The long and short of it

I have been reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch for over a month now and I am still only half way through. I am a stupidly slow reader. Although, to be fair, it is 864 pages long.

Generally speaking, I'm enjoying it. But I wonder whether it goes on, just a bit, in places?

The writing is beautiful and evocative. The scene near the beginning in the art gallery is particularly powerful. But could the whole book have done with a hearty edit?

There is one particular tic that's been getting up my nose. Phrases like 'We always...', 'We sometimes...', and 'Often we'd...' seem to crop up fairly regularly. I don't like these generalised flashbacks. It feels a bit sloppy. I want to see a scene in which the regularity or repetitious nature of whatever it is they are doing is shown rather than told. I think it is partly because in everyday life, when someone says "we always do this/that..." it often means they've done it twice, or even only once but like to be perceived as the type of person/couple/family to often do that thing, whatever it may be. I don't trust it.

A single set scene, crystal clear with everything the reader needs to glean the surrounding story from, is so much more powerful. And Donna Tartt writes this kind of scene so brilliantly throughout the novel that these broad stroke flashbacks feels unnecessary. Like I'm being stuffed with story.

Perhaps my reaction stems from the amount of time I spend with short fiction - reading it, writing it, editing it - where every sentence, every word, has to work and where the best stories don't rely on generalised flashback (or, more and more I'm finding, don't rely on flashback at all.) I've just reworked a story that I wrote a long time ago and found myself hacking away at the ugly flashback scenes, to tighten the prose.

This week I'm also reading an Everyman collection of Russian short stories. In contrast to Tartt's weighty Russian equivalents, such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace, these bite sized stories demonstrate that size isn't everything. With short fiction, it is so much about what you leave out, the unspoken moments, that gives a story its punch. Tolstoy's 'Korney Vasiliev' gives the life story of a man's undoing in just over 20 pages. Gogol's 'The Cloak' explores class, status and society through a man's need of a coat. These narratives leave something for the reader. It is the sealine viewed longingly through coin operated binoculars, rather than an overwhelming tidal surge.

This week I read Poor Souls' Light, a collection of seven winter ghost stories by independent publishing collective Curious Tales.

I'm hugely late to the party on this one (nothing new there!) The collection came out well before Christmas when I bought it as a gift to myself. I've been saving it until I could consume the whole book in one sitting, which probably isn't the recommended way to do it unless (like me) you enjoy steeping in that unsettling feeling genuinely frightening stories can give you.

All seven stories draw inspiration from Robert Aickman. My favourites are probably Alison Moore's 'The Spite House' and Jenn Ashworth's 'Dinner For One'. But there really isn't a weak story here.

The artwork on the cover and accompanying the text is by Beth Ward. The dark, shadowy images are the perfect companion to the written narratives.

Read more about the fantastic team behind Curious Tales here. You can buy a copy of the book or the art prints here.

The Agenda

Today I received an unsolicited phone call from a company offering me PPI compensation. I get a lot of calls like this, despite being on the TPS list. If you work from home you probably will, too. You will also understand how annoying they are. Mr S suggests I just don't answer the phone. But as a freelancer, if a number comes up that looks halfway legit, I kinda have to answer in case it's work related.

I've had various strategies for getting rid of these people. I went through a phase of just being Very Angry at them. I'd demand to speak to their line manager. I'd demand to be taken off their records. I'd tell them how Very Angry I was to have had my working day interrupted. I would finish the call feeling rattled and Very Angry for quite a while. And then, because I'm generally not good at being Very Angry, I'd feel guilty about my behaviour; embarrassed at how I'd spoken to a fellow human who was just trying to do their job.

My next tack was simply to hang up. But that felt incredibly rude, too. The passive aggressive sort of rude.

So I decided (and this seemed like a perfectly obvious next step at the time) to make gentle animal noises down the line until they went away. Generic bird sounds or what I describe as the Lonely Cat.

Then I realised that it was weird. (I gave it to a character in a story to do and understood via third person quite how sinister it was.)

In my fiction writing I've been thinking a lot about dialogue and how to make it feel authentic. Every character in a story needs an agenda all of their own, ensuring that no character is simply a foil to get some point across for the other. The things they say will lean into their own agenda. The dialogue that I admire most from other writers is the dialogue that tightly pits characters' agendas at each other. Both have something they want, both will only shift so far before they start tugging in their own direction. This works most effectively I think when the desired thing is in some way not altogether known to them - when it's subtle or cerebral. For example, the stilting dialogue between the man and woman in Hemingway's Cat In the Rain.


So today when Kevin rang me from Pearl Refunds, with a very clear agenda for helping me reclaim PPI, I decided I had quite a different agenda. He had interrupted me mid sentence on some new writing set in woodland. So I asked him about his favourite animal. I asked him if he liked squirrels. He wasn't sure about squirrels so I explained a bit about them. Bushy tail, acorns etc.

He said "snails?"

So we had a bit of a chat about snails. Snails were more his thing, after PPI, of course, which he mentioned again.

But I was persistent about the squirrel agenda. "They were in decline," I told him. "But they seem to be making a comeback."

"Snails?"

"No, squirrels."

After a bit he sighed and said, "Mrs Schofield, do you want PPI?"

"No," I said.

We politely said goodbye. It all felt very civilised.

BBC Radio 4 Open Book

Following the release of the Beta Life anthology a couple of weeks ago, Martyn Amos and I were invited to BBC Radio 4 to be interviewed by Mariella Frostrup for Open Book. It was an interesting experience... luckily prerecorded... which meant my faltering answers were cut down to something that sounded sensible.

The interview played out on Radio 4 on Sunday, and then repeated on Thursday. It was an immense privilege, albeit a terrifying one, doing the interview. And a special kind of nervous when part of my story, The Bactogarden, was read out on the programme. To have a story (well... an extract from one) read on Radio 4 realised one of my writing dreams. I feel proud and very lucky to have been involved in this Comma Press project with so many fantastic writers and scientist consultants.

The interview can be heard here.

PS. For more Radio 4 loveliness, here is a link to a short story series I enjoyed recently, Short Rides in Fast Machines; brilliant short stories commissioned by Sweet Talk Productions from three of the best - Toby Litt, Adam Marek and Tania Hershman.

This week the Comma Press Short Story course begins. The course is hosted by Madlab, an organisation coordinating a fantastic schedule of events and activities, all centred around technical and creative innovation and invention. I am thrilled to be leading the writing course this time. I'm particularly looking forward to meeting the course participants, and beginning the process of writing and learning together - exploring the brilliant, diverse and exciting things short stories can do.

One of the most challenging parts of the course preparation so far has been creating the reading list. During sessions we will study several short stories from the masters (contemporary and classic) - examples to help us develop our own narrative structures, character, voice...  But how do you reduce all the incredible, jewel-like examples out there to a reading list of just twelve stories? And how do you overcome the temptation of personal favourites in pursuit of balance and variety? (At one point, my list featured three (three!) Hilary Mantel stories...)

After much agonising and coffee, and a bit of guidance from Comma Editor Ra Page, I just about got there. And I'm really looking forward to exploring some fantastic work by writers including Hemingway, Conan Doyle, Carver, Joyce, Mansfield, Adam Marek... (and I still sneaked a Mantel on there!) with the group. But casting out so many amazing stories was painful so I am hoping we can compile a working list of go-to short stories that course participants will add to as well with their long term favourites and also stories they discover and fall in love with along the creative journey.

But more than reading, I'm excited to begin the writing process with the group - seeing what stories we bring; creating unexpected narratives, pushing ourselves to try something new and sharpening our writing skills together.

Beta-Life Launch Week

This week Comma Press launches its latest anthology of science into fiction. Beta-Life: Stories from an A-Life Future is a collection of stories written by authors collaborating with scientist consultants in leading research areas of artificial life, future technology and unconventional computing. All the stories in the collection are set in or around 2070.  I was delighted to contribute a story, 'The Bactogarden', working closely with my fantastic consultant Prof. Martyn Amos.

Now I finally have my hands on a copy, it is fascinating to see how other writers have taken on the project, particularly their perception of the world in 2070. It is intriguing how certain things recur in the stories (quinoa, video walls, climate refugees...) Perhaps we've all been watching the same SF/ futuristic films or have somehow synchronised our google research paths. But predicting the future and keeping it in hand through a narrative was something I found delightfully challenging with this project. Perhaps that is why I particularly admire Martyn Bedford's story, 'The Sayer of the Sooth' which not only creates a very convincing portrayal of the world in 2070, but also riffs against it in a self-aware primary narrative, the story effectively folding back on itself. It is hugely inventive, without compromising the grit of the central story. I also love Claire Dean's story 'Making Sandcastles' which explores human issues around personal fabricating technology, and Zoe Lambert's story 'Keynote' which deals with collective consciousness. Adam Marek's story 'Growing Skyscrapers' is another of my favourites so far in the collection, imagining a world where high rise buildings are grown organically, like trees.

At times during this process, trying to imagine the world in 60 years time has left me blundering dangerously close to something that resembled the Jetsons, and eventually coming to the conclusion, with the brilliant editorial support of Ra Page and consultant Martyn Amos, that in many ways things won't be that different to now; ultimately humans are humans are humans... regardless of location, situation, technology advances or time frame. We have the same motivations, desires and drives. Predicting what the future looks like is tricky. I recently remembered an episode of that dire 70's sitcom Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em where Frank and Betty are staying in a futuristic house belonging to Betty's brother. It's all sliding doors, retracting TV screens and hammy rotating storage. Predictably, with Frank around, chaos ensues. The technological advances were, clearly, less predictable - and laughable now. In 2070, I will be 90 years old. I wonder if I will look back on the stories in the Beta-Life collection in my old age and smile to myself about the bits we got so right, and perhaps others that were a little shy of the mark. Although in reading the admirable stories from other writers in this collection, I am even more convinced that it is less about trying to make wholesale predictions about the future and so much more about dreaming the possibilities within a solid grounding of scientific truth.

Beta-Life launched as part of the Manchester Science Festival. See here for more details.

See here to purchase a copy of Beta-Life.

The Short Review: Unthology 5

My review of Unthology 5 went up onto The Short Review website this week - a brilliant site dedicated exclusively to the short story.

I am enthusiastic about the Unthology collections that have come before but I particularly admire this fifth collection. It was a pleasure to read and a delight to delve into for reviewing purposes.

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story” (F Scott Fitzgerald). This is a truth reflected in many of the stories in this glittering collection. Several revolve around the moment at which the secret thought, the thing a character most wants to conceal, bleeds out into the world. Underneath the layers, we glimpse the raw, challenging or uncomfortably familiar. And how delicious it is to know the secret thoughts of others...

Read the full review here.

Unthank Books, responsible for the Unthology series, are already preparing the next anthology of work. Read here for more about what they do, and submission guidelines.