Category: Writing

How can your writing be influenced by what you see? How do you use images in your work?

On Saturday, Ellen de Vries and I held the first of our Brighton Creative Writing Sessions events. These are a series of playful, experimental creative writing sessions held in Jake Spicer's studio (also home to the Brighton Life Drawing Sessions). The studio proved to be a fantastic home, providing a more inspiring environment than a classroom-style venue.

Ellen and I did a lot of planning but were a little nervous before the start. How would people respond to what we were trying to do? It turned out that we had no reason to worry. The attendees were enthusiastic and both Ellen and I had a fantastic day.

The session started with a clip from Wild At Heart: "My dog barks some. Mentally you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type of dog which I have. Perhaps you even picture Toto, from 'The Wizard of Oz.'". This set the tone of the session.

We had a number of exercises and discussions examining the relationship between words and the visual world. We gave everyone blank paper to write on, urging them to think beyond writing in neat lines. As a warm up we used some timed visual prompts, similar to what we do for the our Not for the Faint-Hearted sessions, but using Jake's paintings:

Jake joined in with the exercises, and hearing him respond in writing to his own paintings was fascinating. In another exercise, people wrote about their non-dominant hand, producing some tremendous self-portraits. We also had some discussions, including Jake talking about drawing as a visual language.

For me the most interesting part was when we introuced a life model as a prompt. She made a series of three costumed poses.

For the final two poses we used easels to hold the paper. Obviously everyone had to stand for this and we all found that writing while standing gave the act a different energy.

It was this exercise that I found most valuable, and I produced one of the most exciting pieces of writing I've done in years. Jake's recent Catalyst Club talk urged people to experiment with drawing, and I tried mixing my (admittedly poor) drawing skills with writing. I tried to capture the shape of Frankie's hair with the shape of my text, adding a few lines to suggest her face and outfit. While the prose was not perfect, I found the experiment inspiring. I can't wait to try building on this.

For me, it was a rewarding afternoon. The attendees were friendly and gave the session a lovely relaxed mood. The next session is on Sunday 26th, on Wabi-Sabi (tickets available here):

This is a miracle-worker for writer’s block and for loosening up to generate new ideas. Wabi Sabi is a Japanese tradition which celebrates broken and fragmented things, things coming into life and dying things. It lends itself well to writing from landscape; it’s a new way of looking into the cracks in the world around you. "Just lean into the crack / and it will tremble ever so nicely. Notice how it sparkles down there". Bjork.

Thanks to Jake Spicer for providing the venue. Below is a postcard he produced in response to one of the exercises. I love this piece!

On Wednesday, Ellen and I held the fourth of our Not for the Faint Hearted Sessions. The aim is to write stories or poems inspired by images, with a short time limit. Once the time finishes, everyone takes turns to read some, or all, of what they've written. We have a rule that you aren't allowed to apologise for your work before reading. It might sound imposing, but the workshops are a relaxed, friendly event.

This time, Ellen tried an experiment in the second half. Rather than use a picture as the prompt, everyone was given a slice of cake, which they ate during the ten minutes. There were some fascinating stories in response to this strange prompt. We're hoping to do some more experiments in the future sessions.

We used creative commons images from flickr for the event. The photographs used were:

• 2 minutes
• 10 minutes
• 3 minutes
• Break
• Cake exercise – ten minutes
• 3 minutes
• 2 minutes
• 4 minuntes

As usual, the delight was seeing how many different ideas emerged from the same image. It's a good exercise in latereal thinking, and it's very rare for someone to produce work that isn't fascinating or amusing. This time, I found it hard to settle in the first couple of rounds. In the first two minute session I wasted a minute, but managed to come up with something I liked for this image, from Dean Ayres:

"The clowns gasped as the image was revealed to the court. No decent clown would let himself be seen making-up in public. The sentence was the worst available, beaten to death with squeaky rubber mallets. It took two days."

We also had an outbreak of limericks during the session including one a serious one from Graham Sutherland. It was surprising to hear a light form used in a different way. There's a lovely write-up of the session from Louise Halvarddson here, and a brief discussion from Tom Hume here.

Thanks once again to the skiff for hosting the event. Details of the next Not for the Faint Hearted event will follow soon. Meanwhile we're running the Brighton Creative Writing Sessions starting from tomorrow. Leave a comment if you'd like more information on that.

Last night saw the third of the write club creative writing events. Sadly Ellen was sick with flu, so I ran the session by myself. The format was the same as before: a photograph is displayed on a projector and everyone writes a story or poem inspired by the image. There is a time limit, after which everyone takes turns to read some or all of what they've written. The only rule is that you're not allowed to apologise for your work. 

We did a series of rounds -I've linked to the creative commons-licensed photos used in the list below: 

• 15 minutes
• 5 minutes
• Break
• 10 minutes
• 3 minutes
• 2 minutes
• 2 minutes 

I'd picked all of the photographs and it was only later I realised that most of them were images of Brighton seafront. I am going to mix it up a little at the next one.

I love hearing the range of stories produced at Write Club. The time constraints sound imposing, but people seem to thrive on knowing that they'll soon be reading their work in front of the group. Some of the stories were hilarious, and all of them had something exciting in them. It was also interesting to see how many interpretations people can make of the same image.

One of the most exciting things about the event was that I didn't know most of the people attending. I was particularly impressed that one woman had heard about the group at the Playgroup Festival. She'd been talking on a dancefloor with a stranger (another woman I didn't know). After she said she was looking for a writing group, the stranger told her about our event and swapped numbers. Both of them came to the event.

After the two hours was up we retired to the Basketmakers. It was a fantastic evening – thanks to the Skiff for hosting us and to everyone who attended. The next session takes place on September 15th - we're also running our September sessions on weekends in September and October.

I've recently been thinking a lot about writing, and why I do it. I found myself returning to the columns I wrote in 2009 for the Literature Network. I still agreed with most of the things I had written, but was most interested in the post How many readers do you need?. This argued that people should aim at a small, realistic level of 'fame' rather than all-or-nothing success. As the writer Douglas Coupland put it, "there is a lot to be said for having a small, manageable dream". It's easier to build larger dreams on the foundations of simpler ones.

I drew on an essay by Momus, Pop Stars? Nein Danke, which claimed that in the future "everyone will be famous for fifteen people". Danny O'Brien explored similar issues in How many people do you need to be famous for?

I concluded my piece by saying "There's nothing wrong with being famous for fifteen people. JK Rowling was once less famous that that. Finding those 15 true fans is the first step towards millions of true fans, and is far better than none." Re-reading the essay over a year later, I find the ideas as interesting as I did when I wrote it. But I also find myself wondering: what constitutes a fan? How would this differ from, say, a friend who reads your work?

My story A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand has been published on Everyday Fiction this morning. It's a piece  about a ventriloquist's funeral which I have performed live several times:

"I was supposed to meet my family a couple of hours before the funeral, but I arrived late because of work. Everyone smiled when they saw me and I soon found out why: in my absence they’d decided I would be doing the eulogy."

I hope you enjoy it.

Today I finally finished Swansong, the novel I've been working on in Derbyshire. While the manuscript undoubtedly contains a few spelling mistakes and odd errors, there are no bugs that I am aware of.

I started working on Swansong when I was in Coventry, although I first had the idea at University (when I was at University the first time, that is, doing my BSc). The novel has turned out very different from what I first planned, but I think it's stronger for that. It has been fascinating to work on – the research has led to some fascinating conversations and I've met some interesting people.

I've learned a lot from writing this novel. One lesson is to be more careful with research. I spent too long gathering material rather doing the specific research that the novel needed. Hopefully I can avoid this in future by planning the second half of the book better – which would also have prevented a couple of the rewrites. Having said that, I'm very excited about some of the secrets I uncovered through doing the research.

FWIW, Swansong is not the first novel I've written. I wrote some appalling messes in my twenties, that have now been permanently deleted. There is also The Clown Novel, which I finished last year, but that feels a little too depraved to unleash upon the world. Swansong is the first novel I've written that I feel reasonably happy with. I'm now going to send the book to my initial alpha-reader for their comments. Then I'm taking the rest of the day off.

I have a new story available online, in the latest issue of Streetcake Magazine. The story is called The Dirty Bits and was read at Short Fuse's erotic fiction night last year. As the continuity announcers like to say, it contains strong language from the beginning.

It's a fairly experimental story, featuring 'samples' from Anais Nin and Georges Bataille and was an interesting piece to read in public. Issue 11 of streetcake magazine is available from here.

A story of mine, In the Night Supermarket… is one of ten short horror stories that will be appearing in the next issue of Black Static Magazine:

"Ellen always comes to the
supermarket after two, when it’s quiet. She used to have terrible
nightmares but late night shopping keeps them away."

The story was entered as part of the Campaign for Real Fear run by Christopher Fowler and Maura McHugh. I can't wait to see the magazine – firstly, because it's so exciting to be appearing in a magazine that I've been subscribing to for a couple of years. Also, as I said in my last post, I can't wait to read the other stories the Campaign has produced. Hopefully it should arrive in the next couple of weeks.

My latest article, Why Bother Writing? is now up on the Literature Network site. It was written in January, when I was preparing to leave for India:

"I carry a book everywhere I go but it’s only when lugging whole boxes of them that you become aware of how heavy text is. I’ve slimmed my library down massively and it’s still too heavy. I think back to the rumours that my university library is sinking under the weight of the text inside. The story wasn’t true, but it sounds like it could be."

The article is about Twitter, phatic communication, and what the point is in writing in a world that already contains so many books.