Experimentation and Conformity

You feel jaded, fed up of writing the same old stuff. You realise that you re-use plots and techniques, that you're writing self-parody. So you decide to experiment.

I sometimes write things I neither like nor understand. Maybe my powers of criticism and appreciation have fallen behind my imagination. Maybe what I've written is a Hopeful Monster, its stubby appendages the wings of future generations. Maybe what I think is unfinished (a mere sketch or draft) can be treated as a finished work (there are precedents for this in Art and Evolution). Time and amassed criticism might eventually conclude whether the pieces are dead ends, indulgences, Ugly Ducklings or discoveries.

Though I liked Jon McGregor's This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You (with its deletions, repetitions, one-sentence stories, etc) less than his glorious So many ways to begin, my admiration of his work didn't lessen - it's good that he tries new things out. Ditto my reaction to Tania Hershman's more recent pieces in "My Mother was an upright piano" - reviewed by Jim Murdoch. Readers need to learn how best to deal with these pieces, perhaps coming to some kind of concensus. For those of us with far fewer readers and less time, evaluation of our non-standard pieces is hard. I tend to pass the buck to magazine editors.

Of course, what's experimental for you may be old hat to others. Maybe you're escaping from private clichés only to indulge in public ones.

On The Awful Truth Helena Nelson lists 27 "recurring Contemp Po features". Mike Young lists 41 more on Moves in Contemporary Poetry.

Personal affectations are what help identify you, they're part of your personality, your voice. If you start exploring without the means to assess what you're doing, without awareness of what others have already done, you might end up lost, with only a pile of rubbish as proof of your efforts. Public fashions and mannerisms can constitute a style (e.g. Mannerism). Avoiding fashionable traits may merely tempt you to use unfashionable ones, or to use plainer language (itself a trait).

Awareness of one's habits and of contemporary fashions is probably a good idea long term, though it can be stultifying at first. Using these features consciously and judiciously should be our aim. As Eliot wrote - "We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time".

Literary Salon

On Jan 30th I did a talk for the Leamington Spa Literary Salon, in Leamington's Real Tennis club, which is in the city centre. We have a court in Cambridge, but I've never been. Before the talk I had a chance to watch a few points being played - looks like a mix of tennis and squash.

I read 2 poems from "Moving Parts" and 2 stories (one from "By All Means") to an audience of 40 or so, talked about creating characters (the risks of using family, etc), and tried to provoke a discussion about the state of poetry and short stories in the UK, especially regarding sales. I said that a long time ago all literature was poetry but now it's barely read. Though cultural people are polite about it, they don't feel obliged to read the latest poetry book in the way that they'd watch a film or read a talked-about novel. My limiting definition of poetry quite rightly came into the discussion.

I tried to approach it rather like an upmarket, cultural stand-up gig (indeed, I was followed by a stand-up comedian/ artist, who was jolly). Having read about how stand-ups can have bad experiences, I was rather apprehensive about dealing with an unknown audience. It was the first talk of that type that I've done - useful practise. On How much should writers charge for events? it suggests fees of £150 but the groups I know couldn't cope with that (Jeffrey Archer spoke to our local writers group for nothing), and anyway it was good to see so many people coming out for the evening. See An evening of short stories, poetry and comedy for another write-up.

Depth and Accessibility

On Eratosphere's Musing on Mastery forum last year there was an interesting discussion on "Depth and Accessibility". Here are some extracts -

Alder Ellis -

• It might be interesting to survey the history of criticism to see when "depth" became the main denotation of scale or extra dimension of meaningfulness. It seems to me it used to be "height" - i.e., "sublimity."
• In a rationalizing context (characteristic of criticism) the only difference between "depth" and "surface" is the time or effort it takes to achieve an understanding of it. Once the "depths" are understood, they are no longer depths, they too are surfaces. But of course the poems we value most highly (or deeply) are rarely if ever poems we fully understand.

Chris Childers -

• In general, I tend to find 'depth' in surfaces that are initially a little opaque, that demand a little more work but invite one in under the surface.
• As opposed to sublimity, "depth" is a largely subjective notion; Alder Ellis associates it aptly with a "psychologizing bias." Another way of putting it is that "depth" is internal while "sublimity" is external; depth leads down into our own abysses while sublimity scales the heights of the human spirit.
• In my view, psychological depth is the proper opposite of sublimity. However, poetic depth has to do with the construction of a poem: aspects that pull the reader out of the temporal main stream of the verse, under its surface, or beyond it, and invite her to contemplations of another sort.

Me -

I like to think I write for the intelligent layperson: doctors, solicitors, etc - people who give Tate Modern, art-house film, or the latest highbrow novel a chance. I try to be reader-friendly. If I can, I offer fall-back options when I use allusions, or I spell things out. However, there are problems with both of these strategies.

• If one offers a non-allusive alternative, readers (even those who might have got the allusion) might only see the most obvious interpretation. They might feel that they "understand" sufficiently to continue reading, unimpressive though the phrase may seem. If they'd been puzzled they might have googled (or read the notes). The friendly surface obscures the allusive "depth"
• Another problem is that the elegance of the poem may be compromised for the sake of those who'd miss the allusions. I don't want to have to put "Mars (the Roman god of war)" in a poem.

After years of publishing in small mags I realised that only other writers (if that) are likely to read my stuff, so why risk compromises? Nowadays, I often don't, rationalising thus

• Just because I'm uncompromising in some poems, it doesn't mean I can't be more accommodating in others
• Not all a poem's allusions need to be understood. I think the writers of the Frasier TV series were happy to slip in jokes that only a minority would get - not all sitcoms work that way though
• It's easy nowadays to put companion notes on a website

Forthcoming UK story competitions, 2013

Here are some competitions you may be interested in

Competition	Words	Deadline	1st prize	Fee	Extras	Info
Grace Dieu	2000	28th Feb	£500	£5		rules
Mslexia	2200	19th Mar	£2000	£10	women only	rules
West Sussex	3000	31st Mar	£200	£5		rules
Exeter	3000	31st Mar	£250	£4		rules
Flash 500	500	31st Mar	£300	£5		rules
Yellow Room	1000	31st Mar	£100	£4		rules
short Fiction	6000	31st Mar	£500	£10 for 2	free magazine	rules
Bristol	3000	30th April	£1000	£8	anthology chance	rules
Bridport	5000	31st May	£5000	£8		rules
Yeovil	2000	31st May	£500	£6		rules

Leamington Literary Salon, 30th Jan

I do quite a few talks at work, but I don't often do readings. My first one was in Nottingham. Henry Normal was the big act.

On the right is my second attempt, in Norwich (I miss those trousers). It was at the "Sixth National Convention of Poets and Small Presses", May 1990. Apparently I shared a session with Eric Alexander. Muriel Bell, Pamela Proctor and Henry Cleverly. Dannie Abse was the star turn.

My third was in Kings College Cambridge, supporting William Oxley.

Then I tried 2 open-mic sessions in 2011 at CB1, Cambridge.

Then there was a HappenStance event at Leicester's "States of Independence" in 2012 with Peter Daniels, Robin Vaughan-Williams and Sally Festing.

Later in the year there was a launch in Leamington Spa, my first attempt at reading prose (photo above).

Next will be at Leamington Literary Salon, taking place on Wednesday 30th January, 7.30pm. It'll be rather different to what I've done before.

Another review of "By All Means"

Jim Murdoch has written a typically extensive review of "By All Means". Even more than Tony Williams' review it homes in on characters and emotions. I'll summarize what I've learnt from the reviews before long. Meanwhile, I've added a write-up of each story on the By All Means site.

The second book syndrome

One way or another, second books (like second albums) can be tough. Partly the urge and ambition goes after the first book, and if you publish your first book late, it might contain the majority of your lifetime's best writing so you'll have little left. Or maybe you've laboured over a novel for years, workshopping chapters before getting it published. You land a 2-book deal, but the 2nd book will have to be written in a way that's totally unlike that of the first, and to a deadline. Or maybe the first book used up all your autobiographical material and you don't know what else to write about.

Having published a poetry pamphlet and a story book (both "first books" in a way) I feel that I'm doubly suffering. But all is not lost. The factors influencing the selection of items for the first books meant that some viable texts failed the cut, and I've added to my corpus since the previous publications. Currently my Acknowledgements sections for my second books are

• Prose - "short fiction","Staple", "Panurge", "Stand", "Aesthetica", "Journal of Microfiction", "Dream Catcher"
• Poetry - "Acumen", "Agenda", "Assent", "Cake", "Envoi", "Fleeting", "Horizon Review", "Iota", "Mobius", "Morning Star", "The North", "Other Poetry", "Resurgence", "Seam", "Smiths Knoll","Staple", "Vers Poetry Anthology", "Weyfarers"

I think I need to pump these up with some headliners, which ties in with my 2013 objectives. Winning a prose competition would help, so I'm sending stories off. Poetry-wise I'm targeting a few magazines that I've never appeared in - Magma, Poetry London, etc.

Also, I've decided to get onto Twitter, as @TimLoveWriter, though I've not tweeted yet