Poets prefer marmalade

An anthology that states it publishes the ‘best’ poetry written today publishes the best poetry written today. There are a range of poetry awards corresponding to the range of poetry being written. It is necessary to categorise poets. All good young poets win Eric Gregory awards.

Read full piece on Hannah Silva's blog.

Written by Hannah Silva. Commissioned by the Broadsheet, launching the Exeter Poetry Festival: 'I’m performing/talking on the 4th October at an event exploring tribalism in poetry, the supposed borders between different sorts of practice and the usefulness or otherwise of labels such as ‘mainstream’, ‘experimental’ and ‘performance’.'

Not strictly novel-related, but I've also been drafting some new poems this week...

'Why does our kitchen look like it belongs to a psycho killer?'

The Novel has been taken out of the box and now covers surfaces and walls with old and new notebooks, charts and scribbles.

My day job work has been put in storage boxes and under drapes and my holiday reply is on my email. Go Away World. I'm (hopefully) Writing.

I saw this in The Paris Review today also...

FIRST PERSON

On Keeping a Notebook: Part One

August 28, 2013 | by Sarah Gerard

'Most of my childhood notebooks are lost–begun in a state of excitement but half- or quarter-filled and abandoned after a few weeks. It wasn’t until high school that I began to think about my notebooks as things that needed to be preserved. In Florida, when I took four years of notebooks outside and burned them, I thought of the act as a ritual cleansing. I was shedding my past in order to recreate myself in the present. If there wasn’t a record of it, I thought, the past no longer existed. Or rather, if there wasn’t a record of it, the past could be whatever I needed it to be; could return to a state of raw material to be molded and rearranged, refashioned into new stories, better stories, the stories I wanted to tell, and not the stories that were most accurate.'

& elsewhere I was reminded of this film, which is a lot to do with how I felt several years ago when I began writing it...

& this overheard beauty from a friend in a local park: 

And then this gem from a 5-year old who clearly pays attention to parental lectures:

"Mummy, don't lie to me. I KNOW you're on twitter. You promised this was time to play together, not to text... Now put your phone away immediately...or I shall get cross!" I heart the park.

Vonnegut on how to write a short story

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Read more and watch the video at openculture.com: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/kurt_vonneguts_eight_tips_on_how_to_write_a_good_short_story.html

I am NEVER ever guilty of tip number 6. No, no. Not me.

We’ve added years to life, not life to years...

‎"We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much. 

We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life. 

We’ve added years to life, not life to years."

- George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Fantasy Writing

I am not about to go writing all out fantasy, but this blog struck true, and I am an old Pratchett fan and a new Gaimen fan. Go read it and my other fellow bloggers over on Mslexia: http://www.mslexia.co.uk/blog/2012/01/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-dragons/

Go on and write

"You can write twice as well now as you ever could. All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is. 

Go on and write. "


On May 10th of 1934, a month after the publication of his new novel, Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his friend, Ernest Hemingway, and asked for his honest opinion on the book — a tale about Dick and Nicole Diver, a couple based largely on mutual acquaintances of both Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Gerald and Sara Murphy.

Hemingway certainly responded with honesty. His engrossing reply — a letter that contains plenty of advice for any writer — can be read below.


READ MORE: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/forget-your-personal-tragedy.html

A L Kennedy: Why I hate the myth of the suffering artist

'It is absurd and insulting to assume artists are assisted by despair or hunger in a way that, say, plumbers are not'


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/apr/02/myth-of-the-suffering-artist