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.

All Good Things

Well I'm back in New Zealand for the first time in 23 months. People ask, "Is it weird to be back?" and, truthfully, it isn't. I like it here. Why else would I come back?

A few things have changed. I've noticed my hometown of Palmerston North is a lot more Australian than the last time I was here, and this may be true of the Kiwi culture more generally, I'm not sure yet.

I have a little over a month before I have to submit the final manuscript for my short story collection. I also have to find a job and a place to live (both hopefully in Wellington).

So you'll forgive me if I takes a wee while before I decide what to do next in the blogosphere. I have some ideas (including one frontrunner), but no announcements yet.

As for writing, it was strange reverting to a non-writer for over five months after last year's insanity. Not difficult, just strange. I only made about 10 pages of notes in my notebook over that time. So I wasn't exactly brimming with ideas. I may write a travel-related story in the next few months, but it's one based in Turkey and Australia (drawing on experience from almost a year ago to the day).

So, as I ease myself back in behind the keyboard, here's some holiday snaps taken since my last blog entry...

Guatemala

Honduras


Nicaragua


Costa Rica

Peru

Bolivia

Brazil


Uruguay

Argentina

Chile

*sniff*

Well, my laptop has just gone bye-bye. Don't worry, I'll see it again in 150 days, give or take. Along with other possessions Marisa and I can't bear to part with but can't lug around four continents in our packs, my laptop will be cruising the high seas back to New Zealand. Barring catastrophe(s), the box will beat me home.

I'm using my landlord's laptop to type this, if you were wondering.

I could have knuckled down and written on this computer this morning after taping the box shut, but I couldn't face it. It felt unfaithful. Me and that black slab of increasing obsolescence have been through a lot these past twelve months. Sadly, it won't be around to see my eight hundredth thousand word of 2008.

That should come later today when I start my big wordcount summary...

How Long Do I Have To Write Until I Get Really, Really Good?

It’s about a week old, but I only just read this extract from Malcolm Gladwell's upcoming book, Outliers, over at The Guardian Online. It’s definitely worth a read.

Basically, in addition to All-World talent, one number links The Beatles, Bill Gates, Mozart and Tiger Woods: 10,000:

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers,
ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the
neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand
hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of
practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class
expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this
long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

Obviously, the mention of fiction writers got most interested me, but I’ll have to wait to read the whole book to see if there are any persuasive case studies of writers.

[This piece on Gladwell, also via Guardian Online, does mention his own 10,000 hours writing non-fiction came while working for the Washington Post ages 24-34].

Does a wannabe have to write for 10,000 hours before there’re ready to win the Booker, or write their Sgt. Pepper? Ten years of writing twenty hours a week? Goodness.

But I am strangely comforted by this idea. Talent is crucial, but maybe persistence and patience is just as important. This links back to my post a few months ago where I argued for public apprenticeships for writers. You may be able to write an entertaining book after, say, 5,000 hours of practice (though who’ll admit that their current novel / story / blog post is just practice?) but it will probably have a few kinks. Perhaps once you reach 10,000 hours, you’d be able to iron out those kinks, or (more likely) be able to recognise that the kinks are part of the genetic makeup of the book and you’re better making another one from scratch -- but the kink-y book still has value. To give a book over to the world provides fresh perspectives on the book for the writer (I imagine, check back with me in 2010), and allows them to start something new.

Right at the beginning of this Quest for a Million Words lark, I said:

I know this is a gimmick. But if it makes me write everyday, regardless of mood
or circumstances, it's the gimmick for me.

What I thought I’d mentioned, but it seems I decided against, was that I felt my writing had reached a tipping point (to borrow another Gladwellian term) at the end of 2007: I had an MA in Creative Writing, I’d recently won the novice section of a short story competition and had another story published for payment… all I needed was more finished things to submit for publication, which would require a lot of writing.

And write I have.

Okay, so I haven’t finished either of the two novels I worked on this year, and probably won’t finish one next year either, but I feel like it’s happening.

Three hours writing a day is probably quite close to my average for 2008 (most days I do more, but all those travel goose-eggs bring the average down-down-down), which means I’ve probably chipped a year off my ten year apprenticeship. Which begs the question: how many hours had I done before this year? And: how many more do I have in front of me?

During September-October 2006 (in the lead up to handing in my novel/thesis), I wrote an average of eight hours a day (honest). For the majority of my MA year, however, I was lucky to pull down three hours of writing time. But I was living and breathing writing the whole time. I was reading books by the pile and the work of my other classmates, providing comments, talking about writing and books, attending readings, seminars, book launches… All of these things were important in shaping either my understanding of writing (reading especially) or my drive to become the one giving the reading / having the book launched. So perhaps the 10,000 hours for a writer is actually 10,000 hours of writerly activity, be that reading books with a writer’s eye, talking about writing, or writing writing. Or maybe for writers it’s more like 10,000 hours writing + 10,000 reading.

Either way, I’m not there yet, but I’m on the way. If I keep working, well, I’ll only have my lack of talent or the seismic shifts in the publishing industry to blame for not winning the Booker!

On Rejection

I've read two quite different articles about rejection (of the literary kind) in the last two days.

The first, via the IIML's newsletter, an editor and writer's thoughts on rejection in the latest The Kenyon Review.

The second, via Beattie's Book Blog, a humble bookkeeper saves editors time by rejecting manuscripts.

I haven't thought a lot about rejection lately, as I haven't really been submitting things. But earlier in the year I had a patch. I wrote a story about it...

Perfectly Crafted

Mitzi Visitacion had done everything right.

She had the pseudonym, randomly generated from to U.S. Census Data.

She had the MFA.

She had permission to quote her manuscript assessors’ words of praise (“Ms. Visitacion writes like English is our second language…”; “Blue Belly Blues is unforgettably… memorable”).

She had the perfectly crafted submission letter.

And of course—of course!—she had perfectly crafted stories.

But all this got her was rejection. Rejection letters, rejection slips, rejection emails, rejection text messages, rejections scrawled on Denny’s napkins and slid under her bathroom stall, rejections instead of prizes in her cereal box.

When she received a rejection note from a journal she had never submitted to—she’d thought she was signing up for an annual subscription—enough was enough.

She opened a new Word document and typed:

Dear Famous Writer,

We here at Xyzphage are looking to publish writers at the peak of their powers, though it is admirable you are still toiling away. So it’s a no from us.

Yours in pre-emption,

Xyzphage Editorial Board

She looked up American Writers on Wikipedia and copied and pasted the names into an Excel spreadsheet. One by one she tracked down each writer’s email addresses and rejected them. If she could not find their email address, she left a comment on their website or advised their agent of their rejection. Rejections for deceased writers were sent to their estates.

It felt good to reject Ernest Hemingway (“not butch enough”), Hunter S. Thompson (“too constricted”), and Grace Paley (“reads like another writing workshop prodigies’ pale imitation of Grace Paley”).

If a writer was really old, but still writing, like John Updike or Elmore Leonard, she still addressed the rejection, “To The Estate Of…”

She was surprised at how many replies she received to her rejection emails. The audacity. It had never occurred to her to respond (let alone object) to a rejection email. Maybe this was what was holding her back.

But she was having too much fun writing rejections to worry about her own perfectly crafted stories.

When she finished the list of American Authors, she broadened her horizons.

Dear Midlist Author,

Someone told us to check out your most recent short story collection or novel, which we did. Unfortunately we here at Xyzphage do not consider your writing to be an appropriate fit with the current direction of our publication.

Yours in pre-emption,

Editor X

Then she began trawling the internet for e-zines, noting down the contributors and rejecting them when they least suspected it.

Dear Emerging Writer,

We here at Xyzphage have noticed your writing around various journals and websites but you have a ways to go before you should think about approaching this publication.

Yours in pre-emption,

Uncle Xyz

To add sting to these rejections, she created a website for Xyzphage, complete with submission guidelines, and posted some of her less-than-perfectly-crafted stories under various randomly generated pseudonyms.

“They think this is good?” she imagined the Emerging Writers thinking. It made her feel warm. Physically warm. The word that seemed to fit best was Chuffed.

But then Xyzphage began to receive submissions. Why she used a real email address, she couldn't remember.

Mitzi Visitacion was forced to stop sending out random rejections and focus solely on rejecting Xyzphage submissions. Soon she could no longer personalize her rejections—there were that many submissions.

So she sent out acceptance letters instead. What was stopping her? She accepted anyone who sent her an email. Even eBay’s ‘Summer Savings’ and Rudolfo Zurich's ‘Cheap Cheap Cialis’ made it onto Xyzphage.

But why stop there? She went into her sent items and retrieved every rejection letter and changed a few words.

Dear Writer,

We here at Xyzphage have noticed your writing around various journals and websites and consider it an appropriate fit with the current direction of our publication.

Yours in prevarication,

Uncle Xyz

For some reason, this got her more irate replies.

Writers emailed asking to have their stories removed from the site. Submissions dried up. The hit counter for Xyzphage stopped ticking over.

The flare up had fizzled.

And all Mitzi Visitacion was left with was her perfectly crafted, unpublished stories.

This Is Where It All Happens, II

Something I didn’t mention in my Status Reports was my writing situation physically. Moving, then taking off for Greece and returning to a full working week isn’t exactly the time to be mildly inspired to write extended prose narratives. The problem was exacerbated by the fact there was no obvious place for me to write in our new one room apartment.

I’d figured that anything would be better than our last flat, where we essentially did everything except cook and go to the bathroom in our bedroom. Sure, there was a huge desk for me with a mini-bar (pros and cons), but behind me there was a large LCD TV and a girlfriend… two pretty mean distractions.

Now we have everything to ourselves (woo-hoo!) but it’s not exactly spacious. Until this weekend, there were also boxes and suitcases lying around, making it feel even more like we had signed up to live in a hallway closet.

I did most of my writing at the kitchen table this week because it was the only desk-like surface available. I could wheel my chair underneath, spread out my notebooks, waggle my mouse. It was great, except, as you can see, the distractions were no longer behind me but in my line of sight.

I couldn't face the other way because that would block access to the kitchen and then how would cups of tea magically appear on my desk?

I tried other places too. On the bed (not stable enough, less comfortable than it sounds), in the unfilled bath (cold, uncomfortable, ridiculous), and even in the toilet (actually the most comfortable spot of the lot, quiet too).

Kooky caption competition: If it’s good enough for Vladimir Nabokov, it’s good enough for me.

We measured the bedroom and figured out we could fit a desk the length of my arm beside the bed. Do they make desks the length of my arm? I wondered. The answer is: depends on your definition of desk. We are lucky that there’s a Salvation Army Furniture and Electrical store just down the road from us and we spent a good half hour there yesterday measuring all many of wooden items to determine their suitability as writing desks. In the end, we settled on a semi-circular deal which is exactly the length of my arm. I think it was originally intended to be placed in a hallway and have the telephone sit on top of it. There’s a wee draw for a notepad, or perhaps a spare pair of keys. I’ve turned it round so the flat side faces me, and stashed an assortment of USB devises and cords which the modern writer uses from time to time in the drawer.

The posi I now inhabit will take a bit of getting used to, I think. The fact I stare at a 45 degree wall messes with my eyes right now, and may be contributing to the kink in my neck. Still, it’s less distracting that the huge mirror I stared into for the last nine months. It’s almost a delight to see myself in the medicine cabinet mirror now. Almost.

Failure Will Not Be Tolerated: Why Writers Shouldn't Be Given Any Free Passes

Yesterday I argued that novelists should be allowed to warm up in the public eye; that by publishing their promising but ultimately flawed books, it might increase the chances they will write a Mr Pip or a White Noise, and give fanbods something to search for in secondhand bookstores.

But.

I can just as easily argue the contrary: that only the crème de la crème (to borrow a phrase from Miss Brodie) of novels should be published. In fact, there are three pretty good lines I could, and will, run.

One: Financial

Why should publishers subsidise writers who haven’t yet mastered their craft? What guarantee is there that a mid-list writer will ever break out? I would be wary of any publishing house (or agent) that accepts work that they do not believe in. The novel emerged as a commercial form pretty much from its inception - - and a popular form to boot. The worst thing we could do to the novel is remove it from the marketplace completely.

And, now that I’m well into my devil’s advocate role, what’s the role of all those writing workshops if it isn’t to get all of those amateurish, imperfect, unsellable books out of the way before a writer thinks about publishing?!?

Two: Market dilution

There are already too many books being published. Far too many to read. And some of these books, I’m sure, are responsible for turning people off reading. It’s commonly bandied around that reading a book beats immersion in any other media, but it’s not easy to write something -- to use words and words alone -- and create a believable world. One word out of place or out of character can be as damaging as the projector chewing film in the cinema.

As Douglas Coupland said:

We live in an era of genuinely diminished attention spans. I'm competing with reality TV and with shows written by 24 to 30 professionals per episode. If I have something to say, it had better be something fucking important, and it had better be said in some new and unexpected way.

[Aside: the novel he was spruiking when he said this, jPod, isn’t exactly the best example of writing, or storytelling, but I still agree with what he said.]

Three: The Writer’s Responsibility

It might have happened, somewhere, perhaps in a small town, one where tractors are still a common sight on the main street: the townsfolk ask the resident genius, “Please become a writer.” He politely declines. They pull out their pitchforks. He changes his postion.

But for everyone else: No one is forcing you to be a writer. You chose this path, knowing full well it was a difficult one. If you can’t toil away without payment or praise until your book-length manuscripts are good enough to receive payment and praise, then maybe you don’t deserve it?? Maybe this is Literature’s form of hazing new-comers? Maybe it’s the constant kicks to the abdomen that build the killer six pack, which, years down the line, will make the fanbods swoon?

…

The thing that I’ve noticed while trotting out my arguments for and against writing apprenticeships in the public eye is that it’s difficult, either way, not to romanticise the act of writing and the result. Perhaps this is because I’m a wannabe, currently in the kicks-to-the-abdomen-phase, who, in his weaker moments, lets his thoughts drift to the swooning fanbods stage.

[I imagine becoming a novelist is difficult for those who are immune to romanticism.]

So, to keep this on a personal level for a moment longer, what do I really think? I have submitted two novel manuscripts to publishers (NZ and Aus) and agents (UK and US). I have written portions of two more novels this year, one of which I will complete in 2008, Scouts honour. Would I like to have had one or both of my unpublished novels published at the time?

Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, there are pros and cons. As Rachel King mentioned in a comment to yesterday’s post, if your first published book bombs, no matter where you publish it, the hill is that much harder to climb the next time. But if you aren’t given the option to publish, the hill is still a daunting thing to stand before. What if I spend all this time on a new book and nothing comes of it? What if I really am just fooling myself? Very real fears, my friends. (I would worry about any writer who does not have these moments, because it would suggest they don’t care enough about readers and/or that they are a robot, and based on current technological constraints I’m sad to say robot’s do not make good writers).

Being a writer is about conquering the fear and writing. The best writing is fearless. These statements are difficult to mesh. It is a complicated game. Sometimes you don’t know you’ve won until after you’re dead (let’s not get into the metaphysical debate my poor phrasing just threw up).

With regards to me, personally, this is all moot. When I send something off to publishers and agents, I want it to be published / believe it should be published. When I stop sending it out (as happened with both "complete" manuscripts) I don’t want it to be published anymore. There’s no great theorising going on about apprenticeships and capital-L literature. When I finish something, I either believe it’s the best thing in the world and submit, or I don’t believe and know that it’s not really finished.


Footnote:
These arguments are for novels. Although creating a book of short stories is a difficult task, it’s a very different proposition. The key to a good short story collection is good stories. Overarching themes and interconnections between stories help sell books, so I’m told, but you can link and overarch all you want: if you’re stories suck, your book sucks. As with any form, you learn to write good short stories by writing and reading a lot of them. But the investment is not normally as big as with a novel. It’s easier to write off a short story as flawed and move on than it is with a novel. It’s easier to draft and redraft and redraft and redraft a short story than it is a novel. You can submit short stories to competitions and litmags and websites and get published, do your apprenticeship in public, so to speak, before thinking about anything as daunting as a book-length collection.

The novel and the short story are different forms; thinking of short stories as baby novels is like calling a dog a baby elephant (though they both walk on for legs, the wee one will never grow into the big one). But still, to continue my dodgy simile, if you are good at training dogs, some of the skills will be useful if you find yourself coaching an elephant football team.

Finding The Clovis Point

A while ago I watched a documentary about the Clovis point. It wasn’t this one, but it covers the necessary points:

Basically, you start with a piece of flint and begin striking it in such a way as to break off flakes that can themselves be used as tools. In the end, you have whittled a slab of rock to a spearhead: the difference between survival and starvation for the first recorded human inhabitants of North America.

This image resurfaces in my head every time I return to novel A, which is a rewrite of the novel which was excerpted here, but never fully published. At the beginning of the year, I decided to take a quarter of the original novel, focus on that and make it a novel in its own right. Since then, I have been working away (in fits and starts), to find the Clovis point embedded in my previous manuscript.

Every time I return to this novel, I find the need to chip off something else.

And just like with Clovis, when I chip something off, these fragments become useful too. I have already written a short story based on a scene in Cambodia in the original manuscript (a country Novel A does not visit). There is also a scene in the original manuscript which was lifted from my first attempt at a novel, and is once more free to be picked up whenever I need a Beginning Of Romantic Interaction scene.

And last night, after seeing the Doug Johnstone and Toby Litt session at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I realised I could take another swing at the remaining slab of flint and chip off the music industry aspect altogether.

Which is perhaps ironic, since I was attending the Johnstone/Litt session was because both authors have recent Rock’n’Roll novels: I Play The Drums In A Band Called Okay (Litt) and The Ossians (Johnstone). But sometimes you need to see your supposed competition to see that you actually want to line up in a different event. At least this time.

Of course, having chipped off a band called The Wet Candles and its two tribute bands (The Final Flicker and The McFailures), they’re free to be used again somewhere else.

Being Completely Honest With Myself In A Not Entirely Personal Arena Moment: The reason I’ve been stopping and starting Novel A (and Novel B (and those brief moments where C and D were considered viable)) is whenever I reach a tough spot, I remember how much work the two manuscripts I have completed were. And how unfun the part that comes after completion is (trying to get published). And that if there’s something wrong with the core of the story, there’s no point pushing on till completion because it’ll probably end up in a draw with the other manuscripts.

It’s like running back into a burning house. You know how hot and dangerous it is coz you’ve been there, but you know you’ve got to save your Grandmother/Van Gogh/family photo albums.

But why do I have to save this story?

This morning I read, via the Guardian Online, Andrew O’Hagan’s comments at the Book Festival on Friday. In addition to slagging off Richard and Judy’s Book Club, he had a go at Creative Writing Students:

'When you speak to students, if you teach on a creative writing course, often what you find is that they are not interested in life at the level of the sentence,' he said. 'When you try to activate some interest, they find that slightly distracting. What they want to talk about is what it would be like to be a famous novelist.'

Every aspiring writer, whether they ever enter a creative workshop or not, has moments where they wonder what it would be like to be a famous novelist. And sure, for some students, that might be the main motivation. But unless they are exceptionally talented, they won’t ever find out first hand. Because it’s hard to craft something that makes sense to someone other than yourself. And even when you get that right, it needs to be something people would consider buying.

The explosion in creative writing courses might expedite the learning process for many writers (I know I’d still be toiling away in a much more affected, showy style if I hadn’t had regular feedback from other writers over the past few years), but it can’t provide the ideas or the desire.

I have ideas for Novel A. Some of them are embedded in another manuscript, others I’ve reeled in fresh from the deep seas of the imagination, and still more will come as I inhabit life at the level of the sentence.

And I have desire. That’s what pulls me back to the threshold of this burning house. That’s why I will, eventually, reach in and pull out the heart of my story.

Okay?

Garlanded With Promises...

Apropos of nothing I started humming my high school's motto song this morning at work. Then I started thinking about the lyrics.

Motto Song

Cloistered in youth we grasp the veil of beauty
Garlanded with promises of happy days to be
There are the doors of fame and wealth and duty
Here at our hands the master key
Work at school, work at play
Uphill runs the stony path to glory
Not for tomorrow the task we have today
Nihil bone sine labore

[This is all from memory as I couldn't find the lyrics anywhere else online, but it's not the sort of song you can easily forget.]

It was strange experience singing this song two or three times a year (prize-giving and related practices) for five years. It was the only time most of us heard the words "cloistered" and "garlanded" in that time. And who talks about duty these days?

But now I feel some affection for this song, and even for the person/persons who composed these eight lines - - despite knowing nothing beyond the song itself. Perhaps it was the work of a frustrated poet, languishing in the high school English department of rural 1920s New Zealand - - and, for all the doggerel he churned out, this is all that persists? Or perhaps it was the stern headmaster and his music teacher love interest (the scandal surrounding the relationship would die down when they married the following year); her plonking out upbeat marches on the piano and him declaiming received wisdom about duty and hard work from his days in the Territorials.

This is how I imagine a lot of writer's work. It's certainly how I work. Something is stumbled across - - a remembered song, a concrete object, an eavesdropped conversation - - and so many questions are thrown up that the imagination just can't help filling in the holes.

Speaking of filling holes (a painful pun if ever there was): when I was at the dentist yesterday, I quickly slipped into my writing headspace to lessen the terror. What if you were afraid of the sound of drills (and why not?), but your father was a dentist who operated out of a clinic below your room. What would you do to drown out the sound? And off I went...

A writing headspace is a handy thing, I tell you.

It even makes research fun. At least the initial stage of research where you have an idea and you're reading around the subject, watching films and steering conversations in particular directions. This sort of research throws up hole after hole for your imagination to fill and claim the territory for your story. (The kind of research that comes after you've written your first draft and certain holes left in your story can't be filled by the imagination - - when you really need to know what sort of gun a newspaper reporter would use, or double checking how much weight you can gain in nine months - - isn't so much fun.)

The best thing I've read about this phenomenon - of filling holes with the imagination and the requisite withdrawal from life to compose false lives - is Ghosts by Paul Auster (the second novella in his New York Trilogy). A young private eye named Blue is hired by a man named White to keep surveillance on a man named Black. Black spends most of his time at his desk, reading and writing, but from his vantage across Orange Street, Blue can't see what Black is writing. Only his imagination can fill the holes in the story of Black and White. And when the imagination does not suffice (the surveillance lasts more than a year; Blue is a P.I. not a writer) he begins to interfere with Black in order to find answers...

It really is a solid piece of thinking wrapped up in a solid piece of writing. (For more of Auster's thoughts about writing and reading fiction, his 2006 acceptance speech for the Prince Asturias Prize is a good start).

The "solid thinking" stage of the writing process is the one writers (myself included) most often omit. Or they start from solid thinking and go about finding the rest of the story. For me, "solid thinking" should enter the equation after the "stumbling across X and letting your imagination run wild" stage. Not everything your imagination inserts into a given hole is a perfect fit. You need to stop and think: how does making Mr Y afraid of drills affect the rest of his character? Is there room for the character this creates on the stage with the guy gaining massive amounts of weight and the girl obsessed with another rock'n'roll suicide?

Then there's the swathe of solid thinking required upon revision. For me and the retooled Novel A, this stage is still a ways off. It's time to dive into a completely new draft. Perhaps that was why I was singing the Motto Song this morning: I was psyching myself up.

Nihil Bone Sine Labore : Nothing good comes without hard work.

Status Report — Half-way

In this time of looking back, it’s hard not to feel a bit deflated. I have written 447,840 words in the last six months, but I have not written one War and Peace. I have not even written one John Grisham novel. I have thrown words around like Brewster threw his millions: to get rid off them rather than using them. This is me overstating things after a long, tiring day at work, but only slightly.

I would love to write 552,160 words in the next six months (3,001 words per day), but I would like to finish a novel more.

But the two are not mutually exclusive.

I am going to move the target line up to 3,001 words (from 2,732) on my weekly graphs to reflect the harder hill I have to climb in the second act. But I’m not going to pull my hair out every day I dip below this line. I still believe in the Shangri-La that is a string of 5,000-word days — once I’ve finished working full-time but haven’t yet started the long tiki tour home / when I’m working on Novel A and it all falls into place. When I picture this writer’s Shangri-La, I even have specific passages in the novel in mind: most of them involve Bhutan, which — coincidentally — is also known as The Last Shangri-La.

But enough looking forwards. I’ve decided to this as a list, if only because I’ve had this line from my second favourite Canadian band stuck in my head all day:

Memory will rust and erode into lists, of all that you gave me…

How I Spent My 447,840 Words

Short Fiction

13 short stories started and completed such that I might consider submitting for publication — 1 published (though I haven’t submitting many, that’s top of my To Do list at the moment)

9 short stories already drafted before 1 Jan have received serious attention in 2008 — 4 published

12 short stories begun but a) abandoned before completion of first draft or b) incomplete as at 30 June 2008

(164,367 words)

Novels

2 novels worked on in earnest — 0 completed

2 other novels dreamed up and preliminary research under take — 2 placed on back-burner / promptly forgotten

(86,310 words)

Poetry

37 poems — 1 published

8 Word files full of words expended in the pursuit of poetry

(17,738 words)

Blogging

104 posts on The Year of a Million Words

6 posts on my travel blog

1 guest blog entry

(101,825 words)

Other

100-150 emails of a personal nature which at the time I deemed might be of interest to my poor biographer in sixty years — 5-10 emails probably fit the bill in hindsight (36,897 words)

19 reviews of stories on Zoetrope and approximately 10 reviews of work from my writing group (23,517 words)

3 extended biographical prose pieces written with no clear use in mind (11,886 words)

1 web-based project which never came to fruition but none the less deserved 5,300 words

The Gallipoli Sensation

This time a week ago I was standing at the New Zealand Memorial on Chunuk Bair (Çanak Bayırı). In all, me and my four travel companions spent an afternoon visiting the various memorials on the Gallipoli Peninsula. My reaction at the time was somewhere between the Kiwi history student who was quickly reduced to tears by the reality of the landscape (“It’s such a small hill. Why should so many die for such a hill?”) and my German friends who admitted the significance of this particular campaign was lost on them. I tried to explain how Gallipoli (or as the Turks call it: Çanakkale Savaşları) was important because it provided one of the founding legends of three new nations (NZ, Australia, Turkey), even if so much of this was built on rhetoric and idealism, then and now.

Minor aside: Having lived in both NZ and Australia, I’ve seen what the ANZAC story has transmuted into in the space of 90 years. Australia with its diggers and mateship, its live telecasts of Dawn Services from State capitals, followed by rock concerts on the beach and/or a beer and a game of two-up down the RSL. New Zealand seems to have had less buzz-words passed down through the years, and there is less of a circus around April 25th (at least there was the last time I lived in NZ… these things change, huh).

That afternoon in Gallipoli I posed for photos on ANZAC Cove (not sure what sort of facial expression to wear) and with the massive statue of Atatürk, took plenty of photos of my own, read all the information panels, stared at the blueness of the sky and sea a few times and thought wordless thoughts - - and then it was over. Another experience for the travel blog. Another box ticked.

But there is a slow-burning significance of this afternoon which I am still trying to make sense of. There is something beyond the tales of nationhood, military manoeuvres, and even the loss of individual life which persists, lingers in my thoughts. I don’t know what it is — I guess a week is not long enough to provide the necessary perspective — but there is something which brings the tears close when I read about the battles on Wikipedia when I ostensibly visited for the correct Turkish spelling of Chunuk Bair. Something made me sit down and write about it now.

This feeling, of being in the midst of a slowly coalescing meaning, is a gift in itself. It is something I have probably experienced before — though I cannot finger a specific example now — but it is something I have written about. Or more correctly, it is the state one of the characters in the first draft (2006) of Novel A finds himself in. Of not quite knowing the What or the Why of his emotions, just knowing where these feelings are coming from. For Mike, it is a past relationship. For me, it is Gallipoli.

So I will take this strong-but-muddled state of emotion I find myself in and twist it into something fit for an off-beat love story. What might have been a character-building moment for myself, I will use to (re)build my fictional character. That is what being a writer is. There is autobiography in all fiction; there is fiction in every life. Writing is forgetting about these distinctions for periods of furious typing.

But Gallipoli was one afternoon of a six day stay in Türkiye. I will also be using my time at the beach to help me write the second half of a stalled short story (though the beach David Leon visits will need to be in Ecuador). And there may be more stories or poems which grow from watching one of Turkey’s insane comebacks in Euro2008 or visiting a mosque. I will just have to wait. Like my Gallipoli sensation, what’s really worth writing about isn’t always clear until much later on.

Nirvana In Retrospect

This is what I did tonight when I had the room to myself:

Watched Portugal versus Czech Republic, y’know, to unwind after work.

Checked my emails, check my statcounter, read a few other blogs.

Opened a blank document.

Went and looked in the fridge. Decided I’d cook tea.

Ate tea in front of the TV.

Did the dishes.

Decided I should also make my lunch for tomorrow.

Opened an existing story which is missing its final scene.

Checked my emails again.

Watched this video without fast-forwarding until 2mins 45seconds.

Checked to see if Switzerland versus Turkey had started (got to do my research for my impending journey).

Turned off TV. Edited existing story from the beginning. Got distracted at page 12 by Sarah Polley’s version of ‘Courage (For Hugh Maclennan)’. Rocked out.

Tried on the suit I only wear to interviews.

Thought: You stupid procrastinating chump.

Started noting down the various forms of procrastination for use in a blog post.

Returned to existing story, read a good sentence, decided it needed to be cut.

Ate an obscene amount of dried cranberries.

Removed ‘Never Let Me Go’ from my iPod to make room for ‘The Wasp Factory’.

Continued to edit existing story with the finale of The Apprentice playing on the television, turning around when ever my boy Raef said something (sadly, it was only twice).

Swept the floor of our bedroom (something Marisa asked me to do while she was away, so…)

Ironed some shirts.

Updated my list of procrastination activities.

Checked my emails. I had two. Replied to one.

Posted this.

The (Part-)Day of Zero Distractions

Tomorrow evening I will be home alone. No house guest (Manchester). No significant other (business trip, East Midlands). The sense of excitement I feel for the span of six uninterrupted hours after finishing work and falling asleep verges on ridiculous.

Even though I have existing stories to edit (ah, the collection; I feel like I am swimming out to a boat that has come free of its moorings), I will write something new tomorrow. Not that I have any one nascent story in mind. But I want to conquer the blank page, rather than rub smudges from the faces of my misbegotten brood (they never stay clean for long).

I will write a post after my brief writing nirvana entitled "Nirvana In Retrospect" (to attract more grunge fans/90's stuck-in-the-muds to my blog).

The Shame of Naming

The time has come to think about a title for my short story collection. To the right you will find a poll. These are five titles that make some sense to me. The three with asterisks double as titles of stories in the collection. I'm not going to explain what each title means, or how it fits with the rest of the collection - this is just to gauge reactions on first blush. A bit of fun, that's all.

Until now, I've never had to come up with an umbrella title. When I did my MA, I wrote a novel, and I had the title from early on. Even when questions were raised about the title and I went looking for something better, I only had to think about the one story (a long, complicated one, but one story nonetheless).

But there were others in my class writing short story and poetry collections, and I remember well the time toward the end of the year when they were all furiously trying out titles for their manuscripts. In workshops, others would have their say, and I certainly offered a few potential titles, argued for and against some alternatives - but it was different then. I hadn't written the poems or stories. I wasn't clouded by parental attachments.

But now, as I play around with which stories make the cut, and the order those that make it will appear in the manuscript, I have a serious perspective problem.

I've leant towards a different title each of the last four days. Tomorrow I will think of something new, and convince myself it works with all the stories. But that's the thing: with a collection of twenty stories (with another ten sitting on the sidelines should they be a better fit with the new title...) you can usually find enough evidence of any theme.

For example, I'll just turn on the news and see what they're talking about... Golf. Okay, well there's a reference to golf in this story, and I could be smart and have eighteen stories to represent the eighteen holes of a golf course, and order the stories like a good course: opening with a straight-ahead par four (4,000 words), then a dog-leg par four (a story with a sudden change of focus or direction), a sprinkling of par threes (2,000-3,000 words) and rounding out the front nine with a massive par five (12,000 words)... I'd probably need to write a story explicitly about golf to open or close the collection, but I sit down and write every evening, I should be able to knock something decent out in a fortnight...

That's what it's like in my head at the moment. Not that you'll be seeing Love on the Links and other stories by Craig Cliff in any book store soon.

It's almost a shame to have to name the thing at all. No name will tick every box without setting of some unintended firework halfway through story and ruin the spectacle of the end. I can almost understand how bands come to release self-titled début albums.

Almost.

I'm not about to do a Michael Martone, though.

Blank Hippo Blank

I've been looking through the word documents I have created so far this year. Specifically the ones that never became anything.

The Quickly Abandoned.

The outlines for unwritten novels; ways to link short stories. The snatches of dialogue overheard at work that could be something more. The first person rants which I couldn't bring myself to fictionalise, nor could I bear posting them here as "What I Actually Think."

Even though it's only been a hundred and something days, I had already forgotten some of the things I'd written. That's what happens when you don't revise something. It is only once I begin revising that a piece begins to assume any importance.

Revision is what separates writers writing for themselves and from writers writing to be read.

But, having said this, some of these unrevised snippets are interesting -- in an archaeological sense. I've been writing all over the place (short stories, novels, poetry, blogs, memoirish indulgences), and these Also-Wrotes fill in the gaps of the story of this year.

The piece I'm about to cut and paste below was written on the sixth of Jan, so very early on in the Year of a Million Words [sic]. At the time I didn't really know how to go about writing circa 3000 words a day, every day. I was half drunk on the challenge, half baffled by the numbers.

The 532 words were the last I wrote that day. An effort to pad out the numbers, sure, but I thought they could be useful for something (perhaps that should be: something *big shrug* ?)... but now, four months later, I know these words are better left where they are.

Rest in peace, casualties of the War of Words.

Blank Hippos Blank

We were walking along the beach at Portobello.

“If I had to describe it, I’d say fizzy.”

“Sorry?”

“What?”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You can’t just start a conversation like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re continuing a conversation. What’s ‘It’? You said, If I had to describe it… ‘It’ is only a placeholder for something the other person already knows.”

“They do it in short stories all the time. You do it in your short stories. I remember.”

“This is real life.”

She made a snickt sound; suction between tongue and roof of mouth. Said, “My life is like one long short story.”

I laughed.

“It. Was. Fizzy,” she said. “My stomach. Last night.”

“Oh.”

“When you go to the library next, get me Moby Dick.”

“You won’t like it.”

“It sounds like I’d like it.”

“The plot is like the tiniest part of the book.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Stuff about whales. Whaling. Ships. In the 1840s.”

“Could be interesting.”

“It’s great, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“What about that other book?”

“What other book?”

“The one you mentioned last night. It probably doesn’t have hippos in the title, but that’s what I’m getting.”

“I don’t remember mentioning a book with hippos in the title.”

“It didn’t have hippos in the title—”

“You could make a great title with hippos somewhere.”

“It was three words.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I didn’t dream it.”

“Hey, I just remembered a dream I had a few days ago. I was forced to eat human flesh.”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“What?”

“You told me.”

“But I just remembered.”

“You must have told me when you weren’t awake yet.”

“Did I recommend this hippo book when I wasn’t awake yet?”

“It was night. We’d just turned the light out.”

I shook my head. “Blank.”

“It was three words: blank blank blank.”

“Blank blank hippos.”

“Hippos blank blank.”

“Blank hippos blank.”

“I like that one. You should name a story that.”

“Okay.”

“Can I be in it?”

“But your life is one long short story. If you turn up in one of mine, it’ll be like plagiarism or something.”

“No it won’t.”

“Or fan fiction.”

“I don’t have fans. I’m destined to be ignored in life, mourned in death, remembered in eternity.”

“Sounds like the best kind of short story. Was it Gogol?” I pronounced it Gaw-gol, the way Nabokov says to.

“What?”

“The book I told you about.”

“No.”

“You should read some Gogol. ‘The Overcoat’. ‘The Nose’.”

“I prefer ‘Blank Hippos Blank’.”

“Only coz you’re in it.”

“Yes! I’m in your story, I’m in your story.”

“Secretly.”

By this time we’d walked up and down the promenade. It isn’t very long.

“I used to hate stories with writers in them,” I said.

“And?”

“And then I realised everyone finds writers fascinating. Everyone thinks they have a novel in them.”

“Or a long short story.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t mind that you’re a snob,” she said. “I’m not a snob, but I don’t mind you being one.”

“I am a snob. I am also white trash. I am a long short story, too.”

“Home time?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Guess what? So am I.”

Running on Empty

Last night I returned from a long weekend in Paris, exhausted.

[Aside: I like the fact the French have put up some resistance to the Englishisation of Europe. I like that you are still expected to have a go with the bon soir monsiers and the un bagette s'il vous plaits. Most of the time, the person serving you knows enough English to understand what you're after, but people who expect to be able to get by without giving the local language annoy me. I've been that annoying person enough, that I feel okay saying this. Of all the places I've been in the last 12 months (I think the country count is in the twenties), France was the first place I felt like the language was part of the adventure. Part of the foreignness.]

Needless to say, I didn't do any real writing over the four days I was away. But I took down a few random thoughts in my moleskine and probably acquired dozens of memories/experiences which will enter or enrich my fiction at some stage down the line. Paris took a lot out of me physically, but it added a more than commensurate amount mentally/spiritually.

Today as I walked to work I felt excited about getting back to writing!

I had not one but two projects I was itching to return to:
* a short story about extinct animals
* Novel B, which I continued to chip away at last week and finally seemed to be rounding into shape.

But then, of course, I arrived at work.

It was worse because someone else stepped in to do my repetitive and unrewarding tasks on Friday… I don’t blame them for doing a half-assed job, but today it felt like I was doing two days work instead of one.

Come the end of the day -- "now" -- I don't have that same effervescent feeling when I think of sitting down and writing the next chapter of Novel B (which will probably need to be revisited 17 times before it sits properly), or writing the final scenes of my extinct animal short story. I'm tired and cranky and have other things to do, like break in the running shoes I bought on Thursday (my motivation must be low if exercise ranks higher than writing).

I also feel obliged to write an entry on mine and Marisa’s travel blog for the benefit of the whanau back home. The words will count towards the million, but I don't feel like I ever get to the heart of an experience in a travel blog. I just don't feel right talking about the importance of speaking a foreign language in too much detail when I know my readers will be grandparents and de facto in-laws (if that makes sense).

If I lived in a vacuum -- a place without physical or monetary needs, but also without stimuli -- I would still write. It's in my blood. But I would not feel the same highs of anticipation and optimism as I felt today as I walked to work; nor would I feel the lows of guilt and exhaustion brought on by other obligations which take me away from the great white page.

I guess that's what being a writer is about: juggling the input (ideas/experience/money) with the output (words).

I might not feel like it any more, but I'm going to open the word document for Novel B or the extinction story, or both, now. I'm going to do this because I know I will get lost in the words after writing a couple hundred of them (and maybe a cup of tea), and because if I don't write, I will sink even further behind the word rate, leading to more excuses and rationalisations offered to the ether.

PS - I will roll this past weeks stats into this coming Sunday's status report. Expect a new type of graph... a "for a limited time only" deal.

A.W.O.L. Competitions

I don’t enter many writing competitions. Only the free ones. And I almost never write a bespoke piece to enter a given competition. But back in January, when writing 2,700+ words a day was both fresh and daunting, I came across details for The Scotsman and National Library of Scotland Short Story Competition.

I’d never written a pure crime fiction short story, though I did have a crime fiction element in the pastiche that was my second attempt at a novel (a.k.a. MA thesis, a.k.a. The City We Forgot To Name).

Anyway, I thought having a stab at this competition would a) net me some words for the final accounting, b) take me somewhere new, and c) give me a chance to win some kudos and whisky.

The story I submitted was called, ‘The Bartender’s Glass’. It was okay, I think. It’s been a while since I read it. I sent it off well before the Jan 25 deadline…

The competition stated that all short listed authors would get a Crime Fiction Masterclass with Mr Tartan Noir himself, Ian Rankin. The entry form stated this Masterclass would take place in March.

Tomorrow it will be May, and I have not heard anything about this competition. Not that I expected to be short-listed, but if the competition has been judged and announced, I expect to either be informed (I supplied my email and mailing address), or in the very least, to be able to find who the winner was on the internet.

Nada.

Last week I emailed the National Library of Scotland (using an alias… somehow everything I wrote came out sounding like a desperate writer with nothing else to think about).

No reply.

I haven’t read the Scotsman (one of Edinburgh’s two evening papers) every day since the first of March, so I can’t be sure I haven’t missed something there, but still…

I hate it when competitions disappear.

What I think might have happened: allowing only six weeks to read and judge the entries, inform the short listed authors and have a Masterclass was overly optimistic. The process may have been further extended when Ian Rankin went off the rails at an awards ceremony earlier this month.

Awards ceremony? Could it… No, it was in London. But still. I can’t help feeling I could have been the 26-year-old writer who spent the night with him…

If only I were a bit older…

And had different bits…

[I love how the story of Rankin’s indiscretion was buried on the Scotsman’s site (and probably never made the paper proper); it really is the Rankin Times.]

If this mythical Masterclass ever eventuates, and I happen to be invited, I’ll be watching the interaction between Master and Pupil closely… the young, female pupils especially. That is, if any young, attractive females write crime fiction.

If anyone out there knows what happened to this competition, I’d love to hear. Until then, I’ll assume I suck at crime fiction and stick to what I know best:

“A young male walks into a bar…”

---

Edit: Found the results today (13 May 08), though it looks like it was all resolved a month earlier. I just was googling the wrong things (like the actual name of the competition...). Only read the winning story so far. Um...