Writing – Page 3 – Jude Higgins

Moodling and Mind Wandering

I’ve always liked the quote below by Brenda Ueland from her book published in 1938 – If You Want to Write – a book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

“So you see, imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”

For those who haven’t heard of her, Brenda Ueland was an American journalist, editor and free-lance writer who was born in 1891 and died at the age of 93 in 1985. Her mother was a suffragette, and Brenda remained a staunch feminist throughout her life. She was said to live by two rules: to tell the truth and not to do anything she didn’t want to do. I’d recommend reading this classic.

I love an older woman role-model. With her feminism and the above ‘rules’, along with the moodling advice, Brenda Ueland is certainly a good role model for me. Most of us were told at school that day-dreaming was lazy or unproductive. Sometimes such reprimands kick in for me. That sour-faced English teacher – what was she called?

There’s an interesting recent Radio 4 series called The Anatomy of Rest which suggests mind-wandering, zoning out, day-dreaming is an important part of creativity. Listen to the series and you’ll also discover that in a large sample of 18000 people, reading comes top in a survey of the most restful activities. You can certainly mind-wander in someone else’s imaginary world if you’re reading any length of fiction.

So instead of bothering to clean the floor or wipe the kitchen surface, I’m going to follow Brenda Ueland’s advice and do what I want – which is to dawdle, idle and putter down the lanes near where I live. No brisk walking for fitness, no intention of getting anywhere, no time-scale. A new flash fiction idea might even pop into my head…

Time Out, Time In

It won’t be news to iPad or iPhone owners, but I’ve discovered the timer function on Siri. Saying ‘Timer’ in a firm voice into the microphone then have the automated voice answer. ‘OK here’s the timer’ helps me get started with a daily write. I like the way the seconds tick down in large black letters, I like the red line that shows you how much time is left. I like the the timer sound at the end. Mine is like a fading old-fashioned alarm. Very subtle. The cookie monster likes the Siri timer too apparently. And you can get a waiting time playlist should you like music when you write.

Anything that gets me into a regular writing habit is a plus.

I am forever in awe of writers like Eileen Merriman, who is a hospital consultant with a couple of small children and who, I read recently in an interview with her by Bath Flash Fiction Award current judge, Robert Vaughan, on Smokelong Quarterly, still manages to write each day, sometimes for a few hours, getting flash fictions, short stories and novels completed and winning awards.

I have a goal now, in any case. I’ve pinched it from a brilliant article by Kim Liao on going for 100 rejections a year. Clearly, you have to write a lot and send out a lot to gain acceptances. This article has such a positive spin. Timing myself when I write helps. Since I began the year-of-100-rejections goal a few weeks ago I’ve received at least four of them, but I’ve also had an offer of publication in a lit mag and am waiting to hear from another magazine. Also I sent out about twelve flash fictions to a pamphlet submission slot recently so that could soon nicely increase my total of rejections.

Start rite sandals — I was very fond of these shoes when I owned some.

I’m also currently taking part in another wonderful flash fiction weekend with Word Tango. This time a creative non-fiction course with Pullitzer prize winning novelist and memoirist Lee Martin. Article on memoir writing here. His prompt today at Word Tango about recalling childhood shoes meant I have completed a flash fiction before midday. Yes! And it was an interesting shoe memory. Here’s a picture of the remembered sandals

Themes from Dreams

The wonderful flash fiction writer, Meg Pokrass who is reading in Bath on July 29th with Carrie Etter, Diane Simmons, K M Elkes and Tino Prinzi, is judging the new Novella-in-flash competition we are shortly launching at Bath Flash Fiction Award. In an email interview I did with her to be posted on the flash fiction site, she says, when writing flash pieces that might be included in a novella, “pay attention to themes that haunt your work and your dreams (they are often the same). Here you’ll find your most vivid and creative material.”

Years ago, when I was working as Gestalt Psychotherapist, I ran a weekly dream group for a year, which ended on mid-summer’s day, (so we could get Shakesperian and have a Midsummer Night’s Dream). All the members of the group were women and the dreams often synched. I remember one week everyone, including me, had dreams about fathers.

I’ve led sessions at Writing Events Bath with Alex Wilson on creating fiction from dreams. One great exercise we’ve occasionally used was taken from the Natural Artistry of Dreams by Jill Mellick, (Conari Press 1996). Mellick suggests working with a passing dream as if it were your life myth. This exercise can help you drill into the recurrent themes of your life and of your writing work.

This is what you do:

Title the dream ‘My Life Myth’.
Open your first sentence with ‘Every morning I awake having dreamed that...’
Add ‘always’ and ‘never’ where you can.
End your write-up with some statement such as ‘and I am destined to dream this for the rest of my life.’

Try it. You’ll be surprised – even if it’s a nightmare dream about Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage. Actually I couldn’t bear the idea of even writing that down as an exercise. Imagine this… ‘Every morning I awake having dreamed that Nigel Farage has mouthed off again…’ But I’m sure I would get beyond the literal if had such a dream and wrote it out in this way.

There’s a lot of really good ideas in the book. I recommend buying it. It could inspire you to tap into your psyche and write your novella-in-flash.

Dancing with Word Tango

I completed a second weekend hosted by Word Tango with Kathy Fish as the teacher, a couple of weekends ago. A birthday present to myself. I like Tango, I like words. I love Word Tango. The focus for the weekend was flash non-fiction. My, oh my it was a good group of writers. I was honoured to be part of it. During these weekend sessions conducted via the forum site, Kona, Kathy posts a lecture and some prompts on day one. And then another extension to the prompt on day two. The writers then get on with it and give each other feed back in a thread.

Unlike Argentinian Tango where I can’t make any moves although I adore the dance and the music, I’m not a beginner in writing flash. I’m not an expert either. They say it takes several months or longer to get the basic steps of Argentinian Tango. Then you improvise and improve over many years. Lovers of the dance spend their whole lives going to Milongas, getting close up, becoming more intricate, learning about space. Now I’m in my fourth year of flash fiction writing, I’m past the basics and getting bolder. The word-dance in flash fictions should set people on fire, ignite their passion. Everything that goes into the Tango.

The interesting experiment on this weekend with Kathy, was the challenge to weave flash fiction memoir extracts into different orders and to think about the use of space. A generalisation, but it’s my view that writers born in other countries seem to find it easier to think about white space when composing flash fiction. Is this because of our densely populated island, I wonder? My piece was fine, but I think it was too packed. I’m re-drafting now to break it up after seeing what other people produced. I’m cutting and trying out different arrangements, using short paragraphs, lists.

It was really a wonderful dance that weekend. I highly recommend writers have a go at one of these weekends. Word Tango also has a writers’ community with great support for people. I’ve yet to check that out, but I believe that on their current submit-to magazines-and-competitions-day they’ve been suggesting writers submit pieces to the latest round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. So I’m very pleased about that too.

On being a late developer

I’ve begun to think of myself like the amethyst I’ve got on my shelf. Pretty craggy and old on the outside but shiny and multi-faceted within. I’ve had the particular stone pictured here for years – it needed dusting off. But now it’s sparkling again.

Last Autumn, after taking two courses with Kathy Fish – one weekend and one two week course – I decided to submit to literature magazines as well as to competitions.

Since the end of last year, two pieces I wrote on those workshops have been accepted for magazines. (Many other people find this when they do a course with Kathy – it’s magic how she gets writers going). I have a micro in the December 2015 issue of Flash Frontier. Last week, a longer flash fiction of mine was accepted for the inaugural issue of Halo Literary Magazine. And these are the first two non-competition pieces I’ve ever sent out, apart from ones submitted to Visual Verse each month.

In the same week as being accepted for Halo, I heard I was longlisted in a Retreat West contest and and longlisted for Flash500 second quarter competition. I’m waiting to find out if I’m going to reach the short list for Flash500. If not, both stories are going travelling again, maybe out to other literary magazines. To cap a really great week I won the Faber Academy’s weekly Quickfics contest and a pile of books with my flash fiction piece. ‘Are we nearly there?’

So what can I learn from this? The obvious thing is that I have to keep sending my fiction into the world if I want it to be read by others. Competitions, magazines – whatever. And it doesn’t matter how old I am. I can still carry on developing – be a really, really late developer. Editors out there are focused on the writing, not the age of the writer.

Should writing fiction be all about fun?

Should writing fiction be all about fun – or something else?

I’ve recently been interviewed by writer Damyanti Biswas, who was one of two writers commended by our judge, novelist and short story writer Annemarie Neary last October, 2015 in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award. Damyanti’s commended piece, ‘Picasso Dreams’, which Bath Flash nominated for the Queens Ferry Press anthology, Best Small Fictions 2016, ended up being a semi-finalist out of thousands of worldwide submissions. Everyone at Bath Flash thinks that’s a wonderful achievement.

In the interview, now posted on Damyanti’s blog – daily (w)rite, I said writing should be fun, and she’s suggested other writers comment on that. Should writing fiction be all about fun? Or should it be something else? My take on the subject follows below. You can add your comments on her blog.

Writing is like eating good chocolate…

For me, having fun while writing doesn’t mean staying light-weight, or avoiding emotions. I love the absorption that writing brings. When I’m at the computer or scribbling in a notebook, writing an emotional scene can stir up a whole range of feelings in me. It’s not boring. When I let go I’m often amazed at what ends up on the page. Time flies, drafts of longer stories or flash fictions get written – usually ones I haven’t thought about in advance. This process of allowing ideas, plots, and characters to form as I write is an endless source of pleasure to me, even if the subject matter is challenging. A ‘source of pleasure’ is one of the definitions of ‘fun’. Editing is also satisfying, particularly if I move out of a blinkered fog and notice bad habits, or improve the work by cutting away flab. Writing is like eating good chocolate – you savour the pieces, then stop before you get sick of it.

Running writing competitions is very much fun

2015-anthology — 20 authors from the Bath Short Story Award 2015 in print

Running competitions, although hard work, is very much fun – particularly notifying winners. Who wouldn’t like informing writers that their stories have won big cash prizes and will appear in print? Reading the huge variety of stories entered to the competitions is fascinating. And of course, reading is part of writing. I also like supporting writers and other contests via social media, particularly twitter. The amount and variety of interesting and challenging writing on the internet is astounding. It’s fun ferreting it out and promoting the successes of other writers.

Send your inner critic on holiday

can't be arsed — Now Jude’s inner critic is on holiday, he can’t be arsed to make unhelpful comments

At Writing Events Bath where I lead creative writing sessions with my friend Alex Wilson, we suggest writers imagine sending their inner critics on holiday. Drawing a cartoon of a grumpy character lounging on a sun bed, takes the sting out of that inner carping voice. Writers love creating first drafts in a relaxed atmosphere.

So what if writing ceases to have any element of fun, satisfaction or absorption? It’s like any other relationship. You probably work on it for a while, then decide to let go. Or you stay with it, knowing that something will change. Nothing stays the same.

My best reads 2015: from small details to the whole shebang

I’ve read many stand-out stories this year so I’m limiting myself to one example from each of my categories.

Details: There are marvellous character details in the story ‘A Room With Many Small Beds’ by Kathy Fish, the first story in a newly published collection of flash fiction pieces, ‘Rift’, which also contains stories by Robert Vaughan. I’m eagerly waiting for Rift to arrive in the post, but you can read this first piece online. The narrator’s father’s girlfriend, Pearl, ” …sits cross-legged in front of the television with her cigarettes and her nail file. Her hair is set in empty frozen orange juice cans. She looks like a space alien or a sea creature.”

It’s the orange juice can rollers that do it for me.

Sentences:

A few sentences in Dancing to the Shipping Forecast, Dan Powell’s second prize winning story in the Bath Short Story Award 2015, gave me a heart-stop moment. The narrator’s great love has disappeared in a storm – we don’t know how. She is still living his house near the sea. His sister wants her to leave and eventually implies in a phone call, that because the relationship was new, she has no right to stay any longer. After a long, crackling silence we hear the narrator’s thoughts –

“Two months, three weeks, four days, fourteen hours and a few minutes. Two months, three weeks, four days, fourteen hours and a few minutes from the first kiss to the last…”

This account of time in the context of the piece, sums up the aching depth of the woman’s loss and desolation. It comes at around the mid-point. Read the whole story in the Bath Short Story Award Anthology, 2015.

Paragraph:

There are many great paragraphs in ‘All About Alice’ one of Danielle McGoughlin’s stories in her acclaimed debut collection, ‘Dinosaurs on Other Planets’ Middle-aged Alice is trapped by the mistakes of her past, living without hope in the family home with her routine-bound father. In a rare week alone, when her father is on holiday, she ends up on a one-night stand with Jarlath.

“In the semi-darkness of Jarlath’s bedroom, Alice lay on her back. She saw a large amoeba-shaped stain on the ceiling and, on top of the wardrobe, an orange traffic cone. Downstairs the two young men that Jarlath shared the house with had turned the music up louder. Jarlath lay next to her, his jeans still around his ankles. The music stopped downstairs and for a while there was silence except for the sound of a car going by on the street outside. Alice was overcome by a deadly urge to talk.”

Says it all.

Scenes

‘The Good Son’, by Paul McVeigh contains dozens of scenes that fizz with energy. He came to Bath for an evening of readings we organised at Bath Short Story Award and read from the beginning of the novel, making those initial scenes even more poignant and funny. Another scene I enjoyed describes Mickey, the ten-year old protagonist, playing in his mother’s bedroom and dressing Killer, his dog, in a confirmation dress. But there are so many. In other scenes, I learned new words and phrases: ‘ lumbering’ and ‘hitting a redner’. If you don’t know what they mean, read the novel. Read it anyway, it’s so good. My copy is still with my neighbour, who loved it too.

Titles

‘This Is How They Drown’

This title works well for a powerful piece of flashfiction by Eileen Merriman, which won second prize in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award. Although we know from the title that more than one person will drown, we don’t know how. There are layers of ‘drowning’ in this piece – the story lingers – what will happen to the girl who survives this terrible event? Go to ‘Winners’ on the website menu to read the story and to ‘Views’ to read what Eileen has to say about how it came into being.

The whole Shebang

The Redemption of Galen Pike’ by Carys Davies won the prestigious Frank O’Connor award this year. I’ve just bought a copy and read two stories so far, both of which knocked me out. The ends of each are so surprising and powerful. ‘Travellers’ begins in Siberia but its heart is in Birmingham. Read the beginning of ‘The Quiet’, set somewhere in a remote homestead in Australia and you might think you know where the story is going to end. You’re wrong. Timeless themes in different landscapes. Can’t wait to read more. Buy this.

Read/ buy all the other pieces too. They’re all wonderful.

My Love Affair with Flash Fiction

Only friends

For years, I thought I was only friends with flash fiction rather like the protagonists in the film, When Harry Met Sally. I liked short stories of whatever length, but there was no grand passion. Sudden-Fiction the anthology edited by Robert Shapard and published in 1983, was on my bookshelves and contained several of my favourite writers – Raymond Carver, Grace Paley and ones new to me then, like Lydia Davis. Once in a while, I enjoyed reading a story from the anthology.

First Attractions

My interest grew stronger in 2005/6 when The Guardian Newspaper published short shorts by Dave Eggers every week. I even tried writing a couple. But it was in late 2012 at a workshop with Tania Hershman we organised at Writing Events Bath, that the attraction grew. Tania showed us several different examples of the form and included some great exercises during an action-packed two hours. I was writing a novel for the Bath Spa MA in Creative Writing that year, but in the workshop I really liked being able to complete something succinct that could still be meaningful.

Falling in love

So when did I fall in love big time? When I wrote a piece in the last hour before the Fish Flash Fiction Prize ended in February 2014 and received an Honourable Mention when the results were announced. Mutual admiration always does the trick in matters of the heart! It was wonderful.

Entranced

Launching the inaugural Flash Fiction contest earlier this year has only made more more entranced. It’s always been a habit of mine to begin new projects that force me to learn more about the subject. Years ago, before I became a Gestalt Psychotherapist, I was an Assertiveness Trainer and a very successful one. But although I could handle a group session, I wasn’t very assertive myself – not for a long time. With flash fiction, the more stories I read and the more I write, the more fascinated I’ve become and I’m certainly getting better at writing the short form.

Besotted

Now in November 2015, a month since the launch of the second Bath Flash Fiction Award, I’m completely besotted with flash fiction. I was so excited about the standard of the winning, shortlisted and longlisted entries in the first competition. I frequently return to read those stories and enjoy the different ways they are written.

While the first Bath Flash competition was going on, I made a point of submitting to other competitions myself. As a result of my efforts, I was one of ten winners in the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Contest, was shortlisted in other prizes including the Fish Flash Fiction Prize, published on Visual Verse and recently received a Highly Commended in the Inktears Flash Fiction Prize. These successes and an online course last month with the well-known American writer of flash fiction Kathy Fish (to be highly recommended) has left me starry eyed.

The acknowledgement for my successes from the twitter crowd who write very short fiction has been amazing. It’s been a real boost to be retweeted or favourited by other writers I admire. How can you not be in love with that amount of support for your work?

Committed

So what comes after being besotted? Hopefully, not a crash into normality. Flash fiction requires passion and commitment. That’s what to do – write every day, read more short stories, branch out into submitting stories for magazines as well as competitions. Have an on-going relationhship that refuses to become stale.

Some people look worried when I tell them I’ve abandoned the novel I was attempting to finish for several years. A waste? No. I can say with absolute conviction that I’m no longer interested. If they want to meet my new love, Flash Fiction, they’re very welcome.

The Particulars

In estate-agent speak, ‘the particulars’ of properties for sale or rent are anything but particular. ‘Compact’, means a flat the size of a cupboard, ‘deceptively spacious’, means there may be a cupboard in the flat somewhere.

At the wonderful Stinging Fly summer workshop I attended in Dublin this June, we were given an article by tutor, Sean O’Reilly, during a session on the use of detail. I don’t know who wrote the piece, but the author says “it’s not just detail that distinguishes good writing (fiction or non-fiction) ; it is detail that individualises. I call it particularity. Once you’re used to spotting it–and spotting its absence–you will have the best possible means of improving your writing markedly.” There’s some great examples of particularity in this article – for example, the first line of Graham Green’s The Heart of the Matter.

” Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the iron work”.

The author of the article points out that if the words ‘bald pink knees’ were removed, the sentence would be ordinary, not memorable. Those three words do a great deal to suggest character and bring the other details into focus. It’s a brilliant example of how to begin a novel or short story.

I’ve been reading and enjoying Alison Moore’s story collection, ‘The Pre-War House’. She often particularises characters by their actions. I like this example from the story ‘Over night stop’. The protaganist is a woman going on her honeymoon. The plane is delayed and she and her new husband are put up in a hotel. Alone in the hotel bar, she suddenly recognises someone – a man from her past, called Stanley.

“She shared a house with a friend of his and never knew if she would return from work to find Stanley on the sofa, drinking milk from the carton, resting it between his thighs after swigs, looking at her in her uniform and saying, ‘Hello nursey.'”

For me, there’s something about Stanley swigging the milk, resting the carton between his thighs then saying ‘Hello nursey’, that makes him distinctively creepy. Without Alison writing anything else, I imagine Stanley has a mustache of milk, can see the beige of his trousers, hear the wheedling tone of his voice. This story gets much more creepy – it’s very good. I recommend reading it and the rest of the collection.

Breaking writing rules (if there are any)

In my last post, I talked about removing ‘ly’ adverbs to strengthen prose. But here’s a challenge – I’ve read a new microfiction by one of my favourite writers, Lydia Davis, where she uses five ‘ly’ adverbs in the space of about 100 words. And yes, the piece works. I like it a lot

A five-day workshop with nine other writers and with the brilliant tutor Sean O’Reilly, organised by Stinging Fly at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin in late June, also shook up my self- imposed rules on editing. I learned not to edit stylistically to begin with, but to ask the question ‘what is this story really about?’ An obvious thing to some writers perhaps, but I’m not sure I’ve ever edited my fictions with this fully in mind. I’ve concentrated on structure, point of view, sentences (yes removing adverbs). It’s harder and sometimes uncomfortable to discover the truth of a story after you’ve written it and to strengthen that aspect first.

It was either Sean or Clare Keegan, who came to talk for one afternoon, or both of them who suggested to write as far out of your comfort zone as possible. When the group and Sean were concentrating on one of my story drafts, I got interested in an underlying theme about choice. I didn’t begin with the idea of writing about the choices people make and their sometimes dire consequences. A couple of the men in the group were angry with the woman in my story, who by her actions, put her husband in a life-threatening situation. I liked them having this reaction – this aspect of the story provoked the strongest emotional response and I could see that deepening it would create a much stronger piece.

After reading the flash fiction I’ve linked to above, by Lydia Davis, I was left thinking about the nature of perception, not about her use of adverbs. The narrator creates a whole life for a person on a wrong perception, a perception that is confounded at the end of the piece. As a reader, I was challenged in the same way. And being challenged in some way is one of the most exciting things about reading fiction.

Should writing fiction be all about fun – or something else?

Writing is like eating good chocolate…

Running writing competitions is very much fun

Send your inner critic on holiday