Tag Archives: Writing

Quick Update

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This year seems to be less productive than 2011.  I mean, I’m not disappearing altogether, you can catch my published work still around the place. 

I assumed the role of a soldier with combat experience to squeeze out a tale of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and was featured in an anthology in the US which you can find here.  I was interviewed by the very cool London/Paris magazine Structo which I helped edit for their eighth issue here.  And finally a story published by echuk is now available from itunes, see my profile on their site and read a short sample here.  Nonetheless I’ve sold no stories this year, nor have I really submitted any, and I’ve sold no photos or art.

Still the last 10 days have seen three photo shoots come to fruition.  I’ll upload some shots from my shoots with Melissa and Eva in the next few days.  I’ve also planned a couple of shoots and a photo-walk for August, with a new camera to boot.

Well summers here at last, and I should really start thinking about my dissertation module which starts in September, I need to start writing again instead of watching old Father Ted DVDs and taking photos of beautiful women!

Thanks for keep up with the old blog, pictures to follow…and have a nice week.

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A Long Week

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…well, it has been.  I was ill, hence my poor internet-world attendance.  The doctor said I had a bad virus and its normal that I still feel as though I’m dying!  And, to top it all off some s***bag fraudster had £500 out of my bank, through PayPal.  But it’s back where it belongs again now.  PayPal incidentally are the best company in the world for customer service, if you ever have money stolen from you, you better wish it’s via PayPal.

What else.  Well from several thousand submissions to my now quite forgettable competition, I have chosen a lucky winner.  I had to employ a large team of monkeys to sort through the many submissions and the winner is………..Sammy Dee!  at Manchester Meanders.  And, no it isn’t weird that she’s also my main commenter here at Manchester’s Artistic Son.  

What did she do to win?

Baked a Souffle, which was one of the challenges I set.  I hope Sammy blogs about this herself, as it was an experience with its ups and downs (that’s a souffle joke)

She designed a Manchester’s Artistic Son T-shirt!  and she is in the process of finishing her colouring book but has come up against the old felt tip nightmare (you know the pen with the cerulean blue barrel which actually draws more like Prussian blue, good for the sea but too dark for the sky).

So Sammy Dee - the prize of a book and a print of one of my photos is winging it’s way across the globe to Manchester, England, Well Done!

Other news.

Cutaway closed and the edits have been sent out to all those accepted.  Sorrys sent out to all those not.  Booo.  We had hundreds of submissions so had to be very selective, it’s a big thanks to everyone who sent stuff.  Next is the layout and the design then we send off to the printers for a proof copy.  Off the back of Cutaway and a few emails I’ve been able to join Structo magazine’s Editorial team this month, which is a real great opportunity.  Structo is a lovely newspaper-style literary magazine which my fellow editor Craig Pay has been published in, and a magazine we admired and referenced when we started Cutaway, its brilliant to see how another magazine operates too.

We had super-successful novelist Jenn Ashworth visit last night at our MA and she was encouraging about blogging, and the whole world of Social media stuff, and off the back of her advice I think I’m going to return to posting a bit more fiction and poetry and a bit less photography.  Over the next couple of weeks I’m thinking you can expect some poems, a short story, some insider thoughts on publishing and editing and some of the same in terms of model photo shoot pics (I’ve got two planned this weekend and a couple over April too.) Oh and the 1st birthday of Manchester’s Artistic Son blog!!

April is going to be another month of analog photography on 365project.org, so expect some funky lomo styles.

 

 

Closing the window

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 I had in mind to publish some poems since recently I have posted far too many photos.  I have writing to post, I always try to make images and write at the same time.  What I find difficult is to write poems and prose at the same time, or to make lots of photos and be in the mood for painting and drawing, but usually I can write and photograph.  Only, WordPress is being annoying and all my poems pasted from word adopt strange formatting with lots of line breaks and really I am not in the mood!

So, I will do the blog post I should have done anyway, if I was a good editor!

Cutaway magazine, our literary project for 2012, is about to close its submission window!

If you wanted to get something in to us then you have till March 1st to do so.  To those who already have, whether you have been successful or not we say a big thanks, because it has been really fun reading all your work.

Cutaway, if you don’t use the internet, read newspapers, or watch TV is a literary magazine due to hit the (virtual) shelves in May and it will feature all kinds of super-ace stuff.  So send us your writing.

 

Let me work out what WordPress is doing with this double line spacing malarchy and I’ll try to get some poems or a story up next time I’m around.  I’m also inundated with digital photos since it has been Film-February on 365 Project!  But I feel like  my readers are getting a bit bored with photos!??  Weekend fun wished to all!

And any thoughts on my new header?  I took this picture in a very misty forest last week and I really liked it, if you click it the full-sized image will appear, in case you’re looking for a wallpaper. ;¬)

The Mangover (Meat-hangover) Post number 75!

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So I failed.  Challenge 69, I quote ‘Go vegetarian for a month, Ooo this is going to be so hard.’

But now I’m wishing I stuck to it because after visiting Chao-Baby at the Trafford Centre last night I got the most horrible Mangover.  The best way to describe it is a hangover, made of meat.  I belched enough meat vapour to power a balloon and still my stomach was like a drum.  Dreadful.

In other, more interesting news – I received an Alpha II rangefinder, despite sounding like a spaceship – it’s a photo enlarger (to print photos from negatives).  I also picked up a case full of developing equipment (the case was a 1945 demob case that a soldier was given on leaving the army.)  Well 1945 is an estimate, it could have been anytime during national service I guess.  So I’ve just disinfected everything, thrown away all the rotten cardboard and polished all the lenses.  There’s an undeveloped film from 1979 in there which would be interesting to develop. and a heap of weird stuff I’m going to spend the night sorting through. 

I’ve realised, this last month or two, why I met so many nice people during my life – so that I can beg borrow and steal photography equipment from them all now.  I can’t wait to start printing my own black and white in my bedroom at night.  It’s missing some integral part though so I’ll have to trawl the internet first and find out what it is.

Erm, what else?  Reading the cutaway submissions is super fun.  Finding lots of cool work, if you meant to submit and haven’t yet send it in quick because we’re picking now, as we go along.

Also, if anyone saw Sammy Dee’s comments on my last post, about a kind of tutorial, slash lomography trip, slash photo walk in Manchester then climb on board because that actually would be fun. If you saw the comments you might also have seen my admission that I bought too many point-and-shoot, lomo style film cameras and am now selling them. I’m putting them on eBay in batches but I have about ten I’d like to sell with cases for £4-5.  I can post for another £1 I reckon so it’s a cheap deal.  They are the simple, toy-camera type where you roll on the film by the sharp little cog thingy.  But I also have some fancy Olympus ones and some APS ones if anyone is actually a collector of that kind of stuff.   Anyway sales pitch over, email me at admin@manchestersartisticson.com if you fancy one before I sell them on eBay.

Have a nice week – my stuff is submitted to uni, but now I’m empty on the writing front.  Really, no motivation to write for about four weeks now!!  This weekend’s been one of those ‘At least I’ve not got cancer’ type of weekends anyway where things go wrong and I end up doing something self-destructive like watching TV instead of making something worthwhile.  The weather seems to be getting worse again too, and my employment status in January hits an annual low.  *sigh*

Pre-Christmas Tradition

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My mother needs no excuses to start cleaning.  She spent my childhood shaking her head at my assembled plastic, toy soldiers, or tutting at my lined up matchbox cars.  But at this time of year I can almost – decades later – still hear her saying – ‘Right, it’s time to have a clear out and make room for the new toys you’ll be getting!’  Almost a bitter-sweet feeling combining cleaning my room with the promise of gifts!

And this week, as instinctive as a squirrel burying nuts, I began to itch with the sudden desire to overhaul my room.  Really I’m not getting that much stuff, but I like a good clear out.  that’s an understatement – I love a good clear out.  What is it that makes throwing things away feel so good?  Between ebay, the bin and the charity shop I reckon I’ve shifted about 40% of everything I own, if not more.  Add that to my clothing clear out of a couple of months ago. 

 

 

I mean, who needs a VCR these days? and if I get rid of the VCR then I don’t need thirty videos under my bed collecting dust.  I had virtually every love letter, bank statement, pay-slip and publishers rejection letter I had ever received!  Really. In a drawer whose bottom was slowly collapsing.

Life now feels simpler.  Need a stapler?  I know where it is – bottom shelf near the Delia Smith cookery bible.  Need a biro? there’s a cup full of them on top of the chest of drawers, need a dog-eared second-hand novel to read?  erm…go to the library I’ve thrown them all out.

I don’t think we need half of the things we keep for a rainy-day, and I doubt it’s just me who feels suffocated the more things I own (it possibly is just me, tell me it’s not just me!)

I need a notepad, a laptop and a camera.  A few different lenses and a sketch pad and pencil would be added cherries on the cake.  But two shelves full of shoes?  and every colour of craft paper you could dream of.  Well it’s all gone now anyway.  And if it doesn’t sell on ebay I’ll have to get a skip because it’s clogging up the dining room.  Does anybody else carry this Christmas-cleanup tradition from their childhood?  I used to empty all my cupboard space and under my bed and then on the day itself I’d get shiny new stuff to replace it all. 

I’ve never been one for buying needless stuff, I’m not materialistic, I’m a doer (I’d like to think) not a haver. But even I get swamped a bit by choices – shall I read, play computer games, watch DVDs, go on the internet, write, draw…or another million things.  And say I choose drawing, should I use pen, pencil, charcoal, oil pastel – and if I decide pen drawing, should it be on coloured paper, textured paper, in a sketch pad on loose sheets…and on and on until I’ve wasted half an hour setting up – then I start resenting the mess.

 Now I have one book next to me, one pile of stories to update and edit, and….no DVDs to watch (oops I think they ended up under my bed.)

So do you have any traditions for this time of year.  Do you feel the need to clean house and do those DIY jobs before the family descend?  And, for those deep thinkers, why the heck do I get a good feeling throwing stuff away/giving stuff away?  I can’t think of an anthropological reason why I should, but I feel superbly happy at my new sparse existence.

Thanks for reading, comments welcome!

Cutaway Magazine

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So, December first – and as one project ends another begins (365 project isn’t so much ending as….well, as continuing – but I’m past that one year mark!)

Cutaway Magazine is a project me and my writer pal Craig Pay have pulled together.  It’s a literary magazine to be released in May 2012, so from now – or January first to be exact – we are looking for submissions of amazing poetry and prose.  The magazine will be launched in Manchester – and will be available to buy from the two of us at first, and also to order on demand on Amazon.  Please check out the website, and ‘like’ us on Facebook or follow us on twitter and if you’re not exhausted by then pen us a nice piece of edgy prose, or perhaps a short poem and send it to us from wherever you are in the world.  I’ll blog about what I for one as half of the editing team will be looking for specifically in the fiction and poetry closer to the time but there is a hint already on the website.  Hopefully the resulting anthology of writing will be super-cool and who knows, this might not be a one-off after all.

Thanks guys!

November Challenges

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What would you say to writing a novel?

I expect you’d say it sounds nice but how would you fit it in?

So, if I said you have to write it in a month that wouldn’t sway you?

No, me neither.  But some super-writers are having a go, and for most of them I get the distinct feeling it isn’t the first time.  This November is National Novel Writing Month, stunted to the ugly NANOWRIMO.  Hmm, catchy.  Where you’re expected to write 50,000 words in a  month.  No, you’re right, that isn’t a novel, or at least it’s a very short novel, but I’m sure the people at NANOWRIMO would reply – feel free to write more! 

Craig Pay isn’t taking part, and what with the MA I don’t know now if I’ll bother.  I would have done it to meet like-minded individuals – They are using space at MADLAB for intensive writing sessions starting on the fourth – but the group seems a bit tight already.  Lots of whooping and high-fiving over tales of how last year went.  So I might be skulking at home after all, scribbling short stories.

Last night I went on down to The Castle on Oldham Street and sat through a very pleasurable night of readings.  Bad Language is a collection of three writers who have been organising an entertaining open-mic type night at the Castle for a year now.  I really enjoyed it, they have a Facebook page and meet one Wednesday a month.   The quality was great, and talk about value for money (it was free) there must have been ten or twelve readings. The headliner was Emma Jane Unsworth, local published novelist who read from her latest novel, and also an excerpt from a future novel.

Also regular readings are still taking place at The Octagon in Bolton, one tonight for instance! (you can ring the box office on 01204520661)

So, there seems to be lots of writing being done, whether you plan to lock yourself away for November, or not.  I will be ambling along, and since I write a lot when in the mood, I might dash off 50,000 without meaning to.  It has been heard of.  What stops me signing up in a formal kind of way, is ideas…and stamina.  The two are needed in bucket loads and after a few months writing short stories and poems I’m not in practice.  All I can say is good luck to everyone who has a go…and the disconcerting news…that the real work begins after you’ve written the 50,000 words (in my experience)

Also good luck to those who grow their facial hair for November in a bid to raise awareness of testicular cancer.  Someone at work this morning announced they’d just been diagnosed, and since I grew a month-long beard for October Project Day Zero, I might as well keep it for another month in support.  It is, after all, keeping my face rather warm.

Our Age-Of-Distractions

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It’s an old topic for me, but do you ever take notice of the town you live in?  I admit it’s something I do more since getting older and hitting thirty.  Now I can’t get from point A to point B without standing for ten minutes and wondering what some palatial Victorian building used to be, before it was a Pound Shop.  I can’t pass a post box without taking a photo of it  and marvelling that it’s stood there for over 120 years with who knows how many different kinds of people popping post into it – World War One soldiers home on leave, Boar war wives posting fresh socks to South Africa and starving marchers walking from Jarrow in the thirties, sending a postcard back to tell their families they’re fine.

This week, with Manchester Meanders shortlisted for the MBA I discovered another shortlisted blog, The Pubs of Manchester  which has certainly reminded me of the heritage surrounding us.  Is it just me, of when you see the old black and whites of grumpy factories and bedraggled slate roofs, do you feel a sadness?  When I see old industrial scenes I always remember the smell and feel of my late granddad’s old house in Withington, the dusty tea leaf kind of smell and the nicotine stained walls.  Regime and uniformity were more important then, life was lived around rules, habits and schedules.  Even TV stuck to certain schedules instead of the constant squirt of drivel we know today.  I’m not saying the past was perfect (what a cliché) with its domestic abuse, drink driving, homophobia and other isms, but something about the fact a whole different world has almost completely disappeared makes me very unhappy.  I’m not going to start wailing about Carlos Tevez and todays demonstrations in New York, it’s just that the past is important and I feel like I have to search Greater Manchester myself trying to make some sense of it.  I have to try to patch together an idea of my ancestors and the lives they lived, and what they’ve passed on to me, meanwhile thanks to my comprehensive education I can talk for an hour on the Romans, the Vikings, the Nazis and the Spanish Armada.

I got in my car this afternoon, in this mood, and drove around Leigh, Westhoughton and Atherton, taking lots of photos and getting out and having a walk around too.  In Westhoughton there’s a huge area of desolation where there used to be open cast mining.  It’s the location, funnily enough of the oldest colliery shower-block in the world, and it’s still standing.  I walked into the mucky countryside which the council have tried to establish on top of the slag-heaps and theundulating ground and there was a fire burning somewhere and it was raining and it all felt very depressing and atmospheric. And in the middle behind a mesh of barbed wire and over a very abnormally orange stream, there was a lonesome telephone pole and four horses standing still in silence.  I know they’re not pit ponies, it’s the eighties since these mines were working, but it felt timeless.  I fed them an apple and wondered how many people had walked into this landscape and wondered what life would have been like before our age-of-distraction. 

Lots of cultures value the past and their ancestors but I get the feeling we’re not all that bothered.  So I took some photos and tried to make them look retro, and I wrote a poem for your Sunday evening pleasure.  Have you discovered your family’s history, your local heritage, your national past?  Do you marvel at signs left over from another era, or do you think it’s best to move on, plug your I-pod earphones in and try not to think about anything? (A bias question perhaps?)

History Lessons
 
 
The kind of history schools teach is shite
A history of facts and figures, and I ask what and why
And it is Hitler – and they say ‘so we don’t forget.’
Instead of our past they learn Jews and Krystalnacht
They can list Auschwitz deaths but not Pretoria’s or Peterloo’s
They don’t know that their granddads died, what they did, or didn’t do
So we won’t forget and repeat –  but – since World War Two
There’s been more killed than those five-point-two million Jews
From the Polish pogroms when those Jews got home to more abuse
And Poles living in their homes dispatched them in the woods.
Russian allies slipped four times as much at least
Up the Road of Bones, to the gulag cemeteries.
In fifties China Mao’s Great Leap Forward
And another forty million people dead.
Then across to Indonesia five or six million died
In the sixties – almost as many as Hitler’s genocide.
What do you call four million Vietnamese?
Burnt in napalm sweeps of jungle incinerating trees
Over borders in Cambodia two million died
At the hands of the Khmer Rouge nineteen seventy five.
 
So genocide has happened ever since around the globe
Genocide continued before the Jew’s had even got home
So why do British kids not know their history?
Of collapsing mines, closing mines, front lines and hard times
Of means tests, unions, rationing and picket lines
Of grandparents and their parents trying hard to make things better
So their offspring won’t have to work as hard and suffer
Forgotten – folks who built our roads, and tracks and trains and rivers
Working six days and on the seventh thanking God for all he’s given.
It’s sad about the Jews but what about voting, war and oppression
Empire, cotton, pubs and parks and LS Lowry’s impressions.
The school kids think evil comes in one shape and size
It’s German, dressed in black and has bespectacled eyes
And when America dropped bombs on Japan it couldn’t do otherwise
And likewise it was for freedom when they fought the Vietnamese
And now,  the war in Afghanistan must be right?
Who knows, since the history they teach in schools is shite.
 
Thanks for comments etc.

Updates and an art lottery

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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.

Writing and Challenges

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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.