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• After a short hiatus, I'm posting to the Brighton Argus marathon blog again. My most recent posts are A Frustrating Few Weeks and The Doldrums. Despite these titles, training has recently been going well.
• I planned my marathon training schedule last week and was horrified to discover I have 663 miles to go before finishing the marathon.
• Alan Moore's new magazine, Dodgem Logic is now out. I liked the review that described it as "resembling if anything, a fanzine version of Radio 4" The magazine is hoping for people to set up local franchises – hopefully it won't be long before a Brighton edition appears.
• I recently posted about Tim Clare's attempt to write 100 poems in a day. This was successful, and there's an interesting summary on his blog along with links to some of the most interesting poems produced.
• A couple of Saturday's ago was the Brighton sketchcrawl, the second time Kay Sexton has encouraged me to try drawing. Photographic proof is provided here by mockduck.

Brighton and Hove have been battered by high winds for the last week. It’s made running a chore and caused hundreds of starfish to be washed ashore. As well as other things, some of which were thoughtfully arranged by a passer-by:

 

(Photos taken on Sunday November 13th)

(#foundwhilewalking is a game on twitter, which @kaysexton started. People tweet accounts of interesting things they’ve seen while on foot. Some recent examples are:

• @LaGirafa The ragged skeleton of a leopard print umbrella, a purple hat in flight, scarily angry awnings
• @asalted Rain, puddles, a picture book rainbow that looked as if started by my house…
• @laurencehill de-flowered bouquet dumped on a bin. Failed romance? http://twitpic.com/p3gr5
• @orbific tiny bumps of ships on the horizon; the west pier looking like a sea monster.
• @madhavaji http://twitpic.com/p808k – I let my love run in circles
• @orbific debris among pebbles, storm-scatterded on the promenade. Seaweed, a flattened shotgun cartridge and a champagne cork

I’m going to miss my seafront route to work)

I've had a lovely few days relaxing with family in Derbyshire but I need to head back to Brighton today. While the journey up here takes three hours, the return is a five hour epic – and that's without any replacement bus services. Fortunately my copy of Short Circuit arrived yesterday, so I'll have plenty of time to read that.

This evening I'll be appearing in Brighton at Short Fuse's Nouvelle Noir night:

A line-up of contemporary noir fiction, rooted in Series Noir, film noir and the pulp novels of the 40s and 50s, this Short Fuse special will see local crime writer Danny Hogan headlining. Danny will read from his pulp novel 'Killer Tease' a novella set in Brighton,where a psychopathic burlesque dancer takes her violent revenge on a string of venal males who discover they have bitten off more than they can chew. Hogan is the man behind Pulp Press, a publishing company which delivers the best and newest in pulp fiction. "From hard boiled crime to rockabilly sleaze via a few Westerns and tales of delinquency." Also featuring Brian Bell aka Charlie McQuaker, A.K.Benedict, James Burt and Tara Gould.

Doors open 8pm at the Komedia Studio Bar, and entry is £5. As I've said before, it going to be a good night with an interesting line-up. You should come! Meanwhile I'm off to East Midlands Parkway to begin my epic journey home.

The last few weeks have seemed very busy, and I’ve not had chance to post everything I meant to. So, here are some links from the last few weeks:

• Last Tuesday was the sixth sparks night. There were some great stories, including my old friend @LaGirafa‘s first reading, and a couple of stories from Vanessa Gebbie  (who blogged about the night here). It was also good to see Jonathan Pinnock (blog post here) who I met at London’s Liar’s league last year. Sparks Night is a friendly, well-curated evening – submissions are being accepted for Sparks 7 until November 14th.
• I had some good responses to my Literature network post on seven ways to be a great writer, but my favourite was this one: “a better description would be Seven Tips for Becoming a Great Poser“. I will have to email the chap when my next post is online.
• I’ve been submitting interesting snippets of overheard conversation to the Evening Argus Overheard in Brighton blog – here and here. The entry deemed unsuitable for a family newspaper was this one: “It’s like Allen Ginsberg had this magic penis and every poet that touched it became famous“
• Lovely six-word-story from exmosis: “Our last photograph together. We smiled.“
• Wise advice from Hawker’s pot:
  “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so do be careful.“

Last Tuesday I read at the 5th Sparks night, a flash-fiction evening held at Brighton's Three-and-ten. I opened the night with my story 'meat', a tale of vegetarians, bondage and Internet pornography. At Sparks each of the stories is accompanied by a specially commissioned photograph and I read in front of an image that included a bare-chested Burt Reynolds.

The night had a well-chosen mix of stories. Sadly Nik Perring could not attend, but I enjoyed his story 'Sharkboy', which was read by Jo Mortimer in his absence. The night also featured poet Tim Wells, whose new collection, Rougher Yet, is fantastic. The only blemish on the night was my decision to go for a meal in Buddies afterwards.

Some exciting things are on the horizon for Sparks, including talk of an anthology in the near future. The next night is on November 3rd and submissions are currently open. You'll have to be quick though, as they close on Thursday 15th. The guidelines are: '1000 words or fewer, any theme. Send in the body of an e-mail to sparksbrighton@hotmail.co.uk and if accepted, come and read.' Sparks is a lovely, friendly night and well worth submitting to.

Me in action, photographed by Nikki Acott

My new post for the Literature Network went live yesterday: 7 Tips for being a Great Writer.

Nobody has written the how-to-write guide I want to see (although one friend used Ted Morgan’s Literary Outlaw as a template, with disastrous but compelling results). Life is too short for me to write my ideal writing guide, but here are the top seven tips I’d like aspiring writers to follow.

The piece was driven by an irritation with the tone taken by much writing advice. Too many recommendations suggest that they are universal, and rules like ‘show, don’t tell’ are repeated without full critical consideration. In addition, there is a warm, encouraging tone to much of the advice given, something I’ve questioned previously.

(The popularity of writing advice makes me wonder if more writers are reading discussions of how-to-write than are reading literary magazines?)

One article that inspired my tips on Great Writing was Sara Crowley’s Why you can take your “You must write every day” advice and shove it… I chose not to link to the piece as the section of my article attacking the write-every-day rule had very different aims in mind; but I recommend read Sara’s piece, which also questions the idea that writing advice is universal.

I enjoyed writing my 7 tips, and reading the responses (I’m in the middle of replying to the comments). One thing that has been interesting is that people have attacked particular points while ignoring some of the more irresponsible ones.

Following all the tips in my article would be foolish for most people but I hope the point is obvious: that for others this might be better advice than the more conservative suggestions available.

Last night I read at Short Fuse, as part of their Tainted Love night. I read 'LIBRARYS', a piece originally published in Penumbra a few years back. It was a very busy night, which made me a little more nervous than usual, but I seemed to do OK – and, being on first, I was able to relax the rest of the night. Tara and co. had picked a great mix of stories. My favourite was the second, a piece called 'Chasing Murakami'. There was also a brilliant open-mike story about living statues that rounded off the evening. Short Fuse is a very sociable night, and it was lovely to catch up with some old friends.

One of the most interesting things about reading out loud is how some stories work and others done. One of my favourite stories to read aloud is 'A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand', which always seems to get a good response. I've tried a few times to prepare it for print submission but it doesn't work so well on the page. Equally, I've got a few pieces that have been published which I don't think would be effective for a listening audience.

LIBRARYS was originally written as a series of bullet points, so I'd not considered reading it aloud. When I was invited to read it at Ride the Word in London, I had to think how best to perform it. In the end I settled for putting each point on a separate index card, which worked well; so much so that I've used index cards for other stories since. For some stories it's much freer than reading from A4 paper.

Among the other highlights of the weekend were Friday night's Jam at the skiff, which included guitar, cello, drum machine and the Alphasphere, a musical device made from espresso cups and wires (pictures of both are below).

I'd been planning to see the film Morris: A life with Bells on, but tickets sold out some time before. I did end up going (sadly, due to a friend's misfortune) and found myself at a spectacular screening. I'd expected a relaxed Sunday afternoon audience, but instead there were dozens of morris dancers, some of them performing outside.

These days you don't need to remind people to turn off their phones; but before this screening started with an announcement asking the morris dancers to remove their bells. Morris was the sort of film I love, like Spellbound or, um, Shakes the Clown, which transform a small subject into a life-or-death matter. Watching the film with an audience who knew the subject well was particularly interesting, since you could tell the in-jokes that would otherwise go unnoticed by civilians.

All-in-all, despite sleeping through Saturday afternoon and a vicious headache before Short Fuse, a pretty good weekend.

Last night I took the bus home and it was full of people dressed up to go clubbing, shouting and drinking cider. This morning I woke to grey skies and rain. I walked to work along the promenade and found a lonely remnant of someone's Sunday night.

Today I am on the wordia site, defining the word of the day, wound: ‘the past tense and past participle of wind’.

The wordia project is a ‘visual dictionary’ which features short films defining particular words. Last week I went to the Jubilee Library with Rosy Carrick and Kay Sexton to be recorded for the site. Being filmed was a strange experience. I was very conscious of the stumbles and pauses in my speech, but Rob seems to have produced an edit which makes me sound more fluent than I did at the time. Watching myself on video is a strange experience and I’m more comfortable with it than I expected (although I definitely need a haircut!)

Kay blogs about the afternoon here. Kay defined row (to propel a boat by using oars) and Rosy defined note (a brief summary or record in writing, esp a jotting for future reference). Thanks to Rob Harper for filming and editing, and to Kay for inviting me to take part.

Rosy will be giving a talk on Thursday October 8th on ‘Cannibalism and Love Poetry in Performance’ at David Bramwell’s Catalyst Club.

I've got three readings coming up in the next two months:

23rd September: Glue Velvet I'm reading at Glue Gun 91's David Lynch-themed special. My story (which doesn't have a name) is inspired by Twin Peaks and features a musical soundtrack. I'm very excited about this piece and can't wait to see how it works live. The event starts at 8:30pm in the Victory and is absolutely free.

6th October: Sparks V I'll be reading my short story about vegetarian bondage, 'Meat' at the next Sparks event. I'll publish full details of the night nearer the time.

29th October: Telling Lies – Fear of the Dark. I'm helping organise a Halloween spoken word night at the Marlborough next month. There are some exciting acts lined up, and the night be far more than just another spoken word night. I'll do a full post on this once I have the flyer but, meanwhile, put a note in your diary.