Monday 31 January 2011

A Bomb and a Hit

So, this is the last that January has to offer 2011... and news just in:

a) I bombed completely in one competition... one that I would dearly have loved to have made a mark in.

b) I have won a second competition for the year... The Sentinel Literary Short Story Competition and the judge there thought something about the language was 'brilliant' and my story stayed with her after she had read it. That was a nice thing to say, a nice thing to hear.

c) Oh and an agent has made contact on the back of an earlier comp success and has asked to see a novel... so, I had better get busy.


Sunday 30 January 2011

DO YOU SMELL?

Book or Kindle

I try not to be Luddite in my thinking about new technology. I do. I try to be open to change, a little. Ok, so I’ve never grown out of being a 70’s hippy and I am a creature of habits and those habits established over long time. But I do try to keep an open mind about the new. After all, I am a teacher of high school kids and it would not do to be of the ark and not knowing what they are talking about . Imagine my surprise then when this week one of the fifteen year old girls in my class confessed that bookshop owners might think her visits to their shop a bit strange as she flicks through the pages of new books and breathes in the scent of them. ‘I love the smell of new books,’ she said, a little guiltily.

Smell is not my sense of choice. My olfactory tool is a bit blunt to look at and a bit blunt in its operation, too. So, I am telling one of my sons this today, about a bookish fifteen your old girl sniffing the insides of new books. I know he likes books, though he is particular. He is an art student and funds are always lower then they could be. He admits that he can understand this pupil’s fascination with the smell of the pages of books, though for my son it is the smell of old books that he enjoys - maybe that has something to do with economics, I don’t know.

I don’t get it. Not the smell of them. But I accept that there is clearly some appeal in sticking your nose between the covers of yesterday’s blockbusters and today’s new bestsellers-to-be - for them what have sensitive hooters.

And this brings me to my question to you: what does your Kindle smell of? Do you hold it to your nose and breathe in the scent of it? Will it have a different smell when it is old and dog-eared? Will the new Kindle have a smell built into it? Is the lack of a smell perhaps an advantage? You tell me.

Sunday 23 January 2011

An Essay on Flashing

(Sometimes the things making noise in my head are just thoughts and they want to be out there as much as the creative things. I gift you this. See what you think.)

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, OR FLASHING

I have had some success myself with writing flash fiction. I was one of five shortlisted in Smokelong’s Kathy Fish Fellowship Award 2008; I have been highly commended by Biscuit, honoured by Binnacle and short and long listed by Flash 500. My work has appeared in prestigious magazines, both print and on-line, and in a text book guide to flash fiction as an example of what can be achieved. And I enjoy writing flash fiction.

I have written a whole novel that works as a series of flashed pieces, though these are interconnected pieces and not wholly self-contained so might not pass muster as true flash. I have written a homage to my late father in fifty flashed pieces, like anecdotes that might be told by family and friends at a funeral gathering, but again they sort of hang together. The point is I am no stranger to flash fiction and I can see possibilities with the form.

And yet, I can’t help feeling that there is something wrong with what’s happening with flash fiction. I can’t help feeling that there’s something of the Emperor’s New Clothes about it’s current popularity.

I am a teacher of English in a High School. In the upper school students can study English at different levels. They have to submit a folio of essays to be marked. If a student studying at the lowest level produces an essay of the same length as a student studying at the highest level (say 1200 words) then the student at the lowest level is penalised. This is the case because there are set upper limits for essay length at each level and they differ. You might wonder why there is an upper limit at all, and maybe the answer would have more to do with expediency than writing - after all, someone has to be paid to mark the work and time is money! But that a poorer ability student has the task of expressing him/herself in fewer words than a student of higher ability does seem to be a little back to front.

Maybe there isn‘t a connection here, but it seems to me that the rise of flash fiction has more to do with expediency than it does with writing.

Competitions should be about developing good writing - in a perfect world perhaps. Or about encouraging writing , or identifying talent, or giving recognition for writing achievement. But competitions, when all is said and done, are mostly about raising money or raising the profile of the organisation staging the competition (which may have a link to money-making too). Writers are more often than not charged for their entry and the entry fees pay for the competition. You can charge as much for a flash fiction entry as you can for a full length story, but judging the flashed pieces becomes less time-consuming a task than judging stories where the limit is in the thousands of words. (This may also explain why there are so few competitions where the word limit is higher than 3000 words.) And imagine, there are some flash fiction competitions that set the limit at a hundred words, and some even tighter than that.

We live in the internet age and the argument runs that flash fiction sits well with that ‘web surfing’ level of focus. And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the reason for the rise and rise. Maybe that’s why Hemingway’s six worder is lauded as the pinnacle of economy and pathos, where I see only six words.

I read ‘Einstein’s Dreams’ again recently, by Alan Lightman. I read it again because I remembered enjoying something about it and at the same time being somehow dissatisfied with it. It is clever. The writing is good, even brilliant. But the flashed time pieces that make up the novel, seem ultimately unsatisfying, or at least satisfying only at a certain level. It’s like leafing through a book of sketches by a brilliant artist. I love seeing sketches, and can see they have worth in their own right. Personally my sketches (when I am being a visual artist) are often much better than the finished works. But hang a brilliant sketch next to a brilliant finished work and there’s no contest in me for which I prefer. I love the pieces in Lightman’s book and he does at least try to hang them together in some way; he seeks to unite them with his prologue-interludes-epilogue pieces, and I think whilst this can help place the flashed time pieces into their context it does not ultimately make for a good complete book for the reader. The individual pieces are brilliant, the concept is brilliant, but somehow for this reader that is not quite enough.

I read a new writer’s collection, just published last year, all of the pieces are ‘flash’. I had heard good things about the book and I was intrigued. And sure enough there is some cleverness in something of what I read. And the prose is easy and not damnably bad. And I could see what was going on. But ultimately, reading the book was like feasting on hors d’oeuvres and really quite unsatisfying. I wanted more. The pieces read like sketched thoughts and I wanted the fully flavoured finished story. Bite-size is not how everything should be; we need something more to chew on. And flash has, I think, yet to find its proper place at the table.

I enjoy writing flash because I enjoy playing with words and stories. Often my flashed pieces are like quick sketches, and many flashes, like seeds planted, have grown into something more. And one or two of these may become more leafy still. (sorry for all of these mixed metaphors!) I will continue to write flash and to use flash as a key to unlock my inner voices and as a way of quickly getting down on paper what might otherwise be so fleeting as to have flown before I could pin it down. I will also occasionally marvel at short pieces and think ‘that’s it!’ when I find what a true flash can do. But I will also try not to be fooled into seeing new clothes where there is nothing.

What about you?

Saturday 22 January 2011

A Guest of My Old Writing Group

I forget things just now. Maybe it's an age thing. Maybe it's because my head is filling up with ideas and I am not writing as much as I should be - because I am also trying to do research for a biggish project that is taking some shape in my head. Anyway, I forget things, and have forgotten to post up a piece of information here. So, this is me remembering.

I have been asked by my old writing group to join them in a public reading in Carlops. This was supposed to happen at the end of last year, but the weather shifted it to February 4th. This will be a fun evening, hearing what friends have been up to creatively and sharing what I have done and a captive audience looking for performance. Love it.

I should do more of these, I think.

And today I wrote a new short story - so I could make space for the 'real' project to be heard in my head. I wrote a story that has an interesting structure, telling itself three times and telling itself different each time. Remember John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman and how it ends and then offers you a second ending and then encourages the reader to choose between the two? I thought this was so clever when I read it. My story is, I think, in the same tradition. It was tricky making it work and I so am pleased with the playfulness of it and its neatness and also its relationship with a real experience I had.

And somewhere I saw stuff under the heading 'Why Write?' and thought it an odd question to draw so much comment. Write because it is a joy to do. Write because you enjoy writing. Write because it is fun to do so. If it is different for you - a struggle, a pain, a trial - then maybe do something else... life's too short. At the very least I am with Susan Hill on this - not having patience with writers who whinge about how hard it all is.

Friday 21 January 2011

Longworth Editors Short Story Competition

I can say now because it's announced and in the public domain: I won the Longworth Editors Short Story Competition. I was pleased with this win because it was with a story of mine that I liked so much I wanted it to do well... and it just goes to show... it had hit ok in other comps... commended but no prizes... and then here it wins... have faith in what you have written is the message, I think.

A couple of ideas are taking up time at the moment... so am being a little quieter than usual. Some good might come out of this... we'll see.




Sunday 9 January 2011

AND IT'S ONLY JANUARY

2ND RESULT OF THE YEAR and it's only Januuary!

Just found out that I was commended in a competition where the proceeds have gone to a good cause. Claire Apps runs a site to support those who have suffered from or those who want to take a stand against Domestic Violence. She has just completed the judging of a short story competition on that theme. Congrats to everyone who entered and to all those who won prizes.

If you are interested, Claire is running another short story competition. This time the theme is 'future' and the proceeds will go towards an equally good cause. Check it out!

Wednesday 5 January 2011

News in!

Have been quite busy over the holiday period. I wrote five new stories, a couple of which I think are worth something. They were a bit of a new departure and lots of fun to do, too. Then I got down to work for the day job - that was more serious, but I made some progress there aswell.

News just in (and this feels good coming so early in the year) : I have just been informed that I have won another short story competition. Was told in November that I had made the shortlist, then heard nothing so thought I had not done better than that, and was pleased with that anyway. Then today, an e-mail to say I had won and some feedback which praised the language in my story.

Last night I had quietly resolved to give much more of my attention to bigger projects this year... then this happens.

Whispers are in my head for a further novel idea... needs more research than the other ideas I have, but those whispers are beginning to make themselves heard... and so, may become shouts before much longer and then I will have a project to consume me.

Happy New Year to all writers and any readers that come here.