Category Archives: writing

Writing Begets Writing

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in creativity, Mental Health, Short Stories, teaching, workshops, writing

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I’ve recently been involved with the wonderful Hearth organisation. Founded by Polly Wright, the artistic director, Hearth aims to use the arts to animate key issues in mental health, social care and the humanities, and to promote well-being. I’ve been enlisted, as part of the Writing Begets Writing initiative, to deliver a creative writing workshop in a mental health setting. I’ll be working alongside a mental health practitioner who will continue the work that I start, promoting creative writing as practice to promote well-being and who will encourage the service users to submit work to a short story anthology.

workshop

Fellow writers (left-right) Eugene Egan, Andy Cashmore and Vim Ayadurai

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m really looking forward to working in this field as a writer. I have some experience of working with people who need mental health support but this will be the first time I’ve worked in this setting as a writer. The feedback from mental health service users regarding the benefits of creative writing were incredible.

You can find out more about this project and Hearth here.

Days of the Bagnold Summer

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Art, Comics, Costa Novel Award, writing

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I bought Days of the Bagnold Summer at the British Library. We’d gone there to view the exhibition on comic books: Comics Unmasked. The exhibition was good and focused mainly on British books through the ages from Punch Magazine up to Warrior and beyond. it was great to see original pages of artwork and the typed scripts of Alan Moore and others. The exhibition is on until the 19th of August and is well worth a look if you’re heading to London. You can find out more about it here.

I think there was a reference to Days of the Bagnold Summer in the exhibition, after all, it’s the first graphic novel to be shortlisted for the Costa novel award. I bought it primarily for my wife, I’m slowly bringing her over to the dark side of story telling. She thoroughly enjoyed it.

Table.

Table.

Joff Winterhart tells a funny, sad, moving story with economy and wit. It’s a simple tale of a teenage boy having to spend the summer with his mother. Danny had been expecting to spend it in Florida with his father and stepmother. Initially he’s relieved but soon mother and son start to grate upon each other.

Joff splits the story into six weeks with each week consisting of 9-10 pages and each page broken down into six equal panels. The art work is simple black and white pencils and Winterhart’s real strength lies in his facial expressions. Some of the teenage disgust he manages to get into Danny’s face is simply sublime.

I’m not going to give anything away concerning the story, you’ll need to read it. The tension between mother and son and her fears relating to her son, based upon what happened in her past, are excellently realised as is Danny’s pain in the arse mate, KY. KY is such a dick that a lot of the humour comes through him and his view of himself and the world. It all struck a chord with me. Not that I was ever into Heavy Metal when I was younger – or now – just that I’m sure we can all remember feeling awkward around members of the opposite sex and wanting to fit in but also, being well aware that we don’t. Or maybe you were lucky and never went through any of that? Git.

I would recommend this to anyone and challenge them not to like it, but especially for those of you who may not read comics. Days of the Bagnold Summer shows just what you can do with only six frames and a few carefully chosen words. Well done Joff Winterhart.

Bagnold Summer cover.

Bagnold Summer cover.

Birmingham Lit Fest….

08 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in comissions, New Birmingham Library, writing

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Yesterday was rather wonderful. I met with Sian and Joanne, from the Birmingham Literature Festival, and the very talented Anya Jung. Anya is a mighty fine illustrator. Don’t just take my word for it, check out her site: Anya Jung.

Why did we meet? Well, that’d be telling, just keep your eyes peeled and look out for some graphic news soon.

Writing West Midlands

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in New Birmingham Library, Writers Group, writing, Writing West Midlands

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I’ve been very lucky to have been involved with Writing West Midlands over recent years. They are a fine bunch of human beings who live to promote literature in the West Midlands region.

I was approached by them to see if I’d mind being included in their new brochure, this would include being photographed by a professional photographer. Of course I didn’t mind.

I’ve been involved with a number of projects through Writing West Midlands and run one of their many Write On! Young Writers groups. If you are a writer based in the West Midlands you should get in touch with them. Anyway, the brochure is now out. Here’s the cover:

You can just spot me on the left amongst the grime of the old library.

You can just spot me on the left amongst the grime of the old library.

Inside the brochure there a wonderful overview of all the incredible work that the Writing West Midlands team does across the region and across all the possible formats that writing can take. There’s a great map of the region, beautifully put together by Kerry Leslie, that pinpoints some of the outstanding talent that has come from the area. This includes J.R.R. Tolkien, who used to live just down the road from me, Benjamin Zephaniah, Jonathan Coe, Carol Ann Duffy, John Osborne and of course William Shakespeare. Information on the Birmingham Literature Festival, Write On! Young Writers, The New Library of Birmingham and tons more.

The brochure is beautifully put together with great photography, a cool layout and printed on pleasingly thick paper.

Inside there is a section on local writers that WWM work with and there are brief interviews with: William Gallagher, Deborah Alma, Cindy George, Fiona Joseph, Rochi Rampal, Helen Cross and me.

My page can be read below. Just click on the picture and it’ll open at a readable size.

Cheers.

Scary man in cool coat.

Scary man in cool coat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Writer’s Blog?

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in work, workshops, writing

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I’m in the middle of updating this blog.

I want it to be informative and entertaining, I want it to be somewhere people feel welcome and want to come back to.

So, with this in mind, I’m asking you, the good people of the Blogosphere for some advice.

What would you expect to see on a writer’s blog? News of their latest work, information on how to get hold of that work, workshops that they run, ideas about writing, tips about writing, a small sketch they once did on the edge of a napkin, or maybe a highly processed photo of a stick in the shape of a fist?

Leave me a comment below and you never know I might use your idea.

Cheers.

 

Tweeted Objects

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in creativity, Short Stories, Think Tank, workshops, writing

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A huge thanks to all the staff and kids who were at the Tweeted Objects workshop on Tuesday. I was made to feel really welcome and was allowed to wander through the stored items in the warehouse, which has to be seen to be believed. Extra thanks to Lynsey for organising it all and for introducing me to Story Cubes. Here are some pics of the day.

Kipper ties!

Kipper ties!

Happy scribbler.

Happy scribbler.

The cabbage hat.

The cabbage hat.

Inside the vaults.

Inside the vaults.

The kids produced some great tweeted fiction and managed to tell some marvellous stories in 140 characters or less. Tales of cabbage hats, of cats trapped in boxes and the bejewelled wonder of a jealous prince…

Check out the exhibition in May to see their work and to tweet your own. I’ll post full details nearer the time.

Tweeters of the Lost Ark

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in creativity, Event, teaching, workshops, writing

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On Tuesday, the 18th of February, 2014, I shall be working with young writers at  Birmingham Museum’s Dollman Street Collection.

This is a warehouse full of items that the museum is unable to exhibit permanently; picture the huge warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark, now bring the scale down a tad and instead of sealed crates imagine engine parts, huge, ornate clock brackets, antique computers and old prototype cars that never saw production.

Giddy up

Giddy up

Dollman street triangleYou get a very rough idea from these pictures of the type of thing you can elect to discover there.

This workshop is open to children aged 13-16 and will allow the children to explore this great space and then to handle objects from the collection.

I’ve been sent some pictures of the objects and they’re rather marvellous: kipper ties, weird hats, strange cats and other stuff I can’t identify. I’ll be putting the kids through a series of warm up exercises and focused tasks that lead up to them writing about the objects in no more than 140 characters (that includes spaces, punctuation etc.) just like a tweet, hence the title.

I’m really looking forward to this. I think it’s a great idea and will help them to think about editing and getting to the heart of writing: make every word count.

Here’s a rough outline for the session:

12.00 Arrive at MCC
12.15-12.30- Tour of the stores
12.30- 1.00- Lunch
1.00- 1.30- Introduction to the objects by a curator
1.30- 3.30- Facilitated session to create the interpretive material 4.00- Collection by parents

Here’s the brief:

Outline

  • This project will utilise the interpretation device of creating ‘Twitter Labels’. This means producing a piece of creative writing about an object using a max- imum of 140 characters, i.e. the method of delivery on the microblogging, so- cial media site ‘Twitter’. This challenging method of interpretation is inspired by modern tends in twitter story writing where authors are using a single tweet or series of tweets to tell a story. We would like the participants to create a story or piece of creative writing using an object as inspiration, in the format of a tweet. We are not looking for historical information about the object, i.e. its date, name etc. that information will also be displayed alongside.

Participants will be working with objects from the ‘Patterns and Textures’ sec- tion of the exhibition including examples of textile, glass, carved wood and more.

dollman_street_racks2-300x225I’m not sure who you contact if you have a young one who’d be interested in this project but you could try Dollman Street, just click on this link for details Dollman Street.

Cheers

Back in the saddle

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in creativity, writing

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After a very excessive and tiring festive season it’s now time to get back to the serious business of writing. To help me, and any of you, that find yourselves in this situation, I thought I’d post Neil Gaiman’s, all important, writing tips. Read, digest and then write.

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Write

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Laugh at your own jokes.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.