Goodnight, beautiful

I've been away, on a different planet, in an unexpected and unwanted world. My Mum, my beautiful Mum, died on the 21st December. Leaving me and my 2 brothers in shock, but together, and with the rest of our loving family we are dealing with the loss of such a great woman.

My Mum was a writer, though never published. When I told her I wanted to be a writer, she took me to the library where she asked the librarian for a list of all the publishing houses in the UK so I could send them my book when it was ready. I was 8.

She was so supportive and thrilled with every bit of writing news I told her.

She wrote poetry. She wrote funny stories for me and my brothers when we were little. And when I couldn't sleep, she said, "Put your arms around yourself and tell yourself a story. You can go anywhere you want to go, be anyone you want to be."

I still can't believe I'll never see her again. She should be there, on the end of the phone, in her flat, telling me about the chinese dragon she could see in the trees.

Goodnight, beautiful x

Tell me how you write - Part 1 - Jo Stanley

I have several modes: business stuff straight onto the machine; journals in 0.7 black gel pens; fiction and poems written on plain A4 with well-sharpened 2B pencils, written in mind-map form, often starting half-way down the page, for some reason.

Place and position matters. The main work is at the computer (too bloody endlessly), and it matters that I had an ergonomist set up the right arrangements for me: kneely chair, flat panel screen at the right height, raked keyboard, gel wrist rest, inspiring mouse mat (Virgina Woolf in sepia, actually). To mitigate the square, hard, plastic, boring insult that the screen is I’ve decorated with3-D objects that insist on my visceralness, my creativity. They round off the machine and give it texture. Mainly they’re the remnants of some art therapeutic work I did after losing a baby in 1993 but quickly rediscovering how much writing and painting are to me about giving birth. I had a vision of myself with spring onion knees, daffodil tits and sunflower shoulder blades, harvests whooshing down from my fanny; I’m the absolute epitome of creativity. These symbols are bluetacked onto the monitor’s border.

Alongside them is my chunk of rose quartz, to remind me that love is what matters in life. A yellow ‘well done’ sticker from my dear writing friend Maggie - to be applied with high-handed aplomb to any task I do, as appropriate - keeps my spirits up when I remember to notice it. The silver screen stands on 79" x 34" smoked green glass IKEA dining table that I keep as empty as possible, because the more space there is around me, the more I can think calmly and widely as I write. The desk is set to look out of a south-facing window, overlooking Soyland Hill in the Pennines. That wooded sweeping slope’s is a fine target for blank gawping.

Duration and intensity of writing is important. Mainly I just slog and slog. So maybe the most important writing tool is my kitchen timer. The current one (they break down) is fat, scarlet, apple-shaped, and from John Lewis in Southampton. It’s set to tell me to take a break from the computer. Which I ignore. I do too little stretching backwards and outwards. And I do a lot of leaning forward, elbows on the wrist-rest, saying ‘errm’ at the screen, gazing as if its blank areas are going to offer useful answers, as crystal balls do - of course.

The best writing (in terms of how it satisfies the deepest me) is in bed, by hand. I like to do it with all the phones unplugged AND turned to silent mode, the door locked, almost naked, and with a sense that I have an absolute right to put the world on hold for a few hours. Doing this sort of writing is almost the same as doing watercolour painting for art therapy. Indeed, often I’ll have the Bijou mini paint box in one hand and the pencil in the other. This sort of writing is absolutely not performative, not done with any audience in mind. It’s about encountering the Truth - the sort with a capital T. The process makes me cry good tears and get up whole. Back to the machine, where I might go on and shape that work if I can spare the time, or back to the dutiful work-writing. But that time-out always brings about the wonderful state of rasa. Right and left brain working together in harmony - the creator and the editor. Wotta luverly couple they make, bless em. How essential their unity is to my sanity.

About Jo:

I’m a writer. No, I’m an explorer of ideas and psyches and histories, who sometimes puts useful words down on paper. With serendipity the marks and ideas make something delightful together. Mainly I write accessible factual history books about off-centre subjects, e.g. women pirates. Really my heart’s in fiction, including plays. But it’s harder to get them published/staged. I’ve been writing since I was 15 - that’s 45 years. About 8 per cent is published, the rest is in filing drawers and inside a retinue of outgrown computers, some dead. Being an ex-journo is useful. It means I’m not precious about Cree- ay- tiv- it-eh; I can do short sentences without literary angst; and I feel absolutely entitled to begin sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but.’

And I want to change the world. And I’m sad. And I love my cat, and my mates. And I truly believe patisseries may be humankind’s best invention. But they should combined with arts cinemas, poetry readings spaces, massage rooms, moors and revolutionary rallies. The photo shows me dressing up as a pirate for a publicity shot, in Taranaki, New Zealand. Yeah, I love playing and showing off. And I like it when those sides of me get together with the writer. I’m very conscious of how constrained my upper body is, on the computer, by comparison to that swashbuckler out on the wide sea. It’s a reminder of what matters - exploration and fun, not niminy-piminy wordsmithing.

Links:
Jo's website
Jo's Blog on Gender and the sea

darn virus, and a 'coming soon'

Have been a little absent this week - my laptop got a destructive virus that I have - thankfully - managed to get rid of. I'm really bad at remembering to back my work up so had a bit of a panic, but luckily I know people who know more than I do about computers so we managed to save what I needed.

I mentionned a couple of blogs ago that I'm starting a series of guest posts by other writers on the subject of the way they write, particularly what they write with - pens, keys, paint brushes; what they write on; how this affects the work produced; how this satisfies the writer.

Here's the prompt:

Tell me how you write. The instruments you use. What you write with, what you write on. How you feel when your hand is holding a pen, or hovering over keys. Do you have different instruments for your different moods? Or for different 'types' of writing? Tell me about when the connection between your writing self and your hand is the strongest - what do you use to write with then? What kind of writing satisfies you, the deepest you, the most?

The first response will go up tomorrow from Jo Stanley who writes books, plays, articles and everything in between. And she's a female pirate. I'm sure of it.

Alex Thornber, editor of Tomlit, will share his response with us a few later, then we'll have Nik Perring along in the New Year.


If you'd like to participate, send me an email at treacle_tree_2000@yahoo.com (I know it's a hideous email address - I got it back in '99 when I was a youngling) and I'll send you some info.

Reminder - Tomlit Comp Closes Monday

If you'd like to enter the Tomlit competition you have a few days left. Alex has forwarded the fiction entries my way but it would be great to have some more to read and consider. I'm waiting until all entries are in before starting the judging process.

Word limit: 500
Theme: Reunion
Winner: Published in the next issue of Tomlit Magazine, in mid-January
Deadline: Monday 14th December

Full terms can be found here.


Good luck!

What's the shape of your novel?

I got this idea from Nik's Blog a couple of weeks ago. He was thinking what the shape of one of his stories would be, and he shared his vision of the story shape on his blog. It got me thinking what shape my novel-in-very-early-embryonic-progress* is.

I've recently bought a plain unruled notebook to scrawl in, just for doodles and sketches and free wheeling thoughts written in pencil. (This is a new thing for me, this writing in pencil thing. Thanks to Tania for the pencil I'm pencilling with - it was part of my pay-it-forward gift.)

Anyway, here's the shape of my *NIVEEP




At least right now, that's the shape of it. It will no doubt change, I might post its changing shape.

Anyone else want to share their shapes, if working on a novel? I know you can't post images in the comments, but you could put it on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments here, maybe, or over on Nik's blog. (Is it even okay to tell people to leave comments on a blog that's not yours??? I realise maybe not, but as it was Nik's blog where the idea started I don't want to hijack it. Hijacking his blog with comments is better..?)


I've also started keeping a note of how much time I spend writing each day. This, I hope, will keep my head in perspective when I think I'm not doing enough, and give me a kick up the bum when I'm actually not doing enough. And it'll help me see how I'm dividing my time between shorts, the novel, research, subbing and the blog, and I can make improvements if I need to.



*COMING SOON*
A series of guest blogs on the way writers write - but in particular what they write with. (Don't say hands.)

Kreativ Blogger Award

Thank you, Jessica, of Writer's Little Helper fame, for nominating me for this chintzy award:



To honour this award I must do the following 7 things:
-thank Jessica (tick)
-link to her blog (tick)
-copy 'Kreativ Blogger' image to my blog (tick)

-tell you 7 interesting things about me. Oh-kay, this is hard. Just 7? I don't mean that. I mean, aagh, this is a bit painful but here goes:

• I don't like cheese (you: what??? really??? but why??? and how???)

• I can play songs on my teeth, just using my teeth, no instruments, just teeth and my mouth opening and closing at various intricate levels to create notes.

• I like pickled onion sandwiches a lot.

• I fell down 2 flights of stairs when I was a baby and didn't cry.

• I would love a kitten. When I lived in Australia they had kittens in pet shops. Many hours were spent staring in pet shop windows.

• I used to teach English to non-english speakers and on my first day a class of 8 year old Korean children made me cry.

• I backpacked around Europe on my own when I was 20.

- nominate 7 Kreativ Blogger and link to their blogs:

• Monda at No Telling - there's something about the way Monda writes, even about the everyday, that pulls me in.
  

• Elle is one of my real-life friends. She's an artist whose blog the happy kimono is mostly a place where she showcases the work of other artists and interesting things that have caught her artist's eye. I love Elle's designs - go to her etsy shop to see.

• Tania Hershman's blog was one of the first writing blogs I found. It's a great mix of useful and interesting. Inspiring too. And Tania, being a very successful short story writer, is a big supporter of the short story form too.

• Alex writes short stories, makes music, studies for his degree, reads a lot, and gets his work accepted in various places. And he runs Tomlit Magazine.

• Vanessa Gebbie for her enthusiasm for the short story, her success at writing them, and for editing Short Circuit - a guide to the art of the short story (Salt publishing) which is soooooo on my christmas list.

• Andrea's blog - a cat of impossible colour - not only the best ever blog name, but an interesting account of someone further along her writing path - Andrea's first novel, The Cry of the Go Away Bird will be published by an imprint of Random House in 2011.

• Miles - another real life friend - whose commitment to making films and being constantly productive while holding down a non-creative job has been an inspiration to me.

- now go and tell those 7 people that they are Kreativs.

To it!

it's niche comedy

but I love him -





Off to see the versatile singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth from Sheffield South Yorkshire's new film - Southern Softies. AND Graham Fellowes is doing a live Q&A after the screening.

Even better, well what's making it even better for me is that my cousin is coming too, we're the same age and loved John Shuttleworth as teenagers. I don't get to see her much these days but it's ace when I do.


All that's left to say, is 'Oof'.

opportunity: new competition from Leaf Books

Seems Leaf Books are expanding their competition-setting horizons with a few new categories - the one that's caught my eye is a 'Writing about writing' challenge.

They'd like 750 words on the theme of writing:

You can send us creative writing (a story or poem) or an essay/academic/journalistic piece, or even a stream-of-consciousness writers-block-induced panic, provided it’s on the subject of writing.

Lots of scope, I think, for interesting pieces. There's a handsome £100 first prize, plus publication in a pilot edition of a Leaf Books magazine - if the magazine takes off that'd be a nice addition to your writing CV.

There's a £3.50 submission fee, or £10 for 4 entries.

Closing January 31st 2010.


Since most writers love talking about writing, and writing about writing in their blogs, this could be a popular comp.

Good luck to all who enter. Just make sure you do some 'actual' writing too. (That's a reminder for me more than anything...)

so that Bridport thing

happened at the weekend. Feels like a world away... it did take us 12 hours to get there and 12 hours to get back - but when you think of some of the other winners coming over from the US I realise I have no cause to mention my journey.

It's hard to know where to start - so I'll just start at the top and see what happens.

I woke up nervous. Really nervous, the kind of nervous where you think of all the times you've been an idiot in public and you're certain you'll be that idiot again. Or someone will ask you a question about writing and you'll answer it badly - thus revealing your actual non-writer status. Or you'll be dull. Bland. And you'll shake. You'll shake when you're reading your story on stage, and your mouth will be full of wool and your tongue is far too fat to be reading out loud anyway...

This lasted about an hour, but luckliy M is very good at bringing me down from such ridiculous heights of insecurity. I dusted myself down and felt better. Think I just needed to purge.

We were due at the Arts Centre at 12noon for champagne and photographs. I think we might have been amongst the first to arrive, but we were greeted warmly and given name our badges. Even M had one, but his did not have a red sticker on it - which meant 'a winner', rather than 'sold'.



We were directed upstairs to an exhibition space where the photographers were. The champagne went down quickly. I had my photo taken holding the anthology, which I hadn't seen yet - but when I started leafing through it the photographer assured me I'd have a copy waiting for me at my place on the table in the town hall where were having lunch. I stopped pawing it.

We made our way downstairs again, and in the time we'd been upstairs, so many more people had arrived, and the place was crowded. Frances, the organiser of the whole Bridport operation, recognised me and after we'd said hello she asked, "Have you met Ali yet?" I hadn't - I didn't know she was there - and Frances, knowing I was nervous, took my hand and led me through the crowd to her.

She is small, as small as me, and lovely, and warm, and her first words to me were, "Teresa - In a seaside cafe," and I felt phew - she did read it then. Which was obvious, she knew everyone's stories. Later, in her speech, she spoke baout how she'd spent the summer reading them and getting to know them. She was genuinely sad for the ones that didn't make it.

We talked for maybe 5 minutes. The first 30 seconds were taken up by me fawning, I won't use any direct quotes - but let's just say she looked a bit embarassed, and a bit stern, and she frowned and then swerved the conversation to me, and my writing, and my story. Which was an odd and brilliant experience. She said she was happy when she saw, that because of the alphabet, my story is the last in the anthology. She thinks it's a good one to end on.


She asked what I'm working on at the moment, and raised her eyebrows when I said I'd started a novel and one of the reasons is because so many people say you must write a novel asap if you want to get published. She didn't go into what she thinks about that, but she asked how I felt, and if I was ready to write a novel. I said I'm finding out, making notes and seeing where it takes me.

There were other people waiting to meet her, and so we ended our chat. I think I touched her arm as I said goodbye... take that not as a stalker move, but as a relaxed one. It felt okay to do that.

I rushed back over to M so I could relay everything to him before it disappeared from my memory and therefore ceased to exist. I felt relieved to have met Ali so early on, and ready to keep celebrating the day. I had another glass of champagne.



Lunch was a lively and informal affair, and we were lucky to be seated next to some lovely people: a fellow short story runner up, Anna Britten, and her husband Peter; and also 2 Bridport readers, Maggie and Liz, who are part of the team of volunteers who read all of the entries. There were approx 6500 short stories entered this year, and Maggie and Liz read 400 each. It felt a real privilege to be able to chat to them about the process, which involves a team of primary readers, secondary readers, and then one man, Jon Wyatt, selects the list which is passed onto the judge.

It really hit home at that point how much chance has played a part in getting me there. If the primary reader who read my story didn't like it, or it didn't hold up against the other pieces they'd read, that would have been it. My story jumped through 3 hoops before it got to Ali Smith. Think of all the stories, as good as and better than, the ones in the anthology. I don't for one second doubt the capabilities of the readers - Maggie's been doing it for 7 years, and was very serious about how she dealt with reading everyone's work, ensuring each entry is given a fair read, and respected.

One of the things that stood out during the whole experience is that the Bridport Prize is this big international prize, but behind it all is this small but dedicated team of people who just love short stories and poetry.



After we'd eaten the prizes were given out. Ali talked about the process of judging, and as I mentionned before, she felt for each story that she couldn't put through. She talked about the short story form, which she did brilliantly and you can read something similar in her Judge's Report. Then she read out the names of the runners up - my name came first. It felt like a long walk to the front to collect my envelope, and it's a bit of a blur but it included her handing it to me, saying well done, and the two of us having our photo taken. The rest of the story prizes were handed out, and then Jackie Kay - a smiling, sparkling lady with real warmth, talked about the poetry entries, and then handed out her prizes.


We were then all invited to an 'after-show event' hosted by the lovely Vanessa Gebbie, who came over and said a friendly hello to me during lunch, back at the Arts Centre. This was where the readings were to take place, and so the nerves reared their heads again, but just a little, just normal-scale nerves.

It was a great experience. My voice held, I didn't have a wooly mouth, my tongue isn't that fat. My legs did shake.

Here's Vanessa introducing me:


(If you look closely you can see my hands clutching the anthology...)


And here I am, reading: (please note how Vanessa's throne takes centre stage. And rightfully so.)




And that was where the day should have ended, after everyone read, and said their goodbyes, and parted. We were on our way out when the photographer came over to me, looking worried. The only photograph that hadn't turned out from the whole day, was the one of me and Ali Smith. BUT, if I didn't mind, I could go with her to Ali's hotel, and see if she was there, we could take it again. I really didn't mind.

Though, when we got there, she wasn't there. We waited a little bit. I should add here that this photo wasn't a souvenir for me, but for the local-to-me press release. It seemed we didn't know when Ali would be coming back, and so the photographer decided we should probably leave it, but she was really sorry. So we got up to leave, and in she walked.

She was first suprised, then worried we'd been waiting for ages, and then very happy to have her photo taken again with me.


Look at my eyes - can they get anymore "OHMYWORDIMHAVINGMYPHOTOTAKENWITHALISMITH!"


And that, really was, that. We said goodbye and I left the hotel feeling thrilled, relieved, tired, excited, and ready for a drink. I found it hard to sleep that night, with so many things swimming in my head - my conversations with Ali, the people I'd met, but most of all the stories I'd read - there are so many wonderful stories and poems in the anthology.







In a way, I wish I'd had chance to read them before the event, just so I could tell the other writers how much I liked their work.


I am left with an inspired feeling, particularly about the short story form. I think I am a fan of fragments coming together to make a whole, which, I guess is what every piece of writing does, but when it happens in short form it's something else.

away I go

Just heading to London now for a brief stop-over to see friends before travelling to Bridport tomorrow - eeeek - prize giving is Sunday, I'll be back home Monday night.

Have decided at last minute to do a reading from my story on Sunday - I was asked a couple of weeks ago but declined, thinking I'd be bad at it/nervous etc - but well, what the hell, it's a great opportunity to push myself a bit into a new territory so I'm going to do it.

Just need to hunt down a hard copy of my story now to take with me - printer's broken - got one somewhere...

Back Monday!