Mobile phones

They're a pain. In "I just called to say I loved you", Jonathan Franzen wrote "The technological development that has done lasting harm of real significance - the development that, despite the continuing harm it does, you risk ridicule if you publicly complain about today - is the cell phone". They've made several of my stories into period pieces. People no longer get lost in cities or fail to meet people at the right time, unless their mobile goes flat, or they've lost it. Many of the stories I write nowadays begin with characters losing (or forgetting to recharge) their phone.

In the Guardian's Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines? article, JM Coetzee's quoted - "The telephone is about as far as I will go in a book, and then reluctantly. If people ("characters") are continually going to be speaking to one another at a distance, then a whole gamut of interpersonal signs and signals, verbal and non-verbal, voluntary and involuntary, has to be given up. Dialogue ... just isn't possible."

That said, they make some new plots possible. See

• Mary McLean's post (an anecdote that's sure to become a story or poem)
• Together (one of my Flash pieces)

While videoing with his phone in the snow, my son dropped the phone, which became buried, lens up. It continued recording my son's panic until he uncovers it. See the two minute video

There are Cell phone novels, though I'm not convinced.

Munich, Innsbruck and holiday reading

In March we went to Innsbruck and Munich. Here's how we left our kitchen blackboard (C++ is the computing language that I'll no longer be teaching to first years).

On the plane I read "Will You Take Me As I Am" by Michelle Mercer. It's about Joni Mitchell. I read that she got her "Both Sides Now" idea from "Henderson the Rain King" by Saul Bellow. I've since done some research. In chapter V it says "sitting above the clouds, I felt like an airborne seed ... And I dreamed down at the clouds, and I thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily"

I hadn't skied for 3 years, and I'm not much of a skier anyway, but I enjoy the journeys up (highest was 2,250m). Here's the selfie-shadow of me on a chairlift. I read "Plenty-fish" by Sarah James, and "Arc" by David Clarke (both published by Nine Arches Press). I find poetry easier than prose when on skiing holidays. Jeffrey Archer (one of our local authors back in Cambridge) was 14th in the Austrian charts with "Das Vermachtnis des Vaters".

Years ago at a local car boot sale I found this globe of Bavaria. We've visited Munich before, but there's still much that I've forgotten or haven't seen. Overall, there seemed to be more pride about being Bavarian nowadays. We went to a beer event (brass bands, "strongest man" and beauty competitions) and sang the Bavarian anthem. I'm not used to drinking beer by the litre, and it was strong stuff. "craft beer" is in fashion.

The Michael Jackson tribute is still in Munich (where he appeared on a hotel balcony holding his child), and seems well looked after.

We noticed inscriptions like this (bottom right) on door frames in Innsbruck and Munich. According to Ritten Renon These are the symbols of a Christmas tradition originally carried out mostly on the Twelfth Night, when carol singers go from door to door, perform a song and raise money for a charity. After their performance they will write, let’s say “20 C+M+B 15”, on the doorframes with sacred chalk. The numbers represent the respective year. The three letters, C, M, and B don’t stand for the names of the three wise men Caspar, Melchior und Balthasar, as one would expect, but for the blessing “Christus Mansionem Benedicat“, which means „May Christ bless this house” in Latin.

CB1, March 2016

It was standing space only at the CB1 event (held in CB2), and I was at the back, hence the fuzzy photos. Two locals headed the line-up. Adam Crothers ("Several Deer", Carcanet 2016) has a default style that's well worth investigating, rhyme holding together content that has wit and abrupt tonal variety.

Ilse Pedler was making her first appearance following the publication of her prize-winning Seren pamphlet "The Dogs That Chase Bicycle Wheels". She also uses forms (sonnet, sestina, etc). As the emcee Lindsey Fursland pointed out, her day-job as a vet interacts with her poetry in several ways.

They both gave interesting introductions to their pieces. They both used sonic effects, so hearing the poems added to their effect on the page.

I contributed to the open mic. One of my problems this time was that the font was too small for me to read in the atmospheric gloom of the venue. Maybe one day I'll get it right.

Archives of articles

Here are some useful archives of articles about writing -

• Glimmer Train (prose craft and marketing)
• Emma Darwin (prose craft and marketing)
• Emma Lee (prose/poetry craft and marketing)

Influences

A podcast by the Australian Broadcast Corporation has several authors listing their influences. It's an interesting mix. "MiddleMarch" is mentioned, but so is the TV series "Skippy", the 70s band "Sweet" and the "BladeRunner" film. Here's my list.

• "Thunderbirds" - I fear that many of my narrative templates derive from the original TV series.
• "The Golden Cobbler" (Enid Blyton) - As a child I read some books repeatedly. This is the only title I recall. But though she wrote hundreds of books, there's no book of that name. I think I've mixed titles up.
• Pink Floyd - "Wish You Were Here" mostly. I think my templates may have been affected by the end of "Echoes" or the arrival of the Sax in WYWH.
• "Cinema Paradiso" (the original version - not the director's cut) - charming and sad - what more can one ask for?
• "So many ways to begin" - a novel by Jon McGregor. On the ABC program someone said that they were scared to re-read certain books in case they weren't as good the second time around. I felt like that about this novel, but my fears were unfounded - I've read it twice

A few successes

I've had a busy January, with current/forthcoming appearances in these publications -

• Antiphon (a poem)
• Forge (a c.3000 word story)
• Connotation Press (an illustrated essay)
• Everybody's reviewing (a review)
• Acumen - a long letter about poetry sales over the centuries.

Short story DOs and DON'Ts

Bartleby Snopes’ guidelines include a list of "Things That Generally Turn Us Off" that's worth bearing in mind wherever you send your stories -

• Stories written in present tense (especially third person present tense)
• Stories with graphic dead baby scenes
• Stories about writers
• Stories about struggling marriages
• Stories set in bars
• Stories with more backstory than plot
• Stories with undeveloped characters
• Stories that are overly reflective
• Stories that rely heavily on second person usage

Comma Press have so many dislikes that I can only list a few here -

• Coming of age stories
• Stories about ordinary, mundane days/existences in which suddenly something happens to change everything
• Stories that aim for complete thematic unity (as though the writing of them was a jigsaw puzzle to be completed) above surprise or delight
• Stories about a) student life; b) splitting up with a partner; c) taking drugs; d) unlikely travel/rave experiences
• Stories whose justification in a workshop scenario might be 'this really happened'
• If you're writing from a female perspective: writing about 'going mad for a bit and having lots of dangerous sex with unwholesome types'
• If you're writing from a male perspective: writing about breaking out of humdrum, conventional existences/work; getting stoned; wild irresponsible nights with unhinged mates; meeting salt-of-the-earth old blokes in pubs who, while not having the education of the protagonist, have home-spun wisdom to impart and are prone to saying 'bloody heck'; feeling intellectually superior.

Jonathan Franzen wrote -

• Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money
• Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.

But before you start rewriting, consider the Guardian’s review of the “Best British Short Stories 2015” anthology where they write that “It would appear that – going by this collection and scrutinising the author biographies – your chances of appearing in Best British Stories 2016 will be given a boost by"

• being a woman
• having a connection with the north west
• writing your story in the present tense
• be a bit weird, or uncanny