What A Circus: A Writing Blog

Good Day, Yesterday

2011-12-14T15:37:00.001Z

Yesterday I read my work for the first time in public, for the Creative Writing Day Soiree at Roehampton Uni. A few hours before, I found out I had a short story published in the "Chaos" issue of Stimulus Respond magazine. This made which made me feel slightly more ready for the public reading!

Thanks to Leone Ross and the editorial team for organising the Creative Writing Day.

The workshop held for the speakers last week was particularly helpful. Leone advised we use the tone of voice of "a bedtime story". The reason for this is because it is a comforting tone, yet engaging and playful: it has a psychological draw for much of the western world, who have grown up with bedtime stories. Anyway, the advice seemed to work!

Now to finish off a few essays, and do some more writing...

A Head Full of Blue by Nick Johnstone

2011-12-02T15:07:00.003Z

My review of Nick Johnstone's memoir, originally published on Goodreads:

The thing that struck me most about this memoir are the brilliant metaphors and similes, which make the reader feel sensations from the viewpoint of an alcoholic. Here's one for example, when author Nick Johnstone is ravenously thirsting after a glass of champagne:

"I could hear its tiny bubbles breaking and shattering like crystals falling on a stone floor."

Or this one, when he imagines himself drinking the forbidden champagne (as a former alcoholic):

"[...] the champagne [scorches] my throat and oesophagus and then that wonderful calm like a rusty old anchor being dropped into the ocean in slow motion."

I sometimes find metaphors and similes too "reaching", but only about once in this book I found a metaphor slightly contrived. Nick Johnstone uses them so well, he really makes the reader feel his images viscerally. Certainly the closest I've come to seeing from the point of view of an alcoholic.

This book is life-affirming (yes, that old book-review cliche)- but in a morbid kind of way. It's very concerned with death, almost obsessed with it. It isn't until the last few pages that there's much positivity. There are flashes of it every so often, but as soon as Johnstone hints at something positive in one of his vignettes, he ends it on a negative note. For me, this narrative rhythm became quite repetitive and predictable.

All in all though, a very well-written memoir, but a depressing one, all about human frailty.

Writing as an Envelope

2011-07-11T18:41:00.002+01:00

I recently listened to Zadie Smith's essay on David Foster Wallace. This got me thinking about doing an entry on a certain attitude to writing which Wallace totally believed in- writing as a gift to readers. There won't be much structure to this, just some things I've been thinking about recently.

In Stein on Writing, Sol Stein asks the aspiring writer to think of writing as an envelope. "It is a mistake to fill the envelope with so much detail that little or nothing is left to the reader's imagination", he says.

So both Stein and Wallace share the idea that writing should be a kind of present to the reader, an envelope packaged with care, rather than a simple display of talent. And of course, Wallace was against solipsism- instead believing that writing should be a conversation between writer and reader.

Another thing I've been thinking about: learning to write is confusing. There is so much different advice. We are told both to be specific- to show and not tell- but also warned against including too much.

Some of Stein's advice for writing is to follow this equation:: 1+1= ½. He explains that “[...] if the same matter is said in two different ways, either alone has a stronger effect”. One detail, the best detail, will suffice.

Perhaps the best advice on this, though- which I’ve heard from numerous writers- is to trust your readers.

Goosebumps

2011-07-10T13:35:00.001+01:00

I've been reading Goosebumps recently. Weirdly enough, I'm now reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar which is a bit of a melancholic jump.

What got me reading Goosebumps though, a 90s series of books for kids that were meant to be a bit scary, was this blog. It's a funny look at the whole series. I like the bits at the end of each summary such as the Great Prose Alert. Weirdly enough the book I was fondest of as a kid- One Day at Horrorland- is the one the blogger is harshest on.

The blog hails Be Careful What You Wish For as the best in the series. I didn't read that one when I was younger, so ordered it from Amazon.

The prose is pretty clear, which I guess it should be for children. It has simple, weird scenarios- such as "What would you do if you were the last person in the world?". It got my imagination going, something which a few of the adult books I've read recently haven't managed to do.

Note: each of these posts will be under 200 words, kind of inspired by Twitter's use of a word limit.

Edit: I no longer follow the 200 word limit. I just think it made my posts almost confusing in their brevity... hm...

Why

2011-07-09T23:21:00.000+01:00

I started this to try out a different mode of writing.

Also, I'll be starting my 3rd year at uni soon, and one of my chosen Eng lit modules is Poetics of Surveillance. We'll be reading books such as 1984, and- I think this is a requirement- keeping our own blogs as a surveillance of our own studies.

I guess this is a practice for that- but this blog will deal with the Creative Writing side of my life.

The name for the blog comes from Bukowski quote I liked. I can't remember where I found it:

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." -Charles Bukowski