The downside of a holiday

It is always hard to get back into writing after a break, especially one as pleasant as a holiday in Thailand. But over the last few days I have gradually found my way back to the page. And just now I read this insightful comment from writer Clare Dudman, which captures the feeling well:

“I really should be writing. I keep thinking that. I should stop doing so much reading of other people’s books and do some writing of my own. The longer I leave it, the worse it gets. It’s like standing, shivering, on the shore of a bleak ocean. You know you’ll enjoy it when you get under the waves, but first you have to wade out?”

I like that. And on her recommendation, I have just ordered this:




My Big Night at the Komedia

Komedia, but not this Sunday

I did my reading at the wonderful Komedia Theatre in Brighton this week, for Story Studio. What an amazing experience!
The venue was much bigger than I expected, and had sold out – they were actually turning people away at the door. I know they weren’t lining up to see me, but even so.
I was third on stage out of nine “acts”, the last before the first interval. This was a good slot, the friendly organisers said, because it meant I could relax and enjoy the rest of the evening.
Strangely, I felt no nerves at all when my time came. Up on stage, I couldn’t see a thing – the spotlights were so bright. But there was a big audience out there somewhere. And they were waiting for me to entertain them.
I only realised afterwards – or maybe not until the evening itself – what a risk the organisers were taking when they decided to give me a slot. They must have liked my story, but they’d never heard me read to an audience. I could have been a disaster.
Luckily, I wasn’t. It went better than I could possibly have hoped. People were really kind afterwards – audience members and other performers. One, who’s act I really enjoyed, said “you’ve got ‘It’”; the organisers said I was “amazing”.
Anyway, I’m hooked on live performance now and will be looking for any chance to get on stage again. So watch this space.
Just a shame I didn’t get any photos.

More LiveLit – This time, at the seaside

I made another small piece of “LiveLit” yesterday, inspired by last weekend’s workshop. This is based on a  story idea I had knocking around but, unlike my last effort, I was writing the words with the images in mind this time.

Only one of the images that I was thinking of actually made it into the finished piece, but it was interesting playing with them nonetheless. The original idea used a lot of covers from 1970s knitting patterns, I had great fun researching those.

I want to do more of these, taking inspiration from writer Sarah Salway, who regularly posts 50-word photo stories on her blog. I met her briefly at an exhibition she has contributed to at the Tubridge Wells museum – writing words suggested by an item from their archive, and turning them into something people can look at, touch and play around with, rather than just read or listen to. Very much in the LiveLit spirit! Well worth a visit. My kids loved it, too.

I’m thinking of 100-word film stories, rather than 50-word photos. The original draft of the “West of Aran” piece was 170 words or so; the final version about 90. Cutting it down was a useful discipline; if I wasn’t making the film I would have left it as it was. I prefer the short version.

Listening to it again, I can hear changes that I would make, parts that don’t work as well as they might. But in the spirit of LiveLit, here it is – make of it what you will!

“West of Aran” by the way, is the name of a buoy that captures meteorological information. It’s off away in the Irish sea, somewhere west of Aran.

Experimenting with “Live Lit”

I went to an amazing workshop in Folkestone yesterday. The idea was to explore new ways of presenting literature to an audience. It was massively inspiring, and I put some of what I learned into practice today.

I put together the little “film” here in about 45 minutes. The audio was recorded into a dictaphone, in the bathroom, with a towel over my head. My voice sounds pretty rough and shaky, but that’s because I’d only been awake for a few minutes.

Normally I’d try to get this perfect before posting, or just throw it away. But in the “just do it” ethic of yesterday, I’m putting it here as it is.

I learnt a lot from doing this, and from yesterday. I’ll post more about that later.

Happy Christmas

Finding a voice for personal essays

Carl H. Klaus

I’ve read a lot of personal essays, and read a lot about them, but I’m not sure I’ve ever written one.

I say ‘not sure’ because I’ve maybe written quite a few in notebooks, or written words that could be turned into an essay, but have never tried to actually produce one that might be published.
I’d like to try that, and have been thinking about giving it a go this year. One obstacle is voice: Who is writing the essay? Is it me, or some kind of essay-writing version of me? And is it a voice that speaks the truth, or a version of it?
Today I came across an interesting interview with Carl H. Klaus, an essay writer, theorist on the craft of the personal essay, and author of “The Made Up Self” (via here). He says something interesting on this question of voice:

“I do think there’s some double-edged quality in writing personal essays – because despite the fluid nature of the self, we do in the long run develop a conception of our selves that we aspire to be true to in our own writing.  And yet I know that such a thing is impossible.  To think that I could in fact create a style that was an echo of such a multi-sided thing as the self – that’s simply a cuckoo notion.  So what can I say?  We do, in fact, aspire to write like ourselves even though we know that in some sense this is an impossibility – much as it’s a difficult notion to imagine never being yourself and yet always being yourself.  It’s a paradoxical thing.”

The full interview is worth reading, especially for what he says about Montaigne, which I think I disagree with.

Writing and being lonely

Great image from Gaping Void

Because I spend so much time on my own, at my desk, writing, with nobody else in the house apart from the dog, people often ask me whether I get lonely. I don’t, usually.

This isn’t because I’m an antisocial misanthrope. I enjoy company, mostly. The reason I don’t get lonely is that I am writing. This might sound contradictory, but I came across a Julia Cameron quote yesterday that explained it well:

“The minute I let myself write, everything else falls into balance. If I get a dose of writing in my day, then I can actually socialise with a clear conscience. I can actually be present for the life I am having rather than living in the never-never land of the nonwriting writer, that twilight place where you always ‘should’ be somewhere else – writing – so that you can never enjoy where you actually are.”

Reading that reminded me of something James Thurber said in an interview:

“I never quite know when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, ‘Damnit, Thurber, stop writing.’ She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, ‘Is he sick?’ ‘No,’ my wife says, ‘he’s writing something.’”

John Berger: Indecently Intense

I bought someone a Kindle for Christmas, or contributed my share of the cost. A useful gadget, but I prefer to have all my books where I can see them, on the shelf.

I was looking at one of those shelves late last night, from the comfort of my chair, and pulled down a copy of Photocopies, by John Berger. This is a stunning book, which I bought some 15 years ago and have read many times. It blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, and, importantly, always inspires me to write.

Berger is English, but left this country to live in France four decades ago. Why? He gives a fascinating answer in the interview below. He never felt at home in England, he says. Whenever he talked to people or listened to them, he felt he embarrassed them. “I was indecently intense,” he says.

(relax, only the first 10 seconds are in French)

Finding time for writing – the big lie

Yesterday was my first day back at work. Over the holidays, as usual, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to balance my working day, how to mix my different responsibilities. The aim, as always, is to find more time to write. Because if I had more time to write….ah, well.

How much money does it take to be happy? Ask anyone that question and they’ll usually answer with a figure that is just a little bit more than they earn now. The amount of money they need is always just out of reach.

The same applies to me and writing time. If I just had a little more… And then I read these wise words from Julia Cameron:

“The myth that we must have ‘time’ – more time – in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have. If we are forever yearning for ‘more’, we are forever discounting what is offered.”

I felt a shiver when I read that. She continues:

“The ‘if-I-had-time’ lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment.”