Unspoken Words

Skive Magazine issue 11 dropped through my letterbox yesterday. It contains my first ever published poem, Ode to an Ugly Woman. It’s a short poem, light humour, and is one of only about a dozen poems that I’ve written in my entire life, which isn’t bad seeing – as I’m constantly saying – that I’m not a poet. My thanks to Matt Ward for taking the poem for Skive Magazine.

And while I’m here, let me plug Skive Magazine, and Matt Ward, for a minute. My first ever published short story, Meet Shakespeare, appeared in Skive’s online magazine in 2004 and Matt accepted several more during the following year.

Since then Skive has moved from being an online ezine to a quarterly printed mag and Matt does a thoroughly professional job of managing it.

Earlier this year he was the driving force behind producing an anthology of short stories for members of Critters Bar. After a couple of aborted attempts by the members over the previous few years, Matt stepped in and made it all happen very quickly.

Matt’s not alone in doing this kind of thing. Many other ezines and print mags start up, some fade away quickly while others survive, and these places give new writers an outlet for their work and an opportunity to experience the whole business of submitting work, rejection and acceptance, helping them to build confidence.

Appearing in Skive doesn’t put us on a par with Hemingway or Carver. But it does give new writers something to feel good about, particularly when a shiny mag drops through the letterbox with our work in. For that, I thank Matt Ward and Skive Magazine, and all those like them.

I’m no poet – poetry’s such rotten gibberish, isn’t it - so I wouldn’t normally notice, but I had to travel to London by train this morning, which gave me time to do something I rarely do these days – read the newspaper. Poetry is in the news. No, really.

It turns out that the post of Professor of Poetry was up for grabs at Oxford University and there were two nags in the race. Ruth Padel pipped Derek Walcott past the post when he withdrew amid allegations of a smear campaign. Days into her new role Ruth Padel has resigned (they may actually have shot her, this is serious stuff) following allegations that she was involved in the smears.

Like I said, I’m no poet. I like to think I can have a go at writing prose, but poetry is beyond me. It’s like a rainbow, no matter how far you travel it’s always out of reach. I’ve tried to understand it, bought several books filled with poetry and a couple of how-tos (that looks wrong, but I’ll leave it in), but it’s like trying to ski up Everest.

Tonight I clicked on an article on the BBC web site about the Padel business and was halfway through reading it when something started tickling the hitherto barely troubled poetry region of my brain. On a hunch, I wandered into the utility room and started throwing books onto the floor until I found 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem – by Ruth Padel.

If, like me, you’re not much of a poet, if it reads like gibberish but you inherited a gene that keeps encouraging you to read it, and if there’s one book you’re prepared to buy to help you understand poetry better, this is the book for you.

It’s bwilliant.

Assembled from a newspaper column, the book takes 52 poems by poets many and varied and discusses them. Sounds really simple, and it is. It’s like having Ruth Padel in your living room, talking to you like a human being. There’s also about 50 pages of introductory stuff that reads like Poetry Made Simple for Non-Poets. There’s just no way you can read this book and not come away wiser for it. It won’t turn you into Caroline Bird, but it will help you to make more sense of it all.

Thank you, Ruth Padel.

Gladiatorial combat kicks off in Critters Bar this week with the return of a writing challenge known as The Arena. Each week two members face each other in a write-off. Participants remain anonymous, posting under an assumed gladiator name. Writing to a prompt, up to 1500 words, the winner of each match will be chosen by an anonymous judge. Lose, and you’re out of the challenge. 

Matches continue until only two gladiators are left, in the final, after which the champion will be crowned and a cash prize awarded. 

First match starts tomorrow. Let battle commence. 

Happy Birthday, Christopher

Another advertisement. I belong to the Goldfish Bowl writing group, which meets every two weeks in Canterbury. Run by Amy Roskilly and Rebecca Judd, the Goldfish Bowl has been going since summer 2008. Last meeting we had 10 members turn up to hear local author and novelist Thomas Emson give a talk.

Members’ interests vary, and include short stories, novels and poetry. Anyone living in the area (or visiting) is welcome to come along. Contact me for details.

The group will have its own web site in the near future. (Watch this space).

Here’s a short advertisement for Critters Bar. 

Almost anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been running the Critters Bar writing forum for the last 3 years. It was set up when the writing forum on the East of the Web site closed down in February 2006. A whole bunch of us moved into Critters Bar, named after a fictional place that had appeared in a number of short stories in which the EotW forum members featured. 

If you’re looking for somewhere to get feedback on your writing, give Critters Bar a try. Most of us write short stories, we have a few poets in our midst, and some of us are working on a novel. New members are always welcome.  

http://www.crittersbar.com 

Most of the forums in Critters Bar are for members only, so you can’t see them from the outside, but you can find out more about the place from the posts in the public forums, and if you’re interested, just click on the Register link and create an account. 

If you’ve never participated in an online forum before, check out the posts in How to Surviving Online Writing Forums, which is accessible to non-members. 

I’m guessing that at least one person who knows I’m writing a novel (it could be you!) will find the blog, so here’s what’s happening. 

After five years of online writing forums and writing short stories I figured it’s about time I started to take this writing lark seriously and wrote a novel. I sat down at the end of 2008 and came up with a plan. You know how plans work. It’s a road map of good intentions. You don’t have to follow the map, but it gives you a sense of knowing where you’re going if you at least stay close to it. 

The day job keeps me busy, so I’ve given myself plenty of time to write this thing. I’m due to start the actual writing at the beginning of July (2009), by which time I should have come up with an amazing idea and outlined it. I’ve assumed a weekly target of just 2,000 words, which should be achievable even for me. That’d give me 80,000 words (not set in concrete, but at least set in custard) which is about a minimum I’d aim for, for a novel. That takes me up to the end of March 2010. 

Next, the easy bit, stick it away for three months and forget about it. Maybe I do something else during that time, like plan the next one,  but the plan is to distance myself from the first draft and come back to it fresh maybe three months later. Then edit and revise, for up to six months, which takes me to the end of 2010. 

It’s a plan. I may deviate (from the plan), but it gives me something to work towards. 

So far I’ve spent 3 months coming up with ideas, and got about 13/14/15 that I thought might be worth pushing further. I settled on one and put some detail into it. Job done. 

As part of my preparation I’ve been doing a lot of reading, too. I’m planning to write a Science Fiction novel, as that’s what I’ve read for much of my life (almost exclusively until five years ago) and what I grew up on. So, I’ve been catching up on contemporary SF novels and authors. I’m getting through roughly a novel every two weeks, which is going it some for me, particularly to do that one after another. 

Is it helping? What have I learned? Well, I’ve learned that the idea I came up with isn’t one that I should invest 18 months of my time on. As pleased as I am that I’m getting to grips with the process of coming up with and fleshing out something longer than a short story, the idea I’d chosen isn’t original enough, or exciting enough, to run with. So, I’m still working on the idea, and still plan to have one in place and to have outlined it by the beginning of July. 

I feel good about that. To have gone forward with that idea would at least have been good experience at the whole novel writing process. But I’ve recognised that if I’m serious about writing something of a professional quality with any chance of having it published, I need something bigger and bolder. 

I’ll be back here to provide an update on progress with the novel from time to time, for anyone interested. I won’t be saying much about the story idea, the content, but at least how I’m doing against the plan. If the plan needs to change, I’ll change it. It’s custard, not concrete. Fortunately, my domestic commitments are lighter now than they have been for a few years, so I’m confident that I can complete a novel by the end of 2010. 

I’m also planning to write at least two or three professional quality short stories in that time and to seek publishing as high up the food chain as I can. I have a bunch of ideas for those, too, and I’ll let you know how that goes. 

Right. That’s enough blogging for now. Novel ideas. Go! 

Oh God. You know what it’s like. You wake up with that morning after feeling. You know you did something bad last night but you can’t remember quite what, and then it hits you.

You started blogging again.

The heavy weight of expectation pushes you so far down into the chair, you have to reach up to get to the keyboard.

Okay, well, if I’m going to do this thing, I might as well do it properly. Anyone out there know how to blog properly?

Here we go again. 

Some of you may remember that I had a blog once before. I gave up on it after about 18 months – binned it, canned it, killed it – having come to the conclusion that I’m not a blogger. So, I reverted to having a traditional web site. Now I’ve gone full circle. The blog is back. 

Why? 

Convenience. Ease of use. Laziness. Interactive. A simple way to provide brief updates, for those who are interested. And the updates will be brief. You may already know that I’m just settling down to write a novel. I’ve cleared the decks a little to make time for the novel, so I don’t expect to be blogging a mega-huge amount, but if there’s anything to know it’ll appear here. Eventually. 

Welcome back, blog-watchers.