January 2015
Reflecting on the Say It Right Writers Circle NON-FICTION: Beware Trailing Plot Ends – Alan Marshall NON-FICTION: I Spent A Dirty Weekend Practicing My French – Ben Smith NON-FICTION: Unselfconsciousness & Learning To Love Nabokov – Ali H NON-FICTION: Everybody Knows by Orzak Bule FICTION: The All-Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood by Phil Chokeword
Find out more about the Say It Right Writers Circle: sayitrightwriterscircle.blogspot.com Get in contact: tensongspodcast@googlemail.com All work licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
Beware Trailing Plot Ends By Alan Marshall There are many things I do not feel fully qualified to do, and writing 1/5 of an actual book is one of them. Whilst other contributors to this project sculpt sumptuous imagery, stark kitchen-sink reality tales, and reasoned ethical and political discourse, you will find me weaving dystopian punks and tramps into dimly lit Nordic birch forests or prehistoric catacombs (it’s something we all just need to come to terms with). I have always enjoyed writing about the bizarre and macabre – music and comics, along with Hammer movies, medieval archaeology and an unhealthy fixation with goblins are large parts of my internal world so they just sort of seep out – and with good reason. When I was about ten years old, I remember being chastised by my English teacher for writing a composition, in which I narrated a war story from the perspective of a dead soldier. She told me this was implausible and impossible, and marked me down for it. Despite being utterly wrong (many tale-tellers way better than I have used the same device - from Dante’s Inferno, to The Lovely Bones, or The Book Thief), it also deterred me from putting pen to paper for over a decade, which I think is incredibly sad. In the interim I failed English and English Literature O levels, and stuck to reading Melody Maker and the aforementioned comics, until punk rock gave me a toolkit to have confidence in my own ability again. Writing, like all other art forms, was suddenly something to be reclaimed, a freedom which had hitherto lain uncharted, a seditious inner-voice which needed to let off steam – and best of all, I realised you didn’t need to be good at it, just to do it! This writing circle has captured part of that anarchic force for me again. Whilst I certainly don’t consider myself to be a writer - at best I am a person who writes – and more often than not a frustrated scribbler with more to say than people are prepared to listen to out loud - it was the short sharp shock nature of the idea which had me hooked. Social interaction these days has been reduced to a slim 140 characters, or an instant screen-grab of someone’s lunch - and the flash-mob way this project has been compiled owes a lot to the same idea, but I hope it provides something else too. It is more soul food than selfie - freedom to experiment with style and form, to simply put words on a page and not care too much about the way it ends up. Seven hundred words provide the perfect manifesto to take a gobbet of an idea and run with it - sometimes unexpectedly well, other times with less pride - but always with the beauty of brevity, which allows those ideas to grow beyond the page. Short stories create a perfect storm to throw out characters and scenarios from the dark subconscious without needing to shine the light on them too harshly. There is no space to paint well-rounded protagonists, and loose plot ends flail in the breeze until they latch on and thrive like parasites in other people’s heads. Every next chapter remains unwritten, and characters on the brink of success (or more likely doom in my case) become the reader’s responsibility. The trail of condemned weirdos I line up and blindfold is no longer my concern – it is yours. Ready! Aim!... But more than the freedom to just write and see what monsters come out, I have enjoyed the challenge and constraints of each subject (ok, maybe not sport!), and have marvelled each month at how differently each person involved interprets their own spark struck from the same raw material.
I have worked alongside friends and met new ones, made imaginary places and people real, and best of all, made my English teacher wrong. The opportunity to write – and have it read (hopefully) is truly magical. Not just in the shadowy sword and sorcery sense of the word, but also in the down-to-earth scrawling something into existence on a blank sheet of paper way. If I started off saying by that I do not feel qualified to write 1/5 of a book, there is only one way I know of to change that. Have someone tell you to get on with it and give it a go. You should give it a go too. To paraphrase Sideburns zine – Here’s a word, here’s another one. Now go write a book!
I Spent A Dirty Weekend Practicing My French* By Ben Smith The waves crash against the shore the water rolling out on to the beach below. I find a flat surface a top the dune on which to sit and try to relax. The people earlier have put me on edge. Based on an assumption that ‘allez’ was a negative. An insistence to go somewhere else. I look to my right the shoreline obscured by the dune on which I sit. That way is ‘home’ the direction I’ve come from. I look to my left, the coast snakes away and the blueish grey silhouettes of the mountains reach up to the sky. The future, the unknown. Ahead of me the sea. The rolling Atlantic. Crashing noise and turmoil of sea foam and spray. The sun is setting shrouded in cloud. A thin red strip of fire above the horizon rendering clouds to strange stereotypical two dimensional imagery. As the red orange glow disappears into the horizon the dune around me takes on twilight colours rarely seen. An absence of light but not darkness. Why am I here? Both a literal and egocentric question. A year of art? A year of writing. A year of allowing myself to think, to wonder. No more trying to remain stupid and mute in order to find some fabled happiness. Let off the leash, the brain left to wander and create. Asking questions can be dangerous though. Answers you don’t expect or wish to hear. I thought I craved solitude. I thought I needed space. Well prepared I knew I was happy in my own company and yet something doesn’t feel right. I find myself drawn to others, to society. On top of the dune I begrudgingly admit the feeling I hate the most. Roll forwards a few hours and the routine takes over. Pedal, breathe, pedal, move forward. What is around the next corner and what’s ahead are unknown. A thought wriggles around inside my brain, I try to shape it and it takes form as the ability to alter the future. I don’t know where I am or where I am going but that doesn’t matter. It’s the people I meet along the way who make it special. *Martha – 1967, I miss you, I’m lonely
This project started was conceived New Years, 2014. A year later, New Years, 2015, Ben was sleeping on my sofa, briefly visiting on his way to cycle across France and on to the rest of Europe. He’d contacted me about doing something different to mark the date. Knowing my feelings about the holiday and how being sober made it even more difficult for me, the idea was to step outside of the trap of twitching in the corner of a pub whilst everyone else got wasted or having a quiet one in and feeling like I was missing out. We set out at 9pm, wearing head torches, hiking boots and warm clothing. I’d forgotten that night hiking is like walking through a long tunnel - you can see well within the cone of white light from the head torch, but outside of that, it all fades quickly into darkness. It was amazing how different familiar places became and how little effort it took to feel like we were doing something adventurous. We walked along the river Itchen to Shawford, over to Twyford and up across roads and bridle ways and on to the South Downs in time to see the midnight fireworks. I doubt many people saw a better display than we did, stood by the side of the road. Winchester, Eastleigh, Petersfield, Southampton and the other small towns and cities in the distance were all lit up, rockets exploding like tiny daisies above the skyline. It was one of those moments that was perfectly timed - and probably unrepeatable as a result. I mention this because of two things. Firstly, I sometimes feel that life can be boiled
down to one set choices or another, different options that are really based on the same assumptions or dynamics that often involve buying an experience. Do I want to watch a film or read a book? Go to the gym or go for a curry? It takes a lot of creativity to try to come up things outside of that but if you can do it, they are nearly always worthwhile. Even if it all goes wrong and everyone thinks you’re a bit mad for trying to start with. Secondly, I asked Ben to write a bio or some sort of write up for what he’s up to. He asked me to do for him so I decided to write about where his cycle path crossed over with my own, much more metaphorical and confused, journey. Check out his blog at punkrockbikeclub.com to see what he’s up to and where he is – and use the power of the interweb to buy him a coffee. I know he’ll appreciate it. – Phil Chokeword
Unselfconsciousness & Learning To Love Nabokov By Ali H I can’t believe I’ve been part of the Writers Circle for a whole year. It’s become such a special part of my month to get home from work, climb into in bed with a cup of tea, ignore my inbox and read four new stories. I don’t know most of the members of the circle, but without meaning to I’ve made up ideas based on what I’ve read, and then changed my mind a bit with every new piece of writing; adjusting imaginary voice, temperament and world view each time I’ve read a new story. I’ve enjoyed seeing how each person has taken the theme of the month and changed and interpreted it in a way I never would have thought of. I’ve also liked going back to read each story as a development in each person’s writing over the year – seeing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same, what January’s monsters have morphed into by March, and which turns of phrase I’ve started to recognise. Most of all I think I’ve enjoyed the community of it. Writing for yourself is so different from writing to share with a group of people. It felt so exposing at the beginning but it’s what I liked most by the end. I’ve only ever written for myself – I have a whole shelfful of books of stories and poems and doodles, and a whole shelfful of ones waiting to be filled. But sharing something that’s always been so private and personal has felt like a giant, joyful leap into space. Writing as part of a group has come with the responsibility of making the time each month to write, but also the responsibility of valuing that time as worthwhile. Creating stories from nothing is something that the children I work with do naturally and unselfconsciously on an almost daily basis; as adults we are given the impression that creativity belongs to a gifted few, and that creating for its own sake is a kind of selfish indulgence. Overcoming that requires the right amount of safety and fear, as well as at least a small amount of commitment to unselfconsciousness and imagination. Unlike Alan I was lucky enough to have had an incredible English teacher. Like the archetypal literature teacher in so many American films, he was rebellious and opinionated and was eventually kicked out of our college. He got drunk with us at bars and danced like an idiot and lent us books and made me love Nabokov. He also made each of us feel that what we thought and what we wrote had value – the same principle, I think, as the one behind this project. I stated writing this in bed on a Sunday morning in February. It’s so cold that I’m wearing two jumpers and a hat. Its now early afternoon but the sky is already starting to grey over and my room is getting dark. I don’t think I’ll make the word count but I don’t mind – all I wanted to say was thank you: being part of this has been great and I’m proud of what we’ve made. Ali H
The Tiny Trickster of Wonderland
Everybody Knows By Orzak Bule January: You know those days when you get the mean reds. Not like the blues, which are just because you're failing a PhD, and maybe it's been raining too long. With the blues you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, and you don't know what you're afraid of. Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in the car and go to Malvern. It calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there and it’s too high up for the worries to reach. I had my phone with me on the first Malvern walk of the year, a subtle sign that it was a bad day. I get Phil’s text about the writers circle and not being quick-witted enough to think of an excuse (could I feign illness for a whole year?) I sign up. February: Ernest Hemingway once wrote that to be a great writer ‘ All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. ’ This month’s writing includes a throwaway remark about an ancient romance, but I delete it after worrying that it’s too personal. March: I hope the rules of plagiarism don’t apply in this writers circle. April: ‘Are you reading that Say it Right blog?’ I overhear a friend say at a Black Yaya show ‘Most of it is great – but whose this Orzak guy with his student-newspaper-reject stories and undisguised Morrissey references?’ May: I take a break to ride freight trains around the mid-west. June: Phil asks if my writing is fiction or not, I ask for it to be labelled ‘polemic’, but this doesn’t wash. I explain that it’s based on the truth, shamelessly exaggerated. I don’t admit that I’ve been alive for twenty eight years but never even been to the Peak District. July: I resign from the project feeling increasingly humiliated by my monthly offerings. Ironically, my resignation letter fits into the circle’s word count regulations, about 700 words with a 10% leeway. My request is rejected. August: I write a beautiful poem entitled Carlo Cafiero Blues, where I imagine myself slowly adopting the mind-set of the Italian anarchist. Cafiero was committed to a psychiatric hospital after a failed suicide attempt in 1883, where he gradually became obsessed with the idea that he was receiving an unfair amount of sunlight. After ‘recovering’ he was taken in by his wealthy family and started to live a respectable life before one day witnessing a group of peasants squabbling over a crust of mouldy bread. The scene reawakened Cafiero’s revolutionary zeal and he once again dedicated himself to anarchism. Cafiero died of tuberculosis at the age of 45 in Nocera Inferiore psychiatric ward. I press delete before the poem is committed to memory. October: Like a young punk hearing The Clash for the first time, I read Kafka’s short stories and think ‘I could do that’. I can’t. November: When the world falls apart, certain things stay in place. I enjoy the routine of scraping together 630 words every four weeks – is there an old zine article I never published?
January: I ask Phil if I can amend all previous writing by taking out any references to the Green Magpie Coffeehouse. He agrees.
The All Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood By Phil Chokeword Oxford is a city that seems to be good fit for me. After multiple romantic liaisons, work trips and study weekends, I had the realisation today that not only have I spent a lot of time there over the past few years, most of this time has been pretty well spent. Like when I realised all of a sudden I liked the Smiths singles collection, this kind of came out of the blue (although I never hated Oxford, I just hadn’t really thought about it that much). Oxford, on reflection, I think we’re getting to be pretty good buddies although my bank balance wishes that Blackwell’s Books wasn’t as well stocked. Today, after two hours, a cup of coffee and a twenty quid binge on crime fiction, I accompanied another member of the Writers Circle to the Story Museum. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be an old office block, with each room containing a couple of exhibits each curated by a different children’s author. Each writer had picked a favourite character from a children’s book and had their photo taken dressed up as them; these photos were then built into some sort of relevant diorama to walk through and interact with. I was pleased to see that Neil Gaiman chose Badger from Wind in the Willows and the overall experience was like someone had fed bunch of really inspired children’s librarians cherryaide and let them run wild. Near the entrance was a room full of theatre costumes. The idea was that you dressed up as a character, then, using preset words, made a name board declaring that you were the x y of z. Then, holding the board in front of you, you walked slowly towards the throne at the end of the room and sat down. If you did this right, the chair somehow read the preset words on the board and announced who you were. Of course, after some polite heckling, we both dressed up. We each chose a costume for the other person and then tried to come up with a suitable name board for whatever we’d been kitted out as. In my black fur coat, bushy wig and top hat, I seemed to fit “the All Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood”. Eating a fuck tonne of ice cream afterwards and wacked out on sugar and black coffee, we both decided that we should write short children’s stories about our characters, just because we could. This seems a good way to end the Writer Circle for me – doing something silly and creative because I can and someone else has encouraged me. This year, I’ve really enjoyed having an opportunity to write fiction for the first time since my early teens. I might keep doing it.
In his younger days, the All Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood was famous for his hunting skills. The cat would, when he picked up the scent of a mouse, rat, bird or even a rabbit, take great pleasure in hunting them down. Like most cats, it was for fun as much as for food. He enjoyed sneaking through the woods without his prey having any idea he was there until he pounced out of the undergrowth. And it was too late by then. He was greatly feared amongst smaller woodland animals for miles around - and he liked it that way. These days though, the cat was over all that. He had moved into an abandoned badger’s set in the side of a densely wooded hill and gone vegetarian. It didn’t seem right to kill things anymore when there were berries to eat, water cress in the stream nearby and a small patch of wild vegetables. It took a bit of work to look after them, but it was less effort than trying to find something worth killing. In any case, the All Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood enjoyed it. Hunting was a kitten’s game. His fur had gone grey and his eyes weren’t what they were. Allotments were the new dead sparrows.
Of course, he never advertised this. It wasn’t the done thing for a cat of his reputation. So whenever by accident a field mouse stumbled across his patch, the cat would reluctantly crawl out of the badgers set, flashing his sharp claws. The mouse always took the hint and ran like lightning, telling everyone of the lucky escape. And there would be a few more months of peace and quiet. This was how the All Powerful Cat of the Wild Wood liked it - just him and his wild blackberries and his wild carrots.
Fin.