Category: Writing

In a stunning feat of derring-do, poet Tim Clare is attempting to write 100 poems today. Tim Clare is a talented performance poet, who recently played a great set at Hammer&Tongue. He was also part of the show Found in Translation, which I saw in London last year, and the writer of We Can't All Be Astronauts, a lovely book about not being a bestselling writer.

In his blog, Tim has talked about speed poetry, where groups of poets write new work in 10 minutes. This is something I'm very interested in after my experiments with Write Club. In one recent post, Mr. Clare talked about the benefits of speed writing on his work:

"Each speed poetry session, I might hear between three and twenty new poems read out to me by their authors. Each one gave me hints on different ways of approaching the same subject matter or interpreting the same phrase – oh yes, I'd think, a poem can sound like found dialogue, or it can be like a little third-person short story with line breaks, or it can have a chorus like a song, or repeated lines, or take all its similes from a particular lexical field, or be presented as instructions, or just be a list of stuff, or be an open letter to somebody, or be in praise of something, or adopt the style of another type of text like a newspaper report. Slowly, I was building up a repetoire of options for when I got the next title… Doing speed poetry regularly helps abolish a fear of blank pages. You learn to just roll your fucking sleeves up and have a bash."

The attempt starts today at 9:00 GMT and there's a blog set up for the poems. Tim is planning about eight minutes a poem, and will be posting the titles on twitter as he starts each one so people can play along. I'm sorry that I'll be at work most of the day and unable to watch until the evening.

Last night was the second Write Club, run by Ellen de Vries and myself. Write Club is a flash fiction writing event (no, definitely not a workshop) which sprang from Brighton's Write Club networking group. The night has the following rules:

• The night is divided into rounds. Each round has a prompt image and a time limit of 15, 10, 5 or 2 minutes.
• Everyone writes a story or poem 'inspired' by the image
• Everyone then takes a turn reading what they've written, whether they're happy with it or not.
• There is no formal critique of the pieces.
• Nobody is allowed to apologise or pre-empt their work – what you've stands or fall on its own merits.

(We work very hard at not making Fight Club references, as shown by my restraint in the list above. But last night did feel a little reminiscent of the movie, with 18 of us in the basement of the Skiff after hours. Word of mouth had brought in more people than last time, some of whom I didn't know personally. For what it's worth, I see Ellen as the Tyler Durden figure).

I felt more nervous this time because of the larger group. I wanted everyone to leave feeling they'd had a worthwhile evening. And it was, of course, guaranteed that I'd have a projector glitch half-way through the night. Even so, I think people enjoyed the evening and the approach we've taken.

I don't know if it was my nerves, but I was less happy in general with the work I produced this time. I found it harder to come up with ideas, facing a blank sheet three minutes through one of the five-minute rounds. Even though Ellen and I choose the pictures, we don't manage to prepare ideas in advance and the prompts end up being as hard for us as everyone else.

Despite feeling less sure about my work, there were two pieces from last night that I'd like to do more with which, I guess, is good going (and better than last time). But the main thing was that I had a fun evening. I heard some amusing, interesting and thought-provoking stories, some of which seemed well-formed despite the short time available.

Ellen and I are still tinkering with the format. Some ideas and prompts have worked well in the last two sessions, other things not so well, but I'm very excited about the third Write Club session, which will be coming soon…

If you want to play along at home, the pictures we chose (CC-licensed photos from flickr tagged with Brighton) were:

1. Ghosts on the shore (10 minute round)
2. chickens (5 minute round)
3. Pac-Man Drinking (2 minute round)
4. Fish and chips (15 minute round)
5. movie still #6 (5 minute round)
6. The Head (2 minute round)

Thanks to everyone who came, and thank you to the Skiff for providing a fantastic venue

Sunday travel on East-Midlands trains is a trial, with the journey to St Pancras taking twice as long as during the week. The one advantage of this is that it provides some quiet time for reading. The weekend before last I received my copy of Vanessa Gebbie's new book, Short Circuit, a collection of essays on writing short stories. I read the book over the weekend and finished it on my epic crawl to London.

Short Circuit is a very good book. It was refreshingly free of mysticism, offering practical advice and techniques. Being a collection there are many different voices, some even contradicting one another as Vanessa has pointed out. Not every piece in the book spoke to me, but I don't think it should have done – I imagine every writer could find something useful in this collection. Some of the things I found most interesting are below:

• My favourite piece was by David Gaffney. Gaffney has written two collections of microfiction, Sawn-off Tales and Aromabingo. Microfictions fascinate me, and I've found homes for a few sub-100 word stories. Not all of my pieces have worked, and Gaffney offers some interesting advice on structuring tiny stories. Most useful was his suggestion to put a microfiction's ending in the middle to avoid the punch-line effect. Great advice, and something I can use in my own work.
• Alex Keegan's piece, '24: The importance of theme' was very interesting, starting with a discussion of theme, then discussing how theme can be explored through the use of character. It's a compelling argument, and gave me some ideas for fixing a few stagnant stories.
• Elaine Chew talks about the epiphany ending for short stories, "sudden or dawning change upon or realizations of inner truth for a protagonist based on the events of the story" Chew questions how realistic an approach this is, how such stories often rely on time stopping as the character is changed. With such an ending the reader does not see any resulting change in the character's actions. Using a story by Lorrie Moore as a model, Chew suggests a series of epiphanic footprints are more realistic, "the dribble-down effect of a life-changing realization."
• Paul Magrs essay was fun, a quirky list of thoughts on creative writing, written at the end of a term teaching workshops
• The most fascinating piece was Sarah Salway's discussion, 'Stealing Stories', particularly in light of the scandals this summer. Salway focusses on stories heard from family and friends, or found in newspapers. In her introduction, however, she quotes TS Eliot's line that "Mediocre writers borrow, great artists steal", comparing such theft to stealing a car: if the car is stripped down or resprayed, it will be unrecognisable to the original owners. Which seems to support the view that theft, particularly of virtual goods, doesn't count if no-one notices that a crime has been committed. It's a fascinating and provocative essay, which amusingly practises what it preaches.

Short Circuit is a fun book. It's certainly given me more techniques to work with than most writing manuals I've read. Well worth the time.

Ellen de Vries and I will be running another free writing workshop on November 23rd.

As with our previous workshop, the aim is to produce stories based on photographs, then share them with the other attendees. Each round of the workshop is done to a time-limit, which varies between fifteen minutes and two. The event might sound imposing, everyone produced work interesting and complete work, even in the two minute round. One of the previous attendees, Tom Hume, has posted about  his experience of the event.

The event starts at 7pm on November 23rd and will again be at The Skiff, 49 Cheltenham Place, Brighton BN1 4AB. If you'd like to join in then turn up on the night or mail me

Tonight I hosted a flash fiction workshop at the Skiff with Ellen de Vries as part of Write Club. The evening was something of an experiment, but it seems to have worked very well.

The night was divided into four rounds. In each round we projected a creative commons photo from flickr on a screen. Everyone in the group then wrote a story inspired by the photo. Afterwards each person took turns to read what they'd written. Apologies were banned – you read what you wrote and let it stand or fall on its merits. In the first round people spent fifteen minutes writing; after that came rounds of ten, five and finally two minutes.

I'd expected the finished work to be scrappy, sometimes left unfinished when the time expired. I also expected a few squibs, where the story hadn't worked and there was no time left to salvage anything. I thought it would be interesting to acknowledge the part played by dissatisfaction and failure in the creative process.

For me, the biggest surprise of the evening was how good the work was. I heard 35 stories (one person arrived after the first round) and each of them was strong and more-or-less complete. Any of them could be developed into a complete piece, given time and polishing. I'd expected the evening to produce some interesting lessons about writing; instead it produced some exciting and entertaining work that I loved listening to.

We're definitely going to do another session soon. Tonight has been the most fun I've had writing in ages. And, to quote Mr. Hume: "first rule of write club was: you don't make any fight club references when talking about write club". Mercifully, I kept to that rule.

The picture below is from exmosis, and was the image used in the 10-minute round:

Hello!

I'm going to be running a writing workshop on October 26th with Ellen de Vries as part of Brighton writing group Write Club. To quote the announcement:

Monday 26th October, 7-9 pm
at The Skiff. 49 Cheltenham Place, Brighton BN1 4AB
Not for the faint hearted.

Challenge yourself. This writing workshop will put you on the spot – you have no choice – you have to write a poem or short story for a set amount of time, and you HAVE TO perform it.

We’ll be writing for 20 mins, then 10 mins, then 5 mins, and performing our work at each stage. Yes we’re scared too. Who knows what will happen? Its an exercise in writing with adrenaline and driving out those pesky whiny inner critics for an evening. Join us 🙂

I'm not a big fan of workshops as a means of critique but I think they can be an excellent environment for sparking creativity and generating ideas – some of my most satisfying stories started as workshop pieces. Writing with a limited time available, knowing you're going to read it out loud when the time limit is up, can be a massive spur to imagination.

The workshop will be, in part, an experiment, but I think it will be a lot of fun too. If you'd like to join in then turn up on the night or mail me

In a late addition to the bill, I'm reading at Short Fuse tomorrow. The theme for the night is Tainted Love, and I'll be reading my story 'LIBRARYS'. It's probably my favourite of all the stories I've written, and describes a relationship with a woman who has too many books. 'LIBRARYS' is also very critical about books and the place they have in our lives. It was published in Penumbra a few years back and I read it live for the first time in June. I'm quite pleased with how it worked and I'm looking forward to reading it again.

I'm not sure who else is reading, but the night is headlined by Bridget O'Connor. The night takes place tomorrow at the Brighton Komedia Studio Bar and starts at 8pm. Entry is £8. It would be lovely to see you there!

I'm also reading at Sparks in the Three and Ten this Tuesday – I will add more details about that soon.

I'm a little late posting this, as I've had a very busy couple of weeks. (I'm writing a post about some of the things I've done, but who knows when that will appear?). During the whirlwind my new post was published on literaturenetwork.org. This one touches on ideas, mathematics, plagiarism and magic:

Writers are often asked where they get their ideas. Their answers are sometimes glib – Harlan Ellison once replied “Poughkeepsie” and Neil Gaiman used to suggest ‘from the Idea-of-the-Month Club,’ or ‘a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis’. My favourite reply is one I’ve heard attributed to Arthur Miller: “If I knew, I would go there more often.” Wouldn’t it be something to visit the place ideas come from?

Please click through and read the full thing. I'd be very interested in knowing what people make of this one as it took in some strange topics.

I'm very excited that I've been asked to read at the next Glue Gun '91. The theme for the night is 'Glue Velvet' and it will be themed around the films of David Lynch. The night contains 'strobe lighting and scenes of violence'! 'It begins with a clown and ends with a spider'.

I will be reading a new story, set in Brighton, that will unsettle and disturb. You must come along! The night starts at 8:30pm and is completely and utterly free.

My next reading is going to be part of the Melbourne Arts Festival in the village of Melbourne. I am going to be reading some of my stories which will then be followed by a performance from poet Les Barker. The event starts at 7:30pm in Melbourne Public Hall. Tickets cost £7 – they can be booked in advance, so get in touch if you want details.