Athelstone

I enjoyed this prompt @Seagreen . At first I thought I wouldn’t have time to enter the comp this month but being able to work on something I’d already written gave me fresh energy. My piece still needs a bit more work but the exercise you gave us was very helpful and one to be remembered.

Just to make clear – this just relates to autumnal references. You can use sight in other parts of the story.

Alex – I know exactly what it’s like to have life throw a spanner in the works, so no apologies necessary.

Ath – Oh wow! Stalking Leviathan seems so long ago… *dashes off to recharge the Kindle so I can check which story you mean*

Apologies for being late back to this and thanks to everyone who entered (as well as those who didn’t enter but found the prompt useful). I’ll get onto the business of judging later today and post results by this evening ☺️

Hope this meets the challenge. It is approaching the end of my book Saving Grace, and has spoilers (in the event this thing gets published!). Pervious feedback said this scene felt too easy/convenient. Now, she panics and resists. I show her conflicts as she starts to make comparisons.

Untitled

While he drove, Michael told me about how he worked…[Read more]

This is from my novel. It’s 1937. Hester is shortly to leave school and has asked her father if she can have flying lessons. He’s said no, it’s too dangerous. That’s the novel’s inciting incident. The is the next scene, told from her father’s pov.

412 words

In Worcester Cathedral, Hester’s father Frederick Longley gazed at the vaulted ceiling…[Read more]

I’m now almost halfway through Salter’s ‘Collected Stories’ and can understand how the short, sharp sentences make an impact, but I find most of his characters, male and female, seem a bit self-obsessed, and, for me, there is over-much description (as is often the case with American literature.) At least they are readable! Some time since I read…[Read more]

I think for me Salter stands out because the spareness is also lyrical. I find many ‘less is more’ authors to be a bit dull, but his prose manages to be as poetic as it is simple

Yes, Salter’s detachment. Is that what makes his writing interesting? I think it may be – for me anyway.

John, I wouldn’t press Salter on you, or anyone, but his prose is an example of American spareness if you ever want to investigate same.

Salter is an author I’ve never read. 90% of my favourite                                                                                                                                                   contemporary authors are women, but that may be as much about genre as gender. I read very few thrillers or crime novels, and only occasional l…[Read more]

Salter is very much a writer of men. I was somewhat horrified by his treatment of women in All There Is (although there’s always a detachment to his writing that means it’s never entirely clear who his sympathies lie with). I find his earlier work rather tighter.

@sandra

The short stories are very good, Sandra. I liked a Sport and a Pastime but it can feel dated even though the writing was, for me, compelling. Salter can fall into the trap of his generation. Some of his writing about women can seem as if he didn’t ask the women around him how they thought and felt. On the other hand he’s also a very…[Read more]

I posted too soon. My comment may look as though I’m suggesting you don’t, Daeds, which I certainly didn’t mean! Your study of Salter brings a clarity and atmosphere to your writing which I’m sure it would have anyway. It’s interesting to think, in this influences process, how much we’re drawn to authors who provoke writerly neurones that we…[Read more]

@ Daeds and Libby,

re James Salter, 2/3 years ago II read and was impressed by a short story featured in a newspaper. Eagerly borrowed ‘A sport and a pastime’ from the library and found it  heavy-going. Couple of months ago I bought his ‘Collected Stories, but have yet to begin it, but hope to do so with an eye to his style..

James Salter has (had) a wonderful style.

Sandra, interesting you say that about unconscious influence from books you read years ago. I’m generally reluctant to specify my influences because I’m certain that I don’t know who all of them are. On more than one occasion I’ve reread something I read in my youth but had only the haziest memory of. And, to my horror, encountered somethi…[Read more]