Pater familias (in absentia)

Arthur Koestler, who was so taken with the subject of coincidence that he wrote a book about it (The Roots of Coincidence), would have been intrigued by our ‘Absent Fathers’ evening at Clive’s house on Monday April 2nd.  Our own pater familias, Rob, was in London meeting American friends and the resulting quincunx was regaled by Annie with three pieces of flash fiction, in each of which the absent father was the crucial figure. In the first piece, admittedly, the father was only absent in the sense of being sub-human – he was portrayed as a squalid, malodorous and repulsive kiddy-fiddler. The second died in a pool of his own vomit outside a kebab shop and the third had absconded with his neighbour’s wife, leaving his own wife and daughter facing the loss of their home to the mortgagee. When Clive suggested that Freud, in the light of these stories, might have wished to discuss with Annie her relationship with her own father, we learned that all the tales were based on the experiences of three of Annie’s friends.


Possibly due to a rather puerile sense of indiscipline induced by Rob’s absence, there was initially an inordinate amount of end-of-term-style giggling but we were soon sobered by Annie’s desperate tales. 


The Leopard
‘Seedy, grubby and sordid’, this was not an easy piece to enjoy, in Tony’s view. Chris congratulated Annie on her skilful handling of the disgusting, while Linda liked the authentic feel of the piece and Clive appreciated Annie’s use of synecdoche. All were agreed that the dialogue was stilted but that the ‘sofa springs groped her flesh’ was a vivid metaphor, especially Linda, who admits to a thing for anthropomorphic imagery. Offered in both first and third person versions, the piece was preferred in the third person by a margin of three to one.
Unity Street
The first paragraph graphically portrays a low-life street in a town centre; the images made this story Linda’s favourite. Tony’s understanding of the story was enhanced once he learnt that a pavement pizza is a euphemism for vomit. Clive and Linda both thought that there was a problem with the time sequence.
The Sleigh Ride
This was Tony’s favourite: poignant though a little confusing. Linda, too, had to work hard to ‘get’ it and suggested Annie was demanding too much of the reader – this points up one of the difficulties of flash fiction – but felt it to be potentially a good story.


Annie was pressed for time in submitting these three pieces of work, which perhaps accounted for any lack of polish, some stilted dialogue and questionable punctuation but all the pieces were felt to have merit and to have been generally well-written.

News

Rob had emailed prior to his departure that he had none. Clive has been stung into action by his chagrin at Rob’s earlier suggestion that his muse has deserted him and begun what will become either a ‘short’ or a ‘flash’. Linda has spoken recently to her Muse and been told that chapters need to be between 1500 and 2500 words. Linda’s were originally written at around 2000 and her mentor asked her to increase to 3000 (which she did) and so is now editing down to where she was in the first place . . . Chris, who seems to be on a roll, delivered another successful talk in Solihull to a National Trust audience of around 80, of whom 19 purchased a copy of his book, Why Don’t You Fly? He has also heard from the New Zealand outfit that they intend to include his work in their Less Flying project. Tony has entered a Bristol competition, as well as the Malvern As You Read It, and brought to our attention a Worcestershire Life magazine short story competition arranged in conjunction with the Worcester LitFest. 500 words, Lisa Ventura judging, a prize of some sort. Tony also talked about a publisher (Saskhet? – doesn’t google) who is looking for recipe novels based on having fun cooking. I might have misheard that: check with Tony. Annie wrote and staged a show at Northwick Primary School which was performed on two afternoons and one evening. Attendances were good and the show was much enjoyed, with some people actually laughing at the jokes (comic timing is not a skill commonly found in seven-year-olds).


Next meeting at Annie’s, Clive reading, Tony blogging, date not yet agreed but not, ideally, the 16th or 17th.


Clive Eardley
April 6th, 2012

From a Patio on another Planet...

By 7.30 on Monday 19 March four members of the Severn Valley Authors were sitting down to coffee and cake in Welch Gate. No Tony or Annie, who are never late, and we began to wonder how we were going to manage a meeting in the absence Tony, who was supposed to be reading his latest short story. Ten minutes later, however, they turned up. Their uncharacteristic lateness had been due to Tony driving to Rob’s house by mistake, and after a hard day at school, Annie had been too exhausted to notice.

Tony’s short story, entitled The Limit, was excellently written and an enjoyable read. There was much to admire in the authoritative description of a career in journalism, the expert and easy treatment of dialogue and the following delicious metaphor in the opening paragraph: In the grey-blue flesh of the evening sky he watched an aeroplane make a peach-coloured incision with its vapour trail. The cut quickly healed itself as the trail evaporated and Richard smiled to himself. 

                Tony cunningly managed to sustain the readers’ interest by keeping the location of the main character nicely ambiguous until the very last word of the piece, at which point the reader realises with a jolt that Richard Wycherley is reminiscing over his career as a newspaper reporter from his patio on another planet. 

                Most of the discussion surrounded the problem of the time over which the events had taken place. Rob pointed out that the main character, given his whereabouts, had to be reminiscing from a time in the fairly distant future; yet, as a budding journalist, he had interviewed Spitfire pilots – the youngest of whom would have been around 85 years old by the year 2010. So if Richard Wycherley was reminiscing from a patio on another planet, it couldn’t have been too far in the future, for he wouldn’t have survived that long. If he’d been born in 1985 he’d have been 25 in the year 2010. The narrative excludes the possibility that he’d retired or was even considering retirement, so it seems unlikely that Richard was relaxing on his patio on Planet Zog much later than 2050 - and we all felt that the idea that people could be drinking wine on their patios on one or more planets in less than 40 years time was a little far-fetched.

                Stretching Annie’s credulity was also the fact that Richard could lean back in his patio chair at the same time as reaching for the wine glass at his feet.

                Clive (who enjoyed the quality of the writing but shared the general confusion about time) remarked judicially that you probably could if you were pissed. He should know.

                Exercising his right to reply, Tony stated that two thirds of the story could have been set in the present. The exercise became a game to see how long he could keep the reader wondering where Richard Wycherley was doing his reminiscing.

General News:

Rob announced that he had abandoned his efforts to get literary festivals interested in his talk about the background to his novel-in-waiting No Mean Affair. No doubt they’ll change their tune when it gets published. He is writing a new short story for the Bristol competition and has entered the ‘As You Read It’ short story competition, along with Tony and Annie. Winners will be invited to read out their stories in at the Forum Theatre in Malvern on 17 May. Tony has already booked tickets and we decided to make it an SVA day out. Linda was feeling under pressure because her computer had expired and she was having nightmares getting used to the funky new red Toshiba lap-top - with a mentoring session with Kathryn Heyman looming next week. Clive stated that he had no news and had become so outraged by British politics that he didn't even feel able to blog about it. A shame - Clive's recent blogs on current events have been excellent and insightful and wouldn't be out of place in a newspaper column (http://cliveeardley.weebly.com). Personally I've always found any powerful emotion, whether positive or negative, provides a terrific incentive to write.

The next meeting will take place on Monday 2 April at Clive’s. Annie to read, and Clive to blog.

John Clare on grammar

At SVA meetings, we often spend quite a bit of time discussing the finer points of grammar. Part of our critiquing of one another's work involves close scrutiny of the nuts and bolts of language but perhaps we worry too much sometimes. A propos, I was amused to come across the following unrestrained opinion, expressed by the great English poet John Clare: 'Grammar in learning is like tyranny in government — confound the bitch I'll never be her slave'.

A New Chapter

The meeting started with the news that a new chapter has started in Rob’s life. Rob has become a granddad. Daisy was born on 27th February and weighed 8lb 4oz. Many congratulations.
We met at Rob’s house on Monday 5th March and read Linda’s piece. It started with the most fantastic quote: ‘Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies for instance’ John Steinbeck

Rob described the writing as poetic. Chris praised the fantastic detail, good dialogue and descriptive flair. Clive had enjoyed the piece so much that he had also passed it onto his wife, Marilyn to read, who had also enjoyed the piece. Tony liked the phrase ‘houses clung to the cliffs like barnacles.’ There was also a super description of the Midlands as ‘a place of averages and in-betweens’. I particularly liked ‘gauzy perfumed roses climbed the walls, dusty pink like snatches of petticoat.

Linda must be commended on her writing. Everyone agreed that it was evocative and carefully crafted. Well done, Linda, this project is definitely taking shape before our eyes.

During the news section the group talked about the Malvern Theatre Writing Competition – ‘As You Read It. Stories are submitted, the winning entries are selected and the authors are invited to read their work to an audience. Several members of the group are interested in taking part in the competition.

Chris reported that he had a talk coming up in Bromyard. Clive had no news to report. Rob reported on the latest communication from Lisa Runions of Cornwall and District Writers’ Circle. Tony’s news caused much amusement. Tony has been trying to write a blog about a book that he has not got around to writing. He has accepted defeat on both the book and its blog. This has allowed him to clear his mind and he has written a song that he was very pleased with and it only took him four and a half hours.

Our next meeting is on the 19th March where Tony will be reading his piece.

We are all philosophers now

Spot the philosopher

SVA member Chris has cycled the 16,500 miles from Bewdley, Worcestershire to Beijing. His next, equally daunting, challenge is to complete the Careful Driving Trilogy in which he charts the journeys, physical and mental, that a truck driver takes as he steers his juggernaut across Europe.

We have seen only glimpses of Chris's work-in-progress but it is enough for us to wonder at the audacity that compels him to undertake this gargantuan task. Given what he has achieved in the past we have no doubt he will bring the cargo home with aplomb.

In the extract under review, the truck driver crosses Germany while musing on how Plato's tri-partite class structure and his 'once upon a time' miracle have echoed down the centuries.  As usual, Chris's prose was virtually beyond reproach with only one 'fail' in Linda's obsessive bad-hyphen hunting and a mild rebuke from Tony regarding his 'tic' of inverting sentences so the reader embarks on them not knowing their destination.

The challenging nature of the philosophical content was a concern. Chris defended his position citing that the development of his arguments and their repetition will facilitate understanding. Nevertheless we all felt that he should not forget the limitations of his target readership – the great unwashed British public.  In Tony's words, the book must not fail the Costa coffee shop test. He suggested that Chris should beware of the 'authorial voice' and ensure the reader is always firmly either in the cab alongside the driver or in his head.

Annie and Linda observed that this will help drive (pun intended) the narrative along and ensure that the transitions from corporeal to mental journeying (a concern of Rob's) would not be 'sleeping policemen' in the reader's path.

In SVA news we learned that:

·         Tony is creating a new blog that will be a mental health discussion and ideas forum

·         Linda has submitted a further 10,000 words of her work-in-progress to her Gold Dust mentor

·         Annie is reading the 2011 Bridport Prize anthology

·         Rob has entered his second novel in the Dundee International Prize

·         Clive has unearthed a W Somerset Maugham book of essays that includes a treatise on the short story

·         Chris's recent speaking engagements in Kidderminster and Stroud were both sell-outs and resulted in the sale of 35 copies of Why Don't You Fly.

But the most telling moment of this meeting, in my opinion, came when one of our number dropped into the conversation, 'I was reading Cicero the other day'. It attracted not a flicker of scepticism or curiosity. This is the intellectual plateau SVA exists on following our immersion in Plato, Marx, and the World of Ideas.

The SVA Buzz

We had a very enjoyable SVA meeting at Annie's flat on the 7th February - in great part due to the excellent cake.


Rob read an extract from 'The Sting Inside'. He was interested to know how we felt about his new approach to  tackling the rather complicated back-story of how the English family came to be living in America. He did this very efficiently by incorporating an article about the family in the 'Burford Buzz' (a local social gossip magazine) written shortly after their arrival. I thought this worked very well. The article was light and amusing and it highlighted the American curiosity about the English.


Annie felt that Rob had introduced the story and characters in an original way that would grab the interest of readers. Clive commented that this type of magazine produced the sort of stuff that he hangs on a nail behind the toilet door. Chris felt that Rob had devised an ingenious way of setting the scene, but asked if this should be the introduction or a prologue. Tony commented that the solution to the long-winded back-story was 'inspirational' and more believable than the writing competition line. We mostly agreed that the change of name from Jon Vidler to Jay Shapiro was a good thing.


News:
Annie has entered the Reader's Digest 100 words competition. Good luck, Annie!
Rob has applied to Room 204:
            'Room 204 is for emerging* writers living or working in the West Midlands who are looking for career development. It will support 15 -20 writers per year. We will offer each writer at least a year of support, including meetings and planning sessions in the first year, with follow up contact in subsequent years.'
I have looked at the website and it looks like a fantastic opportunity and it's free. Good luck, Rob. I hope they accept you.
Clive received a cheque for £25 for his Homity Pie recipe in 'Take A Break' and has had an article printed in 'Mensa' magazine. Splendid!
Chris gave a fabulous talk at the Rose Theatre in Kidderminster where tickets were sold out and he sold nineteen books. At Stroud's Cotswold Playhouse Theatre on 17th February he had an audience of sixty and sold sixteen books.


Last but not least, if our friends in Canada are following this blog, I would like to say to Lisa how much I enjoyed her father's story 'Fool's Paradise'. I promise to be more proactive about keeping in touch in the future!

The Innominate Tale

We gathered at Clive’s house and read Clive’s short story. A tale without a title.

The story unfolded and told of Dennis Afrani, a middle aged business man, who had been posted to Belfast by his company to set up a new branch. Dennis’s character was carefully drawn as a philandering, dishonest egotist. Before long his opinions make him the butt of a practical joke. His reaction to the practical joke was extreme. The story also had a strong theme about the political situation in Northern Ireland.

The group enjoyed the story and found it amusing but also though-provoking. Particular phrases were singled out for special attention including: ‘all pink and powdered and silver-haired in his Rubinacci chalk strip three piece;’ ‘the strangulated vowels of Belfast’ and the question: ‘Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?’

Another facet of the story that appealed to all was thinking about the fall-out that would follow Dennis’s over-reaction. Clive was also praised for his natural sounding dialogue. ‘Linda-the-hyphen-Bruce’ spotted several hyphen related incidents: over zealous use and omissions. Rob again performed open prose surgery; he suggested removing the ending to the piece to leave a much stronger finish.

As for the news this week, I had nothing to report. Rob has received several emails from Lisa Etherington-Runions from Cornwall and Area Writers’ Society (our twinned writing group in Canada). He is planning to send her his latest piece. Aside from that Rob has entered several competitions and has made structural changes to his work in progress called ‘The Sting Inside.’ Linda has delayed her most recent Gold-dust session. Chris talked about his upcoming talk at The Rose Theatre in Kidderminster. Tony has entered the clocks competition and is working on two linked articles. Clive has submitted a rant to ‘The Oldie’. Tony asked, ‘Do they accept unsolicited rants from unknown ranters?’ It would appear that they do not.