Literature for Social Change

I wanted to direct your attention towards a blog post by my wise and talented friend Sue Guiney. It's a reprint of her article in the recent issue of "The Author", the magazine of the UK's Society of Authors, and its subject is literature for social change. What Sue wrote really made me think, and her topic is an important one, especially in this strange time here in the UK where the new school leaving exam seems to be dropping Arts subjects. Here's a taster of what happened after Sue's 2nd novel, A Clash of Innocents, set in Cambodia, was published:

I am a writer. I write stories about people I make up. So that should have been the end of it, right? Wrong, because the best part of the story was yet to come.

Many of us are lucky enough to go off and be inspired. Some of us can then create something out of that inspiration. But I realised I was one of the happy few who could bring the fruit of that inspiration back to the people who inspired me in the first place. And so I connected with a shelter in Siem Reap called Anjali House, which provides support for street kids and their families, and through them I founded a writing workshop for their teenagers. There I teach them to write poetry and stories in English, we publish a literary magazine, and then we hold a party where the kids stand up in front of a room of supporters and read from their work. I am now committed to running this programme three times a year, once on-site in Siem Reap, the other times via the internet.

When I came back to London from Cambodia after first setting up the workshop, everyone congratulated me. ‘What an incredible thing you’ve done!’ they all said. ‘How did you ever think of it?’ Everyone was amazed. But I was amazed by their reaction. I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t believe there was anything unusual about me that led to this attempt at social change.

... Read the rest of Sue's article here, and leave your thoughts on writing and social activism, it's something really worth discussing.

Arvon and Permissions

I just got back from the most wonderful week tutoring a short story course, together with the fabulous Adam Marek, at the Arvon Foundation's heavenly Totleigh Barton centre! There is always something magical about an Arvon course - after so many years they just have the formula right, the combination of a small group, a focussed five days of workshops and one-to-one meetings, the constant supply of food, including dinner cooked by a different quartet of participants each night, and the remote setting with gorgeous views!

But this time there was an extra special dash of fairy dust - maybe something to do with the group being particularly serene, creative, curious and willing to do any of the crazy things Adam and I asked of them! Many many new stories were begun last week, by the two of us too. And the staff - Claire, Olly, Steph, Eliza, Bridget, Caroline, Huxley - making us feel so at home. And the luminous Helen Dunmore, our special guest, talking to us so candidly about her life and work.

 

Adam's written a brilliant blow-by-pasty account of our week here, (how did I miss the pasties?) so I won't go over that, but I wanted to talk about one concept that kept coming up during the course: Permission. Permission to write about anything you want, in any style you want. And where does that permission come from? 

I have seen this in my own writing career - I can almost pinpoint other people's work that has opened my eyes and allowed me to try something I'd never tried before. Never thought of before.(All Over, a short story collection by Roy Kesey, was a revalation in 2007).

And it really hit home to me, how important this is - and, thus, how vital it is to read everything you can get hold of - when I was talking to undergraduates at Bath Spa Uni, my old alma mater, recently. I talked, of course, about using science as inspiration for fiction. Someone put their hand up and said, "So, do you think it's okay to use anything as inspiration, science, or maybe history?" I said Yes, I do, I think everything is up for grabs, and it wasn't until afterwards that I realised that perhaps I had just given that questioner permission he might have needed, that he hadn't just taken it as a given that a fiction writer can scavenge from anywhere. That really made me think.

This came up in an article in this weekend's Guardian review, a profile of Gerard Woodward:

At the same time, he was encountering the two authors whose work would mold the tone and temper of his own. "I was reading Updike and Nabokov for the first time. Updike showed me it was possible to write in a realist way, with a poetic approach. I'd never come across his blend of poetic sensibility and prosaic imagination in realist fiction before. Nabokov blew me away for the same reasons; not quite as down to earth, but he has the same qualities of poetry and playfulness. I found reading them both incredibly liberating, and permission-giving for what I wanted to do. They were the presiding spirits when I was writing August [the first novel in the trilogy]. Everything fell into place, after years of struggling both with novels and autobiography in poetry. I thought, at last I've found a way of writing about autobiographical material that works for me."

[Read the full article here.]

What has given you permission in your writing? Care to share? A person? A book? A film? A TV show? I'd love to have a discussion about it! The flipside of permission is taboo, and I planted this thought in our Arvon participants' minds on Day One: What wouldn't you write about, whether it's something that society considers taboo or it's personal? And what might be a taboo for you in how you write? No writing from the opposite sex, for example, or the 3rd person plural?

Bye for a while

There's no time, there's never enough time - to tell you what an astonishingly good week I had last week tutoring my first Arvon course with Sarah Salway! To tell you how much I learned... how much fun we had. I'm off now to the Hawthornden Castle Writers Retreat in Scotland for 4 weeks, with very very very little Internet access (maybe the odd dribble of it) - taking no fiction with me to read at all, a "short story fast"  -  wish me luck! See you all back here at the end of June, happy writing!

Memories and future memories

I am in Manchester, getting together with a few friends, chatting about writing and other stuff. And today, before I head back to Bristol, I thought I would go and wander around where I used to live when I was here as a student, 20 (!) years ago. I found the street I lived on in my 2nd and 3rd years, and as I wandered, bizarre snippets of memories came back to me. I couldn't remember exactly which tiny Victorian terraced house we lived in, so I wandered back and off to the Physics department, where I had spent so much of my time.

Manchester has changed almost beyond recognition since I lived here - the Maths Tower where I spent half my time has been torn down! But... in Physics, time stands still. Exactly exactly the same. I sat at the back of one of the lecture halls, dark and silent except for an odd buzzing, and was quite overwhelmed. I let feeling emotional, and not in a good way. The whole experience made me think of the choices I made then and since. Risks I could have taken then but insecurities that held me back. I was so so young. Weren't we all. I think that will be my last trip down that particular memory lane. Done.

Anyway, onto more positive news: The White Road and Other Stories is now available for the Kindle! Yes, I've gone all e-book-ish. I have no Kindle, never even seen one, so if you do have one and fancy purchasing TWR, I'd love to know how it looks, how it reads....







A Few Writers' Service Announcements:
The V S Pritchett Memorial Prize is looking for entries: 2000-5000 word short story, postal entry, deadline 30th June. Ist prize £1000. (I just wrote to them suggesting they follow the Sunday Times short story competition's lead and publish a longlist, so fingers crossed...)

The BBC Short Story Award closes this Friday, June 18th... and the Bridport Prize, which this year has a FLASH category for the first time, closes on June 30th.

If you want some stimulation and guidance to get you writing that winning story, my friend and writing colleague Vicky Grut, is running just the workshop you need on June 26th, just in time!

WRITING SHORT STORIES: June 26, 10.30-4pm

What makes a great short story? Do short stories need a plot? What about a ‘twist’ at the end? Where can you publish? We’ll look at these and other questions, and, using writing exercises, will explore elements of short-form storytelling in practice. Participants will be asked to read a couple of short stories in advance (texts will be supplied).

What people said about this workshop last year:

· Somehow, seeing the variety and quality of what other people – and you yourself! – can come up with on the spur of the moment, restores one’s faith in the human ability to be immensely creative.

· Vicky’s chairmanship was excellent. She kept firm hold of what we were doing and where we were going (so we didn’t waste time), at the same time as drawing everyone out and getting us all participating fully. She knows her stuff.

· A very supportive environment. Great balance between practical and talking and discussing - feel I learned a lot from both. You were probably altering what you did to fit the group and choreographing madly but were so calm and effortless that there was no pressure to do things or feelings of being rushed / incompleteness

· Thank you for today's class. I wish we had one every Saturday!

Workshop leader Vicky Grut’s awards for short fiction include the Chapter One International Short Story prize in 2006, and an Asham Award in 2009. Her stories have appeared in magazines and collections including Random Factor (Pulp Books, 1997), Reshape Whilst Damp (Serpent’s Tail, 2000), Valentine’s Day: Stories of Revenge (Duckworth, 2000), two volumes of the British Council anthology New Writing: 13 (Picador 2005) and 14 (Granta, 2006), and Waving at the Gardener (Bloomsbury, 2009). She is a reader for The Literary Consultancy and has taught for the Open University, The Arvon Foundation and London South Bank University.

The workshop costs £70, which includes tea, coffee and a sandwich lunch. Central London venue. Small group.

For moreinformation or to book visit the website or e-mail londonwritingworkshops@googlemail.com

I'd better sort my submissions out. Just getting used to my new laptop! (Cleo is doing well, improving every day, thank goodness). And the sun is shining! Not the Manchester I remember :)

Like a Kid in A Sweet Shop: Catching Up Part 2

I've been having a wonderful two weeks, rushing around to lit events like a kid in a sweet shop (or me in a sweet shop!), all of it reinforcing that this country is the right place for me right now. It hasn't left me much time for blogging, or reading other people's blogs - apologies for that. I won't make this a very long post (famous last words). So, where have I been?

Two weeks ago I flew to Ireland for the Waterford Film Festival awards evening on Nov 8th. I knew my screenplay, which I adapted from my short story, North Cold, was one of 20 finalists for the short screenplay award, but didn't know whether this was 20 out of...30? Well, I was delighted to find out it was 20 out of 100, and although I didn't win, we each received a certificate and it feels like a great stamp of approval for me for my first foray into writing film scripts.

Sadly, I didn't manage to see any of the films at this wonderful, small but dynamic festival, hopefully next year. Waterford seemed like a place I'd like to spend more time, too... but there never is enough time, is there? I am loving adapting my own work - have adapted two other stories into short plays, and one is shortlisted in a 6 minute play competition and will be performed in London in January. I won't have any input into the performance, and am eagerly and somewhat nervously anticipating the evening. Will let you know more details when I have them. 

Ok, so returned from Ireland on the Monday, and on Tuesday afternoon I dashed off to London to meet my fellow science-in-fiction-loving-friend Sue Guiney, and together we went to an event at the National Maritime Museum entitled Poems of Space. Renowned astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been collecting poetry about space for many years and talked us through what poets like to write about space (black holes, radio telescope arrays) and what they don't like to write about (telescopes on satellites, I think!). She is one of two editors of an anthology of poems on space called Dark Matter which I picked up a copy of.

What made her talk wonderful was that at the beginning she asked anyone who would like to read to take a copy of one of the poems she had printed out, and at certain points during her talk would mention the title of one of them and the audience member stood up and read. (I read Halley's Comet by Stanley Kunitz, one of the funnier poems of the evening.) This audience participation made it feel much less like a lecture than an intimate discussion.

Joining Dame Jocelyn on the panel after her talk were my blog friend Pippa Goldschmidt, an astronomer, writer in residence at the Genomics Forum in Edinburgh and blogger about science and fiction topics at The Write Reality, and Kelley Swain, poet-in-residence at the Whipple Museum of History of Science in Cambridge. It was wonderful to meet both of them, we will be getting together for more talk about science-inspired fiction soon, I hope. The whole evening was an inspiration, both to hear the poetry written about scientific themes, and to meet two writers-in-residence in science arenas. More on that later!

After a day's break, I was travelling to London again, this time invited by Jewish Book Week (yes, it's more than just one week) to spend the afternoon talking about short stories with pupils at a London secondary school. I was pretty nervous - firstly about getting up in time for my train (!) and secondly because I was going to do a flash fiction workshop with Year 9 kids and what if they sat there in complete silence, refused to write, refused to participate?

Well, transport did fail me - FirstCapital Connect was on strike in London, but they weren't going to divert me from my purpose and I managed to arrive on time, nevertheless. And, secondly, my classes went wonderfully well, it was a joy and a boost for me.The first class of around 30 or so Year 9  kids seemed to really enjoy the flash stories of mine that I read - expressing surprise that so much could be said in so few words, which was, of couse, the point. And then they picked some prompts, and we all wrote flash stories, even the teacher!

Then: lunch and a tour round the school, a Q&A session with a group of kids in the library during which I was asked the fascinating question, What are your hidden talents? To which I replied: Parking. I am very good at parking. And finding parking spaces. They weren't so satisfied with that so I had to reveal that I am a secret hula hooper. And yes, there were a few questions about writing, too.

Then a final session with a small group of Year 10 pupils that I had been warned might not be quite as responsive as my first class. Not many hands went up when I tried to discuss what "story" meant to them. This didn't seem to be a room in which it was "cool" to respond, so it took some cajoling on my part, moving away from books to films and even to the idea of story in computer games, which did inspire enthusiastic comments. And I read out quite a lot of my flash stories, which they also responded to very well, it seemed. It was lovely to hear, as I read, that at the beginning of each story there would be fidgeting, a bit of whispering, but by the end, there was silence, which I hope was a good sign. I really enjoyed meeting this class, I felt like the fact that I had been told they might not be responsive but I managed to elicit great responses was really an achievement, and it was great to hear from them, from all the pupils, and not just listen to myself talk.

The school bought two copies of my book and I was thrilled when the librarian emailed yesterday to say that a girl who "has never asked to borrow a book before" went in to ask to borrow mine. Very happy!

After a long day at the school I headed off to a Society of Authors meeting for new members. I won't say much about this except that it was eye-opening and that no, despite pressure, I will not be writing a romance novel. I did get to meet one of my childhood heroines, Anne Digby, author of the Trebizon series of books, which I loved as a kid. What an honour. We were told we could bring a copy of our book to put on the table, and at the end a lovely writer I had been chatting to asked if I had a copy she could buy, so I sold it to her. The Soc of Authors staff were amazed when I told them - apparently I was the first person to ever sell anything at one of these events! (Used the money to get myself some dinner for the train ride home:) )

Yes, there's more. The day after, I had a meeting that I initiated with the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Bristol University to discuss the possibility of me becoming writer-in-residence. He was extremely positive about the idea, he is the newly-appointed Dean and has already initiated several arts-science type collaborations, including short films of interviews with mathematicians, and science-inspired photographs. So it looks like this is going to happen and I am very excited! Now I have to go about finding funding for the position, any ideas welcome. I am not sure whether it might just be too much inspiration to be the writer in residence for the entire faculty, all the departments and the labs they contain. But it's such a thrill, I can't wait!

After that, my head buzzing, a quiet-ish weekend, a wonderful Los Desterrados concert on Sunday night, and then off to London again on Monday. This time for two book launches: Rob Shearman's second short story collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, and Elizabeth Baines' Too Many Magpies. Rob's launch was great fun, he read a story which was both comical and poignant, and then did a Q&A with his publisher where we learned about his odd writing habits (Tooting Common, 3am)! A lovely writerly dinner afterwards with Vanessa Gebbie, Elizabeth and her partner, John, and Adam Marek and back to rest for the next night's launch.

The next day: great excitement. I discovered the first London branch of my favourite US clothes shop, Anthropologie. Had a thorough browse, then an excellent meeting with my publisher, Jen, from Salt, more of which in the coming weeks. And then Eliizabeth's book launch. I had offered to introduce her, and then she read, beautifully, two sections from her novel, which is magical, dark and moving. It was wonderful to meet writer and blog friend, Debi Alper, another instance of feeling like we knew each other before we met. And great to meet Alex Keegan and see Vicky, Rob, and Sue again. A wonderful evening, left me buzzing.

And... yes, that's it. I've had a request from an arts journal in Europe that wants to translate some of my flash stories, which is delightful. And am now trying to find funding for the writer-in-residence position, and thinking about the possibility of other school visits, lots on my mind. But the best kind of mental busyness! All short stories and books and writing and writers... lovely, lovely, lovely. We are back off to London on Sunday for the Speaking from Experience event on Sunday night, which should be another kind of fun.

Ok, it ended up being a long blog post, but there was a lot to say! Not going much writing myself, but it feels like I am positioning things, setting things up to get ready for the real writing. The next few weeks seem pretty busy already, which is something that used to freak me out, but it's ok, it's all good. It's all good.

Teaching for the first time!

Well tonight was another milestone: the first session of the short story workshop that I am co-teaching with Evan Fallenberg, a wonderful writer and new friend, in the Studio he has created in his capacious garden. And let me tell you, I was really nervous. People were coming, 12 of them, who had paid money and I was supposed to sit there and behave like a kind of authority, someone who knew what she was doing. And I was being paid for it. A whole new experience. I was shaking, I had real stage fright, although all the chairs were in a sort of informal circle. As everyone came in, I noticed them doing that class "thing" where everyone tries to sit as far from Teacher as possible... and that was me! Weird.

But... it was great. Really great. I didn't freeze or say anything too inappropriate, and Evan and I introduced the course and the location, and said what we needed to say. The part of the evening I had been concerned with was the Flash writing session in the second half. I had already heard that some people weren't keen on "writing exercises". Well, to be honest, neither am I. I either want to write or not write. Exercises, for me, such as "describe your character's childhood" or "write about a scene where two people have an argument" don't work for me. But writing to a set of flash prompts, that really does because it taps into that part of my brain that is activated when I am in the "zone".

So I told them all this. I said that this wasn't a writing exercise, but actual writing. I said how I had over 100 flash stories from such flash sessions, several of whom have been published. And they seemed to be happy to try.

Then someone said, Yes but what do we do with what we've written? And this was the part I hadn't wanted to mention til afterwards: the reading out of everyone's rough 1st drafts. I had to reveal that, and say that it would be wonderful if everyone read, but if someone really didn't want to...

Let me say: they all read! And they were all fabulous! Everyone had written a story, or the beginning of one. And each one was different, unique. I got such a thrill out of it, and I hope the others did too - seeing everyone take it seriously, and reading out their work with no hesitation, no disclaimers. It was a joy.

Sadly, I won't be seeing them again for 5 weeks - it is a 12-session course over 6 months, and Evan and I are alternating classes. I am really looking forward to it. A milestone, definitely. Paying me to talk about short stories? How crazy is that?

The Michael Martone Interview » Quarterly Conversation

Thank you to Matt Bell for leading me to this interview with writer and teacher Michael Martone:

I don’t pretend to know anything. I am not that kind of master teacher where I know something and transfer that knowledge to students who don’t know. Instead, I guess, I teach curiosity. I try to create in the classroom interesting environments and then, with the students, discover things that, perhaps, we already knew or know but didn’t know we knew. I think my other job as a teacher is really to resist the bias bred into the institution where I am housed. A university is by nature a critical institution. I want to resist having my students learn to be critics. Instead I want to inculcate the habit of writing and in doing, so I think one has to defuse the tendency to judge quality of work, to even resist asking the question, “Does this work?” Students come to me ready to think of the classroom as a place of battle. They have already been naturalized into thinking that a workshop, say, is a simulation of the way the world works. You write something and an editor or reviewer beats up on it. So students have come to think of workshops as a way to create calluses, to out-think the critics. Instead, I like to invite them to remember the intrinsic pleasures of the business, the act itself of sitting down and writing, not the ritual of self-sacrifice. My students’ writing have, for a long time, been quite timid and, as they love to say, traditional. The many classes many of them have taken have led them into an aesthetic that is by design static. The realistic narrative—once a highly experimental form—has produced a series of stylistic rules that can be taught and my students have learned—don’t use exclamation marks, underlining, or any graphic measure to intensify emotion, for example. Those kinds of rules are set in stone. What is to vary realistic story to story is the content, the local, the details. You can in that kind of aesthetic do things wrong. And the critical institution we work within loves that kind of knowledge. I have seen recently more and more students attempting fiction outside that particular drama. More interest right now in the fantastic, irreal, the magical. Also a growing interest in more things lyrical, meditative, associative, and less linear.

The Michael Martone Interview » Quarterly Conversation

I like the way Martone talks about teaching. Workshops can, I have often felt, become, as he says, "places of battle", with a great deal of "this doesn't work" and "this is wrong". I know friends who recently completed an MA in Creative Writing where one tutor's idea of a comment was "This is unpublishable". I don't think that is helpful. Or necessarily true.

Martone's own fiction is wonderfully irreal, non-linear. His collection, Double Wide Fictions, is waiting on my shelf to be read, a real treat!

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