Love Craft
It's been...what? A month, since I last posted? I feel awful. I don't know why I stopped, really. I had things going on. A family funeral, which threatened to turn ugly. Family members who needed support. Threatened reshuffles at work. To be honest, though, I normally write through things like that. The truth is, I've become bad, lately, at getting out of bed in the morning. I found myself with time to write only one thing, and so I would turn to my writing project rather than this blog. I hope you understand.
Even then, though, the word writing needs qualifying, because a lot of the time I was looking at the blank page. I dabbled at this and that, two or three ideas. Straining for a particular story idea which would accomodate my shopping list of things I wanted to include. When will I ever learn? Shopping lists are bad for my writing. I put things down like "sympathetic hero" or "set outdoors", and immediately dismiss perfectly good story ideas with unsympathetic heroes, etc. The idea is king.
What snapped me out of this was, first of all a short story competition with a short deadline. I hurriedly wrote something for that. Then, one of my writers group put me onto a website which is looking for horror fiction, Burial Day ( http://www.burialday.com/ ). They like H.P. Lovecraft but they don't want science fiction. Which threw me. I started rereading the Penguin Modern Classics The Call Of Cthulu, and came up with a sort of lovecraftian idea. And that is what I have been beavering away at for the last week or so.
I had to stop. I don't think I can write like Lovecraft. I enjoy reading him, but his work- at least in The Call Of Cthulu- is borderline science fiction, and I haven't got that sort of mind. So I'm back to square one.
I took part in a "story slam" during my absence. For a short story competition. But you had to read it aloud. It was in a library, after closing time, and they'd set up a microphone with speakers. I imagined a room full of ranting poets, borderline thespians. I don't like reading aloud- I don't like the sound of my own voice. I wish you could change your voice the way you can change chimes on a doorbell. I'd have Ian Dury's voice.
The people, though, were friendly, middle-aged Guardian reader-types, and they made me welcome. You had to write a story in 200 words, and I'd chosen, again, to write a horror. I couldn't look over the microphone as I read. I got breathless, but somehow or other I got through it. Incredibly, they liked it; and I had to repeat my performance again, because it ended up as a tie-break between four of us. I don't know; joint fourth in a story slam in a library in South London: I feel flushed with success.
The funeral was unnecessarily tense. A great aunt who'd died leaving all her property to her niece, whom she'd been close to. The nephew, her brother, tearing his hair out trying to organize it all. And their other brother trying to contest the will. Relatives were flying over from the USA. An almost farcical attempt to get everyone to meet up in the cemetery car park, involving calls on mobile phones.
On top of that, the great aunt had been an atheist who wanted no flowers or music. A cremation, without any words of comfort. There was no wake afterwards. Relatives air-kissed each other, then gathered in their collective political groups to discuss tactics. Finally, they all clambered into their cars and drove off, and the relief was palpable. The English way of death. Although it wasn't the worst funeral I'd ever been to. That had been for an old lady whose two surviving sons hated each other. Afterwards, we convened to a pub where one son put Ricky Martin's Living La Vide Loco on the jukebox.
I'm not going to start any new projects for a while. Instead, I might see if I can place the stories I've already written with Burial Day, Weird Tales (another magazine I've recently heard about- http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/ ), Dark Tales, Graveyard Rendezvous, Trembles, Writers' Forum, Microhorror.
In fact, lately I've been wondering whether I should attempt to write something other than horror. Something more honest. A non-genre story, or a comedy. A novel. I feel vaguely embarrassed when I introduce one of my stories as horror fiction; or when somebody asks me what I'm reading, expecting it to be a Nabokov or a Hanif Kureshi, and I have to ruefully admit it's a Sheridan Le Fanu. Or when, at my writers' group, someone reads out a moving account of a character getting divorced, and I follow it up with a story involving vampires. I don't know. I suppose, too, I want to get closer to my characters. I don't want them to be puppets; but in a genre story, I'm not sure that they can be anything else but puppets, and all you can do is try to hide the strings.
Even then, though, the word writing needs qualifying, because a lot of the time I was looking at the blank page. I dabbled at this and that, two or three ideas. Straining for a particular story idea which would accomodate my shopping list of things I wanted to include. When will I ever learn? Shopping lists are bad for my writing. I put things down like "sympathetic hero" or "set outdoors", and immediately dismiss perfectly good story ideas with unsympathetic heroes, etc. The idea is king.
What snapped me out of this was, first of all a short story competition with a short deadline. I hurriedly wrote something for that. Then, one of my writers group put me onto a website which is looking for horror fiction, Burial Day ( http://www.burialday.com/ ). They like H.P. Lovecraft but they don't want science fiction. Which threw me. I started rereading the Penguin Modern Classics The Call Of Cthulu, and came up with a sort of lovecraftian idea. And that is what I have been beavering away at for the last week or so.
I had to stop. I don't think I can write like Lovecraft. I enjoy reading him, but his work- at least in The Call Of Cthulu- is borderline science fiction, and I haven't got that sort of mind. So I'm back to square one.
I took part in a "story slam" during my absence. For a short story competition. But you had to read it aloud. It was in a library, after closing time, and they'd set up a microphone with speakers. I imagined a room full of ranting poets, borderline thespians. I don't like reading aloud- I don't like the sound of my own voice. I wish you could change your voice the way you can change chimes on a doorbell. I'd have Ian Dury's voice.
The people, though, were friendly, middle-aged Guardian reader-types, and they made me welcome. You had to write a story in 200 words, and I'd chosen, again, to write a horror. I couldn't look over the microphone as I read. I got breathless, but somehow or other I got through it. Incredibly, they liked it; and I had to repeat my performance again, because it ended up as a tie-break between four of us. I don't know; joint fourth in a story slam in a library in South London: I feel flushed with success.
The funeral was unnecessarily tense. A great aunt who'd died leaving all her property to her niece, whom she'd been close to. The nephew, her brother, tearing his hair out trying to organize it all. And their other brother trying to contest the will. Relatives were flying over from the USA. An almost farcical attempt to get everyone to meet up in the cemetery car park, involving calls on mobile phones.
On top of that, the great aunt had been an atheist who wanted no flowers or music. A cremation, without any words of comfort. There was no wake afterwards. Relatives air-kissed each other, then gathered in their collective political groups to discuss tactics. Finally, they all clambered into their cars and drove off, and the relief was palpable. The English way of death. Although it wasn't the worst funeral I'd ever been to. That had been for an old lady whose two surviving sons hated each other. Afterwards, we convened to a pub where one son put Ricky Martin's Living La Vide Loco on the jukebox.
I'm not going to start any new projects for a while. Instead, I might see if I can place the stories I've already written with Burial Day, Weird Tales (another magazine I've recently heard about- http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/ ), Dark Tales, Graveyard Rendezvous, Trembles, Writers' Forum, Microhorror.
In fact, lately I've been wondering whether I should attempt to write something other than horror. Something more honest. A non-genre story, or a comedy. A novel. I feel vaguely embarrassed when I introduce one of my stories as horror fiction; or when somebody asks me what I'm reading, expecting it to be a Nabokov or a Hanif Kureshi, and I have to ruefully admit it's a Sheridan Le Fanu. Or when, at my writers' group, someone reads out a moving account of a character getting divorced, and I follow it up with a story involving vampires. I don't know. I suppose, too, I want to get closer to my characters. I don't want them to be puppets; but in a genre story, I'm not sure that they can be anything else but puppets, and all you can do is try to hide the strings.
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