Reading Short Story Collections

As I was reading Catherine Chanter's enticing collection of short fiction (which I would again urge you to read!) I realised something about my reading habits.

I currently have bookmarks in four separate short story collections. Women Who Did: Stories by Men and Women 1890-1914 and Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siecle both have page markers around about story one. The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield dispensed with the bookmark for some reason unknown to me, although I think I was about half way through the mammoth 779 pages and The New York Stories of Edith Wharton has a nice solid receipt marking page 230 out of 459. Add to this the fact that I'm reading three separate collections for my PhD and it seems I'm drowning in short story collections.

I think it stems from the fact that I only allocate myself an hour of pleasure reading per day. Eleven until midnight is the only time I really switch off and allow myself to do something fun. Not that PhD research and writing my socks off isn't fun, it's just it's... work. So during my hour I like to bury myself in a story and, unfortunately, short stories don't drag me back for more. If I finish one tonight then where's the incentive for me to return to the collection tomorrow? More to the point, why should I pull myself away from whatever I may be doing at eleven o'clock when I'm not anxious to know if Person A betrays Person B? There's a reason serialised fiction in periodicals was intensely popular in the nineteenth century. (Note PhD encroaching on my blog posts now!)

Do I have a solution? Well, I think short stories are the most delicate and intriguing form known to writers. Writing them is so difficult that I want to marvel at the ingenuity of Catherine Chanter or the expressive detail of Edith Wharton or the quiet contemplation of Katherine Mansfield. I think that somewhere in my schedule I need to allocate 'short story reading time' and enjoy one collection at a time.

Suggestions on where I can fit that into my full schedule happily received on a postcard.

Comment Control

Recently I posted a perfectly good-natured comment on the bottom of a historical blog entry only to find the next day that it had been removed. Now, there could be all sorts of reasons for the disappearance - maybe I wasn't as articulate as I presumed, maybe I made a glaring mistake in the response that made both me and the owner look stupid, or maybe there was a glitch with the page and my comment didn't save.

It could be any of the above really but the notion that my comment might have been deliberately deleted by the blog owner baffled me a little. I pretty much bowed to his superior wisdom and let it be known that he'd taught me something. I would've thought all bloggers liked hearing that.

Generally, I don't remove any comments from anything. On this blog I've been happy to converse with the lovely people who have stopped by and on my other blog, the political Rattling Marbles, I've received one comment only. Now I didn't deliberately intend to ignore that response to one of my posts - I hadn't got to grips with the comment alert feature at the time and subsequently didn't notice it for about a month. It's sad really because I would've liked to engage the reader in some lively debate but the time had passed for that. Even so, the comment remains there on the blog, a blip on my authority as blog owner. But whether it's favourable or not, it at least proves that post stimulated some kind of debate with someone. I'm happy for that.

Do you regularly delete comments from your blog?

Twisting the Standards

I'm currently listening to Alfie Boe's latest album. It's a selection of show tunes and, truth be known, there's not a bad track included. From 'On The Street Where You Live' to 'Tell Me It's Not True' to 'Some Enchanted Evening', all the songs are deservedly standards.

Now, whenever somebody releases an album like this I'm immediately sceptical. In many cases I consider the original to be the best. That includes any track by Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury or Robert Preston. In the same way that I would not want to see the central premise of The Woman in White highjacked and ruined, I would hate for somebody to take 'The Man That Got Away' by Judy and actually believe they were emulating the most famous version.

However, as writers we are frequently reminded there are only so many different stories in the world. We work around the same themes, use the same plot progressions. In fact, the only weapon we have in reserve is how we tell the story, not what the story actually is. It's very tempting to stick to a prescribed route and tell a story the way it's been told before. After all, that was successful. But that doesn't mean anything. You can turn a Lord of the Rings style quest into something completely different if you're only prepared to look at it in an alternative way.

Take this album by Alfie Boe. It could easily be another drab collection of musical theatre standards but it isn't. What Alfie brings to the music is his opera training and the passion that training inevitably instils in a voice. Every note is crystal clear and sung with such warmth. He is so like the original or famous recordings yet so different. His rendition of 'If I Loved You', for example, is outstanding. For the three minutes I'm listening to it I can easily forget all other versions I've ever heard.

And that's what we need to do as writers. Don't try to emulate your favourite authors; find your own voice and discover what you can bring to your writing. There is something in your history or your way of perceiving the world which makes you different to everyone else. Find it and you open countless doors.

Catherine Chanter

I'd like to draw your attention to an excellent short story writer.

Catherine Chanter has published a collection of stories which truly blew my socks off. I went through the terrible ordeal of desperately wanting to read each story but dreading what would happen when I'd finished the book. As it happened, I managed to spread it over a luscious five day period and several of the stories are still haunting me anyway.

The collection is called Rooms of the Mind and the title piece is a lengthy tale that takes the reader around each room of a house as the owner prepares to sell it. As each room is uncovered so is the disturbing life of the owner. Chanter isn't reluctant to play around with form - 'Rooms of the Mind' is set out under the headings of each room and another story, 'A Summary of Findings', has a colloquial tone but contains welfare-style notes at the bottom commenting on the case.

In the shorter tales Chanter immediately plunges you into the world of the character but without revealing anything that may impede enjoyment of the tale. Reading the stories is a delicious exercise - you may have your suspicions about where it's headed but you don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the way it unfolds. One such story is 'The Prologue', a tale that deals with modern themes and preoccupations, as do most in the book.

The collection is off-kilter and strange as the blurb suggests. Out of the eleven stories I only had trouble accessing one. 'You Come Here' is the tale of a woman who gave her daughter up for adoption forty years ago. What makes it difficult to read are the introverted ramblings of the protagonist but, far from being a disposable accessory, these are integral to the unravelling of the woman's story. I personally found it a little difficult to access, even though I enjoyed it in the end.

I bought this book after seeing the cover and very short description in the Inpress Catalogue. For some reason it jumped out at me and I'm exceptionally grateful it did. I'm looking forward to reading these stories again in the not-too-distant future.

Rooms of the Mind is available to buy here.

Be a Curious Clown

It was the immortal Cole Porter who advised us all to 'be a clown'. Alas, I can't stand on my head and my jokes are rubbish. But it did get me thinking about what it takes to succeed in writing.

You can take on the most serious and challenging subjects in the world but if all you focus on are the bleak aspects you might leave your reader feeling exceptionally depressed. That's why Coronation Street is beloved by fans: it usually contains the right mixture of humour and heartache. I can't watch Eastenders any more due to the sinking feeling I get that the world may be grinding to a slow and painful halt. I've previously blogged about indulging the whimsy in my soul in my short stories but I think I could apply it easily enough to novels as well.

I want to tackle difficult topics but mostly I just want to ask questions, whether they're difficult or madcap. I often find that looking at something in a slightly different way produces some interesting words. I remember vividly travelling on a train from Lincoln to Doncaster when I doing my undergraduate degree and suddenly asking myself, quite seriously, why grated cheese tasted so much better than sliced. I didn't have a notebook with me at the time so I jotted the beginning of a short short to that effect on the back of a form I was supposed to hand in somewhere. The form was never handed in and I didn't finish the short story. I might return to that pressing question later in life though.

In the film The Pirate Gene Kelly and Judy Garland sing 'Be a Clown' as the final number of the movie. Judy's clown thinks she's very smart because she keeps dodging out of the way of a pin bopping her on the head and Gene's clown keeps getting bopped instead. Of course, her luck runs out. Sometimes the build-up of anticipation can lead to a more rewarding pay-off. If your character is jumping over metaphorical manholes throughout your story make sure he falls into at least one metaphorical pit before you're finished.

Ask yourself the basic questions every step of the way: why is my character doing this, what can this lead to, where is he going, what is the absolute worst that could happen next.

But do remember what Cole Porter cautioned - 'be a major poet and you'll owe it for years'. The things we do for our craft.

Book Review: Landing by Emma Donoghue

I read this as part of my mission for the LGBT Reading Challenge 2011 (see logo on sidebar for details). As a consequence I didn't discriminate against the book. I believe I could've easily talked myself out of buying it if I'd tried. As it happens, I'm glad I didn't.

Donoghue is a very accessible writer. She doesn't sanitise her language so if a swear word is appropriate then a swear word is used. This certainly helps the authenticity of her characters and gives the book an altogether more adult feel than the plot alone might suggest.

Landing tells the story of two women, Jude (living in Canada) and Sile (pronounced Sheelagh, living in Ireland). They meet on a plane journey when Jude is travelling to England to bring back her sick mother. Sile is a stewardess on the plane and the two are initially brought together by an unexpected incident on board. From this they grow to know each other and ultimately end up in a long distance relationship, separated both by the Atlantic and their individual lives.

Donoghue paints her characters extremely vividly at the beginning of the novel. Primarily, she manages this by showing their interactions with the people in their established lives. Aside from demonstrating character this also shows the power of the relationship into which they later fall because these interactions inevitably alter. There are perhaps too many of these secondary characters to know intimately but that could be an attention problem on the part of this particular reader.

What struck me was the poignancy of the book. It so accurately depicts the issues surrounding long distance relationships and why they can't immediately be resolved. It seems loaded with pearls of wisdom that could probably conspire to make their very own self-help guide but they don't feel too preachy when slotted into the novel as a whole.

It is a very readable book which draws on human insecurities and desires. At one point Jude and Sile keep missing each other and are forced to leave a series of frustrated messages on the answering machine. Anybody ever compelled to spend time away from the one they love will easily identify with that sequence.

It isn't a novel that will raise any profound questions. At its core is the idea of identity and whether separating yourself from a certain place fractures who you are. It is also a clever love story and I can certainly see myself rereading it in the future.

Landing is available to purchase here.

POV Gripes

There was an interesting letter in the latest issue of Mslexia lamenting the self-conscious style of many short stories these days. What caught my eye was a little further down: the writer was scathing about the number of first-person stories out there and wonders whether it's a new rule.

POV is usually a primary consideration for any writer. I've written several short stories in the last year from a third-person perspective but I've then had to alter them to first-person. Maybe I'm more comfortable within it but, also, it suits the story I'm trying to tell. Two of my four short stories that are doing the rounds at the moment are told via first-person and the other two via third-person. My choice was primarily character-based: I can't sufficiently describe someone about to pass out from a head injury in third-person. I can, however, easily depict a funeral scene using a third-person POV.

The novel I'm about to undertake a complete revision of (for the second time I might add, I blogged about the first attempt here) is in first-person because it's the only one that works. I need my character to be unreliable; at points the reader has to seriously doubt what there are being told. I couldn't make that work in third-person.

Maybe it is a new craze but it isn't based on any 'rule'. It could just be that in times of uncertainty we look inwards and first-person POV offers a way to do that.