Tag: prose

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Fringe Previews

Although a digital version is available, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe still diligently prints a paper catalogue of events. This year, it runs to a total of 384 pages, with six to 12 events per page.

Since the festival doesn’t take place until 2 to 26 August, there is still plenty of time to pick shows, so I’m working out which ones are showing when I’m available.

As I do this, I’m reminded that comedy – and especially stand-up – is the dominant form. It takes up almost a third of the catalogue, and you can find it from tiny attic venues to 1,000-seat theatres.

It strikes me there must be some crossover with certain productions. Comedy and spoken word have elements in common. And then the line between spoken word and theatre isn’t always clear, while the catalogue groups together physical theatre with dance and circus. And at what point do dance and circus become cabaret or variety?

Even experienced promoters must have to make tough decisions about which category where a given show should be placed. Should a humourous theatre piece go in Comedy and potentially be crowded out by other events, or be included in Theatre where readers may be expecting a more serious production?

In any case, the popularity of the festival might be starting to ease off. It’s notorious for causing performers to make a loss, largely because of accommodation costs. Even the well-known Jason Manford and Gail Porter say they’ve been priced out.

But that’s a matter for the future. For 2024, it’s business as usual, and I look forward to going once again.

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A Plea to Organisers – Create an Event Listing

If you’re the organiser of a literary, comedy or any similar event, I urge you to read this entry about the importance of creating clear event listings. Or should you really be unable to spare the time, at least skip to the bottom line.

Regular readers will know I host and co-organise an open-mic for writers called Hotchpotch, typically on the second Wednesday of each month. We then have a self-imposed deadline of four days to compose a bulletin about the next event.

While a substantial chunk of the text remains static from month to month, we always go around the members at the end of each session asking for other local events to be featured in that bulletin. We take a recording for our reference and make sure we ask for the time, date and venue.

The problem arises when it’s time to compose the bulletin. At the last session, a member said he’d be performing the following week at an open-mic for musicians. As it was a venue well-known by locals, I thought it would be easy to find.

I discovered this particular place uses Facebook for its events, as do many others. This is not a problem in itself, but it was difficult to find a reference to the open-mic, as all the events were years out of date. I eventually found one reference in a picture that had been pushed down the feed by other updates.

This is only the latest instance of being unable to find events. Some have websites that haven’t been updated for some time, if ever. Others omit vital information like the start time, or require the visitor to email an organiser for details.

By now, you might be thinking there’s a simple solution: ask people to send us events in writing, complete with URL.

But this isn’t the easy option it sounds. I’ve been running this event a long time, and collecting events while you have members’ attention is much easier. Waiting for people to send in submissions can cause a significant delay, and some forget entirely once they’re back home.

With Hotchpotch, we post our bulletins in three main places:

  1. On an opt-in email announcements list.
  2. As a Facebook event.
  3. At a static URL that always shows the latest update.

Additionally, we post the static URL to our social media pages every couple of weeks, so visitors shouldn’t have to scroll back more than three or four updates to find it.

Despite the bottleneck caused by finding external events, our reason is a simple one: if we don’t do it for other organisers, they’ll have no reason to do it for us. There are some organisations, such as Creative Dundee and I Am Loud who regularly boost our events, and reach people we can’t.

The bottom line is: Whatever format you choose to publish your listings, please keep them in an obvious place and update them regularly. Take an afternoon to sort out your online presence: it helps new – and existing – punters to find your events, it helps promoters to boost them, and it helps our community as a whole.

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Lost and Perhaps Found

When I started writing around 2010, I made a point of keeping an archive of my work.

Every story and poem has its own directory, and dated revisions are kept within each one. Plain text doesn’t take up much storage space, so there’s plenty of scope to keep doing this into the future.

About two or three years ago, I was looking for a particular poem I’d written; I knew its title, many of the words, and roughly when it was written. So when the archive showed no results after several attempts, I realised my system had broken down somewhere and wrote it off as a loss. I could have reconstructed it with a little effort, but I never did.

There’s a common misconception about Snapchat that it deletes every picture you send. In fact, you can set it to keep a copy of every picture you add to the My Story feature.

Fortunately, I’d not only set this up, but I’d taken a clear picture of the original handwritten verse four years earlier – and I’m not in the habit of doing that. In February 2022, while looking for something else, I found that picture. The original verse had almost certainly been shredded along with other papers. I swiftly copied the words into a Word document and placed it in the archive.

Luckily this was only a 16-line poem. Other writers have suffered far greater losses. Jilly Cooper, for instance, lost the original manuscript of Riders on a London bus and it took her years to rewrite.

Not all losses are accidental. A significant quantity of drama has been wiped from BBC and ITV archives, including episodes of popular shows like Doctor Who and Dad’s Army. Before the advent of home video, there was little incentive to keep old programmes except to resell them overseas.

In some cases, collectors and members of the public have discovered recordings; some in great condition, others needing significant restoration. The BFI used to hold an annual screening called Missing Believed Wiped, featuring a selection of recovered footage, but I’m unable to find any recent events.

It remains a mystery whether I typed out the poem in 2018 then lost it, or whether it was never typed up in the first place. I’ve nonetheless started backing up my archive locally and online so no further mishaps should happen.

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Discussion Questions About Discussion Questions

On Sunday evening, I reached the end of the Richard Osman novel The Man Who Died Twice. I always like to read over the acknowledgements, and then I turned the page to find a section titled ‘Discussion Questions for Readers’.

Most of the questions give away plot points, so I won’t repeat those here, but there are a few only tangentially related to the story, such as ‘Have you ever been lonely in a new town?’ and ‘What is an acceptable name for a pet, and what is unacceptable?’

I’d never before seen this feature in a novel, so I asked around to see whether others had. While some pals were – like me – surprised to see this outside of an educational setting, others reported discussion questions appearing in other books, such as:

  • A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six, both by Taylor Jenkins Reid

These titles were all published in or after 2012, and I’d be interested to find out whether any older novels also have this feature.

One respondent reported debating with herself whether such questions encourage critical thinking or are merely there to spoon-feed reading groups. I’ve considered this question myself, but I have no conclusions so far.

It’s not clear whether the discussion section was the initiative of the author or the publisher, but I expect you’d want to test the waters first. My edition boasts ‘The multi-million-copy bestseller’ on the cover, so I expect Penguin Random House knew by this point that its readers would want to discuss the title.

Although I really enjoyed The Man Who Died Twice, perhaps I haven’t seen a discussion section before because I simply don’t normally lean towards crime fiction, cosy or otherwise. However, I will keep an eye out for this in the future.

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Sky Writing and Railway Reading

Yesterweek, I talked about going to Dublin for a few days and what I would bring to read and write on the three-day trip.

The flight there takes about an hour and five minutes from Edinburgh. I used the journey there to write six postcards, which I would then post on arrival, and tackled some other writing on my return. As predicted in that last entry, the cashier was indeed rather bemused as she handed over my stamps.

On the second day, my pal and I took a train to Belfast and back, taking around two hours each way, I split my time between writing in my notebook and reading my magazine.

It was helpful to have this time, but it would be more helpful if I were able to recreate this experience at home without the expense of travel. I’ve heard the suggestion of listening to ambient train noises as I write, but I also rationally know I can step outside my door at any time; not something you can do on a mainline railway.

If you’ve any suggestions on that front, I’m all ears.

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Sky Writing

If you’ve flown with Ryanair before, you’ll know the company doesn’t have a generous baggage allowance. So when I head off to Dublin for a few days tomorrow, I’ve had to be selective about what I bring for reading and writing for the journey.

I’m definitely bringing my laptop, which will sit alongside my plastic A4 document holder. This comfortably holds my A5 paper diary and a commercial-sized paperback. My current read is The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman, and it’s the first time in a long time I’ve wanted to read a whole series.

However, I’m going to visit a pal from university on her birthday weekend. We typically swap cards by post, so I’m taking the opportunity to hand it over in person and I’m including a book, which will take up the other half of that document holder. As such, I’ve decided to take my copy of Writing Magazine to read instead, as it’ll slot nicely into the holder.

This gives me just enough room left to slip in some postcards. I know these went out of fashion with the advent of the text message and they’ll likely arrive home long after I do, but I specifically wanted to send some. I’ve already stuck on the address labels, so it’s just a matter of writing the messages and taking them to a post office, no doubt to the bemusement of the cashier.

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Nice NaNo-ing You

Long-time readers of this blog will know I’ve been involved with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) since 2010. This is a not-for-profit initiative that encourages members to draft a 50,000-word novel every November.

In 2015, I began to organise our local Dundee & Angus region. A local leader is known as a Municipal Liasion (ML). Each ML needs to sign an agreement every year promising to enforce the code of conduct, hold regular meetings, and so forth. In fact, we already go over and above the agreement by holding meetings every week, not just during November.

I always like having a second ML in charge to help me make difficult decisions. This turns out to have been a prudent move.

Late last year, a member of NaNoWriMo staff in California stood down after making a racist comment about a colleague. Separately, the organisation was slow to remove a forum moderator who was sending inappropriate material to minors.

As a reaction to this, a new Interim Executive Director was appointed without warning, who then released a draft ML agreement with several adverse clauses. These included requiring us to verify our identity with a US company that doesn’t comply with GDPR and preventing us from speaking to MLs in other regions. There has also been a general air of disrespect in replies from this Director, which I haven’t experienced in a decade and a half of involvement.

There are a lot of aspects to this story, but that’s a summary of the main points.

As the situation with NaNoWriMo worsened, the other ML and I started serious discussions about withdrawing our affiliation and becoming an independent group. Our format had slowly evolved over the years, adapting to what members wanted, and we felt we could retain this aspect without external oversight.

Around this time last week, we sent a long bulletin announcing our independence and offered the opportunity for members to ask questions.

The news seemed to go down well. By this time, the MLs from most of the other regions in Scotland had also decided to step down. If anything, the decimation of NaNoWriMo has brought us closer together.

The next discussions in our local area will be about what to do with this newfound freedom. We’ve already amended our terminology to distinguish ourselves from our former identity, registered a URL for future use and discussed holding a summer writing event instead of a November one.

Whatever happens, we remain convinced that withdrawing our NaNoWriMo affiliation is the right action to take and we look forward to the year ahead.

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A Time for Writing

When I started this blog over a decade ago, the first dozen entries or so were posted at seemingly arbitrary intervals. It was an experimental venture that took a few months to settle into a regular cycle, initially every Monday at 5pm.

It made sense, considering my schedule at the time. I could write the blog over the weekend and then make any tweaks during the day on Monday. These are now posted around 8pm every Tuesday, which coincides with the end of my writing group, so I can use that time to make amendments.

The purpose of this schedule is to keep me producing at least one piece of prose per week. I don’t always manage a full entry, but I always post some text, even if it’s to explain I haven’t managed to write that full entry. Additionally, my Wyverns group membership encourages me to produce at least one piece of poetry every month.

I hear about too many writers – especially beginners – who feel they aren’t real writers unless they set aside a certain length of time every day. Of those, there is a sizeable subset who feel the well-known writing routine of Steven King is the One and Only True Way.

I find this frustrating to hear. One man’s method is not everyone’s method, and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

Some authors swear by keeping a notepad and pen by the bed, or writing in the morning, whereas neither of these work for me. There are a few who consider the activity seasonal, doing the bulk of their work in the summer or winter months.

There are also environmental factors. Bizarrely, one of my favourite places to write used to be in a certain branch of McDonald’s, and I can’t explain why. Maybe I should go back there and see whether it still works.

Once you experiment with your times and figure out what schedule works for you personally, the process will probably become easier.

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Looking Out for Each Other

One of the best pieces for anyone looking to be published is to fully read the submission guidelines for any publisher you wish to contact.

It came to my attention late last week that Auroras & Blossoms is soliciting submissions with conditions that many writers and editors consider unfair and unorthodox. You can read some reactions to these guidelines online and find links to the publisher’s website.

For someone like me who has made hundreds of submissions to many publishers, I can immediately see what’s wrong. For instance, it’s highly uncommon for a publisher to withhold royalties unless the writer makes a donation. For a beginner writer who hasn’t yet developed that frame of reference, it’s easy to be caught out.

Fortunately, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is also worried about this problem. They run a blog called Writer Beware that’s geared towards any author, regardless of genre, highlighting the latest scams, impersonations and general shadiness. Unbelievably, this has been online since 1998.

Shortly before posting this entry, I discussed the blog with a pal. She not only already knew about the Writer Beware blog, but told me she’d brought Christina Kaye to their attention after a bad experience. Since the original post in November 2021, many other writers and industry professionals have added their voices, with a couple of comments even dating from last week.

While the problem of dodgy publishers isn’t new and isn’t going away any time soon, there are at least some in the industry who have your back.

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Looking at Loqueesha

There are plenty of films released each year that are given a lukewarm to negative reception. However, to make it onto the Wikipedia page titled List of films considered the worst, it has to be particularly bad.

At the time of writing, there are some predictable gems on there, like The Room (2003) and Cats (2019), along with forgotten and obscure features like Reefer Madness (1936) and Glitter (2001).

But one in particular caught my attention: Loqueesha, released about six months before Cats. It’s a vanity project directed, produced and co-written by its star Jeremy Saville.

The plot centres around a white barman who sends an audio recording to audition for an advice show on local radio. When his first attempt is rejected, he sends a second one pretending to be a black woman. After landing the job and fronting a successful show, he needs to maintain the illusion.

There are many reasons why it has a score of 1.6 out of 10 on IMDB and an astonishing 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. For a start, there aren’t enough plot points even to stretch to feature-length picture, and let’s skim over the borderline racism.

If there is one salvageable aspect of this film, it’s the dialogue. In the 98-minute running time, I don’t recall hearing much that I would describe as cliché. Yet it does need a lot of tightening to account for the lack of sub-plots. It could probably be shortened to a half or a third of its current running time, and be turned into a TV or radio drama.

There’s also a lesson here about lessening your control of a project. The staging or filming of a script is typically a collaborative process, with different people taking well-defined roles. The writing credits are shared, but perhaps doing the same for the other roles would have improved this film from bad to mediocre.