Bodleian

Not an awful lot to report.

I spent last weekend in Oxford and, after a somewhat unfortunate incident with the hotel room, had lovely time seeing old friends.

It was my first time in the city. It’s a strange place full of contradictions: we passed a mock tudor McDonalds on the way into the city by car and then, walking through the centre, we saw an actual historical building that had a Pret shoehorned into it. The city is a layer cake of architecture ranging from the Anglo-Saxon to the present, from the well preserved to the careworn and heaving with tourists at this time of year.

We were lucky enough to have access to some of the university as we were attending a wedding reception on site. I wasn’t immediately familiar with where we were until G and I wandered round one of the courtyards. It was a strange somewhat dislocated sensation as I realised I was standing in an area I’d seen in any number of television programmes and films – Morse and Harry Potter being two of the more obvious. But for me, of course, it was all about Tolkien because we were by Bodleian library, where the Red Book of Hergest is kept and some of Tolkein’s own manuscripts now live.

As regards my own writing I am still focussing on short stories while I sort out the current backlog of longer ideas. Reading wise I have been on something of fantasy binge and so, once I have finished Looking for Jake and other stories, I think I’ll be tackling something out of my comfort zone. I am also compiling the all important Holiday Reading list on which I shall spend most of my backage allowance. Happy days.

Stark complexity

I see Starkey was at it again last week.

David Starkey is ostensibly a historian specialising in – oh the irony – the Tudors but seems more intent these days in generating media attention by wresting the coveted rudest-man-in-television-award away from celebrity chefs and lazy back-combed stand-ups back to its rightful place amongst pseudo-academics. Yes: he annoyed me but probably not for the reasons you’d think.

The comments, from last week’s Question Time, that produced the media attention were:

“If we decide to go down this route of an English national day it will mean we have become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish.

“The Scots and the Welsh are typical small nations with a romantic 19th century-style nationalism.”

Now, as most regular readers will know I am Welsh, and it’s not unreasonable to expect me to be annoyed because, whilst I am not anything like what you would call a nationalist (nor a Welsh speaker), I do identify with my home culture. I am not someone who was just born there; my family is Welsh going back quite a way and Welsh speaking from my grandparent’s generation back. Yet it wasn’t as a Taff I got annoyed. It was as someone who studied history, reads history in my spare time and, indeed, has a passing awareness of the current geo-political map.

The quote was in response to the question ‘should England have a public holiday for St George’s day?’. Wales does not enjoy a public holiday on St David’s day, Scotland does because it has its own parliament (the Welsh National Assembly is not a parliament whatever my countrymen might assert) and Eire is not part of the United Kingdom but a fully independent nation state that naturally has its own bank holidays. Of course Starkey knows this, he is simplifying in order to make a point and because he holds us, the audience, in contempt. We can’t digest complexity.

If Wales and Scotland are feeble little countries so then is England because, just like Wales and Scotland, it is not a nation state. It is one of the countries that makes up the nation state of the UK enjoying its own patron saint (St George) and sports teams and its own share of vocal nationalists. The nation state in which I live is, to give its full name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Notice there is no mention of England or Wales or Scotland?

The truth is this country was created over thousands of years by many different tribes and emerging fractal kingdoms kicking the shit out of each other, being invaded by Vikings, Irish, Anglo-Saxons and Normans before emerging in its current state. A “United Kingdom” that is actually a “Queendom” and occasional democracy populated by English, Welsh, Scot, Irish, Pakistanis, Hindus, Afro-Brits, Iranians, Iraqis, French, Italian, Serbs, Croatians, Poles – the list goes on. A “United Kingdom” that is so familiar with violent dissent that its citizens chief response to terrorist attack was to go to the pub. It is a dysfunctional, kaleidoscope of cultures banging against each other on a small collection of rocks on the east side of the Atlantic. In short:

We are complicated.

Perhaps it was that complicated nature that led the to the use of the Welsh Not in the eighteenth century and that was still in use into the mid-nineteenth century. A charming practice that involved hanging a piece of wood around the neck of children heard to be speaking Welsh in school until the end of the school day, when whichever poor sod was wearing the wood got lashed. It was such an unpleasant practice that in the mid-nineteenth century government reports into education denounced the practice – in spite of condemning other aspects of Welsh culture. Pesky people blurring the lines again.

Starkey is supposed to be a historian but he seems to have forgotten that history is, at its root, all about people. After all, country isn’t really a collection of borders and land; the nation state is merely a construct of people who share a set of resources based on landmass in order to ensure personal survival through mutual co-operation. History is the record told through recollections and records of events of what went before, people’s stories retold and distilled through the personal bias of the historian or teller but the by-product of people. No people, no history.

People, people, people, you can’t get away from it.

I can hazard a guess as to why Starkey feels the need to be so reductive that he makes himself look like an arse on a regular basis and that’s his weakness in falling for the glass teat’s seductive glow. No, stop – you see? I’m doing it now; I’m guilty of reductive thinking and showing my personal prejudice. It’s not the demon telly. It’s people again. There are a vocal segment of a population (in the sense they devote money, attention and consumption) who crave the simple story: the three act, simple premise, face of a thousand heroes, twenty-four hour news agenda filler, quotable sound bite. Popular media in most of its forms chases this lowest common denominator for the win and that’s all Starkey is doing: trying to get his name and his new series in front of that all-important virally consumptive audience.

It is all about people and, now that I think of it, it’s not Starkey I’m annoyed with. It’s the people that egg him on and – dare I say it – myself for devoting time to him, giving him the attention he craves like the media junky he has become in the drive for ratings.

People are complicated but Starkey is transparent.

Why make art?

A perfectly valid question that uses art, I think, in it’s broadest sense and includes fiction. Or at least it does in my head.

The question was not asked of me (I saw it in the twitter stream), I’m not sure if anyone other than perhaps friends/family would be interested in my view and I think I may have partially addressed this in an earlier post. Still: it got me thinking. Why do I keep on writing and spending large amounts of time at this? Has my position shifted?

I thought of five reasons. Yes, it’s another list. Here goes:

1. Sanity – The glib answer I used to give was that writing was my way of taking my overactive thought processes and forcing them to consider something other than the day job. This was a nice, safe answer that didn’t carry with it any expectation of success and was, born out by my Myers Briggs profile, at least partially true. However, there are still occasions where the day job or specifically thinking about the day job can derail my creative efforts. And it provides no explanation for why I put my work “out there”.

2. Please myself - Very true. However, doing it just for yourself is a little to close to mental masturbation and again, more importantly, you’d never put the work out there for anyone to see. I get a kick out of it but that’s not the whole game.

3. It’s the way I’m wired – Also true. I have written stories since I could pick up a pen and often it’s the only way I make sense of the world around me. As a race we are, arguably, pre-programmed to acquire language and to spot patterns and to problem solve. Stories are, to a certain line of thinking, the by-product of evolutionary features such as imagination, communication and pattern recognition. Yet not everyone writes (although sometimes it feels like they do) and to reduce it all down to wiring feels too reductive. I don’t buy it.

4. God gives you a talent and you should use it – Sorry, no. This is just a variation on 3 with evolution substituted for God (or vice versa depending on your belief system) and it’s still reductive. Moreover, we’re in to a whole quagmire of how do you define talent and should you only do something if you’re immediately successful at it and I’m an atheist so let’s just move one.

5. Connection – Ah yes. There you are. There is nothing on this earth – in my humble opinion – like creating something that didn’t exist before and having another human being respond in surprise/delight/awe/shock/connection. To have taken something from your skull and transmitted it into someone else’s cranium. Each of us is encased in a fleshy prison of solitary confinement, bumping occasionally against each others’ cells, through art we can reach our fellow captives – we can even be touched by those artists who have long since made their escape. It’s telepathy, it’s magic, it’s fucking awesome.

And that’s why I do it.

Bottom

Sometimes you just need to hit bottom before you can come out the otherside.

For me that moment was yesterday when I found out that someone who had promised me faithfully they would do something hadn’t. Actually, it was more than one person but it occurred to me, or rather the observation crunched through my head like an anvil, that the world didn’t end because that stuff hadn’t been done. That in point of fact my soldiering on when I clearly needed a rest wasn’t just silly but really quite arrogant. And so I hit the brakes.

Which is a really convoluted way of saying I took the day off.

Today has been spent getting some of the ever growing pile of life stuff I needed to get done off my to do list, reading and attempting to write some flash. The later not going terribly well – the first attempt actually turned out to be a short story idea that I will have a crack at next week – but everything else was pretty good. I’m also looking at how I structure my week so I don’t keep hitting the wall like I’ve done through the first quarter of the year. 2009 is pretty much a pressure cooker – as it is for most people – and it’s no good whining about it. I’ve just got to adapt. It’s OK – I have a plan.

On the writing front there hasn’t been much going on. No excuses, I simply let my priorities get skewed but I’ve begun to bounce now. My plan is to try to finish the current draft of Forever by the time we put the kitchen in at the end of April/beginning of May. On the grounds that I won’t have as much time for that fortnight period and so it feels like a natural break point. I’ll probably do some more short fiction following that.

More blogging soon. Promise.

Top five 4AM Whisky Songs

OK, so I was going to be lazy and post a music video again.

I had one of those Monday’s where I just want to stay up until the wee hours, sipping whisky and writing. Alas, I cannot do that but one of the songs I would probably stick on, if I were to stay up until 4AM is Be My Downfall. Of course when I tried to stick it on here I discovered YouTube was having yet another spat with the record companies and it wouldn’t embed.

And so in true Nick Hornby style I thought I’d post my top five 4AM Whisky Songs:

5. Be My Downfall – Del Amitri (For the bad ones you know were no good but miss anyway.)

4. The Town that I loved – The Dubliners (Hey, they were banned once. For the morose, the-past-was-drizzled-in-honey-and-grease-and-I-liked-it stage.)

3. Need Your Love So Bad – Fleetwood Mac – original line up (To truly enjoy this you need a whisky in one hand and someone close on your arm dancing round a nearly empty bar, slow.)

2. God is in the House – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (For the I-think-it’s-whisky-but-I’m-not-sure, I-finished-the-other-bottle-and-this-was-at-the-back. As-long-as-I-have-both-ears-in-the-morning-I’m-good.)

1. Je n’en connais pas la fin – Jeff Buckley (Some would go for Hallelujah but you can practically taste the cigarette smoke on this one and of course that’s what it’s for. Sitting at a piano you can’t play, smoking cigarettes when you don’t actually smoke and nursing that last whisky that will send you to Dream.)

Actually, this could also easily be a top five songs to slit your wrists to. 4AM whisky music is a bit like that, fine lines. By way of lifting the mood of the list, I’ll point out that I Google You (written by Neil Gaiman for Peri Lyons – because she asked for a song not, as Neil points out, because he was googling her late at night – and recently covered by Amanda Palmer) narrowly missed out on making the list. Balls, that was a messy sentence.

Moving on. What’s your 4AM whisky music?

Reflections

So I’ve been reflecting some more on my writing this year and many thanks to those who commented on the last post of this nature, there’s some interesting food for thought in there.

Anyway, I must confess to being quite pleased with my productivity if nothing else. I’ve written seven short stories this year, completed the third draft of The Scarred God (88K) and forty-three pieces of flash fiction. I was quite surprised at this and a little concerned at whether my lack of success with placements was the result of falling foul of the quantity over quality minefield – but then I looked at my submission log.

Now, even I managed to clock that really you need to keep track of where your content is in terms of submissions but the unfortunate side effect is that you have nowhere to hide when your taking a cold hard look in the mirror. Months passed between rejection and submission to new markets on most of the stories dragging out the whole cycle far longer than it really needs to take. Key lesson: I need to dust myself off far quicker and get stories back out.* And to make sure it sinks in this year’s submission log is going up on the wall in a large font.

On the quality side, in spite of not getting stuff accepted I have actually managed to secure more feedback than ever before and it’s been of a very high standard. House was part of the lead issue on Aphelion for most of January (and is, I think, still live if you haven’t read it), Arvon was good for feedback from the professionals taking the course as well as fellow writers who didn’t know me and Friday Flash Fiction has been pulling in some quality advice.

F3 in fact has probably been the biggest success of the year with the blog’s most popular story (Tinman from Feb ‘08, and my only proper hyperlink story) pulling in 273 views so far and there isn’t a story in the top ten that hasn’t gone into three figures on views. It’s good to know that at least some of my fiction has been getting in front of readers in the second half of the year. I experimented with posting a full length story (Wide Open Space) back in January 2008 on the grounds that the story in question had been knocking round for a while and I didn’t feel it would find a market easily but wanted someone to read it, around 50 did. I feel that kind of validates GLP’s comments regarding the dangers of self-publishing but it was a useful exercise and the story is still live if you want to read it.

I’ve had no success in placing my more popular flash with the limited markets that accept reprints but some of them I am really pleased with** and keen to push as wide as possible in terms of exposure. To whit: I will be conducting an experiment in January and will post my experiences here regardless of whether it succeeds. I’m not going to say anymore right now as I don’t want to prejudice the experiment (it’s the online marketer in me).

In summary, I think the year hasn’t been as much as a bust as I originally thought and I’ve learned quite a lot even if some of it’s been painful. The point of reflection is to take an honest look in the mirror in order to improve the things you’re disappointed in and continue the things you’re happy with. Certainly, since I’ve made the time to do it, I’ve found my energy levels returning – they were at a low through October/November – and my determination with it. Going forward I think I’ll try to review what I’ve done every three months or so to try and remind myself/check how far I’ve travelled. Don’t worry, I won’t necessarily blog it – it’s more for me.

Bring on 2009, I’m ready for ya.

*To be fair a few people pointed this out politely but now it’s sunk in.
**No doubt I’ll post a best of 2008 Flash list at some point in the next fortnight.

Sunday Musing

So I’m in Wales at the moment.

It’s really good to be out of London for the weekend and to see my family. Hanging out with my brother, his girlfriend and my niece was really fun. I can’t believe how quickly C (my niece) is growing and I don’t think it’ll be long before she’s mobile, apparently she’s already crawling a little – although I haven’t seen it yet. Through the magic of the internet I also got to see/speak to my sister in Sydney. She looks well and seems to be having fun on her latest adventure.

However, mainly I’ve been resting. That I was tired I knew but it still came as a surprise that I slept for around twelve hours last night and I feel much better for not carrying a full set of luggage under my eyes. Typically, as I start to have more time, my thoughts are turning to writing and looking at what I’ve managed to do this year. To be honest it’s been a bit disappointing.

The year started very well with a couple of stories scheduled to appear and I’d be lying if I didn’t say how pleased I was to take part in Illuminations in spite of the less than stellar review I got. Yet since then I haven’t managed to place anything, due largely I think, to focussing mainly on my novel projects and largely only submitting to pro-markets. My main concern about the length of time it’s taking to find places for my stories is that I’m not getting feedback and this slows down my progress. For example, the review in Illuminations was a little bruising but it was also incredibly useful and made me work a lot harder on my line edits. Hopefully, improving my work for the better. The fact is that some of the stories I currently have in circulation are coming up to a year old and I want to move on, to learn from them. Feedback has to be part of that, in my opinion.

Then there’s the danger of obscurity. I’ve found the Friday Flash meme incredibly useful in terms of generating feedback but it is ultimately such a short form that it limits the amount of experimentation you can carry out and increasingly I find myself wanting to post some of my longer stuff. You know, just to see what happens. The fact is that no one gets rich from short stories these days and I wonder if perhaps I’d be better off trying to promote my own stuff online.

Or is it just vanity?

I don’t know. I do know that it seems illogical to continue with the same process when it doesn’t seem to be working and that if I put myself in the mindset of using my short fiction as a loss leader or marketing tool it leads me down a very different path than submitting to a handful of paying markets. Or that if I just want to do it for fun. Or if I could generate a different meme along the lines of the Clarion process maybe I could generate some feedback.

Lots to think about.

And I can’t silence that voice in the back of my head. You know: the one that keeps pointing out whether you really want to get to the end of your life and still be asking what if? Thoughts?

Quiet

Just a quick one.

Apologies for not being around much, I have been pretty much trying to get my eye better and so have had nothing of any interest to report. I go back to work tomorrow increasing the chances that interesting things will happen or at least amusing things.

Other than that I’ve been working on Forever and trying to get back on top of my reading which is now somewhat behind where I wanted to be. Forever is going OK – I am currently working on Chapter Six and finishing introducing most of the characters. I had a bit of a crisis of confidence while ill and was convinced that my second draft was a bust but a reread of the first 22k has enabled me to press on. It’s definitely tougher going than The Scarred God but I’m hoping the results will be better.

And I haven’t been doing much else. We have visitors coming down next weekend, my sister leaves for Australia on Friday and there’s a BSFA do on Wednesday that I may shuffle along for, eye permitting. I hope to return to my plans for making the blog more interesting and reanimating bookrater.co.uk soon.

What have you been up to?

Gas

I’m a bit out of gas this week.

Fellow Twitterers and people with insomnia will know I was truly suckered into the whole US election media madness but – despite my own misgivings – it was tremendous fun. I was sat on my sofa following on the TV, twittering with friends in at least four locations across the UK, emailing a fellow blogger in the US and FB’ing an old friend of mine. All while the US elected their first black president to the White House. Not that long ago all of that would have been SF.

Of course, in the perfectly understandable scream of relief that followed the election, no one seemed to really notice that Proposition 8 was passed rendering a bunch of US citizens’ marriages illegal and creating a new sub-class of US citizen. Yes, the US made a step forward but it still has a way to go. As, I learn from the Guardian, do we.

Last weekend’s travels wiped me out a little and then an impromptu evening out with some former colleagues finished me off. I spent yesterday wandering through the office in a kind of daze and pretty much slept for around twelve hours straight. Feeling a lot better now, I am spending the afternoon working out where I’ve got to with the second draft on Forever and idly doodling ideas on how to use my digital skills better. Tonight I’m off to see Quantum of Solace and, if it’s anything like Casino Royale, I’m in for a treat. You can expect a review later on or certainly by tomorrow morning.

Anyway, this was meant to be a quick post to explain the lack of a Friday Flash Fiction piece yesterday. I was – as I mentioned – a wee bit tired and inspiration did not strike until early evening but it does mean there will be an entry next Friday. In other news: I’ll be tweaking the blog a bit as I bring some more of my content together, making it easier for people to find some of my other stuff. Let me know if anything important breaks.

Now I’m going to drink some more tea and scribble some more notes.

On this day…

- An earthquake in Pakistan kills at least 170 people
- Suicide bombers attack Northern Somalia killing 31 (and targeting amongst others the UN)
- Congo rebels close in on Goma and the UN Secretary General warns of a humanitarian crisis of “Catastrophic dimensions”
- Following an alleged US helicopter attack in Syria there are reports the US embassy in Damascus may close
- David Banchflower (member of the UK MPC) has a pop at his colleagues for not reducing interest rates sooner
- UK Chancellor Alistair Darling relaxes “fiscal rules” paving the way for the British Government to attempt to “spend” its way out of trouble it caused by encouraging easy credit and poor regulation

And what does our great British media lead with:

Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross behaving badly (BUT ‘FESS UP AND APOLOGISE)

Front page or lead story on: BBC, The Guardian, Evening Standard, London Metro, Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Reuters UK, ITV news, Sky News and even newsnight.

AND guess which of the above stories our Prime Minister chooses to comment on?

Yes that’s right. In a time of unprecedented (if you had your head up your arse for the last twelve months) financial turmoil, and arguably a crushing indictment of his ten years as chancellor, Gordon Brown decides to weigh in on the issue that really matters:

Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross behaving badly (BUT ‘FESS UP AND APOLOGISE)

One can only imagine he’s watching their apologies carefully in order to match his own apology to all the people nearing retirement whom will now have to work until their seventies to heat their homes and service their negative equity. Good to see you have your finger on the pulse there Gordon.

Makes yer proud to be British don’t it?

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