The Eagle, the truck driver and Plato*

In the ‘About’ wording on the right of your screen, we say that the members of Severn Valley Authors share a commitment to being published. So we always greet the news that one of us has had a success with huge enthusiasm. Aquila the magazine of ‘fun, challenge and inspiration’ for youngster of 8-13 is publishing Tony Gillam’s short story Times Wing’d Chariot in its summer double issue. Well done, Tony. (And he’s paid for it too!) 

We settled down to the main event of the meeting which was to workshop a rewrite of an extract from Chris’s meisterwerk. Chris Smith is not your usual truck driver. In Karl Marx and Careful Driving, the book he is writing (the act itself makes him unusual), Chris describes one of the great migrations of the truck-driving fraternity and weaves into his story the history of world politics and philosophy. It’s an odyssey of the body and the mind. His plan is to write this in such a way that your every-day, currant-bun reading truck driver can make sense of it. This looks like a crack-pot scheme and originally I doubted Chris’s sanity for trying but, if the extract he read at our meeting is anything to go by, he’s going to pull it off.

The thoughts of Plato, who was absent in the original extract (a shameful omission, I think you’ll agree), have now been added to those of the other philosophers and political thinkers in Chris’s repertoire. He has seamlessly woven this content into his expert travel writing that describes the night drive from Kidderminster to Dover which is the first stage of Chris’s bodily odyssey. He does it in such a way (now that the extracts from heavy tomes are confined to the footnotes) that even I find it accessible and riveting. We all agreed that this is a winner.

*Aquila is Latin for eagle – but you knew that.

Accomplished Writing

Our meeting was diverted to Rob's house this week because Tony had some limp excuse about flies in his chimney. I think he was afraid that we might ask to meet the elusive Mrs Gillam who he claims is kept in the attic. Do you know, I'm sure I've heard the rattle of chains during our meetings there. He says that the flies come from a decaying squirrel that is stuck behind the gas fire. What I want to know, Tony, is where is your wife? At least he had the decency to bring the chocolate biscuits.

Any business: We have to congratulate Rob on his budding modelling career - he is the new face of HPB and we have decided not to renew our membership of NAWG. Sorry, NAWG, you were great but at the same price as a Chinese take-away, we have decided to opt for the latter. Annie has entered her excellent story The Ninth Step for the Bridport prize and Tony has also entered with his engaging story Paper Thin. Good luck to you both.

Rob takes us to Spring 1932 in Berlin. We all agreed that this was a seriously accomplished piece of writing. The characters were compelling, the dialogue excellent and Rob had done a really good job with the research into Berlin during the 30's, including all the authentic place names. He wrote about homosexuality in a very convincing way and with some great 'dark' humour. We all loved the image of 'two stately homos of England flouncing ahead of me in their open-toed sandals (Chris hid his feet under the table at this point) and Besides my valise, which was large enough for me to have smuggled in a boy for my gratification. I am looking forward to reading the finished book. I think this could be a winner, Rob.

Golden Arches and Dancing Plants

On Tuesday 14 June we gathered at Rob's to discuss Annie's submission, entitled Yellow Peril and the Green-Eyed Monster.

News: Tony has entered the Guardian Weekend short story competition, the theme of entries being 'journeys'. After changing most of the narrative from first to second person, Annie is entering her short story The Ninth Step for the Bridport Prize. Rob has submitted entries to the Guardian Weekend, the Bridport and the Bristol competitions. I wonder how he finds the time. Linda spoke glowingly about her week spent on a residential Arvon writing course. She received great tuition from a couple of brilliant authors who were both very positive about her writing - as are we at the SVA, but Linda suffers from an entirely unjustifiable lack of self-confidence. After returning from deepest Shropshire she has changed direction and decided to rewrite her novel A Head Full of Budgerigars in the first person.

On my first reading of Annie's short story, I found myself wondering just what the point was of writing a detailed description of a three-year-old girl's fascination with the act of a man (her father) urinating. But then what is the point of writing anything? Perhaps Tolstoy has put his finger on it in What is Art?:

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having invoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art. Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others the feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.

Annie has done exactly that by reproducing the experience of a three-year-old child, skilfully reproducing all the toddler's curiosity, fascination and bewilderment by deploying the art of what Rob calls "showing, not telling":

'The slapping of liquid on leaves stops me (she writes). His back is to me but something is happening; I can tell. I put down my trowel down and stand up wiping my hands down maroon corduroy dungarees. As I come alongside I see a golden arch making the plants dance. Yellow droplets gather on the long grasses and then slide to the ground.'

On second and third readings, as is often the case, I found the story growing on me. It is a well-written, acutely-observed and charming piece about an unusual subject, described with humour and a child's attention to detail. We had the predictable argument after the reading about whether or not a child's experience can be expressed in such adult language. I felt that it could, and indeed would have to be, for a child of that age is clearly incapable of writing or expressing itself in a way that would make entertaining or even comprehensible reading. The recreation of any childhood experience has to be accomplished by the adult writing about events seen from his or her former self's point of view.

Linda described it as a very poetic description of someone having a wee but wondered why there was no reference to smell. Both Tony and Rob felt that the item was a little too brief for the short story genre and Rob wondered if it might be extended to include the mother's addressing her daughter's distress at her inability to 'wee standing up' like her father by listing female compensations. And we established that there is a hyphen in wee-wee.

In which Tony gets a 'Reality Check' and Rob dangles his participle

We met in the upstairs sitting room at Chris and Linda's and were served very fine banana bread.

Tony read a story that he had written some years ago called 'Reality Check'. The story was about an aspiring musician; whose work is only discovered, when after bitter disappointment, he leaves it out to be collected by the bin men. Rob enjoyed the 'Tony-Gillam-Garrison-Keillor' feel of the piece. He also felt that he was in safe hands as Tony's technical knowledge of speakers/guitars/cables etc. was clearly shown. Well-written with good subject matter, super command of dialogue was Chris's appraisal. Linda thought that the story was very neat and fitted together well.

There was much discussion about the ethics of one of Tony's characters who had had several beers at lunchtime and had then collected his kids from school. Some of us weren't happy with this state of affairs.

It was then that Rob informed us that he had spotted a dangling participle... We were horrified but luckily Rob was on hand with a sheet of information about this dangerous occurence

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/dangling-participles.aspx

Well done Tony a carefully constructed piece with a lovely sense of completion.

The Slaughtered Lamb

Who remembers 'An American Werewolf in London'?

The book I’m reading at the moment is The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons. It’s an interesting story and Simons makes it rattle along while employing some interesting point-of-view trickery to give it a literary quality. But, occasionally, I find my reading pace checked when I come across something which, I believe, should have been smoothed out by a diligent editor.

 

There are times I read a piece of writing that is so simpatico, my internal editor switches off and a preternatural connection transmits the meaning from the writer’s pen straight into my brain.  Our member Linda produced prose of this order in the latest extract from her novel-in-progress, A Head Full of Budgerigars.  This was from a chapter headed Magnetic Socks in which Linda’s protagonist Lily spends a day in her Shrubshire home but contrasts the current idyll with a remembered life on a French farm where:
 

Trevor dragged the frightened lamb on its back across the unkempt farmyard in Sainte Béatrice, to a piece of rough ground in front of the kitchen window. … He slit the lamb’s throat and the blood dripped into the bucket below. Lily had expected it to gush out in a hideous torrent. He cut open the stomach and removed the liver with a knife that flashed in the sunlight. The liver flopped into a chipped enamel bowl. ‘Do you want to fry this up? It’s beautiful when it’s fresh, not like that crap in the supermarket.’  … She [Lily] grimaced, ‘I’d rather not.’

The humour in the pay-off line is typical of Linda’s novel which is also characterized by a wistful, elegiac tone for the pieces about the English countryside. We all hope that when Lily finishes the book she can find an agent or publisher who loves it as much as we do.

In other news, we discussed the current round of competitions and it looks as if at least three of us will attempt to have a story in the Summer Guardian Weekend Short Story special. We also floated the idea that if we can’t afford to go to writing retreats organized by other people why can’t we do-it-ourselves? Five Go (Writing) Mad in Dorset beckons.  

Our last meeting was at Rob's house where we listened to Chris read an extract from Karl Marx and Careful Driving. It was generally felt by the group that Chris had got it just right this time, ie more about the journey and less philosophy. Marx (as the title implies) is central to the theme of the book and Plato is becoming equally significant, so Chris didn't quite agree.

I felt that this was an exciting extract from the book - real swashbuckling, romantic stuff. The loneliness and isolation of the long distance truck driver really came through. Tony appreciated the 'dark' humour and Annie enjoyed getting a bit closer to life on the road. Rob was a little disconcerted about Chris's thoughts on speeding: 'The Inquisition is wielding radar guns on the Minsk bypass'. Hopefully this contentious subject will attract interest and discussion and we will soon be listening to Chris being interviewed on Radio 4, while we eat our cornflakes. Doesn't he bare a striking resemblance to Errol Flynn?

Apologies to Annie for missing my turn to blog on her latest short story Aspirations and Ambitions. We all agreed that this was a well constructed story with an excellent twist and the requisite happy ending. This is the sort of story that women's magazines love and hopefully she should do very well with it. Several of us felt that the title should be changed. I suggested Keeping up with Monica.

Fine upstanding writers

It had been a while since we'd met at Chris and Linda’s and the mood was light-hearted. Thanks to Linda's hospitality and baking skills I enjoyed my second accidental cake of the day. Annie and I shared a pew while Rob -- suffering with a back problem -- was obliged to spend the meeting either towering over us like an intimidating lecturer who had lost his lectern or else kneeling beside this. Poor Rob. But the supplicant was rewarded for his humble genuflection with lots of thoughtful and constructive feedback on his submission to this week’s meeting -- an opening chapter for a ghost-written memoir. This is a fascinating project and generated much discussion about the particular challenges of writing memoir and the extent to which a ghost-writer must remain faithful to the recollections of the ‘ghost-writee’. All memory is imperfect. How much poetic licence can the writer of memoir-at-one-remove be allowed?

Meanwhile, Chris has been busy touring his ' one-man show ' based on his book Why don't you fly? With the logistical backup of Linda, Chris is as busy doing talks these days as he is writing. He played us a recording of a recent interview on BBC Radio Shropshire. Notwithstanding the chummy facetiousness of the radio presenter, BBC local radio remains one of the few forums for emerging writers to publicise their work. The BBC is a public service and, like all public services these days, is facing cutbacks. BBC local radio is a precious platform for writers just as BBC Radio 4 is one of very few outlets for short literary fiction for UK-based writers. Let us hope, as the BBC's output is scrutinised, opportunities for new writing are developed rather than cut back. Perhaps we should follow Rob's example and ask for as much on bended knee.