Frances and Martine

Creative Writing Week 2: An Introduction to Writing Short Stories

Warm-up: Exercising your voice

Having a good rant on the page can be a great exercise for warming up the voice. See this poem here by Steve Scafidi: “To Whoever Set My Truck On Fire” from Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (LSU, 2001).

The writer gives himself permission to be firey, strong, kind, murderous and bewildered all in one poem.

Ask yourself: What do you feel strongly about? Then freewrite on the subject. Don't hold back!

Short Stories:

When I grow up ;) I'd like to write a novel! Writing short stories has been a great place to start. Many of the elements of writing a novel: plot, character, theme, point of view can be found in the short story. The length of a short story can vary but usually between 1000 to 6000 words. Anything under is usually labelled 'Flash Fiction' or 'Micro Fiction'.

It took me a long time to gather enough resources and to learn the skills I needed to get started with short story writing. I'm still developing this skill, but many of the ideas and elements below have really helped. I'm sure you can discover more helpful tools, there are many books and blogs on this subject, but here's a few to get started.

How to begin?

Which of these short story beginnings make you want to read on?

'They can't shave their heads every day like they wish they could, so their tattoos show through stubble. Little black hairs like iron filings stuck on magnets.' From Mines by Susan Straight.

'The woman showed him into a small room, not unlike a doctor's waiting room except all the magazines on the table seemed to be about fish packing and frozen foods.' From Trawl by William Bedford.

'Dear Friends and family, by the time you get this this letter I will be dead.' From The Last You'll Hear From Me by David Sedaris.

'In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. Except for that, things looked much the way they had in the bedroom - nightstand and reading lamp on his side of the bed, nightstand and reading lamp on her side. From Why Don't You Dance? by Raymond Carver.

In 1972 my father came back from the moon. From Prison Moon by Molly Black

How will you start your story?

Characters

Your job, as a writer of short fiction–whatever your beliefs–is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value–that will, in Chekhov’s words, “make [man] see what he is like.” -Rick Demarnus

Appearance. Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character. Action. Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives. Speech. Develop the character as a person — don’t merely have your character announce important plot details.Thought. Bring the reader into your character’s mind, to show them your character’s unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

Dialogue

Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. -Jerome Stern

Point of View

This is a good place to find all the information you need about Point of View. The Beginning Writer.

Plot:

Try the 8 - Point Story Arc as a way of understanding stories and how they work. Read some short stories to see if you can discover these plot elements.

From, Nigel Watts' Writing A Novel and Getting Published.

Stasis
Trigger
The quest
Surprise
Critical choice
Climax
Reversal
Resolution

Here's a short video to help you get started.

HOW TO WRITE A GREAT SHORT STORY

Some short stories to try this method on before writing in this way:

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, and some free short stories by Anton Chekhov. Think about the stories you have read in the past, do they fit into this plot structure?

Watch Kurt Vonnegut on The Shapes of Stories

Here is a piece in the New York Times about The Seven Basic Plots. Again, try to organise the stories you love into these types of stories.

If you'd like to read and understand sub-text, I recommend David Baoulene's book: The Story and he has a very helpful bog on the subject HERE

The Bridport Prize accepts stories up to 5,000 words (no minimum). See Short Stops for more ideas of places to read short stories and start learning this craft.

Goodluck writing short stories!

Creative Writing Week 1: Introduction.

Week 1: The Art of Free Writing:

Free writing can be a great tool to get writing started and improves with practice. The best time to practice is first thing in the morning before you are fully awake, perhaps still in the dream state. I like to free write just before falling asleep (this works for me) and I do this on my phone in the notes section. My notes are full of surprises and I get my best work from this process. See here a post about Virginia Woolf and her approach to writing daily:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/25/virginia-woolf-on-keeping-a-diary/

Free Writing: Begin to write without stopping for five or ten minutes. Put down everything that comes to mind on the issue or question. Do not stop to think about spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Simply, write everything possible on the topic freely without stopping. Do not stop at this stage to evaluate the results or worry about sentence structure. The goal is to pour out as many ideas as possible in a steady stream of writing.

See further information about free writing here:

https://writingprocess.mit.edu/process/step-1-generate-ideas/instructions/freewriting

Try a focussed free write using the word 'Waterfall' as a stimulus word. Try any word at home for a timed 5 minutes.

Note: Free writing is not the same as automatic writing.

Here are some examples of short pieces of writing:

Daniil Kharms: http://www.sevaj.dk/kharms/kharmseng.htm

Gertrude Stein: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gertrude-stein

Here's something more contemporary and narrative from writer Tania Hershman:

http://www.smokelong.com/coat-and-shoes/

Socks

For Kim Moore

If you were a pair of socks Martine, would you display yourself in dirty little piles about this room, sitting about with other dirty socks failing to reach the wash basket in such a demonstration of filthy deeds? How long would you hang about with such vagrant items, itching and holing around, the muck of you an irritant to those who love and care for your well-being, those who share your foul spaces, cluttered moments, inconsiderate escapades of slattery? If you were a pair of socks would this behaviour continue, or would you strumpet and slurf your dirty way to the wash basket with a face like Desdemona in her final moments, waiting for Othello to forgive her in that last leap to the basket, the denial of your love for other dirty socks. O Martine! I can not walk by. This makes men mad, it is the very error of the moon.

O Frances, a guiltless death I die.

#slaternsunite

WHO IS A SURREALIST AND WHO IS NOT? AND WHO CARES? Penelope Rosemont

"Knock hard. Life is deaf." —Mimi Parent

For a long time I've been drawn to the surrealists and this month I decided to get to grips with what it really means to be a 'Surrealist'. I am interested in this subject because the word 'surreal' is often attributed to the work I write. But am I a surrealist? And who cares?

This week, I ordered David Gascoyne's book of 1935 and now published by Enitharnon, A Short Survey of Surrealism. David Gascoyne was a translator of the 'leading' French Surrealists: Dali, Ernst, Breton, Eluard and others. I was struck by the lack of women. Surely there were women.

"Certain critics and curators have attempted to isolate women surrealists from the Surrealist Movement as a whole, not only by reducing their work to the traditional aesthetic frameworks that surrealists have always resisted but worse yet by relegating them to a subbasement of the art world known as “Women’s Art.” Ironically, the old (mostly male) critics who ignored or minimized women in their studies of surrealism are not that different from these newer (often female) critics who ignore or minimize surrealism itself in their studies of women who took part in it. Each of these one-sided and erroneous views reinforces the other, and both prop up the insidious fiction that surrealism is yet another “Men Only” movement." Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Women (Surrealist Revolution) University of Texas Press.

Some of them have been reduced to shadows of the more famous men. Take Lise Deharme: "In recent years, historians such as Marie-Claire Barnet, Mary Ann Caws, Renée Riese Hubert, Andréa Oberhuber, and Penelope Rosemont, have begun to un-do the "reducing" of Deharme to "a failed love story." These scholars have set out to establish a more dynamic conception of Deharme's reputation."

I searched 'women surrealists' and found a list on Wiki. This is where you fall down a fantastic rabbit hole. Don't follow me, you might never get out! I'll make a list of women whose poetry I can make a link to and then a further list of Surrealist writers.

SURREALIST POETS:

Aase Berg (born 1967) is a Swedish poet and critic, among the founding members of the Stockholm Surrealist Group in 1986. EIGHT POEMS

Joyce Mansour (1928-1986) was an Egyptian-French poet. She first encountered Surrealism in Cairo, but moved to Paris in 1953. FIVE POEMS

Olga Orozco (1920-1999) was an Argentine poet of the Surrealistic 'Tercera Vanguardia' generation. THREE POEMS

Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) was an Argentine poet heavily influenced by Surrealism. SIX POEMS

Gisèle Prassinos (1920-2015) was a French writer of Greek heritage, associated with Surrealism since her first publication at the age of 14. ONE POEM

Penelope Rosemont (born 1942) is an American writer, painter, photographer, collagist and cofounder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. Her edited anthology Surrealist Women demonstrated the breadth of women's contribution to surrealism. MY TRIP TO RUSSIA also editor of Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (Surrealist Revolution Series)

Blanca Varela (1926-2009) was a Peruvian poet. Octavio Paz characterized her poetry as in the "spiritual lineage" of surrealism. THREE POEMS

Unica Zürn (1916-1970) was a German writer and artist. She wrote anagram poetry, exhibited automatic drawing and collaborated with Hans Bellmer as his photographic model. Nine Anagrammatic Poems

Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) was an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, writer, and poet, whose early work was influenced by Surrealism. She became part of the circle of Surrealists in New York in the 1940s, and was married to fellow Surrealist Max Ernst for 30 years. FIVE POEMS

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was a British-born Mexican Surrealist painter. She met the Surrealist Max Ernst in 1937, and had a painful and complicated relationship with him. Much of her work is autobiographical. ONE POEM

OTHER WRITERS AND POETS WHERE NO WORK CAN BE FOUND ONLINE:

Lise Deharme (1898-1980) was a French writer associated with the Surrealist movement. WIKI PAGE

Valentine Penrose (1898-1978) was a French surrealist poet, author and collagist.

Guia Risari (born 1971) is an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, translator.

Ginka Steinwachs (born 1942) is a German scholar and writer. Her doctoral thesis on André Breton was published as Mythologie des Surrealismus.

Haifa Zangana (born 1950) is an Iraqi writer active in surrealist activity in London.

⇻

Penelope Rosemont asks in Surrealist Women (Surrealist Revolution) University of Texas Press,

"WHO IS A SURREALIST AND WHO IS NOT? AND WHO CARES?"

"Neither silly nor simple, these questions are vital for anyone who wants to know the truth about surrealism. Critics who attempt to define the movement in aesthetic or literary terms, as a “style” or a “school,” overlook the crucial fact that surrealism is above all “a community of ethical views,” as Toyen put it in a statement included in this collection."

"Many are the writers who at some point in the course of their careers have expressed themselves in a surrealist voice—"

All the women included here have been co-thinkers and co-dreamers in surrealisms revolutionary project. More precisely, for the purposes of this collection, I define a surrealist as one who

(1) considers herself/himself a surrealist and/or

(2) is recognized as surrealist by surrealists and accepts being so designated, and

(3) takes part in surrealist activity by:

(a) producing work recognized by surrealists as a contribution to surrealism;
(b) collaborating on surrealist penodicals;
(c) participating in surrealist exhibitions;
(d) publishing under the movement’s “Surrealist Editions” imprint;
(e) cosiging surrealist tracts;
(f) taking part in Surrealist Group meetings, games, demonstrations, or other activities; and/or
(g) otherwise publicly identifying herself/himself with the aims, principles, and activity of the Surrealist Movement.

FINAL WORDS

If you are interested in participating
in the activities of
the Surrealist Movement,
please write us at Black Swan Press
c/o Charles H. Kerr Company
1740 West Greenleaf Av
Chicago, Il 60626

For orders phone 773-465-7774

Let us know, in as much detail as possible:

1) your views regarding contemporary revolutionary thought and action;
2) your orientation toward surrealism and its project here and now; and
3) what contribution(s) you believe you can make to surrealist revolution today.

The God Baby

My new chapbook, The God Baby, is a collaboration with artist Jill Carter and includes stunning prints: website HERE

Limited copies are available to buy in the UK
Sheehan’s is a unique voice, a hallucinogenic mix of colour-clashing syntax and formal innovation. Every time you think you know what to expect, Sheehan’s poetry charabanc swerves onto a track you never knew existed, leaving you breathless and exhilarated. Supported by Carter’s anarchic illustrations, these poems surprise and amaze by turns, ambushing the reader with tenderness, humour and political rage. A truly unmissable ride. - Jacqueline Saphra (latest book, All My Mad Mothers, Nine Arches Press)

"I was instantly hooked – the surreal yet grounded storylines, the sentences crackling with nervous electricity, the subtle interweaving of the political with the personal, and the innovative yet tempered and often lyrical use of language." Ian Seed: Stride Magazine

"Sheehan has a way of putting things that sound logically impossible but are metaphysically very real. An impressive, funny, and entertaining surrealism one can believe in." Robert Vas Dias

"The artwork and the poetry blend perfectly to present a very special, damaged account of parenthood, and childhood – in lots of ways the two are intertwined. Hilda uses her fantastic surreal style to bring humour and surprise to the poetry, but it is never far from feeling very real and painful. This pamphlet carries greater weight than many collections I have read this year and I recommend everyone read Hilda’s poetry, she is truly unique and wonderful, making the world a better place through her askew poetry!" Stephen Daniels, http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/p/tell-mistakes-i-love-them.html

Jill Carter is a multi-media artist based in the UK. Her diverse performative practice explores narratives of identity, creating dark, quirky and engaging off artworks and collections. She enjoys drawing, printing and transforming findings and offerings into stitched and bound talismanic objects. Passionate about journaling, her one off books are badly behaved and full of curious observations and musings.

The God Baby

A god came out of a woman
and took over her house.

‘I am a god!’ he screamed
from his baby mouth

and in no language.

This god was massive: 25lb in her arms!
And her opening, from out he came

was a secret cave where light beamed
through at certain times

of the day – and out
had come this god

looking nothing like his father.

March 2017: Surrealism (1)

I like to turn to the surrealists for inspiration. The poems I write may not always eventually be surreal, but reading the surrealists and using surreal techniques can lead the way towards writing something true and fresh.

“The word ``surrealism'' having thereupon become descriptive of the generalizable undertaking to which we had devoted ourselves, I thought it indispensable, in 1924, to define this word once and for all: SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.” Andre Breton.

Some favourites of mine below and suggested reading:

Andre Breton - Choose Life

Hans Arp - The Domestic Stones (Fragment)

Amy Lowell - Red Slippers

Francis Ponge - Crate

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes Sliding Trombone

Short Stories

I've spent the last week reading short stories. Mainly because I have a unit to teach at New College, and each time I teach it I have grown myself as a writer and teacher, so I end up rewriting the whole unit! The pleasure of reading and discovering new stories can take you to new imaginations. I started with Best (British) Short Stories 2016 (Salt) I wanted to read what writers are writing and publishing now. There is a lively introduction by Nicholas Royle and he reminded me to read some of the excellent journals that publish short stories, in particular, Brittle Star, Lighthouse, and Ambit.

I've also been reading, That Glimpse of Truth: 100 of the finest short stories ever written. Selected by David Miller.

'Any anthology is a weird wonky wonder ...' he writes.

And it is a wonky wonder. I have loved revisiting The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Anderson, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, and How to Write a Short Story by Sean O'Faolain.

It's hard to teach people to write, and giving structures and science can help a great deal. I was reading these stories with structure in mind, I wondered how they fit into Nigel Watts’ eight points, from Writing A Novel and Getting Published. Here's my conclusion from The Red Shoes.

•Stasis

ONCE upon a time there was little girl, pretty and dainty. But in summer time she was obliged to go barefooted because she was poor, and in winter she had to wear large wooden shoes, so that her little instep grew quite red.

•Trigger

In the middle of the village lived an old shoemaker’s wife; she sat down and made, as well as she could, a pair of little shoes out of some old pieces of red cloth. They were clumsy, but she meant well, for they were intended for the little girl, whose name was Karen.
Karen received the shoes and wore them for the first time on the day of her mother’s funeral. They were certainly not suitable for mourning; but she had no others, and so she put her bare feet into them and walked behind the humble coffin.

•The quest

Just then a large old carriage came by, and in it sat an old lady; she looked at the little girl, and taking pity on her, said to the clergyman, “Look here, if you will give me the little girl, I will take care of her.”

Karen believed that this was all on account of the red shoes, but the old lady thought them hideous, and so they were burnt. Karen herself was dressed very neatly and cleanly; she was taught to read and to sew, and people said that she was pretty. But the mirror told her, “You are more than pretty—you are beautiful.”

•Surprise

Meeting the soldier: Now every one came out of church, and the old lady stepped into her carriage. But just as Karen was lifting up her foot to get in too, the old soldier said: “Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!” and Karen could not help it, she was obliged to dance a few steps; and when she had once begun, her legs continued to dance. It seemed as if the shoes had got power over them. She danced round the church corner, for she could not stop; the coachman had to run after her and seize her. He lifted her into the carriage, but her feet continued to dance, so that she kicked the good old lady violently. At last they took off her shoes, and her legs were at rest.

•Critical choice

At home the shoes were put into the cupboard, but Karen could not help looking at them.
Now the old lady fell ill, and it was said that she would not rise from her bed again. She had to be nursed and waited upon, and this was no one’s duty more than Karen’s. But there was a grand ball in the town, and Karen was invited. She looked at the red shoes, saying to herself that there was no sin in doing that; she put the red shoes on, thinking there was no harm in that either; and then she went to the ball; and commenced to dance.

•Climax

She danced, and was obliged to go on dancing through the dark night. The shoes bore her away over thorns and stumps till she was all torn and bleeding; she danced away over the heath to a lonely little house. Here, she knew, lived the executioner; and she tapped with her finger at the window and said:
“Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance.”
And the executioner said: “I don’t suppose you know who I am. I strike off the heads of the wicked, and I notice that my axe is tingling to do so.”
“Don’t cut off my head!” said Karen, “for then I could not repent of my sin. But cut off my feet with the red shoes.”
And then she confessed all her sin, and the executioner struck off her feet with the red shoes; but the shoes danced away with the little feet across the field into the deep forest.

•Reversal

On the following Sunday they all went to church, and she was asked whether she wished to go too; but, with tears in her eyes, she looked sadly at her crutches. And then the others went to hear God’s Word, but she went alone into her little room; this was only large enough to hold the bed and a chair. Here she sat down with her hymn-book, and as she was reading it with a pious mind, the wind carried the notes of the organ over to her from the church, and in tears she lifted up her face and said: “O God! help me!”

•Resolution

Then the sun shone so brightly, and right before her stood an angel of God in white robes; it was the same one whom she had seen that night at the church-door. He no longer carried the sharp sword, but a beautiful green branch, full of roses; with this he touched the ceiling, which rose up very high, and where he had touched it there shone a golden star. He touched the walls, which opened wide apart, and she saw the organ which was pealing forth; she saw the pictures of the old pastors and their wives, and the congregation sitting in the polished chairs and singing from their hymn-books. The church itself had come to the poor girl in her narrow room, or the room had gone to the church. She sat in the pew with the rest of the pastor’s household, and when they had finished the hymn and looked up, they nodded and said, “It was right of you to come, Karen.”
“It was mercy,” said she.

This might help you understand plot structure: