A Comprehensive Update of the MJ Nicholls Experience From January to June

Why haven’t I been writing more blog posts, commenting on your brilliant blogs and strewing desperate witticisms about the blogosphere like a comedian on horseback? I will endeavour to explain in easily accessible list form.

1. Blogs come to a natural stop. Looking at my blog roll I see many blogs that haven’t been updated in yonks. Stuart Kelly’s blog died a year and half ago. The Napier MA blog relaunch flopped and since then the Napier MA students have no online outlet for their awesomeness. Several friends’ blogs have languished for three to eight months with no updates in sight. Some update in monthly hiccups, keeping their hand in with tiny meaningless posts that tell us nothing about their writing agenda or personal lives. People drop off the internet (and the face of the planet) willy-nilly. It depresses me. They have babies, they marry Backstreet Boys, they win Yahtzee contests. And they’re so obsessed with their privacy they tell us nothing. That’s how it swings.

2. Life becomes too boring to describe. Since leaving my MA I have done nothing of interest except complete my novel Arlene’s Atoms, which I am currently pitching to agents. This might be construed as interesting but I have that piece of information in my profile. See? (Not the Ruskoline bit, lower). What else is there to say? I wait. I hope. I will send to other agents pending refusals. I will pitch to small publishers. Then write another book should I face constant rejection. In my day to day life I write and read copiously. I don’t have a job yet—no prospects of acquiring one on the horizon as I still don’t want to do anything but write. I have, however, been contemplating avenues of paid work I might explore—there isn’t really anything I want to do for eight hours per day but write. I don’t mind being unemployed because I have all the time free to write and read. But I’m trying to break this cycle, since the clocks are starting to tick. I have to do something else.

3. I have been in tortured artist mode. My next novel has undergone various false starts. I began by writing a satirical Divine Comedy, set both in Hell and Edinburgh (the difference: better bus links in Hell). Revolving around the lives of three suicidal people who discover a reason to live (that reason was never decided), the narrative was an attempt to further the magical realism I used in Arlene’s Atoms. This collapsed when I used the interrogating technique Sam Kelly uses to reduce eager artists to whimpering hacks. It had no heart. Or a viable structure. Or a semi-decent third character. Plus I couldn’t come up with a suitable reason for my characters to live. Then I toyed with a series of interlinked prose-poem vignettes, like what American MFA graduates write. Nope—binned. Next attempt was even crazier: six authors (all in the same family) collaborate on the same “little book of nothing” which comprises six separate narratives that would gradually reveal telling things about said dysfunctional family through the narrative approaches they each took, while commenting on the artifice of storytelling itself. ARGH. Metawank. Binned.

4. Continued. Despair passed when I decided to concentrate on refining and developing the individual characters’ voices and an overarching narrative voice that allowed me to fluctuate freely between internal monologue, narration and dialogue. The style is working for me so far. And the fun of writing a first draft without an obsessive need to design and structure is freeing. The main purpose of all these narratives is to draw upon my own difficulties fitting into life and find an outlet for exploring my own mishaps and calamities in the realm of self-interest, self-consciousness and self-destruction. Selfishness to the power of infinite. All the characters represent various aspects of my past self, imagined future self and fantasy selves. (And present self). I also want to discuss the notion that characters are nothing but extensions of the self and make this a part of the narrative. I’m toying with a talk-show format to link the three stories. Metawank? Perhaps.

5. Obsessive Compulsive Reading. Since I signed up to Napier I haven’t stopped reading. Stuart Kelly (Napier Reader-in-Residence) has passed on his OCR disorder and a week hasn’t passed since September 2009 without a book being read or completed. (By me. I think that was obvious). This doesn’t sound too bad, but it has become both a compulsion and displacement activity. I derive immense pleasure from reading but if I didn’t read so much I might make progress on the career thing. I wouldn’t fill three or fours per day gobbling up novels like the Book Monster. I can’t tear myself away and I love it. Is this a proper complex? If so I have it badder than bad, baby.

So: madness, obsession, self-destruction, denial and apathy for the outside world. The usual. Oh. I also started a book group—The Extremely Inferior Glasgow Book Group Experience. I also attended the Glasgow Writers Meetup which was a workshop (the horror) but quite useful. I also still live in Glasgow (at the bottom of Byres Road) if you want to stalk me. I’m also still in a relationship and five years sober on the sexual frustration stakes. Booya! (Too much information? Impossible, sir).

My Graduation, or The Missing Cufflinks Débâcle

05:55 Wake up. Or, more accurately, emerge from a day-long anxiety trance and stumble into a shirt and tie.

06:15 Notice my shirt is missing one crucial element: buttons or cufflinks. With no time to find said items, I sellotape my shirt cuffs together with Rymans’ finest 99p tape. Leave tape behind.

06:27 Head to the subway, dragging my girlfriend Laura with my right arm while she attempts to decrease my walking speed from panicky haste to standard urban saunter.

06:35 Arrive on subway platform to find a fault on the outer circle line before the first train engine has even been turned on. Clench my toes, grit my teeth, and hurl obscenities at invisible engineers.

06:50 Get on train. Look at watch nine hundred times.

07:05 Drag Laura towards bus station. Note the disproportion in our leg sizes and get blasted for being too tall. Have a brief argumental blow-up on Buchanan Street before resuming our walk.

07:14 Buy a Mars bar.

07:20 Get on the bus to Edinburgh. Mellow down and resume the anxiety trance. Read an obscure absurdist text that doesn’t help unknot the tension ropes. Eat half the Mars bar.

09:00 Meet my sister Kathleen at Usher Hall. Discuss safety when crossing the road in pairs: if nothing is coming along the small road you intend to cross, but the neighbouring road looks busy, is it all right to cross at red? If others are crossing is this not a sign of safety? Lose argument.

09:03 Go into the wrong door.

09:10 Leave my companions and get robed up.

09:13 Ask my companions to return when I realise the sellotape has not held my cufflinks together. My sister is forced to gobble down her bacon roll while I stand outside like a lemon holding my coat.

09:25 Send my companions off to buy a roll of sellotape.

09:35 Companions return with tape and Laura bites off several strands to keep the shirt sleeves together. I keep the tape in my trouser pocket in case the strands don’t hold for the duration.

10:00 Head inside to graduate with my dangerously talented writing cohorts.

11:43 Graduate. (See picture). Hold cuffs up to prevent the tape snapping off while shaking the chancellor’s hand. (See picture).

12:30 Dick around in the corridors getting squashed and jostled and shunted. Make a choice and ditch the robes. Meet someone who has graduated with a degree in television. We voice our disgust at not receiving a red cylinder with our degree certificates before departing forever.

12: 45 Get out of there. Get on a bus to Craighouse campus.

13:05 Ditch the shirt and tie on the top deck for a fetching black T-shirt ensemble.

13:15 Arrive at the ceremony. Drink two glasses of orange, nudge through the sea of parents and unknowns, endure boredom. Eat a few salmon and prawn canapés and one that looks like a squid eye.

13:45 Fail to spot most of my co-students, then ditch the scene. Discover a squished Mars bar in my coat pocket lining.

14:00 Sit on a bench. Walk around the campus one last time. Close the book with tearful farewells.

MP → End

Complete. Sent. Await gradation and certification, then packed up and booted into the real world. Mood: placid with a hint of terror. I don’t feel like taking the project on further, but it’s been instructive and entertaining to write, despite last-minute rewrites and wobbles.

This is the part where I say ‘what I learned’ and how I plan to hone these skills in my future writing. Well, it should be, but I want to relax for now, having finished only 24hrs ago, fergodsake. Plus I still have an essay, and that content is reserved for further gradation and certification. What irritated me was my name had been left off the list of people expected at the school office, and the receptionist had to add me. That smarted.

The experience left me eager to return to fiction, so after this I want to resume full-speed ahead on my novel. The painful reality of writing a novel is knowing most people are working on a novel, and getting one published really does take an act of God. Still, I am tooling up to make writing my career (well, it has always been, only no money), so I need to take a less disparaging outlook and get a pair of positive blinkers. End of.

MP Update

First supervision session was successful: no bug-eyed carpet gazing for me, no sirree, plans and strategies for completion. Likelihood of these plans being implemented: a five in seven chance.

Main hurdle: research. So far the non-fiction content is battling an ongoing narrative about an exaggerated mother and her parental neglect. Said narrative is a good framing device, but it’s tempting to spindle plot yarns and sandpaper the factual content down.

So: flinging self into the research cockpit. Involves: checking out relevant books and reading with intuition scanners set to turbo. Add content to existing content to make content more stimulating as content-as-entertainment. I use ‘content’ here since the non-fiction moments are a re-arrangement of facts, grafted onto one particular worldview and madcap narrative action, so don’t comprise ‘art’ on their own terms.

Important: research chapters must engage and amuse me, or zero motivation to do any research work. So framing device and narrative necessary, healthy balance of fact and debate crucial for harmonious marriage of ‘narrative’ to ‘non-fiction.’

Difficulty: fact filtering. Too simple to Google the topic being discussed and draw material from the first relevant source found. How do you discriminate against facts when so many are relevant? This is the trouble. Too eager to write the bastard and not research the bastard.

Also important: fresh air. Less chocolate and chocolate sandwiches. Less toggling between FB and Goodreads like some madman with a clicking disorder. Have more cold showers. And pakamacs (above) are awesome. Bye.

MP Squared (Blogger Doesn't Allow Superscript in Titles Because Blogger is Hateful)

Question: What is your MP?

Me: My MP is 20,000 words of a creative (narrative?) nonfiction book about video game addiction among kids and teens.

Question: Why?

Me: Because I was a gaming addict and the topic is phat. In fact, since discovering KCRW’s Bookworm I’ve been addicted to a certain map in the war game Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. In this game you build army bases to defend yourself against enemy opponents, usually situated at opposite ends of large maps. It’s a game I’ve been playing on and off for yonks now, mainly for mindless amusement, to escape the heck that is me. The game had grown stale until I discovered a new method of playing.

On the random map generator screen, I toggle the settings so all three computer opponents and myself are scrunched up tight inside a map, thus:

This proximity of enemy bases leads to pandemonium. The fastest person to build their base, churn out soldiers and tanks, and so on, wins, and the sheer sensory overload gets me more buzzed up than four vats of Red Bull. I recruit engineers to steal the enemies’ buildings, I erect grenade turrets to tear through streams of soldiers, I steal and build and steal and build then win or lose. It’s not as though this method generates an infinite number of options: usually I repeat the same tactic over and over again.

And this is a prime example of why writers are more prone to gaming addiction than sane attractive people who like granola bars. We crave procrastinations. Quick, addictive, exhilarating games are what we need to stop us writing. So far I’ve spent a little too much time playing this instead of researching my MP and I’ve even asked Mrs Q to hide the disc. I fear a return of the sort of die-hard life-consuming mayhem I’m trying to write about.

Question: Isn’t that ironic? Dontcha think?

Me: A little too ironic?

Question: But yeah, I really do think. It’s like rayayaaaaaain on your wedding day! It’s a free ride, when ya—

Me: Shut it, Alanis.

MP

stands for…

Member of Parliament

Who is my MP? I don’t know his name. Or her name. I should know his/her name because political parties can benefit from voter apathy to enslave the poor, but I don’t. What do I see when I picture my MP? I picture a perfectly nice person not very concerned about things in general.

Melting Point

The melting point of a snowman is about thirty-six degrees centigrade. Minimum. I spell this out in case any snowmen are reading. They only understand numbers and don’t care about the power of language to unite us lumps of bone, blood and bitterness together in temporary harmony.

Mooring Post

Or, in another word, bollards. Have you noticed how people never touch bollards? Have you also noticed how few people hold onto the railings on public staircases? Am I the only one to grip on tightly as I climb the capital’s peaks? I often feel people are privy to some horrible truths about germs, and everyone views me as a filth-monger, fingering those dirty rails.

Metropolitan Police

The police stand for two things: fear and death. If a policeman arrived at my door I would faint in fear of imminent arrest or family slaughter. I trust them to keep me safe from vagabonds, but I want no dealings with them, I want a world free from terrifying little squares and yellow cagoules.

Major Project

Our briefing yesterday was laced with the usual slammings of former students (the subtle approach) and general nods and winks not to fuckitallup, please. In fairness, there were also positive ex-grad remarks, and the slammings were a deterrent against any unneeded humiliation before being sent into the great beyond of post-postgrad life. All my prep work in the creative (or is it narrative?) nonfiction module has been leading up to this moment, so I don’t face a gaping void of ideas and worries. But still, they’ll come.

MP also stands for Mumbai Police, Machine Pistol and Missionary Position.

Termination

With a great fat bazooka of learning and a big bad Bertha of knowledge I emerge, limping from the course. For now. There’s another six months to go then I can quit writing for good.

This term has been harder on the following levels:

→ Work: My fiction has screeched to a stop in favour of a creative non-fiction boom. All evidence points to the fact I love writing about me and can squeeze greater narrative liquids from the melon of my past.

→ Humans: I’ve found interacting with other students harder this time, since they’re all extravagantly confident. And they all shoot off zingers at a pace that is frankly unhealthy. I actually found myself craving some good old po-faced seriousness, in all the larks. Nice people, but the scene has been too mirthful for this misanthrope.

→ Cocaine: I love this drug. I’ve installed one of those vending dealers in my home. It’s a shady man who sits inside a plastic box and dispenses crack at increasingly expensive rates until my septum drops off and I go onto harder drugs like heroin or Nesquik.

→ Words: Idleness has taken over these months. I am a modern day Oblomov, the difference being I set fire to all bills and demands. (Kidding: I eat them). And I don’t own a droshky.

Ritting a Poohposal

I’m writing a blog post on writing a proposal so I don’t have to write an actual proposal. What is a proposal? A proposal is a detailed explanation of everything you intend to do in the amazing book you are poised to write. I can’t stress how horrible it is having to write a proposal. This blog post, on the other hand, is far more pleasant to write than a proposal. I haven’t planned this blog post at all. I haven’t a structure or plan or explanation of greatness and relevance and necessity in mind for this post. Look.

I’ve taken a paragraph break and I can do anything I want. I can confess to painting the Queen green at last week’s Buckingham Palace caber toss. I can confess to milking a cow portrait for a dozen portraits of unpasteurised milk. I don’t have to think about the proposal. I don’t have to demonstrate how absolutely necessary my would-be amazing book is. I don’t have to pretend anything I do as a writer is necessary in an age when writers are becoming more obsolete than coal miners.

But I still have the freedom to use this keyboard and phrase my thoughts in the way I choose. I still have the freedom to say I hate this and I like this, and I like hating this and I hate liking this. I have the freedom to tell people they are idiots for not reading Raymond Queneau. I have the freedom to keep this document open so I don’t have to look at my proposal. I have the freedom to make this paragraph slightly longer so I don’t run to the end and have to flick back to my proposal and add more lies to the page.

I wrote a sentence of my proposal there! It wasn’t very good, but it’s another sentence nearer the word count, so we can all pop a glass of champagne at that. See . . . we’ve hit another barrier here. I could have planned this post, but it would’ve created additional research work, and I would procrastinate from writing this post and have to go back to writing the proposal. I would have some double-attack proposal shit going on. Not good.

Now I’m struggling. I’m flicking back and forth between the web and this document. I should unplug the web, but if I don’t have a million distractions, I will walk out the flat and lower myself onto the Blackford train tracks or go steal all the Frosties from the cornershop and throw them at squirrels. I will tear off my shirt and run naked along the street, pull out each toenail one by one then caramelise them in a dish I call Toe Slurp.

Here are a list of things I would rather be doing than writing this proposal:

1) Not writing this proposal

2) Criticising shoehorns

3) Slapping Ewan McGregor

4) Smearing Edam on my thighs

5) Not writing this proposal

6) Making a kayak out of spaghetti

This is hell. If you ever have to write a proposal, don’t. If you do write a proposal and find it straightforward, death to you. I don’t want to hear about people successfully writing proposals right now. Another thing: in my MA class we get many handouts from blogs written by incredibly witty people telling us how rubbish we are as writers and how we shouldn’t whine because we’re not winners if we whine, we’re snivelling failures.

Listen: I write loads. I write so much I have RSI in my testicles. I try to plan and think sometimes too. Writing has always been my strongest point: planning and thinking seriously slows down my ability to write. Anyway, I don’t want to read another smarmy humorist doing the tough love routine about how useless we are as writers. It really makes my hot water sizzle when I read these unbearable smarm kings. (This is buying me excellent proposal distraction time! I should keep this up. Who else can I criticise?)

I could criticise me, but that’s dull. I could criticise someone I know, but imagine the shame when I have to explain to them in public why I called them a talentless geriatric bimbo. I could criticise a celebrity, but no one with a rational mind is interested in anything famous people do at any point, ever. I could go and research a political topic on the net and construct a well-rationed argument on this intellectual thing or that very interesting thing . . . but that would take a few days, and I would get distracted and not want to do that, and that would be some triple-attack proposal shit going on there.

Oh no! Back to the proposal!

Actually, I edited this post. This post has overtaken the proposal! Yes! I’m wondering how much more I can get away with before this becomes tiresome for me and any readers. Long blog posts usually get half-read or skimmed for key words like NAZI UNIFORMS ARE WELL CUTE and THAT NICK GRIFFIN IS A HANDSOME CHAP but that’s understandable. Blogs should be . . . no, I have to stop there before I say something dull.

I’m writing execrable sentences now. I’m writing like this: I think I would like to rite this book because I am a good ritter and I like ritting and I used to be a video game junkie and I want to find out about video game junkies and I can do fun things with form and style cause I like experimental ritting and oh god I want to self-harm hate me hate me hate me.

I have five days (as of tomorrow). Help.

(P.S. I went back through this post and highlighted additional bits in bold to avoid writing the proposal. And added the picture. And link. I think you get the idea now. Kill me).

Creative Non-Fiction – Second Slurpings

I thought I’d add to the insightful and delicious posts written on this topic (a staggering sumtotal of one) with a brand new sense-check-point. (A point to sense-check).

TANGENT: This blog used to be a place where I poured opinions and thoughts into the vacant punchbowl of my unconscious. Most of the time I spend reading novels and writing fiction and engage in no conversations about actual occurrences taking place in the actual world. The vacuum I have chosen to inhabit is one built on a foundation of misanthropic distance, a poor vantage point at the outpost of human suffering.

I am planning to write a creative non-fiction book about gaming addiction. Our classes have primped us for the task: I now have clear ideas about structure, tone and narrative position (exclusive terms for MA students! terms I would not have used over a year ago!) and look forward to sinking my teeth into this unfathomable undertaking.

TANGENT: The phrase ‘non-fiction’ still sends me lunging under the desk in terror. When I was a wayward undergrad and looked to the future I saw two paths: decadence and penury as a writer, or teaching snotball kiddies in Caldercruix High School. I chose the former. I have no authority to impart. I am not a voice of authority: I take notes, I listen to the wisdom of others. Facts and their arrangement is not my trade.

Right now I’m working on a detailed book proposal. (This is a lie. I spent the weekend reading McSweeney’s and the rather fabulous Dubravka Ugrešić. But let’s pretend). The proposal shouldn’t be an insult to the senses if I assume the reins of this bolting colt and take authorial control like a big grownup writer who knows what he wants.

I am concerned about research. I have a short attention span for facts and will have to process these truth-bombs in short shocks. To counter each truthfulness gleaned from the internet’s banks of bullshit I will need a shot of memoir action to keep me going. Which explains the memoir/investigation structure I’ve chosen for this purpose. Help to be found in the strategic arrangement of pages and their contents.

TANGENT: A train station opened in my hometown last month. When I went there, this ludicrous zigzag staircase unfurled along the line beside a car park barren of cars and a platform barren of life. Since I was a child there has only been one direction out of there, and the option to go RIGHT opened up such a wound of space I burst into tears.

The course has been discursive, with guests such as Kate Summerscale, David Miller, David Robinson and Edward Hollis who each contributed invaluable information on proposals, structuring and tickling the investigative spirit. Beneath this impenetrable cloak of despair I wear, this sardonic waistcoat I trail around like a string of porky entrails, I feel optimistic.

TANGENT: Optimistic being a synonym for delusional.

Five Paragraphs

Paragraph About MA:

This term abounds in bumper crops of work. I’m hoping to go insane in March and convalesce in October, after graduation. I stopped being so obsessive about grade-hunting last term (because I bombed the assignments), so won’t be so sad to get my low pees this time. I’ll still put in the effort, but this course is about learning how to do things well. Things I have no aptitude for well. This includes making errors and weeping. Fact.

Paragraph About LEVY:

Sometimes you read books that set aspirant benchmarks. One such book is the incredible Billy and Girl by Deborah Levy. The novel hits the highs I aspire to hit one day, building a strange and humorous world around damaged and original characters. It staggered and floored me. And for British people it is easily accessible at the Devil’s Bookshop.

Paragraph About BLOGGING:

I hate one-sided bloggers who post and then refuse to interact with other bloggers. When people sneer at bloggers I kick them in the face and steal their Ribena. I like to visit and comment on other blogs but I am stuck on a 2004 computer that runs slower than a sleeping Linford Christie. So I do generally read the blogs on my blog roll most weeks, and if there’s no comments, bask in the knowledge I am reading and learning and loving.

Paragraph About STUPIDITY:

I forgot to renew my student card at the start of term. I must be going mad since I swear I read an email about this. There are times when I envy the stupid. I’m hardly an intellectual colossus, but I do know words like colossus, so I’m hardly mixing with the mongs. Having said that, I only befriend idiots. I find I can pour my ideologies into their minds and get them to lift things for me. Failing that, they make neat coffee tables.

Paragraph About PARAGRAPHS:

I grew up respecting the well-placed paragraph break. In Infinite Jest, there are about five paragraph breaks in 1000 pages. There is a term for this sort of torture: paragrapixis. (Try pronouncing that). Foster Wallace was a paragrapixist and Joyce was so scared of spaces he developed agoraphobia by proxy. Paragraph breaks are beautiful things. In terms of pacing and rhythm and structure and style. The whole caboodle. It’s no longer chic to bind words together like twine and print them in 10pt font. Give us room to breathe and laugh and love. That’s all we ask.

Creative Non-Fiction — First Fumblings

When we write stories we devise strategies to help us implant personal information. Perhaps the protagonist is a brilliant detective who happens to have acne and a limp. (Like you). Perhaps the story takes place near a gasworks and smells of sewage. (Like you). Perhaps the character speaks in tirelessly witty phrases that perfectly sum up the zeitgeist. (You wish).

Aren’t these stories merely an indirect way of discussing what most matters to us: ourselves? Is there anything more important in life than what is happening to each of us right here, right now? Why do we post Facebook bulletins with such urgency or write blogs talking up the significance of our every bowel movement?

Fiction for some can be such a dead-end. I’ve read stories drawn from personal experience that obscure the truth in an attempt to honour those involved or draw attention away from themselves, through embarrassment or not having dealt with the experience emotionally. The result is a mess. In some cases, it would clearly be easier to write about “an issue” using memoir as a springboard.

I’m starting a creative non-fiction module this week. Right now, the genre appears to be both pulpit and confessional. The ‘non-fiction’ element implies reportage and information and fact-enforced analysis. The ‘creative’ element opens up a whole box of possibilities. It suggests narrative, entertainment, a license to take risks. It invites the stuff of literature into the hallowed realm of fact.

For fiction writers who write “topical” books, it seems creative nonfiction is a much better fit. Jodi Picoult went to live among the Amish to write her novel Plain Vomit then wrote a protagonist clearly based on herself. Why the rigmarole? Why not write first-hand about the experience and the narratives within the real Amish community? Why feed us clichés and tired plots when the facts might be twice as interesting?

More on this as the crow flies. These are my first fumblings.

Term, End of

I have not had a smashing good semester on my MA course. My results have been wishy-washy and my confidence has plummeted into the Seine. The Creating Narratives module puts emphasis on rigorous decision-making and being ruthless with stories. I haven’t been able to start anything because I bore holes in all my ideas and dismiss them as rubbish.

My only choice is to, well—not bore holes in my ideas and dismiss them as rubbish. Otherwise I won’t write shit. Word up. You must remember I am, first and foremost, an idiot. *

Anyway. This module has been a dizzying overload of information and the emphasis on pre-writing preparation has been stifling. I tend to generate ideas as I write things and obsessive pre-planning is not the easiest muffin to bake. Hence the suckifarious results on the suckifarious assessments. On the non-complaining side, the technical writing advice has been invaluable, and my only enemy remains, as ever, my limited intelligence. (Working on that. I have tools).

Also on the non-complaining side, the Creative Non-Fiction module looks amazing. Sadly, it requires reading aloud in groups and discussing things in groups, so a certain volume of nightmarish misery will have to be endured for the greater good. It’s never good towing the status quo. You have to fling yourself into bowel-dropping terror from time to time. I did this last night when I went to see the Human League. Horrible.

I still haven’t figured out what to do with French or Russian literary theorists. Maybe I could start a support group called Friends of Theorists for those struggling to incorporate the unfathomable verbiage of eggheads into their personal writing philosophies. Number: 1-191-HELPTHEORY! Or not.

* Since I wrote this post yesterday my confidence has improved. Funny thing, confidence.

Narrative Class [5]

Over the last few weeks on the course, I’ve been getting strong signals that my planning and practical application skills need to be bazookaed and built from scratch. This surprised me as I have always been a naturally analytical person, but less so for writing.

Today we discussed narrative position in depth and I felt lights switching on in those blank rooms in my brain. I’m not in possession of a clever, ingenious or fast-acting mind. I’m lucky to have been allowed into another university, frankly. I’m sure someone made a mistake. So when we are told about a crucial skill integral to our future as writers, I need some time to grapple with this concept. Not the skill itself, merely acknowledging this fact. I put this down to a pathological avoidance problem, but that’s another story.

We discussed the various nuances of first and third person narrators, ranging from interior monologue to detached, informational voices. How to shift between positions in the chosen narrative style was demonstrated by a story which goes from close third person narrator to omniscient within the space of a sentence. Reading the story again in this context really opened my eyes to the depth of subtlety it is possible to have in a story. It is also incredibly intimidating.

Today I felt knowledge and understanding dripping through. To avoid making a decision on narrative position from the outset only leads to bits falling apart, stories crumbling like unloved cake. I’ve decided to revisit a past project for the next assignment, which I’ve been sellotaping together from bits of gleaned information. I hope to be able to lay proper foundations—cement, bricks, stanchions, the whole caboodle—this time.

I feel confident about my writing most of time, but when there are glaring design glitches, things peter out and I’m left with more folders stuffed with stale work I can’t use. My confidence has slumped in the last month or so as a result. I’ve decided to switch to using paper and a pen for first drafts. It’s easier to make brain-scraping decisions without a cursor blinking at you all the time.

Scary as this may seem, there is a difference between learning technical aspects of writing in a classroom and applying them to your own work. The two sides of writing and theory can be symbiotic, so what matters, I think, is an awareness of the possibilities for how to tell your story, having the necessary technical knowledge at your disposal to make professional and informed decisions on the work, and to justify these decisions. This could be the difference between ‘aspiring’ and ‘professional’ writer.

Narrative Class [4]

I’ve been meaning to keep on top of the MA reports, but have been distracted by— well . . . writing. Something must be going right.

The last few classes were on tone, structure and character. This is sort of thing I should be writing about but frankly, transcribing my notes is tiresome and I wouldn’t want to spread course material over the internet, or the whole university system would collapse.

Tone in particular has been my greatest concern over the last four months. I’ve written a few short stories with tighter viewpoints, narrative voice and rhythm. These involved stripping the humour from my work, which was successful in the case of a horror story, and writing a story with more sentimental content, which also went well. Both these stories were picked up when I sent them out, so I am happy with progress on this front.

My current full-length work is an attempt to explore the limitations and possibilities of narrative stance. The character, writing in the first person, refutes the success of first person as a means of storytelling while telling a perfectly engaging story in the first person. The second section, narratorless, questions the need for a third or first person POV by telling a story through documents that perform the function of plot, character, back story, etc.

The third section is, appropriately, in the third person, and is a story written about two real people—the narrative is reportage (or spying) tailored to fit the romance market. The writer’s impositions (via footnotes) gain hold of the narrative, twisting the focus of the story.

I have very clear ideas about this project, but we’re being trained to assess the worth or purpose of our work through a ruthless interrogation process. This helps to get to the heart of a project—listing its intentions, ideas and themes until a definitive purpose emerges. Almost like a psychiatrist asking: “Yes, but what do you really feel?”

My first assignment went OK-ish. It’s tricky to turn a reflective essay into an original piece of writing. It’s a skill that would be really useful in creative non-fiction, the module I’m doing next year. I overdid the humour in this one, knocking the tone off-balance so it sounded like a piss-take. Oops. I want to write the story, though, as I have a voice in mind for the lead.

The geese above are named Concert & Roderick.

Narrative Class [3]

Lin Anderson lectured this week on researching for crime fiction. The gist: speak to relevant professionals, hit the libraries, don’t be afraid to email old friends, collect specific details from crime folks, write about someone’s head exploding and use episodes from real life.

This left me wondering how much of crime is actual fiction. If a crime writer speaks to forensic scientists and notes down specific details from cases, bases characters on people, and so on, the novel becomes, to an extent, a transcription of actual events and cases.

There is a curious line between ‘being authentic’ and writing fiction. This is the line crime writers must straddle, presumably, and it’s not as if exact dialogue, scenes, or descriptions are taken. Crime is the genre for those who prefer more grim reality in their escapism.

First assignment this semester involves researching. I’m looking forward to seeing what detail can do to a story. My other pieces are held together by a few stringy ideas, usually with no researched detail whatsoever. In the past I wrote a novella on the teachings of Albert Adler, Austrian psychiatrist, and I sometimes look up street names. That’s it.

In other news, Calpol are facing bankruptcy. This news has put a strain on my day. Today has been very strainy.

Narrative Class [2]

Our homework this week was to write twenty original story ideas and bring them to class. I didn’t spend hours developing my ideas, but I love the prospect of setting aside time to brainstorm. I don’t write on Sundays, so instead, I’m going to write down twenty ideas for potential shorts or longer works. Every Sunday. I’ll choose the best five and paste them on my wall for future reference. Ace beans.

Guest speaker was Peter F. Hamilton. He writes those thick sci-fi tomes that weigh down bookshelves but he was an interesting speaker, and almost pulled off the waistcoat look. His methods for writing such complex books are as thorough and assiduous and you might expect. Eight months planning and a strict eight-hour writing regime for over a year and a half for each book. Yikes.

One thing he said struck me as odd. Apparently, he only reads 2-3 books a year. I was surprised at this. I expect all professional writers to be professional readers, so this knocked me. He spoke about his love for reading as a child, so it was doubly odd that he’d limit himself to such a tiny reading list as a grownup. Does the urge to read ebb away? Shouldn’t he be reading to fuel his inspiration as a writer? Even if you have the most hectic home life, surely you can squeeze in a little more than that?

Anyway. Of the ideas I wrote down, I think two or three have merit. It's very tricky to bottle a story into one tagline (or logline) sentence without making it sound crap. Such is the challenge this week.

On another topic, my cowboy trousers came out wrinkled in the wash. I would iron them, but I’m too busy modelling waistcoats.

Narrative Class [1]

This week’s narrative masterclass featured a guest lecture from James Robertson. His novel Joseph Knight is the first historical tome I’ve attempted (unless Empire of the Sun counts) and his lecture about the research process was illuminating.

Research is an area of extreme weakness for me. I don’t research because I don’t include facts among the fiction. Sometimes I google place names or historical figures. Real detail invigorates the wildest story, adds authenticity to the weakest. I often don’t research because creating replicas of our own world doesn’t interest me. The artifice of fiction is a pressing concern of mine, so stories can be anywhere, with anyone, names are interchangeable.

I could never research with the immense detail required for a historical. You have to have a genuine passion that will withstand about a year’s worth of work, then keep this up during the novel’s composition. I can’t think of one thing I’d want to spend three years researching or writing. Not one thing. Not even stripy tops or Radiohead.

That could change in time, of course. It helps to have history degree or PhD to do historicals, which James has. That would explain why he writes historical novels. There is a logic to these things. My brain dislikes ‘interesting facts’ or trivia. It couldn’t care less, and so facts do not accumulate in my head. Thank God we have Wiki.

I’m also considering options for a term two module. I was going to do genre fiction, but I’ve been swayed into doing creative non-fiction. Then again, that involves research, so I’m still on the fence. Did you know the first fence was invented in 234AD during the battle of Johannesburg? Neither did I.

First Daze

First days always rile me. Then again, inside-out socks rile me. Dust riles me. Riling riles me.

But. This. Was. The. First. Day. Back. There were new students to meet, and I met about three of them. They were weird. I think some of them might have been (cover your ears) cool.

This year should be lower key, co-student-wise. Last year, we went through a full working shift with the gang whereas this year, we spend a mere three hours in their presence. Not much wiggle room for getting to know people, so I don’t have to fret too much about becoming one big happy family.

On an unrelated note, this song from The Beards is absolutely awesome.

And on another, my story Dragon, Interrupted is online at Indigo Rising Magazine.

And my other story Fred in Duplicate is in the latest issue of Anything Anymore Anywhere. (Print mag. Costs £9).

Ciao.

Return of the Mark

Tomorrow I start Year Two of my MA Course at Edinburgh Napier. I have compiled a list of things I want to achieve:

1. Get into a violent, bloody brawl with a co-student over a minor difference of opinion on Bakhtin.

2. Sit on each of the chairs in both classrooms, 218 & 219. I suspect some are spongier than others.

3. Read one graphic novel. Like, the whole way through.

4. Use the word ‘encephalitic’ in casual conversation without anyone noticing.

5. Punch someone in the toilets and steal their lunch money.

6. Bring a tramp into class and hide him under the table.

7. Tell someone my favourite living novelist is Mark Morrison (criminal rap artiste), and see if they flinch.

8. Invent books. Last year I told someone "Winter Wooksie" was one of my favourite novels, when it is in fact no such thing. (B-side by Belle & Sebastian, in fact).

9. Leave a cabbage lying around somewhere.

10. Lick a wall.

I am looking forward to my return. The course I’ll be doing will involve a stricter writing discipline, and I have to confess the phrase ‘strict discipline’ turns me on a little, so this could be (sadomasochistically, at least) a terrific year.

Manifesting Ourselves

As a side project on my Napier MA Course, and what a pleasant course it is, if you want that £3750 removed from your bank account, six part-time students wrote manifestos to be produced in print and ‘manifested’ at a local venue. The experience has been an interesting lesson in patience, collaboration and writing-in-the-real-world-to-deadlines-and-such.

My manifesto evolved from four children sitting in the café discussing various ways to torture monkeys and cats. The end result was a sect known as the Hattists, the gag being the ritual donning of hatwear at all times. Har-har. At the time we chortled at our strange humour, and the presentation went down well, but after a weeks, I got fed up of the thing.

My task, then, was to sustain enthusiasm for a project that basically took one night to write. The manifesto had been ready since I wrote a mock-up for a class presentation. So I would have to hold onto my fondness for this thing for the eight months it took to bleed it into print.

At first I was irked that it was our responsibility to design the manifestoes. There seemed to be an assumption that we were knowledgeable about how to format A5 documents, that we were also visual artists, and that we knew how publishing layouts worked. So, in a muddle of confusion, the project hid in the cellar for months until we were forced into action.

At this point, the few undergraduates who volunteered to help us dropped out, leaving us on our own. Now. I am not a natural leader. I don’t want to lead anything. Except leading my stories into print. Or leading cake into my mouth. Leaders are people willing to be called tosscocks, and have loins of steel. I take a slightly large phone bill as a personal insult. Not a good leader.

I am also, frankly, unhelpful in a group scenario. Generally, in groups, there are only a short number of logical suggestions to be posited, and they get posited by someone eventually. I limit my contributions to nodding and basking in the charm of others. So this group collaboration was a new experience for me, and I like to think I handled it with a certain flexibility. Though no sexual acts were required, apart from some mild fisting.

We were being tested on our autonomy as a group, and coping with the deadlines and demands. I also had to take on a second manifesto when one member of the group pulled out, so had to edit someone else’s work for publication. This was another daunting challenge, and I’m not sure I pulled off a first-rate editing job, but hopefully the manifesto speaks for itself. That is, after all, the purpose of a manifesto. That’s my excuse, anyway.

The biggest challenge for me is on Saturday, when we ‘manifest’ our manifestoes in little 10-min presentations, organised by Forge of the Wordsmiths. In front of people. I still can’t believe that I volunteered to speak. But I could use the experience at reading as – like it or not, and I don’t like it, not one little bit – public reading is part of the writer’s life. I will have my Hattist comrades for support, so fingers crossed it goes down well.

A big round of applause, then, for all the manifesters and their sterling work in putting the manifestos together. It has been a painfully jolly time for all.