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Meaning – it’s the point in my MA Creative Writing course where we have to put stuff in for marking. I’m about 70% less confident this semester than I was last semester (when I was disappointed with my mark anyway). So things aren’t looking good. I decided to vent about it here, and to basically give you an overview of what it is I’ll be sending in.
So first of all I wrote a story called Keith; which opens -
I got home from school one day to find dad having his faced slathered by a puppy. ‘Keith?’ I shouted, when he told us his name. Mum walked back through to the kitchen in silence and began noisily assembling the plates for dinner.Keith isn’t about a puppy, the puppy sadly gets run over by a bus. The story is about family life through a childs eyes. The mum banging the dinner plates being a subtle example. Later the little girl telling the story picks up on her dads unhappiness, wants to tell him she’s having fun (when they go for a weekend away) and realises (on a ill fated visit to a donkey sanctuary) that like Orinoco the donkey, her dad’s getting old by himself with nothing for comfort except the puppy Keith who had just died.
I don’t know where this story came from, but I know whenever I read it back it makes me very sad and I don’t know why.
I’m also submitting a whimsical story about a man who for a living forges diary pages from Van Gogh’s and later Winston Churchill’s diaries and correspondence. He does get caught but the main distraction is the waitress and amateur photographer who lives across the corridor;
The next time I saw her she was wearing a pink waitress dress and a pinafore. She smelt like fried bacon and old oil. She wore a thick wool scarf that seemed to have lost its structure and become just scraps of cloth around her neck. ‘Hey.’ ‘Hey,’ I replied, any new pictures on the horizon?’ ‘She laughed like I’d made a joke – ‘Did you find a job?’ ‘I set up a new company – ‘Winston Churchill’s secret life dot com.’ ‘Oh yeah, the insurance company guy?’ ‘Yeah, I think so – erm…’ ‘The dog – the nodding dog…ohhh yes!’ ‘Sure something like that – he was working for the Russians all along.’ ‘Oh right,’ she smiled. She flashed her beautiful eyes, I could tell she was oblivious of what I was saying.’ ‘Well see you then.’ ‘Bye,’ I said to her already closing door.This character is affected by his lack of relationship with the girl, and especially his failure to end up with her at the Christmas party – his one big opportunity.
What to write about them both. (I have to submit a critical commentary alongside the two stories.) I guess neither of them are extraordinary. The details are the details of everyday life and no big event happens other than in the minds and hearts of the characters. In my essay I quote Maupassant the French writer:
‘The writer would find it impossible to describe everything in life, because he would need at least a volume a day to list the multitude of unimportant incidents filling up our hours. The author should know how to eliminate, among the minute and innumerable daily occurrences, all those which are useless to him.’
And a quote I really liked was about Chekov’s work:
Michael Baldwin writes, ‘What his (Chekov’s) stories seem to say to us is, ‘The world is a pretty dull place, but stick with me and I’ll show you the drama of it.’
(This sums me up pretty much with my writing.)
This has been a funny submission because I published a lot since my last marks, and I did a course during the summer. I expected to see some real results maybe and it’s hard to see it in stories. I wrote these very recently so haven’t really had time to mull them over either, some people knew at the beginning of September what they were going to send in, but I left it till the last minute.
Hopefully I’ll do okay. Another quote from my essay notes is: David Foster Wallace wrote ‘Fiction that isn’t exploring what it is to be human today isn’t good art’ which is another guideline which I have used – trying to understand two different characters in two very different stories. Wish me luck!
Next blog post will be some lomo style film photos!
Writing this week has manifested in various false starts – my head is full of ideas, but when I start typing they quickly run out of steam. It isn’t writer’s block. It’s more like writer’s shallow idea syndrome.
Anybody else suffer WSIS or is it just me? I know some writers have a process when they hit a wall, they might play word games or switch from stories to poetry or turn to a particular style they don’t normally write in.
Still I managed to write 15,000 words of a novel, the first thing of that length since the summer of 2010. But it’s historical and I find it really tough to stick to historical things because my daily frame of reference is 2011 and when things inspire me during the day – overheard snippets of conversation, life in recession-Britain, and just modern-city-experiences – I can’t apply them and have to instead fabricate constantly.
What isn’t helping is focusing on experimental/postmodern fiction on the MA. I’m reading Italo Calvino and Woody Allen and trying out various postmodern story structures and experiments, things like:
Writing a story with copious footnotes, so really it’s two stories intertwined (try this it’s fun) (Read – Baker’s The Mezzanine)
Writing a story about a writer writing a story. Hmm, sounds a bit cliché but there’s been some classics in this format. (Attwood’s Blind Assassin)
Write a story in the form of dictionary descriptions – (I did this recently, but it’s hard to describe, I wrote ten keywords and then wrote ten passages like a ‘you would use this word in this way’ kind of thing, and the passages made a story.)
Print off some fiction that you have already, perhaps blow it up to font size 14, then cut all of the sentences, or words, out and rearrange them to make a new story. (Like Kathy Acker and William Burrows)
Make a story out of tweets, newspaper headlines/clippings or facebook statuses.
Rewrite an old classic like Tess of the D’urbervilles or Wuthering Heights, as a short story.
Write a story (or novel) where the chapters of the story are split up with chapters of discourse on the subject, involve your reader with a question and answer session, maybe a workshop or a quiz to see what they’ve remembered from the previous chapter.
So postmodernism…here is where I don’t explain what that means. You’ve got Google right? If you find out then please explain in a comment box on this page.
Here’s some good news for writers this week, did you ever wonder what good ever came from two or three centuries of subjugation under the British Empire? Maybe you feel like Britain should give something back to the mutilated Mau Mau rebels, the fifteen million forced migrants of the Transatlantic slave trade, or the ten million who died en route, or perhaps you resent all the Australian, Canadian and Indian troops who were killed in the world wars that Britain became involved with to maintain it’s dominance in world trade whilst later using more ethical and moral justifications. Well it’s here…..
The Commonwealth short story competition. FREE ENTRY to people who endured that horrible Empire (apart from Zimbabwe and Ireland and possibly Burma, you guys blew it, oh and America – the revolution was not cool!) If like me you aren’t doing the Nanowrimo write a novel in a month challenge, then this is for you. I’ll give you some tips – write a story between 2000-5000, don’t write anything naughty because it’s a family show, genre is allowed but the past winners tend to be very lit-fic, in my view. Send one off, you’ve got till the 30th and the prize is huge, or at least pretty big. Think of it as Britain putting something back…but not all the cool stuff we nicked in the first place and filled out museums with you can’t have any of that.
Anyway, this was meant to be a few words and then several photos I took earlier in the week, so enjoy looking and have a good weekend.
This time with a theme of mining.
Excerpt of Prose:
The colliery glows like flames, yellow and orange and flickering. I was rounding the wall and stumbling across the loose gravel of the track. There are cobbles under foot but they are covered in mud, it slops over everything, beige and cloying. Porridge coloured, my boots are always dust dry with it when I get out of bed in the afternoon. I shuffle up the slope to the banksman’s hut where my helmet and equipment is kept. There are no signs of life, the wind catches smoke trails and curves them over obstacles. The wagons on rails full of coal waiting to be sorted and weighed, the empties waiting to go back down. It is only seven in the evening but if feels like the early hours. In the early hours I’ll be stuck down there without any sense of time and space. Stuck beneath whether it’s day or night. I’d rather work at night there’s no chance of the manager or his agent dropping in. Even the Fireman stays out of the way. I stand by the shaft, the wooden shelter which supports the winch and keeps the weather off the workings. I wait for ten minutes before the Banksman and Engineman stroll over blowing warm air into their hands. The Banksman nods. He’s got a face sourer than lemon, his eyes are grey and sag wearily, he dislikes me and I dislike him and we make no attempt to smile or speak. The Engineman I’m indifferent concerning, he’s in the banksman’s pocket, that’s all. The cage is called up and it chatters it’s noisy metallic way to the top.
‘Just you.’ One of the men say, I just hear it over the wind.
‘Just me?’ I can’t tell if they’re asking or telling me. I can’t work out why it is so quiet tonight. I step on the cage, unused to having so much space to myself. I give my token to the Banksman who keeps it while I’m underground, sort of like a register of who is down. The level beneath me lurches and begins plummeting.
Descending into a coal mine goes like this:
Darkness gradually encroaching between suspended lamps. You feel a pair of hands at your neck, that have kept you warm like a scarf up until now, starting to tighten their grip. The walls are wet. You don’t need to see it, you can hear it, like a babbling brook, tinkling away in the darkness. You keep thinking you’re going to hit bottom, in fact it’s deeper than you remember, always. The chatter of chains and metal ends so suddenly when you’re at the bottom it takes you by surprise. And then – my first thought? Twelve hours to go.
‘Donald?’ I shout into the pony stalls which surround the pit eye. A couple of boys with startled eyes poke their heads around the thick, motionless thighs of a pony. They are sitting in the straw doing nothing, possibly just sleeping. ‘Donald!’ I shout again and a shadow scurries out from behind the horse. He keeps his head down, the other boys sink back down into the black. I have a lamp in my hand with a candle in. There are safety lamps we’re meant to use but you can’t find your own arse with them. How they expect us to win black coal from a black coal face in low light. I lead with my lamp and we begin the long hike. The ceiling is flat and low, the floor dirty and uneven. Donald is behind me pushing a cove, an empty wagon, for the coal I’ll cut. We reach the tunnel proper, and the space of the pit eye diminishes to four feet by two feet. I bend, we walk steadily. Occasionally at declines Donald lets the cove hit the back of my heels. I whip around and try to smack him but usually he anticipates it and ducks behind the thing.
‘Why’s it so quiet here tonight?’
‘Thirteenth in’t it?’
‘Friday thirteenth?’
‘Yep, I didn’t think you’d come in, I was going home if you didn’t come in.’
‘Because of bloody bad luck?’ I ask, Donald murmurs a reply and we keep walking. At the turn in the road there was a tenter asleep whose job was to open the door. There were these doors all over which regulated the air flow. I kicked at the tunnel floor and gave him a cloud of dust to breath which made him jump up quick smart.
‘You’ll be fined if he comes down,’ I said and the boy pulled the rope which opened the door. We passed through and left him behind us in darkness. Now it was cloying, the air was warmer on this side of the door. We walk on and I hold the lamp ahead, watching the flam flicker threateningly. Donald is rumbling behind me at his own bastard speed. His father works in a rag place, sorting rags and ripping up old clothes. It won’t be long before Donald is earning more than his dad. God knows why he doesn’t come down here.
Now at the coal face I strip. It’s warm, not uncomfortable, but once you’re going you get sweating fast enough. The smell at the coal face is dank, like a man’s old socks. There is an intricate series of stoppings, and on either side of a pillar two places to cut. On the opposite side there is another man cutting and further across the seam, down a narrow tunnel I can hear a third man. The space before me is mine. The pillar to my side isn’t to hold the ceiling up, we use timber props for that, it’s a baulk, a space of rock between the seam, and it isn’t worth any of our time to chip it out, so it will have to stay until the wasteman or shifter comes to clear it.
I’m at the face now with my pick wearing just a pair of cotton shorts. I trim away at big pieces and it’s a constant shift and twist beneath the four foot ceiling to get into place to swing. My hands are rough and sore from the day before but I have to grasp the pick tightly else my wrists wouldn’t last five minutes. I feel like shit already, I gasp for air and when the pick hits wrong, or slips at the face instead of cuts, my back and arms ache. If it sticks in I have to use my whole body to pull it back. As each chunk falls Donald clears it into the cove. This is how we will spend the night.
After a few hours my thumb and palm is aching so much I drop the pick. Donald is away to the brow with a full cove. He stays with the coal I’ve cut to see it’s marked up properly and recorded, as my pay depends on it. If the chalker fancies the cove is laid out, that is full of stones and slate, then I’ll be fined rather than paid, for the time wasted getting it to the top and sorting it. If Donald is slow I give him a quick wallop to speed him up. The problem with having lots of boys down is they’d rather sit and chat.
An hour from the end I’m aching all over. As I lift the pick and swing it I’m trying to arch up so that it undercuts a block of coal. I’m bending into three feet by two feet for this action. The coal is above me almost and I’m trying to get it to fall under its own weight. Donald has slowed down too, and the two of us are waiting for time to pass. My back creaks, and when I bring my shoulder back there is an unpleasant click at a certain point. When the last block finally sags, I get the arch of the pick in and lever it out and it crumbles and collapses into a heap. Donald steps in with a shovel and feeds it mechanically into the cove whilst I get dressed again. I wipe the sweat off my face and head. I know it will be cold outside. Dark early morning. The different between the air down and the air on the surface is harsh and it rips suddenly at your throat and you get mouthfuls of phlegm to spit. I follow Donald back up the road, I put my tools on top of the coal and when he struggles I put my head to it with him and shove. We both use our heads since our arms are knackered by this time. The cage creeps up and I’m out into the grey dawn. I can’t speak for coughing. I get the token from the Banksman who is sipping tea on a stool, with the door of his shed open so he can see when the day shift turn out.
I walk down Thomas Gunn Street. The weather is more favourable, it might even be a good day. My legs ache, my knees and ankles. But most of all it’s my wrists. I can’t pivot my hands in any direction and have to hold them carefully, straight by my side. Where my knuckles have grazed and cut the coal dust has filled them so all of my injuries are bright black and wet. I hawk up dirty phlegm and spit it in the gutter as I walk. The cold air reaches into me and scratches my insides. At the house I open the door and step in, but it is too tight and warm, my breath almost stops completely. The atmosphere is stale here and my cold lungs are tight already. I walk through and open the back door. Outside in the yard the mist is tinged with golden light. I sit on a rock and try to make slow, small movements with my fingers. I twist my neck, my shoulder cracks again. I’ll wash then slide into bed. My body at first lands like a fallen tree upon the mattress, it’s branches are my rigid limbs. But in an hour I would have relaxed, my muscles unravelled, my hands and neck numbed. I sleep like the dead once that happens.
Poem: The miners daughter Black fingers scarred and cut red hands too small for cove’s handles Thin finger tips worn hard and nails cracked and blistered. Grit-eyes too dry not needed in the dark, Sometimes closed on cold corridors, closed on breezy emptiness She had dinner ready for him though she finished only recently And he was black and crumbling in the back yard Bleeding black in basins with his tankard, dry coughs spit-wet with beer Black fists mobile like thrown stones swinging. Dinner out, moon-white face washed in candlelight looming He grips cutlery with knuckles, building anger menacingly Wordlessly leaving and she sits panting, lungs tight Empty house draws in black as coal the empty night.Inspired by a suggestion from Lou at I Hug My Books, I’ve tried, in this post, to put together each various element that I am interested in - a photo, a piece of art, a story and a poem. It was an interesting project, looking through my work and discovering that themes I use in my poetry, prose and art don’t always overlap, although history does make a regular appearance. Obviously my photography becomes the hardest element if I pick a subject vaguely historical. I overcame this by learning from one of my favourite photographers Willie Doherty and replicating the photos of Northern Ireland he makes that don’t show specifics but rather the eerie possible locations of secret meets, ambushes or bombings. Comments are welcome, and thanks for looking.
Poems
Bandit Country In Tullyvallen breezed grass is a crouching man By the fence through the darkness shuffling. A leaking gutter springing droplets, tapping On the uneven concrete are footsteps, The last few up to the back door. In Tullyvallen a passing taxi driving revellers Is a minibus full of farmers in balaclavas Retribution from the other side of town Did it pass and fade, or stop? A nocturnal assassination – a dog’s howl. Patrol We marched out towards Newry To the New Road we hurry From Crossmaglen’s high walls Out over dark moors. Boots wet and blisters Wind deafens our footfalls. Lino Print and photograph:
Excerpt from a recently published piece of prose:
The New Road is ahead, the Lead Scout Dawson is to my right, he climbs the hedge first and crouches. As I’m crossing he gives a signal – a raised hand – and we all drop low. I’m astride of the hedge but I slip down on the intended side and click the safety off on my rifle. The road is too quiet for this time in the morning. Dawson dashes ahead and I keep an eye both ways whilst the others get over the hedge at different points.
Dawson and I move North West in the direction of Tullynavall. I keep my heavy SLR on instant – safety off – we march with safety on in case someone trips. I can feel the rest of the section behind me, I pray they stay quiet. Dawson is listening to his ear-piece, there’s a Puma somewhere and it’s spotted something on the road, I become more alert, I breathe quietly, hold my rifle high, my eyes burn into the distance.
We stop. The gun group with the GPMG has crossed the road further back they will try for high ground. The rifle group is on our side and the command group is behind. Dawson gives a thumb down to me, we freeze, he’s spotted something. We wait; on the November breeze I hear fragments of voices like jigsaw pieces. Dawson pats the top of his helmet. I go to him. I can feel the mud beneath me, giving under my weight, slipping. Newry is still five and a half hours in the opposite direction.
The Lieutenant is watching through his rifle sight and me and Dawson are still on point. Then the Lieutenant covers his face with his hands and points straight up the road. It’s the signal to go; we run low and quick a few metres and then come down again. My whole body feels like it’s shivering but my hands are steady, my mind is empty. The mud is wet, the sky is grey, I take it all in.
Now I see what the Puma reported, a brown Ford Cortina, parked across one half of the road, and a figure, nothing more than a black bullet shaped silhouette, an illegal checkpoint. Contact. We can’t get closer to the car to see what’s beyond without compromising ourselves. Signals are waved across the road and the bushes respond with a ‘ready to move’ gesture.
When an engagement begins you go blind to everything other than the threat ahead and your mates on each side of you. Guns rattle in fits and jerks, and at different tempos, the GPMG is deeper, like a chain being run quickly over stone, like a ships anchor unravelling. It is over as soon as it started, the fields echo gun-shots and the crows caw.
‘Rifle group go,’ the Lieutenant shouts. Assess, run, cover, fire, that’s our tactics. ‘Gun group go.’ There is the rattle of fire again and then it is quiet.
There are four dead at the roadblock, the Cortina is knackered. The rifle group move on up the road, the gun group fans out and me and Dawson take a minute pretending to look observant whilst Sergeant Bloom and the lieutenant disarm the bodies and searched them. You feel like shit afterwards, heavy and tired and hungry. It was drizzling and we had a five hour romp to go. Now my hands really are shaking, I click the safety on with numb fingers and lick my dry lips.
I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve not had a great deal of inspiration. I’m chipping away at the writing, chipping away at the art, generally chipping away. It’s kind of like a curse. And when you pull it all together at the end, sure, it looks like a lot. But then there’s a call for submissions and it invariably says ‘send us your best’ and you think, hmmm, what’s my best? There is several calls at the moment by the way, for any writing buddies reading this take a browse at duotrope for publications of which these are but a small sample:
Alt-hist is a British magazine looking for your historical fiction, there’s no deadline and you get $10 or a free copy. Read the stuff on their website before you send.
Best Fiction is open to literary short story submissions for which they pay $25, they are quite a new establishment.
Fiction 365 accept submissions and pays a small amount in return, check out their website for a story a day
Or if you write childrens fiction you can send to Stories for Children Magazine who are looking for stories and articles for next Springs issues, stories for February are themed on families and March should be about neighbourhood and locality.
If you’re lucky enough to be a woman Mslexia is open currently for submissions
As for me I haven’t sent much out recently except for emails asking where the heck my story went and when the heck are people planning on getting back to me. I keep chipping away anyway, it feels like a chipping-away time of year, a time of year you just want to survive before the onslaught of you-know-what-holiday. Mince pies are back on the shelves so I intend to begin my yearly survey of the best and the worst very soon. What’s your best seasonal snack? or seasonal tradition…? I can’t believe I’m asking Christmas questions…do you love or dread this time of year?
In other news I’m virtually sleeping on a bed lifted off the floor by the sheer amount of art stuffed underneath it. 
So I thought, why not sell it? Art is so expensive isn’t it? Not mine! I’ve about a million sketchbook pages of prints, pen, pencil and charcoal drawings and paintings etc from the last twenty years, there’re too many pictures to post photos of individually, so I filled my bedroom floor with about 5% and took a photo. I’m proposing £3 each, or two for £5. But it would be an art lottery, unless you live in Manchester in which case buy me a coffee in my local Costa and you can browse 
through bags like this one and pick out which pieces you like. There are some really nice sketches in there, paintings too.
What else? I’m reading a great book, but I can’t say much about it because Lou will tell me off. It’s teaching me something I already knew but sometimes forget, that the judgements we make about people are made pretty quickly and are based on quite shallow variables. Those same people are deep and complex and our judgements can be wrong. And, the most important point, some people we label as arses, are arses…but they might have very good reasons for being arses too. I’ll leave you with that cryptic thought for the day.
As always if you want to buy some art email me at admin@manchestersartisticson.com or comment below, and you can pay me through Paypal using the address I send you. You could write what you like in the email, perhaps landscapes, nudes, soldiers, cars, I really have all sorts, and you could mention pencil-paint-pastel etc.
It was really nice to get into Manchester at the weekend and enjoy the festive atmosphere. It was the N4 street party in the Northern Quarter.
I ate a burger, and two soft cookies stuck together with white chocolate cream. Yes it was as good as it sounds. Beer in plastic cups and live music, and the weather was ace. Bliss.
Writing wise it was a successful weekend too. I wrote six stories, 12,500 words, which is more than I’ve written for a while. I’m trying to link the six up thematically to form some kind of coherent collection, but with a twist. I don’t see myself sending out a collection of stories in the long term, I think I’ll still rely on novels to get some exposure in the future, but it’s good practice to link my stories and find themes which run through them.
Challenges wise, the 101 challenges in 1001 days now appears to be a slightly more manageble 89 challenges in 973 days. Simple. 
I got Vistaprint to print some business cards for me (95) They were cheap and cheerful and might come in handy if I remember to carry them around with me. Basically it’s just a good way to remember a long winded blog address.
The same company very kindly sent me a special offer (only ever buy from vistaprint if you want to recieve daily SPAM emails for the rest of your life!) to print a t-shirt, and as challenge 96 mentions blog merchandise I thought I’d be crazy to say no.
Finally Challenge 86 – Get a phone I can email from:
I got it a few weeks ago, and have been emailing like mad from it, so job done. I’ve never ventured far beyond the old text and ring type phones, so there is a lot to take in but I’m getting there. It comes in handy the most when I get too involved with a book on the train home and can check on the maps app and see where the heck I am, and whether I’ve missed my stop already when I return to reality.
There is another challenge I thought I’d be ticking off this week. Number 20 write a press release about my work. I wrote a nice email to my local newspaper a few weeks ago, since I knew I was having several pieces published for free on the internet, and in books, and I wanted to publicise the fact a bit. I also had the month long critique of fiction (challenge 49) which I thought local writers might take advantage of. I listed the local interest elements of my work, the fact that one LA published podcast was about local history and was free to download, the fact I go to the local university and am all about the heritage and culture of my town. I pictured maybe page ten or eleven ‘Local boy published stories in US’ come on this is a paper which can run, as its front pages, newsworthy items like PIGEON POOS ON STATUE. You know the type. But to no avail.
Then one night last week I happened to be sitting in the pub talking to a twenty two piece jazz band and drinking 10.5% cider, as you do. I asked one young lady what she did, and she said I’m a journalist for the — paper. Oh right, I said, remembering where I knew her name from – I sent you an email about my work. She rolled her eyes, meh, lots of people send me emails… What do you do? she asked, and I said, oh, this and that, I write. She asked my influences, baring in mind I’d had a couple of ciders by this point. I said Raymond Carver and Miranda July. She insinuated those people didn’t exist, but in her infinite mercy said I could email her again for a second chance. Bless. Well next time I email her it will be to CC her into an article submitted to the TLS, or when the Guardian reviews my novel (yeh right, I can type that email tonight in my dreams). Anyway I’m confident I’ll get a better offer in the next 2.5 years. Talking about writing, my friend and fellow MA student Craig Pay just won a national award for one of his short stories. I haven’t published anything for about two months I need to start sending things out again and being proactive.
This year is rolling by too quickly.
I’ve spent the day rifling round the house like a cold-turkey addict, searching for some codeine, even paracetamol or plain old ibuprofen, too lazy to find a shop. My recent tooth extraction has floored me, I usually function quite competently with tooth-pain but this one really got to me. I have a feeling he slipped a couple of times when he was fiddling about, and I wasn’t to know because of the local anaesthetic but I have some nasty sores on the roof of my mouth. Anyway, nothing to do with what I wanted to say…
I’ve written down some thoughts in the past on different elements of writing. Not official guides or anything, but things I’ve picked up through practice and my MA. After all what else does an MA and six or seven stories published allow me apart from blogging a bit of guidance for anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps – or perhaps qualify me for the latest Celebrity Big Brother (I think a published poem would entitle me to that these days). I’ve posted on Beginnings, and Character and I don’t need to post on dialogue because Craig Pay has blogged sufficiently in this area. So here are a few thoughts on writing endings with a nod in the direction of the Comma Press website and the recent Comma Press/Madlab writing course I attended.
First of all, I suck at endings! Seriously I could write episodes of Lost, my endings are that bad, they go nowhere. It is the thing I do least well, and something I am trying to improve. So what is the general advice? First of all as always I’m talking about short stories. Are novel endings different to short story endings? Who knows, I always presume everything about a short story is different to a novel. I’ve become completely won over by the short story. I recently returned to a great novel idea which I was five thousand words into twelve months ago, but had drawn up some decent plans for. I wrote a sentence, then contemplated another 85,000 words…and turned my laptop off and went to make a cup of tea. My stamina is damaged.
So short stories
They can end one of maybe three ways. The epical ending – In modern terms Epical endings refer to an epiphany or revelation which sheds light on the whole. The first one which comes to mind is the film Memento – the realisation of what Teddy says to him in the last five minutes (trying not to spoil the ending) sheds light over the whole film, and everyone in the room looks at each other with eyebrows raised and releases an ‘ahhh’. Traditional Epical though is a more tied up ending, where the bigger picture is shown, but external realisations are key, not just a personal experience. For me this ending is a bit cheap. Tom eventually overcame the problems he and Diane were having, and he apologised and came home and they did get married three weeks later as planned. You know? It doesn’t involve feelings, it doesn’t involve thinking and contemplation. But hey, I suck at endings, so convincing you to do endings like me is a bit silly.
So then there is reveal endings. I find reveal endings so, so tough. A reveal is obviously a bit like a twist, and a bit like a modern epical ending. Except a reveal relies on a secondary plot, a continuing issue which at the end is shown to be important and conclusive. Two plot lines come together in a way that makes you slap your hand over your mouth and start flicking back pages to look for the clues. A twist in the tale meanwhile, shows the same hand-over-mouth ending but you won’t find the clues paging back. A twist is unsupported, it’s too easy – there, it was all a dream, or James was really an Alien and he exploded, or the island is really heaven and everyone died in the plane crash. Reveal endings untie the knots. Magic tricks and jokes use reveal endings they take you in one direction so that when they reveal the truth you feel a dummy. The most obvious kind of reveal is the one where Poirot stands up at the garden party and fingers all of them one at a time, and the shifty working class employee skulking in the shadows gets it last, and gets it good, a company of policemen waiting patiently off-screen to pounce.
Finally, and my favourite – Lyrical endings. These are more modern. For me lyrical endings are logical and authentic, my life isn’t a series of Poirot moments when I get bowled over by a suddenly revealed truth. Things get their moment, sometimes I seize them sometimes not, when I do seize them they will inevitably sometimes dwindle and disappear – that’s the lyrical ending. Arguments that end with one person compromising or biting their lip (rather than hacking off the others head with an axe [traditional epical] admitting they are going home to their real wife, who they’ve been married to all along [reveal] or realising that they’re in fact gay and going upstairs to pack their suitcase [modern epiphany]) The lyrical ending is real. It allows the reader to feel something and think something after the story is over. There is a lack of finality which to me inspires more interation with the events. The reader can think, oh I’d do that, or this…what would you do. People can find their own answers (Woody Allen’s Manhattan is a nice lyrical ending).
What is important, I believe is people want to read between the lines and add something of themselves to good fiction. The Bible is an example of the fact a story can be taken several different ways. People look for metaphors – does it really mean Jonah was swallowed by a whale or is it about a journey in our understanding? Or is it a metaphor for Jesus in the wilderness? Most Bible stories end traditionally epical, you’re told that the Israelites got out of Egypt, and when God sent the Egyptians after them, he gave them an out, and drowned all the Egyptians. There isn’t anything lyrical about that. Maybe if Pharaoh had sat outside his tent in the last scene, watching from the hilltop as the Jews walked across the Red Sea, and thought to himself, maybe I should start going to church again….
So there are three. The only three? The best three? What do you write, do you always have a similar style to your endings, do you run out of steam and never know what to put. Maybe you’re a reader and you’re really disappointed if you don’t get a certain kind of ending where the loose ends are all tied up? Comment if you have anything to say. Meanwhile don’t take any of this as fact, I really am not the best at endings.
So, you write? You did a bit of creative-writing years ago, or maybe Access Course English. Or even a degree but you’ve not done it for a while? You’re embarrassed about showing it to your friends but you want a bit of a push in the right direction. Well guess what, I might be able to help.
First of all bear in mind it’s harder to publish novels now than it’s ever been – why? Well the internet of course, that – the rubbish economy – and well the competition – (Peter Andre and Jordan) no seriously publishers want to publish people who already have a following so they don’t have to market them that hard.
‘Oh is that why they publish footballer’s lives?’
‘Yep. Not ‘cause they’re brilliant, but because they’ve sold 50,000 before the critics have had time to see that it is, or isn’t, brilliant. Other than Wayne Rooney certain other types of books have a following like self-help and mind-body-spirit things. Oh and child wizards who go to private school apparently. Straight literary fiction is the big bottleneck. Millions of people vying for one or two places.
YEY!
So I do an MA, which not everyone can afford, (between £2,500 and £4,500). I’m not saying that’s going to get you published, the guys who sign you up admit that alone will not get you published. And be aware when people say ‘I’ve got an MA don’t you know,’ it don’t mean they’re good. It means they got a few pennies in the bank. And I go to writers groups, which I know are not everyone’s cup-of-tea. The critique can be harsh.
So what are your other options to get a step on with your writing?
This is a website where you post your work and as long as you keep critiquing other stories you get yours critiqued. It’s free (but a big platform for vanity publishing, just ignore the adverts.) but the quality of critiques has gone down recently (in my view) as it has got more famous.
Or you can pay to have your work critiqued by a pro. I’m not going to post links here but basic advice is if you’re going to part with £200-£500 to have a novel or portion of one critiqued then make sure it is a service offered by an agents or publishers you have heard of, rather than ‘Buddy’ from Arkansas who has a really colourful website! When I was sending my novels off I noticed a few agents had become critiquing services, they’d be the ones I’d try.
OR – In the month of August I am offering to critique your fiction for free!! Either one or two poems, not exceeding 1000 words or a piece of fiction. Sorry but that’s capped at a thousand words too. Maybe you send me 2-3000 words if you don’t want to break it up, but I’ll only do in-depth look at a portion of it. How do you do this and take advantage of a publishing, self employed writer giving you a bit of a kick in the right direction? Here’s a checklist:
!. Make sure you’ve reread your work. Say it’s a poem about a wedding you attended – read it out to yourself aloud. Make sure it sounds right and you don’t have to try six times to spit a line out.
2. So you wrote the poem when you got home, drunk, from the wedding? You need to seriously look at the imagery. When you saw the bride she looked ‘like a wedding cake’ well that’s no good…a cloud? Still no good. Poems have already been written with these images in. A swan? Better, what about a fleck of sheep’s-wool caught on a barbed wire fence? Okay that’s probably too far (unless you despise the groom and his family), but the first thing that comes into your head is often not the best. Think. Same applies to prose.
3. Read a book: if your writing novels churn through novels, if short stories read all the best short stories (look back through my past blog posts), and if poems the most recent poems (not Matthew Arnold and Emily Bronte)
4. Read another book – this time a guide to writing, the best are Self Editing for the Fiction Writer, Stephen Kings ‘On Writing’ and if you’ve written a novel, the Weekend Novelist. There’s loads, Peter Sansome wrote one about poetry.
5. Finally subscribe to my blog, since I will in the future put more advice about writing, and more importantly keep you updated with publishers and competitions. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and input the same email you email me your story with because I’ll check the emails before critiquing. If you send me your work without subscribing I won’t open it. Ha.
6. Finally send me your 1000 words or less, of poetry and prose to admin@manchestersartisticson.com
Then what will happen?
Maybe I’ll say, wow this is brilliant! And if I’ve heard of any competitions/publishers that would suit you recently I’ll send you a link. Or I’ll say this needs a line-edit (that means your English isn’t perfect or your prose isn’t up to scratch) and you should read through it carefully. Or I’ll say your imagery isn’t sophisticated enough if your bride is still a wedding cake, the trees are like fingers and the house’s windows are like eyes. Or I might say you need a big structural edit. Which means you’re not at the line edit stage, you need to rethink your story and go back to the drawing board. So you have to be thick skinned because I will detail more of the flaws your writing possesses. It isn’t any use if I just say your work is nice. I don’t want hate mail afterwards. It is just my opinion, either use it or ignore it don’t start telling me you were at a dinner party with Martin Amis and he read it and said it was a tour-de-force, or Darley Anderson lives next door to you and he’s offering you a million for the rights but your holding out for a better offer.
Good Luck. Offer ends end of August.
She sighed. Her sigh could mean a lot. Perhaps she’s weary, tired, possibly annoyed, or comfortable and content. Now though it means she is annoyed and Mark takes it personally. The rain drizzles down the windows. At least the rep who showed them in called them windows. Really they are squares of transparent plastic on the front of the oversized tent.
‘I…’
There is silence, what did she say? What was she going to say? Mark starts to doubt whether she actually spoke at all now that the silence is surrounding them again.
‘Isn’t there something we can do indoors?’ She finally asked.
‘Yes, probably.’ He didn’t want to set a precedent by pandering to her, by rushing to the reception on her instruction to find places to visit. She could go herself and find out.
‘Can you not be bothered?’ she asked.
‘Sure, where do you want to go?’
‘Anywhere.’ She didn’t budge, she just sat still and watched each droplet run down the wet sheet of plastic. The drops zigzagged into each other and gathered momentum.
‘I didn’t realise it rained so much in France.’
Mark knew she was apologising in her way, it was the closest he would come to an apology. She had argued for France and when he had said it always rains, at least in the North, she had refused to believe it. Even the South of England is pretty dry, she’d said.
‘Mark?’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Will you go to the reception and find us somewhere to go. I’ll go mad sitting in here, I’m so bored.’
He knew she would ask, and not because she didn’t want to be drizzled on. He knew she was investing in a whole day of moaning, a week of moaning. He would be a suitable scapegoat. If he found a rotten day out for them at the reception she could blame the whole shitty holiday on him -
‘Really it was going okay until that day out, that was what ruined it all,’ she would say to her friends in weeks to come.
‘Why don’t we both go?’
‘I just have to get out of here, pick anything I don’t mind, I can’t go out like this, I’ve not done my hair.’
‘We’re camping; you can’t start being precious about your hair.’
‘Oh why are you picking on me?’ she demanded raising her voice to the pitch which irritated him so completely.
Mark left the tent by the zippered door which flapped aside, the fabric roof was disturbed as he slid through and it sent down a quivering haze of rain molecules which soaked him. The distant sea views which had brought them here were a grey haze over the trees. As usual he counted the identical tents, reminding himself that theirs was number five, but that they were fourth from the end. Near the cherry blossom tree which sprayed it’s petals into the steady breeze like butterflies.
The reception was stuffed full of holidaymakers struggling for wall space and fighting over map books. The posters ranged from water-parks to The Normandy Landings. Mark considered war-memorials for a second, with a smile. Like contemplating dangerous machinery running with exposed moving parts and imagining the damage it could do. She would go wild if he took her to a military cemetery.
‘Looking for something to do in the rain?’ A small Scottish girl who seemed too young to have finished high school was standing next to him in the holiday companies uniform. She smelt of sex, or sweat, something obscene.
‘Yeh, what do you suggest?’
‘Either the museum of lace, or the museum of jazz, but they’re both quite a drive away.’
He thought she was joking and smiled, but she picked up a leaflet and proffered it in his direction. The front showed a Breton woman with a white headdress holding up lace drapes.
‘I was thinking more an art gallery, or a cinema, or an indoor water park or go-carting…’
The girl just shrugged her shoulders as though her options were the only ones. She dropped the leaflet back onto the table and moved on to another of her holiday-makers.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye trying to vocalise why the museum of lace was her recommendation to a young couple.
‘It’s just – it’s just – nice,’ was her verdict.
Mark dawdled on the way back; the air was damp and luscious. He could taste the wet tarmac the fresh smell of earth and plants being fed by moisture. The rain was balancing on blades of grass and as he walked through it his feet – bare except for his flip flops – were washed by a cold shower.
He poked back into the too-warm tent which had become stuffy and saw her lying on her back on the bed. He had planned to announce to her his final decision, to rush her and motivate her and convince her. But now he seemed quelled, it was like walking into a church. She looked up off the bed as though she’d just woken up.
‘Let’s get drunk!’ he exclaimed sheepishly, thinking about the young rep, the lace museum, lingerie.
She sighed.
