Are we all a tiny bit self centred... or is it just me?

Although sport is probably one of my Least Favourite Things I really enjoyed watching the Olympics. I found myself irretrievably hooked. Even the dancing horses, erm... dressage, and the diving. I want Jess Ennis to be my bff and I keep doing the Mo Farah Mo-Bot at strangers.

The Olympics, sports in general, have never held much appeal for me. It was taught appallingly at my school by some of the PE staff. I was given a really negative report once because I wasn't very good at running. Constructive? Not very. Actually, when I returned to deliver an assembly at the same school years later and spoke about completing the Great North Run, the same teacher audibly scoffed. Nice.

So why were the Olympics so enticing this time? Why did I find myself crying with uncontrollable and embarrassing frequency? Hard to admit, but I think it's self centredness. Maybe we are all a tiny bit like this? When we hear a song on the radio or see friends getting married, or watch some crappy story line unfolding on a TV programme and feel that lump growing in the throat, probably part of it is empathy, but the greater part is because somewhere in our minds it has tapped into our own feelings, morphed into our own experiences and turned us inward to understand the emotions around our own life experiences, struggles and joys.

So the Olympics this time, the race, the striving for something significant, something that feels vitally important, tapped directly into why I write. And like the sports men and women, the fact that writing is something I enjoy completely, feel lucky to be able to do, even when I'm smarting after another failure or rejection letter, I want to keep trying. I find writing really very difficult. I don't think I'm particularly good at it a lot of the time. But I know that if I try really really hard, and keep trying, I will get better. Half the battle is just keeping going when other people have given up; keep going because it matters too much to stop. And to watch, listen and learn from the people around who are doing it too. Lessons learnt - keep going, try harder, and develop some sort of Mo-Bot style victory move for when things are going to plan.  

MCBF ....got the teeshirt...

Today I volunteered at a Manchester Children's Book Festival event. It was a poetry reading with Carol Ann Duffy and fellow poets Mandy Coe, Philip Gross, Grace Nichols and John Agard with fantastic musical accompaniment from John Sampson and his wide range of wind instruments.

This event really worked to my strengths - my obsession with health and safety ("where are the exits and disabled lifts?") And chaperoning school children and teachers to Lecture Theatre 1 honed my cat-herding skills. Actually, the young people were really well behaved, as were the poets... mostly! The whole event was planned with the kind of attention to detail that excites my youth work sensibilities - everything ready on arrival, a clear tick list spreadsheet and I even got a snazzy teeshirt! The event was brilliant. You can read more on the official blog here. A great do! Thank you to the performers and Manchester Writing School for organising such a great festival event.

Back to School

I spent yesterday shadowing fantastic poet Ian Bland at a primary school in Rochdale. Ian writes poetry for children and travels all over the country running poetry workshops in schools. He is absolutely brilliant. By the end of the day, every Junior child had written their own poem. Ian is definitely someone to book if you are a primary school Literacy Coordinator or Head Teacher. Shadowing was a great opportunity to see primary school workshopping modelled so that I can refine and improve my own skills and ideas for running creative writing workshops.

It really is difficult to pay bills from just writing stories (sorry, if this sounds whingy... I know I'm lucky to be able to do what I'm doing. And please no one mention JKR...) Working as a writer in schools is a way to supplement my wage. But actually the financial incentive is not the major motivator for me. I just really miss working with people. There is something horribly indulgent in spending all day every day writing. What I loved about the youth work job I packed in to write full time is that it felt like I was actually doing something constructive in other people's lives. I felt like I was contributing to society. Being useful.

I realised how much I miss working with children and young people and LOVED putting that 'hat' back on again yesterday.

Wowfest Flash

When Mr S and I went to FACT cinema in Liverpool to see Prometheus, I had to subdue a moment of sudden delight as I saw a piece of my flash fiction stuck on the wall by the cinema bar. All the entries into the Wowfest flash fiction competition are stuck up there at the moment. I had sort of forgotten that that was going to happen. Honestly! So I affected a nonchalant air; a 'this happens all the time' shrug, and then posed by it for a couple of snaps. I am so completely transparent. Sadly, mine didn't make the shortlist, but the three fantastic winners can be found here, including one of my favourites from brilliant poet, writer and blogger Clare Kirwan.

It does look rather lovely, with all the stories pasted up. Something to read whilst your companion goes for a pre-film wee. Ideal really. The theme was the end of the world. I have to say we didn't make much of Prometheus, it was less than earth shattering. But Wowfest's lovely installation easily made up for it for me.

Oh, blimey. I'm reading one of my flash fiction pieces at Flashtag's Writing Competition event in Chorlton tomorrow. And as usual, before any reading, I feel pretty vomity today. The story is about allotment gardening sexploits; affairs, lies and hardening off. Spare my blushes. I'll have to pretend I'm not the prude I am for a couple of hours (...or perhaps release my inner Mistress.)

So today, I'm trying to edit something for the Bridport Prize, as the deadline is looming at the end of this month. I've had a series of very interrupted days where I've got to the point that I want to be rude to people and slam phones / doors etc. and be left alone for more than one hour altogether to get stuck into my work. Does everyone working from home experience this? People assume you're fair game to be visited / interrupted because you are in? Usually I don't mind, just shuffle in a coffee break I was going to have anyway... but this week is turning a bit epic. To the point that I wonder if I'm the victim of some odd Derren Brown mind game, where they are seeing how far I can be pushed before I sort of explode in violently criminal ways, only to be hypnotised back to mild mannered unassertiveness.

So anyway, on with Bridport. I'm working on a short story and maybe I'll send in a flash fiction entry, too. It would be rude not to. I won't win. I know I won't. The closest I've ever got with Bridport was the shortlist. But a story stands no chance if it doesn't even make it off your screen. And there is something important about seeing the process through and sending work out. When it bounces back I regard it slightly differently, like I want to keep it in play. It needs to keep moving. So I tighten, change, rearrange, swap feedback with other writers and then ping it off again. Hopeful that, eventually, it will catch somewhere.

National Flash Fiction Day

I love a good flash, me. Tiny complete micro stories of up to about 500 words. David Gaffney, a brilliant writer of flash fiction, writes about it here in the Guardian. And today is the first national celebration of the tiny genre.


There's a minority who are a bit sniffy about flash fiction... making comments like it's an exercise for writing not reading etc. I'm usually the first to back down in any argument, just for a peaceful life, but I would say these doubters are just plain wrong. And probably idiots, too. (And if I hear/read another 'flash-in-the-pan pun I might micro-punch someone.)


Flash fiction is deceptively hard to write well. There's a lot of crap ones that fall into anecdote, or something like your dad would tell as a joke when he's trying to do stand up. 


What I love is that to be a good flash fiction, every single word works really hard. Every word and stanza is chewed over, moved round, tightened like a nut into place to create a really closely honed story. At the same time it needs to feel effortless - like it sort of just hatched perfectly from an egg or something. The reader shouldn't, in my opinion, feel like they are expected to step carefully round it like a piece of abstract art. They should enter into it and consume. It has to be enjoyed without feeling like the writer is leaning over your shoulder to check that you 'got' it. 


Below, is a flash I wrote. It's not my best, but it's the shortest flash I've ever written at 165 words. And that seemed pertinent for today. I hope you enjoy!

Apocalyptic Middle Age

When it happened we went underground and ate tinned meat and lentils someone had thought to bring.

Through shadow days and sulphurous nights we slowly digested ourselves and tried to hold our snippy tongues. We found ancient, urgent entertainment. Within a year we’d sporned our tendrils further down. Babies wriggled the echoing, narrow gauge tunnels, their eyes filming like Mexican Tetras.

Grounded and trapped we grew nostalgic for a past that our children would never grasp or comprehend like us. Breathlessly recalling details by flickering light; Fraggle Rock, Slouch Socks and Teddy Ruxpin... Pop Tarts and Party Rings… Paula Abdul, Magic Eye and those thumbed pages in Forever… Skip-Its, He Man and NKOTB Hangin’ Tough...

And then someone suggested it might all be over.

We mushroomed through the crust. Emerged. Just brushed our feet through the dust of what was. A lonely, orange moon floated like a toy we’d outgrown and we set our children down into the ash of their future.

Burning Bridges

 In the process of spring tidying, I unearthed some notebooks full of angsty poetry and notes from my adolescence. They're embarrassing. They're cringy. But, my word, how much we fudge our memories. I think a lot of people forget what it was really like (honestly, without the gloss or protection of time's passage) to be a kid. Those who have kept similarly cringy notebooks might identify with this. Flicking through the yellowing pages and feeling the stab of things you hadn't quite remembered right; the complex friendships, obsessions with (mostly unsuitable) boys through endless reams of imitation poetry. I discovered Adrian Henri when I was in my early teens and much of the writing in these little notebooks has his stamp all over it. I am blushing just writing this...  

I decided they had to go because I would be mortified if anyone ever read them. They're intensely personal, aching with hormonal over-emphasis of probably insignificant situations and events, but when I wrote them they were important to me no matter how petty the content seems now. They're informative of who I was then, and ultimately make a piece of the picture of the adult I am now and will be in the future. This is not for public consumption. It is boring to anyone except me and perhaps those who really (really) love me.  Writers, you know that moment when you're at a creative writing workshop and someone is reading their piece of fiction and you realise with sickening certainty that what they are reading is autobiography thinly veiled as fiction? That.

Also, they're not reflective of the writer I am today. Every time I write, I try to get a tiny bit better at it. To see these early awkward attempts is painful... there is a need to let go of it. Move on.

So I burnt them on our BBQ. I know - a bit dramatic for some stupid teen scribblings. But it felt right. Besides, our shredder is broken and bin day isn't until next Tuesday. So. Funnily enough they didn't burn that well, as if they were resisting it. A bit of lighter fluid did the job (pyromaniac at heart...) but I lost my nerve when the smoke started getting a bit thick and, panicking about neighbours calling the fire brigade, I doused the lot with the hose. It could have been a romantically poignant moment, but it became a bit of a farce. That will teach me to navel gaze and to just get on with writing.