Thursday 29th August 2013

At ‘that’ stage with a good few short stories. I’ve been a bit like a magpie with them over the last few months (and by ‘few’, I’ve just realised I mean ‘twelve’), in that as soon as one idea gets a bit too tough to carry on writing, then I’ve flitted to another work in progress, and tinkered with that one. As soon as the tinkering gets a bit too much like hard work, then I’ve gone back to the first WIP (or a completely different one), so that my attention  span doesn’t get too hammered over the head, and I give up on the writing altogether.

Now, depending on who you listen to, this is either a perfectly fine and noble way to stop ideas (stories) getting too saggy and baggy and boring, or it’s the worst idea ever, because you have to stay committed to your ideas, and see them through to the very end, otherwise you’re never actually going to finish the bloody things at all. And, of course, in some cases, both those statements have been made by the same person at different times. Like all pieces of advice, they can be embraced or ignored as you see fit (and as you see that the advice itself fits you).

Right now, however, I feel that I need to go the hard-work route, and commit to the stories, and finish them off. One by one. This will be somewhat tough, because, at the moment, a lot of them are crap. Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t self-loathing, deprecating analysis. Even at their current stage (and I think a good few of them are about three drafts away from the final version), some of them read better than a few of the short stories I’ve bought on the kindle. There’s a reasonable amount of short stories self-published by unknown authors, some of them good, some of them awful (not nearly as many as you might think, however), and the majority of them – uh, average. Now, I’m sticking my neck out here slightly, because of course, I intend to publish my own collection at some point (reasonably) soon. So it’s a bit of a risky job – if not actually arrogant – to compare my unfinished works to those that have actually been uploaded onto a website and people are paying for. But, what the hell. I will claim that in at least a couple of cases, the stories that I’ve got, in their second or third draft, are better than the stories that somebody has deemed fit for public domain, publication, and consumption. And, yes, I am talking about the drafts of my stories that are currently in the ‘crap’ stage.

It’s not as if the stories that I’m talking about are bad, not at all. And I’m aware that I’m certainly setting myself up for a fall when I do publish my own (hey, here’s an idea, maybe I don’t publish them, that’ll keep me safe from public criticism – even better, hell, I won’t actually finish any of the stories ..). The ideas behind the stories (the ones that people have published, not mine) are actually pretty good. But quite often, the story is told in such a brief, perfunctory fashion – in the matter of about three kindle pages – that I wonder, what’s the point? It feels less like a story well told, and more like the synopsis on the back of the DVD cover : ‘Once there was this guy who said that it would be cool if we were all nice to each other but he got nailed to a tree but it was OK because he came back to life the end’ … Now, come on. I’m sure you could’ve stretched that out a bit.

It’s occurred to me recently that short stories don’t always have to be short, and they don’t have to be stories, not in the normal sense of the word. Quite often, I see short stories (very short, around 1,000 words) struggle to keep to the format of a beginning, a middle and an end. I understand the desire to keep things coherent and within a recognisable framework, but I’m not sure it’s always vitally necessary. Some of the best short stories deal with a passing thought or emotion, a reaction to something else (I’ll be honest – some of the very worst short stories do that, too, because the writer is shrinking away from committing to an idea – but that’s a blog for another time).

Anyway, I managed a few thousand words each on two stories this morning. They’re both currently at the stage of ‘terrible’, but they still feel good to write, and I still (just about) remember what I liked about the ideas in the first place, which isn’t always the case. Plus, it’s helped that in the café where I’m writing at the moment, there’s a couple of other people, both working on Important Stuff. There is a distraction here, and it’s name is Free WiFi, but there seems to be a atmosphere in these kind of places; if you’re vaguely aware that the other people are actually furiously working, rather than piddling about on facebook, or tweeting the hilarious ‘other’ dream that Martin Luther King was going to talk about, it ‘shames’ you into doing some work yourself.

Or, as writing avoidances go, writing a blog isn’t exactly the most terrible .. 

Cover Me

So, today, I posted off an entry to a short story competition - Opening Lines, at BBC Radio 4. It's the first time I've sent anything off to the BBC, so naturally I'm slightly nervous. But on the other hand, I'm not expecting to hear anything in response until at least March 2013, so the best thing is just to forget about it, and go about writing the next short story.

That seems to be the thing at the moment, for me: short stories. It makes sense, because normally I'm a terrible procrastinator (by which I mean of course that I'm excellent at it), and working on short stories lends itself naturally to seeking out writing completions, which are generally weighted towards the short story - even if there isn't a great deal of agreement as to an appropriate length that can constitute a 'short' story. There's a good few different stories that I'm working on at the moment, and I have this vague idea that at some point I might bundle them together on the kindle. Well, it's the modern way, isn't it?

This week will be my last improv workshop of 2012. Considering how nervous I was back in September that nobody would ever turn up to any of the workshops, I've been very pleased by the support and amount of returning customers. As I say, this Sunday is the last one this year, so if you're around the Iron Duke around 7pm, do please drop in and say hi. There might even be mince pies. (no promises)

I say that I've been working on short stories, but this week that's almost a lie, apart from the Opening Lines entry, and the fact that I had an idea for another story this afternoon. What I've actually been doing in the last couple of days for the most part is mocking up covers for the kindle short story collections. There are a good few very decent free photo editing programs littering up the Internet, and I've begun to have some ideas about how to make this (as yet non existent) collection look more attractive to the average browser online. Since I haven't actually finished all the stories, this is of course roughly equal to avoiding doing your homework, but ensuring that you use lots of brightly coloured felt tips to decorate the folder it comes in. But I guess it's not entirely procrastination: having a potential cover makes the whole thing tangible, even if, being an online book, it isn't literally tangible. As the year races to the close, I'm thinking that occasionally - just occasionally - I'm getting some writing actually finished. It's been a hell of a long time coming.

The Last 200

I've come out to a coffee shop with the specific intention of finishing  up a short story that I'm working on, since I tend to work a bit better if I've got myself out of the house where there's too much temptation to stay in bed and re-watch box sets of '24' (currently re-working my way through season 4). This is important, because I've got a deadline to meet before Wednesday. The short story that I'm working on - In The Middle Of The Night - I would have been working on anyway, since I'm hoping to put together a collection of short stories on the kindle. My hope was to have them all finished by January 2013, and while that's certainly still possible,  I don't just want to rush and hack them out. After all, no-one knows who the hell I am - it's not like anyone is eagerly awaiting this book. 

The reason, therefore, that this particular story finds itself with a deadline in to days time is because I hope to enter it for a short story competition. The reasoning behind this is three fold. The first is fairly prosaic: if the story actually gets anywhere, then I can assume that it's got a chance of finding a larger audience outside those who feel contractually and emotionally obliged to tell me that they like it. Secondly, of course, if it does really well, it will have some financial reward. And if I can't get flattery, then I'm happy to take the money. Thirdly, of course, if it does really really well - ie, if it is a runner-up or even a winner, then that's obviously something that I can plaster on the promo material for the book.

So, this is why I'm here in the coffee shop. It's a 3,000 word story (not actually that long), and I've completed about 2,800 words. It isn't, as you might have thought, simply a matter of just if providing the missing 200 words. There's still a bit of shifting around in tone and texture, and, at the moment, the resolution to the story just jumps out a bit suddenly, without a great deal of lead-in, so I need to fix that. I think it's probably a relatively easy fix, however, and I'm not overly concerned about it. 

And that's why I'm in this coffee shop. With some ideas and a laptop. But not, as I've only just discovered, without the external hard drive on which I've saved the latest draft of the story. That, I've left back at home (probably on the bed, next to the 24 box set). Which means that I'm not likely to be able to finish the story today. Again, though, I'm not overly concerned, since the deadline isn't til Wednesday, and luckily I've managed to remember to bring out a hard copy of the short story collection. This, luckily enough, chimes in with the way I very often write: printing out a hard copy (or seven) as I go along, and reading it as I would if it was finished, all the while scrawling notes and annotations over the text. There's still something very alluring and persuasive about seeing the words on a page of foolscap. It makes the whole thing a great deal more accessible and - 'real' than just seeing the words on a screen. All of which, I guess, means that even though I don't have the hard drive with me, I don't really have any excuse to stop writing the story today. Which in addition means  I'm really using some delaying tactics in writing this blog. 

Despite the fact that I was paranoid that nobody was going to turn up to my first improv class, there was actually a nice little turn out. Of course, I'll need a few more on a regular basis in order for me to break even after hire costs and everything, but it's a promising start. We played a few short-form improv games, and it was a very decent evening. I'll go on about this a lot, but the main bulk of what I'll be saying is that the improv classes will be held every Sunday at the DukeBox Theatre, at the back of the Iron Duke pub on Waterloo Street, 7.00 - 9.00pm. It's £5 per workshop, and there's loyalty cards available. 

By the way, I'm going to be doing a couple of Ghostwalks this week. Because it's Halloween this week, there's a special late night one (well, at 9.00pm) on the night itself, which is on Wednesday. There's no need to book, and you can just rock up to outside the Druids Head pub (not the Druids pub, which is something else) at 9.00 on Halloween. For those of you who have been saying for the past year that you're definitely going to come one time, this would seem to be a perfect opportunity. Just saying.