Activity

A New Opening

Lockdown. Away from a contageous world full of contageous people. Away from touch. Away from hold. Away from gossipy nudges and ear-whispers in the office, shrinking my world to room size; specifically the area where work-table met window. I unfasten the latch and swing it wide open in a desperate bid for expanse.
Between remote…[Read more]

Maybe I should also mention, that the timer I use is an online timer like a bomb with a fuse. You set the time, and the fuse slowly burns down while the clock ticks. When it runs out there’s a big “KABOOM!” I’ve been tempted to set the time, turn my speakers up on high, then try to write so many words before the thing goes off.

Maybe someone…[Read more]

Thanks. I’ve found what helps for me, when it’s really getting *bad*, is to set a timer. For the next 15 minutes I look at nothing but the story! Writing or revising. Then I can goof off a bit if I want. Not too long. Then I set the timer again.

Doing this, I’m finding it helps get me into the mode where I’m safety into the story.

You’re quite right Richard. Although the lack of hoovering and the pile of christmas cards still waiting to be written might point to a different conclusion!

‘Instant hit of relateable truth’: yes, that a good way of putting it.

Jane, if you got a result you haven’t been wasting your time, have You?

When I need to be productive, I set myself time slots for internetage. i.e. 15mins when I first sit at the laptop, during a lunch half hour, and then that’s it apart from evening phone-evil-blackhole-of-distraction. Tbh, I like being able to quickly check something as I’m writing – find a photo of a place, or look at a map or whatever, so I…[Read more]

They do have that sort of instant hit of relateable truth don’t they? Ironic, or perhaps not, that Roche’s career might apply to the principle of ‘Connections’, even though it’s clearly about something much more personal. A missed connection here or there is the difference between national treasure status and obscurity.

Also interesting for me to…[Read more]

I’ve just wasted an hour, thanks to you Richard, trawling through the internet searching for Brian Patten who was my particular favourite and ordered a copy of Little Johnny’s Confession which I am sure is the book of his I used to have. Fingers crossed.

Jane, I suspect that, er, somewhere on the way you too encountered that anthology, so long ago you’d forgotten about it until my post reminded you.

Yes, I like the Liverpool Poets too. It’s only one aspect of his talent, but Roger McGough has raised that lowest form of wit, the pun, into an art form. Like this, from The Mersey Sound:

The Act of…[Read more]

From JaneShuff (copied from the wall)

Thank you for this, Richard. I spent my childhood and teenage years in Liverpool and The Liverpool Poets were a big part of it. I thought I hadn’t heard of Pete Roche but, amazingly, I found myself able to recite Somewhere On The Way as I read it so the poem must be buried somewhere inside the dusty old a…[Read more]

I’d not heard of Pete Roche, and much enjoyed these two examples, thank you for them.

It’s that sort of recognition/everyday honesty that draws me to certain songwriters (I’m thinking Aidan Moffatt in his Arab Strap days), and why Vicki Feaver spoke so loudly to me.

Weirdly enough it helps my way of working which is to do intensive bursts of writing and then let myself be distracted for a brief while before I attack again!

I haven’t removed the internet connection from my laptop because it’s too useful when I want to check something, but keeping the laptop for writing and using a PC for everything else – emails, online purchases etc – makes distraction less of a problem. When I’m using the laptop I’m in writing mode. It’s a little thing but it helps.

@Daedalus, I know exactly what you mean: most of my novels start with a conversation between two characters, me thinking they’ll be the opening chapter, then, as things develop, I find they’ve moved to the middle of the middle.

@sandradavies thanks, I will look that up. I’m a fan of keeping speech tags/descriptions to a minimum and I often write scenes with dialogue first and then build the other stuff around it, so this is very much up my street

@Raine – exactly! When I first read A L Kennedy’s tale, I had to re-read to see how it was done. Then di my best to emulate.

Oh YAY – congrats @athelstone. Very well deserved. And thank-you @sandradavies for such an ace prompt. It was a valuable lesson to me that i really can strip out a lot of my speech tags, actions etc and the world may not crumble!

@Daedalus: the story is in ‘What becomes’, the theme of which comes from the song, and it the tale of a man and a woman, previously unknown to each other, having sex in a hotel bedroom.
I’ve never tried an all-dialogue story, but have to say what were served up here showed similar skills to Kennedy’s.