April 2009 Archives

By David Whetstone

If you were in Hall One of The Sage Gateshead on Wednesday night, you will be counting yourself lucky.

The World's Greatest Musical Prodigies might be a hyperbolic title - it certainly invites debate - but there was no doubting the extraordinary talent of the five young people
who, accompanied by the musicians of Northern Sinfonia, treated the audience to a thrilling concert.

On the eve of a state visit to India by the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabo, Balram Halwai, successful businessman and owner of a mini-cab firm, sits down to write him a series of letters. The purported aim of the Prime Minister's trip is investigate the legendary Indian entrepreneurial spirit and how it can be encouraged in China, and Balram is worried that that this opportunity might be wasted if he speaks only to dignitaries. He wants to tell him how an Indian entrepreneur is really born. After all he has been there....

Sometimes - not always, mind - the Carpenters transcended their easy listening straightjacket and turned out an absolute gem.

No less an authority than Burt Bacharach said that their version of Close To You was the best, and they had a fine line in bleakly sad tunes.

Rainy Days and Mondays is a case in point: a great tune that showcases Karen Carpenter's beautiful voice. (Goodbye to Love is great, too, though not for the faint-hearted: it's bloody tragic...)

I wrote a while back that Lily Allen is the spiritual heir to Squeeze.

As if to prove my point, she has now released a country music pastiche that is a bit like Squeeze's Labelled With Love (or Cornershop's excellent It's Good To Be Fair On The Road Again).

Not Fair is about a boyfriend who's rubbish in bed, which is very Lily Allen. Nice tune, though...

What is the 'right' way to write? Is there such a thing?

The advice for budding writers (and professionals) on how to actually go about writing creatively is as contradictory as putting a freezer in a greenhouse.

I remember a famous writer telling me that if at least one draft of a story wasn't completed within a few weeks, then the writer obviously wasn't passionate enough about telling it and, therefore, the whole thing was doomed to either (a) blandness or (b) never being written. Yet some of the best books have taken years, sometimes decades, to write.

Two other writers offered starkly different approaches to writing: one suggested working on about five different projects at the same time, insisting that the different characters, formats, genres, etc. will feed into each other and keep the writing fresh. Another said never, under any circumstances, attempt more than one book at a time.

Who's right?

The above are extreme examples of an otherwise broad range of writing approaches, but you get the idea. Every writer's Holy Grail is the 'right' way to write: a method that will achieve, first and foremost, a publishable piece of work, and secondly, a satisfying, sustainable writing practice.

Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way takes a holistic approach to the subject of writing. She advocates 'morning pages', or a daily practice of writing 3 pages in long-hand every morning, no matter what. These pages are geared towards emptying the brain of its 'internal chatter' (Cameron admits to filling her own pages with rants, shopping lists, and variations on the phrase 'I don't know what to write') so that the creative mind can be stimulated.

Cameron's idea of morning pages is hot stuff. Some writers, such as Noelle Sterne, praise them for combatting writer's block. Ellen Klages gives credit to her own 11-year effort at morning pages for doing more than shutting up her internal chatter: Her story 'A Taste of Summer' came straight out of her morning pages. Of her everyday scribblings, she says, 'It's all material.'

This notion hits a chord with me. Writing seems to be about the rule of 1000-1: 1000 pages of rubbish to every gem. I've deleted, scrumpled up, shredded, and actually burned writing that I deemed particularly tripe. But then there's the famous story of Stephen King's wife digging an early draft of 'Carrie' out of the bin. He'd obviously thought it wasn't very good; his wife (Tabby) argued otherwise. The rest, as they say, is history.

Even if everyone's laptop detritus isn't the next Booker prize winner, it's a good rule of thumb not to delete ANY writing material. This is, I'd say, the only 'right' way to write: to rewrite. Some pieces can sit for years before they're ready to be taken apart and rebuilt as shining masterpieces. Others might contain a single line that can be used later as the opening (or close) of a stunning story, script or poem. Mslexia, the women's magazine for writing, publishes a brief interview in every issue with a published writer, describing a book that she never published: interestingly, many of these writers admit to trawling old unpublished manuscripts for characters and plots with which to furnish works that went on to be published, win awards etc.

The 'right' way to write is a notion that I try to encourage writing students to think against. I spent years thinking I was doing it all wrong, having taken on advice from other writers that contradicted my own writing practice. It's taken an equal amount of years to trip over a nugget of sense: writing is as simple as pen and paper. Write ten books at a time, if that's your cup of tea. Write in the bath. Write all night long, every night, for months - it paid off for Cecelia Ahearn. Write only what you know, or write about what you don't know. Write entirely against your 'natural' style, according to Anne Enright.

But above all, if you must, write.

Image credit: celestindevilla

It has been widely observed that Armando Iannucci's In the Loop has hit the cinemas with an almost spooky timeliness; the film seems so of-the-moment that one of its best gags has been piped to the post by Newsnight, of all things. Indeed, in the wake of the Jacqui Smith scandal that has been plastered over the newspapers in recent weeks, it is impossible for the audience's laughter not to be tinged with a certain knowingness when the hapless International Development minister Simon Forster (Tom Hollander) bemoans his fear that hotel porn "might turn up on the expenses bill".

I couldn't think of a Song of the Day and ended up asking colleagues A-Dog and the Hunter who came up with this.

To be honest, it really shouldn't have taken three of us to remember what a belting song I Want You Back Is.

Anyway, it's there now so I can go home while you all boogie to this all weekend (and as a special treat, here's KT Tunstall doing the same song, rather niftily, on an acoustic guitar).

To celebrate St George's Day, GP's SotD will today be the only song I can think of that mentions him: England Half English by Billy Bragg.

From an album of the same name that has the cross of St George as its cover, England Half English points out that the current multiculturalism of Britain (curry, cappucino, etc) has always been with us: "Britannia, she's half English, she speaks Latin at home/St George was born in the Lebanon, how he got here I don't know."

(I can't find England, Half English on YouTube so here's the single from the same album that Billy got into the charts in the week of the Queen's Golden Jubilee: Take Down the Union Jack.)

Matt McKenzie reviews The Specials on the first date of their reunion tour at the Newcastle O2 Academy

TERRY Hall nearly ruined it when he started crowing about Man U being top of the league.

Nearly, although he'd have probably got away with most things given the mass, panting delirium that waited for The Specials before they trotted out to a slow, long blast of Enjoy Yourself.

A novel rid of the boring bits? An abridged tale? A narrative poem? Squashed fiction?

The short story has traditionally suffered from much confusion - much of it published - as to what it actually is. You'd think it would be pretty easy to figure out. It's a story that's short. The End. Or is it? Why is it short? Why doesn't something else happen after the final scene that leads on to another plot point and to more characters that complicate things and bring us to an ending some 100,000 words later? Is the short story deficient in something? Does the short story writer have less to say than, say, a screenwriter or novelist? Is it just a glorified scene?

I recently had the good fortunate to meet with Ra Page, editor of Comma Press, an independent publisher with a particular interest in the short story. He described the short story format in terms of what he calls the 'light bulb moment', or the revelation or shift that occurs at the end of the short story. This is where the short story diverges from the novel: loose ends can stay loose. Ambiguities that a novelist might baulk at can thrash their way right to the final full stop. Because in the short story, it's all about yanking the rug from under the reader's feet.

On the website www.shortstory.org.uk, Page puts it another way: 'Short stories excel through the things they don't tell you, the gaps in information; the darkness that bookends them so narrowly, making what you do get more vivid.' There are many examples of short stories that take this ethos to extremes, with interesting effects: Gerard Woodward's short story, 'A Tray of Ice-Cubes', tells the story of a 40-something bus driver who decides he's pregnant. Following an account of his 'labour', the story ends with his wife leaving out a tray of ice cubes overnight and finding, the next morning, a 'trembling, lively, blood-warm tray of water'. It's an ending that forces the reader to re-read or reflect upon the preceding story with acute attention to plot, characterization, and language, and it's the insights that come from this reflective reading that create the 'light bulb' moment that Page talks about. I can't think of a more engaging way to read.

So, for the avid reader, the short story might be a format to think about next time you opt for the latest Richard & Judy prompt. There's an argument that the short story is more fitted for the Twitter generation, but I don't think it's all about length: it's about the kind of reading experience that a good short story can offer, asking a little bit more of the reader and giving a little bit more in its interactive mode of storytelling. Or in other words: poetry, without a sonnet in sight.

Which reminds me: Biscuit Publishing have £1000 for grabs for the best short story under 750 words. Get cracking.

Image credit: NixieMichelle