Man who talks

I can't locate a post thanking The Lonely Crowd for including my story "Man Who Talks to Books" in their first issue, back in 2015. There's a preview of it here. Belated and sincere thanks to Editor John Lavin.

The lonely crowd

I'm grateful to Valerie Sirr for including my story "Katherine Mansfield's Sheets" in her guest editor issue #7 of The Lonely Crowd. And thanks to John Lavin.

Here's a taster: 'Out on the lake a black swan swims into view between the two buoys measuring Pupuke’s diameter.' - 'Katherine Mansfield's Sheets'

Back trying

I have a story, "The Bull Calf", up at The Bactrian Room. I'm sincerely grateful to Editor Russell Streur for hosting my work - his support has been instrumental in getting my writing career off the ground - and The Bactrian Room's a great venue for longer works, and a compliment to The Camel Saloon. Thanks again, Russell.

"The Bull Calf" is a satire inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "The Story of Isaac", and takes its title from the Irvine Leighton poem of the same name. I wrote it almost a year before Gareth Morgan's suggestion to cull cats to save New Zealand's birdlife - predictive text, folks!

Splash fiction

Surreally pleased to have my fiction "Ladder to the Moon" included in Through the Looking Glass. Sparkling thanks to Andrea Quinlan for having me.

Crowd of thoughts

I'm workshopping a story over at Fictionaut.  If you're a member or not, I'd love your input either there or here.

Harbour abridged

Painted from the impression travelling over Auckland Harbour Bridge left on me: after I went to see Emily Perkins and Dylan Horrocks present their graphic conversation "All Hail Ellie". I think the real bridge is much bigger.

First up, huge thanks to Vanessa Gebbie and Zoe King for all their help and advice and for housing my story "Sticking the Needle In", and poem "Words With Charlie", in Tom's Voice. I'm extremely grateful. Vanessa is the author of Words from a Glass Bubble, a collection of very touching stories, as well as Storm Warning, which I'm looking forward to reading (more links on the side bar).

It's been a stressful few weeks: my husband was told his company's Auckland office was closing at the end of November. The options were: move to Wellington or get another job. Now his office is moving down the road and there's a reprieve until April. I've been feeling unsettled.

I was going to post a poem about writing a poem but Dick's posted one which cannot be rivalled. Hats off to you, Dick. So you've got a repeat (no pun intended). I posted this a while ago, then removed it, and now I'm posting it again. I've written a few poems about stuttering. My husband stutters. It's hard to argue with someone when you have to wait for them to insult you. Laughter replaces intended crimes of passion. He doesn't stutter with our toddler, nor with animals (you wouldn't catch me talking to the animals). Thanks to Donna and Thomas who spotted and left lovely comments on this the first time around. And apologies to Lori whom I confused at the time.



Aubade to Balbettare




Refused your words, gum in a torn pocket,

they are caught within the fabric of your

tongue. Confidence droops like a shamed face, set

to counter exasperation. Breathe. More

lowered, your lids self shield. Self-healed you start

again, and, and, and conversation stalls

till late at night, when all but one dear heart

can be heard, you speak into me. Crystals

hang sparkling about my ears: sentences,

uninterrupted, unfinished by choice;

utterances full-stopped by our senses.

Bodily parenthesis given voice

to mock Aurora before she scatters

your eyes with her curse of fettered letters.

Glad I wait or not?

Last post I used this image. I didn't give you the full picture.

I'm glad I waited to post this.

Todays post is bigger than I wanted it to be.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where it seems really, well, real? And then you wake up, at least you think you have, and realise that the dream hasn't ended? And then, hopefully, in the real world and not in some straight to tv horror film, you actually wake up. Phewsh! What a nightmare!

There's nothing worse than doing battle in your dreams only to wake and have to do it all again - and you ever realise how rubbish you are at fighting in dreams? All that pre-experience doesn't do you any good whatsoever because, when the real event happens, all you know how to do is lose - that or wake up, and you can't wake up again if you're already awake.

Still following this?

Well today I woke up...hang on, first things first. Remember that poem I was writing about bugs? Well, I had another bash at it (oh, pardon the pun - I don't often bash the wee beasties, not often, thankfully...for me...). Here's what I have so far, not a draft as such, more a collection of associated phrases indicating something of the movement and imagery I'm interested in pursuing, or was when I wrote it:

Un-homely.

There are three in jars on the sill: insects.
You'd have to hear them to know what they are.
Mute: I have captured their identity
but the fear they infect me with cannot be kept
or even held. Reduced to a pencil tap I collect
their facts, memorise their features through that
which is featureless. You can see
their difference more clearly through the safety
of a jar. They have travelled the equivalent
of miles around a glossy ellipse: each one slips
as it tries to scale the side, all those legs and not
one can get a footing. I've never liked them
and to think I came all this way to find a fear
with features I recognise only by my reaction to them.
Window ajar: I return them outside, lesson learnt,
to butt noisily against the pane (still
ignorant of my sensitivity), or silently wander.

I used Jim's starting point and went from there. What I was aware of, as I wrote this, was that there were several things going on in my thoughts and that it was the clash of these which was one cause in my poem's non-communication. Firstly there was the noise. The first poem I posted was entitled "Cicadas": it isn't merely their buggyness which frightens me, it's their noise, and for several months of the year it is constant through the day. However, at night we have crickets - similar you would think? Yes and no. I like crickets. I can hold crickets in my hand, if I'm feeling brave. I like their sound. I detest cicadas. At some point I'm going to work on the cicadas alone.

Secondly, there was the feeling of alieness - not only of the bugs being alien, but of my feeling alienated in a place where these bugs are at home. I wanted to capture (oops) the feeling I had, often still have, of being not-at-home: an un-homely feeling. This in turn leads on to ideas around heimlich and un-heimlich and touches on the gothic, the surreal and the notion of things which are all too familiar being at the same time most frightening. I want to write a poem with these elements in.

Finally, there is the realisation that different senses react differently to different aspects of buggyness. There's a lot of difference. Certainly it all results in the same fear but the individual elements deserve distinction.

Now, shall I begin at the beginning or at the beginning of the end and work backwards - what works for you?

I woke up with the breeze from the open bedroom window blowing my hair across my cheek. It was just a dream, phewsh, here I am in my own bed with a gentle breeze to cool my perspiring brow. I sat up. My hair was still blowing the same way, only the window wasn't open.

Back a bit. I had gone to bed after checking my blog (for what, blog bugs?) and drifted off into a fitful sleep. I had a dream about a hairy spider - specifically a hairy spider in the bathroom which someone (my husband?) flicked into my face.

I woke up and felt a sense of calm rationality sweep over me when I thought of the last image I had observed closely:

The moth "eyes" - and I laughed at how funny it was that I had cropped off the part which scared me - see the little furry critter in the left hand corner ("LITTLE" USED HERE TO SHRINK FEAR TO MANAGEABLE PROPORTIONS).

I looked at my husband who was looking at me and I saw an expression register on his face which I felt ought to have been on mine. Especially considering the fact that my hair was still travelling towards my eye.

A flush of adrenaline had me flick my hair from my face. I felt nothing. I saw nothing. I did the thing they do in horror films when you shout "NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo"!

I peered over the edge of the bed and saw:

five little diamonds, twinkling in the sky

which one did I pick? Go on, click the link - I dare you.

I want to say that I rushed to grab my trusty bug hoover and carefully disposed of this fellow to hoover up some spiders of its own (white tails are unusual in that they only prey on other spiders - veritable gladiators of the bug world).

The End.

P.S. Sleep tight, mind the bugs don't bite! Oh, and the scale...it's all wrong, the one on my head was much bigger, about five centimeters across, bigger than my eye in any case, or in my head!

Short story newsflash - there's a competition over at the Tomlit blog if you're interested. Get your entries in quick though, deadline is December 14! Think I'm going to enter.

Nude Not Naked Tour

Nuala Ní Chonchúir's here. She's just behind that screen, preparing for her portrait - I'm painting her nude.

You go on and make yourself at home there, Nuala!

While Nuala settles in, here's a little biographical note, just incase you haven't been following my blog or have had your brain misplaced in a peat bog for the last goodness knows how long, and you're now wondering, "who is this fabled Nuala"?

Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in County Galway, Ireland. Her third short fiction collection Nude will be published by Salt in September 2009. She has poems and an essay in The Watchful Heart – A New Generation of Irish Poets, edited by Joan McBreen (Salmon, 2009). Nuala was chosen by The Irish Times as a writer to watch in 2009; she has won many short fiction prizes including the Cúirt New Writing Prize, RTÉ radio’s Francis MacManus Award, the inaugural Jonathan Swift Award and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She was recently shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature and she was one of four winners of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection competition. Her pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car will be published by Templar in November. Website: http://www.nualanichonchuir.com/

Looks like we're almost ready to get started. I've got my brushes, my paints, tea and biscuits.

Now, don't be alarmed by the size of my easel!
Portrait of this artist looking very sleep deprived and in need of make-up, photoshop, or editing out altogether, and staring oddly just a little bit too close to the camera. I have such lovely eyebrows - what a shame they're hiding.

Regular followers may remember I offered a little challenge for one of you to come up with a question for Nuala, in exchange for a little blog showcasing. And the lucky winner was (is), Lori Tiron-Pandit. Lori is here now - lovely hand shaking ladies - to ask Nuala her question first. So let's begin.

Lori: "You write both poetry and fiction with success. What is the process of choosing to manifest a thought as either a poem or a short story?"

Nuala: Thanks for your question, Lori. It’s a hard one to answer but I’ll do my best. In a sense there is no conscious choice; something occurs to me and I know by the shape or feel of it whether it’s story or poem material.

Story is more complex because there are characters, scene-setting, the ‘what-happens’ – which is akin to plot – etc etc to think about. I don’t start out with a plan or an idea as such, usually a story starts as a meeting of character, situation and atmosphere in my head (very difficult to describe! John Banville called it a ‘mood’ once). That all launches forward from an opening sentence that may have been swirling in my brain for weeks. My fiction is generally based on made-up events that resemble the truth, though sometimes I’ll use a real life event from the media or history to base my fiction on. There’s a story in Nude called ‘An Amarna Princess Up North’ which is my imagined version of a real-life forger’s life; I changed the names and got inside his head.

My poetry then is normally either very personal – based on my life and events in it. Or it’ll be a comment on other women’s lives and things they’ve gone through like domestic violence or anorexia; things I haven’t experienced but I feel the need to highlight. I also write historical narrative poems based on women I admire, like Joan of Arc. Actually I wrote a story about a different aspect of her life too which is on the net at Indieoma. http://indieoma.com/

Rachel: There is the feeling, as the reader of Nude, of not being a reader at all, in the sense that we are not spectators but are brought to take part in the events; almost as if we can intervene at any moment, or that a character may pose a question to us; and I notice that you have used (with success, more so in ‘Unmothered’, I think) that uncommonest of narrative forms, second person narration, and I wondered if this, and your employment of first person narration, was a deliberate means to make the reader feel that the stories are not escapes at all, but to make the reader feel the same need to escape as the characters?

Nuala: I’m glad that you were so lost in the stories that you felt a part of them, that the characters seemed real. It’s so hard to be objective about your own work and you never know if it’s believable. I don’t write with anything in mind other than telling a story to myself, so I never wonder what readers will think as I write. I only wonder about people getting it after it’s been published.

As for 1st or 2nd person being deliberate choices, they aren’t; I just find 1st person the best way to tell stories. I have difficulties with 3rd person because I feel too far away from what’s happening; it feels clunky and frequently doesn’t lift off the page for me. I love creating a voice and getting inside the mind of a character.

Unusual it may be, but I find 2nd person oddly comfortable. I have to stop myself from using it often because I seem to naturally go there when I start writing. I think it’s a very Irish way to tell a story – sort of intimate but distant too.

One of my favourite books of all-time is Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place, so maybe I gleaned a love of 2nd person from that. The novel I have written is in the 2nd person and some of the publishers who have read it (and rejected it!) have had a problem with that voice. But if it’s good enough for Edna O’Brien and Jay McInerney...

Rachel: The title of your collection of short fiction is, obviously, Nude, and nudes do feature, in some way, in each of the stories within this collection, but I was struck by the notion of reality as the character being undressed, and that your fiction was, in essence, peeling back the filth, the commonplace, the ordinariness of real life to reveal the art of life, and I wondered how much you consider yourself to be undressing reality, as opposed to clothing it with art; which leads me to ask how much do you consider yourself to have chosen characters who are overlooked?

Nuala: I think so much of peoples’ lives are about secrets – most people won’t share the detritus of their minds with others for fear of being exposed. One of the great things about fiction is, as you so wonderfully put it, the undressing of those secrets and the sneak-peak into privacy and personal truths. We all have an image of ourselves and other people’s image of us is often quite different and in stories, as a writer, you get to expose and explore people’s foibles and weirdnesses. I love that. I also love fiction that rings true and I hope that no matter how weird the situation I present in a story, that there is a dose of reality and truth in it.

As a reader, I am not keen on reading about ordinary, hum-drum lives and so as a writer, I prefer to write about odd-balls and loners – they have more interesting internal lives. Frank O’Connor famously wrote about the short story being peopled by the lonely and I would agree with that. Most of the characters in Nude are yearning for something or someone to make them feel less alone.

Thank you, Nuala, for such detailed and insightful answers, and for choosing to stop off here in New Zealand first. No peeking, I've got a few finishing touches to make first.

Thanks a million Rachel for hosting me at Snow Like Thought on my Nude not Naked Tour and for very interesting questions. I’m starting and ending my virtual tour in the Antipodes – the last stop on the 3rd November is at Australian author Sylvia Petter’s blog, Merc’s World: http://mercsworld.blogspot.com/

Next week, on the 8th of September, I’ll be at fellow Salt authors Tania Hershman’s blog TaniaWrites: http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/

My thanks, also, to Lori, whose blog I will be showcasing soon.

Finally, Nuala, thank you for posing. I think we're all done here now, would you like to see your portrait?

Sorry, did you think I was painting Nuala......? Oh, I meant her book of short fiction, Nude! Her Nude! Words, eh? Slippery as paint.

Re:collection

I found a stack of sketches, all near identical, each figure having taken mere moments to translate. I like the messiness of the whole thing. All of it. Everything. Life. Don't tidy me; don't edit me into conformity and I can be deliciously succinct.

Give me an old body any day

with breasts comfy as cats, skin

that wants to touch itself.

Young bodies are regular, angular or thin,

each appendage trying to leap,

perpendicular, as far away from its host; each

bump a fleshy beast as obstructive,

as appealing, as short-shelved as a peach.

Not long to go now until Nuala Ní Chonchúir touches down, on the first of September, to talk about her ravishing book of short fiction, Nude. And now I want to congratulate her on her genius for choosing a title that would make headlines this week for being in a tug of war between two celebrities - what great publicity! - And she isn't even married to Henry DeTamble!

I'm still averaging a short story a day, too. Got that collection collected! Now, what to do with it?

It could be mist

When I read one of the stories in Nude I thought of this pastel sketch and smiled. I like it because the colours are soft, much as pastels and bottoms should be, I think.

It's time for another nude: not the Nude, that's coming up on the first of September - I'm priming my canvas as I type (I should add ambidextrousness to my list of talents, except that it's made up and I'm being daft) - this nude is ten years old and doesn't look a day over fifty!

She's lovely and blurry and fuzzled at the edges: like mist - a pastel mist.

All this getting ready to interview Nuala Ní Chonchúir has been extremely beneficial to my creativity. I've written five short stories over the last seven days ( I can't call it a week because it didn't begin on a Monday, nor end on Sunday), and they're all going in my almost complete collection. I like to imagine I have a publishing deal and all the trimmings, there's no point being a pessimist is there? Or a pastelmist. Perhaps I am ever so slightly losing the plot, but it will all come out in the wash. Speaking of...I'd better get these brushes washed!

Nude Zealand

I've got some exciting news, I won't beat about the easel, I'll lay it bare...

...Nuala Ní Chonchúir is coming to New Zealand to Kick off her world tour to promote her new book of short fiction Nude...and the best bit...she's starting the tour here!

That's right, I'm going to be hosting the first stop off! How cool is this?!

(I've only ever hosted a sheep tick before so I hope I can pull this off!)

And that's where I need you, dear bloggers. I'm going to be interviewing Nuala (AKA WOMEN RULE WRITER), and I thought it might be fun to have a little audience participation.

Interested?

Follow me into my studio and I will elaborate.

By all means take a seat - but not that one! It has wet paint on it. Phewsh!

Oh, just look how the light has illuminated your cheek...I digress...so...here's the thing. I'm going to be asking Nuala some questions and I thought, wow, of all the times I would have loved to ask a 'real' writer some questions, and now I can! And wouldn't it be great to share that feeling?

This is what I'm going to do. I am offering you, dear bloggers, the opportunity to ask Nuala a question of your own. Here's the deal. I get to ask three questions. I'm giving up my third question to one of you, so it had better be a good one.

Rules: it has to be a question about writing or about Nude.

What's in it for you? You mean, that isn't enough? You're a tough bunch to please.

Well, Nude is published by Salt (and is available to buy now - ha), and Salt's website receives '80,000 visits a month...14 million hits a year'.

Uh? Not following?

As a little thank you for hosting Nuala, I get my blog profiled on Salt's website - yup - I get (in theory) 80,000 extra visits to my blog per month (that's 80,006 bloggers in total!) As my reward to you guys for your questions, I will guest profile your blogs, thus sending that extra traffic your way, too.

Now are you interested?

I'll only be asking one of your questions mind, the rest of you will still get profiled for contributing though - that sound fair?

I look forward to writing your portrait!

Think Hemingway

Just a short post today.


How short can a short story be?

I wrote what is my most diminutive story today - 82 words, including the title!


What's the shortest story any of you have ever written and what are your views on this?

And for some wonderful short fiction I suggest you check out:

http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smf/9781844716425.htm

Web feat

Today I made my first submission to a webzine, recommended to me by none other than Women Rule Writer - see fave blogs over there on the right - Nuala Ní Chonchúir :

http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/

and you wouldn't believe how difficult I made it for myself.

I have about twenty short stories to choose from, but could I choose one to submit?
Nope.
Why?
I have no idea.
All I know is I wanted the story, this story, my story, to epitomise me and what is special, different, me, about my writing.

They all capture different facets of what I think is good about my writing, but this is my first public foray with a short story (aside from uni critiques, and my now famous family story gifts), and I wanted it to be special.

So I gave the submission a story for itself. I'm not sure if this made my writing any better or worse - didn't give myself much time for revision, or that long pause for reflection either - however, when I read it back, out loud a few times, I liked it.

I wrote it pretty quickly, it was just there, waiting to 'pop' out, and it got my heart going writing it, and I always think they're the ones that are the best for me. Over-revision and doubt have ruined many a piece of writing for me. I have dared myself to be less cautious with this; I hope it pays off.

As it has turned out, it is a sort of hybrid magic realist/prose poem/short story - try selling that one to a publisher!

What does it signify?

I wrote a short story this week. I didn't intend to, but I'm not going to say no if one pops into my head and asks politely to be transcribed. The strange thing is, when I read it back, it didn't seem like the same story that had been in my head. Words are like that. Sometimes I think that's the property I like best about them, then, other times, it really bugs me.

It's back to that slippery chain of signification: you know the one? Sure you do. The theory that goes something like, every time you use a word, you move further away from the true meaning of what the thought of the thing was. But we only have the words we have (except I'm working on that), and are limited to a certain extent by them.

So, to explain more (forgive me if you know this already, I majored in soporifics), say you want to describe a thought, and we have a word for it, so you write 'house', only that's not quite what you had in your thought, so you write 'home', only that's not it either, but now you're two words away from what you thought: you're two links down that signification chain.

There is, as there always is, a more technical and accurate explanation. But, if a word never really does capture the meaning of what we mean, what does it matter?

In a week or two I'll go back to my story and one of two things will occur, possibly: either it will seem like a talented literary alien, from the planet Aliens of Literary Talent, has written it - in which case I shall be perplexed yet thrilled - or I will recognise it as a bracelet of my own clumsy making: words slipping down the slurry covered signification chain, and landing at my own hand.

Hullo! Aliens, are you there?

Short thought

The short story has received rather a lot of publicity recently, and I, for one, am glad. I think it is a fantastic medium which suffers - at least it has in the past - from literary snobbery. It is about time it was raised in status to its rightful place. Bring on the short story awards....well, there are two competitions that you, dear readers, may be interested in: the BBC annual short story competition, and the one in my list of fave blogs - over there, on the right.

So, what are you waiting for?

Well, in case you want a little inspiration, here are a few of my favourite short stories to whet your nibs and get those creative juices flowing. In no particular order:

The Bloody Chamber and Peter and the Wolf by Angela Carter, The Dolls House by Katherine Mansfield, The Little Match Girl and The Little Sea Maid by Hans Christian Anderson, Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood, The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy, The Signalman by Charles Dickens, and Mr Loveday's Little Outing by Evelyn Waugh.

Angela Carter's short fiction is so rich I can only read one story in a sitting, and still feel as though I've read a whole novel. She is at her best, for me, when she writes about wolves. She was influenced (see intro by Salman Rushdie in Burning Your Boats) by Shakespeare, and like the Bard, if a thing was worth writing about once it was worth repeating! But she (along with t'old Will - as I affectionately like to refer to him) could certainly pull it off.

Mansfield is at the other end of the spectrum from Carter; her stories are the epitome of reserve and understatement and are as breathtakingly succinct as they are panoramic. Although some of her short fiction is almost novella length, it still leaves me wanting more. I long for the novel length Mansfield, but alas, like Carter, she was cut down in the prime of her story telling prowess. I read somewhere that Mansfield wrote the only fiction that Virginia Woolf was ever jealous of, and it is understandable why. I love the way her metaphors climb out of the pages and grab me. The Dolls House is one of only three short fictions which can make me cry: the other two are by Hans Christian Anderson.

Atwood captures everything that is so perfect about her writing in Bluebeard's Egg. I have to wonder why it takes her so many more pages to say it in a novel. Plus I love anything to do with Bluebeard!

Thomas Hardy was apparently never so happy as when he had written something miserable, so The Withered Arm must have had him jumping for joy and giving high fives to the air! He perfectly captures the real grit and pain behind so many of those beautiful pastoral paintings of rustic idylls. I am blissfully miserable when I read his fiction and his poetry.

Dickens is Dickens! What's not to love? With The Signalman, his writing reminds me of that of his pal, Wilkie Collins - I'm thinking Woman in White here...woooooo - wonderfully atmospheric.

Waugh is the boiled sweet of fiction: his writing will melt like syrup but still manage to slice your tongue with its razor sharp astuteness. Dark and wry, the man was a genius, though in his longer fiction he does, admittedly, become a little tiresome. Reign it in a bit there Waugh!

Hope there's something you like in that little lot!