Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm considering dropping my current novel-in-progress which has completely stalled and writing something else. If only to declogg my brain and to be able to go back to the main piece later. I'd quite like to do a modern faerie epic with the emphasis on dark, funny and strange and decidedly non-twee, with lots of little stories making up one big story. I've got a couple of shorts already that have been bubbling away. This is pretty much inspired by Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Michael Moorcock and Angela Carter, but I've had so much fun reading their stuff that I want the fun of creating new stuff myself. As Susanna Clarke wrote the glorious Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (a modern classic in my opinion and I say fie to anyone who disagrees) about magic and faerie returning to England in the late 18th century, so I'd like to explore suchlike happening to the UK now. Small scale at first but then bigger and bigger until its basically a strange and slightly ludicrous civil war in Britain - and taking into account the imported folk tales of the UK and the changed ethnic map and so on.

I've got a stack of good books in the library of old folk tales and I know a fair few of them. I'm just wondering if any of you know any plots like the above so that I might avoid accidently copying anyone? I also may post snippets if I need proof readers.

Anyone else got any short stories or novels on the go?

Not as much as I used to... I used to churn them out left right and centre, many of them Fallout fanfics (I even submitted the 25 page centrepiece to my Writer's Craft class in high school and got a very good result) but the inspired part of my brain dried up about the time I had to enter the workforce.

I've got a novel that's been in final draft stage for about eighteen months. My Mac at home being broken has rather brought things to a standstill on that front.

I was recently in a little creative writing contest (that I won, go me) whereupon you wrote something to a genre specification given to you. You went up against someone else, the pieces got judged by your peers and the winner advanced. I think the longest single entry I wrote was about 15k in word count, and the shortest about 3k. My final piece though was actually an abridged version of the first three chapters of a novel I'm working on (shortened as I was in a rush and wanted to get to an itneresting point to leave the story... I must revisit and complete). Amusingly, the concept for my first round piece was given to me by Malc, and the final round piece by Nervous Pete.

I really just need to be able to motivate myself outside of silly contests, as I can write to deadlines, but without a deadline set I faff around and play too much CoD4, resulting in never getting anything done.

FTFY

Strangely, I can usually only write after the hour of midnight, and whilst drinking.

Ja. A story about, among other things, a schoolgirl who has an affair with a teacher, and another scifity one about a brutal murder sparking off a civil war in a post-Britain police state. Lots of other vague ideas aside from those, but they're by the by.

I will probably write at least one of them all in one massive month-long crunch, after a decade of refining them in my head. At the moment I have eighty odd pages that'll probably be redrafted in an arty tantrum. I'm quite pleased that I managed to get the phrase "chronic penis envy" in there already, though.

I like to write throughout the night, ideally with baroque sort of music. Relaxes me.

The only time I tried getting something published was some indie magazine or other in Manchester that wanted 56 words on anythin gat all. I got shortlisted, and may or may not have got into the rag. I'm not sure, though I was pleased with it. I ought to do more stuff like that.

We should have a creative writing competition here, perhaps a short story contest. I'd certainly enter.

I have written one or two short stories for very small contests, about Joan of Arc as a sarcastic Americanised angel. They were quite poor.

This is more true, yes. It's hard to settle down for anything when every night is 'Let's drink and watch Die Hard/eat kebabs/play Track and Field on the Xbox/pass out' night.

Drawing > Writing

In that order of course. He's not kidding, we all got brutally addicted to Track and Field in MAME on the Xbox. It was all we played for a week.

Tsk, wrong. They're both on an equal footing, though if I had to utterly choose as if the fate of the galaxy being gobbled by a singularity were at stake, I'd go for drawing and rely on a vocal storytelling tradition.

I wouldn't mind a BETEO short story compo, or even one without competitions and just 'what do you thinks'.

I'm actually off to Write Club tonight at a mates. We cut out a load of photos from a magazine and pick one at random, stare and wait for inspiration and write a short four page story. Then we read 'em to each other. It's fun.

I thought we agreed not to bring anything personal into this, Tom. Now it's out...



I write. Mainly short little stories. I'm working up to actually getting my act together and stringing them all into a story, or a book of small stories, ala Margaret Atwood.

Well I can't really help it if you keep waving it about, can I?

Ace! Glad there's more scribblers here. I love short stories, and they can work mighty well when threaded together, like with Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Though I am actually terrified of Margaret Atwood, she keeps hurting me when I read her. I find Angela Carter just as good and dangerous, only without me feeling exhausted and upset at the end. ("Phwoaar! Eh lads, eh?" - Ian Sinclaire)

Wrote another short story earlier this evening at Write Club about photographs and time and a lonely woman in a dusty old house in Louisianna. It was odd.

There's absolutly no reason why we can't do this, we are having a gallery for the art, so no reason why we can't have storytime links too.

I like the idea of writing my own short story, the trouble is that whenever I try I always end up writing the same thing:

I wouldn't worry about that. It didn't stop John Grisham.

The novel I am writing has a plot like the above. Though you can't avoid copying because I'm not sharing the unfinished thing with anyone, and I shan't be done for ages

Really? B'oh! *

Ahh well, its not so bad. The plan is to write a few strange short stories revolving around that theme, link 'em together and see if they will bear the weight of a greater, bigger thing built around them.

*Regular readers will notice my new favourite cry of frustration, "B'oh!". It is not merely an alteration of Homer's famous cry, but is from Stephen Fry's stupidly voiced cry in a comedy "Oh dear!" sense from his Control sketch on 'A Little Bit of Fry & Laurie'. What? No one cares? B'oh!

(It's pronounced Bow but with a longer pronounced 'o' sound and a limply smiling shake of the head, by the way.)

Ooh, I do the "b'oh" thing as well due to Stephen Fry.