Anatomy Of A Short Story

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Big Brother, British Columbia, For Books' Sake, gender, horror, inspiration, Jeremy Kyle, La Push, Lakeview, Lakeview Journal of Literarture & Arts, literary journals, literature, macabre, Miley Cyrus, Olympia National Park, point of view, reality TV, rejection, research, short fiction, shortstories, Sixteen Feet, The Manchester Fiction Prize, The Twilight Saga, Twilight, Washington State, writing

During the 2016 Easter holiday I read a news story on the BBC website. They have a sidebar for the most clicked and I often look here for short story inspiration because it usually contains some little-known news item that has piqued the public imagination. On this particular occasion, the story that caught my eye was about fifteen severed feet that had washed up along a stretch of coast in British Columbia, Canada. The details were scant but macabre, the first foot was discovered in 2007 and five more appeared on the same coast over the next year, the gruesome discoveries stopped in 2012 and resumed again in 2016 bringing the total number to fifteen. There was speculation that it was a seafaring serial killer, tying chains around his victim’s feet to throw them overboard, theories ran from alien abduction to human traffickers but there was, at that time, no reasonable explanation.

It had a definite Scandi-noir feeling about it that I knew I wanted to explore. I started to formulate a story from the point of view of one of the people who had found a foot. Initially the main character was a woman who was out jogging on the beach with her dog. As I wrote I realised that there would need to be more to it, the main character would need a personal tragedy which added emotional resonance to the initial shock of discovery, so I imagined a partner lost at sea, there being no body to bury giving the protagonist a feeling of affinity to the severed foot, even convincing herself that the foot belonged to her husband.

I have never been to British Columbia so I played with setting the action in Scotland or Ireland but it didn’t feel right.  I have been to Washington State, spending time at La Push on the Olympic Peninsula, you probably know it as a location for the Twilight books and films, it’s desolate and eerie and a lot of things wash up on the shore. I decided to set my story there, it’s only a few miles south of Vancouver Island and I had photographs and memories of walking on the beaches there which made the descriptions easier to conjure. I’ve never been afraid of writing in an American accent, American culture is so familiar to us now and I’ve visited enough times to find it relatively easy to mimic. (Of course I may well get the odd word wrong but a lot of my work is set in the US and I have beta readers who I can ask about Americanisms.) I think as a rule, if you’re not comfortable don’t do it but if you can it’s good to stretch.

The first draft took a week to write. We were on holiday at my Father-in-law’s in Devon and perhaps the change of scene made the words flow faster. About half way through I realised I wanted the couple to be gay. I decided to make the main character a man mourning the loss of his husband who was a fisherman. I wanted to add another level to the story by normalising the couple and placing them out of a city in a remote area. The moment I decided on this it was like a light turning on. I went back over everything and changed what I needed to but deliberately kept the gender of the narrator ambiguous until near the end when he goes to see the local sheriff and is addressed by name. A lot of readers still think it’s a woman even though the name is very specifically male. I find this interesting in terms of expectation – the implication being that I am a woman therefore I have to write about women. I love writing from a male point of view. I do it often and it is very liberating!

Once the first draft was done I did a lot of research. I looked up every article and news broadcast I could find on the phenomenon, there were interviews with the people who had found the feet and law enforcement officials and hundreds of icky photographs. I discovered that most of the feet were found in running shoes, that the ankle was usually bone and the foot still had flesh – it was gruesome and fascinating and provided rich detail for the second and third drafts.

I was really pleased with it when it was done and began sending it off to journals and competitions. Then came the usual round of rejections. On November 9^th – two days before my birthday and the day we knew Donald Trump was the next US President – I got a phone call from The Manchester Fiction Prize telling me I’d been shortlisted. If you don’t know, The Manchester Fiction Prize is a big deal, the winner gets £10,000 for a single short story but just getting on the shortlist of six is a major event for any writer. There was a fancy gala in Manchester, I didn’t win, to be honest I don’t think anyone ever expects to win such things, but I did have a fantastic time, a career ambition had been realised and it gave me a huge confidence boost.

The story was published on a pdf on the prize website but I thought it deserved to reach a wider audience. Over the next few years I submitted it everywhere that accepted previously published stories, I  approached journals in all honesty saying it had been shortlisted and appeared in pdf only. I got absolutely nowhere. When my collection, 15 Minutes, came to be published I tried to shoe-horn the story into it, changing some of the details to fit into the theme of fame but it didn’t feel right so I left it out. Thankfully Sixteen Feet has now been picked up by the wonderful Lakeview International Journal of Literature & Arts and you can read it there for free.  I suppose the purpose of this blog post is simply to say never give up on something you think deserves better, eventually when the tide is right it will wash up on shore.

End note – because of this blog post a story for 15 Minutes is now on For Books’ Sake Weekend Read and you can read it here. That’s two free reads from me this week, if you want to read more please buy the book!

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Writing From Memory

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am writing, character, creative practice, creative writing, Death Valley, Donegal, family, inspiration, Ireland, memory, Older People's Festival Brighton, writing exercises

In September I’ll be teaching a writing from memory class at The Older People’s Festival in Brighton. I decided to use memory a basis for a creative writing class because it plays a big part in my creative process. A lot of my ideas come from the surfacing of long forgotten memories. The novel I’m writing at the moment evolved from the memory of a diner in the California desert that I stayed in in 1995. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered, a TV show maybe or my kids asking me about where I’d been in the States. Whatever it was it all came flooding back. When I remember things suddenly like this the memory is very vivid, I not only see it but I feel it, hear it and smell it. The memory of the diner brought with it the scorching heat of the sun, the layer of dust on my skin, the way the sky looked at dawn and the taste of the beer with a lime wedge after a hard day exploring Death Valley. I have been blessed with strong olfactory memory too, I know what the bar smelled like and the oasis, the sun on the car interior, sun cream mixed with the perfume I wore back then (LouLou). It’s the whole package and it has been very useful to me as a writer.

I’m sure that it’s something that can be developed. People often say they don’t remember things well but if you break things down into their constituent parts it makes it easier to create a whole multi-sensory experience. I help out at an annual enrichment week at my local 6th form college, one of the exercises we do is to hand out old fashioned pick and mix sweets and ask the students to eat one and think about all the sensory qualities, taste, smell, texture, to eat the sweet slowly and silently and then to write down everything they have experienced eating it. They are then asked to write a short piece based on the sweet. More often than not the writing uses childhood memories, thoughts of grandparents, of being kids in the school playground, summer holidays, Christmas stockings and from these specifics come empathetic fictions because characters are developed that share the root experience of eating the sweet. Try it, you’ll be amazed what comes to you.

You can do something similar with songs. I sometimes get asked about music that has influenced my writing. I use music a lot when I’m writing, I’ll obsessively play songs over and over to really get the feel of them in my words particularly if they offer insight into a character at a specific moment in their journey. Where I might differ from the way others use music is that I like to listen (and watch) on Youtube. For me experiencing it this way means I get to see as well as here and this means I can fully experience the music with the character. As an example in 15 Minutes there is a story about a teenager seeing David Bowie on Top of the Pops for the first time in 1972. I watched that video over and over, noting everything I could about the sights and sounds of it, the way Bowie looked and sounded, the way it was filmed, the lighting in the studio. I was a child in 1972 but my sister loved Bowie and I remember TOTP being like that. Experiencing the song this way brought a whole new layer to it one that plays extremely well with people who experienced it at the time.

My lovely Irish Aunt Anna died on Monday, just a few months after my mother. She was a great age and was a very cheerful and happy person. I wanted to remember her in this way so I dug out some old photographs and looked through them with my son. They were taken in 2009 when we had taken Mum to Donegal to meet up with my aunt and her brother. The photographs were on a disc and, in this age of digital immediacy, we probably hadn’t looked at them since they were taken. My son was seven at the time, he hadn’t thought about that holiday for years but looking at the photographs he could remember it really strongly. He remembered the vast and deserted beach and the terrifying experience of being chased by cows, the walk from the house to the shore and his little brother toddling around getting into mischief. It’s amazing how much he did remember from a couple of photos. Again a fully sensory set of memories came to me. I remembered the house we rented as if it was this summer, I remembered the buffeting winds on the coast and the smell of salt in the air, that I went for a long walk on my own, because I could walk then without crutches and because being the mother of two lively boys meant I needed a couple of solitary hours in the quiet almost meditative atmosphere of the Donegal coast. I remember my 20 year old niece welling up because the  really very good chocolate cake (as described on the menu) we had in a restaurant on out last night would not be bettered in her lifetime. I could use any one of these memories in a creative piece, long or short, because they are suddenly so clear in my mind, each one triggering another. I’ve been writing notes about it to use at a later date, making sure to get down every detail. Like my recollections of the California desert I may not use them for years. I’m pretty sure that when I do return to them it will be for something completely unrelated to family history but the characters that will come out of them will be all the more believable for emerging from real life experiences.

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Starlings Reborn

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amwriting, books, Brighton, Brighton Pier, characters, ebooks, inspiration, locations, piers, publishing, Revenge Ink, seaside, self-publishing, starlings, writing, writing practice

I’m on Brighton Pier in the half term holidays. The skies are white with low cloud and there’s a sea mist blowing in but it’s warm enough to be outside so I’m sitting at one of the tucked away tables by Horatio’s Bar. Their playlist is quiet enough to ignore as are the distant screams of children as they hurtle through the air on the twirling aeroplanes of the nearest ride. My youngest and his friend are finally old enough to go on rides on their own so I’ve got them all areas wristbands and have settled down for a couple of hours of writing.

Brighton Pier has a lot of memories for me. I came here as a kid then brought my kids and since I started writing it has always inspired me and often features as a setting in my work. It’s a haven for detail; competing, smells, sounds, lights, people of all types from babies in prams to pensioners with walking sticks, smiling children hopped up on sugar, hungover stags and hens, parents, grandparents, teenagers trying to be cool. I had a little walk around the hidden bits, the alleyways between the rides, the end behind the Turbo, because that’s what I did when I was writing my first book, Starlings. I’m feeling nostalgic. Starlings is entirely set in Brighton. I wrote it when I first moved here and it helped me get a handle on my new home, I wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of the lesser-seen aspects of a British seaside town, to explore it as I would a character. Brighton has a personality that changes day to day, very different in the height of summer to a rainy day in December. I spent a lot of time seeking out the more unusual locations or looking at the well-known ones from a different angle. One of my proudest moments was at an event when a Brightonian reader exclaimed surprise that I wasn’t born and bred because I’d got it spot on.

The reason for all this nostalgia is that Starlings will very shortly be out of print. I bought the remainder paperbacks from my publisher and I’ll be getting all the rights back very soon. This makes me both sad and hopeful. Starlings was my first book and I had no idea what had to be done to market it to readers. For me it was a huge achievement that it was published at all but I’ve always thought it didn’t live up to its full potential. I’d like to give it a re-edit and a cover make-over. I have plans to publish a new edition paperback and release it on ebook and I know a lot more about publishing now than I did then. It’s seven years since it came out, my publisher, Revenge Ink, was a gutsy little maverick trying to showcase the type of books being ignored by the mainstream (if anything this situation has got worse and the industry has got more blinkered in what it chooses to publish). I am forever grateful to Revenge Ink for trying, for taking on my little book because they really understood and believed in it and we part on very good terms.

People still buy Starlings, they come up to me at readings and say they’ve just discovered it and ask why I was so mean to Barney. I’m asked to local book groups on a regular basis and it’s still in the Brighton books section of the city’s bookstores. I’ll be peddling the ‘limited edition’ originals at book fairs and market stalls until I run out (or hell freezes over). If you want a signed copy, personally dedicated by the author email me at erinnamettler@gmail.com or look out for me at car boot sales, a copy is yours at the knockdown price of £5 plus p & p.

‘This is the last bench in Brighton. To the left of it are the rickety legs of the Mousetrap. At the height of summer they rattle constantly under the weight of the mouse-shaped cars that whizz along to the screams of happy tourists. On this day they only shudder slightly in the wind.’ 

Now we’re off for fish n chips.

 

A Short Story Thread

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agents, books, Brighton, editing, feedback, inspiration, publishers, shortstories, Twitter, workshops, writebythebeach, writing

I did one of those Twitter thread thingies today – about writing and submitting short stories. I have pasted it below.

15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler

On March 17th I’m giving a talk on #shortstories @bh_writing conference in #Brighton as a director and judge of @BrightonPrize Here’s a thread about what I wish I’d known when I started out 10 years ago.

1:04 PM – 6 Feb 2018

• 10 Retweets
• 7 Likes
• 

1 reply10 retweets7 likes

1. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   #shortstories are a particular form, good ones are not practice for writing a novel. Don’t send the first chapter of your novel (or a bit from the middle) into a comp as a #shortstory. We can spot it a mile off.

   1 reply3 retweets2 likes3
2. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   If you want to write them, read them. Read William Trevor, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, read @saltpublishing ‘s #bestbritishshortstories, read books on craft like the @Writers_Artists one.

   

   2 replies 4 retweets 6 likes
3. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   If you are subbing to a comp or a journal read the latest copy, the previous year’s anthology.

   1 reply1 retweet 2 likes
4. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   Write! Practice makes perfect. Find other writers that you trust and workshop the hell out of it. Set deadlines. Meet regularly. Have enough awareness to know you don’t have to do everything they suggest but if 2 people point out a problem – it’s definitely a problem.

   1 reply2 retweets1 like
5. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   When you send your story into the wild, make a note of it but then forget about it. Don’t check mailbox every hour. Everyone who sends something to @BridportPrize or @GrantaMag thinks they will be successful. The odds are against you. A shortlisting is pretty amazing.

   1 reply2 retweets3 likes
6. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   Winning a prize is usually down to luck. Just write the best story you can. Even with a great plot, dialogue, characters, descriptions winning is down to the personal preferences of the judges/editors.

   1 reply2 retweets3 likes
7. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   Don’t contact them and ask why you weren’t selected. Don’t insist they’ve made a mistake – this will make you memorable, but not for your writing.

   1 reply2 retweets2 likes
8. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   More

   Build an online presence as soon as you begin your career. Be active on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram. Interact with the community. It’s where you’ll meet people going through the same as you are and where you’ll get submission news.

   1 reply2 retweets2 likes
9. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

   Hootlet

   You should be spending at least as much time editing as writing.

   1 reply1 retweet2 likes
10. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

    Hootlet

    Talking of editing, as you become more successful you will be professionally edited – get used to it. An editor just wants to make your work the best it can be. The first time your work comes back with mark-ups it can be a shock but it’s not personal, it’s a negotiation.

    

    2 replies3 retweets3 likes
11. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

    Hootlet

    More

    Read your work aloud. It is probably the best way to edit. Then read aloud at events. It’s scary but you connect with readers and increase your visibility and confidence. @rattletales is looking for subs to @brightonfringe now! www.rattletales.org
12. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

    Hootlet

    Rejection is only experience. If you seriously want to give up after a handful of rejections maybe you should. Submitting short fiction is not for those who are easily discouraged.

    1 reply3 retweets4 likes
13. 15 Minutes‏ @ErinnaMettler 4h4 hours ago

    Hootlet

    I’ll be talking about this and more at #writebythebeach. There will be talks from best-selling authors, workshops, panels and 121s with top literary agents!

    http://bit.ly/2hvNIi9

     

Tears In Rain – The First Time I Saw Blade Runner

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Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, family, film, Harrison Ford, inspiration, Memoir, Phillip K Dick, Sci-fi, The British Film Institute, Vangelis, writing

Blade Runner 2049 is almost upon us and I can barely conceal my excitement. Blade Runner is one of my favourite films. They better not fuck it up; but going by the trailers and previews it looks like they’ve managed to get it right. We’ll know for sure on Friday. When I’m not working on my novel, or marketing my collection, I’ve got a sideline in movie memoir. I’m collecting together pieces about films I’ve seen with family. Here’s a shortened version of the one about Blade Runner.

Tears In Rain – The First Time I Saw Blade Runner

We made and odd couple, my Dad and I, walking into the dilapidated late night cinema. I was fifteen and he was in his mid-fifties. I had Sun-in hair and too much black eye-liner, waif-like in the way that only teenagers can be, while he was tall and solid, his bulk made bigger by his sheepskin coat.  It was winter 1982 and we’d gone to a midnight screening, both of us wanting to see different films on the double bill. In 1980s northern England there no instant movie streaming like there is now; if you wanted to see an obscure American movie you had a window of about a fortnight and even then only at selected cinemas. If you missed this opportunity you sometimes had the chance to mop it up at a repertory screening. And so it was that Dad and I braved the Yorkshire winter to go and see a double feature of Blade Runner and Firefox. You’ve probably only heard of one of those films, and with good reason, but in December 1982 I first had to sit through Clint Eastwood’s mediocre cold war offering in order to experience one of the greatest films ever made.

I was a film mad teenager. I consumed movies the way other people ate food – they were necessary for my survival. Severe hip-dysplasia had meant a childhood of surgeries and immobility. I spent a lot of time watching television, lying in bed or, when I was feeling up to it, on the sofa in the lounge, from which I’d watch mid-morning reruns of classic Hollywood movies. I was born late to my parents, my mum was 46 and my Dad 40, we were not just one but two generations apart. A love of cinema helped Dad and I bond. He introduced me to all the greats, John Ford westerns, Busby Berkley musicals, screwball comedies. He liked both Marylin Monroe and Ingrid Bergman, James Stewart and Robert Mitchum. His all-time favourite was Humphrey Bogart. I suspect that as a young man he’d been told he looked like the morose movie star because he often emulated his idol; in any given film Dad knew many of Bogart’s lines by heart and often wore a Philip Marlow mackintosh and chewed a match. There was indeed a striking resemblance. Dad had the same pleading eyes and thin upper lip, a square jaw and a slightly dissatisfied expression. We’d watch the movies together over and over; Key Largo, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, The Caine Mutiny and, of course, Casablanca.

Most of the films we watched were on TV, trips to the cinema were rare, especially as I moved towards adulthood and away from a love of Disney. I began to go with friends to see modern horror movies and comedies. I’d read about Blade Runner in my beloved film magazines and was intrigued – a sci-fi movie in film noir style!  I watched for the listings at my local cinema but it never appeared. I’d just about given up hope of seeing it when I saw the ad for the double bill in Leeds. I showed it to Dad knowing he liked Clint Eastwood and to my surprise he said we could go.

‘It was strange thing to do,’ said my sister, home from college a week later, when I told her about it. It had been an experience. As you can imagine, those attending a Saturday midnight screening were not the usual cinema audience. It had been freezing outside, a few scant snowflakes making an appearance as we walked up the stone steps to the old-fashioned picture palace, slightly out of town. The doors were art deco, their brass handles worn from the many hands that had held them open. Inside we were hit with a blast of acrid heat and the odour of stale popcorn mixed with cigarette smoke hung in the foyer. The bored looking woman at the box office eyed us suspiciously as she sold us our tickets. We opted for the balcony because they were the best seats in the house. There were a few single men dotted around the aisles, some obvious junkies in from the cold and a row of drunk students at the back. Firefox was on first. It had a ridiculous cold war plot about Clint Eastwood stealing a spy plane from a Russian airbase. My Dad loved it, I watched his face more than the film, saw the delight on it, the joy when the hero saved the day.

‘That was fantastic!’ He declared and nipped out for a cigar in the interval, leaving me to sip my cola and stare at the patched velvet curtain closed in front of the screen, even at that age aware that it would not be a good idea to catch anyone’s eye. He arrived back in his seat just as the camera panned across Los Angeles 2019, accompanied by the first notes of the Vangelis score, and I decided that I was going to be a film director.  I sat open-mouthed throughout. Here was a movie that had managed to incorporate all my beloved classic films into something shiny and new. It felt like it had been created specifically for me. I must be the only person who likes the original voice over version the best because it’s the most like those old Bogart movies my Dad loved so much. Dad wasn’t so keen. He snored softly at one point. Afterwards as I enthused he said it thought it was ‘a bit boring and so damn dark you couldn’t see anything’. Within a week I’d dyed my hair auburn, started smoking and wearing vintage clothes and put the poster on my wall. I still have an antique VHS version of the film somewhere, though nothing to play it on.

I never became a film director. But I did study film at University and managed to get a research job at The British Film Institute in London where I stayed for fifteen years. During that time I went to West End premieres, special preview screenings and Q&As with famous directors but still nothing beats that screening of Blade Runner in terms of raw cinematic experience.

Now I’m a writer I use cinema a lot in my work. I often write about people going to the cinema, using the way they respond to certain films as a way of developing character. In my current collection (15 Minutes) I have two stories in which films feature heavily. The first is Lost In Translation which sparks an unhealthy Scarlett Johansson obsession in my protagonist and the second features a teenage boy obsessed with Blade Runner. He listens to the soundtrack, talks like Deckard’s voice over and smokes unfashionable Marlboros.

As we walked from the cinema in the pre-dawn, the snow had turned to rain. It pattered on the car windows on the silent drive home, windscreen wipers creaking.  Dad concentrated wearily on the road ahead while I watched the city lights flick past and imagined that I was riding into the unknown with Deckard, searching for immortality. My Dad is no longer with us. I often think of the night we went to that midnight screening. I sometimes imagine the times he went to the cinema as a young man, on dates, to shelter from the rain or just because he wanted to catch the latest Bogart before anyone else. Only he knew about those times and now they are gone – moments lost in time, like tears in rain.

 

Shona Kinsella Talks World Building

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Ashael Rising, books, ebooks, fantasy, inspiration, Shona Kinsella, Unbound, Unbound Digital, world building, writers, writing

One of the great things about crowd-funding through Unbound Publishing is that there is a real sense of community amongst the authors. We all keep in touch via a private Face Book group, swap news of achievements and frustrations and give each other tips on all aspects on writing and publishing. Sometimes we even meet up, as a few of us did at Unbound’s fifth birthday party in November. They’re a great bunch and today one of them is the first guest contributor to this blog. Shona Kinsella, who has just released her brilliant fantasy novel Ashael Rising, gives some tips on world-building that are very useful for writers of any kinds. Personally, I’m a pantser that stops halfway through for a bit of obsessive map drawing!

Approaching World-Building by Shona Kinsella

One of the most enjoyable and challenging parts of writing fantasy is the world-building. There are fantasy writers who spend years creating a world before they feel ready to write a story set there. They have maps, detailed histories, notes of the flora and fauna and knowledge of political factions in every country – but they don’t have a book.

I’m very different from this. I’m what is sometimes known as a pantser (as in flying by the seat of the pants) although the term I prefer is discovery writer. What this means is that I discover the story, and the world, as I write.

When I sat down to write Ashael Rising, I knew very little about KalaDene. In fact, it didn’t even have a name until the third draft or so. My world-building was all done as I went along. I once heard an excellent description of the process; it explains just what it feels like to me so I’m going to share it here. World-building is like walking through a tunnel (the world) with a torch (the story) so I can see as much of the world as the story shines a light on and a little bit around the edges but everything else is just fuzzy shapes in the darkness, with maybe a puff of cool air indicating that there might be a door to somewhere else off to the left.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. For example, sometimes I could spend most of a day’s writing time trying to figure out how the limits to the magic system worked or whether the climate I’ve described would support the plants that I have my characters eating. That’s not a particularly efficient use of my time and would not have come up had I built my world in advance. On the other hand, people who have created an entire world before writing a book will often find that they have wasted time in building details that they do not need for the book – time that could have been spent writing.

It also means that I made substantial changes between my first and second drafts, tightening up world-building details, as well as improving the plot, and fitting in things that I changed or introduced over the course of writing the first draft. My understanding is that this is common for discovery writers while people who have plotted and world-built in advance will often have something close to the finished work at the end of their first draft. This probably balances out though – they spend the time up front, before they start writing, and I spend it at the other end.

One of the things that I like about my approach is the massive amount of flexibility it gives me. If I find myself inspired by something I see on a nature documentary (something that happens more often than you might think) I generally have space to work it into my world somewhere. I already have a few notes to myself about elements I’d like to fit into book two.

The only major drawback that I’ve experienced is that, since I make things up as I go along, I have no idea what will end up being important and I must try and keep the elements of an entire world straight in my head – something the planners don’t have to do. I have taken to keeping a world-building file open while I write, somewhere to make notes of characters that I’ve introduced, plants that I’ve made up along with their uses, distances between places and so on. The thing is, I’m pretty bad at actually updating the file. While I’m writing, I’m too involved in the story to keep stopping and starting and switching files. More than once I’ve found myself having to search back through the text to check how I spelled something a few chapters ago or whether or not I said a particular plant was poisonous or what someone’s name is. Again, not the most efficient use of my time. Still, efficient or not, it is the way that works for me and it’s the way I’ll continue to work for the time being.

Elegy To The West Pier

Tags

Brighton, Brighton Beach, i360 tower, inspiration, landmarks, memory, piers, starlings, storms, The West Pier, The West Pier Trust, weather, writers, writing

The West Pier is dying. Last Wednesday a huge chunk of her fell into the sea, dislodged by heavy winds and swelling tides. Now there is a gap on the Eastern side of her and the middle hangs precariously over pirana waves. Brighton’s residents gasped collectively and wailed about her not lasting the next twenty-four hours, many braved the wind to gaze on her last moments. The wind raged through the night but the Pier stood defiant. She won’t last the weekend, they said. Tomorrow a week will have passed but tomorrow the weather forecast is gales and high swells. 

The West Pier features in the first proper short story I ever wrote, a story which went on to form the first ‘chapter’ of my episodic novel, Starlings. For me the landmark is the most beautiful place in the city. She is definitely female and also old. I don’t mean in terms of actual years, I mean anthropomorphically. She is, to me, an old lady. She was once a great beauty, immaculately dressed, popular at parties, blessed of many lovers but then she aged and she couldn’t afford the fine clothes and shiny jewellery the younger girls had and her looks began to fade, people didn’t come calling anymore. She still paddled in the sea, as she had in her youth, but she grew thin through lack of sustenance and good company and her legs withered, the bones showing through. Then there was the fire.

I remember visiting Brighton in the 1980s and 90s and seeing her listing downwards, her paint peeling and windows broken and I remember thinking how romantic it was that she wasn’t a naff bells and whistles fun-fare like the Palace Pier. Every seaside town had a pier. I’m from the North, you couldn’t really beat Blackpool for seaside attractions, but Brighton had the West Pier, decaying, abandoned, loved only by the birds. It was special. The white picket fence brigade hated her then, she was an eyesore, a blight on their beautiful city, someone should do something about her. But whenever I came here she was the thing I wanted to see the most.  She was Miss Havisham. She appealed to my introverted younger self. I wore black then, even in the sun, Wuthering Heights was my favourite book, the Mary Chain played in a loop in my head and I wouldn’t have been caught dead swimming in the sea. What better than a pier you weren’t allowed on because it wasn’t safe! I didn’t want a kiss-me-quick hat and a stick of rock; I wanted to gaze on decay.

I’ve changed, I hope, I like nothing better than a sea swim these days, but I’m still drawn to the desolate beauty of West Pier.  I thought she was at her most beautiful after the fire. I didn’t move to Brighton until 2003 so I wasn’t here for the fire but afterwards she seemed elevated into a new art form, something truly unique.  Her burnt out wreck has inspired me in so much of my writing, even when the work isn’t actually about her, the image of her guides my hand, churning up thoughts of lost beauty and aged stoicism. She is memory personified. She is death. She is anything you want her to be.

Brighton will be a much less interesting place without her. There won’t be the collective thrill of walking around her ruin at extremely low tide or watching the waves crash over her prow in stormy seas. I won’t be able to hear the peculiar metallic  ting of the wind shaking her strutts or see clouds of starlings crowd her at sunset. If I’m honest though I’m really looking forward to seeing her fall. To me she is a reminder of our mortality, that technology is meaningless and that all things eventually come to an end. How much sweeter it is to be here when she goes? To be able to say ‘I was there when…’ This is selfish of me I know, but I don’t want her rebuilt like she was, because then she’d just be another pier and in the end she’s so much more than that.

If you are not as selfish as me and you would like to see a life size sculpture of the West Pier on the front when she goes then please sign this petition (anything is better than a stupid tower).