Got nowhere else to spruik this, so...

Essential Zealand Short Stories, edited by Owen Marshall, first came out in 2002. It featured 45 stories from 45 New Zealand writers, from Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson, through Lloyd Jones and Witi Ihimaera, to Emily Perkins and Chad Taylor.

This month, an updated edition has been published featuring five new stories.

If you turn to the last story, you'll find mine ('Copies').

It's far too early for me to be sitting in a book alongside Mansfield, Marshall and the Maurices (Shadbolt and Duggan)... but when the collection was reviewed on National Radio this morning, 'Copies' got a special mention. Listen here if you're interested.

My only complaint with the book is the lack of author bios. Okay, for all the luminaries you can look up their NZ Book Council page (I like the new look, by the way) , but for the "fresh young talents", readers have to make do with whatever Google throws up.

November Experiment – A Post-Mortem

[to go along with number 21.]

It’s strange to sit down at my computer today and not need to get a hundred word story out of the way. Throughout November the task was a millstone. I couldn’t start working on a longer story until I’d done my hundred word one, and despite the length, they weren’t that quick to write. First there was coming up with an idea: either a plot (such as the ribcage on the beach in 13), an image (e.g. “full flame” in 30), or an arbitrary rule (e.g. using every letter of the alphabet except “A” in 20). Then there was writing a story. Then there was making it work in one hundred words. Most of the time this meant cutting. A couple of times this meant looking for another sentence.

So I should be relieved to not have to write another tiny story today, right? Except I feel I’ve got another story in me. I’ve overheard snippets of dialogue that could be the beginnings of a hundred word story. Images have popped into my head that could be chiselled away to reveal their clovis point. The palindromatic and 7th person singular stories I never got round to writing are still waiting in the green room, reading magazines with the covers ripped off, hoping their name is called next.

The November Experiment is, at least in this respect, like a micro version of my yearlong experiment. Creative writing is habitual. Ideas come when you have somewhere to put them. Words come when you have something to sit down for. The way to get over whatever hump you’re at, so it appears to me, is to write regularly. Whatever it takes to sit you down -- a blog, a competition deadline, a book contract – you gotta milk that for as many hours as you can.

I think it also speaks back to my post a fortnight ago on Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and the fact a writer needs to put in around 10,000 practice before their genius will show. I don’t think my hundred word stories became demonstrably better as the month went on, despite knowing more about what the form can do (and what it can’t). But I feel like I could, if my life depended on it, write a better hundred word story today than I could on 1 November. Or perhaps just write one quicker. I’d be able to recognise the false starts and the blind alleys, having come across similar before. I’d be able to choose the best suited of available ideas.

The same goes with short stories (over 100 words): the more stories I write, the more I can see the roadmap before I begin and can choose a more direct route. The story itself may not be the best I’ve ever written as I write it, revise it, or even after I’m finished and satisfied with it, but that may not be the fault of how much practice I’ve put in. That may be a failure of genius.

---
FOOTNOTE: According to wikipedia, a hundred word story is called a drabble. I just found this out.

Thirty Ways of Looking at a Blank Page

November Experiment – Hundred Word Stories

[background]

1. IVF

“I can't eat this,” she said, and removed the half-chewed segment from her mouth.

“What?”

“It has seeds.”

“So? Spit them out. So we bought seeded by mistake, it's nature's way, y'know?”

“They didn't have seeds on Saturday.”

“I don't remember.”

“They didn't.”

“So?”

“So the seeds, they've grown in these mandarins since we bought them.”

“I guess. As they ripen...”

She pushed the segments and peel further away from her.

“What?”

“I can't stand the thought of the things in my fruit bowl... struggling. Not rotting but fighting for life. To make life. It seems so...”

“Pathetic?”

“Heroic.”

2. Half-life

I like bullet points, meetings with agendas, stationary cupboards, walking down the hall to collect something from the colour printer, holding it against my cheek, warm and smooth. I’m not built for construction or sales or science or medicine or piloting any sort of vehicle: I’m built for office work. I like semi-colons and ampersands and control-shift-8: the reveal key. If only there was one for life outside. Too much to absorb, filter, guesstimate. Give me a box of paperclips and a slow Thursday afternoon. Give me a farewell morning tea with sausage rolls and talk about the weather.

3. Medium

The television waited till everyone was in bed before it snuck out the kitchen window. It was rooting through a dumpster when the rain began. Under a cardboard box that may have once held another TV — the television couldn’t read — it hummed the theme from Bonanza. The same faint grey image continued to flicker on its screen: a young boy halfway up a hill of bison skulls. (The family had briefly switched over to a history of the Midwest while X-Factor went to a commercial.) The cardboard began to sag. The rain beat harder. The television resolved to stay.

4. St. Mary’s

I am standing in front of a huge stone cathedral. There are no paths. Grass is growing halfway up the door. It’s as if this building was moved here but never re-opened. Beneath the highest spire I find a man in a brown suit pressing a palm to the stone exterior. His head is turned towards me, one cheek hovering just off the pressing hand. His eyes are closed. It looks as if he is humming, but I can hear nothing. He opens his eyes, stares straight at me. His lips are moving, but I can hear nothing.

5. Soft

There were too many women talking at once for Chobe to understand a word of it. He did his best to look like he was listening, not wanting to appear rude. To keep a focussed expression on his face, he listed his favourite animals:

* Wombat
* Beaver
* Bison
* Kodiak Bear
* Highland Cow

He wondered why they were all so furry? And where were the animals from his own country?

Someone said his name, or so it sounded. He looked from face to face, but there were too many women talking at once for Chobe to understand a word of it.

6. The Six People You Meet Called Steven

The kid who taught you the fingers.

The learner driver who knocked you off your bike.

The video store clerk who always recommends Jules et Jim even though you always tell him you’ve seen it (and didn’t rate it).

The guy drinking at an airport bar who ends up asking you for a kidney.

The friend of your partner’s brother who does that thing with his eyelids, y’know?

The doctor who asks you to use his first name, but you persist in calling him Doogie, even though he’s too young to get it.

7. Leitmotiv

When I was a student, there were only a limited number of flats close to the university which landlords would rent to undergraduates. Somehow, I always missed out. Forced to live further out in the suburbs, the rent was cheaper but I still could not afford to catch the bus. Everyday I would walk passed houses that had passed me over, and houses that were deemed too good for my kind. But what really annoyed me were the vacant lots.
The effrontery.
After graduation, after marriage, the years of fidelity and filing, my memory is crowded with vacant lots.

8. Keynesian Slips

Any prolongation of the work will exacerbate an already alarming rate of deterioration.
The policy analyst read over this sentence a second time.

He control+C and control+V’d the sentence into an email and wrote: If I ever start talking like this you have my permission to kill me, pressed send and moved on with his life.

At the trial, the prosecution argued that the email did not represent a legal contract as it involved an illegal act.

The defense couldn’t think of any witnesses to call. He was too preoccupied with avoiding any prolixity in his spoken communications.

9. The Truth About Honesty

The morning after you lost your virginity, I was there. I wanted to ask how it went, but didn’t.

You bared your soul to me once, but I drank so much the black spots ate the whole conversation. You would never tell me what you said, just that you said it.

We drifted apart.

I feel I should apologise, but it may seem like I expect some apology in return. Like, for not replying to my emails. For having a secret that doubled with importance the second time you bottled it up. Perhaps I do.

Sorry.

10. Inventory

My knuckles have been replaced with grapefruit. My fist feels crowded. I expected this would come, one day. But my feet? The hinge between my foot and toes has rusted, the bolt buried in the middle aches to be released.

Grapefruit and rusted bolts.

My shoulders rattle like those hand-cranked cement mixers. My shoulders weigh so much. They never used to weigh at all, did they?

Perhaps this is the body’s way of taking an inventory. This is what you never knew you had. This is what we won’t let you forget again.

Grapefruit, rusted bolts and cement mixers.

11. Nodes

John looked up from his sandwich. “My kid, you know what he did? He went one better. He has this friend who moved away. Went to live with his mother in Auckland. But they kept in touch, you know, texting. Anyway, one day, this friend, his cellphone dies. His mother, she’s still finding her feet up there and can’t afford to buy him a new phone that minute. So he can’t text my kid. You know what he does, my kid? He writes a message on his phone, puts it in an envelope and posts it to bloody Auckland!”

12. Hear No Evil

This woman comes on the train with one of these modern prams with the oversized, off-road wheels. A real effort to find somewhere to park the thing, but she manages. Then I see the kid in this pram. It’s gotta be five years old. “You want to sit next to mummy?” she asks the kid, and hoists it out the pram. It’s wearing a fake fur coat, jeans and white boots with wee heels, listening to an iPod. The mother places her on the seat next to her and the kid just sits there, holding its ears.

13. Scandal

A ribcage is found washed up on the beach. A child, or perhaps a woman — it’s hard to tell. After a head-count, the police are called. The townsfolk watch them bag the ribcage — from a distance their care and precision looks like squeamishness. It is sent for testing. Days pass. The ribcage falls from conversation, though the antique dealer exhibits an unnatural interest. It’s not like C.S.I., he is told. These things take time. Eventually, he reads of the results in the local paper. Chimpanzee? People come to his store, eager to gauge his reaction. No one buys anything.

14. Three Friends

“What are ten year olds like these days?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, not really.”

“Me neither.”

“Well…”

“When I was ten I thought sex was like pumping petrol — you put the nozzle in and leave it there till it’s done.”

“When I was ten my only concern was making a pottle of yoghurt last an episode of HeMan.”

“When I was ten I got sick of waiting for my parents to buy me a Ken to go with my Barbie, so I cut Barbie’s hair off and drew on a moustache.”

“And then?”

“Ken-Barbie was just as lonely.”

15. Lecture Theatre

I had this psychology lecturer who was always drinking from a Pump bottle. One day I was late and the only available seat was on the end of the front row, right by where she kept her water. I didn’t think I was that late, but the bottle already looked empty. I was surprised, then, when I saw her walk over and attempt to have a drink. I figured she’d forgotten it was empty and pretended to drink to avoid looking foolish, but then, a few minutes later, she returned and had another drink from the empty bottle.

16. Hallway Sentence

Neil had come to the conclusion that whenever anyone asked How are you going? they didn’t really care — it was just a turn of phrase like gidday — and as such he ignored the question whenever it was posed and jumped right into his prepared conversation, which normally related to variance reports (with a hand shake for favourable variances and hands in pockets for unfavourable ones), though this one time, shortly after being promoted, he held up his hand like he wanted to high five me, but I just coughed and in the end he let the hand drop.

17. First Order Of Business

Ned suggested that, as an homage to Nirvana, they chose another Buddhist word. After trawling a website on Buddhist doctrines, Joel recommended they check Google for any existing bands with those names. Samsara? Melboune hardcore band. Bodhi? Exeter Jam Band. Kilesa? Students from Carlow, Ireland. Moksha was actually two bands, one in England, one in India. ‘What about Bad Karma?’ Neil, the band’s Warren Zevon fanatic, suggested, but another Melbourne group beat them to it. “The Dharma Bums?” ventured the Kerouac-enraptured Clayton. When the page loaded, Shawn suggested maybe they weren’t ready to form a band.

18. Switch

The problem bear turned out to be a Newfoundland named Waldo. The Missoulian couldn’t resist running the headline: Where's Waldo? along with a big photo of the rascal dog looking down the lens, his paw resting on the rim of a silvery rubbish bin. The photo later appeared with thousands of Lol Catz style captions around the internet. W.I.S.P.A. ran the photo as a full page ad in national papers with the caption: If I wuz a bear I wld hav been shotted. Waldo appeared boisterous but loveable on Letterman, while a man was being mauled back in Montana.

19. Hangovers

On my second Friday I went for a drink with my workmates and I found myself swearing a lot. I changed the topic away from my last job but the swearing continued. Conscious of the impression I could be making, I opted for silence. I looked over at the bar, to a woman with a black handbag the size of a For Sale sign and just as thin. A workmate tapped me on the shoulder. The bald buy in the corner was staring at me, apparently. “Fuck him,” I said. “Have you seen the size of her fucking handbag?”

20. _BC of Life (a pangrammatic lipogram)

In the spirit of George Perec, who wrote one complete novel without the letter 'e', this story does not use the first letter of the, um, list of letters in its common order. Without further fuss, the story goes like this: guy, girl, drive-in; necking, petting, cooling off; more necking, more petting, no cooling off; zygote, foetus, birth; teething, toddling, speech; primmers, juniors, high school; long locks, short locks, locks left on pillow slips; blue pills, red pills, purple pills; rest home, hospice, exquisite urn; silence/trumpets, void/cherubs on puffy clouds, nothingness/bliss.

21. If Six Was Nine

“I can't believe you had the balls to meet his wife!”

“I've had 'Ironic' by Alanis Morisette stuck in my head all day.”

“You deserve to suffer.”

“I wonder if it will rain on our wedding day?”

“Whose?”

“Mine and Brian's.”

“You're unbelievable.”

“Oh! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh, so you're unbelievable!”

“Who sung that?”

“Jesus Jones?.”

“No, they did ‘Right Here, Right Now.’”

“Second single?”

“I’ll have to wiki it.”

“Props bet?”

“It’s not Jesus Jones.”

“Whoever it is, it beats Alanis.”

“Woe, you’ve just invited her back in.”

“Haven’t.”

“I can see you want to hum it.”

“It’s…”

22. In certain weather, all you can see on the footpath is chewing gum

I decided economics was not for me today. Rudy Valentine was talking about sanctions, how they can have unintended consequences. His example: if you increase the sentence for rape from ten to twenty years, the penalty for rape is now closer to murder and may lead to rapists murdering their victims. “After all,” Rudy Valentine said, forcing his hands into his pockets, “it would eliminate the witness…” Bad example, sure, but it was the shallow laugh that we budding economists gave off that made my stomach slouch.

23. Memoir

The vice-principal’s rubbish bin. Too many pub bathrooms to list. Behind the recycling bins on Caledonian Place. In my mouth (swallowed). Every toilet in every house I’ve ever lived in. The path from the library to A Block before the debating final. The ferry back from Zanzibar. A truck somewhere in Northern Malawi. Over the side of a fishing boat off the Gold Coast. Outside a fish’n’chip shop in Taihape. The Kaimais. An ice cream container. A mixing bowl. An empty coffee mug. My hands. A plastic shopping bag. In the shower. Out the window of a moving car.

24. The Pohutokawa Wars, Pt I

After the flood there were potatoes and kiwifruit and onions over everyone's lawns. It seemed a kind of surreal pickmeup until it was discovered they were rotten. Nature continued to taunt with possibilities. The top half of Mr Jenkins’ pohutokawa, snapped free by the floodwaters, flowered gaily in the now-streaming sun, wedged between Mr Kellum's woodshed and back fence. Kellum left a note in Mr. J’s letterbox: Extricate your g-d tree from my g-d property. Miffed, he researched tree-related torts online. Extricate your head from your arse, he replied. The reply: a volley of onions.

25. Extra-curricular

“Where’s Ernesto?”

“Didn’t you hear?”

“He wasn’t fired?”

“No.”

“Another job?”

“Nope.”

“He was too young to retire… So what?”

“He finally sold a patent.”

“No kidding. Which one exactly?”

“You know how he was always walking into those Slippery When Wet signs?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And how he always said one day he’d make those signs a thing of the past?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, he did.”

“Huh?”

“He invented linoleum that changes colour when wet. Sold it for millions.”

“Ernesto, eh? Geez.”

“Yeah.”

“So what you up to tonight?”

“Karaoke competition. You?”

“Might take another look at my screenplay.”

26. Degradable Bio

When I was ten I had a calendar on which I crossed off the days till Disneyland. If there was a switch to skip the intervening months I would have flicked it.

When I was sixteen I had a journal in which I tallied my situps, though sometimes I just scribbled the whole page black. If there was a switch to stop existing I would have flicked it.

When I was twenty five I had a blog where I posted graphs and made nonsense calculations. If there was a switch to slow time it would be long flicked.

27. Workie

I pulled a workie today. I just couldn't face another day on the couch. I put on my black slacks and polo, walked down the road to the big Tesco and straightened shelves for four hours. After a cigarette and a Yorkie by the loading bay, I straightened shelves for two more hours until a guy with bluetooth earpiece asked me if I was able to work a double shift. I told him my kid was sick -- he looked disappointed -- but my wife was a doctor. He gave me a huge smile, and two jars of Dolmios.

28. Cliffhanger

…but he was only clinically dead. Paramedics managed to revive him after fifteen minutes and six broken ribs. The doctors were amazed he wasn't a vegetable, and warned Sadowitz, Mendez and the band that his brain function would be reduced. “Reduced from what?” we asked with straight faces which evolved to tense-but-smiling faces. Two weeks later Robbie returned to the studio to work on Live And Let Dog. Little did we know he would be dead in six short months. Skin cancer. From a mole he never got checked. A crummy way to go. So uncool it killed us.

29. Solitude With Options

The comedian was a regular on celebrity quiz shows, well known for his garish shirts, buggy eyes and knack with accents. One day, he appeared with a ventriloquist’s dummy that looked just like him: same buggy eyes, same orange shirt. His normal voice was the dummy’s voice. Snippets of this particular show became popular on YouTube for the wrong reasons. The comedian refused to appear without the dummy. The shows acquiesced. The comedian hid behind the desk, refusing to show his face. The dummy remained a regular on celebrity quiz shows. The comedian was never seen again.

30. Curtains

You could see his tragedy coming a mile off. He’d worked up this momentum and there was nothing that could stop him, except, you know, the big full stop. Like how with some gas hobs you have to go though “full flame” to get to “off”. The last time I saw him, he was in full flame. It was probably the alcohol, poisoning from the inside, which made him sweat in the cool of the corridor. “I want to change,” he told me, stroking my lapel. All I could think was: A snowball’s chance in hell. A snowball’s chance.

In which the writer takes a significant step towards becoming an author and explains the feelings of vindication expressed late last week

The news: my short story collection will be published by Random House New Zealand in 2010.

I received this news on Thursday, but was waiting until I saw the contract (as proof I didn't dream it rather than a fear of being had) before going public.

In some respects, 2010 seems a long way off (I'll be 27 before the book comes out - gasp!). But the major advantage is that it gives me time to write 1 or 2 or 3 more kick-ass stories before I have to submit the final manuscript in June 2009. Fingers crossed a kick-ass story supplies a kick-ass title which inspires a kick-ass cover...

Considering the fact I will be M.I.A. from Christmas until around Anzac Day -- at least when it comes to writing fiction -- June 09 is not so far away.

And hopefully that credit crunch malarkey has died down by 2010 and people are in the book-buying mood!!

For those of you curious as to how this all ties in with the Year of a Million words shtick:
Of the 17 stories currently included in the manuscript, seven were written from beginning to end in 2008. A further four were commenced in late 2007 (after settling in Edinburgh), though most of graft took place this year. The remaining six stories were all 'complete' at the beginning of the year (some previously published), but all have undergone numerous revisions since then. And then there's all the stories I worked on '08 on which didn't make the cut...

I can't say for sure what I would have written this year without a target of 2,732 words per day, but I can guarantee that some of the newer stories would never have been tackled. Other stories, old and new, would have been allowed to drift along, perpetually unfinished/unpolished/unloved.

I thought I needed to say something pro-Quest, since most of the time I'm pretty down on what a harebrained gimmick this is. With that out of the way... I have a kick-ass story to write. Excuse me.

BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award... Top Ten

Further to my post last week on the 2008 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards 2008 , I received an email this evening... Apparently my story ('Oh! So Careless') was in the top ten in the Open Section. So, from top novice last year to top ten among the big kids this year. I'll take that.

Here's what the judge, Peter Wells, had to say:

“Overall, I looked at more than 230 stories so a good story really had to stand out. The nine finalists caught my attention. Sometimes a story grabs you with its content, but usually it is the combination of content and style. There were many stories which seemed thinly disguised memoir. I didn’t feel this with the nine finalists: they seemed self sufficient stories in their own right. Each writer had gone that extra mile to make the story stand out. Even the title is important - it’s like looking at a menu and from what’s written you have to imagine the taste. I think the nine finalists could improve their work by reading short stories by acclaimed writers - people as various as Tolstoy, Elizabeth Bowen, Alice Munro as well as contemporary short story writers who appear each week in the New Yorker magazine, for example. It’s not an easy artform at all. And we all learn and become more enthusiastic about the short story by reading the great writers. But each of the finalists should feel heartened by the fact, in a such a big public competition, their work stood out. What separated their work from the winning entry? I would say the winning entry had more observation of the foibles of the way we interact as humans. It was quietly, even sardonically humorous. It was well tailored overall. Sometimes, strangely enough, if you relax with the medium, ie not necessarily try to tell 'big stories', you come up with a better result. But be encouraged. And dream up further stories.”

Since my last post, the three winning stories have been posted on the BNZ's site. I've read them. Novitz's story probably does observe more foibles than mine... And his title is probably a better menu entry... Though I'm not sure, if given a contents page of twenty stories I'd turn to a story called 'Three Couples' first (or fifth).

More on reading habits and contents pages tomorrow.

BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards 2008

It's official. I am no longer the reigning Novice champion of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition. That honour now belongs to Joseph Ryan.

Story here.

Congrats to Julian Novitz for winning the open category and joining "the literary heavyweights".

I haven't seen the stories up on the BNZ site just yet... if you go searching, you'll still find my story, Another Language. How unfortunate.

If you hurry, you might still be able to watch this video cobbled together with footage from the 2007 awards and, if I'm not mistaken, 2001. I was in Germany during the 2007 ceremony, but you can see my mum standing next to Carl Nixon at 1:04-1:10. Go mum!

Okay, off to see Ladyhawke at Cabaret Voltaire... Got to support those 80's obsessed Kiwis, eh?

The Last Word on Willesden

For completeness, here's the final word from the Willesden Short Story Competition judges.

It explains the judging process, the mix-up with the short-listed authors, and reiterates the rationale behind the judgement. Perhaps more of this detail and less of the "call to greatness" first up would have prevented upsetting some people...

The short-listed candidates were contacted and asked whether they wanted their names to appear. Some comments made on the comments page of the blog about these writers were so unflattering that it was decided that the WH should be sensitive to their feelings... When the decision was made to split the prize money, the short-listed writers were contacted again and most of them said that they did not want their names or stories to appear and did not want any prize money. They told us to f--- off. Which is fair enough.

All a bit of a storm in a tea cup really. Or in the modern parlance: "something to blog about."

I certainly wouldn't have turned down the money and the publicity, no matter how adverse. No one can be summed up by one story. Thankfully - otherwise what would my non-shortlisted entry say about me?

Willesden Update

From the Willesden Herald blog:

Bowing to common fury, the prize will be split equally amongst the shortlist, all of whom have written strong and worthy stories. Our honest problem was that we didn't feel we had found a stand-out for the big prize, and we were trying to set the highest standard, but we did it clumsily and, as many have argued, there's no reason not to award the money, since it's there. Maybe you lot can read them when they're up and choose your own favourite.

There were only two or three comments suggesting a split. Personally I think it sends the wrong message. They wanted to stir things up. To agitate us all to greatness (or their idea of greatness... slippery slope). But now... what? I'm confused.

I think those involved mistook healthy online debate with whining. Easy mistake to make I guess. For those wondering, this is the former. Honest.

Still, these two competing decisions (no stand-out story so no prize awarded; no stand-out story so ten prizes awarded) don't do any favours for the prestige of the competition this year and going forward.

Congrats to the short-listed writers, though. Any placing, in any fashion, has to be taken as a positive. The "You're good, but go further" message may even spur them on to "greatness". Maybe they're already there, it just flew over Zadie's head?

The Affair of the Willesden Short Story Competition

That's what this would be called if written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I sat down this evening with the best intentions to write fiction. I opened up the Excel spreadsheet in which I track my stories, their status (complete, in progress, not begun) and the wheres and whens of submissions. Scanning my growing list I was reminded that I entered the Willesden Short Story Prize back in December. I hadn’t heard anything yet, so I googled around and wound up here.

Perhaps I have a sixth sense for controversy?

To summarise: after receiving 800 entries, short-listing and handing X number of stories to Zadie Smith to make the final judgement, it was announced today that no story was good enough to award the prize (£5000 and “immortality” as they said in the conditions of entry).

According to comments on the Willesden Herald’s blog, they actually posted a message a few days ago saying the short listed authors had been notified… And now this.

It was a free competition. Apart from printing and postage costs, which all but one person would not have recouped if a winner had been announced, so there’s really no issue there.

[Except the claim that the prize next year will be this year’s £5000 plus a year’s interest, which would only make the average prize-money £2500+interest over the two years… surely they could up the £s next year, or spend it on promotion to get the best entries out there for 09 rather than banking it for a couple extra hundred pounds…]

Zadie Smith makes some interesting points in her explanation for the prize being withheld, and I can’t really argue that it’s their right to not award the prize if they didn’t read “greatness”.

But:

In the same diatribe-cum-apology, Zadie Smith talks about the aims of the competition as supporting unpublished writers. I wonder how many PUBLISHED stories Zadie Smith and the other judges would read to find one “great” story? Of course a free competition will have some chaff, but to expect “greatness” in a short story competition might be overstating the competition’s importance. Especially one “established to support unpublished writers.” Few writers achieve greatness without first passing through mediocrity, promise, proficiency…
I can understand why they wouldn't want to send the message that proficiency was enough, but if the competition and its organisers really want to help usher writers towards greatness, how about some specific critiques? I’d be particularly interest to hear how the short-listed entries fell short…

As I re-read Ms Smith’s carefully chosen, agonised-over, words, I started to see a subtext.

“I think there are few prizes of this size that would have the integrity not to award a prize when there is not sufficient cause to do so.”

Add to this the repeated references to this prize not being sponsored by a beer company, it’s difficult not to consider whether this is less about the stories received and the writers who submitted than upping the prestige of the prize and the people involved…

But it would be simplistic and misanthropic to say this decision was a cynical marketing ploy. It was a combination of less-than-great stories, the desire to get better stories next year, and the potential to rattle a few trees that lead to this decision.

The only problem I have is that what Zadie Smith perceives as greatness would vary wildly from the opinions of “Rimbaud or Capote… Irving Rosenthal or Proust… Svevo or Trocchi… Ballard or Bellow, Denis Cooper or Diderot… Coetzee or Patricia Highsmiththe” (writers mentioned in her explanation). Again, the “not good enough” ruling calls out for examples. They usually publish an anthology of the shortlisted stories – I think it would be more interesting to read it this year (with an introduction addressing where they fell short) than the last two year’s anthologies.

If anyone involved in the competition is reading, it may take some grovelling to the short-listed entrants, but such an anthology would do more for writing than simply keeping mum until next year.

A Young Man Writes About Writing

I have, amongst other things (understatement), been working on a longer shorter story which I intended to submit to the BBC National Short Story Award. I had read the fine print, which stated that writers need to have been previously published. Turns out, I needed to read read the fine print, because entrants must be published in the U.K.

Drat. There goes my shot at £15,000.

On one level, I can see why the competition has this clause. It’s the biggest short story prize in the U.K., established with the express purpose of helping raise the status of the short story. (I’m not sure I entirely agree with some of the people behind the scheme’s arguments about the health and importance of short stories, but I think anyone who puts up money for writers has their wallet in the right place.) By rigging the draw so that only published authors can win, it means they will have someone with a track record to spruik, rather than doing the Pop Idol thing and launching someone to the top of the list without the experience behind them to keep them there.

But then there’s the purist in me who says it should be a competition for the best short story, not the best short story by a writer of XYZ description. If a story is great, it deserves £15,000 and the wide exposure a competition like the BBCNSSA would bring, even if the author doesn’t.

Huh?

I know it seems difficult in today’s age of author events at literature festivals, full page author photos on back covers and celebrities-turned-paperback-writers to conceive of books without their authors. Even harder when you consider this proposition for other media. Praising a movie without considering the actors behind the characters or the director behind the camera. Talking about a song without talking about the performer. (I plan to write about cover versions in the near future, so take note).

I believe all literature prizes should be judged on the work and the work alone. This shouldn’t be a problem. As the novelist Jim Crace said, “If a novel's any good, it will be more interesting than its author.” Based on his wikipedia page looks like he’s lived by that maxim. Anyway, I agree with what the man said. It may be naïve and suboptimal, but if I was giving away £15,000 I’d want to give it to the best story possible, meaning no criteria at all. No word limits, no entry fee, online or paper submissions accepted, published or unpublished, UK citizen, transient, terrorist or alien authors: come one, come all.

But instead every competition has to have an angle, and every book needs a photogenic author.

Meh. That’s life I guess.

When I realised I could no longer submit my 6,000 word story I was a bit bummed, because there aren’t many journals or competitions which accept pieces of this length. I really want something in the Edinburgh Review or Chapman before I leave Scotland, but they both have word limits around the 2,500 mark. D’oh.

BUT... I’m glad to be in the situation of having a longer story which, had I not misread the rules of the competition, I may not have completed. The sudden revocation of my BBC eligibility also presented the opportunity to stop and consider what factors had influenced the beast my story became.

Like most stories, it began life as an idea. The first night I spent in Zanzibar, there was a strange ticking noise which I couldn’t place. I thought this could be a good metaphor for something, but didn’t know what, filed it away in a notebook and continued travelling.

Then, in about November, I was looking at all the stories I’ve ever written to see if I had enough to cobble together a short story collection. In collating the stories, I wrote a little summary sentence along side each, like so:

A young boy tries to figure out if his grandfather really stutters in another language

A young university tutor becomes obsessed with one of his female students

A young man tries to reconcile memories of his father and his own looming fatherhood

The misadventures of an ambitious but limited man who becomes mayor of a fishing town

A courier loses his licence and his job and must rely on his grandfather for transport and conversation

A day in the life of a single sex (male) high school

A young man returns to home for the holidays and plunges into depression

…& so on…

It wasn’t all “young man” fiction, but there was certainly a distinct lack of female characters. So, when it came time to turn the mystery sound in Zanzibar idea into a story, I thought, Why not make the main character female?

Was this a cynical decision? I don’t think so. Perhaps if I’d said: Having a female lead will give me a great chance of winning the BBC comp, but I didn’t know about the competition at this time.

When I did discover the competition, mid-November, it may, however, have encouraged me to write the female in Zanzibar story over, say, a young man who builds a shrine in his department’s men’s room story. And the 8,000 word limit definitely gave me the freedom and imprimatur (Word I Couldn’t Define Until I Looked it Up #2) to make it a long short story.

To go into any further detail about this story which you won’t see until it finds a home is a bit mean. I will say that I don’t think my decisions were any better or worse intended than those I make when writing fiction with no specific competition or publication in mind. The great thing about fiction is, if you’re doing it right, it’s all you in the end, regardless of word limits, themes, format or trends. Even the best need boundaries to work within or goals to work towards.

Speaking of which, I just cracked the magical 3,000 for today. Boom Tho!

Footnote to self: define, then sing the praises of the word 'spruik' one day.

Deaf Men Talking, Or: An Insider's View on Writing Workshops

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of words spent on the influence writing workshops and MFAs have had on the state of contemporary fiction. But I haven’t really seen is a lot of words from those who’ve gone through the process and come out the other end.

I did a one year Masters in Creative Writing in 2006, and a few years before that I took a one semester short fiction workshop. I’ve also, on occasion, co-ordinated writing workshops for high school students. Now, more than a year after my MA, my novel/thesis remains unpublished and I am taking deep breaths as I prepare for next year’s challenge: writing a million words.

As I sat down to write today, I didn’t feel up to working on anything half-finished or first-drafted and in need of a good going over. I wanted to write something new. I imagine 2008 will be full of these days. The problem with writing something new is the blank page. Often, it’s too much and watching TV or tweaking fantasy basketball lineups is too attractive. This is where the pressure of having to write 2732 words a day will help me put aside whatever mood I’m in and just write. But what do you do when you want to write, but don’t know what you want to write? Me: I start typing. Typing anything.

Today, my first ‘first sentence’ was, “There was something rueful in the dog’s eyes.” My second and third sentences were “Dog’s eyes: full of rue. Some things, you can only just get away with, and the slightest disruption will cause it all to unhinge, unravel, unwind, undo.” In all, I managed 248 words before I decided to start again with something else (the story that evolved, a girl and her depressed dog, kind of finished at word 248).

My second ‘first sentence’ was: “It’s often easiest to start a block of fiction with dialogue.”

Below is a marked up version of the text I managed to write, with my comments on the process of composition (click on it to make it legible). In discussing the process of writing this snippet, I hope to reveal a little of what it is like to be inside the head of this young writer who has been through the workshop gauntlet.

By the time I got to this last sentence, I had more questions which needed answering before I would feel comfortable continuing:

• Where are they exactly? Rest home? Institution? Country Club?
• Linked to the above: How old are they?
• What country’s sign language do they speak? This will affect my description of the gestures to define the made up word/gestures, and it’s something to research (first spurts of stories often stop at the point where I realise I have to research something).

There is also the bigger question of: What is this story about? I’ve written 238 words of text and discovered I was writing about a game two deaf adults play. The heart of the story feels like it lies in the relationship (friendship?) between these two men, and the way being deaf affects this relationship. But I didn’t know this when I started.

When I go back and read the first two sentences which got me writing, my workshopped brain says that these words might not serve the kind of story it looks set to become. When I step back and think about this process, there’s a lot of internalised workshop tendencies at play:

• The desire to round out characters and settings (to answer all the usual questions people have).
• The obsession with finding the heart of a story and expanding on it.
• The tendency to discard metafictional or experimental passages as they interrupt the vivid and continuous dream of your bog standard short story.

I’m not sure if the image of ‘one deaf man making up sign language words for another deaf man to define’ is a workshop-fiction idea or a Craig Cliff idea. I think it’s a bit of both (it’s a false distinction anyway), but I do have a sneaking suspicion that the deaf definition scene (which may well come in the middle or the end of the story, not at the beginning as it stands now) is a distant cousin of the narrator holding the blind man’s hand and helping him sketch in Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’. I didn’t rate this story when I first read it, but sitting on the other side of my MA year, I now concede it is one of the best short stories written in the eighties, and possibly any other decade. Is this a result of my maturity as a reader, or my workshop indoctrination? Again, it’s probably both.

This is why I feel torn when it comes to considering those first few ‘How to Write A First Line’ lines. It helped me write over 1000 words (and counting, including this mini-essay of course) and it comes from a place less contrived than two deaf men making up words, though, to a workshop veteran, it looks the most contrived.

I think it’s a question of voice, something bandied around in a lot of workshops but normally in terms of I love the narrator’s voice, or I think the voice slips in the passage with all the adjectives. It is not really a workshop’s role to step back and question the author’s voice: the right they have to inflict more fiction on the world; their staked off area of thoughts and way with words which no one else can replicate. Workshops are quid pro quo affairs, where every comment you make may affect the comments you receive on your own work. And they are limited by time: not just the time in the workshop room, but the time spent reading others’ work amidst the flurry (or lack of flurry and the resulting guilt-induced lassitude) of one’s own writing. So it is rare when a person’s work is ever looked at in terms of authorial right. What right do I have to tell a story about deaf people? Very little, on the face of it. After I research the different sign languages and perhaps read some deaf peoples’ blogs I will be more informed, but I will also be a slightly different person to the one writing to you now: the one who came up with this image but isn’t sure where it will go. The one who is writing a blog entry/essay instead of powering on with the story. But I do have a right to this story because, if I do it properly, only I could have written it. Other people may steal this idea (please don’t, there’s gotta be at least a 12 month statute of limitations on ideas espoused here) but they will all be different stories.

This is why I’m reluctant to cut the first two sentences: because it’s me talking. That’s my voice. It signals to the reader that what follows is the product of my mind, not the reporting of a lived experience. It feels less like lying. Not that the sanded, lacquered and polished banisters of ‘workshop fiction’ are full of lies, just that too much of the author has been sanded away.

I guess that’s what other people are talking about when they say that most contemporary fiction feels clinical and formulaic. Workshops are like lawnmowers: they tend to cut everything above a certain height. The result is a nice, clean looking lawn, but one that very much resembles the neighbour’s.

Don’t get me wrong, the workshops I’ve been in have helped me become more ruthless with my own work and I’m much more perceptive when it comes to picking out the part(s) of a story which are important, and I wouldn’t unlearn all these lessons and unmake all the friends I’ve made and forget the feeling of connectedness I felt when a part of that small community of writers. But now that it’s just me, and I’m the prosecution and the defence, it takes a lot of walking away from the screen and doing something else for a while to decide what’s best for MY stories.

P.S. Hopefully one day I can post a link to the finished, published and lauded ‘Deaf Definition’ story. Once I’ve written it.