Author: Joanne

The Unfamiliar Window – a prompt for practice

~ Joanne ~ Leave a comment

Since I’m feeling bouncy and full of energy today, despite a spring cold, I decided I’d post another exercise you can use to create your own practice. It’s the sudden sunshine after two weeks of constant rain, I think. The upsurge in vitamin D is obviously making me think anything is possible, including some energetic writing practice.

This one is another observation exercise, to jog us out of our ordinary ways of seeing. I realised how much we automatically filter out when I started taking walks with my son – he sees everything. His brain hasn’t yet started to ignore things he has seen before, things that are commonplace, and therefore he is overloaded with information and excitement just walking down the road. Sometimes it’s not so interesting (how many motorbikes I can find interesting in no way correlates to the number my son finds interesting), but sometimes he points out a flower I wouldn’t have noticed, or a heron stock still on the island in the park, or the dragon nests in the clouds. Invigorating.

Ado? No more:

Exercise: The Unfamiliar Window

  •  Describe the view in detail.

You can do this with a truly unfamiliar window, or one that is familiar, that you think you know inside out. The trick is to look with fresh eyes, and note every significant detail you can: the toys in a back garden, a window left open, people at the bus stop, the leaves (or otherwise) on the trees. Paint a true picture of what you see. Try and keep judgements out of the prose. 300 words.

As for the windows themselves, you can sit in front of them, take a photo, do a quick sketch, or  take some quick notes (this will end up being more of a remembered/imagined version but still useful).

Extension exercise: focus on one detail and expand its story. Now is the time to bring judgements into the prose. 300 words.

Workshops and Word Cricket

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I went to a different kind of workshop today, not the ‘bring your work and expose yourself’ kind, but the ‘let’s just think about what makes a good story great’ kind. It was billed as a workshop on navigating the world of short story competitions, and how to give your story the best shot.

In the end, all this meant was reminding ourselves to write the best story possible.

It was useful. It was gentle. Vanessa Gebbie reminded me of Anna Burns – compassionate and passionate, and well able to deal gently but firmly with the crazy writer in the room. (I don’t know why, but there’s always one in every workshop I’ve ever been on. Someone who is only half willing to learn, talks loudly and for too long on the wrong end of the stick. The blessing, as one tutor confided to me, is that if you can spot that person in the room it means it isn’t you.) We didn’t have to share work, but we did a couple of exercises, one of which she called word cricket, which had an Oulipian edge to it. I set it down here for you to enjoy too:

  1. Start writing from a short phrase eg ‘The door opened…’
  2. carry on writing until the facilitator throws another word at you
  3. catch the word, and incorporate it into your writing
  4. repeat steps 2&3 for around five minutes.

Obviously it helps if there is someone else throwing the words at you so you don’t know what’s coming next. It was playful, I made myself smile, and it didn’t feel difficult at all.

I wasn’t sure it could still feel like that.

I did have to navigate some internal complications – feeling rusty, out of the game, yadda yadda – but I’m glad I went. It was a step out of my comfort zone, required effort on a Saturday, the quelling of guilt at passing over the childcare, talking to people I’d never met. It was another rung on the ladder, another hop on the way back to writing as a living, breathing part of my existence. All good.

Recommended – Short Circuit, a guide to the art of the short story, edited by Vanessa Gebbie.

 

Mundanity and the Business of Thinking

~ Joanne ~ 4 Comments

I get really pissed off about life sometimes. The repetition of all those chores and tasks we need to do to keep on living the way we do just blows, doesn’t it? In one way or another we’ve been doing it for thousands and thousands of years, and hurrah for that or none of us would be here, but some days I swear I could smash every dish in the cupboard just so I didn’t have to empty the dishwasher one more time.

And yet.

Today I was indeed emptying the dishwasher, and had a sudden coming to, the way you do from a daydream. I realised I’d been thinking about the way people begin to gravitate back to their homeland once they’re approaching forty, not about how to stack the stupid amount of bowls we own in our ridiculously tiny cupboards.

Key point: I already know how to stack the bowls.

I figure it out anew each time I go shopping for new bowls and have to cram them in somehow, because if I don’t the voice of my husband will win out over the clatter of crockery. So my hands were moving on automatic pilot, freeing up some corner of my brain to head off into reverie, letting it scrabble away at something that has been trying to get air for a while.

It’s not as if this is a new revelation – Steven Spielberg has been quoted as saying his best ideas came to him driving the freeway – but today it felt new to me. I could save up my chores and do them in one swoop, letting my brain have some rest time for an hour so things can ferment. I could turn off the radio when I do it, just to help things along. I could quit bitching about the things that need to be done just so we can eat from clean plates and put on clean underwear, and just factor it in.

Living creatively doesn’t just mean having hours spare to do the ‘art’. It means using all of your hours in the best way you can, even when you’re hanging laundry. Let’s face it, there’s always laundry. You may as well just learn to use laundry time better.

Women, Literature and Invisibility

~ Joanne ~ 2 Comments

The Orange Prize announced their longlist this week, to coincide with International Women’s Day. I saw on Twitter a few grumblings about these ‘women only’ events, sadly a lot of them from young women, who seem to think it’s better to talk about ‘people’, and not single women out for special treatment.

This would be fine, if men hadn’t been having all the special treatment for centuries. If sexism wasn’t still rife in the workplace, in pay packets, in casual pub conversation, on television, in magazines and newspapers. If sexism wasn’t still so institutionalised that it’s sometimes hard to spot it, especially now that no one talks about it out loud.

Last year Vida (Women in the Literary Arts) released their first Count, a tally of book reviews, totting up the gender of reviewer and author. The results showed a gender bias across most publications, weighted significantly towards men. The Guardian ran an article with responses from commissioning editors, where the TLS editor, Peter Stothard, said that he would be very surprised if the numbers of published books were split 50/50 between the genders (and if that’s true, shouldn’t we be concerned about that as well?). He seemed to think this excused the fact that around three quarters of the authors and reviewers of books in the TLS were male, but he revealed his real problem in his next sentence: “we know

[women] are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS”.

In other words, “you ladies read fluffy books that aren’t important”.

The inference to be made is that the books we write aren’t important either. Or is it simply that anything that concerns women isn’t important?

I believe in positive discrimination because most people, myself included, don’t much like change. If it worked before, however imperfectly, you’re likely to stick with it. Without the catalyst of offering women and only women for a prize or election, say, the chances are that you will always see the men rise to the top. It’s far easier to stick with what you know – literary prizes are no exception.

Which is why it’s very important that women writers have to continue driving change in the publishing industry.

Sisters in Crime is an organisation founded by Sara Paretsky to specifically combat the gender bias in the mystery genre. When she began she found that “[crime] books by men were reviewed 7 times as often as books by women”. Not only that but books by male authors stayed in print far longer – women’s earning capacity was shrivelled by having not as many column inches and not enough time on the shelves. It’s the equivalent of getting half the pay for the same work. Fighting the imbalance is not a done deal either. As Sara says, everytime they take their eye off the ball, the discrimination creeps back in.

In a moment of serendipity, after I’d written most of this post my copy of Mslexia popped through the door (do you subscribe? If not, why not?), with an excellent article on this very subject. It also included some research into the effects of verbalising gender stereotyping – tell a woman she can’t reverse park and she’ll mess it up, in other words. Women have been told for centuries that not only can they not drive cars well, they aren’t deserving of education, equal pay and opportunities, or property ownership, to name a few small things. We are supposed to be there to nurture the dreams of others, not create our own. It’s no wonder that we are under-represented in the arts.

It is incredible how guilty and selfish a woman can feel for clutching at an hour of time to write, rather than do the laundry. And yes, women are far less likely to offer themselves up as professional writers or reviewers, never feeling good or experienced enough, since we seem to lack the sense of entitlement that some men seem to carry around with them. Yes, I have trouble with all of the above, but I’m working on it, because I know that I am more than a pile of paired socks.

Vida repeated their count this year. Nothing much has changed. We ought to keep shouting about it until it does.

Roadtrip

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It took only a month to track him down. Bixby had that unnerving knack of knowing just which stones to overturn, and how gently to prod at what was underneath them. They started out with the last known whereabouts, the house Reynolds had shared with his wife before she died. The new occupier was an introverted academic, the kind of woman who would take a carefully leaked fact from a conversation and let her curiosity and imagination run wild. In under five minutes Bixby had the name of the removals company, as well as the company who had handled the forwarding of Reynolds’ mail. The removals company had since tanked, but the forwarding company went from strength to strength, possibly because the merest hint of badge from the Future Bureau made them role over like puppies and hand over the entire file.

That led to another address, out of town, which led to a trip for both of them. Sarah happily agreed to look after Bixby’s dog, unaware that there was anything untoward in Benjamin’s sudden interest in Bixby’s radio controlled helicopter hobby, and the necessity of heading out to the country to fly it.

“I think it’s nice,” she said, caressing the velvet ears of Bixby’s greyhound, both of them watching Bixby head back to the car.

“Nice?” Benjamin faked an interest in the contents of his overnight bag.

“You and Bixby, getting out of town. Buddies.” She teased him with the word he hated. “You’ve been working so hard lately.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Sometimes it gets all -“ He jumbled his hands around in front of his face.

Sarah put out a hand to stop his. “It’s ok. I know. We don’t talk about the future.” She was smiling. They made that joke all the time: theirs was a relationship without a future.

Only now it was true.

Thinking of doing a Creative Writing MA?

~ Joanne ~ Leave a comment

I’ll be upfront: I didn’t think of any of these things when I applied for mine, but hindsight is terrific, isn’t it? If you’re thinking of making a last minute application, as I did, here are a couple things that might be confounding you.

1. Location. This depends more on your stage of life. If you are settled and have a family then you’re much less likely to be able to up sticks and moved to another town. However, even if you come to it straight from your first degree you might be so heavily laden with debt that moving to a new town or staying in your old student town just isn’t viable.

So, could you travel instead?

One of my classmates lived at home in Glasgow but got a cheap flight once a week to London. Cheaper than upping sticks and moving to the capital. Could you afford the time and cash to travel to your preferred course even if you can’t move there on a more permanent basis?

Check the teaching hours: if they’re condensed into one or two consecutive days this might work for you. Call or email the department and ask to talk to someone about the practicalities of studying and balancing work. They are very aware that people do have to earn money to do things like eat.

Similarly, if the course closest to you isn’t your first choice that doesn’t mean it won’t be the right one for you, which leads me to…

2. Tutors. The best piece of advice I got was from another creative writing tutor who said “be taught by someone whose work you admire”. It’s obvious really – if you admire their writing, then perhaps they write in a similar way or genre to you, and you will learn tons. However, you can only afford to be this picky if location isn’t an issue.

I had to pay this advice no attention and I really lucked out. I learned two things:

  1. Fiction writers can learn a lot from poets
  2. If someone has been published and is employed by a reputable course director to teach, they will probably know what they’re talking about.

My only regret is that in the years since I graduated the teaching staff for my course has expanded, and I’d really like to work with some if the new faculty.

Don’t be dazzled by a big name in other words. But if you can, read the tutors’ work before the course starts. It’s polite for one, and you learn by reading anything, for two. It’s a win whichever way you look at it. (Yes, even if you don’t like it.)

3. Going back into Education. My only advice is don’t worry about it. You will not be the only one. You will be able to get help and advice from your tutors. You will have access to amazing libraries and other resources. You will rise to the challenge.

I had one meeting with a tutor when I was close to tears. I can barely remember why, but I was feeling lost and confused, and regretting ever doing the MA in the first place. We had a great chat, she drew me a diagram that really helped, and she didn’t even mention how teary I clearly was. I went away feeling slightly foolish, but bolstered.

See, the thing is that when you’re on the course you are a writer among writers, and that includes the people teaching you. Your tutors know exactly how you feel, because they have been in your position – unpublished, uncertain. But what I do know is that the good writers are always generous with their craft, their time and their wallet in the pub. Ok, so maybe more often than not you’ll want to buy them a drink, but the other two are definitely true.

If you’re hesitating, just stop. Get your application in, and see where it takes you.

(For the curious, I did my MA with Andrew Motion, Jo Shapcott and Susanna Jones here: MA Creative Writing at Royal Holloway (taught in central London). I’m still processing some of the things I was taught.)