Redraft Eleven as a Rubik's Cube and Setting Fire to Stupid Titles

I am hauling myself bucking and bellowing into redraft eleven of the dissertation story.  I’ve circled it warily for weeks. 

I think it’s reached a sort of Rubik’s Cube stage; the impression that it might be nearing completion is illusory.   This story needs to be pitilessly undone before it can be put together nicely.  I am trying to resist the temptation to just rip the little coloured squares off and stick them back (all curling at the edges) where I think they should go.

To recap for my other reader, the story is called The Shoes and is about a relationship over forty years told from alternating male and female points of view (POV).  Initially, it was to be 2,000 words long.  An earlier post about the process is here.

The story is an indeterminate form; too long for a short story, too short for a novella.  I've termed it a Loomidob for now.

I have written a large chunk of backstory for my female character.  It relates to a time when the girl is trying to prevent the adoption of the child she is expecting.  The extract became a short story called The Musical Mobile (as if I haven’t told you that already). 

 

My supervisor, The Author who is Writing about Neanderthals, said it is fine for me to write about events that have influenced characters but, to be fair, I should do something similar for my man character.

What I have been advised that I need to do:

See what techniques real authors use to get around the problems I am experiencing.

Signal temporal and narrative shifts more effectively.

Give my man more substance, more backstory - even if it is never used.

Sort out continuity and cohesion problems and research facts instead of guessing stuff.

During the wasted weeks when I’ve felt shitty and I haven’t felt able to write nicely I’ve been: 

reading; 

speaking to real authors by email; 

thinking about my male character and trying to work out why he doesn’t seen authentic.

What I’ve read:
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (a get-better present from a really good friend)
Black Rock by Amanda Smyth

The Leaping by Tom Fletcher

Housekeeping, Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler

What I’ve learnt:

Real authors make themselves write however shitty they feel because they can edit and redraft weak work but they cannot edit no work.   Real authors write a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day in its original form.

That I have to stop being resistant to signalling narrative shifts.  In The Leaping, Tom Fletcher alternates between two narrative voices and he signposts each change with the narrators name. It works very well.

I have to stop being resistant to naming my characters; it isn’t enigmatic, it’s pretentious and irritating.

I am going to have to write a lot of backstory for both of my characters and then jettison most of it; the piece is now over 17,000 words long and my word limit for assessment is 12,000.  17,000 (and growing) is really unwieldy; I forget where stuff is and my style has evolved as I’ve been writing so there are big discrepancies in technique.

I need to avoid sentimentality and cliché by recalling my own honest emotions rather than writing what I imagine a pretend person (who is inevitably more sophisticated than me) might do and feel.  A line from Anne Tyler’s book The Amateur Marriage brought me up short. 

The extract is set in the US in the1960s.  A mother has just discovered that her runaway daughter is in hospital in San Francisco, which is thousands of miles away from where she and her husband live.  She telephones her husband at work:

‘We have to go, you have to come home, how will we get there? …… We have to buy airplane tickets, how do people do that?’ 

Which I think is exactly how a real person might respond in the circumstance.  That is how I would respond.

I need a timeline to give me an overview of the structure of the story and to highlight irregularities or sloppiness. For example, I realise that I've written about a Harvest Moon in May, and I refer to a general election in 1974 that didn’t happen until 1976.  

Also I’ve made the male character’s father a socialist refugee.  Because my grasp of history is poor I don’t know which European countries generated socialist refugees around the time of WW2, or whether they were likely to arrive before, during or after the war.

Part of me thinks that this is my made up world and it doesn’t matter what I make up.  Part of me knows that if I were an examiner I’d throw a script across the room for slapdash fact-finding.

What has happened:

I am sick to death of the title, The Shoes. If I could set fire to that stupid title, I would.  If I could hang it, draw it, quarter it and put its head on a stake outside the city walls, I would.

I have given my characters names, Joan and Senny (short for Senacerib).

I signal narrative shifts CLEARLY.

My characters have more substance; transpires a high proportion of them were bed wetters (really!) No idea this has happened and I might have to rethink it -  but what can I do? Maybe noctural enuretics do clump clammily together for comfort. 

I am still finding it much harder to write the male point of view than to write the female point of view.

I listened to Michael Portillo’s Democracy on Trial on Radio 4.  Michael’s father is Spanish, a Labour voter who came to the UK just before WW2 as a refugee.  Hurrah!! Senny’s dad is that thing too!

What is still to do:

Ensure that the characters’ POV are distinctive, consistent and emotionally honest.

Ensure that the characters’ POV change and age as they do.

Write, edit, write, edit, stop being a wuss, write, edit.

Thank you to David Wright for my photograph of a wistful Rubik’s Cube (I knew David would had a Rubik’s Cube to photograph for me because he can do them very quickly!)  
David and his band The New Zealand Story are at Spotlight on Friday 21 May 2010, as are many other splendid people. Look Here for details.

I’ve got these books still to read:

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis (a get-better present from someone Very Fine)

Antwerp by Nicholas Royle

Not So Perfect by Nik Perring (both get-better presents from myself)

The Dissertation, Narrative Mode and Being Jealous of Margaret Atwood.

My supervisor, the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals, has spent hours forensically reading my shitty first/fifth/seventh drafts and I have had the first two of my six dissertation meetings.

The project will be 12,000 words in my chosen genre and 3,000 words of critical commentary.

Initially I planned to write six 2,000 word pieces because I am a blatherer who needs discipline and because I find it so difficult to make longer stories cohesive. The first three story ideas started out as:
The Shoes: a love story over forty years told from alternating male and female points of view;
The Wrong Baby: a story about the social changes wrought by a transfer from a mobile forager/hunter existence to sedentism and food production;
I Was A Nurse: a story about the impact of dementia;

Two of the stories feature dead or lost babies and the third features an infantile parent. I am always losing babies in my stories.

I am about to blather about point of view (POV) or narrative voice and tense so here is a scanty summary of POV and narrative mode - as I understand it:

First person: Uses the ‘I’ voice. The first person narrator is often unreliable because they are presenting events from their perspective.
Second person: Uses the ‘You’ voice.
Third person: Uses the ‘She’ voice. The third person narrator can be:
Third person objective, that is the narrator describes events but not the thoughts of the characters.

Third person subjective (also known as third person restricted (or limited) omniscient) that is the narrator describes events and the thoughts of one main character. Some stories are a series of third person subjective narratives that focus on alternating or different characters.
Third person omniscient: the narrator who sees all and knows the mind of all the characters.
Past tense: 'I was at'; ‘She was at’.
Present tense: 'I am at'; ‘She is at’.

POV and tense can be used in every permutation. To add confusion I am going to talk about a story in which I use a first person, present tense narrative mode to write about a memory. I like present tense because events are unfolding for the reader as they happen.

My love story started out being told by two alternating (unnamed) protagonists. Both were narrated from the first person, past tense POV.

This is a small extract from the first draft (it was well-slated in workshop). Usually the alternating sections are longer but these two just happen to be very short. The girl narrates first then the bloke:

"I was one of May’s bridesmaids. After the reception a group of us went on to Charlie’s. The dress wasn’t one of those dreadful satin carry-ons; we chose a nice maxi-dress from Dorothy Perkins so I could get some use out of it afterwards. I wore ballet pumps with mine. When he saw me he said.
‘Don’t you have any proper shoes?’

Houghton Sue wasn't at Charlie’s this week but she was. She was drunk and looked a bit of a mess, long flowery dress and stupid shoes. Still I took her home and got my end away."

At the first dissertation meeting my supervisor recommended that I read:
Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace to see how a writer can shift between narrators; in this instance between an first person unreliable narrator and a third person subjective (or restricted) narrator;
Postcards by Annie Proulx as an example of how a writer tells one man's story as a series third person restricted narratives; each section present events from the point of view of different characters in turn over many decades;
Burning Bright by Helen Dunmore to see how I might convey how devotion or obsession can blind a character to reality. Burning Bright is written from shifting POV but in the perpetual present tense.

Over a few weeks I found all of the titles except Burning Bright at various Oxfam Books (I found loads of others besides and I did get a bit carried away.... )

I redrafted The Shoes first because, despite it being slated, it is the story that engages me most. It still is not finished and had grown to 7,000 words before my second dissertation meeting so I suggested to my supervisor that I might concentrate on this tale and let it expand into a 12,000 word long-short story, if such a thing exists.


The initial drafts of The Shoes were written colloquially with contractions - weren't, should've, I'd, can't - which I was unhappy about but which I felt were appropriate to the first person voice. One of the books I found in Oxfam was When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishguro's story is a first person narrative that eschews contractions other than in direct speech and I decided to copy his approach in my next iteration.


So, in the redrafting I removed contractions, added a present tense (and present day), first person prologue which describes the woman catching a glimpse of the man after the passage of many years:


"I see you today.
I am driving down the hill into the city. It is late morning and the sun is shining in my eyes as I turn a bend. I am about to ask Edie to retrieve my sunglasses from the glove compartment but she is speaking and I think I will wait until she has finished this bit of what she is saying.
I am concentrating on Edie’s words. Or rather, I am alert for a natural break. And then there you are…"


I changed the man's POV sections to third person restricted narrator; I made this change because it allowed me to include details and descriptions that my male character would not necessarily have noted.

I altered both narrative POV to the perpetual present tense so they are not memories or flashbacks but unfolding events. The narrators and the reader does not know what will happen (although the prologue has obviously hinted against a happy-ever ending).

I'm impressed that proper writers are able to let slip early on that all will not be well - that the narrator will be dead by Tuesday for example - but it is done so skilfully that that the reader allows herself to hope against hope that all may turn out nicely. I hope this every time I see Hamlet.


This is extract from above, redrafted:

“I am a bridesmaid at May’s wedding. After the reception some of us travel on to Charlie’s for a dance. My dress is not one of those dreadful satin creations; we chose a flower print maxi-dress from Dorothy Perkins so I can wear it again afterwards. I found some pink ballet pumps that match it exactly. When Tom sees me he says.

‘Haven’t you got any proper shoes?’

Tom cannot find Houghton Sue at Charlie’s this week, but that girl with the frizzy hair is here; the one that seems to be following him around. She is drunk and she looks a bit of a mess in a long, flowery, hippy-dress and stupid shoes. Tom considers for a while, but he does not get any better offers and so he takes her home; and this time it is worth it. He gets his end away.”

I also gave my male character a name, Tom, and the female character became a nurse.
I nursed in the olden days; I know about thermometers and myocardial infarctions and gallows humour and getting bladdered - I have access to credible detail. I'm not sure why I am reluctant to name my main protagonists. It is clear from creative writing blogs and books that not naming a character in an attempt to be 'mysterious' irritates readers. I think I am partly guilty of trying to be mysterious but my reluctance is also based on my prejudice about how a person called, Tom, for example might behave. It is probably time for another trip to a graveyard to harvest some pre-used names.
The Author who is Writing about Neanderthals was happy for me to concentrate on one long-short story and gave me some interesting guidelines for how many words constitute what form:

12,000 is more than a short story; it bites back, it trusts (her words).

20,000 is a long story (a US form she said) which often reflects upon the social morays of a particular time.

35,000 is a novella, like The Great Gatsby or The Turn of the Screw.

50,000-60,000 is a short novel.

So my piece doesn't really have a form. I might call it a Loomidob, or I might get a better idea.


My supervisor said that the new prologue framed the narrative (!), it is set further in the future than the main body of the story and is the point from which the writer can look backward and even forward.


She is happy with the redrafting so far and feels that the removal of contractions has changed the tone of the piece and consequently the impact on the reader. She suggests that the new formality slows the narrative and that the piece has acquired a tenderness that was missing previously. She suggested I read:
 Colm Tobin; for tenderness that works very well.

Bakhtin on Dostoevsky's work and the representation of polyphony, many voices. The Shoes has two voices, although I think Bakhtin would say that there is a third voice; the woman who relates the prologue is a decades older version of the nurse and therefore an ‘other’ or changed person.


The Author who is Writing about Neanderthals is a candid and critical reader but she already knows my characters, what I am aiming for and how the piece has developed. I recently attended some intermediate writing workshops and I took an opening extract from The Shoes to get some fresh and cold-eyed feedback...



The counsel I received in this forum was invaluable and (I hope) encouraged me to stop deluding myself.  I was advised that:

My shifts between points of view need to be more clearly signposted.

I need to orient my characters in a place and time with each shift.

I had already made a decision not to signpost shifts in narrative voice by changing font or by other type of formatting (other than by defined line breaks) because I felt it was patronising the reader, but it is obviously pointless to muddle the reader too.
It was suggested at the workshop that I could date sections like diary entries. Again, I'm not keen but I am not sure why. Maybe it is because I am a lazy writer, or maybe it is because I am prepared to be a hard working reader and figure out what is happening in the books I read (those written by proper writers); but I realise that that is not a good-enough reason and that I can't depend on reader-loyalty from MA markers.

 I came away from the workshops with some more reading suggestions:
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood; for effective use of present tense memories or flashbacks and for technically accomplished tense shifts.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; for a portrayal of interlocking lives.
Morven Callar by Alan Warner for a self contained female narrative voice.
Lorrie Moore.
Ann Beatty.
Miranda July

Cat's Eye is my favourite so far, it features a motif that is familiar to me and, I expect, to my other reader. That is, how a child can be terrorised by a bully who is ultimately revealed to be feeble and pitiable. For my part, that syndrome is not limited to childhood; I spent whole swathes of my adult life not getting or being afraid of people I saw regularly - other parents, people at evening classes, work colleagues - only to eventually realise that it wasn't necessarily me who was stupid or out of kilter.



In Cat’s Eye, Atwood keeps her child narrator in the eternal present, which contrasts with the nebulous and disjointed childhood memories of the her same character as a grown woman.



I am very jealous of Atwood because she manages time shifts between forty years ago and now that are mostly in first person present tense and occasionally in first person past tense without clunky signposting; italics or diary dates. That is what I am trying to do.  The difference is Atwood is a skilled technician and I am not.

My first person narrator presents information in an immediate, simplistic way:

"I am a bridesmaid at May's wedding. After the reception..."

Although Atwood is writing in the present tense as a child her voice is more lyrical and knowing and her scope is broader:

"The snow erodes, leaving the pot-holes in the roads near our house filled with muddy water. The bubbles of ice form across these puddles overnight; we shatter them with the heels of our boots."
Atwood's narration feels like an adult looking through a child's eyes but, as I said, the adult narrator does not remember the childhood events with clarity or order.

 My story is not complete yet. I know what happens but I am not sure how it happens. I think I just need to get it finished using the current narrative modes and then work on trying to make it accessible without being patronising.

The Birthday Neanderthal, half an MA and Time

I was given this Neanderthal for my birthday, and those fossils and that terrifying stuff from the stygian crevices of my head. James Fraser made this picture for me. James, you are officially the King of being able to judge a person.

I might have half an MA Creative Writing. A 'M' I suppose, or more properly an 'A'; I’m certainly not a Master - but then I hardly qualify as an Art either.

Whatever, the taught year of the degree is over and when I met the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals for my first dissertation tutorial she intimated I'd passed the last two modules; the exam board meets in October. Schrodinger's cat is completely out of the box – the marks aren’t confirmed - but I’m never, ever going to average 70% or over for the year. Oh well, I don’t exactly want to top myself. Although actually, a bit I do…

The dissertation is to be twelve thousand words with a three thousand word commentary. I’ve form for being ungovernable regarding word count guidelines; the short-story I wrote for the fiction module grew to be over eight thousand words long and was a nightmare to edit and make coherent because I couldn’t actually read it all in one go (grim to mark too I imagine). Consequently I’m planning to write six, two thousand word pieces, a mixture of fiction and creative nonfiction, based on some of the statements from my 20+ Things about me-meme; me, me, me, me. I'm hoping some unifying theme will emerge.

When I spoke about the three short-story ideas I've got so far:

• Alternating male and female perspectives of an affair over forty years;
• Changes wrought by a transfer from a mobile forager/hunter existence to sedentism and food production;
• The impact of dementia;

the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals suggested Time as a theme. I dunno why I didn’t think of that because I am already a Time-Nerd.

In an earlier post, That’ll be different, I referred to shifting perceptions of time through moment and culture. For example, during the 1940s an anthropologist, Evans-Prichard, lived amongst the Nuer, a pastoralist people of Southern Sudan.

Evans-Prichard reports that Nuer don’t have Time; that is they don’t have any expression equivalent to Time which means that they can’t speak of Time as if it is something actual, it doesn’t pass, can’t be wasted, can’t be saved and can't be made up. It pleases me to think of people who live without Time; of Time as an artificial construct.

How I feel about time is - in the short term everything matters but in the long term, geological time, nothing matters.

If my infant mother hadn't survived diphtheria in an era before antibiotics I would never have been born.
'No great loss!' My other reader might reasonably exclaim. 'You're a narcissist, you produce ungovernably long short-stories and you're morbidly attached to Neanderthals.'

Okay, that is all true - but, what if Charles Darwin's mother had died of diphtheria or Alan Bennett's mother? And anyway, if I wasn't born who would my childrens’ partners be marrying at those pretty damn special weddings I've written about; the weddings that are going to happen in the near future? And who would be here to submit bridesmaid gowns to the YMCA test? Unsettling thoughts.

Yet in terms of geological time, nothing is really significant, not whales, not poor darling infants choking to death, not the threat of redundancy, nothing.

I think to be kind and attentive are the most essential human characteristics. I try to occupy the moment and believe that everything equates. But mostly I live in a geological-time mindset; a mindset where nothing matters; except maybe MA marks and interesting facts about Neanderthals (my favourite hominin, thanks again, James).
Yes, I know I’ve used stygian twice recently. Stygian has taken over from trope as a word I bandy in an attempt to appear clever.

ps I've borrowed the 'What if my mother hadn't survived? None of this would have happened,' motif from Kathleen Jamie (Findings p. 112). Jamie's mother survived pneumonia and my mother really did survive diphtheria.

The YMCA Test for Bridesmaids' Gowns and being a Creep

There are going to be some pretty damn special weddings in the near future. My youngest child has been asked to be a bridesmaid, which is grand, and frocks are under discussion. One suggested dress is an asymmetrical style. It has rose petals or foliage all around the top and clambering over a single strap.

My youngest child is hesitant about this style.
‘What’s going to be under those petals climbing over the shoulder?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Will it be a shoe-string strap?'

'It could be.'

'You know what'll happen if it is don't you?'

'Will it dig in?'

'No.'

‘Will it be annoying because it’s not equal and balanced?'
'Not that.'
'Will the other shoulder feel left out?’

'No, not left out.'

'What then?'

'The second I start doing the YMCA it’ll snap. There'll be petals flying everywhere.’

I’m not sure how to put it to her that this celebration might not be a YMCA kind of a do. It might not even be a

(brace yourself) Oops Upside Your Head kind of a wedding-do either.

I'm not going to let on just yet. It's going to be much more fun shopping for bridesmaids’ outfits if we're assuming we have to submit each gown to the YMCA test.

I discovered yesterday that the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals (my favourite hominin) will supervise my MA project. This is a very good thing but I’m also a little bit sad that it isn’t going to be the Writer with the Writerly Name.

At least I can now write sycophantic comments on the Writer with the Writerly Name's blog posts without appearing to be a creep. But then, what is the point of writing creepy comments, if it’s not going to get me better marks? Only kidding. Oh man, I think I’m only kidding, I hope I'm only kidding.

Had two mentions and very fine link-ups in the last week.
Valerie O'Roirdan at not exactly true is about to start an MA in creative writing at the University of Manchester (she's keen to hear from others doing the same or similar). There are links to some of Valerie's smashing stories from her blog.

Kate Feld at Manchizzle is hard at work adding blogs nominated for the Manchester Blog Awards to her blogroll.

And on the topic of the Manchester Blog Awards Dave Hartley has written a story a week for the last twelve months (just two to go). If you haven't read his tales yet you're set for a lovely treat.

Thank you, James Fraser, for my YMCA bridesmaid.

The Syphilitic Nature of Blogging (Part One)

Writing things in the hope that other people will read them on the internet is such a schizophrenic experience.

Is it acceptable to use mental illness metaphors? I think it might be, even if I’m not being postmodern, but that’s not exactly fair is it? It would hardly be acceptable for me to say blogging is like having Duchenne muscular dystrophy or Down’s syndrome or syphilis. Saying any of those things would be insensitive and incorrect and yet a bipolar person doesn’t make a choice to be out of kilter anymore than a victim of muscular dystrophy does.

Curiously, saying blogging is like having syphilis might be just about acceptable (although inaccurate). I wonder if that’s because syphilis is a STD and therefore inherently comical or because it’s treatable with antibiotics?

I digress; promoting a blog is fraught with conflicts and contradictions. At first I though I was writing for myself but that’s not really true. I write a new blog-post and I’d like people to read it. To advertise the new post I tweet a sheepish link on Twitter to people I’ve mostly never met. From what I can make out a fair number of my Twitter Followers are actually pretend people; some of them sell solutions; storage-solutions (boxes, I think) and communications-solutions (computer-shit). Judging by their friendly and outgoing photographs, some ladies who follow me are promoting relief-solutions, I tend to block them - unless I know them - obviously.

Because of the slightly impersonal nature of twittering I queer-like sort of don’t mind if Twitter Followers pity me, that’d just be Twitter Pity.

As I’ve become bolder I’ve tried to make the promotional tweet a hook, writing lines like, ‘I’ve been looking at ladies legs.’ or name-checking characters that people obsess about, Myra Hindley or Carol Ann Duffy or Hairdresser Ladies; (it might only be me who obsesses about hairdresser ladies - but somehow I Don’t Think So).

To begin with I cravenly tweeted a link to my blog-post in the middle of the night; a quiet time when people are asleep and when my tweet could get buried under the getting up tweets-rush and never be seen again.

However, my Twitter tweet now updates my Facebook status (sorry if that makes no sense at all).

I have met (just about) all of my Facebook friends – I see a fair number of my Facebook friends most days. I don’t mind too much if the storage-solution thinks I’m vain and deluded but it’s a bit different to rub your Facebook friends’ faces in the facts.

In earlier days of Twitter/Facebook synchronisation I’d nervously post a blog link via Twitter, wait a few nail-biting minutes, and then I’d hysterically logon to Facebook and delete the synchronised status update before it could be seen by too many of my (23 plus) Facebook friends.

I was cured of this lunacy (there I go again with my mental illness metaphor) when I deleted a Facebook status update blog link just as someone added the comment, ‘I loved this post! :)’ Of course, the complimentary comment disappeared with the deleted original Facebook status update:

Noooooooo! Your first blog-approval and you deleted it! You were frantic. Yet again it was time to calm down, and weigh up the options, and decide what to do.

Nothing?
Too vain and deluded for that.

Print off the email alert and carry it everywhere with you so it’s handy if it ever crops up in conversation?
Goes without saying.

ReTweet the link and ask your Facebook friend to write his comment again?
Pathetic, are you a complete moron?

ReTweet the link and copy and paste your Facebook friend’s comment from the alert email you received when he posted it?
The reply would still have your name on it, Stupid; how would that look? Think about what you’re considering (and You, stop using learning difficulty-allegory whilst you’re at it).

What I did do was to ReTweet the link in the hope that my Facebook friend was a sympathetic mind-reader who understood about deranged wannabe writers and would write the same comment again. Sadly, not. (I've have got a copy of the comment in my pocket if you want to see it though).

On the topic of deranged wannabe writers I received two disappointing MA Creative Writing marks on the same day several weeks ago. On the strength of my disappointment (in myself) I decided I was going to complete the last two taught modules of my MA and then drop out of the programme without starting the dissertation.

‘That,’ I thought grimly as I bloodily sawed at my nose,’ will show me.’

The marks weren’t awful but they were comparatively low and, worse, I deserved them. I knew I was floundering when I put my Stylistics portfolio together. In the end I felt as if I resorted to writing bottomfishbanana a thousand million times because I just didn’t really get it or know what else to do.

I went to see the programme leader to discuss my decision. She, predictably, told me my marks were creditable. That’s another one of Those Terms isn’t it? Like ‘salt of the earth’ (common) and ‘friendly and outgoing’ (fast) ‘lively writing’ (self conscious, verbose, first draft-type writing). Creditable is kindly meant but it hurts.

But she said something else that did make me reconsider my decision. She said that she could see me submitting work for publication in two or three years time. My reflex reaction was that if I’m not good enough now I don’t want to know. Before I came away I’d realised that I couldn’t expect any greater compliment than what she said; of course it won’t happen overnight. And I’m grateful for her honestly, and her sagacity.

So, if you see me with nasty awkwardly sewn-back nose - horrible black thread and oversized needle-holes (I can never find the right needle) don’t worry; its just my schizophrenia, I mean syphilis, playing up again.

The photograph is of The Minotaur and the Hare by Sophie Ryder in the centre of Cheltenham. Frankie said the Minotaur looks like a nice boyfriend, and despite the fact he’s as friendly and outgoing in his dress sense as some of my relief-solutions Twitter Followers, she right, he does look like nice boyfriend doesn’t he?

Left hand down a bit, First Creative Writing workshop, Naming Names and the Competition... Wednesday 22 April 2009.

I do get out of sorts when I’m trying to reverse into a parking space and a dapper bystander wearing a shorty-mac taps eagerly on my car window with his knuckles and proceeds to give me instructions.

‘Left hand down a bit.’
‘What?’
‘Left hand down a bit, and you’ll be sorted’
The thing is, I have absolutely no idea what ‘left hand down a bit’ means. Now and then I’d quite like to punch that dapper man in his shorty-mac when he taps eagerly on my car window with his knuckles and says that thing. I’m not a bad person but sometimes I might come across as a being a bit insolent.

This Wednesday was the first week of the Writer with the Writerly Name’s Creative Writing Workshop module. We’re going to be doing a lot of peer appraisal in this unit. Peer appraisal is what happens when we take in turns to offer feedback and suggestions on each other’s work. The convention is that each group member says what they consider to be admirable about the piece. Then they each comment on what doesn’t work so well and, if they can, offer advice suggesting what might make the piece more effective.
My daughter is using a similar approach with her primary pupils and terms it ‘three stars and a wish’. My writer friend uses what she calls a sandwich – commendation-suggestion-commendation. What’s important is not to descend to platitudes, just saying ‘I like it’ or ‘it’s good’ with being specific about what exactly does work and why it works.
When my children were little I tried to say at least three positive things for every negative pronouncement. Similarly I tried not to resort to inanity such as ‘you’ve tied your shoe laces very nicely’. Being a mother who is forever blurring the boundaries between roles the children were soon party to my approach. It has become a family joke that if one of us does something regrettable, say comes downstairs in an irredeemably grim outfit, we say: ‘Well, your shoes are tied very nicely’.
The MA group have critiqued each other work since the start of the course but now the process is to be more rigorous and we’ll each have the opportunity to chair a discussion.
In The Poet’s module I received very poor feedback for a poem. Well deserved on reflection, but I thought I’d die of grief at the time. The experience triggered another poem; Dead on the Table.

They comedian and singer, Isy Suttie was asked to make a face out of edible stuff for a weekend magazine and found some bits quite tricky. Peer appraisal, like making ears out of ham, is harder than people make out. Last term I think someone suggested that half an hour was enough time to spend on preparing feedback on a colleague’s work. Well. Like Suttie’s ham-ears it takes me a lot longer that that, about a day a person I reckon.

I’ve been thinking about naming names. During the Life Writing module I was writing about characters from my childhood. I discovered I couldn’t give my people fictional names (to protect the not-so innocent) until the very end of the process because individuals with a pseudonym name immediately stopped being who they were and started to behave inappropriately.

During the Fiction module I found the apportioning original names to characters thorny. I've called someone Bette Benn and it sounds contrived. All my made-up names sound risible; improbable.
In the book That Old Ace in the Hole each character Annie Proulx introduces has a more ingenious name: Bob Dollar has an uncle called Tambourine Bapp (Uncle Tam) who has a boyfriend named Bromo Redpoll. Bob visits a town called Woolybucket where he meets Sheriff Hugh Dough; Ponola Dough; LaVon Fronk; Orlando Bunnel; Ribeye Cluke; Ruhama Bustard; Parmenia Boyce; Ruby Loving (an ancient haggard Country Singer); Ace and Tater Crouch. He also spends some time helping out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café. I like the names in That Old Ace in the Hole very well. But then I think, people in America do have interesting names anyway.

There’s a vast disused county lunatic asylum at Lancaster; you can see the vernacular quadripartite tower looming above the trees from the M6 on your drive up to the Lake District.

As an aside, the world record for enduring ‘total’ sense deprivation – staying alive, conscious and sane without appreciably seeing, hearing or feeling anything - is three days and twenty hours, recorded in 1962 at Lancaster Moor Hospital. The perceptual isolation research was conducted on volunteer nurses and patients and was an attempt to see if schizophrenics and ‘normals’ differed in their tolerance levels. I first read about the feat in the Guinness Book of Records forty years ago and understood at the time that the subjects were submerged in sound proofed tanks of body temperature liquid. Reading about the experiments now it seems that there weren’t the resources for such sophisticated techniques, so the subjects were wrapped in cladding and placed in sound proofed rooms. The deprivation wasn’t total because they still had to eat and go to the loo. I think I imagined that they’d be tube-fed and have astronaut-type toilet arrangements. Common sense dictates that the Lancaster Moor Hospital wouldn’t have had the benefit of Nasa technology. I find myself bizarrely disappointed by the researchers’ lack of rigour. Disappointed and bemused and then saddened. I feel saddened by the poignant image of a sightless schizophrenic volunteer being bundled along hospital-green tiled corridors to the lavatory in the name of scientific research.

On the city-side of the asylum is a cemetery. The Lancaster liberal peer and linoleum giant, James Williamson, and three of his wives (and others) are buried under a modest monument in this enormous graveyard.

Little Jimmy, as he was nicknamed, commissioned the Ashton Memorial in Williamson Park in remembrance of his second wife, Jessy. Jessy’s monument is also visible from the M6.

The colossal dome of the Ashton Memorial is copper and in the 1960s it was cleaned and burnished. The monument looked very strange for a while but soon reverted back to the more recognisable verdigre-ed state. When Jimmy, Lord Ashton, died in 1930 he was worth ten million pounds; which would have been be worth an almost unimaginable sum at today’s standards.

However, the point is I went to the cemetery to look at names. Here’s a small selection: John Shadrach Slinger; Alice Maude Wolfall; Charles Purdon Silly; Rimmon Clayton; Dolly Salliss; Oliver Speddy; Harold Muckalt; Bindloss Smith; Nellie Bell; Peregrine John Smart; Ninian Smart; Isabella Row; Jane Bailie. And some nice alliteration: Alice Arkle; Ernest Ellershaw; Clara Ann Airey; Henry Homer; Herbert and Harriet Hall and Maria Marriott.




So you see; people do have diverting names in Britain too - Shadrach Slinger and Ninian Smart; half of my characters will be named Shadrach or Ninian from this time on. What strikes me is that, although those names are uncommon they don’t sound contrived like my Bette Benn does. Maybe a name has to be lived in to sound authentic.

All students in our group have been urged to enter the writing competition (entries to be submitted by 1 May). I assumed that the fact that I’m busy on the presentation night would exclude me. Apparently not; the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals (my favourite hominin) said I could still submit a piece. Sadly my first thought on learning this was:
'What if I don't win?'
There I've said it. Now if I do enter and I do tell people I've entered and I don't win everyone'll know why I'm doing deluxe sulking.

I'm including the photograph of Mary Jane Minnie Davis because her name is fine and because her headstone is made from Shap Granite which is currently my second favourite rock.


Shap Granite forms in batholiths when magma is contained underground rather than escaping through volcanic vents. Batholiths can be miles in circumference so the magma cools very slowly allowing large mineral crystals to form (in contrast volcanic rock like basalt cools very quickly as it leaves the earth so there is no time for large mineral crystals to form and the rock has a fine texture). Shap Granite probably formed when the tectonic plates carrying Scotland and England collided about four hundred million years ago. It contains high levels of orthoclase feldspar which gives it its glorious distinctive pink colour, prized by monumental masons. I like the idea that the granite owes its existence to the colliding of two continents; I like the idea of something crystallising under the ground for millions of years and the earth being eroded down to expose it; and I’m enchanted by the notion it is located just up the road; it’s our Shap Granite.

What have I learned this week? Well, just look at those last two images; John Shadrack Slinger and Mary Jane Minnie Davis. I’ve l learned that I need to do right-hand down a bit when I'm taking photographs. This is a doubly significant realisation in light of my opening remarks. I’ve also learned from Eric Partridges Dictionary of Catch Phrases that the expression ‘left hand down a bit’ is a standard piece of Navalese. It caught on when the dapper actor Leslie Phillips used it regularly in a 1950s radio programme called The Navy Lark. So, to all you spruce and eager bystanders with shorty-macs and tappy knuckles; now, at last, I can see where you were coming from. So thanks, and I’m really sorry if I came across as a being a bit insolent, as I say I’m not a bad person.

Back with Stylistics and the Pantoum is Queen. Wednesday 28 February 2009

I’ve learnt about syllabic metre and iamb iamb iamb – but I’m still not sure how to hear the difference between iamb and trochee. I’ve become entirely addicted to pantoums I’ve gained weight, mostly because I’ve been so engaged writing piss-poor pantoums that I haven’t moved around at all. I like pantoums because I’m a rubbish rounder-offer and with the pantoum form once you’ve written your first line you’re sorted with your final line. And I enjoy the way that unexpected collocations of lines seem to make the poem say something profound that you’ve only just realised that you think.

I’ve delivered a ‘poetry’ workshop. I had to give a 30 minute presentation at the culmination of a library orientated Training and Learning course. I’d every intention of reviving my web evaluation set-piece but an evil shoulder-demon was whispering: “pantoum” in my ear when I was sleeping. Once the idea was planted there was no hope of shifting it; setting myself up for maximum humiliation and I was powerless to intervene. We’re British librarians; generally speaking we’d rather eat own nasty liver than participate in the most innocuous of ice-breaking exercises, let alone render our soul. I went into a session promising 12 librarians, well 11 librarians and a conservator, that in 30 minutes they’d leave with the first draft of a poem (a pantoum). I didn’t give any prior warning as I presumed I’d fail automatically if no one turned up; at least if everyone just fainted I’d get marks for trying.

We did it in three stages (and I gamely modelled each stage as we went along, wot a trooper):
First: a childhood remembering, a room, a teacher, a den, anything, and the senses and emotions associated with the memory – scary carpet, fingerless gloves, cheesy wotsits, muddy smell. Then they talked that memory to just one other person (essential that it was as discreet as possible) for one minute;
Second: they noted down 8, 4/5 syllable phrases used in their description. This was the bit I was most terrified of; I reasoned that if they’d spoken about a topic for a whole minute they’d easily have 8 phrases but I’d absolutely no proof of that or contingency plan if they didn’t; but they were a match for me and they’d plenty to say;
Third: they reordered the 8 phrases in pantoum form. Two people allowed me to read theirs out, bloody fantastic – two tightly coiled memory-bombs, really moving. So now the Pantoum Appreciation Club has 13 members – 14, if you count my tutor’s 10 year old daughter; my tutor took the notes home for her to use. She’s like me – ideas, but a weak finisher – not any more.
The irony of me, Tin-ear Tamara with a portfolio of piss-poor pantoums and a whiney piece about not being understood, isn’t wasted on me. But 11 British librarians and a conservator and the tutor’s little girl came out happy and I’m happy.

Stylistics is very hard; metalanguage encompassing language. It seems ok – identify the adjective, adverb and noun premodifiers in a noun phrase. For example in: “my new friend from Mars”, ‘new’ is the premodifier.
Then there’s a test. Identify the premodifiers in the noun phrases in a given text. And the text contains phrases like: “was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis, with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century additions”. Well. I’m sorry, that's just messy, you can’t write that. You’ll just have to make do with one or two simple premodifiers – otherwise it’s just going to make me cry and probably faint.

We’re going to start fieldwork; keeping an artist’s sketchbook to record still-life and movement in language. I’m very taken with the idea of sitting outside Bruciani’s recording life with my gimlet eye and my Moleskine. I’m a bit concerned I’m going to look a just a tad shifty and risible and I suspect I’ll keep catching myself writing my birthday wish-list, but I’m off uptown as soon as I’ve posted this.

Life writing returns Wednesday 5 November 2008

29 October was the last poetry session until Wednesday 26 November. We were packed off last week with instructions to write a poem with form. I’ve bought three books, How to write a poem by John Redmond; Poetry – the basics by Jeffrey Wainwright; The making of a poem: a Norton anthology of poetic forms, Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (eds.). And then I Googled pantoum and followed the structure set out on Wikipedia, just like I tell my students not to. So, the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next; for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. That is,
1
2
3
4

2
5
4
6

5
7
6
8

7
3
8
1
I think; that’s what I’ve done anyway. My pantoum is frivolous and insubstantial and relates to fact that no one in our house ever wants to go food shopping, make a brew, feed the cats, get coal, empty the dishwasher or clean. To make it fair the system we operate is that if you blink first you have to do the chore.

We also employ the T-plot; that is, trying to trick someone else into making the sound ‘T’. For example one person might pretend to be doing the crossword and ask the others how to spell ‘eject’. If someone is tricked into saying the ‘T’ sound, the others in the room all yell, “yes please!” and the silly T-er has to go and make the drinks. Hilarious. The system isn’t foolproof however because three of us are dyslexic and, although daft and forgetful enough to be duped, we often genuinely reply that we don’t know how to spell the word.

I was impressed by how the form of the pantoum makes it make sense of sorts but I’m cross with my absurdly crass abab rhymes. I want a book or a website that’ll give me half-rhymes so that I can seem more sophisticated.

I’m writing the notes for this on an early train to Manchester. There are two mature students (far younger than me though) having a loud conversation, nay competition, about who knows the Biggest Most Important amount of stuff and whose relatives have the Most Critical medical condition. I put earphones in my ears but their voices are headset resistant. If I pause it’ll be because I’ve broken off briefly to punch the winner.

It was peculiar to shift back to back to life writing from poetry. It was show and tell night. We brought an important item to describe and talk about. I couldn’t decide between two; a piece of igneous rock that Ali brought back from Kilimanjaro and the Mousterian flake that Duncan found in the Loire Valley. My emotional response to the baby poem made me realise that I probably couldn’t talk about the lava, even obliquely, without getting upset. It was actually hard enough to talk about the fact that an other species of hominid had made the flake and that my son had seen it and realised that it’d be something I’d want to look at.

One of our group spoke about her grandmother’s engagement ring; of how it recalled her grandmother’s devotion and forbearance in the face of her grandfather’s confusion as he aged. It made me think about my own commitment to marriage; I have so little patience and I worry about people close to me becoming chronically sick because I’m too selfish to look after someone without harbouring terrible resentment, or making like I’m an honourable person; indeed a plaster saint.

We wrote about our significant item and then reworked what we had down using a different tense and person. I was right back to ‘how on earth do you know?’ Luckily the person I was discussing the impact of the changes with is really hot on syntax (if that’s the term). She brilliant at picking out patterns and half rhymes in poetry too; she’s exactly the right person for me to be sitting next to.

We submit a first draft of life writing next week. Thinking and writing about Jimmy Woods sparked what I’m doing. I dreamed about him last night, weirder and weirder. There has emerged a tie-in between him digging graves, the church where I attended my friends’ mother’s funeral, my Dad, the remembrance poppy and a tune called September Song. All sounds a bit soppy now. For the second draft we have to radically rework the piece by altering tense and or person; I’m truly a bit excited to see what happens when I do that.

I’m slightly worried about confidentiality. I’m using real names. I’ve tried to change them but when I do it creates too much detachment and the people start to behave in ways that I don’t recognise. I’ll have to call them by their real names at least until the first draft is completed.

We read a bit of an article entitled Experience by Joan W Scott. It was a spot impenetrable but I think I have already been thinking about what she’s writing about. Partly, how to convey the integrity of an event, both from my perspective, without trying to present myself as a plaster saint, and with an understanding the alternative perspectives of the other participants – who are obviously equally a part of the situation but are not viewing it with my eyes or my baggage; suppose a bit like the scrap of Kilimanjaro or the Neanderthal flake, or my Dad at the funeral. I was reminded of anthropology lectures and of the way that (sweeping generalisation here) the white, male, classically educated perspective of the early anthropologists influenced how unfamiliar societies were recorded and could also change those cultures by the way the worker interacted with society members. For example male ethnographers privileged what they consider to be Big and Important - tool making and hunting; the stories and perspective of male hunters, even though these activities might play a relatively small role in terms of nutrition or social cohesion. The emphasis of the western worker effectively mutes the role and view of the female. Even though the foraging and preparation she does for food probably supplies most of the calories eaten by a group and her childcare and networking activities fortify and maintain the social structure of a culture. Group members can obviously see what the anthropologist value and this in turn influences how the men and the women in the society perceive themselves and their roles.

I suppose what’s hard is knowing what your perspective or prejudice is; obviously I won’t think my bigotry is anything but the natural order.

First I was very pleased that Barack Obama won, and then I was shocked that so many people still voted for a 72 year old man and that lady who defies description, but who would become the president if the 72 year old man died died. And then I realised I didn’t even know who Barack Obama’s deputy was until I saw him on Have I Got News for You last night. Whilst Obama’s not old I presume he’s very, very vulnerable to assassination attempts. Anyway, I’ll get sophisticated about half-rhymes first and then I’ll work on politics.

Some of us were swotty and circulated our poems with form in time for the others to have A Nice Look At before 26 November. I’m particularly taken with one called My Nan is Mental. Takes me right back to the Mersey Sound and Roger McGough and Goodbat Nightman; I love it.