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.

Writer's tics... and finding my lobster

Lobster by Stacy Lynn Baum on Flickr

I've been thinking about writing tics. In fact, I've been thinking about one specific tic that seems to be cropping up in everything I read. I'm finding it really very annoying. It is this:

"And yet... and yet,"

I know. It's a petty thing. There's nothing really bad about it. Used correctly, it's quite an intelligently snazzy conjunction. It has been used by such literary greats as Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde. Indeed, until the overkill set in, I'd aspired to its confident little stylistic rhythm. And yet... and yet, this is the very reason it has started to get under my skin. It is like that person who talks too much, only pausing at the point at which you can't interrupt, and then presses on with another self important stream. You know how Mrs. Thatcher used to? It is tired. Overused. The sparkle has gone.

Two other things that I'm reading a lot in books that I'm Bored Bored Bored of are: writers writing novels about writers, characters who are writers, navel gazing novels about writing...(you get the picture) and things 'nestling' (phones nestling in bags, chocolates nestling in choc boxes, objects nestling in drawers) Its true sense has been lost. Please say it differently.

But, um, it would be unfair to criticise without acknowledging some of my own tics, too. I'm probably more annoyed by my own, to be honest. The worst offenders? There are always birds in my stories, usually sparrows. Often dead... My characters have names like Bea, Frank and Pete, an unhealthily narrow menage trois of names, clearly, who frequent 1920's styled independent coffee shops and drink far too many cappuccinos. When they eat out, they often order something stewy or casseroled that they dip bread in. They play with their food. And man, are they clumsy? Unable to keep the wine in their glasses. Also, they smile at each other. Far, far too much.

This week I'm trying to write something really really fresh. I heard a fantastic story on BBC Radio 4 last week.  Jenni Mills read her story 'Cleaning the Silver', an actually chilling tale with visceral descriptions of eating lobster. The lobster was a tremendous hook into a dark narrative read for International Woman's Day. It was inspiring and has set me searching for my lobster; my fresh hook. Writing tics be ware...

Does it make me a bad person...?

Image by Mia Eley www.coffeeandsnow.com/

I know I care far too much about what people think of me.

With that in mind, for ages (since roughly a week after my last post) I've been Very Bothered about not having written another blog post. I always get this nagging feeling. A bit like when you know you should have called a friend back but keep putting it off and you don't really know why.

I won't make excuses (I could... but you see, that's the whole point...) I am delighted to think people might read what I write here. But I know their world won't fall apart if there is nothing fresh on my blog for a while. Equally my world won't end, a fairy won't die, I won't suffer seven years bad luck, Santa will still come at Christmas, I will effectively still exist, even if my internet self is set on ice for a bit.

I know of many writers and bloggers who worry about this. And it eats at creative energy.

Kona MacPhee sums it up beautifully in her article 'Blogaholic' in the latest edition of Mslexia magazine. Particularly where she quotes poet and novelist Ros Barber who says "Now I blog once or twice a month and it's more like breathing on the glass to prove I'm still here."

I will probably be breathing on the glass in the next few days. But I won't worry too much if it takes me a bit longer.