing else! This has advantages like being able to "follow" through with Caz in her investigations, to keep the tension exactly so... My advice to most writing students would be to avoid omniscient writing until all the other skills of writing had been absorbed and to use first-person where the 1st person POV character was very distinctive, and had a great voice, like here:
In the villages all down this valley, from Senghennydd down to Caerphilly, they call me Ernie the Egg.
I do not mind this, but for the record, I am Ernest Jones, poultry farmer, son of Robert Jones, Deacon, and they are my hens that run amok on the hill above the town. You may eat whosoever's pigs you wish, but it is my eggs that you shall have on your plate if you sup anywhere in the valley from Park Hamlet right through Abertridwr. My eggs is on the plates for most the best part of Caerphilly, too, though I know of some Cardiff eggs there.
Yes, I am rich, and the boys in the villages, and the old men, make jokes about me. Yes, Ernie the Egg I am, and with a few bob, and sought after by the Revenue, too, but I am wealthy by fortunate accidents and hard work, and with the help of God, and because of a great and ordinary man, Meredith Toop Evans, collier, and because I am shot in the neck in the Great War and because I am a failed scholar.
The hens have been my livelihood but this have not always been so. Once I was to be a teacher, then a collier, then dead underground, then dead from a bullet in the Great War. That I am not any of these things is an odd thing for me, peculiar altogether, but facts is facts, which is why I will relate my story.
Otherwise, I would always suggest seeing if the story will work in third person, and, if it does, consider how limited you would like that perspective. Totally restricted to the main character you have the intimacy of first person but the advantage of being able to write long camera-shots, and occasional lines where the character is "out of it" as in the extract where Caz falls unconscious.
If you are going to allow more than one third-person viewpoint, take great care. If you dip in and out of more than one person's head, you begin to lose the tensions of not knowing stuff. It can be done but it is a very delicate art and awful when done badly. I'm a very experienced writer and I still try to avoid this.
One common technique is to be limited third-person but maybe write the thoughts of two people, often the detective and the serial-killer. This is so commonplace as to have become clichéd, but can be pulled off. I would personally advise against it. In my opinion, it is far better to increase identification with the protagonist and share his or her troubles and bafflement.
But what I see more commonly is slippage of POV where the writer, knowing everything, forgets that the viewpoint character wouldn't know these things. This is only the briefest of introductions to point-of-view, but always think hard about scenes and test them for "would she know this; would he be able to see that?" For example, in the passage to follow, would a man in a bar know from across the room what the woman is drinking, or would it be better to indicate that he is guessing? This was a student passage.
She immediately sensed his vulnerability and though Jeff was surrounded by other men, drinking and chatting at the bar, he looked uncomfortable and a little helpless. he had noticed her, and while the Friday night jokes of his office mates fell on unresponsive ears he let his mind and occasionally his eyes wander towards this woman. She sat alone at the table nearest the door and sipped a vodka and tonic, returning his furtive glances. Because she was dark and rather quietly dressed she seemed approachable; his wife was a tiresome blonde. Beside her to her left, resting on a chair was her hand-bag, her left hand inside, not rummaging for anything, but just there.
Note here that the piece has not been written deliberately and clearly with alternating points of view, but kind of drifts from one to the other. We can produce different stories by selecting who is the most interesting character to "go with." Should we see him wondering about her, or her wondering about him? Yes, both can be done, but remember to do it well.
I wrote: Choose whose POV, his or hers. That gives emotional control. I'll try not to improve the language and use as many of the original words as possible.
Hers
She saw him first, drinking and chatting at the bar, uncomfortable, a little helpless. She immediately sensed his vulnerability and though he was surrounded by other men, she felt he was alone. She knew he had noticed her, and while the Friday night jokes of his office mates rambled on she sensed his mind wander occasionally and his eyes furtively glance her way. That was when she felt for her handbag.
She was sitting alone at the table nearest the door, sipping a vodka and tonic. He glanced her way again and this time she returned the glance, just a flicker or wider eye and raised lashes. She saw him shift slightly so he would be able to look across more easily, then she saw him laugh, a little too loudly, a little too forced.
Because she was dark and rather quietly dressed she knew she seemed approachable. She unclasped her bag. She'd guess - his wife was a tiresome blonde, probably one kid, she'd lost her figure.
Now she had her hand inside the bag not rummaging, just there.
His
Jeff was surrounded by other men, his office mates, drinking and chatting at the bar, laughing at the Friday night jokes but he was uncomfortable and a little lost. He had noticed the woman almost as soon as he came in. She sat alone at the table nearest the door and sipped what looked like a vodka or maybe a G&T. He had glanced her way a few times, maybe furtively, and she had looked back once with something half-way between a come-on and fuck-you. He saw she had her handbag open, her hand in as if she was rummaging for something. But her hand didn't move. It was just there. She was dark and rather quietly dressed. She seemed approachable. He thought briefly of his wife then dismissed the thought. He looked again at the woman. Her hand was still in her bag, not moving, just there.
See the differences in the two passages? Note also that by choosing one POV we can "sit on the shoulder" of the character: to me, the most natural of ways through a story. And if we have one POV, one character's, it's easier to shape the language and tone of the narrative to approach that of a first-person POV; masculine for a male protagonist, not-so for a female...
Beginning Writing 001
It's occurred to me that some of the articles on here are not all that easy for the beginning writer.
So I thought I'd post some old stuff aimed at earlier birds.
To distinguish these articles from the maybe more sophisticated ones, I've marked then Beginning Writing 001 etc.
So here's my view on Openings. Questions welcome, by email or from a name that's traceable. Anons are ignored.
How to Open Without a Bang
Grab your reader with an opening! Right? Have a man walk in with a gun, set the bomb ticking, the lovers begin to undress? Oh, how many stories I've seen with a slam-bang start like that, and oh, how many have immediately gone to a flash-back, admitted the dream or simply fizzled, spluttered and dribbled slowly away.
The nuclear bomb opening I see as the medallion man of literature, more flash than substance, more likely to lead to disappointment than satisfaction. It's the confident whisper, the self-assured promise I look for, the paragraph which quietly says, "I don't need bells and whistles. Listen, listen." And the story may be so quiet that I have to lean forward. I am tilted into the body of the work, disconcerted, or intrigued by setting, attracted by character or seduced, simply seduced, by the sounds and shapes and meaning of the words.
Saturday afternoon and Dai Griffiths sits with his finger-polished roll-up tin. He is patient, fixated, listening. His tongue protrudes slightly as he makes his careful, half dog-end tobacco, half Old Holburn, delicate, thin cigarettes. It is raining outside the pub and along the valley side snake-terraced roofs glisten. The afternoon light closes.
I want to know. And that's all it takes. Make the reader want to know more.
Rather than use the verb "grab", I like to suggest "tilt". I want to push my readers just a little, not slam them so hard they resist me, but persuade them that this road is interesting, one of ultimate promise. My job (first) is to ensure they reach (and want to read) the second paragraph, that the second begets the third and that the whole of the first page is strong enough to quiet the TV, block out the conversation on the train, or more importantly, wake up that tired editor, that jaded judge.
It was now lunch-time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining-tent pretending that nothing had happened.
"Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?" Macomber asked.
A famous opening from a famous story, Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. What's fascinating about this opening is that, yes, the tilt is there - if someone says "pretending that nothing had happened" you betcha I want to find out what did happen - but look what Hemingway chose not to start with. The story has to flash back (eventually) to an incident of high drama when Macomber panicked faced by real danger. Surely, surely, with such a gift we should start with the dramatic action?
But Hemingway had the drama still to come -- so we await it. He didn't start with something climactic -- after a climax is anti-climax - but promised us at least one. The work shows self-confidence, the ability to present seemingly innocuous events well, but in such a disarming, confident way we simply feel the power to come. But there's more to this opening. It was chosen to guide the reader into what the story was really about, not big-game hunting and cowardice or bravery, but what these things meant to the sexual relationships of the three main characters. By starting with the "ordinary" drinks scene, Hemingway was able to steer us, the readers towards the core of the story. We get to see and feel the coldness and unhappiness of Macomber and his wife -- exacerbated by Macomber's lack of physical courage -- and it's through courage that Macomber eventually gains self-respect and a fleeting but glorious happiness.
So yes, an opening must promise us a diverting story, but also it should be right for the story, not just a good opener but the best, the most apt opener. When we take time to "find" our opener, to find the exact character, setting, tone of voice and point of view, when we wait and let the opener float until it begins to resonate as solid and true, then, often the story falls in front of us like dominoes, sentence after sentence begetting sentence, driven by the feel, the force, the organic predictability contained within the start.
He wondered what the sex would be like. She thought it would be good. When she asked him, "Do you think it will be good, Harry?" he knew it would be great. But that was later.
Sometimes we just know from the opener...
When I began writing I leaped on ideas, rushed to grab a pen or typewriter, and started. More often than not I crash-landed, and even when I did finish things they sucked and didn't sell. Now I've learned a little patience, an ounce of forethought, a few minutes of consideration and now, rather than dive into a story, I'm more likely to climb into a bath, a half-bottle of wine close by, and wallow, body and mind. My story idea may well be weeks, months, even a year old. It has been fermenting in my unconscious, a particularly unsavoury and mixed up place. I went there once, right next to The Old Man and the Sea was Three Blind Mice, a picture of an old girlfriend, the guitar riff from Pulp Fiction and... the rest is censored. But somewhere in the mess there is a story -- at least I hope there is -- and I want to coax it out. If I shout, it will run away, if I do nothing it will sit there, but if I just make little coaxing noises, show I'm friendly out pops an opening, a tone, my protagonist, complete with accent and attitude.
I lie.
The opening almost comes. Here is where I have another glass of wine and top up the hot water. I've learned that if the opening really comes to me, if the character pushes through the fog and steps into my world, if he is ready to live, really ready, not a good one but the one, then I just know, little bells ring, presses run, music plays, the opening resonates, buzzes, sings. The almost openings flutter in an out but the opening doesn't. It comes with a life, a history, a destiny. Truly, getting the exact feel is more than half the story.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez said, "One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily." Absolutely, Gabriel! "In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book." Yes! Yes! "The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be." Smack on! "That's why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again." (Excellent, he should go far).
Yes an opening should interest, tilt us forward, but an opening does far more; it sets the agenda, it makes not just promises to us, but suggests to us how we should react, what mood we are likely to find here, how best we might take on the upcoming dream.
Tom is watching a movie with his mistress when something in the story-line touches him, and breaks through his well-constructed façade. His defenses breached, he thinks of his son and his small daughter. He begins to cry soundlessly. When his mistress realises her lover is upset, she tries to be kind, but her kindness makes the guilt worse and Tom snaps at her. She doesn't understand.
Once there were many prairie dogs and they decided their kingdom was fine and suited the prairie dog way of life. Some prairie dogs were large, some very small, but most of the prairie-dogs were middle-sized and their bark, more a yap, was conservative.
Two openings, but the contract with the reader is different.
I hope my openings are directive. I want them to intrigue and seduce but I want them to channel the story as a whole, to create in the reader a sense of a joint adventure, one of a type. If I'm trying to be funny, I need the reader to be thinking light music, not Beethoven's Fifth. If I want "serious", I don't want him whistling The Birdie Song. Like Gabriel Marquez, my openings take time but they contain the organic nature of the story as a whole, the theme, the tone, where I'm coming from, where I want the reader to go.
Look at the opening to Catch-22.
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this being just short of jaundice all the time confused them.
We get the main character, the tone, the craziness, the feel, immediately.
Or Cuckoo, mine. (1992)
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea-front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
Or Brighton again, Graham Greene.
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn't belong - belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd.
Or Raymond Chandler.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
Oh, I wish!!
So I thought I'd post some old stuff aimed at earlier birds.
To distinguish these articles from the maybe more sophisticated ones, I've marked then Beginning Writing 001 etc.
So here's my view on Openings. Questions welcome, by email or from a name that's traceable. Anons are ignored.
How to Open Without a Bang
Grab your reader with an opening! Right? Have a man walk in with a gun, set the bomb ticking, the lovers begin to undress? Oh, how many stories I've seen with a slam-bang start like that, and oh, how many have immediately gone to a flash-back, admitted the dream or simply fizzled, spluttered and dribbled slowly away.
The nuclear bomb opening I see as the medallion man of literature, more flash than substance, more likely to lead to disappointment than satisfaction. It's the confident whisper, the self-assured promise I look for, the paragraph which quietly says, "I don't need bells and whistles. Listen, listen." And the story may be so quiet that I have to lean forward. I am tilted into the body of the work, disconcerted, or intrigued by setting, attracted by character or seduced, simply seduced, by the sounds and shapes and meaning of the words.
Saturday afternoon and Dai Griffiths sits with his finger-polished roll-up tin. He is patient, fixated, listening. His tongue protrudes slightly as he makes his careful, half dog-end tobacco, half Old Holburn, delicate, thin cigarettes. It is raining outside the pub and along the valley side snake-terraced roofs glisten. The afternoon light closes.
I want to know. And that's all it takes. Make the reader want to know more.
Rather than use the verb "grab", I like to suggest "tilt". I want to push my readers just a little, not slam them so hard they resist me, but persuade them that this road is interesting, one of ultimate promise. My job (first) is to ensure they reach (and want to read) the second paragraph, that the second begets the third and that the whole of the first page is strong enough to quiet the TV, block out the conversation on the train, or more importantly, wake up that tired editor, that jaded judge.
It was now lunch-time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining-tent pretending that nothing had happened.
"Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?" Macomber asked.
A famous opening from a famous story, Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. What's fascinating about this opening is that, yes, the tilt is there - if someone says "pretending that nothing had happened" you betcha I want to find out what did happen - but look what Hemingway chose not to start with. The story has to flash back (eventually) to an incident of high drama when Macomber panicked faced by real danger. Surely, surely, with such a gift we should start with the dramatic action?
But Hemingway had the drama still to come -- so we await it. He didn't start with something climactic -- after a climax is anti-climax - but promised us at least one. The work shows self-confidence, the ability to present seemingly innocuous events well, but in such a disarming, confident way we simply feel the power to come. But there's more to this opening. It was chosen to guide the reader into what the story was really about, not big-game hunting and cowardice or bravery, but what these things meant to the sexual relationships of the three main characters. By starting with the "ordinary" drinks scene, Hemingway was able to steer us, the readers towards the core of the story. We get to see and feel the coldness and unhappiness of Macomber and his wife -- exacerbated by Macomber's lack of physical courage -- and it's through courage that Macomber eventually gains self-respect and a fleeting but glorious happiness.
So yes, an opening must promise us a diverting story, but also it should be right for the story, not just a good opener but the best, the most apt opener. When we take time to "find" our opener, to find the exact character, setting, tone of voice and point of view, when we wait and let the opener float until it begins to resonate as solid and true, then, often the story falls in front of us like dominoes, sentence after sentence begetting sentence, driven by the feel, the force, the organic predictability contained within the start.
He wondered what the sex would be like. She thought it would be good. When she asked him, "Do you think it will be good, Harry?" he knew it would be great. But that was later.
Sometimes we just know from the opener...
When I began writing I leaped on ideas, rushed to grab a pen or typewriter, and started. More often than not I crash-landed, and even when I did finish things they sucked and didn't sell. Now I've learned a little patience, an ounce of forethought, a few minutes of consideration and now, rather than dive into a story, I'm more likely to climb into a bath, a half-bottle of wine close by, and wallow, body and mind. My story idea may well be weeks, months, even a year old. It has been fermenting in my unconscious, a particularly unsavoury and mixed up place. I went there once, right next to The Old Man and the Sea was Three Blind Mice, a picture of an old girlfriend, the guitar riff from Pulp Fiction and... the rest is censored. But somewhere in the mess there is a story -- at least I hope there is -- and I want to coax it out. If I shout, it will run away, if I do nothing it will sit there, but if I just make little coaxing noises, show I'm friendly out pops an opening, a tone, my protagonist, complete with accent and attitude.
I lie.
The opening almost comes. Here is where I have another glass of wine and top up the hot water. I've learned that if the opening really comes to me, if the character pushes through the fog and steps into my world, if he is ready to live, really ready, not a good one but the one, then I just know, little bells ring, presses run, music plays, the opening resonates, buzzes, sings. The almost openings flutter in an out but the opening doesn't. It comes with a life, a history, a destiny. Truly, getting the exact feel is more than half the story.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez said, "One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily." Absolutely, Gabriel! "In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book." Yes! Yes! "The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be." Smack on! "That's why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again." (Excellent, he should go far).
Yes an opening should interest, tilt us forward, but an opening does far more; it sets the agenda, it makes not just promises to us, but suggests to us how we should react, what mood we are likely to find here, how best we might take on the upcoming dream.
Tom is watching a movie with his mistress when something in the story-line touches him, and breaks through his well-constructed façade. His defenses breached, he thinks of his son and his small daughter. He begins to cry soundlessly. When his mistress realises her lover is upset, she tries to be kind, but her kindness makes the guilt worse and Tom snaps at her. She doesn't understand.
Once there were many prairie dogs and they decided their kingdom was fine and suited the prairie dog way of life. Some prairie dogs were large, some very small, but most of the prairie-dogs were middle-sized and their bark, more a yap, was conservative.
Two openings, but the contract with the reader is different.
I hope my openings are directive. I want them to intrigue and seduce but I want them to channel the story as a whole, to create in the reader a sense of a joint adventure, one of a type. If I'm trying to be funny, I need the reader to be thinking light music, not Beethoven's Fifth. If I want "serious", I don't want him whistling The Birdie Song. Like Gabriel Marquez, my openings take time but they contain the organic nature of the story as a whole, the theme, the tone, where I'm coming from, where I want the reader to go.
Look at the opening to Catch-22.
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this being just short of jaundice all the time confused them.
We get the main character, the tone, the craziness, the feel, immediately.
Or Cuckoo, mine. (1992)
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea-front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
Or Brighton again, Graham Greene.
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn't belong - belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd.
Or Raymond Chandler.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
Oh, I wish!!
Latest Boot Camp Stats
Since the last report another 2007 Virgin has had a hit.
That now means 14/20 have had hits but three of that 20 have only been with us a month and another one has been away all year. So really all bar two Boot Campers are off the mark
00 Calvin (not currently submitting work)
00 Random ????????
00 Bonzo on long sabbatical
00 Misty JUST JOINED
00 Bry1300 JUST JOINED
00 Jacob JUST JOINED
TOTAL HITS IN 2007
90
TOTAL FIRST PRIZES
04
TOTAL PRIZES AND NAMED FINALISTS
20
TOTAL EARNINGS
$3,443
FULL STORIES WRITTEN AND POSTED
143
FULL CRITIQUES
1,246
FLASHES
NOT COUNTED BUT EXCEEDS 100
That now means 14/20 have had hits but three of that 20 have only been with us a month and another one has been away all year. So really all bar two Boot Campers are off the mark
00 Calvin (not currently submitting work)
00 Random ????????
00 Bonzo on long sabbatical
00 Misty JUST JOINED
00 Bry1300 JUST JOINED
00 Jacob JUST JOINED
TOTAL HITS IN 2007
90
TOTAL FIRST PRIZES
04
TOTAL PRIZES AND NAMED FINALISTS
20
TOTAL EARNINGS
$3,443
FULL STORIES WRITTEN AND POSTED
143
FULL CRITIQUES
1,246
FLASHES
NOT COUNTED BUT EXCEEDS 100
Big Finish!!
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
01,227 Words May 10 (Story)
01,736 Words May 12 (Article and Poem)
01,583 Words May 13 (Article)
01,900 Words May 14 (Article & Flash)
00,890 Words May 15 (Flash)
05,000 Words May 16 (Long Story and Article)
02,410 Words May 17 (Story, Poems) 13:09
05,185 Words May 18 (Long Article)
00.449 Words May 19 (Flash)
00,000 Words May 20 (Satisfied Rest Day!)
02,150 Words May 21 (Story)
01,216 Words May 22 (Flash)
03,215 Words May 23 (Article)
37,515 Words Total 14,515 Words ahead of schedule
1,618 words a day, 7 days a week
07,515 Words beyond monthly target
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
01,227 Words May 10 (Story)
01,736 Words May 12 (Article and Poem)
01,583 Words May 13 (Article)
01,900 Words May 14 (Article & Flash)
00,890 Words May 15 (Flash)
05,000 Words May 16 (Long Story and Article)
02,410 Words May 17 (Story, Poems) 13:09
05,185 Words May 18 (Long Article)
00.449 Words May 19 (Flash)
00,000 Words May 20 (Satisfied Rest Day!)
02,150 Words May 21 (Story)
01,216 Words May 22 (Flash)
03,215 Words May 23 (Article)
37,515 Words Total 14,515 Words ahead of schedule
1,618 words a day, 7 days a week
07,515 Words beyond monthly target
A Risky Business
I am reading Al Alvarez's "Risky Business", his second set of collected essays (BUY IT!) and have just read his chapter on the concert pianist Alfred Brendel. Yesterday I posted an article "Rembrandt and Raymond Carver" and this morning the Brendel article goes to the same places. I feel an epiphany coming.
When I teach it is very intense. It's a commonplace reaction for writers on my courses to say their head has been turned to mush. More than one has been nervous about driving home (which is why we always suggest an evening dinner on the Sunday where we just laugh and chill.)
I usually say to writers that immediately after a course (ha, I typo'd CURSE, there!) that they may very well have difficulty writing, and if they do write, the writing may appear to be inferior for a while.
I liken it to going up a difficult, dangerous, mountain. Sometimes the route you are on cannot EVER get to the top. Sometimes you have to climb DOWN a little either to find a new route, or to get extra equipment, or maybe, to talk to a Sherpa Guide who knows the way.
That's only part of the problem!
I often say things like: "You must write totally, completely "on theme" where every word is building in the same way."
But I ALSO say, "But you must ignore the theme! Never write thinking of the theme." and I say, "Get the right characters, and the right opening voice, trust the characters to guard the theme."
But how can I force myself into the strictures of theme at the same time as ignoring the theme?
When discussing the writing art we often have to use the art of writing (I mean beyond competent journalism) to get closer, ever closer, to the meaning we are trying to impart. For example in my article "The Seventh Quark: Finding the story" I wrote that I, "Write with light hands."
What follows might be partly random (I hope so.)
In the Brendel article, Alvarez states, "One of the most important lessons Brendel taught Imogen Cooper was that there is a tension that goes all through a piece of music and never lets up. He used to talk of a long silver cord that one pulls on. "He'd crouch down beside the piano and say, 'Go on, pull, pull.'
Sometimes there is a little kink in the cord but it never sags. There's always a force irresistibly pulling it from the first note to the last."
THINK THEME, and the tension in a good voice.
"He used to say, 'You've got to get the audience from the first note.' I'd say you've got to get them from the moment you come through the door. How you command the space between the door and the piano makes the audience listen in a certain way. They listen with their eyes and their ears."
Think! Think about presentation. Think about fonts, font-size, single, double or 1.5 line spacing, white space for time-breaks, the size and boldness of the title, the use of italics for emphasis. Think how, the moment that editor or judge sits down with your piece. ALL of it matters.
You are trying to create "A mode of acceptance."
Think how the start shapes the whole. That's why I can predict the final score a story is worth from the opening. That is why 99% of editors and judge know as soon as they've read two paragraphs.
But remember I'm really talking about paradoxes in how I say we should write (if we want to write anything worthwhile.) Paradoxes, or apparent contradictions…
Brendel says performing is a risky business and the concert pianist who wants to make a work new each time he plays must live life dangerously. (Alvarez)
"As a performer, I have become aware of the paradox of my profession," Brendel said. "You have to be in control, and, at the same time, lose yourself completely. You have to think and feel in advance what you want to do and, simultaneously, to listen to what you are doing and react to that. You have to play to satisfy yourself and also play so that the people in the back row will get the message." In other words (Alvarez says) the concert platform is where his two worlds of intellectual control and inspired nonsense interconnect."
Are we talking genius here? No!
Of course Brendel is a genius, and Alvarez probably is a genius, but quality craftsmen have to go to this place also, the greatest sportsmen.
We train the body and the mind and then trust the spirit.
I always forget who for sure, but I think it was Harlan Ellison who said we must write and write and write and absorb technique until it runs in our blood.
It is when it's in our blood that we leave room for extra imagination, room for our angelic inner self to speak. Ray Bradbury (I'm pretty sure it was him) said we need to write a million crappy words just to start being a writer. That first million words is our scales, our music theory classes, our hours at the piano, our weekend courses in music, the summer schools, the endless rehearsals.
Then after the million, we start to find ourselves.
We no longer have to think about dialogue, or speech tags, or whether a noun-adjective here is needed for the flow and balance. It is part of us, the hands know where to go. If we apply thought now it's "beyond" it's expressive, it's extra.
Briefly, this is why I believe in the Boot Camp process. I believe that at least 99% of wanabee writers write far too little. In surveys I've done the average for writers at conferences was 147 words a day (and remember they are probably exaggerating their word-counts.)
(See Comment 1)
Stop RIGHT NOW and work out exactly (not roughly) how many creative words you have written this month. It is the 23rd of May 2007. If you haven't written 11,000 words, if you haven't written a paltry two pages a day, what the fuck are you doing? How can you call yourself a writer if you are writing the odd 200 words when the mood takes you?
Don't cheat. Don't cheat yourself. You are the one that gets hurt. What fresh work did you write yesterday? What fresh work did you produce on Monday? Did you have the weekend off? Were you going out to lunch Friday and never got into the mood? Was there a "really interesting" thread on some noddy web-site and you just had to get involved?
My recent favourite in a writing forum not a coffee-shop was "Favourite Handbag?"
Tell yourself the truth.
Officially, Boot Camp, right now, has twenty members. In fact it has 16 active, two away, two starting back in June. Usually you can presume that a couple more away with work or family commitments, illness, holidays and the like.
Yet we have posted 140 stories this year, probably the same amount of flashes and a fair few poems. Every story has been critiqued at least eight times (the average is about nine.) Every day we are arguing about craft, talking creative writing.
But Monday (part) and Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday we WRITE.
Excluding this work I have written
15 Poems (02,692 Words)
07 Flashes (06,211 Words)
04 Stories (07,813 Words)
07 Articles (17,785 Words)
34,501 Words in 22 Days
1,568 Words per day
10,977 Words a week
Today (not yet included) looks like being 3,000 words, an article and a flash.
Now this is not to tub-thump or blow a trumpet over my own hard work. The obvious response (always wrong) in that quantity is achieved at the expense of quality. Not so! Not so! And even if it were so, and from a month's work I got just a single story of quality (I mean real quality) that's 12 great stories a year.
But the millions of words I write have taught me a new language. I can move around tenses and Points of View, appear and disappear as a narrator, do tricks I never dreamt of when I began writing, stuff I couldn't do after five years.
At their own rate, on their own scales Boot Campers are doing the same thing.
They are first learning to speak so one day they will be able to sing.
Singing will mean insight, language, a fresh expression, depth of character.
But what is "depth"?
Quoting Alvarez on Brendel again:
Brendel thinks Beethove's last piano sonata, Op. 111, is a "premeditated conclusion, a last word leading into silence forever."
Discussing a performance of a complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in Munich Alvarez talked of "depth" and then quoted Isiah Berlin.
"Depth is an odd word. It's a metaphor but you can't translate it into other terms. Depth means penetrating into something very basic in oneself, and touching it, and feeling an electric shock."
At the time Alvarez wrote, Brendel was suffering physical frailties which were beginning to restrict his playing. He was getting old, but still learning.
"One does not stop learning," Brendel said. "I've learned how to control certain silences. They depend not just on what you play but on how you look. After the last chord of Op. 111, I don't move. I don't take my hands away from the keyboard, because directly I stir, they applaud. Each time I play the Beethoven cycle the silence gets longer, because I know how to relate to it. I know how to sit still."
On Sitting Still
I once wrote an article (you can read it at The Internet Writers Journal) called Theme Music: Tone is Not an Accident.
NOW, it's not. But when I began writing, long after I was being regularly published, there was tone over here, character over there, and a bit of plot somewhere if I can just find it, and the all important theme which was down the shops buying cigarettes but would be back in five minutes.
Tone is not an accident, not for an experienced writer. Nor is theme, and yet the best writers, those with the strongest, most gut-wrenching or intellectually invigorating themes, can write without worrying about their theme. How?
CHARACTER!
When we begin to get a feeling that a story is coming. I should add here I mean real writing not superficial trivia with a "clever" twist-ending, or that womag bumph or intricately-plotted shoot-em-up, or Dan Brown. I mean writing that matters a little, right now, writing that we return to, dwell in, savour.
When we begin to get a feeling that this kind of story is coming, what happens? If you get an idea, a plot-line, some clever tricks to post here and here and here, then I'm sorry for you. Oh, you might well publish. You might even be flavour of the six months, but you won't be writing.
What about the feeling, what about the ache?
What about that sense of pressure, of something deep in you or way back in time, or maybe some part of your life that only makes sense if you don't ask it questions? Don't you want to know who you are? Why you're here?
Don't you want to know what this is all about?
If we use the brain exclusively – I mean the logical left-brain, the bit we plan with, we cannot get "fresh", we cannot get "insightful". Instead we get the same old same old. It might be re-jigged (if we are really crafty) but it's still the same old. The active left-brain doesn't put things together that don't belong together.
The active left, interfering brain doesn't write:
I used to sit in the hall and stare at the geese on the wall, fascinated because one was chipped and had a white chalk beak. I am not sure I know what love is.
Because all those boring shapers, the life-police, told you that plaster of Paris ducks are nothing to do with "love". If you try to write that paragraph it doesn't happen. You have to let a better, more dangerous, more unpredictable person write it.
If we aren't using the left-brain. If we learn to sit still and let things rise up and emerge, those things are always better, truer, than what we do deliberately.
Think, most importantly about the many constituents of an opening. There is a setting, a tone, a voice, a level of complexity of language, a "colour", a timbre, probably a narrator, a character or characters, some air of musicality.
Where did they come from? Did you sit down with a team of advertising executives and Simon Cowell, and "thrash this thing out"?
Did you go to some stainless city office and listen to a Powerpoint presentation on the commercial viability of the darker character?
Or did something come to you?
If something comes to you, just comes, if you have feelings, these are the things, the powerful things that will matter. But you have to stand aside, trust the spirit, allow the souls of your ancestors if you like, allow the angels and demons to create.
Instead off grabbing at, or "considering", instead of planning why not ask (without asking) what's here, who is she, what does she sound like, what language does she speak? Stay low, don't frighten the visitor. She may have been in the dark for a long time.
This woman, this girl, this gift is incredible. You ask, how can I not control and yet write a controlled work? Surely it's impossible?
Of course, without help. But you have help. Look! She stands there, slightly bewildered. But all she wants is the tiniest of nudges and she will talk, exactly as you imagined, she will act in a way that always seems right, and because she came without force and emerged as a welcome visitor (from another place in you) she will now look after your theme.
Let me be boringly "straight" for a minute. Presume, temporarily, that what I say is true. We have a feeling about a subject. Maybe it's "something" about the cruelty of childless couples here, contraceptive abortions over there. It feels wrong, somehow but it's not as simple as believing abortion is always wrong, and not merely a rant against God. You feel the complexity of the issue, you almost feel you can express it, but it's so hard.
Then one day an abortion clinic is burned down and a passing child is killed. How confused? Or you read of a child who did not abort and is now a famous concert pianist. Something uncaps the ache. You need to say something.
I realise all this seems vague, but it's only "vague" because most of our lives we deal in greater certainties (which are false) and things which we believe are solid (when they are not.)
If you deliberately "take on" these issues, you are not going to access your deep feelings. You are going to access the front of the drawer where sound-bytes and simple fixes are kept.
I wrote a story once when I realised that my socks and underwear drawers each contain maybe fifty items, yet only the front five or ten are used, washed and re-worn. Think of the back of that drawer. We should be accessing it. Most of the time we live in the nearby, the simple, the quick and superficial.
So, instead of diving in, what happens if you close your eyes and see if anybody walks by? What might happen? A young girl who's pregnant? Her mother who's also pregnant? How about the unborn child or the recently aborted? I have no idea, because HERE I'm conscious, talking to you.
If you relax you might see a red sports car, a Frisbee, a line of Keats, and yet know they all combine and say something about abortion. If you learn to be still, someone will step forward.
If you learn to be still, someone will step forward, and that someone knows your point, she simply knows. If deep in you, despite what you might say publicly, something nags and says "wrong, wrong, wrong" you will NOT choose a real character who argues right, right, right.
Your inner self chooses the vehicle of expression. Think how often, when characters have just come, they feel known to you, like old acquaintances.
When I talk metaphorically I say that these characters are guardians of the theme. If they are spontaneous manifestations then they champion a real theme. If they are forced characters they are crude, obvious vessels for an obvious theme, and very probably the story will read like a polemic.
Damn! It's 12:30 and I have things to do.
OK let's try another tack.
When I see a set of flash-prompts posted that look "clever" and conscious, cold, cute. I expect less flashes to be written and a lower standard of story.
But when I see a load of lines or part-lines from great poems, a few odd break-the-spell words (the more bizarre the better) I expect more stories and better ones. The mere resonance and open-endedness of the poetic snatches seems to "set-off" the unconscious. Something is stirred.
That is, poetry and its effects are disorientating, mysterious, they come at us by entering through the foot or the elbow and bat us round the inner ear because they can. No frontal assault needed.
I believe that it's this subversive, playful, unusual "accent" in poetry that tends to release wilder (from the unconscious) emotions in those who read the prompts. Thus the resulting work is better.
We live in an age where we are inundated by clevernesses, but the very glibness and ease of these cute sound-bytes, the sit-com quips, the quick-fix knee-jerk, the tabloid headline crap (even Panorama cheats now), the pre-planned endings (but if you don't like the film's finish, we'll change it)… an age where shallowness is all. We escape by going under.
Billy Collins said: Poetry seems to provide, more than ever, an alternative to the din of public language (advertising, politics, etc) and a more admirable set of values than we find in consumer-mad society. I read recently about a poetry competition held in Barcelona every year. The third place poet receives a silver rose, the second place winner receives a golden rose, and the first place poet – for having written the very best poem – receives a real rose. So take that, all you fans of bling.
Arthur Polotnik said:
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. You edit to let the fire show through the smoke.
The point of this ramble is that to write about what's burning inside, we need to allow it air, to stand aside and let it burn us up. We have to learn to stand aside, be still, listen. We have to, though, trust our writing ability, which is why we must write, write, write, every day, every week, every month, so we can turn off consciousness. And then:
Somewhere, I know not exactly where, a grey campfire is kicked up, the flames catch again and are let loose. All catches alight.
When I teach it is very intense. It's a commonplace reaction for writers on my courses to say their head has been turned to mush. More than one has been nervous about driving home (which is why we always suggest an evening dinner on the Sunday where we just laugh and chill.)
I usually say to writers that immediately after a course (ha, I typo'd CURSE, there!) that they may very well have difficulty writing, and if they do write, the writing may appear to be inferior for a while.
I liken it to going up a difficult, dangerous, mountain. Sometimes the route you are on cannot EVER get to the top. Sometimes you have to climb DOWN a little either to find a new route, or to get extra equipment, or maybe, to talk to a Sherpa Guide who knows the way.
That's only part of the problem!
I often say things like: "You must write totally, completely "on theme" where every word is building in the same way."
But I ALSO say, "But you must ignore the theme! Never write thinking of the theme." and I say, "Get the right characters, and the right opening voice, trust the characters to guard the theme."
But how can I force myself into the strictures of theme at the same time as ignoring the theme?
When discussing the writing art we often have to use the art of writing (I mean beyond competent journalism) to get closer, ever closer, to the meaning we are trying to impart. For example in my article "The Seventh Quark: Finding the story" I wrote that I, "Write with light hands."
What follows might be partly random (I hope so.)
In the Brendel article, Alvarez states, "One of the most important lessons Brendel taught Imogen Cooper was that there is a tension that goes all through a piece of music and never lets up. He used to talk of a long silver cord that one pulls on. "He'd crouch down beside the piano and say, 'Go on, pull, pull.'
Sometimes there is a little kink in the cord but it never sags. There's always a force irresistibly pulling it from the first note to the last."
THINK THEME, and the tension in a good voice.
"He used to say, 'You've got to get the audience from the first note.' I'd say you've got to get them from the moment you come through the door. How you command the space between the door and the piano makes the audience listen in a certain way. They listen with their eyes and their ears."
Think! Think about presentation. Think about fonts, font-size, single, double or 1.5 line spacing, white space for time-breaks, the size and boldness of the title, the use of italics for emphasis. Think how, the moment that editor or judge sits down with your piece. ALL of it matters.
You are trying to create "A mode of acceptance."
Think how the start shapes the whole. That's why I can predict the final score a story is worth from the opening. That is why 99% of editors and judge know as soon as they've read two paragraphs.
But remember I'm really talking about paradoxes in how I say we should write (if we want to write anything worthwhile.) Paradoxes, or apparent contradictions…
Brendel says performing is a risky business and the concert pianist who wants to make a work new each time he plays must live life dangerously. (Alvarez)
"As a performer, I have become aware of the paradox of my profession," Brendel said. "You have to be in control, and, at the same time, lose yourself completely. You have to think and feel in advance what you want to do and, simultaneously, to listen to what you are doing and react to that. You have to play to satisfy yourself and also play so that the people in the back row will get the message." In other words (Alvarez says) the concert platform is where his two worlds of intellectual control and inspired nonsense interconnect."
Are we talking genius here? No!
Of course Brendel is a genius, and Alvarez probably is a genius, but quality craftsmen have to go to this place also, the greatest sportsmen.
We train the body and the mind and then trust the spirit.
I always forget who for sure, but I think it was Harlan Ellison who said we must write and write and write and absorb technique until it runs in our blood.
It is when it's in our blood that we leave room for extra imagination, room for our angelic inner self to speak. Ray Bradbury (I'm pretty sure it was him) said we need to write a million crappy words just to start being a writer. That first million words is our scales, our music theory classes, our hours at the piano, our weekend courses in music, the summer schools, the endless rehearsals.
Then after the million, we start to find ourselves.
We no longer have to think about dialogue, or speech tags, or whether a noun-adjective here is needed for the flow and balance. It is part of us, the hands know where to go. If we apply thought now it's "beyond" it's expressive, it's extra.
Briefly, this is why I believe in the Boot Camp process. I believe that at least 99% of wanabee writers write far too little. In surveys I've done the average for writers at conferences was 147 words a day (and remember they are probably exaggerating their word-counts.)
(See Comment 1)
Stop RIGHT NOW and work out exactly (not roughly) how many creative words you have written this month. It is the 23rd of May 2007. If you haven't written 11,000 words, if you haven't written a paltry two pages a day, what the fuck are you doing? How can you call yourself a writer if you are writing the odd 200 words when the mood takes you?
Don't cheat. Don't cheat yourself. You are the one that gets hurt. What fresh work did you write yesterday? What fresh work did you produce on Monday? Did you have the weekend off? Were you going out to lunch Friday and never got into the mood? Was there a "really interesting" thread on some noddy web-site and you just had to get involved?
My recent favourite in a writing forum not a coffee-shop was "Favourite Handbag?"
Tell yourself the truth.
Officially, Boot Camp, right now, has twenty members. In fact it has 16 active, two away, two starting back in June. Usually you can presume that a couple more away with work or family commitments, illness, holidays and the like.
Yet we have posted 140 stories this year, probably the same amount of flashes and a fair few poems. Every story has been critiqued at least eight times (the average is about nine.) Every day we are arguing about craft, talking creative writing.
But Monday (part) and Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday we WRITE.
Excluding this work I have written
15 Poems (02,692 Words)
07 Flashes (06,211 Words)
04 Stories (07,813 Words)
07 Articles (17,785 Words)
34,501 Words in 22 Days
1,568 Words per day
10,977 Words a week
Today (not yet included) looks like being 3,000 words, an article and a flash.
Now this is not to tub-thump or blow a trumpet over my own hard work. The obvious response (always wrong) in that quantity is achieved at the expense of quality. Not so! Not so! And even if it were so, and from a month's work I got just a single story of quality (I mean real quality) that's 12 great stories a year.
But the millions of words I write have taught me a new language. I can move around tenses and Points of View, appear and disappear as a narrator, do tricks I never dreamt of when I began writing, stuff I couldn't do after five years.
At their own rate, on their own scales Boot Campers are doing the same thing.
They are first learning to speak so one day they will be able to sing.
Singing will mean insight, language, a fresh expression, depth of character.
But what is "depth"?
Quoting Alvarez on Brendel again:
Brendel thinks Beethove's last piano sonata, Op. 111, is a "premeditated conclusion, a last word leading into silence forever."
Discussing a performance of a complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in Munich Alvarez talked of "depth" and then quoted Isiah Berlin.
"Depth is an odd word. It's a metaphor but you can't translate it into other terms. Depth means penetrating into something very basic in oneself, and touching it, and feeling an electric shock."
At the time Alvarez wrote, Brendel was suffering physical frailties which were beginning to restrict his playing. He was getting old, but still learning.
"One does not stop learning," Brendel said. "I've learned how to control certain silences. They depend not just on what you play but on how you look. After the last chord of Op. 111, I don't move. I don't take my hands away from the keyboard, because directly I stir, they applaud. Each time I play the Beethoven cycle the silence gets longer, because I know how to relate to it. I know how to sit still."
On Sitting Still
I once wrote an article (you can read it at The Internet Writers Journal) called Theme Music: Tone is Not an Accident.
NOW, it's not. But when I began writing, long after I was being regularly published, there was tone over here, character over there, and a bit of plot somewhere if I can just find it, and the all important theme which was down the shops buying cigarettes but would be back in five minutes.
Tone is not an accident, not for an experienced writer. Nor is theme, and yet the best writers, those with the strongest, most gut-wrenching or intellectually invigorating themes, can write without worrying about their theme. How?
CHARACTER!
When we begin to get a feeling that a story is coming. I should add here I mean real writing not superficial trivia with a "clever" twist-ending, or that womag bumph or intricately-plotted shoot-em-up, or Dan Brown. I mean writing that matters a little, right now, writing that we return to, dwell in, savour.
When we begin to get a feeling that this kind of story is coming, what happens? If you get an idea, a plot-line, some clever tricks to post here and here and here, then I'm sorry for you. Oh, you might well publish. You might even be flavour of the six months, but you won't be writing.
What about the feeling, what about the ache?
What about that sense of pressure, of something deep in you or way back in time, or maybe some part of your life that only makes sense if you don't ask it questions? Don't you want to know who you are? Why you're here?
Don't you want to know what this is all about?
If we use the brain exclusively – I mean the logical left-brain, the bit we plan with, we cannot get "fresh", we cannot get "insightful". Instead we get the same old same old. It might be re-jigged (if we are really crafty) but it's still the same old. The active left-brain doesn't put things together that don't belong together.
The active left, interfering brain doesn't write:
I used to sit in the hall and stare at the geese on the wall, fascinated because one was chipped and had a white chalk beak. I am not sure I know what love is.
Because all those boring shapers, the life-police, told you that plaster of Paris ducks are nothing to do with "love". If you try to write that paragraph it doesn't happen. You have to let a better, more dangerous, more unpredictable person write it.
If we aren't using the left-brain. If we learn to sit still and let things rise up and emerge, those things are always better, truer, than what we do deliberately.
Think, most importantly about the many constituents of an opening. There is a setting, a tone, a voice, a level of complexity of language, a "colour", a timbre, probably a narrator, a character or characters, some air of musicality.
Where did they come from? Did you sit down with a team of advertising executives and Simon Cowell, and "thrash this thing out"?
Did you go to some stainless city office and listen to a Powerpoint presentation on the commercial viability of the darker character?
Or did something come to you?
If something comes to you, just comes, if you have feelings, these are the things, the powerful things that will matter. But you have to stand aside, trust the spirit, allow the souls of your ancestors if you like, allow the angels and demons to create.
Instead off grabbing at, or "considering", instead of planning why not ask (without asking) what's here, who is she, what does she sound like, what language does she speak? Stay low, don't frighten the visitor. She may have been in the dark for a long time.
This woman, this girl, this gift is incredible. You ask, how can I not control and yet write a controlled work? Surely it's impossible?
Of course, without help. But you have help. Look! She stands there, slightly bewildered. But all she wants is the tiniest of nudges and she will talk, exactly as you imagined, she will act in a way that always seems right, and because she came without force and emerged as a welcome visitor (from another place in you) she will now look after your theme.
Let me be boringly "straight" for a minute. Presume, temporarily, that what I say is true. We have a feeling about a subject. Maybe it's "something" about the cruelty of childless couples here, contraceptive abortions over there. It feels wrong, somehow but it's not as simple as believing abortion is always wrong, and not merely a rant against God. You feel the complexity of the issue, you almost feel you can express it, but it's so hard.
Then one day an abortion clinic is burned down and a passing child is killed. How confused? Or you read of a child who did not abort and is now a famous concert pianist. Something uncaps the ache. You need to say something.
I realise all this seems vague, but it's only "vague" because most of our lives we deal in greater certainties (which are false) and things which we believe are solid (when they are not.)
If you deliberately "take on" these issues, you are not going to access your deep feelings. You are going to access the front of the drawer where sound-bytes and simple fixes are kept.
I wrote a story once when I realised that my socks and underwear drawers each contain maybe fifty items, yet only the front five or ten are used, washed and re-worn. Think of the back of that drawer. We should be accessing it. Most of the time we live in the nearby, the simple, the quick and superficial.
So, instead of diving in, what happens if you close your eyes and see if anybody walks by? What might happen? A young girl who's pregnant? Her mother who's also pregnant? How about the unborn child or the recently aborted? I have no idea, because HERE I'm conscious, talking to you.
If you relax you might see a red sports car, a Frisbee, a line of Keats, and yet know they all combine and say something about abortion. If you learn to be still, someone will step forward.
If you learn to be still, someone will step forward, and that someone knows your point, she simply knows. If deep in you, despite what you might say publicly, something nags and says "wrong, wrong, wrong" you will NOT choose a real character who argues right, right, right.
Your inner self chooses the vehicle of expression. Think how often, when characters have just come, they feel known to you, like old acquaintances.
When I talk metaphorically I say that these characters are guardians of the theme. If they are spontaneous manifestations then they champion a real theme. If they are forced characters they are crude, obvious vessels for an obvious theme, and very probably the story will read like a polemic.
Damn! It's 12:30 and I have things to do.
OK let's try another tack.
When I see a set of flash-prompts posted that look "clever" and conscious, cold, cute. I expect less flashes to be written and a lower standard of story.
But when I see a load of lines or part-lines from great poems, a few odd break-the-spell words (the more bizarre the better) I expect more stories and better ones. The mere resonance and open-endedness of the poetic snatches seems to "set-off" the unconscious. Something is stirred.
That is, poetry and its effects are disorientating, mysterious, they come at us by entering through the foot or the elbow and bat us round the inner ear because they can. No frontal assault needed.
I believe that it's this subversive, playful, unusual "accent" in poetry that tends to release wilder (from the unconscious) emotions in those who read the prompts. Thus the resulting work is better.
We live in an age where we are inundated by clevernesses, but the very glibness and ease of these cute sound-bytes, the sit-com quips, the quick-fix knee-jerk, the tabloid headline crap (even Panorama cheats now), the pre-planned endings (but if you don't like the film's finish, we'll change it)… an age where shallowness is all. We escape by going under.
Billy Collins said: Poetry seems to provide, more than ever, an alternative to the din of public language (advertising, politics, etc) and a more admirable set of values than we find in consumer-mad society. I read recently about a poetry competition held in Barcelona every year. The third place poet receives a silver rose, the second place winner receives a golden rose, and the first place poet – for having written the very best poem – receives a real rose. So take that, all you fans of bling.
Arthur Polotnik said:
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. You edit to let the fire show through the smoke.
The point of this ramble is that to write about what's burning inside, we need to allow it air, to stand aside and let it burn us up. We have to learn to stand aside, be still, listen. We have to, though, trust our writing ability, which is why we must write, write, write, every day, every week, every month, so we can turn off consciousness. And then:
Somewhere, I know not exactly where, a grey campfire is kicked up, the flames catch again and are let loose. All catches alight.
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Rembrandt & Raymond Carver
I am doing an arts course at the moment, and it opens with "art", that is painting. I have been doing the course barely a few days and it's teaching me about writing. And reading.
We were asked to look at a picture by Rembrandt, The Artist in his Studio then asked to write 100 words about it. Now I know what "art" is, right? I've been to lots of exhibitions and walked slowly, respectful, hushed, past pictures hanging on walls. I've looked at pictures before.
But now I had to 'respond". Uh-oh, arty-farty bollocks time. Is it too late to ask for my course fees back?
The picture is interesting, with soft, yellows and fawns and browns, and some nice lighting. (That's more than I would have seen or articulated when walking round a museum or gallery a week ago.)
But what about the perspective? What about the viewer's point of view? What about the lighting? What about the other items? Why are some highlighted more than others? Why this, here, why that? Why is the easel so big? Why show the door?
I started to write (they suggested 100 words) and struggled to keep inside five hundred words (and I'm picture-blind). Once I actually look, tried to see, once I wasn't casual, I kept seeing more and more and more. I began to wonder about the "psychology" of the painting, the fact that the easel dominated the room and the painter, and blocked a doorway.
The point is, Rembrandt could have chosen any perspective, different lighting, different emphases, but when he approached this painting, this feeling he had purpose and intent, or at least a sensibility he was trying to capture. There are dissonances in the way the picture is "read", tensions between the perspective and point of view. The tutor argued that perhaps the point of view of the picture is meant to be that of the person whose portrait is on the canvas. But is it then beginning to ask questions about the process?
The specifics don't matter. What matters is how easy it is to glance or to skim. How different is something when we really, truly, look, when we begin to interact, when we engage the intellect and the soul.
I've written elsewhere that I am still this kind of blind to a very large amount of poetry. I just don't "get it". I stare at pages and steel shutters fall, or worse a little voice starts telling me, "Here we go again, arty-farty bullshit."
I have to remind myself I would have said that about Hemingway or Carver. Hell, I would have said it about 90% of my own work!
Ask yourself this. How often do you read, sort of half-attending, waiting for the moment the story will "hit", catch fire, so you can attend more? And does it sometimes happen, that before you know it, you've reached the end of the text and thought, "Huh?"
Maybe you go back and try again but something has "gone', a thin chord of trust has disappeared and now the story is "just words". You might (if you have to) manage some kind of reaction, "get in the mood of critting" and pretend the story mattered. But what has gone, maybe forever is that chance to get a real first impression.
I remember once, in Boot Camp I arranged a live-chat of Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing". I arrived late, into a whirlwind of "not-sures" and circular arguments. We started again. Two hours later we were still arguing about the first paragraph! It's a very good discussion to sit down with any opening and ask what do we know with certainty or near-certainty, what is probable, what's likely, what's possible? And what is the mood, what's the emotional point of view, what kind of theme is being whispered, what do we know about the protagonists?
At first glance (note glance, and these were good students) the opening paragraph said, "woman orders cake for son's birthday". I argued (and I'm not going to do it here) that the opening did TONS more. For that matter, I said, could we not dispense with the opening paragraph altogether? After all Paragraph Two starts:
She gave the baker her name, Ann Weiss, and her telephone number. The cake would be ready on Monday morning, just out of the oven, in plenty of time for the child's party that afternoon.
Isn't that covering all the bases? Isn't the first paragraph redundant?
But this essay is not about the specifics of a Raymond Carver story, nor about a Rembrandt painting. Rather it's about the fact that artists don't do things casually, but for a purpose. They set tone, mood, point of view, both for themselves as a writer (to create a writing mood) and to create a way of responding in the reader, or viewer, what I've called "the mode of acceptance".
In the Open University text I'm reading Charles Harrison writes that viewing a painting and "seeing it" is in part a social agreement, convention, set in a historical context etc.
"I suggest that the ability to draw someone into this agreement is the basic condition required to make the illusion do its work in painting. I would also like to suggest that the establishment of such agreement is the starting point for art considered as a social activity. The form of social activity I mean to indicate is the relationship of collaboration and mutual recognition that is established, via the work of art, between the artist who furnishes material for the exercise of the imagination, and the spectator willing to undertake the relevant imaginative work.
A work of art is like a game – often a very serious game – that is set in play when the spectator's imagination engages according to its rules. Once that point of agreement is reached, endless possibilities are opened up for enriching the illusion and for the consequent enlargement of the picture's possible field of reference."
Now note above that there is work involved. That work may not cause blisters or back-ache but the reader of prose must work at reading, fully getting the text.
Later in the same text, when comparing and contrasting two still lifes, Harrison wrote that each artist was attempting to shape and control the viewer's mode of attention. How close is that to my reader's mode of acceptance?
In a still life there are questions of lighting, closeness, objects depicted (and some, for example the pomegranate often had religious or cultural meaning and were rarely 'just there'). The artist controls the manner in which the objects are experienced.
And of course the good writer "steers" the reader down a certain path. There may be a perceived ambiguity or range of possible responses, but how many are closed off to us, almost without us ever noticing, and how much of that response range is real?
For my sins, I sometimes clash with another kind of reader. This is the reader who says "hit me". He wants every single thing in the story to be instantly there, out front, on the surface and in glorious technicolour. For this reader there appears to be no such word as subtlety, or nuance, and "oblique" in his vocabulary (if he knows the word at all) means "obtuse".
Strange how many of these readers love the crudest, crappiest horror stories!
Am I being "unfair"? Am I arrogant or patronising, or cruel? Do you think I lie? Do you think these people are NOT out there?
Do you think I didn't read like that once and imagine it as the pinnacle of the art?
When I was a teenager I devoured Mickey Spillane books. I adored them.
But then, back then, the idea that say, Graham Greene, could matter, that any serious author could matter was ridiculous to me. I was a simplistic, crude young man who wanted everything instantaneously. I was waiting for fast food to be invented. Gimmee, Gimmee!
Now (and I am still, relatively, a Phillistine) I want to understand. I want to know about my humanity, about what might lay outside it or beyond it, or inside it and hidden. I want to discover what it is to be human, what the journey means, why things happen.
And that is not "in your face" and never will be. The trivial imbalances that lead to great tragedies, physical and mental, can be small and seem trivial or inconsequential (yes I know that's self-contradictory!) Going there, to the heart, to the moment, or to be where revelation appears, well that requires some sensibility or sensitivity. Describing it, must almost by its nature demand great care, subtlety and the lightest possible touch.
But if I as an artist, to get through your defences and touch your soul, need you to feel light and shade and texture, to sense perspectives and point of view, to bring to the table history, convention, awareness, and religious significance or irony, or humour, or a consideration of unusual juxtapositions… If I expect you to develop a certain receptiveness, and to look, and look again, feel and feel again, think, and think again…
Should I write dirt, muck, mud, soil, or earth? Are they the same?
In Carver's A Small Good Thing the mother always refers to the boy as "the child". Was that accidental on Carver's part? Why not "my little boy" or "my boy" or "my son"?
Have YOU ever referred to one of your children as "the child"?
What does Carver create when he has the woman say this?
1606
We were asked to look at a picture by Rembrandt, The Artist in his Studio then asked to write 100 words about it. Now I know what "art" is, right? I've been to lots of exhibitions and walked slowly, respectful, hushed, past pictures hanging on walls. I've looked at pictures before.
But now I had to 'respond". Uh-oh, arty-farty bollocks time. Is it too late to ask for my course fees back?
The picture is interesting, with soft, yellows and fawns and browns, and some nice lighting. (That's more than I would have seen or articulated when walking round a museum or gallery a week ago.)
But what about the perspective? What about the viewer's point of view? What about the lighting? What about the other items? Why are some highlighted more than others? Why this, here, why that? Why is the easel so big? Why show the door?
I started to write (they suggested 100 words) and struggled to keep inside five hundred words (and I'm picture-blind). Once I actually look, tried to see, once I wasn't casual, I kept seeing more and more and more. I began to wonder about the "psychology" of the painting, the fact that the easel dominated the room and the painter, and blocked a doorway.
The point is, Rembrandt could have chosen any perspective, different lighting, different emphases, but when he approached this painting, this feeling he had purpose and intent, or at least a sensibility he was trying to capture. There are dissonances in the way the picture is "read", tensions between the perspective and point of view. The tutor argued that perhaps the point of view of the picture is meant to be that of the person whose portrait is on the canvas. But is it then beginning to ask questions about the process?
The specifics don't matter. What matters is how easy it is to glance or to skim. How different is something when we really, truly, look, when we begin to interact, when we engage the intellect and the soul.
I've written elsewhere that I am still this kind of blind to a very large amount of poetry. I just don't "get it". I stare at pages and steel shutters fall, or worse a little voice starts telling me, "Here we go again, arty-farty bullshit."
I have to remind myself I would have said that about Hemingway or Carver. Hell, I would have said it about 90% of my own work!
Ask yourself this. How often do you read, sort of half-attending, waiting for the moment the story will "hit", catch fire, so you can attend more? And does it sometimes happen, that before you know it, you've reached the end of the text and thought, "Huh?"
Maybe you go back and try again but something has "gone', a thin chord of trust has disappeared and now the story is "just words". You might (if you have to) manage some kind of reaction, "get in the mood of critting" and pretend the story mattered. But what has gone, maybe forever is that chance to get a real first impression.
I remember once, in Boot Camp I arranged a live-chat of Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing". I arrived late, into a whirlwind of "not-sures" and circular arguments. We started again. Two hours later we were still arguing about the first paragraph! It's a very good discussion to sit down with any opening and ask what do we know with certainty or near-certainty, what is probable, what's likely, what's possible? And what is the mood, what's the emotional point of view, what kind of theme is being whispered, what do we know about the protagonists?
At first glance (note glance, and these were good students) the opening paragraph said, "woman orders cake for son's birthday". I argued (and I'm not going to do it here) that the opening did TONS more. For that matter, I said, could we not dispense with the opening paragraph altogether? After all Paragraph Two starts:
She gave the baker her name, Ann Weiss, and her telephone number. The cake would be ready on Monday morning, just out of the oven, in plenty of time for the child's party that afternoon.
Isn't that covering all the bases? Isn't the first paragraph redundant?
But this essay is not about the specifics of a Raymond Carver story, nor about a Rembrandt painting. Rather it's about the fact that artists don't do things casually, but for a purpose. They set tone, mood, point of view, both for themselves as a writer (to create a writing mood) and to create a way of responding in the reader, or viewer, what I've called "the mode of acceptance".
In the Open University text I'm reading Charles Harrison writes that viewing a painting and "seeing it" is in part a social agreement, convention, set in a historical context etc.
"I suggest that the ability to draw someone into this agreement is the basic condition required to make the illusion do its work in painting. I would also like to suggest that the establishment of such agreement is the starting point for art considered as a social activity. The form of social activity I mean to indicate is the relationship of collaboration and mutual recognition that is established, via the work of art, between the artist who furnishes material for the exercise of the imagination, and the spectator willing to undertake the relevant imaginative work.
A work of art is like a game – often a very serious game – that is set in play when the spectator's imagination engages according to its rules. Once that point of agreement is reached, endless possibilities are opened up for enriching the illusion and for the consequent enlargement of the picture's possible field of reference."
Now note above that there is work involved. That work may not cause blisters or back-ache but the reader of prose must work at reading, fully getting the text.
Later in the same text, when comparing and contrasting two still lifes, Harrison wrote that each artist was attempting to shape and control the viewer's mode of attention. How close is that to my reader's mode of acceptance?
In a still life there are questions of lighting, closeness, objects depicted (and some, for example the pomegranate often had religious or cultural meaning and were rarely 'just there'). The artist controls the manner in which the objects are experienced.
And of course the good writer "steers" the reader down a certain path. There may be a perceived ambiguity or range of possible responses, but how many are closed off to us, almost without us ever noticing, and how much of that response range is real?
For my sins, I sometimes clash with another kind of reader. This is the reader who says "hit me". He wants every single thing in the story to be instantly there, out front, on the surface and in glorious technicolour. For this reader there appears to be no such word as subtlety, or nuance, and "oblique" in his vocabulary (if he knows the word at all) means "obtuse".
Strange how many of these readers love the crudest, crappiest horror stories!
Am I being "unfair"? Am I arrogant or patronising, or cruel? Do you think I lie? Do you think these people are NOT out there?
Do you think I didn't read like that once and imagine it as the pinnacle of the art?
When I was a teenager I devoured Mickey Spillane books. I adored them.
But then, back then, the idea that say, Graham Greene, could matter, that any serious author could matter was ridiculous to me. I was a simplistic, crude young man who wanted everything instantaneously. I was waiting for fast food to be invented. Gimmee, Gimmee!
Now (and I am still, relatively, a Phillistine) I want to understand. I want to know about my humanity, about what might lay outside it or beyond it, or inside it and hidden. I want to discover what it is to be human, what the journey means, why things happen.
And that is not "in your face" and never will be. The trivial imbalances that lead to great tragedies, physical and mental, can be small and seem trivial or inconsequential (yes I know that's self-contradictory!) Going there, to the heart, to the moment, or to be where revelation appears, well that requires some sensibility or sensitivity. Describing it, must almost by its nature demand great care, subtlety and the lightest possible touch.
But if I as an artist, to get through your defences and touch your soul, need you to feel light and shade and texture, to sense perspectives and point of view, to bring to the table history, convention, awareness, and religious significance or irony, or humour, or a consideration of unusual juxtapositions… If I expect you to develop a certain receptiveness, and to look, and look again, feel and feel again, think, and think again…
Should I write dirt, muck, mud, soil, or earth? Are they the same?
In Carver's A Small Good Thing the mother always refers to the boy as "the child". Was that accidental on Carver's part? Why not "my little boy" or "my boy" or "my son"?
Have YOU ever referred to one of your children as "the child"?
What does Carver create when he has the woman say this?
1606
Taking My Own Advice
Have sent in my Bridport entries five weeks before the closing date!!!
I sent two poems NINE weeks early
Have had a crack at Yeovil's "Opening to a Novel" Comp and basically sent something to any comp with a prize of £150 or more.
I've started subbing poems (but I don't feel lucky) but if I don't sub I'll never know...
The point is, you have a hit rate, 1 in 3 or 1 in 5, even 1 in 10
So if it's a horrible 1/10, sub ten times!
Do that every week and you will have a hit a week.
My personal psychology seems to allow for a hit rate of 1 in 3. I can live with 1 in 4 but anything much worse and I find myself banging out a few flashes to slightly lower targets "just to cheer myself up"
But if I score 1 in 3 this year I'll have about 80 hits (work it out)
Someone said in BC, "You're hot this month AK"
But I'm not. I was hot TWO MONTHS ago when I managed 65 subs.
Art is wonderful. I like to think that sometimes I manage it.
But underpinning art is solid craft, basic rules, and fucking hard work.
And when it's written, re-written, polished, GET IT OUT THERE.
You shouldn't have anything merely "languishing" on you hard disk. Put it to work!
Alex
I sent two poems NINE weeks early
Have had a crack at Yeovil's "Opening to a Novel" Comp and basically sent something to any comp with a prize of £150 or more.
I've started subbing poems (but I don't feel lucky) but if I don't sub I'll never know...
The point is, you have a hit rate, 1 in 3 or 1 in 5, even 1 in 10
So if it's a horrible 1/10, sub ten times!
Do that every week and you will have a hit a week.
My personal psychology seems to allow for a hit rate of 1 in 3. I can live with 1 in 4 but anything much worse and I find myself banging out a few flashes to slightly lower targets "just to cheer myself up"
But if I score 1 in 3 this year I'll have about 80 hits (work it out)
Someone said in BC, "You're hot this month AK"
But I'm not. I was hot TWO MONTHS ago when I managed 65 subs.
Art is wonderful. I like to think that sometimes I manage it.
But underpinning art is solid craft, basic rules, and fucking hard work.
And when it's written, re-written, polished, GET IT OUT THERE.
You shouldn't have anything merely "languishing" on you hard disk. Put it to work!
Alex
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