Farewell to the famous Thermos

It’s been around, that Thermos flask. That’s something my mum would not have imagined when she bought it. For her it was a convenience, something that meant she didn’t have to struggle out of her chair too often for a cup of tea when she was on her own, and breathless, and in pain.

For me, it’s been a convenience of a different kind; a way of scattering my grief and letting it float off with the breeze, by taking her in the flask wherever I need to, to shake out her ashes. So far, it’s accompanied me and Charlotte to Paris, me and Jackie to Basildon, me and a couple of aunts to Hastings and Canvey (rounding off with a lovely night at the theatre; I told you it got around), me and Andrew to Southend, and been my sole companion in Broadstairs and Ramsgate and Poplar.

This year, the third anniversary of her death, I was invited to stay with Charlotte and Dave in the country. It’s become a kind of tradition – by an accident of planning I happened to spend the weekend after my mum’s death with them, and now every year around this time I end up at theirs, eating lovely food, drinking wine and dancing round the kitchen to whatever DJ Dave puts on the decks. This time I did my share of DJing from my iPod, and on Saturday night we danced and laughed and ate and drank. On Sunday, the anniversary itself, we walked for miles in the unexpected sunshine, ending up in a pub. It’s what my mum would have wanted.

And this time, the scattering didn’t seem as necessary. She’s gone where I needed to put her, where she might have wanted to be if ever she’d thought about it or been asked. But of course the scattering has been for my benefit rather than hers, and whilst it hasn’t kept me frozen in grief, clothed in black, wearing a veil and not leaving the house, it does seem like the right time to put the famous Thermos away and think about something more permanent.

My dad’s ashes are buried, unmarked, in a plot in Southend Cemetery, and it seems like a nice place for her to be. I’ve run it past my brother and he agrees that it’s a good idea and doesn’t see why the council would object.  It’s true: how can they refuse? I will cry at them if I have to.

So, all that remains is for me to make some calls, think about what to say on a plaque that will commemorate my dead parents, and shake a few last ashes into that Thermos before it goes away, because, after all, I haven’t stopped travelling yet, and I’d like to have something available should I go somewhere that meant something to her. And besides, there’s no way I’m ever drinking tea out of it.

Very peculiar indeed

It’s brilliant when a story gets a life beyond its initial publication, and I am happy that Matt Haynes and Jude Rogers, the co-founders and editors of Smoke: A London Peculiar, have revamped their website and posted some writing from their archives, along with info about the contributors [yeah, I'm linking to this so you can read me boasting about myself, er, I mean outlining my writing credits, alongside a picture of me taken while drunk in a B+B in Broadstairs. Thank God the fluffy cushion has been cropped out because no one wants to see that.]

My story, ’10.17pm’, which appeared in the last print issue of the magazine, in July 2010, has been included, so it lives on the internet as well as in an actual magazine that you can hold in your hands.

As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, the story was inspired by something that happened on the estate that I grew up on in the 1970s (a council estate, obviously). A kid I knew was covered in petrol and set on fire. It happened in a wooded area between my house and my school, and it has always stayed with me. That kind of thing tends to make a mark.

When I came to write about it, much, much later, I originally planned a story about the boy himself: I wanted to imagine what might have happened to him, how his life might have been affected by this terrible event. But I knew I was more interested in the kids who did it, who covered him in petrol and lit matches. I wondered if they’d gone on to lead lives of criminality and darkness. And then I realised something else: that it might be more interesting to consider that this may have just been something they did, arising out of spite or boredom, and that they had gone on to lead normal lives; or as normal as they could with this shadow darkening their hearts and minds, pushed to the back of memory. Because they surely wouldn’t forget it.

So, I wrote the story from the point of view of one of the boys who did it (I always assumed they were boys). A few years later I took a short story writing course and had to submit two stories. The only two I felt were ready for public consumption were both written from the point of view of men, so at the last minute I changed the male perpetrator to a female one and it gave the story a whole new dimension.That a teenage girl could be behind this terrible deed was of more interest to me, and it enabled me to consider the dynamics of sexual attraction and how they could be utilised.

I’ve also written lately about the process of editing. My writing course had also taught me that it’s best to hook the reader with the first line, instead of meandering into the story as I tended to do, so I also gave it a new opening line, which seemed to shock it into life.

This process of editing, dragging the reader straight into the mind and the memories of the woman who had been behind this event, seemed to improve the story so much that when I submitted it to the notoriously fussy (oh, he just has high standards) co-editor, Matt Haynes, he accepted it with only minimal tinkering. He had this to say about some material in the opening paragraph and his editing of it:

‘I think there were a couple of places where you were selling yourself short by rushing things. Hence the extra paragraph breaks in the opening section, and the repeat of the names in the paragraph about the estate – it just seemed better to slow things down a little. In particular, the “Last time I remember heat like that was ’76″ phrase was rather buried and thrown away in the middle of a paragraph, and I think there was almost a danger of people skimming over it; also, given you’ve mentioned 1976 in the opening line, it seemed odd to introduce it almost as a new topic here – it seemed to miss the point that it’s discussing Spain that’s reminded you of 1976. So, I’ve made it the start of a new paragraph and rejigged the words slightly to emphasise the link between Spanish heat and 1976 heat, which seems to do the trick.’

In reworking and repositioning this short piece of text he clarified something that I’d always felt was slightly off, and in this way helped me to overcome a narrative gap. He also initially questioned some of the psychology of the characters but I felt that there was enough to justify why the gang had done what they had, why they were persuaded by the female character, why the boy had gone with them. I didn’t want to spell everything out and on this he agreed.*  A last query was about the wearing of the Marc Bolan t-shirt and a sentence relating to that, but a minor rewrite from me, based on a suggestion by Matt, allowed that sentence to convey its intended meaning in a clearer way.

As is demanded by the magazine, before submission I’d also changed the location, so that it was set in London, in Herne Hill near the Brockwell Lido. That in itself allowed me to raise the issue of motivation, by referencing those beautiful roads named after Spenser and Shakespeare and Chaucer. Fate had brought poetry vicariously into David McIntyre’s life. It was burned out of him:

‘I can’t remember why we chose David McIntyre. Because he was hot and bored like us? Because he also had parents who didn’t seem bothered that he was out so late? Because he lived in one of the bigger houses in a road named after a poet, before they got turned into flats and bed-sits?’

Anyway, you can read the story here, if you like, and then have a look round the new website.

* In his initial correspondence to me, Matt said: ‘Psychology – with regard to the Bolan top, the phrase “he’d always liked me in that” implies that McIntyre and you had had some sort of relationship, as it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a boy would tell a female classmate. I think a much more casual “he’d once said he liked it” is more believable. Though it also makes me wonder why McIntyre (and Fincher for that matter) is so easily persuaded by you – is there a story there?!?’.

Hmmm, careful readers will note the use of ‘you’ in this paragraph from Matt. Me? Me? It’s fiction. Just because something is in the first person doesn’t mean the narrator is the writer. I never set fire to any kid, you know, not ever.

… and Writing

When typing becomes writing.

It’s all about the editing, of course. As I’ve committed more to my writing over the past few years I’ve got less lazy at that. My method, such as it is, is to get the story down as it comes to me, so there’s a shape, some sense of what’s going on and what’s going to happen;  something to work on.

This is often just typing. Then there’s that moment when typing becomes writing, when your brain engages with your heart to express what you want to say, and you start hitting the keys in such an order that you make better words and phrases, the words and phrases you want to read; the words and phrases that give the characters and the story breath and life.

And lately, it’s really been all about the editing. I recently submitted a story for inclusion in an anthology about the overground line that runs from Crystal Palace to Highbury and Islington. It was an old-ish piece, a kind of ghost story set in Crystal Palace, originally written as a commission for the Cinema for Crystal Palace fundraiser back in October 2010. In order to more closely fit the theme of the anthology (which stated that the story had to have a link to one of the stations, and it would be also better if the writer had a personal relationship to the area) I put my central character on the train, had her wend her lonely way to Highbury and Islington from Crystal Palace, and sent it off.

The response was positive but not without a caveat: ‘not quite there yet but I’d like to use it if you’re willing to work on it’. I was. But this meant editing; and it meant taking into account the opinions and ideas of someone else – a writer, editor and publisher – who saw some aspects of the story differently to me.

Editors can be invaluable of course. Even great, experienced, professional writers have them and their work is changed because of them (Raymond Carver – to whom I am not comparing myself obviously – is a famous and somewhat controversial case). Some people would be horrified at an editor changing a character’s name or changing the whole tone of a piece and I think I probably would, although in some cases this can of course improve a work. But doesn’t it also make it something different to what the author intended, and in doing so make it someone else’s work?

I’m in two minds. An experienced and distanced pair of eyes can see when something you took for granted because it was coming from inside you doesn’t quite work in the world of the story; they can see through the sentence you wanted to keep because it sounded so great that even though it said nothing you couldn’t bear to lose it. None of this affected me in the work I submitted. I was told: ‘I love the way it is written, particularly the descriptions of the pioneer films (and the dealing with being caught in the wrong place in the library), and I believed in the character, but I wanted more meat on the bones.’

And that is my problem. I don’t really do ‘plots’. Most of my stories focus on a specific moment or moments in someone’s life, and can be summed up by ‘man/woman remembers something miserable from childhood’. ‘She Didn’t Believe in Ghosts’ was probably the closest I had ever come to writing a plot of sorts, and now I was being told it wasn’t enough. Suggestions were made: ‘Perhaps other things in that (very convenient, too convenient) trunk could give some clues to what has actually happened.’

I thought. I thought some more. I gave the story to a few friends to read. They all agreed with me that the story and plot couldn’t, and in fact shouldn’t, be explained. The woman ends up finding some men (who have been missing since Victorian times) in an old film. She ends up in the film herself. How do you give a logical explanation for something so illogical?

I developed the idea of the film and her being ‘captured’ in it by prefiguring it a little more, bringing in a bit more film language, emphasising how out of time and out of place she feels (to suggest she has always been lost, ’in the film’ to some extent, identifying with these lost men). There are hints to mental illness, too, which may explain what she sees, what she finds, how she ‘ends up’. I added some material about her feelings when on the train from Crystal Palace to Highbury and Islington to suggest how distanced she feels from other people of her time, thus also linking to how things end for her. I brought in the museum ‘manager’ again to reinforce his role in her fate.

This new material was typed into the version I sent to the publisher. I left it a few days to sink into my brain before going back to it for some editing. It was then that I had to be ruthless, and read the story with someone else’s eyes. In doing this I plucked out a couple of sentences that made no real sense – that were there because I thought they sounded profound, when a deeper and dispassionate look at them showed that they actually meant nothing. Too many words saying too little, distracting from the purpose of the story and the character. I knew what I was getting at, but the metaphors I had used were either too much of a cliche, or completely incomprehensible in their attempt to move away from cliche.

In doing this sort of editing I found what I was trying to say, and new phrases – evoking and developing the sense of dislocation the character feels – made their way into the story.

But I was still left with this sense of not having completely put the meat onto the bones.

Because it’s a ‘ghost story’ of sorts, I was reluctant to ‘explain’ anything in a definite way because I want the reader to be able to interpret the ending in a way that fits with their understanding of the story: metaphysical, metaphorical, the product of delusions, hallucinations, madness borne out of loneliness and feeling out of place and so on. Also, like a lot of stories of this genre, I think things often go unexplained and are often, hopefully, all the creepier for that. I don’t think that anything in the trunk could explain why these men went missing and turned up in a film and why the central character then sees herself there. It’s not a ‘mystery’ in that sense – it’s more metaphysical. That’s how it was intended anyway.

I worried that the publisher’s suggestion about finding clues in the trunk (which isn’t really too convenient as she is ‘led’ there, after all: she ‘trips’ outside the museum, she meets a fake ‘manager’ – a kind of malevolent angel who leads her to her fate – who directs her to the room with the trunks; they are meant to be found by her) indicated that she wanted me to solve a mystery that isn’t the intention of the story.

But ultimately, all I could do was act on suggestions only as far as they served the purpose of what I was trying to do. I read the story again, made a few other minor adjustments to the language, and sent it back, a couple of days before the deadline.

The next day I received this: ‘This is lovely, the atmosphere and sense of being disconnected from life is excellent.’ She definitely wanted to use the story.

But there is also this, and it shows that although the process of writing short stories is a solitary one, the process of developing them for print is more collaborative, and this is something the writer should be grateful for, because it’s all in the interest of improving the story. In this instance, this collaborative process of editing has given a new life to an existing piece: ‘Plot wise it is almost there now. It needs a word or two more here and there, just to make the reactions to the strangeness be “Oh! I wonder…” rather than “Huh?? …”. I’ll make some in-text suggestions if that’s ok.’

It is ok. After all, it’s all about the editing.

‘The Great Big O’ at Stand-up Tragedy

It all started so well. Another older story, but one that obviously stayed in the mind of Katy Darby of Liars’ League. When she was asked to recommend suitable stories for a new event – ones that would suit the tragedy theme – she submitted a range from Liars’ League, including one of mine. The story of a woman who attempts to throw her son off a balcony (ho ho ho), ‘The Great Big O’ was originally read by Libby Edwards in  August 2010 at the ‘Here and Now’ Liars’ League event.

When the story was one of only a few chosen from the Liars’ League archives I was really pleased. I thought it would be good to have the story out there again and great that it would be read by Libby once more.

The event was designed to be a mix of fiction, true stories, cabaret, sketches and songs. All with tragedy as their backdrop. It promised to be eclectic and interesting.

And then it started to go wrong. An inaugural event is always going to have teething troubles and here we go: no rehearsal although we were told we could turn up a bit earlier to talk to the tech guy if we needed to. Well, not much could go wrong with Libby just reading from sheets of paper, could it? Oh, but it could if you discover 30 minutes prior to the event, almost by accident, that if you go over 5 minutes then someone will ring a bell. Yes. Ring a bell. Effectively, Libby would be gonged off after 5 minutes. Now, let me recap: this is the story of a clearly ill, disturbed and abused wife and mother who wants to die without leaving her son at the mercy of his abusive father. So she decides to kill him first. The opening line will give you a taste: ‘When Karen Ward’s son left for school at 9.37 this morning she had already decided that by tea time he would be dead.’ And it gets worse from there. Approximately 5 minutes into this 8-minute story she is detailing the abuse her son has suffered at his father’s hands, and at hers. She is hinting at her own mental illness. This is not the time to ring a frigging bell.

I went all diva. ‘If she’s going to be belled off I’m pulling the story,’ I said, adding, ‘I’m not being a dickhead’ (although I probably was a bit). But really, if you have a 5-minute limit then don’t ask people to submit from an archive where chances are the stories are longer. Or check first. Or tell the author in advance so cuts can be made. Sure, if I had submitted from scratch via the event’s website then I follow their rules. But I didn’t. I was asked. I was submitted via someone else. I was chosen. The 5 minutes was a mystery to me. Luckily the organiser was understanding and accommodating. Not convinced everyone was on the same page I gave the final paragraph to the stage manager so she knew when Libby was heading for the end of the story. I hoped this would keep the bell at bay. But even after me checking with the stage manager, Libby still had to preface her own performance by nipping behind a curtain to tell the woman with the bell about the agreed 8 minutes and so not to ring the bell. And then, and then  – get this – the woman RANG THE BELL (although virtually inaudibly). Shambolic. Libby soldiered on through it, didn’t let it throw her. She gave such a moving performance of the story that it brought tears to my eyes (and it was nothing to do with the other events I’d witnessed that night).

Before and after my story Libby and I sat together at the back, bonding over the events, saying stuff that is best kept for the diary (and you know this blog isn’t a diary), making each other cry with laughter, glad we had pretty much kept the event to ourselves. And I tried to remember my new vow: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

As for the other acts? Suitably tragic. Suitably tragic indeed.

PS: a review has gone up on the SUT website. Here it is; nice isn’t it?

‘Next we had Jacqueline Downs’ The Great Big O performed by Libby Edwards, a tragic story about domestic violence, motherhood, and a sad, mad moment. Moving. Painful. And beautiful. Have a read of it here. This story was sourced from Liars’ League where writers write, actors act and everyone wins. Libby finished telling us the story. The audience clapped.’

Reading…

My friend Ian recently complained that I don’t update this blog enough.* ‘I’m waiting to write something new or read something somewhere,’ I replied, referring to my short stories. He said he thought that by ‘reading’ I would be ‘writing about what you’ve read – the papers and stuff’. He was joking, of course.

But as I recently contributed to For Books’ Sake’s book of the year feature I had to think about what I’ve read this year, and although I still feel a bit guilty that I haven’t delved into a 1000-word history of the military, or something slender on fiscal policy, I haven’t done badly.

When thinking about what I wanted to choose as my favourite book I felt that I should honour the ethos of For Books’ Sake by at least picking something by a woman (even though the non-fiction that’s had the biggest effect on me this year was written by a man**). Likewise, my friend and fellow For Books’ Sake contributor, Amanda, said: ‘I feel like I should choose something by a woman, but my favourite book by a woman this year was a cookery book. That seems a little anti-feminist.’ Then she remembered that she’d read and loved Tina Fey’s autobiography, so she picked that. What she had in store for her accompanying photo still makes me laugh. I hope she gets round to it.

I recently had a conversation with a male friend about how few women authors we read in general and when I tried to list mine for the year I stalled at 5. But a memory less addled with the Norwegian beer that fuelled our conversation reveals that I’ve actually done much better than that, and For Books’ Sake gently jogged my memory:

Aside from Patti Smith’s amazing Just Kids, which I chose for my book of the year, here they are, neurotically and obsessively in order of reading:

Alice Munro: Too Much Happiness.The most recent collection of short stories from one of the modern greats. She writes efficiently and with insight, whether from the point of view of old age or youth, men or women. Some of her stories span decades in the lives of characters in just a few pages, and she is able to tell you who someone is, what they are now, and how they got that way, in witty, moving and incisive prose. One of the stories in particular (Child’s Play; terribly unsubtle title for a beautifully subtle piece of work) affected me on many levels, not least because I’m always fascinated by how the acts we perform or witness as children haunt our adult lives, and this resonates in my own writing.

Sylvia Plath: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Selected Journal Entries. Not a cohesive collection by any means, but there are a couple of stand-out stories, and the journal entries give some fascinating insight into Plath’s mindset. She wasn’t always that cheerful, it seems…

Kate Atkinson: Started Early, Took My Dog. Great title for the 4th Jackson Brodie novel. Not as gripping or heartbreaking as When Will There Be Good News? but still a great read. Atkinson makes a seemingly implausible premise plausible by building a strong central character in the independent heroine, Tracy.

Tina Fey: Bossypants. Very funny, of course, because Fey is the writer behind 30 Rock (sample line: ‘When will science find a cure for a woman’s mouth?’). Surprisingly moving. But she fudges the working mother issue in a way that surprised me. And the cover makes me feel slightly ill.

Lorrie Moore: Anagrams and Selected Stories. Anagrams consists of four stories, each of which takes the same characters in different directions, and it’s an interesting and mostly successful literary game. The Selected Stories are pretty mesmerising. She doesn’t affect me in quite the same way as Munro, but Moore still knows how to cut into contemporary American life to show what it looks like up close. Reading her smart and knowing dissections of relationships at Athens airport in April inspired me to start the story that became ‘Cos You’re Mine.

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin.  I can’t believe I only discovered this book this year. A bible-sized chunk of a novel, the kind of thing that makes you go to bed at 9pm, just so you can read for several hours before sleep. And this I did. I also read it on the train, I read it in the bath, I read it instead of watching my Catch-up TV quota. That’s how much I couldn’t put it down. If I could have read it during office hours I would have done that too. But it’s frowned upon where I work. They prefer you to do your job.

Ali Smith: There But For The. At Clerkenwell Tales in Exmouth Market, Sophie Mayer interviewed Smith, who read from There But For The, before getting Sophie to read some of her own poems. After Sophie introduced me to Smith as ‘a fabulous short story writer’ (still dining out on that one) and Smith asked me what I was reading, we got onto the subject of Margaret Atwood (I’d just read The Blind Assassin). ‘If they have her short stories in this shop now I’ll buy them for you,’ Smith said. I tried to be bashful (‘Oh no, don’t be silly, you don’t have to do that…’). But while I said this I glanced casually over Smith’s shoulder towards the shelf of authors beginning with A. No Atwood short stories. So I didn’t get a free book, but I did buy There But For The, got it signed and had an inspiring conversation with the author. As for the book itself: great. Sparked off by events at a middle-class dinner party when a guest locks himself in a bedroom and refuses to leave, the book is a funny, smart and perceptive mediation on class, memory, history and time. And Smith knows how to wrangle several different voices at once without losing the reader: everyone will bang on about the dinner party scene itself (rightly so) but I found myself bewitched by Anna and Brooke and the way their personalities and experiences are woven into the main story arc. Just lovely.

Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Never seen the film, but knew the gist. Unexpectedly moving and dark and funny. Has more insightful stuff to say about a certain kind of ‘being a woman’ than Caitlin Moran (see below). Thanks Dom, for the recommendation (and the loan).

Caitlin Moran: How to be a Woman. I borrowed this from my friend Lucy for something to read by the pool in Puerta de la Cruz. My own choice (Brave New World) had too much maths in its opening pages and I wanted something lighter. Reading this reminded me of how annoying I used to find Moran when I read her in the music press in the early 1990s. This book made me splutter with indignation and occasional fury at the inconsistency of her arguments, but it did have moments that made me laugh (baby gap, heh heh). Her ‘burlesque is better than stripping’ debate was a naive attempt to explain why it’s ok to enjoy watching women shake their nipple tassles for the boys in some situations but not others (it’s still the dirty mac, brigade, love; it’s just that the macs worn by the burlesque audience are Burberry), and her justification for hiring a female cleaner was asinine (surely it’s ok just to say ‘I have a job. I have two kids. When I’m not working at my job or my kids I don’t have the time or the inclination to clean the toilet. And, more importantly, I’m giving a woman a job’?). But it was refreshing to see someone write so honestly and openly about abortion, masturbation and female pubic hair. No, really, it was. What was missing for me was any indication of how she made the apparently enormous leap from poverty-stricken Wolverhampton child to successful teenage music journalist. She skirts over that, and it might be inspirational to any teenage girl reading the book to know how Moran got where she did from where she came.

Anne Enright: The Gathering. I wanted to like this. I thought I would love it. Instead I found the story predictable, the characters unengaging and the writing uninspiring. That is all.

Diane Middlebrook: Her Husband. I’m ending the year with some non-fiction: an account of the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. It’s too early to say what my overall view will be, but so far it’s pretty interesting and manages to steer clear of too much dry academia. There are analyses of the poems that help to shed light on the work and lives of Plath and Hughes, and help to create an argument around the nature of their marriage.

No women authors lined up for next year as yet. Maybe that’s someone’s way of telling me to stop reading and start writing. Or something.

* This is probably just as well, seeing as how I keep finding grammatical errors in my posts. I think they’ve all been corrected but I assure you I feel nothing but shame. The worst (from November’s Are You Sitting Comfortably?) has now been corrected. I tend to spot them when I see that someone has read a post. I read it again, gasp with horror, think about contacting my friends (because after all, it’s bound to be someone I know) to tell them it’s fixed now, and sigh with relief that I’ve disabled the comments boxes….

** E. L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley. I’m recommending this to so many people, he should give me a cut of the royalties.

‘Cos You’re Mine’ at Are You Sitting Comfortably?

No, you’re not in Groundhog Day. November’s theme was Tricks, so I asked Bernadette how cheeky it would be of me to resubmit this story, previously read as part of the Magic event at the National Theatre in August (I still can’t call it the Royal National Theatre I’m afraid). ‘It’s a different venue and a different crowd’ was my argument.

Which she bought: she* and Gareth read it again and decided to allow it in to Tricks at the Toynbee Studios. And so I pitched up straight after work as usual to get some seats and sneak in some of the free cakes and chip butties before everyone else arrived. I was joined by regular supporters Mandy and Lucy, and we settled in with a bottle of red wine to listen to the stories being read. This is one of the best things about this event: someone else reads so the writers can relax.

As usual there were some great stories – a real mix of the funny and the dark. My own, which I was nervous about (it is inspired by a situation and person that Lucy knows), didn’t make me feel bad this time: listening to Bernadette read it again in the company of a couple of people who know a lot about the situation it’s based on was actually quite a sad and moving experience. It got laughs in the right places (it’s that double buggy line again. But the line that follows it acknowledges how guilty we might feel laughing at it) and I was left just feeling sad about the whole situation. Luckily the nice comments and the extra glass of wine mended that. For a while.

As ever, thanks to Bernadette Russell and Gareth Brierley for decorating the studios with rabbits and dolls and weird little trinkets, for the slide show that nearly blinded Mandy and for helping to create the atmosphere that makes this the best storytelling event I’m involved in.

Now I need to write something new…

 

* This post was written with a hangover but that doesn’t excuse the poor grammar, now corrected. I feel deep, deep shame.

‘Cos You’re Mine’ on Smokebox

Marc Covert, co-editor of Smokebox, recently asked me if I had anything new to submit to plug a gap in the October issue. It just so happens I did – the story read at the National Theatre event in August.

I’ve gone on before about the impetus behind this story, and I have to say I’m a little nervous about going so public with it. I’m not sure I like the idea of fully exposing the ice in the heart that Graham Greene spoke of. I’m a coward like that. This feeling is exacerbated because of the pull-out quote that the magazine has chosen to head the story. It actually made me feel bad seeing it there in white on black.

Read the story here. If you want to. The illustrations by Dee Sunshine are fantastic.

As for the story itself: some of you may wonder where on earth I get my ideas from. But that’s the work of some of my writing – finding a way to explore what’s in my head (and imagine what’s in the heads of others). There are certainly things I know I would not have run away from in the scenario outlined in the story; but equally, there are things I just don’t know the answers to: another reason for writing about it. I know I wouldn’t have been embarrassed, as the character in the story is, but as I’ve said before, that was the worse thing I could think of and it’s why I made the female character feel that way, so that I could explore the worst side of her nature in that situation.

I like to think that if things had worked out differently that it wouldn’t have ended like this. But some things you just never know.