Gobbledegook, Plato and the Nobel Prize

This is a slapped wrist blog. One which I must back date to the 12 June 2012. We met at Rob's house and Chris was reading.

The meeting started with the most amazing relevation. We discussed Chris's full name: Christopher James Aston Smith and asked if Aston was due to a footballing affiliation. Chris replied that it was after Great Uncle Frank. Francis William Aston, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922, no less.

A quick search on Google gave the following information:
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1922 was awarded to Francis W. Aston "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule".


This explains everything...it shows where he gets it from!

We moved onto Chris's extract from KM&CD.

Linda thought the extract contained lots of interesting ideas but felt that there was still a problem with flow. She also accepted that although Chris was reading Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance during the journey that she didn't necessarily think it was wise to include too much of it in this book.

Tony enjoyed the daydreams of philsophising and the madness and sanity within the piece.

Clive was on top form and contributed some fantastic one-liners into the mix:
'I don't know if it's you or if it's Plato but it's goobledegook to me.'
'I don't think you can start with Plato; you should start with an amoeba.'

Rob commented on the high standards of writing but felt that links between sections were still missing. He requested more details about the trucking.

I found the piece to be thought provoking and challenging and for the first time I felt that most of it was just about within my grasp.

And so onto the news...

Rob has submitted a short story to the Bridport Prize.

Tony has also submitted a short story 'A Game of Chance' to the Bridport and is busy combining two hefty articles on mental health practice into one 5 000 word article.

Linda has had a month off from her mentoring.

Clive, I'm afraid that my notes are a little sparse here and I have you down as: met a bloke, eggs.

I submitted three pieces of flash fiction for the Bridport Prize.

Sorry to all for the delay.

Galileo, Pavlova and Generic Nouns

Rob didn't mention his publisher, honest.

'Mmm! Delicious Pavlova, Annie.' Rob fluffed out a cloud of meringue powder with the capital 'P'.

Chris, Clive, Linda and Tony were too well brought up to speak with their mouths full and allowed the unctiousness of the cream to engulf the fruit and meld with the sugar creating a mellifluous juxtaposition of flavours. They emitted a choral, 'Mmm!' of agreement.

So started the second meeting in July. Only when the serious business of making inroads into Annie's confection had finished did we pass on to news:

•    Clive has been too knackered to write more than the two pieces he put before the meeting.

•    Rob gave advance information on 'Bewdley Book Week' in October.

•    Chris's talks about Why Don't You Fly continue and he sells circa 10 books at every event.

•    Linda is on track to present another 10,000 words to her Gold Dust mentor.

•    Tony gave out the deadlines for the '3 into 1'  and 'Falling Asleep' short story competitions.

•    Annie is hoping to enter the Myslexia children's book competition.

Clive read two short stories he has written as possible competition entries. The shorter of them described an imagined visit of Galileo to a Cardinal and, in an understated way, dealt with the likely effect this would have on the Church. The second was about a boy's friendship with a damaged First World War War veteran.

Except for the minor corrections – missing or redundant hyphens appeared regularly – Clive's writing emerged largely unscathed. We all agreed that he writes excellent prose with interesting flourishes that add colour.

Our critiques focused more on the authenticity of the pieces with some feeling that the Cardinal was too gentle and his reaction too accepting. Others liked the characterisation and the philosophical resignation of his response.

In the longer story it was the parents' reaction to the boy spending his time with the 'Wild Man of the Woods' that prompted discussion. Were they being naive or were they more accepting times? As far as this piece was concerned, all agreed that it is unnecessary to label the first section of a short story, the 'prologue'.

After Clive's spirited response to some of the suggestions and a reminder from Tony that all critiques offered are merely opinions to be accepted or rejected by the writer, the discussion moved on to the use of upper case initial letters a generic noun is used instead of names. We all agreed that we knew the rule as far as parents are concerned: eg  My mum said, 'Sit down, Dad'.  But what when the usage is less commonly seen? The clearest direction I could find is that a generic noun used instead of a name is always capitalised. 'Are you all right, Son?' 'Bless you, Child.' Sister Ignatius pointed at the line of sisters and, singling out me with a glare, said, 'Come here, Sister.'

And Rob never mentioned his publisher, not even once. Honest.

Patchwork, Quiche and Mordant Humour

For the second meeting of June we met at Chris and Linda's. Chris, however, was nowhere to be seen and Linda explained that he was off gallivanting in Germany. Also conspicuous by her absence, was Annie who has temporarily succumbed to the delights of patchworking and has not yet worked out a way of being in two places at once and combining her patchwork group with her writing group. All part, I suppose, of life's rich tapestry.

We followed Linda's suggestion of doing our  ‘news round-up’ first, before hearing and critiquing the extract in question, on the very sensible premise that it is hard to read aloud whilst drinking tea and eating lemon drizzle cake. My own news was that my submission to the FutureDaze anthology of young adult science-fiction had been unsuccessful; BBC Radio had also at last made a decision to reject my short story The Idea of Marmalade and, despite not having won their 100 word story competition, Reader's Digest had said they would love to publish The Storks of Valladolid on their website. Rob told us of his success in the Winchester Writers’ Festival competition. The Sting Inside was highly commended in their ‘opening of a novel’ section while Rob's story The Reflected Woman came joint third in the short story category. Clive had also had some success with yet another recipe accepted for publication in Take a Break magazine. They used to say real men don't eat quiche but I'm sure Clive’s Quiche with a Kick will turn out to be the exception that proves the rule. Linda has been completely absorbed in the task of producing 12,000 words of her novel every month to meet the unrelenting requirements of her author’s mentoring scheme. Despite this tough schedule, Linda'smentor has told her thatshe thought her writing had ‘improved in leaps and bounds '.

All of Linda's hard work was in evidence when she read her chapter describing the experience of seeing the sights of America with some very difficult relationships in tow. You could certainly feel the heavy-heartedness of the narrator and her desperate attempts at levity which make for an entertaining read but one where the reader is fully engaged emotionally with the plight of the characters. Interestingly, Linda was apologetic about it being so ‘downbeat’ but, like me, Clive found it full of mordant humour while Rob described it as exceptionally well-observed, with a pervading sense of ennui and yet bursting with humour. We all agreed that calling a central character Mathaios was probably asking for trouble as, each time the reader saw it on the page, (s)he would wonder how the name should be pronounced and this ran the risk of seriously interrupting the flow. Rob mentioned the value of having some more relaxed passages in the novel and Linda agreed that it was important to pace the narrative and have little ‘pools’ for reflection. Her mentor had also stressed the importance of ‘framing’, by which she means that every scene and every chapter must be rounded and have goal/conflict/resolution and beginning/middle/end. For now we had achieved the meeting’s goal, without excessive conflict and had brought things to a resolution, from a beginning of refreshments and news, through a workshop bit in the middle, to a convivial end -- until the next meeting of the Severn Valley Authors.

Men only

Our meeting on Tuesday, May 22nd, at Tony’s house, was, if nothing else, innovative: (comma to word ratio 1 : 2.8 so far) alfresco, all male, half the membership absent and over by nine o’clock.
Rob read ‘Great-uncle Hymie’s bequest’, telling the story of Jonathon, whose father has recently died. Jonathon is shocked by his lack of feelings towards his father and later, lying awake in bed, is reminded of Great-uncle Hymie’s death and his strange bequest to all the family – a clothes hanger. Jonathon, disturbed by his memories, gets up, finds the hanger and imagines Hymie’s presence. A conversation ensues between them about the quality of the hanger, attention to detail, and duty. Jonathon falls asleep and when he awakes to return to his bed, experiences a sense of despair.
Tony was spell-bound by the story, finding it resonant, compact and a carefully-crafted description of grief, with the clothes hanger playing a totemic role. Clive was at a bit of a loss, feeling that the story comprised two stories melded into one, and unsure as to its message. Was it, perhaps, about grief, or was it about Jonathon’s feelings of guilt at his loss of Jewishness? Both enjoyed the language – “…could pick a snag from such a finish…”, “…despair rising into my mouth like heartburn…” and suggested some punctuation changes.
Rob felt that he had failed to convey sufficiently strongly the idea behind the piece, which was Jonathon’s guilt at his loss of the culture of his forbears, and confirmed that the story comprised an extract from his novel to which he had added and moulded new material.
News was swiftly put aside after Clive confirmed he had none, Tony was awaiting the BBC et al., and Rob had entered four competitions, three in Winchester and the Bridport. He had done more work on his novel, five hours that very day, though complained at having been obliged to eschew the sunshine for his ‘foetid’ office because his laptop screen is illegible in bright light: is there an answer to this problem?
On behalf of Annie (who was quilting), we jointly presented the news that her Malvern escapade had gone extremely well. Tony remarked that ‘As you read it’ was a rubbish name and wondered why Malvern Theatres didn’t publish the stories in a small booklet and give the proceeds to charity. Rob and Clive agreed and recommended he suggest that to them, which he said he would. 
As the evening hurtled towards its close, Clive suggested we need an AOB as the last item of our meetings and Rob and Tony agreed that a set closing time of 9:45 p m would be desirable. It was still light when we left.
Next meeting at Rob’s house on June 12th, story by Chris, blog by Annie.

Prosecco and lemon cake, emerald rings and grumpy bakers

We met at Annie's where the story under discussion was Clive's offering The Emerald Ring. Reaching new heights in the refreshments department, Annie regaled us with prosecco and home-made lemon cake. This was by way of celebrating Annie’s success in being selected to read one of her stories at Malvern Theatre next week as part of their As You Read It evening. We all look forward to Annie's performance and wish her all the best for Thursday.

Clive read The Emerald Ring with gusto – a curious and compelling tale which left us all wondering how much of it was true family history and how much of it pure fiction. Like Wuthering Heights and Robinson Crusoe the kernel of the story (as recounted in the carpenter's tale) is given an added air of verisimilitude by being a story within a story within a story. Rob commented that he wondered whether this was a well-told tale woven around a nugget of truth, and alluded to the genre of creative non-fiction. Linda said how much she loved the carpenter's tale at the heart of the story and really wanted it to be true while Chris admitted that, if it were pure fiction, he had been completely taken in.  We all agreed with Chris that the 18th-century language was so convincing it almost had to be true. Singled out for particular praise was the comment, attributed to the Truro magistrate William Fletcher: ' ... ofttimes the repast was unrecognisable to me though, judged by taste, it was invariably fish and when distinguishably not fish, then the taste was yet fish...’

So, how much of Clive’s story was pure fancy? Clive explained that Lily Brydges really was his grandmother and the parts referring to her were all true. The wrecking of the fleet was also a true story around which Clive had embroidered The Emerald Ring. Fundamentally the story was genuine, but Clive himself was the author of both William Fletcher's statements and the carpenter's tale embedded within it. It seems Clive reads Samuel Pepys's Diary every day for fun, so much so that he appears to have absorbed the language of the late 17th and early 18th century.  If this continues, he may insist we refer to him as Squire Eardley.

 In our news roundup, Annie has of course been practising reading her story out loud in readiness for Thursday. Chris managed to sell out Stafford Gatehouse and sold 31 copies of Why Don't You Fly? to the enthusiastic audience. Linda continues to work on her novel and is trying to get the chapter lengths down to 1,500-2000 words as her mentor suggests this is a more suitable chapter length for a book with such commercial potential as Linda’s. Rob was feeling more discouraged with his work in progress but has managed to sell eight copies of Olympic Mind Games to a local school that is using it as a ‘reader’ for Year Six children. Clive has had further publishing success with a recipe for Cinnamon Crumb Cake in Take a Break magazine. With the popularity of The Hairy Bikers (pictured), we did wonder whether Clive might be cooking up a plan to launch himself as The Grumpy Baker.

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.