Weekly updates with a prose and poetry focus
A rather short entry this week. In fact it’s a mere musing on the event that turned everyone and their dog into expert astronomers. I’ve used the form of the tanka, which starts as a haiku but has two extra lines of seven syllables apiece.
The moon ate the sun
on Friday morning in March.
We viewed it through the
office window, expected
to work through all the carnage.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that an editor had tried to reach me but didn’t know the best way to do it. I still haven’t set up an e-mail address or contact form, but I’m looking into my options.
Once the contact is made, how can you be certain the person is legit? If you spend even five minutes on Twitter or any other public platform, you soon learn to regard other users with a healthy suspicion.
To that end, I’ve put together a guide on how I approach the matter. It’s geared towards writers, but the principles apply to any field. Even after following these, you should still use your own judgement.
How much can you find out about them?
If you’re contacted via a website, the user should have some information about themselves and/or the company they represent. If it’s by e-mail, the name of the company often appears after the @ symbol in the e-mail address. In this case, the editor’s first and last names were immediately available on her Twitter profile, and I was able to find a link to the publisher’s website.
When evaluating a company’s website, be sure the address you thought you were going to is consistent with the one you eventually see. If you go to Faber and Faber’s site, for instance, the domain will always appear in the address bar. On the other hand, you can reach this blog by going to http://www.gavincameron.me.uk, and you’ll be redirected to https://gcameronwriting.wordpress.com/. It still doesn’t prove I’m Gavin Cameron, but it is consistent.
Once you’ve reached the site, read the text carefully. Does the text sound like it’s been written by someone who knows their stuff or is it generic marketing copy? Are they giving information about the product or being particularly vague and evasive?
Why me and why now?
Once you’ve checked them out, consider the message you’ve been sent and when it was sent. Is it clear you’ve been targeted because of your skills, or does it seem as though they’ve done a general search for writers and sent the same message to everyone?
As for the when, a friend of mine gave me a prime example recently. She works as a model, and showed posted up a request from an agency who claimed to work for big clients, yet it stated that the photographers could work around the model’s schedule. This is highly unlikely, as most projects in any field are time-limited and require certain actions by a certain date.
In my case, the editor had read previous work of mine and thought my style might suit the publication, and the deadline was spelt out clearly.
Are they asking for money or promising you money?
In publishing, money traditionally flows one way: from the publishing house to the author. Writers were always advised to think twice before giving any money to have their book published. But with the rise in self-publishing, the lines are a little more hazy as the writer has to foot and recoup many of the expenses. So how can you tell who to pay?
Firstly, let’s exclude competitions from this. There is often an entry fee of around £5 per story to cover administrative costs, contribute to the prize fund, and sometimes to make a charity donation. This is perfectly normal.
So, self publishing. The main factor to watch out for is the type of interest the company takes in your book. A place that praises the manuscript to high heaven, or takes no interest in the artistic content, should be treated with suspicion. Even the best books go through several rewrites before they ever see a shelf. A reputable self publisher is more likely to be honest about the manuscript and perhaps offer editorial services. Again, always use your judgement.
The other phrase that should ring alarm bells is to the effect of, “We can’t afford to pay you, but we can give you great exposure.” Often these requests come from well-meaning people who mistakenly believe writing is nothing more than a hobby to you, but sometimes from sources that could afford to pay and choose not to. If it’s for a cause you believe in, or you really do need the exposure, then that’s fair game. Otherwise, my advice is to ignore them or decline the offer. Whether you decline politely is up to you.
About four years ago, I started attending a creative writing group I’m still in today. The tutor gives a prompt and the job of the class members is to write a passage inspired by it. In one of the early sessions, we had a member who often wouldn’t write anything, but would instead describe what she would’ve written. I had a similar experience at the StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews on Saturday.
I’d been meaning to attend this for some time, and this year I finally bought a ticket for Clive Russell (Coronation Street, Game of Thrones). My plan was to arrive around midday and buy tickets for other shows on an ad hoc basis. I queued at the Byre Theatre box office for a show about Alexander Pushkin and Russians in Paris, to be told that the tickets were now available only at the venue door. When I reached the, they had just sold out.
I decided instead to have lunch quickly, then see a 12pm show by a artist and a poet who had written a Ladybird-style book about St Andrews. An enjoyable 40 minutes as they described the challenges of being in two different cities but having to collaborate, but only the audience members attended.
After tea and a scone with one of my classmates who was working at the event, I headed to Musings@MUSA, which encouraged visitors to use the objects on display as inspiration for their own poetry. The first exhibit I saw was marked Seal of Approval and that phrase stayed with me. The 17-line poem I wrote was definitely inspired by elements in the exhibition, but ended up not being about the place.
Finally, time for Clive Russell. I queued up at the auditorium to be told it was, “At the top of the building.” I wasn’t sure how she knew this from looking at my ticket, as there were no obvious markings, but I moved upstairs to the top entrance and took my seat. We were treated to a duet poem written by Rock McKenzie, then the experimental Veridian String Quartet performing Different Trains by Steve Reich.
I made some notes in advance of the main event. The photograph below shows some of these.
When the house lights came up and there was no Clive Russell, I was puzzled. The man beside me said that venues for these two events had been swapped around. I slowly worked out that the first ticket checker had meant a completely different venue, while the second one should have paid attention to the show name on my ticket and not let me in. However, I was indeed in the venue printed on the ticket.
To compound the matter, I’d offered to review the events for Dundee University Review of the Arts, or DURA. If I were writing for The Guardian or suchlike, or I’d’ve been sacked on the spot. Fortunately, DURA’s contributors are volunteers, so I explained the situation to the editor in question and it was no big deal. She even gave my classmate and me a lift home in the evening.
I still enjoyed the day, and I’m tempted to go back next year. I’ve learnt nothing is a waste of time if you can take from it a good anecdote or a free pen.
Last week, an editor wanted to make unsolicited contact with me, but was unsure of the best way to approach it. She settled for asking me via Twitter to e-mail her. This started me thinking.
There are several ways to reach me publicly: leave a comment below, send a Twitter message to @LadyGavGav, or post to me on Google+. Yet I hadn’t previously thought about how people could contact me privately. In the case of the editor, it meant putting her e-mail address in the public domain, which I’m keen to avoid thanks to the risk of spam.
So I’m interested in how you manage to maintain contact with others? A ‘disposable’ address that forwards to your real one? A website form? Or some other method I haven’t thought about?
Recently, I’ve rediscovered the art of playwrighting. National Novel Writing Month used to have an offshoot called Script Frenzy. In 2012, its last year, I wrote my first and only full-length script: a stage play for two actors. Since then, I’ve become more comfortable with dialogue in prose, and how it can be used to imply action, or indeed how an action can omit several lines of speech. I haven’t yet edited my Script Frenzy work, but I imagine I could tighten up the dialogue and cut out many of the directions.
One thing that strikes me about penning a play is that you must have a clear idea of where it’ll be performed, not just which venue, but where in the world. A radio drama, for instance, will be radically different from a screenplay, and done on a vastly different budget. Even taking a stage play from London’s West End to Broadway will require the script to be laid out in a different format. But once you know where it’ll be set, the rest falls into place.
Scrivener, for instance, offers several different templates, including all the ones mentioned in the last paragraph, and any that aren’t shown by default can probably be downloaded. You tell the program your next action by pressing Enter or Tab at the end of each line. I’ve found this software a joy to work with for novelling, and just as good for scripts.
It’s most important, however, to remember that playwrighting is not for control freaks. The moment you give it to a director, he or she will have different ideas about how your words should be presented to an audience. You might imagine your characters sitting opposite sides of a table dressed formally, but the director might see them in jeans cuddled up next to each other. The writer has limited input in this process. The only way to guarantee it goes the way you want is to become a director yourself.
I apologise for not updating over the last few weeks. I’ve been on my back with illness and been in no state to write anything. The good news is that I’ve had plenty of ideas for topics during this time, which I’ll explore over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, here’s a picture prompt of me in my scarf to inspire your own writing:
Sometimes after posting an entry, I decide or realise I should have added some more information. To that end, I have addenda for two recent posts.
After putting together last week’s top tips for public speaking, I think I should slot an extra one after Think about your introduction.
Avoid too much alcohol and/or a heavy meal before speaking. Both of these slow down the thought process. I recognise the meal often comes before the entertainment so try to leave sufficient time for it to digest. Being drunk at an organised event rarely makes a good impression on the audience, and is inexcusable if you’re paid to perform. I often have one coffee before I speak, which speeds up the thought process.
A few entries ago, I also discussed how to set or avoid setting a story in a particular era. Yesterday, I finished the Anthony Burgess classic A Clockwork Orange, written in 1962 and set in a near-future society relative to that year.
To avoid the problem of including dated slang, Burgess opts instead to invent his own jargon partly based on Russian. It’s easy to see why he chose that language, as the Cold War was at its height then. Many of the words have to be inferred through their context, as most editions deliberately omit a glossary.
He does, however, also use English words in an uncommon manner. A couple of these words have made their way into modern slang and these passages read as though they’ve been written recently. A case in point is like, with which the main character Alex peppers his speech not only as a comparison but when he’s struggling to remember the words he means.
There is another example, but I’m not sure whether it’s intentional, when he describes a stereo, “playing a very sick electronic guitar veshch,” the last word meaning thing or stuff. There is only one instance of it in this context, and it sounds as though it has the modern slang meaning that’s used alongside wicked and cool. For the rest of the book, Alex only uses the word sick when he’s feeling physically ill, and the Wikipedia appendix doesn’t list it.
Finally, yesterday marked the birthdays of three very famous writers. Robert Burns is the most obvious – I read To a Mouse to an audience in honour – but Virginia Woolf also burned candles on 25 January, and one of my major influences John Cooper Clarke turned 66.
Thanks to electronic publishing and print-on-demand, there are more ways than ever to read fiction. It is, however, as important as it’s ever been for a writer to be able to stand in front of a crowd and read out his or her pieces.
A good live performance means engagement with your existing audience, a chance to have your name known by more people, and – if you’re published – to shift more copies of your work. I was performing on Thursday just gone, and I’m scheduled to take part in three more over the next fortnight.
To that end, I’ve put together some advice for speaking to an audience. These should be treated not as unbreakable rules, but as guiding principles to bring out a better performance.
Think about your introduction. At a minimum, people want to know your name and the title of the work you’ll be reading, but you’ll sometimes need to include other information. To make this part sound natural, I like to make brief notes which I’ll expand as I go along. The list below is totally fictional, but it might read:
When it’s read out, it might go, “Good evening, my name’s Gavin Cameron. I’d like to thank Tracey Jones for inviting me to read tonight, and the piece I’ve chosen is called On the River Tay. It’s taken from my collection The Pie Seller. I’ve brought some copies and I’ll be happy to sign them afterwards.”
Explain if you need to, but don’t apologise. A good example is when you’re reading an unfinished piece of work. In December, I read out an unedited piece I’d written during National Novel Writing Month. I felt I needed to explain that what they were about to hear wasn’t as highly polished as they were accustomed to, but I was still willing to share with them as an example of what can be done in a month. Should you feel the need to apologise, it’s worth reconsidering whether you want to read out that particular piece.
Before reading to someone, read to no-one. Find a space where you’re on your own and hear how it sounds. Check the inflections you use in the piece, and whether there are any long sentences where you need to take an extra breath in the middle. If you’re reading a new piece, this is also a prime opportunity to make edits.
Practice your page turns. Unlike a rock star, the great thing about being a writer is that you’re often allowed to take your notes on stage. When reading from a book or from sheets of paper, turn up the corner slightly or stick a post-it note on each page to help turn them more easily. When using an e-reader or tablet computer, make sure you practice tapping the correct area of the screen to turn the page, as there is a delay on some devices.
Keep your mouth where everyone can hear it. Avoid tilting your head down to read the piece; instead, hold your manuscript higher and off to one side so it doesn’t muffle your words. Always speak loudly and more slowly than you would in normal conversation. If a microphone is available, keep it at the same distance from your mouth; I’ve seen too many readers wander around the stage and it sounds like a Norman Collier routine. Where possible, work with the sound engineer to set the level before the gig begins.
Sometimes the audience reacts in the wrong places. I’ve had experiences where an audience didn’t laugh in a place I’d expected; don’t point out it’s a joke or tell it again, just move on to the next part without comment. There might be occasions where they react, positively or negatively, in an unexpected place; in this case, pause until it dies down and move on without comment.
Signal that you’ve finished. Just lower your manuscript by your side and/or say, “Thank you.” The audience will take the hint and applaud.
Do it again. This guide doesn’t cover how to deal with nerves. There are many tricks you can use to overcome them: the classic advice to imagine everyone naked, or more unusual methods such as looking at people’s eyebrows to avoid eye contact. However, the only effective way of becoming a confident public speaker is by doing it again and again. It’s worth remembering that the audience sometimes is nervous on behalf of the speaker and most will be forgiving even if you make a mistake.
Speaking of which, even the best of us experience the occasional cock-up. In October, I was invited to a poetry reading at Dundee University and I attempted to read one of them from memory. I managed the second time, but here was the first attempt:
I’m pleased to report that I’ve been asked to respond to the Jim Campbell exhibition currently showing at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Until now, only other artists had been invited to do this, but there will also be poets and prose writers this time. The event takes place on Thursday the 15th, 7pm, Gallery 1; tickets are free of charge.
Something that fascinates me about the creative arts is the ability for writers and artists to respond to each other through their work, often very quickly. A recent example is how cartoonists around the world reacted to the Charlie Hebdo shootings. I’ve previously taken inspiration from the Michael Brown riots in November. In the BBC News report, there was a snippet of a police officer shouting, “Stop trying to turn over the vehicle immediately,” through a megaphone. I responded with a 340-word piece, but only to that fragment of speech, not to the rest of the events in Ferguson.
But it doesn’t always take tragedy to provoke a response. In 2000, Tony Blair lifted his arm at the end of a speech and inadvertently revealed a sweaty armpit. A day or two later, a deodorant company used the image in a press advert.
This isn’t the first time I’ve responded to an art exhibition, although I wasn’t asked to do so last time – I was simply inspired. A friend’s solo show opened on a Friday in summer 2013. By the time I caught the bus home, I was beginning to develop the idea. I spent the weekend typing it up and changing the names to ensure it was definitely fictionalised, and I sent it to her on the Monday.
On Thursday, it’ll be a different type of response. I’ve spent weeks working on it and had time to explore different options such as using props. All I need to do now is keep rehearsing so the response is as fluent as I can make it. Next week, I’ll be offering click save draft my best tips about public speaking.
I’ve been keeping a log of all the books I finished in 2014. Note that these were finished in the last year, and that the top one or two might have been started in 2013. Here’s that list in full:
| Number | Author | Title |
| 1 | Ella Cheever Thayer | Wired Love |
| 2 | Nethergate Writers | If Stones Could Speak |
| 3 | John Twelve Hawks | The Traveller |
| 4 | Nethergate Writers | Whodunwhat? |
| 5 | Rachel McCrum | The Glassblower Dances |
| 6 | Jenny Lindsay | The Eejit Pit |
| 7 | Luke Wright | Mondeo Man |
| 8 | Various authors | Alternate Hilarities |
| 9 | Adam Gopnik | Paris to The Moon |
| 10 | Virginia Woolf | Mrs Dalloway |
| 11 | Carson McCullers | Ballad of The Sad Café |
| 12 | Jayne Anne Philips | Quiet Dell |
| 13 | Raymond Carver | Elephant and Other Stories |
| 14 | Kohta Hirano | Hellsing |
Not all of these were traditional novels. Numbers 5, 6 and 7 were poetry chapbooks, 9 was a collection of essays, while 14 is my first foray into reading graphic novels.
My favourite of these had to be number 1. It was published in 1880 and was ahead of its time both in terms of the technology used in the story and that the main characters are all women, with the men in supporting roles. My least favourite was number 10. This choice will rub up two of my lecturers the wrong way, but while the quality of her writing is high, her books never form much of a story. I had to wait until page 168 for anything major to happen.
Since I became a writer, I’ve tried to finish any book I’ve started even if I find it hard going. I’m currently trying to plough through the abstract concepts in Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and I tackled Crawling Round South Oakwood by Stephen Slaughter a couple of years ago although it read like an unedited first draft. Before then, I would give up after a short time; I didn’t make it past the first few pages of Road to Mars by Eric Idle, nor A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg has developed a formula based on the latter of these books called the Hawking Index to estimate how far people are reading before giving up. It uses the five passages in each book most highlighted by Kindle users. However, in the time since the publication of the formula, the title of least-read book is no longer Hawking’s masterpiece, but Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. You can read the full list here.
Gavin Cameron 