Living Lou - Life of a Writer

Staring out of the Window is also Work

2012-01-29T19:01:00.002Z

Writers tend to spend a lot of time staring out of the window. What is not so widely known, is that this is part of the writing process and therefore it can be called work.

I find it very hard to write in rooms with no or very small windows. If I write in a cafe or a pub I usually choose a window seat.

Something is happening when you stare, I believe. Your thoughts reorganise themselves. One morning this week I spontaneously popped into the Medusa Bar in Preston Street for a cup of green tea (miraculously making it last for an hour and a half). In my bag I had a few sheets of poems in progress that I'd printed out. Staring at the street, staring at the sheets things started to happen, and I scribbled frenetically in the margins, making up new lines, crossing bad ones out and moving a few words around. I'd had an idea for a very long time, but didn't get anywhere with it - now I ended up with three different poems on the same theme (compliments).

I am in need of different views now and again, so it's good that Brighton & Hove have an abundance of bars, pubs and cafes. And when I do my Swenglish project I'll have a different view every week, unless someone puts me up in their basement or even worse wardrobe! (The view in the picture belongs to one of the people I'm going to stay with.)

Shake the Dust

2012-01-23T18:18:00.003Z

This spring I'm happy to be involved in a project called Shake the Dust run by spoken word organisation Apples & Snakes.

Shake the Dust is a celebration of the spoken word and will get young people into writing and performing their own poetry. My role is to assist another poet (the brilliant Mike Parker) delivering workshops in schools. Well, funnily enough my job description is "Shadow Poetry Coach", so for me this year is all about being a shadow (because shadowing is also what I'm going to do for my Swenglish project)

Last week I went to the first training session with poet Jacob Sam-La Rose. He insists on trying all the writing exercises himself before he tries them on his students. A very sound idea! The Poetry Coaches and their Shadows had to use their heads and pens and come up with a group piece.

Jacob calls this method "row writing": you write for a couple of minutes on a given theme and then pass the paper on to the next person. Our group came up with a very funny piece on the theme of truce called "It's easy to forgive a pet". We then performed this poem, standing on a line, looking angry at first and then moving closer together. I'm now looking forward to see what the teenagers make of this exercise ...

Hurry up and Wait! - interview with author Isabel Ashdown

2012-01-15T11:47:00.005Z

This week I'm delighted to present my interview with author Isabel Ashdown. Her latest novel, Hurry Up and Wait! kept me awake for a whole night as I couldn't put it down. I do love coming- of-age stories ...

They say the second book is the hardest, but you’ve done such a good job, and I think Hurry Up and Wait is even better than your debut Glasshopper which I really loved. How was the writing process for you? Was it easier or harder to write the second one?

Thank you! I suppose the writing process was always going to be very different for my second novel; this time round I had a publishing contract – an audience – and, gulp, a well-received first novel to live up to. So in some ways, I felt a little more exposed. I’m a very private writer – with the exception of two close writer friends, I never reveal my work until I feel it’s ready. Even my husband doesn’t get to see a word of it until it’s at an advanced stage. Thankfully, my fiction editor at Myriad, Vicky Blunden, is very understanding, and she left me to get on with it until I was ready to share.

Where did you get the initial idea from?

The seed of it began with a five minute screenplay I wrote several years ago, in which a woman reluctantly attends her high school reunion. I thought, how would I feel about a school reunion; would I go? The thought of it filled me with horror. My writing always starts with the character, and the Sarah of my screenplay was so clear to me, that I suppose it was inevitable I would go back to explore her story further.

How much did you plot and how much did happen as you were writing?

I tend to free-write initially, while I discover the characters and sense of place. Then, once I have a strong feeling about my new world, I panic. I panic over the lack of structure, the hazy direction, the absence of strategy ... In life and in business, I’m one of life’s natural planners, so this way of working is alien to me – but if I’ve discovered one thing about my writing, it’s that it does me good to let myself go a bit, before I pull everything together with a rough plot outline. Of course, the final story never ends up looking very much like that initial plot outline!

Any thoughts on the structure? Did it help using a school year as a model?

It seemed right to locate this story within one full, final school year. So much can shift and alter in those last ten months, as girls teeter on the edge of womanhood, so desperate to be treated like adults, yet so inexperienced and vulnerable. The end of exams and the start of the summer holidays seem to me such poignant turning points in anyone’s history.

How come you decided to frame the novel with an event taking place twenty-four years later?

The story opens in present day, with 39-year-old Sarah preparing to attend the school reunion. Her 40^th year felt like a significant moment to take her back to a place and time that changed her forever.

Did you have all characters clear from the beginning or did extras pop us as you were writing?

There are always a couple of very strong characters who draw me along, and everyone else seems to appear as they’re needed. Often I’ll discover someone new, quite by chance, and it’s thrilling, like being handed an unexpected gift. Today, whilst working on my next novel, I discovered Gordon; he’s a brilliant, quirky character I hadn’t planned at all – but somehow he managed to sneak in and steal the scene.

Did you make detailed character sketches or did they happen more organically?

They just seem to develop naturally. I guess the writer’s job is to supply the situations, to set the scene, and to provoke those characters into showing themselves as they really are.

How much did you think of your own school time as you were writing?

Lots – although I was careful not to inadvertently include any real people! I purposely set the events in my own school year, which helped me to stay true to the atmosphere of the era.

Why did you decide to use the fictive names East and West Selton? (It’s clear you had East and West Wittering in mind, as you even mention that a Rolling Stone got a house there?)

Within the novel there are a number of anagrams of real places – for example Selton is Solent. I wanted a fictional town, to allow the story to go where I needed it to. But if pushed, I’d say Selton is a complex blend of coastal East Wittering, where I grew up, and inland Chichester, where I attended high school. Nice to see you got the Rolling Stones reference!

What role did the band Blondie play for the novel?

When I was fifteen, I was massively into Blondie, even though they weren’t all that current by the mid-eighties. I loved the punk influences; Debbie Harry’s stance was so sexy and cool, and above all, the music seemed to speak to me. In part, I was probably indulging my own nostalgic memories by drawing a favourite band into the story. But more importantly, a band like Blondie represented an exotic ‘otherness’ to a conventional girl like Sarah, growing up within the suffocating constraints of small town England in the 1980s.

Did you have to research the 80s stuff of did you remember most of it?

I’ve got a good memory for that kind of detail, so the story sprang out of that. But as I wrote, I was constantly researching information to check my memories were accurate, particularly for historical detail like news footage of the Chernobyl disaster, or for release dates of albums or films I might mention.

Finally, what’s the theme of your next novel?

I’m busy at work on my next novel, which takes place on a British island one summer in the 1970s. It’s a family drama centred on a scandal in a small community, set against the shifting Seventies backdrop of political unrest, social change and vibrant cultural development. The research part of the process is endlessly fascinating, and as well as exploring the historical details of the era I like to immerse myself in the music, which is no hardship as far as that decade is concerned. In fact, I’m just cueing up Bowie’s Young Americans as we speak ...

There’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s gradually coming together. Having done this a couple of times now, I know there’ll be moments of fear and uncertainty along the way, but with any luck, moments of enlightenment and joy will visit me in equal measure!

Thanks for asking me along to chat, Louise – and I’ll let you know when the next book is due to hit the shelves.

Thank you too, Issie for your inspiring answers!

If you want to find out more about Isabel Ashdown and her books visit her website here.

Hurry up and Wait! is available here. What are you waiting for?

Introducing Swenglish

2012-01-09T23:59:00.003Z

I've created a new blog for my 2012 Swenglish-project.

Please check it out here: http://swenglish2012.blogspot.com/

(I'll still use this blog, Living Lou, to write about other topics.)

2012

2012-01-04T22:02:00.003Z

2012 doesn't have a face yet
I don't know which face to show
but I am facing this year in my own way

2012 is the Swenglish year
the year I'm going to work out
where I want to live and what I want to do

who I want to be even.

(more info about Swenglish to follow)

2011 A-Z

2012-01-01T21:37:00.008Z

A is for

Ace Stories (Brighton's best live lit event)

Agent (this year I signed the contract with my literary agent!)

Alexander Technique Lessons

Are you sitting comfortably? (live lit event)

B is for

Bath (where I went with my family)

Bang Said the Gun (the poetry slam I won in London in September)

Barcelona (where I celebrated my 29th birthday)

Beat (poetry gig)

Beer (too much)

Bombanes (poetry gig)

Breathing

Brighton Festival and Brighton Fringe Festival

C is for

Camping in Hassocks

Chatterbooks (my book group for kids at the library)

Cocktails at Hotel Pelirocco, and Tara’s Cocktails party

Cooking (I’ve cooked for people at 7 different occasions which is 7 more times than last year!)

D is for

Drop-in Drama at New Venture Theatre

Duke of York’s Cinema

E is for

Elly-Mae (the working title of my new novel project)

Events (that I organised/compared at Hove Library)

F is for

4thirtythree (the band I did improvised spoken word/music gigs with)

5rhythms dance

Floetics (poetry gig)

G is for

Game Girl

Grit Lit (short story night)

H is for

Hammer & Tongue (Brighton’s one & only poetry slam, this year I made it to the final!)

Hippie dreams

Horseplay (poetry gig)

I is for

Idea (the big Swenglish idea that I’ll embark on in 2012)

Ice as in Lou Ice

J is for

Jogging

John Cage (part of tribute performance)

John Cale (Brighton festival)

K is for

Kay Sexton (who launched her book Minding My Peas & Cucumbers in a Windmill)

L is for

Laurie Anderson (Brighton Festival)

Lecturing at Loxdale Centre

Letters

Library Blues (no comment!)

LOST (Sky and I watched the last episode ever of the only TV series that I’ve ever followed. Well, at least since Beverly Hills 90210)

M is for

Marching f(or Public Services in London and for Pensions in Brighton)

Marwood’s Cafe

Midlife Crisis (an early one!)

Midsummer Camp Festival in Norfolk

Mindfulness

Modern Art

N is for

Natalie (the main character in REPLACING ANGEL/UNDER THE LIP)

Nick Cave

Not for the Faint-Hearted (writing workshops)

Nässjö (my hometown where I spent some time in the summer)

O is for

OMG (and other modern age abbreviations)

Orange juice with bits

P is for

Photography (the picture is from the forest where I spent the last day of the year)

Planet India Restaurant

Poetry (got back into writing & performing poetry this year)

Pizza (Swedish style with bananas!)

Psychogeography (thank you James!)

Q is for

Queer & Quirky Brightonians

R is for

Rattle Tales (short story event)

REPLACING ANGEL (my English novel that changed name to UNDER THE LIP, see U)

Rock 'N' Roll

S is for

Sandy Dillon (the best music artist I’ve discovered this year)

Short Stories (not that many written, but quite a few published)

Sister’s Circle

Something Wholly Inappropriate (poetry gig)

Spilling Ink Review

Stockholm (stayed with my brother and visited one of my best friends)

Story Scavenging

Story Studio (short story event)

Sue (our “creative coaching” meetings are great!)

Sweat Lodge in Stanmer Park

Sweden (three trips this year: surprising my Dad on his birthday in June, summer bliss in August, and Xmas/New Year)

Swimming in the sea

T is for

Tax Return

Tea (Green)

U is for

UNDER THE LIP (my English novel that is under consideration for publication in both Sweden and the UK)

V is for

Visitors (Laura, my aunt, my family, Pernilla, Sara)

Voice Work

W is for

Waiting (for news about my book)

Walking

Whale Writing (a project with my writing colleague Lotus)

Writing

X is for

Xmas tree (dancing round the tree at work and with all relatives on Xmas day!)

Y is for

YLG (Youth Library Group) conference in London

Z is for

Zzzz …

A Risk Worth Taking

2011-12-27T20:46:00.006Z

Five minutes before boarding the plane to Sweden I opened my Christmas present (see previous post) There was no return, no more book shops, no more magazines even. Luckily, I immeditately took a liking to Sarah Salway's novel Something beginning with ...

I love so-called concept novels. This one is based on the alphabet. Every chapter has a few paragraphs on a letter in the alphabet, e.g. L is for Lesbians, Letters, Liqueur Chocolates, Love Calculators and Lust. At first it seemed pretty much like a stream of concsiousness on different topics, but Sarah Salway actuallly manages to tell a whole story with beginning, middle and end between A and Z.

Take a Risk on a Book

2011-12-20T21:22:00.003Z

My friend James gave me a Christmas present the other day and said "It's a book!". Well, it was kind of obvious anyway judging from the shape and form of the packaging. What's not obvious though is what book it is.

I'm going to take a risk. I'm going to Sweden on Friday and want something to read on the plane and train. Usually I plan ahead what book to read for my travels so I know that I've got something good to digest. This time I'm going to bring the wrapped book and not unwrap it until I'm in the air and it's too late to pick another book ... Whatever book it is I have to read it! (I do hope it's not a Mills & Boon!)

Brighton - well, Hove actually - in December

2011-12-19T10:03:00.003Z

I love living by the sea, but am looking forward to some snowy forest when I go to Sweden for Christmas.

I've been busy LIVING in December, but am trying to make sense of the fragmented poems that I've collected in my journal ...

Am in a funny manic mood. I feel creative, and find inspiration all around me, but am too restless to actually work. Time to dance round the Christmas tree.

A Perfect Storm at Ace Stories

2011-12-12T22:22:00.019Z

When I look back at this year, thinking of things I've enjoyed the most, Ace Stories, at Hotel Pelirocco in Brighton, is high on my list. It was a true honour to be invited to read at such a well-organised event, and a good occasion for me to try out UNDER THE LIP on an audience for the very first time.

It felt a bit like introducing a new boyfriend/girlfriend to your friends, anxiously hoping that everyone will like him/her. Luckily my novel extracts went down well. The theme for the evening was sea-faring and I had picked three scenes from UNDER THE LIP where the sea features: main character Natalie arriving in Brighton, then hanging out on the beach with a punk girl, and finally escaping into the sea after an argument with her parents.

Next up was Courttia Newland, writer-in-residence at Kingston Writing School, who read a short story set by the seaside in Africa.

Actor Brendan Wyer read an extract from Jack London's classic The Sea Wolf.

And Dr Sue Currell, Senior Lecturer in American Literature, discussed The Sea Wolf with Ace Stories director Jay Clifton. I haven't read The Sea Wolf, but Sue was very engaging and told us that even though some of London's writing can come across us anti-feminist he was a great supporter of the suffragette moment.

My highlight of the evening was blues singer and musician Sandy Dillon who performed songs from the forthcoming album Shipwreck'd with guitarist Ray Majors. As well as being a good singer and player Sandy is also a fantastic lyricist. The 'shipwrecked' songs are all based on true stories.

I bought one of Sandy's CD and was lucky enough to get a chat with both her and Ray! I'm totally in love with their music. Lovely people too!

I also love the Hotel Pelirocco*, and last night I felt like a real star having "Perfect Storm" - Kraken Rum cocktails, chatting to artists and other random people. A big thank you to everyone involved in Ace Stories for putting such a great night together. As usual I took photos of the night and all pics are by me apart from the first which is taken by Sam Collins, and the last couple of pics are by Solera Russell.

*Dear Santa, please give me a night in the "Pretty Vacant" room ...

"What must it be like to be a paedophile who lives near a kid’s playground?" - Interview with Starlings Author Erinna Mettler

2011-12-08T09:47:00.012Z

Starlings is a daisy-chain novel set in Brighton; I finished reading it about a month ago, but the characters won’t leave me alone. Every time I walk around Brighton someone from the book pops up in my mind, it could be anyone from a paedophile to a mod from the 60s. As I was very curious about the way Starlings was written, the author Erinna Metttler kindly agreed to be interviewed. Enjoy her inspiring answers!

How did you go about writing Starlings? Were they all separate stories to begin with, when did you decide to link them and how did you do it?

I was lucky enough to take a creative writing course at Sussex University. It was a workshop based course which involved writing short pieces and getting feedback on them in class. The first chapter of Starlings was one of the stories I wrote for that. It’s based on an urban myth, I had heard the story about the paedophile living next to a children’s playground many times, but every time it had something different about it, a different playground, a different outcome. I think people can’t help exaggerating stories but they are equally quick to believe something that they’re told is true. I wanted to explore the way myths are created in a city through assumptions and word of mouth. I wrote Roses and Birdsong next and had the idea of linking it somehow to Andy (the paedophile in the first chapter) so I made a minor character in it his father. After that everything in the book seemed to link together. It’s the way people communicate, it’s not even gossip, it’s more like passing around stories. Brighton is a characterful city and you keep seeing those characters around, it’s also small enough to bump into people you know, or know of, just walking around town. We’re all closely connected to each other and that’s what I was trying to show in Starlings.

When it was all finished it was a nightmare to get into order. I had a spread-sheet with who was who, how they linked, their dates of birth and death and when they met each other. There are some very complex connections and some very simple ones. The first and last chapter were always that, but the others moved around in sequence, they still could, you don’t have to read them in a particular order. I don’t think people should stress about making the connections, just read the stories and if they connect then fine. If you like the book it is better to read it twice because then you pick up on a lot more. I must admit, I like books that ask you to work at understanding them. I think the reader should be actively involved and not just treat every book like fast food.

Where did the initial inspiration come from?

I was sitting at the West Pier Playground on a cold sunny day while my kids were playing. I always have a note book and I just wrote what I saw, describing everything as if I was filming it, but didn’t have a camera and had to do it with words. That’s how I always get started, and then I fill in the story, and the senses you can’t film, like touch and smell and taste. With Andy I thought it would be interesting to tell the story from the point of view of the person who never gets to be heard. I mean, what must it be like to be a paedophile who lives near a kid’s playground? Then I wanted to balance that by showing what a mother who loses her children goes through, that was much easier because every mother has lost sight of their child once in a while and imagined the worst.

The other stories came from walking around Brighton with a notepad and picking up ideas from what I saw and overheard. I’m a terrible magpie – don’t sit near me on the bus.

Did you plot each individual story or did you “just write them”?

I always just write. I usually write the beginning first, then the end and then fill in the middle, but sometimes a story will just naturally flow from the first line to the last. More often than not I’ll think I’ve finished something and then go back to it a few days later and write twice as much again. With Starlings I didn’t plot until I’d finished, and then I went back over everything and tightened up both individual and overall plots. I’m not that hung up on plot, I think it can work against natural creative energy, for me it’s much better to just see where the story takes me. Often the stories in Starlings intertwined without me having to think about it too much.

All stories are set in and around Brighton where you live, despite knowing the environment did you have to do any research?

I talked at a book group the other day and one of the members said they would have put money on me being Brighton born and bred, that made me very happy. I’ve lived here for seven years but it was only four when I wrote the book. My knowledge of the city grew as I wrote the book and I think sometimes an outsider’s eye is invaluable in picking up things people take for granted. Apart from just wandering around and writing what I experienced, I had to go deeper into some spaces than others. I got a tour of behind the scenes at the Booth’s Museum – which was utterly fascinating – and of The Old Police Cell’s under the Town Hall. You can go into the cells and see the graffiti on the walls written by the mods and rockers who were arrested in the May Day riots. I watched footage of inside The West Pier just before it burned down, and anything about the incident on Youtube. I did a lot of newspaper research on the city’s history, the war, the 1950s and 60s, what shops and cinemas and cafes there were then. With the stories that explore the nastier elements, drugs, wife beating, child abuse, I was very careful to do as much research as I could, articles, testimony, academic journals, people working in those areas. You need to get it right, otherwise you are doing those involved a disservice.

In one of the stories, The Wife Of Joshua Bones, you have a character writing a fictive story. What was the thought behind that?

I think that might be my favourite story. Originally, it was much longer and alternated between Dia’s fictional imaginings and her real life, which was much more mundane, school runs, washing up etc. But I’d really already gone into that in other stories, so I thought I’d just present her writing, and see if people got it. The chapter is about the creative processes, about imagination and reality and identity, about how as a writer you can’t help but delve into your past, or things that might have been if your life had turned out differently. My favourite author, Paul Auster, once said that his books are often about what his life could have been. Dia’s story is supposed to be inspired by the newspaper article at the beginning, by the death of her lover from twenty years before, and how that fires her creativity. I didn’t go into the rooms at the Pelirocco Hotel (where some of it is set) until after I’d written it, because I wanted it to be in her imagination. I wanted it to be dreamy and fleeting and full of other influences, I read romantic poetry and gothic novels and listened to melancholy love songs. I really enjoyed wallowing and I am immensely proud of what it produced.

How did you find a publisher?

Bizarrely, through an ad in Latest Homes! I didn’t try to get an agent first, which is what everyone says you should do (I still don’t have one). I sent the manuscript simultaneously to about 25 agents and publishers who accepted unsolicited manuscripts. I got a lot of positive feedback, even when the answer was no, and that spurred me on. One other publisher wanted it but it didn’t work out, it didn’t feel right, I felt they wanted me to change it too much. Revenge Ink got what I was doing immediately and the changes they suggested weren’t fundamental and only made it better. All in all, it took two years from submitting to them to the book hitting the shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhelves, which is incredibly quick. They are a gutsy independent and they go for modern, challenging writing without relying on celebrity or formulas and, in my humble opinion, the publishing industry needs more like them and less people commissioning ‘party books’ (you know who I’m talking about).

Thank you very much, Erinna. I wish you all the best with your next writing project. And I hope everyone will buy a copy of Starlings as a Christmas present!

You can also catch Erinna reading at Grit Lit tomorrow, Friday.

Sneaky Novel Peak at Ace Stories this Sunday

2011-12-06T11:58:00.007Z

Now is your chance. For the first time ever I'm going to read a few short extracts from my English novel, UNDER THE LIP (aka Replacing Angel). At the moment my novel is under consideration for publication in both Sweden and the UK. It's just a matter of waiting, waiting and some more waiting.

So get your ass down to Hotel Pelirocco in Brighton this Sunday, 6pm.

Another good reason for coming along to Ace Stories is ... Sandy Dillon. And there's a chance of winning an electric guitar!

Hammer & Tongue, Poetry Slam Final, Brighton 2011

2011-12-05T13:19:00.002Z

Very happpy to get through to the 2nd round, worthy winner was Spliff Richard!

My Novel in November

2011-11-27T12:05:00.004Z

No, I'm not taking part in NaNoWriMo. But I do have about 50 000 words on my new novel project. If you've read my previous posts here and here you know that each month I'm aiming for 10 000 words that move the story forward and aren't just general rambling.

In December I'm going to take a break from the novel though and focus on poetry and performing. Mainly because the words need to rest. I have written the beginning and the middle, but I kind of wrote the middle first and am not sure how to link the beginning and the middle, if I should actually start with the middle or not. I do have an end in mind, but it's very sketchy and there are several ways to write the story.

I haven't yet decided how much back-story/back-flashes I'm going to use and if there's going to be more than one narrative. It could be quite a straightforward or quite an experimental story depending on which route I take, and I suspect that like my previous two novels this one will also fall somewhere between the Adult and Young Adult genre.

The voice is also something I need to think about. I know whose story it is, but am not sure to whom she's telling it and why.

I live 3 Miles from Love

2011-11-11T23:04:00.005Z

Yesterday I went to the Catalyst Club at the Latest Bar in Brighton. One of the speakers was James Burt who did a brilliant talk on psychogeography and his experience of strange occurrences in Brighton.

Not far from where I live in Hove, about 3 miles from Brighton, I spotted this painted sign.

Starlings - A Star Read

2011-11-06T22:04:00.004Z

A few weeks ago I went to the launch party for Erinna Mettler's debut novel Starlings. I started reading the book on the bus on my way home and missed two stops!

The writing is brilliant, full of quirky detail and a dark sense of humour (read the Snip-chapter and you'll see).

Starlings is quite an unusual novel as it is a novel made up of short stories where the same characters appear, disappear and reappear. Some of the chapters work as short stories in themselves while other chapters are dependent on the stories previously told.

A very good read and as a bonus the book is set in Brighton taking in the seedy seaside atmosphere.

I won the Hammer & Tongue Poetry Slam in Brighton!

2011-11-04T11:54:00.004Z

It's been a potty autumn for me ... A potty poetry autumn!
Last night I won my second poetry slam: Hammer & Tongue at Komedia in Brighton,
hosted by Rosy Carrick and Mike Parker.

I wasn't going to go out due to November Rain, but I changed my mind
and jumped on my bike to town to do a poem about trains which you can read here.

Winning the slam means that I'll be in the grand slam final on the 1st of December
battling against all the slam winners of 2011.

(if you need the toilet the potty can be found in Queens Park)

The Wheel is Spinning

2011-10-25T22:28:00.003+01:00

I've posted a lot of letters

I've set something in motion

The world is spinning and I'm spinning with it

I'm about to embark on a creative non-fiction project

(There's now a wheel on Brighton seafront. I'm not desperate to go on it, but it seems to fit with the changes I'm making. The wheel also steals the attention from the pier.)

Counting Words & Drafting Shit

2011-10-17T12:07:00.011+01:00

When I tell people that I'm aiming to write 10 000 words a month on my new novel they think that's a lot. I don't. It's only 2500 words a week, 500 words a day if you work 5 days a week.

It's mid October and so far this month I've managed to write 8500 words. So in total I've got 28500 words as I started in August. (I've written more words than that, but half of what I write is just random ramblings to find out what it is I'm trying to say, making notes etc.) I never used to obsess about word counts, but at the moment it does help me to move forward.

What inspires me is to hear how other writers work. I read a really good article about Jeffrey Eugenides in the free We Love This Book magazine. He has only written 3 novels with an interval of 9 years in between each novel. It doesn't mean that he's lazy - he's writing all the time, but it's just a matter of getting it right, without being a perfectionist. In the interview he said that his current novel, The Marriage Plot, grew out of the backstory he wrote for a character in an abandoned novel.

The novel I'm working on at the moment sort of started back in 2007 when I spent 5 months in Thailand, but at the time I was too close to the environment I was writing about, so now 4 years later I'm ready. However I'm still struggling with the voice and the structure and I have 2 different ideas of how to tell the story ... At the moment I'm just trying to get the story down, by writing it in a quite traditional way of first person, past tense, but it's very likely to change in the second draft.

Recently I heard Meg Rosoff speak at the YLG (Youth Library Group) Conference and she mentioned that her first drafts are so bad you want to commit suicide when reading them ... I feel the same about my first drafts. As mentioned in a previous blog post, I'm aiming for 10 000 words a month, and after 9 months I'm hoping to have a first draft, but not necessarily a good first draft. But keeping it down to 10 000 words a month will hopefully make the first draft better than if I was taking part in NaNoWriMo churning out 50 000 words a month just for the sake of it. By keeping it down to 10 000 words I'm hoping to keep more focus, to actually think about what I'm writing. (Many writers only write in November and then abandon their VERY shitty first drafts forever.)

Jennifer Egan says:

"I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen."

(I think I first found this quote on the A Salted blog, thanks! And the post-it note saying "shitty first drafts are allowed" probably comes from Julia Cameron but am not sure.)

Early Midlife Crisis

2011-10-14T23:50:00.005+01:00

I'm worried that I'm "only" going to be 60 years old as I'm going through a mid-life crisis, but in Swedish there's no word for midlife crisis, instead there are two different concepts: "the 30-year-old crisis" and "the 40-year-old crisis".

My crisis started last summer when I was 28. For the first time I had no desire to live and it frightened me. It felt like a burden having another 50 years to fill, fill with what?

My three biggest dreams had already come true:

*writing a novel and getting it published (my award-winning Swedish novel "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude")

*experiencing requited love (my 5 year long relationship with Sky)

*travelling to New Zealand to track down a long lost relative (my gran's cousin)

It felt like nothing could ever match those amazing experiences and that life had become pretty dull. No career (as I'd changed my writing career to England and to writing in English, and was starting from scratch again), no place to live (just renting rooms in other people's houses) and no meaningful relationships.

So for two years I've been walking about in some kind of mist, but the other night under the full moon I had an actual light bulb moment. All of a sudden it became clear to me: I came up with a plan for what I'm going to do with my life. At least for a year, staring on my 30th birthday on the 26th of February. This project involves at least 30 people and I do hope that you're out there! More info later ...

Swedish Glory on National Poetry Day

2011-10-09T17:14:00.013+01:00

Swedish poet Tomas Transtömmer won the Nobel Prize of literature!!!

And here I am, performing as Lou Ice, one of the guests
at Hammer & Tongue at Komedia in Brighton,
warming up for another great Swede ...

Henry Bowers aka Kung Henry who told us a few things about darkness

As usual it was a great night hosted by Rosy Carrick and Mike Parker. Both me and Henry did a poem each in Swedish which went down well as there were a few Swedish people in the audience. I had recruited them when I did a performance/talk at Loxdale Language Centre last week ...

The open slam was won by a guy called Ed who did an angry poem, defending people who are wrongly accused of being paedophiles. It seemed like the slam was more intense than usual as a lot of people went over the allocated time of three minutes, caring more about the poetry than the points!

The other guest of the evening was the brilliant story-teller Wilf Merttens.

And thanks to performing I got invited to do two more gigs this autumn. Check it out here!

Upcoming Gigs

2011-09-27T23:15:00.009+01:00

I'm performing at the following events:

Story Studio, Sunday 2 Oct, 8pm at Komedia, Brighton
Am one of the guest for the Feast & Fetish Theme, and will be reading my flash fiction story "Common Fetish"

Hammer & Tongue, Thursday 6 Oct, 7.30pm at Komedia, Brighton
I'm the local guest poet, warming the stage for Wilf Merttens - and fellow Swede Henry Bowen!

Tuesday 18 Oct, 8pm at Bombanes, Kemp Town, Brighton
An evening of music & poetry featuring Lou Ice, Jane Bom-Bane & Rosie Brown

Horseplay, Thursday 27 Oct, 8pm at the Black Dove, Kemp Town, Brighton
An evening of spoken word, music and random fun!

Something Wholly Inappropriate, Monday 7th Nov, 8pm at the Earth & Stars, Brighton
Hosted by Alice Shaw. I'll do a 20 minutes poetry est.

Ace Stories, Sunday 11 Dec, 6pm at Hotel Pelirocco, Brighton
More info TBC

Library's got talent, Saturday 18 Dec, Jubilee Library, Brighton
More info TBC

Winning the Bang Said the Gun Poetry Slam!

2011-09-19T16:59:00.008+01:00

I've come second and third several times. But this was the first time I actually won a poetry slam! And not any poetry slam ... Bang Said the Gun is a poetry collective that runs a weekly poetry night in south London. They took their show to Edinburgh Fringe Festival and were awarded with 5 stars. I can only but agree!

I happened to be a London for two reasons:

1. Taking part in Jacob Sam-La Rose's excellent masterclass on running poetry workshops for young people (organised by Apples & Snakes)
2. The yearly YLG (Youth Library Group) Conference

I had no idea that the third reason for my London stay would be Bang Said the Gun. I only found out about it a few hours before the show kicked off, and decided on a whim to perform Making Over My Landlord, so maybe the spontaneity contributed to winning: I was quite relaxed, and did it for fun. And fun it was. On the tables were empty plastic milk containers filled with little stones (???) for the audience to rattle. It felt like being part of a massive maraca orchestra.
Here is special guest Will Stopha performing a very topical piece about robots. Note his matching top!
I was also very impressed by Richard Marsch's and Katy Bonna's poet duet. They performed a piece about stag and hen nights ...
Me with my trophy: a golden welly boot gun! And best of all I got invited back to perform at the next event which is Thursday this week! 8pm at the Roebuck Pub in Great Dover Street, London (nearest tube is Borough) Join the Bang!

My Friend Married Herself - 2 Year Anniversary Today

2011-09-09T22:17:00.005+01:00

Today it's 2 years since one of my very best friends Sara married herself, and took the new surname Starkström which means "high voltage" or "strong power" depending on how you look at it ..
I was (one of) the bridesmaid in blue and Sara was the bride in red ...

She married herself to celebrate herself
as a way of celebrating her own and everybody's self-worth and self confidence.
A way of showing that she loved and respected herself and wanted to commit to her own truth.

This doesn't mean that she can't have a partner, it's just an manifestation of that you need to love yourself before being able to love someone else.

Sara is also the author of Game Girl
- a female version of Neil Strauss dating handbook The Game.

See more pictures of the Wedding on Sara's blog.

At the time Sara didn't think of it as an art project, the idea of marrying herself was just something she had felt very strongly about for a long time, and I really admire her for this. I was very honoured to be part of her wedding day, and it's not until now that I look at it as a performance art piece.

Flash Lit at Brighton Digital Festival

2011-09-05T18:18:00.004+01:00

There seems to be at least one festival on every week in Brighton... On Sunday I'm taking part in Flash Lit - a short story slam that is part of Brighton Digital Festival.

I don't think you can compete in writing, but I do it for fun! Honestly. I've written four very short pieces especially for this event, and if I make it to the final I get to read three of them.

Where? Sticky Mike's Frog Club, Middle Street, the Lanes

When? Sunday 11 Sep, 7pm-10pm (late bar)

How? Turn up and make a big noise when I read! (It depends on the audience who makes it to the final ...)

Setting Your Own Deadlines

2011-08-31T16:39:00.005+01:00

One reason I've never done any serious studying after I finished school is that deadlines set by other people really stress me out, to the point I get sick and can't sleep.

I prefer to set my own deadlines and goals. People tell me "oh, you must be so disciplined". Perhaps I am ... Or perhaps I'm just a control freak.

When I was in Sweden at the beginning of August, and got into working on my new novel project, I decided that I'd write 10 000 words a month. 10 000 okay or good words, not just any words which seem to be the case if you are a NaNoWriMo-Writer.

If I stick to 10 000 words a month, I should have a first draft of 90 000 words in 9 months time (yes, I like comparing writing to pregnancy even if I don't have any experience in this field ...)

Today is the last day of August and I've got 10 616 words. They are okay/good words, but by no means perfect words. Because at the same time I'm sticking to the advice on my post-it note: SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS ARE ALLOWED.

Seems like I'm contradicting myself, but this is how it works: I write as much rubbish as I can in a month, then I go back and edit, making sure I've got at least 10 000 words of connected paragraphs that make-up a continuous story.

Funnily enough I've been off sick from my part time job for two days ... I feel exhausted, as if some kind of bug is gnawing away on my body. Perhaps my own deadlines stress me out as much as other peoples' deadlines after all ...

(the photo was taken by Mimmi on a walk to Rottingdean the week before last, so no I haven't spent by days off sick on the beach, I've spent them in bed!)

Story Scavenging in Brighton

2011-08-23T21:48:00.005+01:00

If you're stuck for ideas, bored with writing in general or just want to have fun I can recommend going to one of Wendy Greenhalgh's Story Scavenger Workshops.

It's a bit like a treasure hunt, but instead of just collecting impressions/people/objects you write about your finds after. Exercises involved spying on people at Brighton Station, picking an odd object in Snooper's Paradise, and photographing as many blue things you could find in fifteen minutes, hence the blue guitar in the above photo ...

I came home with my head filled with North Laine impressions and a notebook full of half-finished stories and ideas (to hopefully be developed into finished pieces at some point). Even though I was knackered when I came home, I still felt inspired to sit down and write some more in the evening - the playful workshop really opened up my writing energy.

Check out Wendy's blog , for the latest news on story scavenging and other similar workshops.

Read My Story on Your Phone

2011-08-21T18:09:00.007+01:00

One of my short stories has been published by Ether Books, and can be downloaded to your phone for free! (If you have a fancy phone that is ...)

Just click here, and then search for "Louise Halvardsson".

My story is called "A Girl Who Just Wants to Come" and was originally accepted for the Are you sitting comfortably? story night where it was read by an actor.

WARNING: Explicit content. 18 + only!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

The Weekend Novelist

2011-08-15T22:49:00.007+01:00

I spent the weekend as the Novelist I keep reminding myself that I am. Working on a novel makes me happy, makes me feel I'm part of something bigger than myself. When I'm actually writing it feels like meditation. It's the worrying about writing that makes me unhappy. I wish I would remember this ...

Saturday I wrote my morning pages (3 pages of A4 in longhand as prescribed in the Artist's Way) in bed; had breakfast in the garden, reading a Virginia Woolf biography; spent time with my novel,doing exercises from The Weekend Novelist; went jogging; had dinner; spent a couple of hours working on the novel; went for a walk on the seafront to look at the full moon, contemplating my characters.

Sunday followed the same kind of pattern, but in the evening I went to Ace Stories at Hotel Pelirocco in Brighton to let myself get inspired by other writers (Cathi Unsworth, Danny Bowman, Stefania Mastrorosa)and outstanding musician & singer Sandy Dillon.

It's not only me who am The Weekend Novelist. It's also the title of a really good book. I previously worked through The Weekend Novelist Redrafts the Novel when I revised UNDER THE LIP, so I thought I'd give The Weekend Novelist a go. Unlike other creative writing books that tell you how to make believable characters and how to make a setting come alive etc. this books is very straight-forward and simple with exercises that gets you going.

I'm not following the book slavishly or anything, but I claim that The Weekend Novelist unblocked me when I was in Sweden. Just by doing exercises like finishing the sentence "This is a story about a character who ..." and then speed writing for ten minutes I really got a sense for where I'm going with my novel.

I'm still struggling with finding the right voice and the right structure, but at least I've started from the beginning again, trusting that things will work out, knowing that I can change things later. For now I'll just focus on getting the story down, staring at the post-it note on my wall saying SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS ARE ALLOWED. Today is Monday and I'm still a novelist. I know I'm on the right track when I do something else and ideas or thoughts about the characters and/or plot pop up in my head.

What I Miss about Sweden:

2011-08-08T23:34:00.012+01:00

CINNAMON BUNS made by my friend and author Sara Starkström aka GameGirl

PIZZA. You might find it strange ... but the best pizza is to be found in Sweden! Not in restaurants, but in special cheap pizza places that are more common than pubs ... My favourite is the banana and pineapple topping. My brother prefers kebab on his pizza.

LAKE SWIMMING. I still don't know if I prefer lake swimming to sea swimming, but the advantage with lakes is that they are still, so you can actually swim without having to fight for your life against waves and currents.

FORESTS. One morning I woke up early and went down to one of my favourite spots on this planet: Isåsadammen - a lake in the forest, 15 min walk from my parents place. I brought my breakfast and sprinkled the muesli with raspberries and blueberries that I found in the woods just behind me. (And apart from breakfast I brought my notebook and did some random writing.)

FOREST. Yes I do miss the forest. The above mentioned lake at sunset.

As I "feared" the weather distracted me from doing as much writing as I hoped, but my main mission was to find a new way to begin my new novel project and I think I found that way ...

When I'm at the beginning of a new project I can't get enough of just "being" and walking and thinking. It's not the actual time spent in front of the screen.

Now I'm back by the sea in Hove, and at the moment this feels like home. I just need to fill myself up with buns, pizza, lakes and forests now and again ...

More about my new novel project in the next blog post.

dbug

2011-08-05T15:35:00.010+01:00

Sky who made my website has developed a cool new app for iPhone and iPod that is available on the App store.

The app is called dbug and you can use it to "examine CSS, selected HTML, doctype and header information on nearly any website, using a unique mobile interface".

Even if I'm not a computer geek myself I'm impressed by how it works, the possibility to see all the coding behind a specific part of a website etc.

Visit the dbug website!

Out of Office

2011-07-28T23:35:00.006+01:00

This summer I've been out of office a lot. Every time the sun shows its face I'm there. Swimming trunks on, grabbing a towel and walking - or rather skipping - to the beach.

A borrower (I know they are called "customers" now, but I prefer the old-fashioned word) in the library complimented me on my tan and asked if I'd been on holiday. I told her I'd been on my local beach, to which she replied "You're a good advertisement for Hove!"

My normal "office hours" are between 9-12 in the morning before I go to work in the library, but I find it very hard to sit by my desk in my bedroom when the weather is so welcoming ...(You Brits moan that you haven't had any summer but I tell you that most mornings have been pretty sunny!).

I don't know about any laptops that actually work well in sunlight ... but luckily I can still operate a pen and a notepad, so I have done some work, sitting on the beach, in parks or in the garden.

As I'm between novels (just like other people are between jobs or between relationship or between homes or whatever) I find it extra hard to place my bum on that office chair ...

I'm still struggling with some of the ingredients of my new novel project, but by jotting down notes, writing random scenes and drawing diagrams and making mind-maps I think that I'll get a dough together eventually ...

On Saturday I'm off to Sweden for ten days. One part of me is praying for rain. Rain means serious writing. Another part of me is dancing the sun dance. Sun means lake swimming.

A New Season of Ace Stories

2011-07-18T15:43:00.012+01:00

It feels like you "should" stay in on a Sunday night and prepare yourself for the week ahead, but by going out you make the weekend last longer, and Ace Stories (at Hotel Pelirocco, Brighton) is a great excuse to leave your cosy bedroom!

First up was the poet Mike Loveday. His extraordinary observations of everyday life made me smile. Especially the poem about what you might find in a lift.

Next author to take to the stage was Lizzie Enfield and she revealed that what motivated her to write What You Don't Know was that she saw one of her colleague's novels in a supermarket and thought I could do that!

Lizzie has a great sense of humour and read a couple of extracts from the novel, featuring a husband bordering on OCD behaviour and his wife mixing up his CD collection, shelving Radiohead under H ... (I do that to my brother!)

The headlining author for the evening was Jayne Joso who has written a very original novel called Perfect Architect. The widow of an architect challenges four other architects to build her the perfect house ...

Jayne was interviewed by the event director Jay Clifton before her reading, and it was fascinating to hear how the idea for the novel sprung from a non-fiction book about architecture that Jayne had ghostwritten.

Another interesting thing I found out was that Perfect Architect is actually the first novel Jayne wrote, but as she had difficulty finding a publisher at the time her second novel got published before the first ... (This has motivated me to crack on with my new novel idea!)

To finish the evening off Fire Eyes played some great folky rocky tunes.

Ace Stories now have a website and I'm very happy to be the event photographer! Check back later for more photos. (Also this post looks better if you view it in Firefox.)

PS. Ace Stories finishes at a sensible time (9pm ish) but I wasn't sensible enough to leave then ... But hanging out in the bar after is part of the fun, and I love to talk to writers and other artists about their work. Also it was nice that the audience were not only made up of writers. Among others I spoke to a psychologist and woman selling dresses.

Novel Ingredients

2011-07-11T10:30:00.003+01:00

I have:
a setting
characters
conflict
themes

I don't have:
a structure
a voice

Can I still make a novel? Or will it be a bit like making a cake without sugar and butter ...?

Where the Book has No Name

2011-07-04T12:06:00.006+01:00

Today I was interviewed by a Swedish radio station and they asked me about my new novel (UNDER THE LIP), but this novel in question is already starting to feel old to me...

I'm between novel relationships. I'm waiting for a publisher to take on UNDER THE LIP, and I've started a new project, but it's a bit like seeing a new man/woman when you're still clinging to your ex. (Which funnily enough has been my status in real life as well!)

So I find it very hard to fully give myself to this new novel project (that doesn't yet have a name) as any day my agent could email me with good news. But at least it feels like I'm making half-hearted love to this one idea now instead of sleeping around with different ones ... Yet it's far too early to label this affair, hence the "no name" ...

No Explosion, No End

2011-06-30T22:52:00.003+01:00

CLICK HERE TO READ "No Explosion, No end" - a flash fiction piece I performed in the Brighton Fringe Flash Fiction Story Slam

My Midsummer Camp in Norfolk 18-25 June

2011-06-27T15:53:00.005+01:00

My Midsummer Camp

Midsummer Camp started off pretty damp
Wet socks and feet
the rain falling in sheets
but after getting a pair of Welly boots
I was ready to sing and shoot

I decorated the marquee
where later 5rhythms set me free
Flowing to the beat of a drum
was better than drinking rum
but with the help of some gin
I played the Welly with a grin

For the solstice I painted my face
and danced round the field in a haze
Sitting round the camp fire
my body burning with desire
Beautiful boys from Leeds
got me into some bad deeds
Smoking and singing some more
I found myself on the floor
A festival of cuddles
arms and legs in a big muddle

Helped building a bender
which made me feel a bit tender
(as if I’d really been on a bender)
Struggling with yogic breath
to save myself from a minor death

In the kids tipi I made a poi
and almost stood on my head oi oi oi
I learnt more in a week than in a year
and my head feels more clear
Wiping snot and chopping wood
did me some good

The view from the compost loo
made my mind grow
feeling the grass under my toes
more intimate than shoes
In the communal shower
a woman made me feel like a flower
by sharing a story about her nipples
which made my smile ripple

In the camp council I confessed
that I liked getting undressed
jumping in the hot tubs
getting free shoulder rubs
Everybody I met had a story to tell
and a hug to share as well

Shedding skin in the sauna heat
made my heart beat
with appreciation, accepting
the changing season
The nights are now getting longer
but I feel stronger
Am not going to drown
cause I’ve found my inner clown.

Re-charging Batteries in Sweden

2011-06-15T20:49:00.006+01:00

About three weeks ago I ran out of battery. Everything and everyone seemed boring, and I had no energy to do anything. For the first time ever I suffered from homesickness and in desperation I booked a ticket to Sweden.

There's something about this time of the year: the light in the forest, the summery smells and the feeling of freedom ... (At least that's what it used to feel like when I was younger as school is out in June and you have 10 weeks of holiday ahead of you.)

June is also the month of my Dad's birthday, so I decided to surprise him ... I just turned up on the day, knocking on the window of my parents house. Mum looked as if she had seen a ghost and my Dad was in shock all evening ... It felt like something that happens in a book or a film.

Going for longish walks in the forest was just what I needed. A place to breathe, a place to recharge my creative batteries. To let go of all demands. To be free from computers and phones.

Another purpose of my trip was to collect some inspirational material for my next novel. All I'm revealing is that it's set in Thailand. As I spent 5 months in Thailand in 2007 I filled quite a few journals and took lots of photographs that I had stored at my parent's place. Cramming the journals and photos into my hand luggage I was ready to go back to the UK and face reality again ...

But not for long because on Friday I'm off to Midsummer Camp Festival in Norfolk, so see you in 10 days time or so ...

Can you spot the difference between Brighton and Hove?

2011-06-09T21:59:00.005+01:00

Free Writing Workshop on a Gardening/Growing Theme

2011-06-03T13:40:00.005+01:00

When? Saturday 4 June 11am-1pm

Where? Hove Library, 182-186 Church Road

How? Just turn up for this free writing workshop run by author Kay Sexton.

There will also be a seedswap ...

Or just come along for a chat and have a cup of tea or coffee for 50p! (I'll run the refreshment table and need some company :).

Flash Fiction Published in Fox Chase Review

2011-06-02T20:55:00.003+01:00

I'm happy to have two pieces of flash fiction published in Fox Chase Review. Click here to read Old Habits & It's raining blood.

CAGEuncaged

2011-05-31T10:28:00.011+01:00

Before I was asked to be part of a celebration of John Cage in music/spoken word/dance/multimedia performance, all I knew about Cage was that he was the guy who did the silent piece called 4′33″ .

The more I read about Cage the more fascinated I became. I think the problem is that when you label him as a musician some people get annoyed and say that he was making some kind of anti-music ... I don't see Cage as just a musician: I see him as an experimental artist. His music teacher told him he had no ear for harmony and that he'd come to a wall and wouldn't be able to get through. "So what will you do, John?" he asked. John Cage just said "I'll bang my head against that wall!" That's an attitude I like!

John Cage was very into Zen, and wanted to create art without using his ego. By composing, painting and writing using chance and consulting the I Ching he claimed that his work was free from ego. I first thought he was improvising a great deal, but he called it "considered improvisation" and thought that pure improvisation actually was egotistical ...

4thirtythree - the band who hosted the Cage tribute evening don't totally agree with Cage's view even if they're influenced by him. 4thirtythree always improvise. At rehearsals, in the studio when recording albums, and on stage. I think that's very brave, letting go and just moving on ...

The CAGEungaged gig took place almost two weeks ago at the Green Door Store in Brighton, but the reason I didn't get round to blog about it until today was that I didn't have any good photos, but I hope the images above will give a flavour of the evening anyway.

Apart from music by 4thirtythree, VV did some improvised dancing, John Lake played the piano and Simon Mclennan showed some images. I did some improvised spoken word with Tim from 4thirtythree, read a part of John Cage's Lecture on Nothing, performed my own piece Ode to a skull-shaped maraca, and lastly I had the audience helping me to write a mesostic on my top ...

And what I love is that that whole thing was so random. In the beginning of one of 4thirtythree sets Tim made some noise (sounding like banging metal against the floor, still don't know exactly what he did) and it was totally in the spur of the moment. Some of my friends couldn't help giggling, and when I bumped into Tim the week after the gig he told me the other guys thought that something had fallen from the ceiling ...

The whole process of working with 4thirtythree has been a real eye-opener for me, and I feel that I can take more risks when I'm performing and writing, leaving more things to chance, rather than rehearse everything to perfection. Thank you guys!

What do John Cale & Laurie Anderson have in common?

2011-05-30T12:37:00.007+01:00

Answer: Lou Reed. Lou Reed was the reason I went to see both John Cale and Laurie Anderson perform on two different nights at the Brighton Dome in the Brighton Festival.

I didn't go just because I hoped to spot Lou Reed in the audience, I went because John Cale and Laurie Anderson are two good musicians/performers in their own right, but I wouldn't have known about them if it wasn't for Lou Reed. The former was in the same band as Lou Reed: The Velvet Underground (one of my favourite bands) and Laurie Anderson is married to Lou Reed ... Laurie is so much more than just a wife though ... While John Cale was good (even though he looked nothing like I'd expected him to look, and played no Velvet songs) Laurie Anderson was an outstanding astonishing superwoman!

It's hard to explain, but Laurie Anderson's performance wasn't just an ordinary gig. She did play the violin, yes, but the music was more of a backdrop to the fragmented stories she was telling with the aid of visual images. A part of the show was based on the death of her mother. She mixed sad and profound sayings (like "you die three times: first when your heart stops, then when you're a buried or cremated, and lastly when someone for the last time says your name") with comical pieces about her giving birth to a dog ... She also made fun of the fact that your mother's maiden name is suppressed, so suppressed in fact that it can even be used as the secret word that saves you when you've lost the password to your email account ...

I loved the fragmented bits of stories like "it's always raining in my dreams" and the repetition of "I'm thinking of you. And then I'm not thinking of you anymore."

I want to thank Lou Reed for introducing me to Laurie Anderson, even if he didn't do it personally ... Some people left half-way through the performance, and someone feel asleep. Perhaps they'd expected a Walk on the Wild Side ... Either way Laurie Anderson's imagination is wild enough for me, and is inspiring me to be more passionate, and use my feelings more in my creations.

I also want to thank my brother for convincing me to go and see John Cale. I almost cried when he played and sang his song Amsterdam. So it was worth it for that song alone. I love FEELING things.

PS. I have seen Lou Reed in concert ones, so I wasn't too sad I didn't spot him in the audience ...

Writing Freedom

2011-05-29T18:03:00.007+01:00

The writers' organisation PEN are fighting for the freedom to write. I went to an event in the Brighton Festival where a bunch of writers told the history of the right to express yourself in writing, and what consequences it might have.

An example that was brought up was Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. This novel has caused great debate, and Rushdie had to be put under police protection as Muslim leaders wanted him killed. In places the book was banned and burned. A translator was stabbed to death because of it, and several other attacks on people related to the novel have taken place.

I find it fascinating that something that someone writes can cause so much trouble. I've always believed that everybody should have the right to express themselves and their opinions, but after listening to the stories told in the talk I realise that things are more complicated ...

What if someone writes something that is racist? I've read novels that I've found very disturbing, and I've felt angry at the publisher for publishing such shit, but I still find it more dangerous to ban books. It's not like the thoughts of the writer don't exist just because they are not in print. And if something provokes you you have the choice of stop reading and start writing yourself.

However I don't think that I would be able to sleep tight if someone had been killed because of something I'd written ... The only thing that happened when my novel, "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude" was published in Sweden was that I had to take some verbal abuse from my grandma for writing such filthy stuff ...

Book Launch with a Brazilian Beat

2011-05-28T09:41:00.004+01:00

If you suspect that your dad, who was reported dead twenty-five years ago might still be alive, would you still want to find him? That's the question Joel in Ed Siegle's debut novel Invisibles has to face. Well, he's pretty sure himself, but when Joel travels from Brighton to Rio de Janeiro to search for his dad he meets local boy Nelson who makes him question his decision ...

I admire the way Ed Siegle managed to pull this story off, with four different narratives (Joel, Nelson, Joel's mum Jackie and Joel's girlfriend Debbie), spanning over nearly forty years, covering the ground and the backstory in both Brighton and Rio.

Invisibles (published by Myriad Editions) is a book filled with a samba beat and a passion for finding the truth.

Being part of the Events Team at Hove Library I'm delighted to host at Brighton Book Launch for Invisibles next week. Please come along!

When? Wednesday 1 June, 6.30pm
Where? Hove Library
How? FREE, Just turn up! Special Wine & Book Deal
Music by the Brighton School of Samba

Ed Siegle's Blog

Double Slam in the Brighton Fringe

2011-05-27T10:47:00.013+01:00

Hendrick's Horseless Carriage of Curiosities parked up in Jubilee Square last Friday and is leaving on Monday, so there's still a chance to get a free shot of gin. And if you write a very short story or a short poem you'll get a free gin cocktail in the bar, but you have to read it out to the barmen and barmaids!

Last weekend I took part in two slams in the above mentioned carriage as part of Brighton Fringe Festival. On the Saturday Damian Barr hosted a flash fiction slam, and me and 13 other people entered the stage to read or perform a story in less than three minutes. Not everyone agreed with the judges (Stuart Evers, Vanessa Gebbie & Niven Govinden) but it was good fun, even though the theme was somewhat depressing: "The End." My story was about a woman who wanted a divorce from her doormat husband, but the divorce couldn't go through unless the doormat exploded, and therefore my story had no end ... (Thanks to everyone on Facebook who took part in the debate whether such an expression as "exploding doormat" exists or not ...)

On the Sunday Chris Parkinson hosted a lively poetry slam. The poets had five minutes to convince the judges (Damian Barr, James Burt & Kate Shields)that their poem or poems were the best. Alison Brunette (?) became the champion after having performed a parody of the "When I'm an old woman I shall wear purple"- poem and another one about preferring sex to chocolate. At other poetry slams I've been to the audience are often asked to be the judges, so it was a bit different to have a panel of judges that kept their scores secret. I did my poem dedicated to an ex-landlord which went down well. I'm happy with both my performances and really enjoyed being on stage in Hendrick's Horseless Carriage of Curiosities!

The Cosmos, The Cosmetics

2011-05-26T09:31:00.005+01:00

The reason I went to see The Cosmos, The Cosmetics show in the Brighton Fringe was that the subtitle said "a spoken word play". I'm always interested in seeing how poetry can be used to create a narrative, and have my own secret (or now not so secret) dreams of one day putting together a one-woman-show, using my poems and other writings. In a way I've done a bit of that when I do author talks at schools and libraries, but I haven't created something that feels like a finished shape or a whole piece.

Through poetic language Nick Field told his coming-of-age story, drifting from one subculture to another, and eventually coming out and finding himself for real. I loved how the very simple stage set worked ... With the help of different tubs of cosmetics Nick illustrated his experience of being a raver and being a goth. From fluorescent lips to black lips ...

A couple of times I got a bit lost or confused when Nick jumped in time and between different episodes in his life, but he always managed to capture me again with his very calm but catchy way of speaking. I was trying to work out if there were any "complete poems" in his play ... I'm not sure and it doesn't matter anyway. The narrative flowed without any awkward pauses.

Most of the time it felt like Nick was speaking to me personally. So many things I could relate to ... The difficulty to fit in within a certain scene (he was too chatty and positive for the goths, I've always found myself being too "rock 'n' roll" for the goths*) and the worry about spots (Nick found that covering his face in thick foundation (?) or powder (?) helped and I used rouge (!) to conceal my spots as a teenager ...) I found it particularly funny the way Nick had to sneak out of his house to avoid being seen in his various outfits and hair-dos by his parents ... I remember times when I ran out of the house before my mum noticed that I was wearing my Dr Martens with a neat dress for a school graduation ... Not to mention the small-town mentality, and all the neighbours knowing what you're up to ...

There were also some very touching moments in the show when Nick spoke about bike accidents he had and how his skin was damaged and he got this "skin paste" to use to cover up the scars, but in the end chose to leave them be. I hope to see/hear more of Nick Field's stuff in the future!

Here's a quote that kind of summarises the show: "There were so many stitch and dye initiations. So many cut and rip, fix together, plagiarise and innovate, mix and match, daub and dab paint rituals."

*My Swedish debut novel "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude" is all about not being able to fit into a particular box

Lil' Red Ridin' Hoodie & The Big Bad Wolf

2011-05-25T20:36:00.005+01:00

A very unusual take on the traditional tale of the Little Red Riding Hood ... Pyratrix Circus treated Brighton to a free multimedia fire show at the Level (as part of the Fringe Festival) a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed the performance as I think there's something magical about both fire and things that are performed outdoors.

However waiting for over an hour in the chilly May air didn't help. It was also a shame that there were technical difficulties and the spoken words got lost in the wind ... But hey it was FREE and it was a good atmosphere. I just wished that I wasn't a vegetarian that night. The fluorescent vodka jelly shots that were going for a pound were very tempting!

Checking Pyratrix Circus Facebook page it says "Our main character Lil Red is a keen young dynamic activist who wants to rescue her beloved grandma from the big bad wolf. Grandma is a representation of the earth, dying due to the corporate greed of the big bad wolf." And I pretty much got this message despite the sound being crap ... I loved the political messages scattered around the "stage" such as a sign in the McDonald's colours saying "Mc Junk". Proud to be veggie after all!

Pyratrix is touring other festival in the UK and Europe this summer so check them out!

P.S. The fire display in the picture says FEAR MAKES THE WOLF LOOK BIGGER

And the Birds Fell from the Sky

2011-05-24T22:01:00.007+01:00

I'm exhausted (on the brink of seeing clowns!) after weeks of going to Brighton Fringe & Brighton Festival events. I hope to blog about them all at some point. At least I should have the time this week as I'm broke until payday ... Usually when the festival programmes first come out I feel a bit overwhelmed. There's too much on, and it's hard to pick what shows are worth seeing, and it still feels like I've missed stuff ...

One of the very first events I went to was "And the Birds Fell from the Sky" and that's definitely a show to check out. (There are tickets left for next weekend.)

"An immersive video goggle performance for two people, combining cinema and instruction based theatre to cast the audience as main character in a wild journey to the world of the Faruk Clown. Anarchic, dreamy and dangerous, ‘And The Birds Fell From the Sky’ takes you on a joyride inside your head all the way to the edge of civilisation."

I pretty much agree with the above statement. I went to the show with my friend Kristen and afterwards she asked what I thought was the point of the performance/event/show. And I couldn't really give her an answer ...I told her I felt sick in a good way, which is true. It felt like being inside one of James Burt's clown stories. Basically you get physically kidnapped by clowns ... and somewhere along the journey I got reminded of life: there's no real point, at least not one that we know of ... The only thing negative thing I have to say is that the show felt a bit short - just like life itself.

Creative Writing Summer School

2011-05-20T11:53:00.003+01:00

Wendy Ann Greenhalgh is running a Creative Writing Summer School, but don't be put off by the word school ... Wendy is known to have a playful approach to writing, so do sign up if you want to get in touch with your inner writer.

Creative Writing Summer School
4 Wednesdays 8th - 29th June 7-9pm

These inspiring and experimental creative writing sessions, will encourage you to play with language and explore new ways of writing. Each week we’ll focus on the techniques developed by famous writers or creative movements to generate lots of ideas for poems and stories.

WEEK ONE

We’ll be taking a trip into Surrealism, collaging words and pictures to generate narratives and poetic imagery.

WEEK TWO
We’ll be emulating the assemblage artists and trawling the streets for found objects or bringing some from home – putting them in a box and creating story and poem treasure chests, where each object tells its own tale.

WEEK THREE
We’ll be following in the footsteps of the Beat generation, and cutting up and folding out old books, magazines and flyers to create new and unexpected combinations.

WEEK FOUR

With a nod to the Situationists we’ll be going on a ‘drift’ around Brighton, taking photographs of places, people and things that we’ll turn into a lyrical or narrative group snapshot of the city.

The cost of the 4 sessions is £45 and you can book online with Eventbrite or send Wendy a cheque. Get in touch at storyscavenger@gmail.com - if you want more information.

Chinglish

2011-05-15T21:02:00.008+01:00

Yesterday I went to see a performance art show in the Brighton House Festival called The Customer is Always Wrong.

Bill Aitchison spent three months as artist in resident in the small Chinese town of Xiamen. He started to create a show based on his time in China, writing it in English, but realising it didn't ring true, so he wrote it in very simple English, and then asked someone to translate it into Chinese. He then learnt the Chinese script by heart, and studied the meaning of every single word and developed it into a very physical performance piece, speaking only in Mandarin. However he had a Chinese girl reading the English translation after each spoken line.

The translation wasn't a professional translation though, it was done in a translation programme similar to Google translate (Bill found the Google version to be "to good", not producing the word by word translation that he was after.) One purpose of the performance was to play with the idea of "Chinglish", refering to the badly translated English that exists in China, and also the bad Mandarin spoken by visitors to China.

Watching and listening to the show gave me the same kind of confusion you experience in a foreign country where you don't speak much of the native language. You could follow the English translation, but you had to concentrate to be able to understand what Bill was trying to communicate. He talked about his experience in China, how he felt "wrong" because he was taller than everyone else and there was so little space. He kind of liked this feeling though, knowing things were "wrong" or "weird" because he was foreign. If you feel "wrong" or "weird" in your own country you don't have an excuse ...

What I found most fascinating was that the Chinese word for tourist is "walking guest" which explains Bill's marching movement when he was talking about tourists. What I found most surprising was Bill standing on the table/till of the Spiral Charity Shop (unusual venue I know!) and dancing to Backstreet Boys (big in China)!

I could relate very much to Bill's performance as English is my second language. He also transported me back, making me remember the five months I spent in Thailand. How weird it is to be looked up to because the local people think you are very rich ... And you are rich compared to them, but not in your own country ...

I love performance art! If you get a chance, check out Bill's stuff on his website and here you can watch a preview video (which doesn't make the performance justice, but you get an idea).

Writing Wisdoms from Tania Hershman

2011-05-15T10:42:00.006+01:00

Let it lie, put it away, for at least a week

Write what I want to write

Don't worry about being published

Distraction helps me stay in the zone, don't feel guilty about needing that

Don't worry about the market

Give myself time and space to evolve

READ FULL BLOG POST HERE

John Cage - Inspired Performance

2011-05-12T09:04:00.000+01:00

Next Thursday I'm doing a performance with the band 4thirtythree ...

The gig is a tribute to John Cage.

If you like experimental, improvised, avant-garde stuff ... please come along! We promise not to do 4'33" - which is John Cage's "silent piece", although there might be a lot of silence between the words ...

GREEN DOOR STORE, BRIGHTON, 7.30pm THURSDAY 19 MAY

Solitary Confinement

2011-05-06T23:31:00.009+01:00

"I don't have the time." That's the most common excuse I hear among people who want to write but don't do it.

Quite often I fall into that trap myself. It's Friday night ... Well, most likely it's now early Saturday morning. I don't have a clock or a watch and I don't care. (The only time measurer that I've got is my turned off mobile phone.) When I finished work I fell into the Friday trap "It's-Friday-wow-it's-the-end-of-the-week-wow-now-it-all-begins-I-should-have-so-much-fun-go-out-and-get-pissed-or-go-to-the-best-party-ever-or-at-least-go-over-to-a-friend's-place-for-dinner." I didn't do any of those things. (On Facebook I have invitations to an anti- Brighton festival event and an opening of the Brighton festival (fringe?) event and I feel torn.)

Believe it or not my biggest inspiration is BOREDOM. When I get bored enough and there's nothing else to do I create. I feel creative. Tonight I've written stuff. Nothing amazing. But I've put words on paper. I've listened to P.J. Harvey's Is this desire? album, and I've written something that could be the opening paragraph of my new novel.

There's a difference between boredom and boredom. There's one kind of boredom when you feel depressed and miserable. Then there's the kind of boredom that kicks your creative arse ... For fuck sake do something! And that's what happened to me tonight. I didn't even have to force myself. I just felt inspired ... With the help of ...

&

Red wine. Dark chocolate. The only drugs I use.

The Members were bored ... They created some great songs!

Your Life in 5 Min and 29 Sec ?

2011-05-05T20:00:00.001+01:00

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.

Art Work by Miranda July (everything she does inspires me)

Promoting Yourself & Others

2011-04-28T09:11:00.004+01:00

As I don't have a new book to promote yet I might as well promote some other people ...

Click here to read my poet friend Chris's blog The Daily Whale. Now the interesting thing about this blog is that I didn't know that it existed until I happened to see a post on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. In his latest blog post Chris confesses that he's not very good at self-promotion, hence me being oblivious of his blog. He had my blog on his link list though which made me very happy.

Most people find self-promotion very hard. Publishers and agents do their bit, but you also have to do your own bit ... If you don't have a publisher and/or an agent yet it's even more important.

One author who's very, very good at self-promotion is Isabel Ashdown. She's written a blog post called Twitter Confessions, and she says "for every shameless plug I make, I do two more tweets to others/about others." That's very fair I think.

What goes around comes around. I sometimes blog about other peoples' blogs or books and I believe this is indirectly a way of promoting myself. It's great to discover a link to your own blog on somebody else's blog!

The Middle of the Hunger Trace

2011-04-22T17:44:00.007+01:00

A while ago I went to the launch party for Edward Hogan's second novel, The Hunger Trace and was very lucky to get a copy of the book. There's something quite majestic about holding a fresh hardback in your hands, more exciting to me than holding a new born baby ...

To the point. Even if I no longer bring this hardback baby to bed it's still with me.
What I liked best about The Hunger Trace was the middle. It's not that the beginning and the end were bad, it's just that I liked to be inside the novel, following the characters' daily life. I wasn't that bothered about a beginning or an end, it felt like the story had gone on forever and had no end, like real life. And I mean this in a positive way. Unless someone is dead or not yet born you don't really think of their lives as beginning or ending, and that's what I felt about Louisa, Christopher and Maggie in the Hunger Trace. I had the privilege of spending a few months with them and liked it best when I was in the middle of the book. I must admit that the first page didn't grab me, mainly because I didn't know what an ibex was, but as soon as Louisa entered on page two I started to feel connected.

I really like Louisa. Not because her name is similar to mine, but because she's a flawed unusual character. A falconer. A woman still in love with a guy from her childhood whom she could never have. The guy is called David - owner of a wildlife park - and David is dead. He's outside the novel, but we get to know him not only through Louisa but also through his widow Maggie (much younger and a bit tarty), and his son Christopher from another marriage(portrayed very well as an odd teenager who is into internet dating and family values).

I love the Louisa-Christopher-Maggie drama, and when the novel ended it didn't end for me (to be honest I can't even remember the exact end), it carried on in my mind, and I still sometimes wonder what Louisa, Christopher and Maggie (in that order) are up to.

All over the place or in one place?

2011-04-14T18:45:00.006+01:00

If you focus on something for five years and really believe in it you're going to be successful in one way or other. That's what my ex (who gets paid to travel to tropical countries to fix computers) told me while I was working on my debut novel. And almost exactly five years after I started writing seriously I had a novel published. I did focus on my novel writing and I really believed in it. But it's not always this simple ...

What is success anyway? Are you less of a novelist if you spend five years perfecting a novel, focusing on it and really believing in it and still not getting it published ...? The optimist in me wants to believe that those people don't exist, that they didn't try hard enough .... The realist in me doesn't want to wake up because I am a dreamer ...

Another person(in his early thirties)who is a poet, MC, songwriter and musician told me that he would've been successful by now if he had focused on one thing only. I'm not sure whether to agree or disagree. Surely these areas all feed into each other, but if you're pre-occupied by making a living and having a very rich social life it's tricky. It's also matter of how much you're willing to focus, how much you're willing to offer in terms of time and money.

I've been writing seriously in English since 2007, so according to the five year focus and belief I should be published by next year. But at the moment I'm all over the place ... I'm waiting for my agent to find a publisher for UNDER THE LIP (former REPLACING ANGEL). Waiting is not a very active space to be in so in the meantime ...

*I'm making notes on a new novel, note: making notes, not actually writing

*I'm writing random poetry

*I'm working with improvising jazz musicians

*I performing poetry

*I'm reading/performing short stories

*I'm taking voice classes

*I'm going to drop-in acting classes

*I'm going to drop-in 5Rhythms dance classes

*I'm lying down in the Alexander Technique semi-supine position

*I'm reading all sorts of stuff, fact and fiction

*I'm taking more photographs than my harddrive can handle

*I'm making collages (see picture)

But above all I'm working on getting to know my body. Hence the voice classes, acting classes, dance classes and the Alexander Technique. (I can't afford to do these things every week even if I wanted to do, but I try to do at least one physical thing every week).

All my life I've lived in my head, intellectualising all my actions. Now it's time for me to get in touch with my body, and I believe this will make me a better and more confident performer. Indirectly it will also help me with my novel work as a part of "the job" is to promote your novel, do readings etc.

I took out a book from the Children's Library simply titled The Inside & Outside Guide to Your Body. I'm fascinated by the fact that under my skin there is a skeleton. It's not like I didn't know before, but I finally understand that I've got a skeleton. I'm learning to breathe.

I could skip all this body work and just plunge into working on my new novel and ignore all the other parts of me. But at the moment it's more important for me to become a whole human being.

Tuned in Stories at Story Studio, Komedia Brighton

2011-04-12T11:58:00.016+01:00

Short Fuse has changed their name to Story Studio and the night on Sunday was a great success. The theme for the night was "Tunes" and apart from traditional story readings the audience was treated to visual art by Lee Thacker, singing by Pam Hewitt and performance art by Amanda Evans.

I performed my story I'm from Further North than You that was inspired by the Wedding Present song with the same title. Last time I read this story was at the Edge of the Sea festival in august so it was less nerve-wracking this time ... It was great to have Lee Thacker's illustrations of the story behind me, and I felt very honoured to have David from the Wedding Present at my table. I found out that the song was originally titled Edinburgh. I didn't know this, but had subconsciously set the story in the Scottish capital anyway.

Next up was Brian Bell reading Shite Ole' Deep Purple Records. What I particularly liked about this story is that it dealt with the snobbishness of some music fans ... e.g. that you can't be a punk and also listen to Deep Purple. (Swedish rock band Backyard Babies once kicked a band member because they found a Suzanne Vega record in his collection ... And my Swedish debut novel "Punk industrial hard rocker with attitude" deals with being bullied for liking both Guns N'Roses and punk stuff ....)

Jeff Noon was probably the most famous name on the bill. I've never read any of his novels although I've seen them lying about in my friends houses. My first ever flatmates kept going on about Needle in the groove and it's still on the list of books I want to read ... Jeff didn't get up on stage himself, instead Alistair Lock did a brilliant job reading Jeff's story The Queen is Dead inspired by the Smith's song.

Amanda Evans in full action, telling her tale from Jamaica called The Third Drawer. She was accompanied by soft drumming which made the story very hypnotic.

The duo Felstead and Waddell seem to be the act in residence at Story Studio and they always amuse me. Their stories are only about a 100 words long, but each story is a complete sketch with props. The stories they read on the night were all inspired by song titles, e.g. River Deep - Mountain high and Living la vida loca. How they manage to keep their faces straight I don't know ...

This Genesis guy was not at Story Studio. But Tara Gould had written an amazing rhythmic story about losing your virginity titled The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man, and it was performed by Wendy Quelch. I got so into the story that I forgot to get my camera out hence the substitute picture ...

Another highlight was Louise Hume's story Porquoi Es-Tue Devenue Si Raisonnable? performed by Simon Drake and Louise herself. The french title is English for the Wedding Present Song Why are you being so reasonable now?
Apparently it was a huge hit in France ...

Last up was Lee Thacker. Well last up was a graphic short story of his, read by Wendy Quelch & Holly Dawson. Unfortunately the ending of this story Nickles and Dimes was missing, but maybe it was an intentional trick to get everybody to buy the forthcoming anthology with The Wedding Present-inspired stories ... I don't know exactly when it will be out, but I'll keep you posted.

Next Story Studio happens in June and the theme then is Sport & Leisure. Maybe the above picture from post Brighton Marathon will inspire you ... (I took this photo on my way home feeling inspired by writer & photographer Erika Szostak who also has a story in the above mentioned anthology.) More info about Story Studio and submission guidelines here.

Thanks to Lee Thacker for the photo of me.

Reaping my Shorts

2011-04-09T21:18:00.004+01:00

I dedicated last year to short stories. And now I'm reaping what I sow ..

*On Sunday I'm reading at Story Studio (former Short Fuse) at Komedia. The theme for this night is Tunes so I re-submitted the story I read at the Edge of the Sea Festival in August. The story is called Further North than You and is inspired by the Wedding Present song with the same title. This story will also be included in an anthology with other stories inspired by the Wedding Present titles or lyrics.

*This week I received a copy of Spilling Ink in the post - an excellent anthology of fiction, nonfiction and prose poetry/flash fiction. My short story Lovers of the Planet is one of the featured pieces.

*My short story The Party is Over made it to the shortlist for the annual Mslexia Short Story Competition. Although shortlist in this case doesn't mean it will be one of the published pieces, just that it came close.

This year I haven't written a single short story. Here you can read about my change of scene last year, but now I'm think I'm back to poetry again ... What I learnt from dedicating a year to short stories is that every word and semicolon matters. I've become better at writing in general, yet I don't think of myself as a short story writer. I write novels for a living (well, for a tiny tiny part of my living), I write poetry for fun and for performing (and therefore am not too bothered about semi-colons and perfecting them for the page), but short stories ... They are still beyond me.

Dating Myself in London - Inspiration & Nostalgia

2011-04-05T22:42:00.019+01:00

Julia Cameron - the woman behind The Artist's Way - writes about the importance of Artist's Dates. And sometimes we need Artist's Days. Days when we take ourselves out to gain new inspiration and energy. Yesterday I took myself to London.

I started off at the British Library. Little did I know that it was like boarding an aeroplane. You had to check that your bag was the right size, and to go inside any of the reading rooms you needed a pass. The book I wanted to read (a John Cage one) was in Yorkshire which didn't make any sense. A member of staff said "it says DSC in the entry" as if an idiot would know that DSC meant Yorkshire. I didn't let myself get put off though.

Instead I had a look at one of the exhibitions and saw original manuscripts/notebooks from authors like Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde. I also put on headphones and listened to Help! by the Beatles while looking at the original piece of paper that John Lennon wrote down the lyrics on ... After all entering a library is like boarding an aeroplane: you are travelling to another place.

The British Library cafe was too full of laptops, books and conversations so I moved to a cafe across the road and spent two hours with myself, my notebook and a gigantic mug of green tea. I found my words flowing in all sorts of directions without forcing myself to writing anything good.

To feed my tummy I had an over-priced sandwich. But my mind was hungry for something else, so I decided to treat myself to Camden. (And am very proud that I found my way there without looking at the map in my bag.) Camden still feels magic to me. Camden changed my life when I was eighteen. And again when I was nineteen. It would take a whole novel to explain why, but basically it was a shock for a small town girl. Like moving from grey to neon. Like moving from safe to dangerous. Like moving from innocence to experience.

Note the punk with the placard in the middle to the right. I bet he's the same guy who stood there when I first came up from the tube all those years ago ... (The next tube could take you to another world was the slogan on the walls then.)

After only five minutes in Camden I was exploding with memories mixed with new impressions and I just had to sit down and write again. At a crossroads someone asked "Where's the rainbow?" because at that very moment it started to rain at the same time as the sun was shining ... I didn't find any rainwbows but I found Spiral (a cafe by the canal) and that was colourful enough with hippies in green trousers and orange tops. I had Spirulina. Not something I would've done ten years ago ... It wouldn't have been "punk" enough ...

Nostalgia hit me really bad so I just had to carry on to Angel ... To Islington Green where me and a friend once sat in October, drinking before going to legendary goth club Slimelight ... This was ten years ago and I couldn't help thinking of the line from the above mentioned Help!: When I was younger, so much younger than today ...

And this is what my novel is about. Someone with a glamorous name who is not glamorous. (REPLACING ANGEL is no longer the title, but Angel is still very much the subject or perhaps the object of my novel.)

This is the real reason I went to London: I was invited to perform at Beat - a diverse but dynamic monthly poetry event at Charlie Wright's Bar hosted by ...

Andreas Grant. Who is a fellow Swede. (Some of the best Swedes have left their native country to grow elsewhere)

So ... This is one of the longest blog post I've ever written. I feel inspired and overtired, but I want to see myself again. After another couple of dates I might even fall in love ...

And if I get bored with myself I have filled half a notebook with thoughts notes hopes dreams fragments of poems and other ideas. It's funny how I had the intention of gaining new inspiration, but got this craving for nostalgia. Sometimes you have to travel to the future to find your past (path.) Oh dear ... I must be in love to write this rubbish. Lust for life la la la ... Bedtime or beertime? "Me!" my pillow calls, like London was calling yesterday ...

Dressing Up for my Hometown

2011-04-01T12:04:00.003+01:00

CLICK HERE TO READ A NEW POEM OF MINE

Rattling Stories

2011-03-29T11:27:00.011+01:00

From top left: Edward Rowe, Katherine Doggrell, Louise Halvardsson, Jo Dillon, Linda Baker, Lonny Pop, Alice Cunighame, Erinna Mettler, Mike Liardet.

There are several short story nights in Brighton, each with its own flavour. Or should I say noise? The audience at Rattle Tales were given rattles to make their voices heard. Because the unique thing with this event is that anyone can ask the authors questions after they've read or just give their opinion. I think this worked very well and I find myself remembering all stories this morning. For me it worked because it made me listen more carefully and it was also fascinating to find out where ideas came from or what the authors struggled with in their stories.

There were stories about spears, anorexics, pillow fights, facebook suicide, unopened letters, more death, cannibals, homelessness and winning the lottery. All in one evening ... For only £3.

Yes I am trying to sell this ... The next Rattle Tales is happening in June and they welcome submissions. More info at www.rattletales.org

Rattle Tales - New Short Story Night in Brighton

2011-03-27T12:00:00.002+01:00

I'm very honoured to be a special guest at Rattle Tales opening night! Come and hear me read my story Playing Horse.

I could've been a banker - Poetry Video by Alison Boston

2011-03-25T17:12:00.003Z

It seems to get more and more popular to make poetry videos. Why not? Videos are not only for musicians.

Here's a great example of a video made by multi-disciplinary artist Alison Boston whom I worked with at the improv gig.

Minding Peas and Cucumbers in a Windmill

2011-03-23T19:00:00.004Z

Kay Sexton is an amazing woman. I first got to know her as a person writing literary novels with an erotic touch. Little did I know that she's as passionate about words as she are about seeds. This passion resulted in a book called Minding my Peas and Cucumbers. The subtitle reads "Quirky tales of allotment life."

I'm only on chapter two, but I'd be happy to call it Quirky tales of Life. I have no interest in growing anything. In fact I'm very nervous about the courgette and sunflower seeds that came in the goodie flower pot that everybody at the launch received. Nevertheless I've laughed out loud already. You don't have to be a grower to enjoy Kay's writing and witty comments about the other allotment holders ...

The most quirky (a word I learnt late in life) thing about Kay's launch was that it was set in a windmill! (West Blatchington Windmill in Hove.) Apart from signing books and doing a short reading Kay invited the audience to write limericks on an allotment theme or if you preferred draw a portrait of a famous person based on a fruit or vegetable. There were also a chance to generously sample different homemade chutneys. A book launch in my taste!

And if you missed the launch you can buy your own copy of Minding my Peas and Cucumbers here.

Improvising?

2011-03-17T08:49:00.005Z

I woke up this morning and thought what the hell did I do last night? Don't worry I remember it all clearly, I wasn't very drunk or anything ... I was improvising! Something I'm not very used to. I've previously blogged about doing improvised workshops with the band 4thirtythree. But last night wasn't a workshop; it was a gig. People came to the Red Roaster and paid to watch and listen to us improvise.

Luckily the band 4thirtythree improvise all the time so they are used to it and they held the night together beautifully. And somewhere between the music there were words. Some of them fitted some of them didn't. I'm surprised how we managed to make the performance flow without any particular plan. Well some of us poets had brought material (either on paper or in our heads) so it wasn't totally improvised, but we did some collaborate pieces that were happening there and then and won't ever happen again.

Talking to a guy in the audience he said that he enjoyed some bits and found other bits painful. He thought our collaborate pieces worked best, when we only spoke for about 30 seconds each and then moved on to another person, creating a stream of words. Quite a fair comment I think.

I'm mostly happy what I did/said, but I also felt that I missed the "freshness" from the workshop where I felt more free as I had not brought any material at all. I'm still questioning what the hell I was doing last night, but I feel happy for the experience. A big thank you to Tom Cunliffe for putting it all together!

It has been great working with all those talented people: 4thirtythree, Annie, Yaz, Bernie, Alison and Tom.

750 words a day

2011-03-15T10:29:00.003Z

I first heard about 750 words from Chris Limb. 750 words is a website where you are encouraged to write 750 words about anything. (All privately). The advantage is that there's no spell- or grammar checker. Nothing to distract you. Just a screen where you type.

I'm not using this tool to write "just anything". I'm using it to write just anything that relates to my new novel idea/project/embyro. Could be anything from thoughts about the the theme or monologues written from the point of view of the different characters. I can't start writing about what I had for breakfast. If I find myself doing that I have to switch and write about what my characters had for breakfast ...

So far I've only done two days, but it has made me very happy. 750 words a day is so much better than 0 words a day. I'm aiming to keep it up for a month and by then I should have a big chunk of text to work with.

Rip/Cut/Torn

2011-03-14T21:36:00.002Z

Wednesday 16th March

eg poetry presents.......’Rip/Cut/Torn’
The result of numerous workshops......a collaborative evening of poetry, improvised spoken word and improvised music

6 Brighton based poets meet ‘4.33’, Brighton’s most inventive music improvisation trio.
With Bernie Cremin, Lou Ice, Annie Kerr, Tom Cunliffe, Alison Boston and Yassin Zelestine

‘4.33’ (Stuart Revill, Tim Woods, Chris Parfitt).....”free of cliché... a fine enigma” Don Spicer. Jazz World/Guardian.

......sometimes you have to go to the edge.........and leap

Not to be missed.
Red Roaster Coffee House, St James St, Brighton. £5/£4 8pm Ko

Swedish Novel in English?

2011-03-11T09:36:00.004Z

Every week I meet English people who want to read my Award-Winning Swedish Young Adult Novel, Punkindustriell Hårdrockare med Attityd ("Punk Industrial Hard Rocker with Attitude"). I hope the whole novel will be translated one day (by someone who's not me ...)! My agent has showed an interest and asked me to write a synopsis and translate a sample chapter, so that's what I've been working on this week.

First I re-read the novel. I've only read it once before ... A strange experience reading your own novel, especially now when I have a fair bit of distance to it. It felt like I was reading but not concentrating as I knew what was going to happen. Yet I surprised myself. There were so many paragraphs that seemed new to me, and I got confused by my own structure ... As the novel is set over the course of three years there are obviously big leaps and you kind of have to fill in those gaps yourself ... Or perhaps I just got confused because I was reading in a feverish state, being confined to my bed by a nasty flu ...

Anyway. I did manage to write a synopsis, but my playwright friend thought it sounded more like a travel itinerary! Synopsises are hard, and sometimes don't do the novel justice, but I'm happy with what I managed to write anyway. As for the sample chapter ... It was hard to find a chapter without Swedish slang or other typical Swedish references, but in the end I settled for a neutral chapter where the main character is in her bedroom, not knowing what to do with the sample condoms she got from a Youth Clinic person visiting her college. There's also a short dialogue with her Dad. I do hope this chapter is enough to give the agent a flavour of the novel ... The flavour is punk industrial hard rock with attitude!

Toxic Womb - New Flash Fiction Piece

2011-03-02T20:49:00.002Z

CLICK HERE TO READ

grateful for any feedback ...

And I do feel a bit intoxicated after four days in Barcelona
where I went to celebrate my 29th birthday
at La Marsella - an absinthe bar where Hemingway used to drink (and write?)

What is a perfomer?

2011-02-21T09:24:00.004Z

Noun

performer (plural performers)

1. One who performs for, or entertains, an audience.

Last week I was invited to perform at Floetics as the main poetry act. I felt very honoured as I decided to take a step back from poetry last year and instead focus on short stories. (The novel writing has always felt like my job whilst performing poetry has been a hobby, and the short stories are somewhere in between.)

Floetics happens about once a month at the Red Roaster in Kemp Town. It's a very friendly and welcoming event, hosted by poet Jasmine Cooray. Yet I felt nervous, as if I was part of the audience, observing myself. I started to question myself, asking myself who the hell is this person on stage and what does she have to say? Luckily I managed to shut my inner critic up and do a good performance anyway, and I felt that I had the audience with me. But next morning I woke up with the same question: who is this person and what does she have to say?

She is Lou Ice, performance poet. And she has this need to express herself, talk about her obsessions, fears and other grievances ...

My stage persona Lou Ice was born in 2006, and I feel like a different person now, but I'm not yet prepared to just perform as Louise Halvardsson. I prefer to keep my performance identity and my novel writing/short story identity separated. Even though my poems are heavily autobiographical, I also make a lot of things up; I feel I can hide in Lou Ice.

I've never studied performance or had any official training, am one of those people who romanticise self-taught people, but I think I have a lot to learn. Saturday I watched the play Masterclass, about opera singer Maria Callas life and teaching. Time after time she told her students that they had to feel and see what they were singing about, and totally engage with their story. That's what I'm trying to do with my poetry, but it's very easy to get distracted by the audience and things happening in the room ...

Am reading a book at the moment called Find your voice by Joanna Crosse, and she recommends that you should look at the audience as one single person, so that every person listening feels as if you are talking to them alone.

Watch this space. Lou Ice is not dead yet!

Photo: Kristen Healy

Attracting Lips

2011-02-20T19:52:00.007Z

According to the law of attraction
you are likely to get more of what you think about and focus on. This week I've been thinking a lot about lips. Mainly because I need a new title for my novel. Below are a few ideas:

UNDER THE LIP
UNDER MY LIP
STUFF IT UP YOUR LIP
LIP SYNC
ONE FOR THE LIP

On Friday night I fell over on the pavement and hurt my lip. I wonder if I would have ended up with a black eye if I'd been thinking a lot about eyes ...

Me & My Book Baby

2011-02-13T19:30:00.007Z

Nowadays some parents-to-be send pictures of their foetus as Christmas cards. So here's a Valentine's greeting to you all: me & my book baby ready to go to the doctor aka as literary agent.

I met the agent last week in his office, and he said my book foetus is mostly fine. It just needs some minor medical attention. This involves making the letters from one character to another more subtle, and yes ... I still have to cut out some of my Nick Cave references ...

I'm almost there, ready for the next health check-up, the one where every chromosomic line will be scrutinized.

And I have to think of a new name for my book baby. Replacing Angel has to go. What do you think of Under My Lip or Stuff it up your lip!? I know it's a girl, but the name can be androgynous ...

Photo: Barnaby Marriott

Two announcements:

ON WEDNESDAY 16 FEB, 8 PM, I'M DOING A POETRY GIG AT FLOETICS, RED ROASTER, ST JAMES STREET,KEMP TOWN, BRIGHTON

ON TUESDAY 22 FEB, 8 PM, A SHORT STORY OF MINE ON A SEXUAL THEME WILL BE READ OUT BY AN ACTOR AT ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?, THE BASEMENT, KENSINGTON ST, BRIGHTON

A Slammy Poem

2011-02-05T21:59:00.005Z

For the first time since September I entered a poetry slam (Hammer & Tongue at Komedia) and for the first time I got really high scores, and almost won.

I came second, performing a poem called Making-over my Landlord.

Also for the first time I deliberately used rhymes which always go down well. CLICK HERE TO READ THE POEM.

Glasshopper: Growing up in Fiction

2011-01-30T16:02:00.008Z

On Thursday Isabel Ashdown guested Hove Library to talk about her debut novel Glasshopper at an event called "Growing Up in Fiction". I first heard Isabel speak at the Chichester Writing Festival and was intrigued by how her novel came to be a novel. It all started with a short story competition for the Mail on Sunday. Isabel submitted her story, and forgot all about it. A year later she gets a phone call and is told that she's the winner of the competition! It's the kind of phone call all writers are waiting for ...

Isabel, who discussed her writing process with literary agent Adrian Weston, told the audience that Glasshopper in fact contains several chapters that were orginally written as short stories. Perhaps that's why the novel is so good, because when you write short stories you have to be more precise in your writing. The novel follows Jake who grows up in Portsmouth in the 80s, and parallell to his story the novel follow his mum Mary growing up in Hove in the 60s. Interestingly enough Jake first started off as a girl and Mary started off as a dad instead of a mum ...

What I love best about Glasshopper are the family secrets bubbling under the suface, and the ending is brilliant. To me it's the perfect twist, both believable and shocking. Isabel revealed that she didn't have much of a plan when she started off, the ending came as a surprise to herself about half-way into the writing.

Tom Connolly, author of The Spider Truces, was also supposed to be at the event, but sadly had to cancel at the last minute. Instead Adrian Weston read an extract from The Spider Truces, another novel that deals with growing up in the 80s. Both Tom Connolly and Isabel Ashdown are published by Myriad Editions, and Isabel has a second novel secured with them, to be published this summer. It's called Hurry up and Wait. I can't wait!

Story Accepted for Publication ... in 2013

2011-01-24T12:12:00.004Z

Better late than never ... My short story, A Day in Her Honour, is going to be published in Stand Magazine in 2013.

I was inspired to write the story after my grandma died. I was on special discretionary leave, and tried to spend my day in her honour, but it didn't quite work out that way. Especially not in the story I wrote. It became a story in the honour of a fictional mum instead ... I'm very pleased that it's going to be published!

How many drafts must a woman write ... before she throws herself off the pier?

2011-01-19T21:09:00.007Z

I read an interview view Susan Hill in the latest issue of Mslexia. She only ever does one draft of a novel. She goes back to correct, check and edit, but she never rewrites.

I'm totally the opposite, at least when it comes to REPLACING ANGEL, the novel I've been working on since October 2007. My first draft was just a mess of words, me spewing out what I wanted to say. In the second draft I tried to make sense of what I wanted to say, in the third draft I tried to find some kind of plot ... The fourth and fifth drafts were about defining the characters and their motivations. And the sixth draft which I completed a couple of days ago was all about ...

Cutting. 104 000 words became 84 000 words. So you might think that I've spent two intense week in Novelland just deleting words ... but it's not that easy. Cutting also means restructuring, and even adding scenes to make sense of the story. I'm happy with it now, and I'm hoping that I won't have to make more than 8 drafts! There's some interest from an agent, and he was the one who pointed out that the first third of the novel was too slow, hence the cutting ...

What I'm working on right now is the title. REPLACING ANGEL has too many associations to fantasy, Buffy the Vampire etc. As it's more of a gritty realism book I need to find something more appropriate.

Intentions for 2011

2011-01-10T16:43:00.008Z

I had a good start to the year. I spent a week writing in my parents basement, only leaving the house once a day for my daily walk in the forest. The only people I spoke to were my family at meal times. I created time and space to immerse myself in the revision of REPLACING ANGEL.

Once I started the words fell into place. The hardest thing is always to start; I felt very anxious over Christmas, worrying that I would never be able to write again ... But it really helped to follow the Kaizen-method that I blogged about earlier. Just using five minutes a day to brain-storm around my novel, set me up for a good start.

At the winter solstice I asked a friend to randomly pull a card (similar to angel/oracle cards) for me, and the word I got was introvertedness. It felt very appropriate at the time as I had a very extroverted autumn, going out a lot, avoiding myself and my writing. I've been complaining that I haven't had time and space to write as much as I want to, but it's all about making time.

My intentions for 2011 is to spend more quality time with myself and stay in more. Relax. Eat slowly. Drink slowly. Take care of myself. Then I'll go out and have some fun.

My Writing Year 2010

2010-12-30T21:48:00.008Z

2010 is coming to an end. It hasn't been one of my best years. It has been a difficult year on an emotional and personal level, but when I look back I've had a great deal of success with my writing.

2010 was the year I completed my first novel in English, REPLACING ANGEL, and got an agent interested. In January I treated myself to a writing retreat in Lingfield. In February I sent the MS off. In December things started to happen.

2010 was the year I focused on short stories.

I've had two stories published:
*Lovers of the Planet in the Spilling Ink Review Anthology
*The Butter Dish in Scribble
*Next of Kin was shortlisted for the Ilkey Festival of Literature competition

I also submitted stories to the Bridport Prize, The Asham Award and the Fish Prize.
All in all I wrote about twenty-five short stories, including a few flash fiction pieces. What I haven't done enough of is submitting ...

However I've had loads of stories selected for readings at live literature events in Brighton:

*Foxy Lady and Relax Johnny-Boy have some fun for Are you sitting comfortably?
*Steal from the rich and give to the poor for SPARKS
*Ex Love for Short Fuse Story Salon
*I'm from further North than you for the Short Fuse appearance at The Edge of the Sea festival (the story will also be illustrated and published in an anthology to be sold as The Wedding Present Merchandise)
*Clowntown for New Venture Theatre's Into the Dark story event
*Party is over for the Ace Stories event
*Suicidal Girlfriends for Grit Lit

To make time for the short story events I decided to cut down on poetry (both writing it and performing it.) Yet I got a poem published called His depression in an anthology called Book of Dreams.

These are a few of the poetry performances I did in Brighton (and I said that I'd cut down!):

*The Hanover Poetry Festival
*Everybody's got to be somewhere at Prince Albert
*Black History Month at Red Roaster
*We Love Mondays & Thursdays (study support sessions at Jubilee & Hove libraries)
*New Writing South's Christmas party
*Waterloo Press Christmas party
*a couple of Hammer & Tongue slams

2011 was the year of workshops:

*Brighton Creative Writing Sessions & Not for the faint hearted with James Burt and Ellen de Vries
*Voice and singing workshop with Alexander Technique teacher Alan Mars
*Improvised spoken word and music with Safehouse Collective and Tom Cunliffe

And I also had time for some very professional things:

*lecturing at the Literature week in Gothenburg
*talks and book signings at opening of new cultural centre in my hometown, Nassjo
*lectures at Loxdale Language Centre in Portslade
*writing workshop for young adults at Hove Library
*attending Chichester Writing Festival
*organising author events and poetry nights at Hove library

2011 was the year I got a permanent part-time job at Hove library.
I'm lucky to be able to combine my writing with a job that involves literature
and organising events and performing poetry ...

All these good things wouldn't be possible without my wonderful writing mates ...
I meet up regularly to do some writing exercises with Morgan & Bernadette, and I also have "creative coaching" sessions with Sue. My coffee dates/drinks/meet-ups with Kay, James, Robert, Saskia, Kristen, Laura are invaluable. And I'm also very, very grateful for the support and feedback I get online. Tim, Brian, Sanna, Solera, Chris, James, Ed ... I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. Sara of course. Anna Liv. Lotus. You know who you are.

I'll celebrate New Year's Eve with my "sister" Johanna in the middle of the forest in the south of Sweden. Then I'll spend a week writing, i.e. revising my novel as the first third drags ... To help me stay focused and not distracted I won't use internet for a week. So if you make a comment on this post it won't show for a while as I have to log in to accept it ... Same with emails and facebook. Don't despair: I'm not dead - I'm writing.

My new year resolution is ...

to keep believing in myself and my writing.

Keep on dreaming, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die. - Blind Melon

Old Habits - New flash fiction piece

2010-12-30T17:50:00.003Z

CLICK HERE TO READ A NEW FLASH FICTION PIECE

Kaizen Writing

2010-12-26T16:19:00.006Z

Found a great blog post about six small steps you can take every day towards your writing. It has helped me a great deal. Even during busy days at work I can find five minutes to brainstorm a project or one minute to describe a stranger ...

It's also worth keeping those six steps in mind if you're away for Christmas: stuck on trains or bored at family dinners ...
And I'd like to add one point to the list: go for a walk, even if it's just ten minutes. Reflection time is so important. Whilst the whole of Sweden watched the Christmas Disney special at 3pm on Christmas Eve (a tradition to be missed, same programme every year) I went out for a walk and made a snow angel.

Read more about Kaizen writing in Jurgen Wolff's blog here.

Re-entering Novelland & Working in Cafes

2010-12-20T13:13:00.007Z

Last Monday I spent about 3 hours in Coffee Republic* in George Street Hove, sipping the same cold peppermint tea. I don't normally like going to chain coffee shops, but it feels more all right to spend hours in a big anonymous cafe than in a small funky cafe. Restaurants are the worst. I once got kicked out of the Regency, the manager telling me it wasn't an office ... I'd spent about 2 hours in there just ordering a coffee and had covered the whole table with files and books and pens ...

I printed the Replacing Angel manuscript and managed to read about half of it, making notes, and carried on reading the rest at home later in the week. I feel hopeful about it, and am looking forward to my planned week of novel revision work in January.

It's so nice to have a novel in my head again. It feels like the short stories I've written this year have "only" been one-night stands or love affairs, some amazing, some boring, but now when I'm in Novelland again it's like falling in love and entering a proper relationship.

*I applied for a job there when it first opened back in 2002, but after going for a group interview session where we had to make potato men I got a call saying I didn't have the right skills. Thank God!

Publishable

2010-12-11T22:32:00.008Z

Adjective

publishable (comparative more publishable, superlative most publishable)

1. Able to be published.

I've spoken to an agent who's read my English novel, REPLACING ANGEL. It's publishable. That's the first thing he told me.

Publishable, but not quite yet.

The first third of the manuscript drags. I'm aware of this. My playwright/drama teacher friend who has also recently read my MS is of the same opinion.

And the title doesn't work, is too cheesy, too obvious. I wasn't aware of this.

The worst though is that I've used far too many Nick Cave quotes ... (Did you know that he crashed his car into a speed camera at the end of my street this week?! Photo evidence above.)

Even though I have a lot of hard work ahead of me I feel excited. The agent suggested that I take some time to think about it all, and then I'll present him with a new version of the MS in a couple of months time. I'm already thinking of spending the first week of the year in my small boring hometown and focus on the re-write, away from the distractions of Brighton.

Grit Lit

2010-12-04T20:45:00.013Z

The streets of Brighton were gritted enough for a bunch of writers and their hangers-on to make it out last night. It was time for Grit Lit - a live lit event hosted by Amy Riley and Tim Lay. Their show won the award for the best literature event in the Brighton Fringe Festival 2009. Even though some writers were so cold they had to read with their coats on, the atmosphere in the Red Roaster was heated.

I'm reading my short story Suicidal Girlfriends, inspired by a guy who once told me that I looked like his ex-girlfriend who had committed suicide ...

Amy Riley reads from her latest novel which is set in both Brighton and the States.

John O'Donoghue shares an extract from his autobiography Sectioned - a life interrupted.

I didn't manage to get a photo of Tim Lay ... But above is a picture of his short story collection Nibs. The story he read last night was about the rave scene and a particular drug called Fubar.

The audience was treated to a story about vintage underwear when Erinna Mettler took the stage.

Poet and prose-writer Akila captured everyone when she read rhythmical flash fiction stories about experiences of people with mixed heritage from a hardcore/hidden aspect.

A writer who both opened and closed the night by reading about Batman and meditation was Rob Paraman. I'd not seen Rob for years (we used to hang out at the same writing groups) so it was really nice to hear him read, making me laugh more than once.

Another author, Dan Holloway was supposed to be on the bill as well, but was the only one who couldn't make it because of that damn snow that was gone by the time I walked home, warmed up by rum and good company. Thanks to the few friends that made it out!

Antidote for Winter - new prose poem piece

2010-11-30T21:36:00.003Z

CLICK HERE TO READ MY LATEST CREATION

Grit Lit - My Last Short Story Reading of the Year

2010-11-28T11:48:00.003Z

COME AND HEAR ME READ MY SHORT STORY, SUICIDAL GIRLFRIEND, THIS FRIDAY, 8PM, RED ROASTER, KEMP TOWN

Expect nothing less than the grittiest writing in town, from the award-winning Grit Lit duo.

Performance poet diva and writer Akila, published in True Tales of Mixed Heritage Experiences (Penguin), When Black Is Red (Peeple Tree), reads from a new collection of stories, Wherever You Find Us.

John O’Donoghue with an extract from Sectioned: A Life Interrupted (John Murray) which won this year’s Mind Book of the Year award.

Louise Halvardsson, who won the Young Adult Fiction newcomer award in her native Sweden in 2007, reading her surreal shorty story Suicidal Girlfriends.

London based writer, Dan Holloway from underground writers’ collective Year Zero, reading a truly gritty short from his Razorblades anthology.

Erinna Mettler, up and coming Brighton writer reading Underneath, a short story about relationships and vintage underwear…

Australian writer, Rob Paraman, with a hilarious recollection of the Christmas morning when he got a Batman costume… as did half the kids in his neighbourhood.

And your hosts:

Amy Riley, journalist (Trash Menagerie, K-Mag) and short story writer (Queenspark), reading an extract from her novel in progress.

Tim Lay, award winning novelist whose new book Nibs: A Collection of Short Stories is now available from Callio Press, reading a short story set in the wild west (Devon!) during the free party years of the early 90′s.

Advanced tickets on sale NOW: http://gritlit4.eventbrite.com or 5 pounds on door. Licensed bar, best coffee & hot chocolate in town, cabaret style night.

Storyville - Women Writers Festival

2010-11-24T19:44:00.014Z

One of the most exciting things I know is to meet published writers that I like. It’s almost like going to a gig, seeing a band you’re into.

If I could have afforded the money and the time I would have gone to all the talks in the Storyville festival at Pavilion Theatre, but going to three was good enough.

First up was the New Voices session with Emma Henderson, Justine Kilkerr and Emily Mackie. I’d only read Justine’s novel Advice for Strays before (a very unusual novel about depression and imaginary friends), but was very impressed with the other writers as well.

So impressed with Emily Mackie’s And this is true that I had to buy it. The story is about a boy who’s spent basically his whole life travelling round with his writer father in a van, but everything changes when one night the boy kisses his father … You’d think that the incestuous theme would be very disturbing, but he way Emily handles the subject, writing from the boy Nevis’s point of view is fantastic.

When asked how they got published all the debut novelists had similar stories: they’d done and MA in creative writing and met their agents thanks to contacts/events through their universities. Although Emma won a short story competition (yes it’s still worth writing short stories!) and was contacted by an agent because of that.

The second talk I went to was The Music of Chance with Catherine O’Flynn and Lois Walden. Catherine won the Costa book award for her debut What was Lost. She is fascinated by the mundane, and as well as losing people she also writes about the loss of certain aspects of a city. In the end she told us about the long way to getting published. She had fifteen agents completely ignoring her (what’s worse is that she lived in Spain at the time and spent a fortune on posting her manuscripts.) In the end she contacted a small local Birmingham publisher and the rest is history.

Lois also had a long route to publishing. She’s got her background in the music business, but finding an agent wasn’t easier because of it. One agency was interested, but held on to her script for eight months, with nothing happening. In the end it was a friend of a friend who introduced her to an agent … What impressed me with Lois’s writing was that she was very aware of rhythm and her language felt very musical thanks to her musical background.

The last talk I went to was the best. I had a seat in the front row, wriggling nervously on my seat, waiting for Ali Smith to enter the stage … She’s one of the best writers I know. Reading her makes me smile, think and be happy to be alive. There’s something magical about her way with language, the flow and the way every single word fits. I asked her about this. She revealed that seldom did a short story come out in one sitting. She edits and edits and then edits some more. First by page, then by paragraph, then my sentence, then word by word.

Ali was very keen to discuss her writing with the audience and I was surprised that she found it so hard to write short stories, so hard that in fact she once wrote a story called Last, promising herself never to write a short story again … But of course she has. It was also very encouraging to hear that whilst Ali is very disciplined, she’s also very lazy, but is okay with that … To do nothing is also part of writing.

If you’ve followed my blog you know that I’m having a writing block/break at the moment … However something clicked in my brain during the first talk on the Saturday. All of a sudden I had this burning urge to get my notepad out of my handbag and put some words down, and so I did … Since Saturday I’ve written quite a lot, nothing finished and nothing sensible, but at least I’ve put words down, words that form sentences, sentences that forms paragraph, that forms pages …

Also. An agent who has read Replacing Angel says that some aspects of my novel works, other aspects don’t. I’m not hoping too much, but at least we’re going to meet up and have a talk about it soon …

I might submit a working aspect of my novel to Sussex Writers Award. They only want 1500 words, plus a 500 words synopsis. Deadline is 1 Dec.

Another competition coming up is The Writer’s Retreat Competition, organised by Myriad Editions and West Dean College.

Clowntown

2010-11-22T16:46:00.005Z

The Short Story evening at New Venture Theatre Friday went really quickly. You'd think that you'd feel exhausted after hearing nine stories, but I wanted more! Although it was nice to have time to catch up with people in the bar after.

It adds to the entertainment factor that actors are reading out the stories submitted by writers. Gayle Dudley who read my story Clowntown was brilliant and made the story more justice than I could've done myself, putting on a very creepy low clown voice.
I got the inspiration for Clowntown when I was in Ireland and came across a tattoo shop in Ennis called Clowntown. Also James Burt had challenged me to write a story about a clown ... His device is to add a clown to your writing whenever you get stuck ...

This is the beginning of Clowntown:
"Penny didn’t look happy when I turned up at her doorstep after dark. It wasn’t just that I was late and the food had gone cold – I’d brought a clown with me."

Other highlights of the night was the host Sarah Charsley's story Ghost Sex (the title says it all!), and Louise Hume's story about a woman who preferred a house to a man. Needles to say the theme for the evening was Into the Dark.

Short Story Night at New Venture Theatre

2010-11-18T21:39:00.003Z

Tomorrow, Friday 19 Nov, my short story, CLOWNTOWN
will be read out by an actor at New Venture Theatre
at the Into the Dark Event. 7.45pm

Ace Stories

2010-11-15T19:36:00.013Z

Ace Stories (former Tight Lip) is one of my favourite literary events in Brighton. Through the years I've seen and heard some great writers read, among others Joolz Denby, Amanda Smyth and Cathi Unsworth. Usually the night is headlined by a big name and supported by two local authors. At the end the audience get treated to musical entertainment. The organiser and curator Jay Clifton is very professional and takes his time to interview the headlining author as well as asking the support acts why they write. (And believe it or not - all writers get paid!) Best of all there's also a book/film raffle included in the ticket price. The venue Hotel Pelirocco is an excellent choice and adds to the atmosphere, especially as there's a two for one deal on cocktails. It was a great honour to be invited to read at the last Ace Stories for this season.

I'm reading my short story The Party is Over about two teenage girls coming home after a party where they met their big rockstar idol. I also promoted by Swedish novel, Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd which was the right thing to do as there was a Swedish woman in the audience who bought it! Later I was approached by people from Kingston University who might set up another reading for me. Very exciting!

Jeff Sheppard is reading a few poems from his audio collection Autism and the Migration of Birds, and to my amazement he also read from a book that he had published when he was sixteen ...

James Miller with his latest novel Sunshine State

Kristin McClement is finishing a great evening off

MORE READINGS COMING UP - CLICK HERE

PÅ SVENSKA

Reading at Ace Stories

2010-11-13T20:26:00.004Z

Come and listen to me read my short story, THE PARTY IS OVER.

Improvised Music & Spoken Word Workshop

2010-11-08T18:00:00.005Z

Saturday I went to an improvised music & spoken word workshop (organised by poet Tom Cunliffe at the Open House Pub) with an open mind. When I signed up for it a few months ago I thought it sounded cool to improvise words to music. The reality of it was more than cool.

The Safehouse Collective is a group that meets regularly to improvise music and some of the members are also part of a band called 4thirtythree that play live gigs and record albums - all improvised.

Anything can happen and that's what I love about it. The musicians not only use instruments; they pick up brushes, chairs, glasses - anything in the room - to make sound effects. In the workshop the poets were welcome to join in with any words they felt like using. Some used lines from already existing poems, while others made the words up on the spot.

I got a line in my head "I have ice cream in my head, melting in my ears" literally ten seconds before going on stage and later on while I was tuning into the music "my head was falling off." A liberating feeling as I'm a person who normally learn my poems by heart and keep rehearsing ...

You always have a Choice ...

2010-11-04T22:08:00.007Z

Today I was in an apathetic mood, feeling a bit emotional and lost.

These were my choices for the evening: (in no particular order)
*go to the Hammer & Tongue Poetry Slam
*stay in, being miserable, feeling sorry for myself, thinking too much
*return a missed call from an ex-lover
*edit/re-write a short story on the theme of slugs

I should have a competition and let you guess which option I went for, but as I don't have any good prices to offer, I'll reveal that I went for the slug story option ...

I'm still feeling a bit blocked when it comes to writing, but after venting my misery to a few loving writing friends (you know who you are) I decided that I don't have a block - I'm having a break.

Having a break means that I don't have to write, but I can if I want to. And tonight I felt inspired to re-write my short story THE SNAIL HOUSE that originally was on the theme of Hope&Faith for the next Liar's League Event in London. But at the time of writing I drifted a bit from the theme and started to write about snails, and after feedback from Miriam I changed the snails to slugs ...

I've had a great night. Learning about slugs. Listening to The Smiths ("I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour But heaven knows I'm miserable now.") Eating jaffa cakes (the most healthy option when it comes to biscuits apparently*), drinking red wine (good for the heart) and actually writing. I've killed a few darlings. I've added a few new darlings. I will submit the story to Liar's League, even if I've gone off the theme slightly ...

Thanks also to Tim and Chris for feedback. Having someone read your work and making comments about it (positive and negative) is a reason for living.

*don't know if 8 is a good number though ...

Writer's Block.

2010-10-29T11:36:00.005+01:00

No, this is not an advert for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) It's an advert for me and my pathetic Writer's Block. A lot of writers say that writer's block is just a myth, that if you're a writer you just write. You have good work days and bad work days just like everyone else.

But what if you have two bad weeks? I've lost my motivation and inspiration. Usually I write every morning between 9 and 12 no matter what. Some of those mornings I write pages and pages and am annoyed when my alarm goes off, and I have to go to my other job at the library. Some of those mornings I stare at the clock and write about two sentences and make about twenty-two mugs of tea.

It's just that for the past two weeks I haven't even felt like sitting in front of my screen. My bed has been a more tempting place. The pub has been a more tempting place. My friends houses have been more tempting places. I've distracted myself.

When I visit schools and libraries to talk about my writing I often get the question:
Do you get writer's block and what do you do about it?
Usually I answer that luckily it doesn't happen very often and if it happens I go for long walks and read, and trust that my lust will come back. It has never happened before that my motivation and inspiration hasn't come back. Two weeks is not that long really.

Like with other problems the best thing is to find out where they come from. Why do I feel blocked? The answer is obvious: stress in my life. Uncertainty about where I live, missing my Ex (even if we separated two years ago), waiting for an agent to take me on. If other people have stress in their life I always say: Write about it. So maybe I should follow my own advice. But when I pick up my pen all I want to write is SHIT. And when I sit in front of the computer all I want to do is to spy on people on Facebook. Some people say they can only write when they are depressed. I can only write when I'm happy.

I do a bit of journal writing, which helps. But I don't have my usual flow. Maybe I have to follow my other bit of advice: do it anyway. Even if I just write SHIT SHIT SHIT for a hundred pages I'm still writing. And I have a list in the back of my journal with ideas I've collected. I could just pick one of those ideas and write and see where it takes me. I could, but don't really feel like it.

At least I edited a story today. The Snail House on the theme Hope & Faith for Liar's League.

October

2010-10-25T09:53:00.004+01:00

When I have no inspiration and motivation I turn to nature, trusting my spark will return just like the seasons do ...

Short Story published in Scribble

2010-10-17T21:22:00.006+01:00

My short story, The Butter Dish, will be published in the Scribble Magazine!!! (It's not yet confirmed which issue.)

What inspired me to write the story was buying a butter dish in a charity shop in a moment of a nostalgia ... (I didn't even eat "real" butter at the time). Buying the totally wrong birthday present for a friend's daughter (not a butter dish) was another inspiration. Tim - a writer friend - said he admired my ability to find inspiration in every day life. Well, write what you know as they say ... But the story is not really about butter dishes and birthday presents. It's more about being bitter ... I thought about calling the story The Bitter Dish at one stage ...

Thanks to Brian M and Tim P for feedback. And to Rachel for some nice comments.

Who the f*** is Kitty?

2010-10-15T21:37:00.009+01:00

"Knutte", a punk guy I was in love with (unhappily) when I was fifteen, told me he refused to wear advertising. I wonder if he's escaped Kitty. Even I own a pair of Hello Kitty socks. (A birthday present from my mum). But I do wonder. Who the f*** is Kitty?

In almost every shop I've been lately there are clothes, wallets, pens etc. with the Hello Kitty logo. What worries me is that people just buy these items because they are available. What if Kitty is a murderer? Luckily she isn't, but I had to google her to find out what she's all about. A Japanese animation. Fair enough. I doubt though that most people who wear Hello Kitty T-shirts/socks/knickers or write with a Hello Kitty pen have ever seen an episode of the animation.

This got me thinking. I could probably attract people to buy my novel, Punkindustriell hårdrockare med attityd, by producing products with the book logo. It was actually my brother's idea with the top (the image on the top is the same as my book cover). I only had two of them especially made to wear when I go to book fairs etc. But every time I wear the top someone asks me where they can buy it. It would be free advertising for me.

The only downside is that I don't own the copy right of the image. It belongs to the designer Ida Branzell Rosén and I can't thank her enough for making such a brilliant image. It would be weird if people walked about with the image of my book cover and not even knowing where the image came from ... So next time you buy a Hello Kitty T-shirt think about if you really want to be a walking advertisement for something you're not passionate about. (Apologies to all true Hello Kitty fans.)

One Sentence at a Time

2010-10-11T10:39:00.008+01:00

*I bounce down the street, knowing I'll never go to Peter's flat again.

*'If you fall in love with me, you're going to regret it,' she said.

*I only wear false teeth on a Saturday.

*A fortune teller once told me that I'd die on my 35th birthday, but it would be a good thing.

*We were finally on the road with our thumbs up in the air.

Above are a few of the opening lines I generated at the One Sentence at a Time workshop, curated by James Burt and Ellen de Vries, as part of Brighton Creative Writing Sessions. I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday than to be creative together with other people. And James and Ellen have an ability to trick you into working by playing ...

To spark the imagination Love Heart-sweets, Miracle Fish and words on pieces of paper were passed around. And if you were really stuck you could stick your hands in Ellen's magic box ...

Before the first break the focus was just on writing opening lines for short stories or novels. After that we carried on writing opening paragraphs, and then we were encouraged to build on some of these paragraphs. Everybody read out three paragraphs and the other participants voted for the one they wanted to be developed. By the end of the workshop a few of us had more or less completed stories or at least a big chunk of material to carry on working at.

I felt so inspired that I wanted to go home and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening/night writing and was annoyed that I had other plans ... (Even if the party at Zu Studios in Lewes also was a good source for inspiration.)

It's amazing how people's imagination works. The oldest participant in the workshop wrote a story about bondage pets, a very sweet guy wrote a story about a sex addict politician and one girl wrote about nuns having a fight. And I got very inspired by someone else's opening line:

'The prints of Mary were still fresh on the snow.'

What I liked best about the workshop was the playful atmosphere. Once we stopped just to pop a party popper. James said Herman Melville used to do this when he felt stuck in his writing ... Whether that's true is up to you ... What is true though is that whenever you're stuck throw in a clown in the story and see what happens.

Good news is that there are more workshops and happenings planned. I think this is the way forward for writing workshops. Instead of "learning the craft" these sessions are about letting go and setting yourself free and let the words flow. Passion, inspiration and imagination is sometimes more important than style.

TO FIND OUT MORE AND BOOK A PLACE CLICK HERE

20 Essential Works of Feminist Fiction

2010-10-11T10:02:00.004+01:00

Following on from previous blog post about Fay Weldon, I received an email from a reader with a link to a blog that lists 20 novels by women that is essential reading. Among them are already a few of my favourite books: Cat's eye by Margaret Atwood, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Fear of Flying by Erica Jong.

HAVE A LOOK AT THE LIST HERE

Which books are your favourite books by women? Which books would you add to the list?

A male friend recently sent me a list of 40 novels he'd recommend. Of those 40 novels only 3 were written by women ... (I don't blame you Brian, if I was to send you a list I'd probably recommend 37 women and 3 men ...)

Any other thoughts on this? Do women prefer to read books written by women and do men prefer to read books written by men? It's more common that women read books by both male and female authors whilst some men wouldn't touch a book written by a woman ... Why is that? Sometimes I wish all writers would just use their initials like M.J. Hyland and A.L. Kennedy, and that no information about them was available on the book jacket.

I think about 75% of the books I read are written by women, maybe because I find it easier to identify myself with female writers and their experience. I'm still in the stage of life when I'm trying to find out who the hell I am and then it helps reading books written by women about women. Especially young and confused ones... On the other hand lots of female writers use a male protagonist and vice versa.

In November there's a festival in Brighton called Storyville - Women Writers Festival. Why do we still need these divisions? Do these festivals highlight women or do they make it more visible that female writing is a minority? How many men will attend the festival?