If I'm honest, the town where I live, Tunbridge Wells, isn't known for being an active feminist centre. It's a by-word - if you don't know it - for the kind of old-fashioned Colonel who has time to write letters to newspapers about anything even slightly new or radical, and a quick google for the catchphrase, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells brings up 39,400 entries! So hurrah - once again - for the internet as I've just discovered feministing, and can get a daily feed of what's happening in New York. There's also a great interview with the founder, Jessica Valenti here, and I just liked her more and more as I read on. This woman is FUNNY. And inspiring. This is what she says about blogging:

Blogging is my activism. I mean, I certainly do “real world” activism as well, but there’s something really satisfying about doing Feministing. I think about it as a blog that has the potential to inform women’s activism. I think that feminism and blogs just make sense together. I mean, the whole feminist mantra of “the personal is political” is played out in a really amazing way through blogging.

Though blogs and women’s organizations really should be collaborating more. I always think back to how when the Bureau of Labor Statistics said they were going to stop reporting on women’s wages (they’ve since reinstated the reporting), Feministing posted on it almost immediately. They tried to bury it with a two sentence little release in this obscure place on their website. Several months later I got an “urgent action alert” about it from a women’s organization. If the immediacy of blogs could be combined with the grassroots organizing power of women’s organizations . . . I think it could be really something.

I've no excuse now. Not even the town where I live. Yours undisgustedly...

This photograph of a fish feeding frenzy is going to be my writing prompt for today. Just look at the size of those mouths. It was taken on the last day of a holiday in Marrakesh when we felt full up of all the usual tourist jaunts, so we asked a cab driver to take us to where no tourists went. He dropped us at the edge of what looked like a dusty concerete park, with no way we could see of getting home. OK, we thought, this is exactly what we asked for! The only thing that kept us going was the number of local families around, so we followed them and came to this pond full of people running round the edge shouting and laughing. Children were throwing bread in and having to be pulled back by parents because these fish were literally jumping out of the water to get the food. Across the other side from us was a small building and when we asked we were told that it had belonged to a member of the royal family a long time ago, who would bring his concubines there and throw them in the water the next morning if they didn't please him. Can't imagine what the fish would have made of that!

From The New Writer Magazine:

THIS REMINDER FROM NEW WRITING VENTURES 2006

Time is running out for you to enter New Writing Ventures, our series of awards for emerging writers of fiction, poetry and creative non fiction. There is an award of £5000 for the winner, and £1000 for the two short-listed writers in each category. Both winners and short-listed writers also gain a place on unique a year long development programme devised by The New Writing Partnership in collaboration with Arts Council England, East and writer Kate Pullinger. The closing date is May 31.

We are thrilled that Ali Smith , Chair the creative non-fiction strand of Ventures, has been short-listed for a fourth major literary prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain's oldest literary accolade. Smith's The Accidental was short-listed for the Man Booker prize last year and recently for the Orange prize for women's fiction. It has won the Whitbread Novel of the Year.

She will be on the other side of the judging process as chair of the selection panel to choose three of the best up and coming writers of non-fiction for New Writing Ventures. She is joined by Michael Laskey, chair of the poetry panel and Candida Clarke chair of the fiction panel…….Patricia Dunker, Professor of Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia, continues The New Writing Partnership’s association with this prestigious institution, by joining Candida and Courttia Newland on the
fiction panel……Just two weeks to get your entry in!!!

Selection panels:
Fiction: Candida Clarke (Chair), Patricia Dunker, Courttia Newland
Creative Non-fiction: Ali Smith (Chair),William Fiennes, Edward Platt
Poetry: Michael Laskey (Chair), Roddy Lumsden, Esther Morgan

For full biographies of the selection panels, eligibility criteria and entry form, please see our website: www.newwritingpartnership.org.uk

The New Writing Partnership is a registered charity, no: 1110725 The New Writing Partnership receives its core funding from Norwich City Council, Norfolk County Council, The University of East Anglia and Arts Council England, East.

More Book Lists
This isn't a tag though - it's a list of 30 'forgotten' books issued by Waterstones. I've only read five (those in italics) - in fact I've only HEARD of five, but did love those ones so that suggests to me the others might be worth searching out too.

Revenge Of The Lawn by Richard Brautigan
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Death and The Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by BS Johnson
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Dry Bones by Richard Beard
Mirror Lake by Thomas Christopher Greene
Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
Journey By Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Too Loud A Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
Trip To The Stars by Nicholas Christopher
Daughter Of The Forest by Juliet Marillier
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Woman On The Edge Of Time by Marge Piercy
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
The Pursuit Of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman
Drama City by George Pelecanos
Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll
The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban
Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Double by José Saramago
Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum
Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

And my writing prompt for today is going to be taken from one of these titles ... Revenge of the Lawn.

I said in one of the comments that I'd post an exercise from John Lee's Writing From the Body, so here goes. The book is divided into chapters such as Fearless Writing, The Dance of Trust and Timing, Taming the Critic or Lighten Up!, Answers from your Body, which all end with writing exercises or meditations. This one is from the chapter called Inspiration: The Breath and The Word. In the chapter, Lee talks about how as writers we should be aware of how we are breathing when we sit down to write. If we start with a tight chest, and not thinking of our breathing, our writing will suffer. 'We must fully reclaim the breath,' Lee says, 'because without it the body withers and so does our writing. The message written by the tight chest, the stilted body, carries no duende, no darkness, no belly stretched wide by the breath. Such writing is a mere whistle. It rises up like a ghost, substanceless, with a mask for a face, and we do not believe it.' Since reading this, I've tried to breathe deeply before I start writing, and really open up my body. It's a way of reclaiming space too. Here's the end exercise:

Breath exercise: Sit quietly in a straight-backed chair, feet planted firmly on the floor, hands resting in your lap. Take full, deep breaths, filling up your lower abdomen with life-giving air and letting your attention sink down out of your head and deep into the rest of you. Let your attention connect to your breath, and let that breath be like a diving bell as you descent deeper and deeper into your body. Taking full, deep breaths, allow your attention to go down to meet whatever feeling, memory, smell, sight or sound is trying to rise to meet your descending attention. Taking full breaths, you may begin to experience a little lightheadedness - this is normal. Breathing fully, continue to watch whatever arises within you. Staying in your bodily awareness, continue to breathe deeply and fully as you pick up a pen to write what you are experiencing.

Well, I love my food and I love my jewellery - so what better way to combine the two? This necklace and earrings from Legge and Braine made me laugh.

It seems like another lifetime ago, but at the beginning of the year, I posted this picture of my writing room - undergoing construction - and despaired of it ever being habitable again. Well, now I'm back home and it's wonderful. I fell in love with this second-hand desk, which arrived about ten days ago and is where I write very happily, if messily, now (and yes, that is a disco ball above my laptop):
I think I'm going to have some fun too. The first thing I did when I set my desk up, was to write it a poem - to settle both it and me in our new home - and this is what came up, completely out of the blue. Let's face it, my new desk is very definitely a minx!!

It's when they're not watching, I do it.
A thin biscuit slipped from my top drawer,
nibbling round the edges, my eyes fixed
on his, and that's all it'll take. He waits
for the crumb falling on to my bottom lip,
the one I'll put my finger up, my ring
finger up, to brush away, and he shakes,
shakes like a lamb being led to slaughter.
Round and round, the biscuit will turn,
biting towards the centre, until it's gone,
and he's released, until the next time.
I'll shut the drawer, get back to work,
as if nothing has happened, just how
it never does, not when they're watching.

The To Do List blog is fast becoming a passion for me. I particularly love the comments to each list, because they seem to me to be stories in themselves. One comment thread on a list just up 'What I love about you' not only questions whether he does actually love her cats, but also starts a debate as to whether men will really get it right about the best way to approach women. So in the interest of harmony, I offer all men this site of cheesy pick up lines. After all, if a strange man approached me with the line 'Are you lost, ma'am? Because heaven's a long way from here', I'd fall straight in his lap (with the grace of an angel, of course). Yeah right.

I love finding new writers I know I'm going to enjoy. I'm not sure how Judy Budnitz has passed me by, but as I've only just got one book of hers so far, her short stories - Flying Leap - it's obviously my lucky day. Too often I love the idea behind a short story, but find it's not carried through (one of the dangers of the genres, I suppose), but these stories are crafted brilliantly. My favourite is 'Average Joe' where a guy suddenly gets attention because he's been nominated the most average man in America. Even God comes calling:

"The next day was Friday. I stayed home from work.
That morning God came to me. No fuss, no fanfare, no limo, no cohorts in sunglasses. He came to me as I lay in bed."

Of course, God needs help too from this Average Joe:

'Joe, I need your advice,' God said. He sighed and put his head in his hands. I mean, he would have, if he'd had a head and hands and was built that way. That's how despondent he was.
'I don't really think I'm qualified to advise you,' I said. I was trying to be humble; the Bible says God likes that.'
'I think you can, Joe,' he said. 'I need you to speak for the poeple. Tell me, Joe, what ails them? Why are their spirts weak? Why don't they believe in me any longer?'

I LOVED this story, and the conclusion which I'm not going to reveal in case anyone buys the book! I think it's the combination of exact detail and surreal imagination, which makes the whole thing believable. It might be a flight of fancy, but Budnitz never falters in letting her characters question that it might be happening, and so the reader goes along too. The phonecalls from sales people are very funny too, and felt like a subtle revenge for all the times those phonecalls interrupt precious writing time.
And so my writing prompt for today is going to be ... a sales phonecall that goes off script.

My writing prompt for today is going to be .... spring, and i'm going to try to follow the rhythm of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
--When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
--Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightings to hear him sing;
--The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
--The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
--A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
--Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
--Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

The best writing workshops point out the things you know are wrong with your work, but hope you'll get away with. I've been struggling with several things about my latest novel at the moment, see the interview I did with Mark Pritchard, but a workshop I went to last weekend, pointed out a possible fatal flaw which is that I hadn't really worked out the motivation of the main characters. It hurt - all the best and most useful criticism hurts - but now I've picked myself off the floor, I've realised I need to change things. And this is part of the process of writing for me, learning to give up the wonderful idea I have for a story and let the characters I'm writing about take over a bit. Why oh why will I never learn! After all I know this quote from Richard Kearney almost off by heart:

The novelist becomes someone who discloses rather than imposes, who listens gently when the city quietens and sleeps, so that he might ‘hear the ghosts of stories whispered.’ And at such times, the storyteller feels himself in the presence of something greater than himself.

And here I go imposing rather than disclosing all over again! I do feel sure I'm on the right track now, but I'm still enjoying reading stories at the moment about how other writers struggled to find their way through their work. This one by the poet, Esther Morgan is possibly one of the best I've seen, Journey of a Poem. It feels like such a generous and useful thing for other writers to share when things go wrong, as well as when they're going right, and I particularly like finding out the thinking that goes on between her different drafts.
And my writing prompt for today is going to be .... 'When the city quietens'.

Books about writing are such a personal thing - I've had friends thrust books into my hand that I just can't bear - which means I'm hesitant about giving my own favourites but I've just had to do this for a magazine and wanted to share. So here goes... These are the books I LOVE and would never ever lend to anyone!

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, Shambhala Publications Inc
Anne Lammot, Bird by Bird, Anchor Press
Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poets Companion, W W Norton
John Lee, Writing From the Body, St Martin’s Griffin
Julia Cameron, The Artists Way, Pan Books
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, Harper Perennial
Susan Wooldridge, Poemcrazy, Random House

Poetry Thursday

The more I blog, the more I discover how good other blogs are! Couldn't believe my luck to discover Poetry Thursday recently, set up by Liz Elayne and Lynn, and am determined to join in with a poem every week. So here's my first. This is an old one of mine, and won third prize in a Poetry London competition. I wrote it in the British Library when I was researching Freud's theory of family romances, and it resonated with me so much that I had to stop reading and write. I remember really clearly as a kid absolutely knowing that these people pretending to be my mum and dad weren't really, and that any day now my real mum and dad, the prince and princess, were going to drop by and claim me! It was a salutory experience to think that my own daughter was probably doing exactly the same thing - and so this poem came about...

Different Lives

My daughter’s trying on different lives
for size. She tries to catch me out,

snakes her arms around my neck,
pushes herself back into my lap.

Tell me about my real dad, she asks.
This is a game we’ve played before.

I close my eyes. He smells of home,
of ginger biscuits dipped in warm milk,

you know how you sip it to send you to sleep.
Sweet dreams he always said when he kissed me

goodnight. Once we stood under a street light
and he wrapped me in his coat,

buttoned it round the two of us. Sleep tight
I’d tell him. My daughter nods, her head heavy

on my chest, she murmurs an echo of my words
sleep tight, sweet dreams. I watch her go

as her father lifts her off my lap, cradles
her up to bed and I hear her sleepy plea

Tell me about my real mum. Alone, I strain
to catch his words, just out of reach.

And my writing prompt for today is going to be ... the different life I could have had!

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Vita Sackville-West.

Today I have been busy writing, clapping the net over my own particular butterfly, and now I'm tired out. It's an almost physical exhaustion although I've hardly moved at all. I'm going to sit in the afternoon sunshine and just freewrite around my writing prompt for today which is ... a day slipping emptily by.

Hah! My email system has this rather weird and disconcerting habit of picking out words in my emails and offering 'appropriate adverts'. Today a friend wrote and asked whether I fancied going to watch some dance at the local theatre. I didn't particularly, but I was very excited by the opportunity offered in one of our appropriate adverts' to enjoy the excitement of a pole dance in my very own home with my very own removable pole, one of which I could even pack up and put in a natty bag to carry with me between office and home. Well, it makes a break from editing, I suppose. Mind you, I'm not quite a novice at these things - I went to a stripping class once with another friend. Actually I'm exaggerating, it was called Six Ways to Remove a Glove and all we did was dance with feather boas and remove gloves, plus a certain amount of 'bottom work' (don't ask), but I can't remember the last time I'd laughed so much. All my other 'class mates' were, like me, women of a certain age, and most seemed to be mothers at the local Catholic school. In the reception area before, one asked another whether her husband knew she was there. 'God no!' she replied. 'He thinks I'm learning how to knit gloves.'
And so my writing prompt for today is going to be ... gloves. I'm not sure whether they're to be removed or not.

Here are details of a BBC Radio 2 competition that looks fun:

“Imagine an encounter with your own music legend and use it to create imaginative, original drama. Be funny, be bold, tell a great story in less than 10 minutes. You can meet anyone, be anyone, go anywhere, do anything! Turn your dramatic ideas into a radio drama between three and ten minutes long and it could be broadcast on the Mark Radcliffe show. Deadline for entries midday Friday 2 June 2006.”

For more information, go to the Radio 2 website

English PEN presents Ghostwriters with Toby Litt, Hilary Mantel and Patrick McGrath

Tickets must be booked before the event.
Tuesday 16 May

Ghostwriters
People have been telling stories about them for millennia, but why are we so haunted by the idea of ghosts? As they say in Hollywood, there is nothing there in the dark that isn’t there by day – except fear. To put a shiver down your spine on a spring evening, authors Toby Litt, Patrick McGrath and Hilary Mantel get together to compare notes on their own spooky writing and ask what it is about ghosts that has a curious effect on writers’ imaginations, in a discussion chaired by PEN’s own Simon Burt.
Time: 7- 8.30pm

Tickets: £5.00
Venue: Adam Street Club, 9 Adam Street, London. WC2N 6AA
How to book: Call 020 7713 0023 or visit www.englishpen.org/events/

If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends -- you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

Alice Duer Miller (1874 - 1942) US poet, author

I hope this is an urban myth, but one of the writing organisations I belong to, New Writing South, has this little bit in the newsletter about a would be children's author who, after receiving numerous rejection letters for his manuscript, decided that no-one was actually reading it.
So what he did was type out his washing machine user guide, called it The Tin Drum and sent it off. He got back the standard and polite reply: 'We think this work has merit but it's just not for us.'

And - I just have to do this - my writing prompt for today is going to be a rejection letter which tells more about the person doing the rejecting, than what's being turned down!

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It would have been the birthday of one of my most loved and inspirational writers, Angela Carter today. I was lucky enough to meet her once, when I was organising a literary conference for readers of Cosmopolitan magazine. We had a fantastic line-up - Fay Weldon, Deborah Moggach, even Maya Angelou, and the day was just full of inspiration, fun and naturalness. Magic. So whatever happened to REALLY good literature and women's magazines? Seems to me that the magazines that are continuing publishing new stories are the ones for older women.

And my writing prompt for today is going to be ... Freud spoke to me in a dream last night (because he did, and I'm definitely going to have to write about what he told me!)

Well, I'm ashamed to say it's taken me as long to work out how to do the format tags for this list as it would to read all these books, but finally I'm able to respond to Debra and Patti's challenge about what books I've read. Thanks guys, this was fun and I've learnt something! I will be underlining and striking with abandon from here on! So this is the list I received, with instructions....
Look at the list of books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you might read.
Cross out the ones you won’t.
Underline the ones on your book shelf.
Place (parentheses) around the ones you’ve never even heard of.
Here goes nothing!

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (and went back to this recently because of the Capote film)
The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (this one's on the bookshelf but I'd be cheating to claim it because it's my kids!)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling (but it's on the bookshelf and much loved by the kids)
The Life of Pi—Yann Martel (heavily overrated in my view but I've got friends who LOVE it, so might have to go back and read again)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (on the bookshelf but I've never actually finished it!)
The Hobbit--J.R.R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell (a treasured one, this one)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban—J.K. Rowling (as above - not being snobby about not reading this, but I've tried and can't get into them at all)
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Probably my favourite on this list)
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (made me weep and weep)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan (cop out ending)
The Shadow of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert (keep getting recommended this)
(Sula by Toni Morrison) (hah, was feeling cocky, but am now ashamed. How have i not heard of this!)
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Was on my shelf but has gone walkabout)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
The Moor’s Last Sigh - Salman Rusdie
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Schriver (Was reading this morning about the struggle she had to get this published!)
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kuresh (I love this man ... as a writer)
Small Island - Andrea Levy
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
Ivanhoe - Walter Scott
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Bernand Shlink - The reader
(Father and Son - Larry Brown)
(Crooked Hearts - Robert Boswell)
(She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb)
Postcards - E. Annie Proulx
(A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (stories) - Robert Olen Butler)
(Defiance - Carole Maso)
Being Dead - Jim Crace
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, by John Berger - Wonderful!
(Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard) (ashamed I haven’t heard of this – will read)
(Bear Attacks--Their Causes and Avoidance, by Stephen Herrero)
(Desert Notes--Reflections in the Eye of a Raven, by Barry Lopez)
(River Notes--The Dance of Herons, by Barry Lopez)
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
(Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow)
(The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus)
(The Last of the Just by Andre Schwartz-Bart)
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Loved the film of this too)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (keep getting mixed reports on this one)
(A Bell for Adano by John Hersey)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Herzog by Saul Bellow

The books I would add are...
Ripening Seed, Colette
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
The Woman Warrier, Maxine Hong Kingston
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
The Lover, Marguerite Duras

And I'm tagging ...

Clare
Susannah
Shirl
Abhay
Keris

When I was young, I admired clever people. As I grew old, I came to admire kind people.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

The heroine of my next novel, Tell Me Everything finds books by the French author, Colette, in the library just when she needs them most. Colette is one of those wonderful writers who can be a shivery role model - you admire, but aren't quite sure you'd have the courage to follow! However, it was a real pleasure in the writing process to go back to the novels and get lost in that summer hazy atmosphere the stories evoke for me. And even more of a pleasure to read Judith Thurman's brilliant biography of Colette's amazing life, Secrets of the Flesh - A Life of Colette.. It's one of those books where you spend as much time making notes as reading, because each page contains a gem. Sorting out my desk this morning, I came across pages and page of scribbles I'd made and each one is worthy of its own writing prompt...

'For I felt, each day better ... that I was, precisely, born NOT to write.'
'General ideas were like dangling earrings; they didn't suit her.'
'For a child, the unwillingness to thrive can also be a form of revenge.'
'There are people who fling themselves into the path of your existence, and plunge it into chaos.'
'He even had trouble controlling the pages of his evening newspaper.'
'So many women want to be corrupted, and so few are chosen!'
'Jealousy is the only suffering we endure without ever becoming used to it.'
'The widespread adoration of women was also an implacable way of subjugating them.'
'swindled of what I had been secretly plotting to relinquish.'
'no one who has tried both to mother and to write can honestly say they are not, at times, conflicting vocations.'
'that graceful, complimentary manner of unfaithful husbands.'
'A woman reaches an age when the only thing left to her is to enrich her own self.'

From my sister, about tomorrow:

wow....did you know that On the first Thursday of May, 2006 at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
This will not happen again in our life time........ Theres an interesting fact to tell ur grandchildren!!

And on the subject of being 'sad', I can't stop drooling over this beautiful book cover which I found on Patricia Storm's excellent blog, Cover Me With Love. A must for everyone who enjoys the tactile/visual side of books, as well as their content!

There has been so much about happiness recently that it's easy to feel guilty about not being happy. But sometimes there are times when you're just going to feel sad. And you need to, without someone popping up to make you 'feel better'. I think that's why I like this site so much. The Saddest Thing doesn't seem to me to be about voyeurism or feeding a negative itch, but about giving space and recognition to emotion in all its different forms, and I appreciate the fact that it was artists who created it, rather than psychologists.

So that's going to be my writing prompt for today .... the saddest thing I own.

And this too.... I LOVE this idea:

Legend Press looking for stories for new collection
Following the success of ‘The Remarkable Everyday’, Legend Press has announced details of the second book in the series, to be launched late-October this year. Developing the theme, Legend Press is looking for fictional stories of between 9,000 and 12,000 words that follow a character for a single day from a particular cultural angle. As with TRE, the story must provide an interesting and original everyday insight with a diverse range to be chosen for the collection. Legend Press is not looking for any political message or planning to provide an exhaustive list, but just a fictional snapshot into the lives of different people from different backgrounds. It also stresses that this doesn’t necessarily mean focusing on the main religious groups, but can be an examination of any cultural aspect of life. Again, Legend Press is looking for an individual insight, which means a strong focus on the character’s thoughts, actions and emotions. As an examination of the everyday, sci-fi, fantasy and thriller fiction is not recommended.
Legend Press is now open to submissions and hopes all writers will look to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity and challenge. Writers should send their work to Legend Press, 13a Northwold Road, London N16 7HL, along with SAE for returns. The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2006 and writers will receive royalties from the collection. Legend Press is also happy to answer any questions, which can be sent to info@legendpress.co.uk

From a New Writer email:

Arts Council website boosts budding authors
An opportunity to see your own work in print in a new X-Factor-style scheme called YouWriteOn.com, whose Bestseller Chart launches this month. YouWriteOn.com is aimed at publishing books by new authors and distributing them through major booksellers. New members join YouWriteOn for free. They review and rate the opening chapters of each others work before the site randomly sends them on to other members. Each month the five highest rated writers will enter the site’s Best Seller chart and receive a free critique from literary professionals, including established authors and a leading London literary agent.
The author with the highest rated opening chapters will win the site’s Book of the Year Publishing Award and the completed book will be distributed through major booksellers including Amazon, W.H. Smith and Waterstone’s.
Edward Smith, the Development Manager of www.youwriteon.com, said: “The website is a great way for new authors to develop as writers with the help of their peers and guidance from literary professionals. It will help talented new writers to get noticed and published. The Arts Council are really behind the project as a way for new authors to get a voice.”
YouWriteOn’s innovative ratings system was devised by professional authors, including Phil Whitaker, whose debut novel Eclipse of the Sun was shortlisted for the Whitbread.”
Edward Smith said: “We plan to launch new successful authors as all our members will be able to self-publish their completed books through the site. Already many members reviewing new authors’ submitted chapters have said that they would buy the completed books. Our aim is to help all writers develop, and to help talented writers get noticed and published."
www.YouWriteOn.com

The writer Mark Pritchard has been working on a really interesting series of interviews with writers, What Are You Working on? and I was honoured to be asked to take part recently. It's fascinating to see the challenges writers are going through AT THE TIME of writing, rather than when they've been overcome. I particularly liked the quote from Laura Krughoff about the differences in writing short stories and novels:

The first draft of a short story has always been my least favorite part of the writing process -- I've always felt subject to the tyranny of finishing. For that reason, I've been really surprised by how liberating and fun diving into a draft of a novel has been. I'm enjoying the feeling of having a work in progress -- knowing I get to be with these characters and this material for a good long while.

From The Writer's Almanac today:

It's the birthday of lyricist Lorenz Hart, born in New York City (1895). He's famous for writing the lyrics to songs like "Blue Moon" (1934), "My Funny Valentine" (1937), and "The Lady Is a Tramp" (1937).

As a young man in his twenties, he was drifting around, writing verse in his spare time, when someone introduced him to a teenage composer named Richard Rodgers. They worked on a series of amateur musical comedies together, but their future didn't seem promising. Rodgers was just about to give up on music and go into the underwear business when their show The Garrick Gaieties (1925) became a huge success. They went on to write several successful musicals together, including Connecticut Yankee (1927), The Boys From Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey (1940).

Lorenz Hart wrote,
"Blue moon,
you saw me standing alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love on my own."

And my writing prompt for today is going to be .... watching someone standing on their own.

Two strong messages about just getting on with the writing today. First of all, a quote sent in an email:

"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time. The approach must involve getting something down on the page: something good, mediocre or even bad. It is essential to the writing process that we unlearn all those seductive high school maxims about waiting for inspiration. The wait is simply too long." --Leonard S. Bernstein

And secondly, an interview with novelist Matthew Sharpe in the current edition of Glimmer Train. Asked whether he thought it important to have a disciplined plan as a writer - writing every day etc, he replied:

"Oh yes. Otherwise I'd die. I think the more you show up at the computer or the writing pad, the more likely it is you will discover the inspiration. There's a nice metaphor, which I am going to mangle, from Mary Oliver, the poet, where she talks about this wild part of yourself that doesn't want to be tamed, but if you show up at the same place and time every day and you offer it your rigor, it will trust you more and it may be more likely to show up, too."

And my writing prompt for today is going to be ... discipline.

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
A E Houseman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Oh, this is a blog after my own heart. Sasha Cagen has started a todolist blog which is asking for people to send their 'to do' lists which are then going to be compiled into a published book. I can just imagine the circles this will create ... on everybody's to do list, there will be the entry 'Read To Do List Book', and then there will be people cross-referencing other people's To Do Lists, filling their own with other people's To Do points and so on and so on. A brilliant idea, and thanks to Patti for the link. I particularly like the ps after one of the lists - "Note: List says Get Land, not Get Laid" ...

Something to read for the weekend? Try this wonderful prose poem, Nearing Menopause, I run into Elvis at Shoprite, by Barbara Crooker. It's almost worth it for the title alone.
And so my writing prompt for today is going to be bumping into a celebrity in a supermarket. (Actually I've almost written this already with my short story, Jesus and the Aubergines, but I'm going to make it more surreal!)

Got this cartoon from Harold's Planet today. Their site has to be one of the funniest ones around.

Having tried to write for the last few weeks with builders - however lovely - in the house, I'm wondering whether behaving like this crocodile might just do the trick in getting some much needed peace. I would like to find out, though, how they know he's called Brutus.

Et chew Brutus

A crocodile in northern Australia has chased a storm-clearance worker up a tree and made off with his chainsaw. The 4.4m (14.5ft) saltwater crocodile called Brutus apparently took exception to the noise of the saw.

The worker was clearing a tree that fell on the crocodile enclosure at the Corroboree Park Tavern, 80km (50 miles) east of the northern city of Darwin.

Brutus chewed on the chainsaw for 90 minutes, reducing it to pieces. Neither man nor beast was injured.

Worker Freddy Buckland was cutting a tree that had fallen as a result of a recent tropical cyclone. Peter Shappert, the tavern's owner, said the crocodile jumped from the water and sped 20ft to the tree.

"It must have been the noise... I don't think he was actually trying to grab Freddy, but I'm not sure. He had a fair go at him... I think he just grabbed the first thing he could and it happened to be the chainsaw."

Tavern co-owner Linda Francis said: "Fred virtually gave him the chainsaw, shoved it at him. "It was still going and he took the chainsaw onto the ground and proceeded to smash it and it stalled. The crocodile didn't cut himself, just broke a few teeth."

Mr Shappert said the saw was destroyed. "He chewed on the chainsaw for about an hour-and-a-half, then we finally got it out."

Saltwater crocodiles are known to attack small boats, apparently disturbed by the sound of outboard motors.

I'm constantly amazed at the high proportion (for the UK) of writers I come across who, like me, have had a Catholic upbringing or schooling. I haven't seen any research on this but I guess it's due to a number of factors. Firstly, the rhythm and music you almost inhale in those services, but secondly, I wonder if it's down to the fact that, with so much set in stone, the baby writer learns how to question at an early age. I never forget how when we were being taught about what you could and couldn't do on a Sunday at my convent school, asking what you should do if a really nasty insect crawled over your plate when you were eating. The answer, I was told, was that you cover it with a glass and kill it on Monday. Some kind of logic there, I suppose, but one that makes me shiver still.

What made me think of all this is that today's 'poem' from The Writer's Almanac is the ten commandments. Reading them made me think of another reason my religious schooling might have helped me become a writer, and that was the importance given to words in my education. Not only that, but actually being forced to learn them by heart too. This morning, I got hit by a sudden memory of crying wildly in class once because I could only remember eight of these:

The Ten Commandments

I. -Have thou no other gods but me,
II. -And to no image bow thy knee.
III. -Take not the name of God in vain:
IV. -The sabbath day do not profane.
V. -Honour thy father and mother too;
VI. -And see that thou no murder do.
VII. -Abstain from words and deeds unclean;
VIII. -Nor steal, though thou art poor and mean.
IX. -Bear not false witness, shun that blot;
X. -What is thy neighbor's covet not.

-These laws, O Lord, write in my heart, that I,
-May in thy faithful service live and die.

And my writing prompt for today is going to be ... 'shun that blot'.

Here's something I bet no-one imagined ever happening...

CONFERENCE CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Pink Floyd: The Appeal & Longevity of a Band
September 2007 England (Details coming soon)
A conference to examine the social, psychological & economic impact of a very British Band
Organized by, Social Theorists, Methodologies & Methods
In association with Midrash Publishing details: http://web.mac.com/theorists/iWeb/
email: theorists@mac.com
Postgraduates are welcome at a (subsidized fee). A selection of papers presented will be published in Conference Proceedings (ISBN) and others in a book.
Pink Floyd is a global phenomenon; an icon for nearly 40 years.
This is a conference for academics & researchers to examine, from different frames of reference, the appeal, identity, impact & economics of one of the most successful and enduring bands of all time.

The Orange Prize Shortlist was announced yesterday. The shortlist is:

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

My fingers are crossed for On Beauty - it was a GOOD book. Carrie Tiffany's title is great though - makes me want to read it.

Some good innovative stuff here .... I have particularly been enjoying browing in the links, and reading about the history of the world wide web, for example.

***Introducing the trAce Archive
The trAce Online Writing Centre is proud to announce the launch of the trAce Archive. The trAce archive was
commissioned by NESTA, The National Endowment for Science, Technology and
the Arts. It is housed at Nottingham Trent University and is managed by
Professor Sue Thomas, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University. The
trAce archive contains all your favourite projects developed by the trAce
Online Writing Centre between 1995 and 2005. It also houses all the
original new media writing, articles, and transcripts of practice-based
discussions published on the trAce website in the last decade.

And my writing prompt today is ... a tracing found in library book.

I'm fresh out of inspiration today so my writing prompt is going to be taken from Creativity Portal's Imagination Prompt Generator. Mine is 'Write about the losses you've experienced, but you can keep pressing until you get one you like! Just wish there was a button I could press that would write the story too!

I really enjoyed this story - Everyone in Holland is Mad at Me by Andrew Tibbetts at Smokelong. Nice ending, and it's so good to read something that makes you laugh out loud.

Just had a lovely day browsing at an antiques fair with a friend, and although I failed completely to buy anything, I got so many ideas for stories... a painting of a wonderful male nude in a life-drawing situation ... the antiques dealer who had fallen asleep on the sofa he was selling ... a live greyhound surrounded by stone greyhound statues ... a mirror on a stand jointed to go round corners ... collars from fighting dogs ... and a wooden hand holding a bible that was a bookshop sign. But a true writer at heart, I'm always amazed how, in the middle of so much visual pleasure, I'm still drawn to words. A great friend of mine has a poster of the sign above in her kitchen, but one of the wartime originals was for sale which I was very tempted by. In fact, there were signs for everything - from confessional booths, schools, shops ... although my favourite was the very firm CHILDREN FORBIDDEN. Now that could really come in useful.
And my writing prompt today is going to be ... graffiti.

From August 28 - September 2nd this year, I'm going to be teaching a week's writing course on Exploring Fiction with the writer, Jim Friel, at Ty Newydd, Lloyd George's old home in Wales. This will be my FOURTH visit to Ty Newydd, but the first as 'teacher'. Can't wait - the sitting room above is the library and you can see the sea from the windows. The last time I went was during the petrol crisis so there were very few cars, and it really did feel like we'd all found ourselves in a forgotten world. This is a description of the course:

Through workshops and tutorials this course explores the techniques of writing fiction, including structure, voice, characterisation, place, purposeful description as well as generating creative ideas for getting started, keeping going and, even, getting to that finishing line.

More details are on the Ty Newydd website.

This seems appropriate (see below)!

There are many reasons why novelists write – but they all have one thing in common: a need to create an alternative world.
John Fowles

So there I was, yesterday morning, teaching at the University, and speaking with students about how the characters we all wrote about need to move between the 'ordinary world' and the 'special world', terms taken from Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. We talked about space, not least because I'm obsessed at the moment with The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and I used as an example the way we'd just moved back into our house after major building work and - for the sake of our sanity - needed the little pockets of order we created amongst the mess. I was thinking particularly about my sitting room - the one room in the house which wasn't full of boxes or 'things to do', and so has become a sanctuary. Imagine how much it hurt then to find a phonecall waiting for me at lunchtime to say that the ceiling of the sitting room had just fallen in and water was pouring down my newly painted walls. Arrgh. Great structure though - the house is very old and this ceiling almost seems original - you can see the horsehair, straw and, is it, can it really be, yes it is, dung, holding it all together! It's just a pity about the dung stains on my absolutely brand new carpet ... and the fact the builders are now going to be around for a little bit longer.
And my writing prompt today is going to be ... a leak.

There's something about why a man or woman would encourage bees to swarm around their face that has always fascinated me. I was thinking about it last night - about all the good and bad things coming with Summer - and when I googled bee beard images I couldn't believe how many they were. What must it feel like? How could you resist the urge to scratch, because it must tickle. I wonder if there are women who have real bee hair-styles, not content with the beehive. 'Your hair is smelling like honey tonight .... oh wait, it's even tasting like honey. Owwwww....'
And so my story for the weekend follows the bee theme. It's Beeswax from the excellent Pulp journal, and it's by Paul Gorman, a writer I haven't heard of before but will be looking out for.
My writing prompt - hahaha, I'm teaching all day so will have little time but I WILL fit it in somehow - is going to be from Rosemary Grant's amazing step by step instructions to how to grow a bee beard. Go on try it, you know you want to.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

An article from Salon.com cheered me up on this dreary Friday... that strange and cruel pleasure coming from the knowledge someone else is having a worse day than you!

But thanks for writing

The letter Rep. Jo Ann Emerson sent to one of her constituents read like any other a 20-year-old legislative correspondent might prepare for a member of Congress: Thank you for writing, your concerns are important to me, blah, blah, blah. Then came the kicker: "I think you're an asshole."

As the Associated Press reports, Emerson, a Republican from Missouri, says she has no idea how the insult made its way into her letter to a Centerville, Mo., resident named Bill Jones. "We cannot determine whether the addition to the letter was made by someone within the office or by someone with access to the office, but it is on my letterhead and the responsibility for it lies with me," Emerson says. "A valuable lesson has been learned, and new procedures will be adopted as a result."

I once worked for a council rewriting their standard payment request letters. Some were so complicated I had to breathe very deeply for some time before trying to work out what it was they were trying so say. Heaven knows what it would have been like to receive one at a trying time. Others were just ridiculous. The words to one - when someone in the family had died still owing money - have been burned in my brain. It went .... "As officials, we are instructed in some circumstances to show sympathy. However, your situation does not warrant it." My only hope was that particular letter never had to be used.

And my writing prompt for today is ... an instruction to show sympathy.

I am so pleased that my friend, Michelle Lovric's website is up and running. It's worth a look not least because it's so beautiful, just like her and her books, the latest of which, The Remedy, is out in paperback in the UK at the beginning of May. Very definitely worth a read - it's one of those books you can lose yourself in as you travel from London's Bankside to Venice in the late 1700's, and was a worthy inclusion in the longlist of this year's Orange Prize.

Here's an extract to whet your appetite:

So at fifteen, spread belly-down upon the floor, a black sheet hunched over me and candles at my foot and head, my lips pressed on stone, litanies in my ears, as the priest broke and entered my shocked fist to slide the ring on my finger, I promised to take no other husband than Christ. I almost meant it. In that heady moment the vow itself seemed no great sacrifice: I'd never known a man, but I had tasted chocolate.

And one of the Amazon reviews:

Gripping and grimy, September 2, 2005
Reviewer: J. Cotton (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This one's even better than 'Carnevale', her last, and just as flavoursome! The action switches between Venice, where a daughter of the aristocratic Venier family is confined to a convent, very much against her will, and London where later Valentine Greatrakes' quack-remedy and 'importing' business is stuck a blow as his partner is killed in Venice. There will be more murders, lies, romance, sex and travel before the plot to this one plays itself out. There's also much vivid description of the streets and low life of the Thames Bankside and dank Venetian canal sides - The Remedy gives good 18th Century Venice and London, with descriptions you can almost taste, and not just of the food. The hint of decadence in the writing and nastiness in the plotting I find much to my taste too. And if you want to know how you can use any peacock dung, faeculae of cuckow and ox galls you might have about the place in remedies and other useful potions this book will tell you, with handy recipes at the start of each chapter. Gripping stuff!

And so my writing prompt for today is going to be ... gripping and grimy.

This looks like a useful resource from the British Academy:

PORTAL: the British Academy's online directory of research resources in the humanities and social sciences now contains more than 750 links to research resources in all areas of the humanities and social sciences.

PORTAL covers the whole spectrum of the humanities and social sciences from the history of art to geographical information systems, and from labour history to the indigenous languages of Latin America. The resources listed make full use of the opportunities provided by the new technologies and include texts of major or rare and otherwise difficult-to-locate texts, images of artworks and artifacts, datasets, maps, dictionaries and encylopaedias. Resource-providers include academic departments and research centres, individual academics, libraries, museums, government departments and ministries, and non-governmental, international and supranational organisations. Resources, all of which are free at the point of use, are selected on the basis of their high quality and potential usefulness to researchers, and must demonstrate currency, proper functionality, and responsible management.

PORTAL is organised as a simple directory. For each resource listed, a short description and set of key words and phrases is compiled. These resource descriptions are listed alphabetically under 18 broad subject headings. A search tool and index of keywords and phrases are available to assist users in finding resources relevant to their subject.

Although it is primarily intended for use by post-doctoral researchers, PORTAL is freely available to the whole education community, and it has been selected for inclusion in EDSITEment, The Best of the Humanities on the Web from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

ENGLISH PEN INTERNATIONAL WRITERS’ DAY
‘MIGRATIONS OF THE MIND’

SATURDAY 13 MAY 2006, 12.00-6.00
ICA, THE MALL, LONDON, SW1Y 5AH. TEL: 020 7930 3647

Booking is now open for this year’s PEN International Writers’ Day. Titled Migrations of the Mind, this year’s event celebrates the ideas-traffickers of the twenty-first century – the international writers who fuse cultures, challenging received wisdom and opening up spaces in which radical new stories can be told. Smuggled inside their novels, plays and memoirs, writers transmit thoughts across frontiers.

Since 1921, PEN has colluded in writers’ defiance of the intellectual border police who seek to limit the free trade in ideas. Now our work is even more important than ever. Join us for a day of talks, readings and debate about the role of literature in an increasingly globalised society. For more information visit http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=14842

Tickets are available from the ICA box office on 020 7930 3647
Full Price: £25
Concession: £20
PEN Members: £18 – Please quote ‘PEN’ when you book

PLEASE DO NOT CALL THE PEN OFFICE TO BOOK TICKETS
We hope to see you there!

ENGLISH PEN INTERNATIONAL WITERS’ DAY PROGRAMME:

12.00-1.00 WILD WORDS
Jung Chang’s books are tightly censored in China, but these controls are counter-productive, giving her work added cachet. In the opening lecture, Chang, author of the international bestseller Wild Swans, describes the fate of her new biography of Mao, which has just been released in Taiwan. Has the book even made it into China – and if so, with what effect?

1.00-2.00 LUNCH
Sandwiches will be available in the ICA café; alternatively, the fleshpots of the West End are only a few minutes walk away.

2.00-3.15 WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A CULTURAL BREAKTHROUGH
The novelist Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s brightest exports, joins Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic, whose The Ministry of Pain was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2006, and Monica Ali, author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller Brick Lane, to ask why women writers so often find themselves on the front line of cultural collisions.

3.15-4.30 STAGES OF DEFIANCE
When does mob rule veer over into state censorship? Playwright Gary Mitchell has been personally threatened as a result of his controversial depictions of Northern Irish culture. In conversation with David Edgar, he asks why the stage arouses such extreme passions, and why the Government cannot do more to protect writers.

4.30-5.00 COFFEE

5.00-6.00 NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST – HOME’S BEST?
The Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun has long lived in self-imposed exile in Paris. In the closing address he asks whether the confrontation between Western and Islamic cultures is a clash of civilizations, or just another battle between rich and poor.

6.00-6.15 LAST WORDS

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

HERMANN HESSE

An article by John Walsh in the Independent newspaper has given me such pleasure this morning. It's a review of a book, The Meaning of Tingo, which came about when the author Adam Jacot de Boinod discovered that the Albanians had 27 words for moustache, and started collecting "extra-ordinary words that abound in the world". Some are beautifully precise. NAKHUR, for example, is the Persian word for a camel that won't give milk unless her nostrils are tickled, but once you hear others, you can't imagine a better word for the job. QUEESTING is the Dutch word for allowing a lover access to one's bed under covers for a chit-chat. Lovely word in itself that, chit-chat. SEIGNEUR-TERRASSE, is the French word for someone who spends time, but not money at a cafe (yep, been there, done that). YUYIN is the Chinese for the remnants of sound that stay in the ears of the hearer. But before you spend as long as I've done on this article, be careful of too much FUCHA - the Portugese for using a company's time and resources for personal purposes.
And my writing prompt for today is .... I want to speak another language.

Thursday 4th May 7.00pm
Oxfam May Poetry Reading 2006
Oxfam Books & Music
91 Marylebone High Street

Hosted by Todd Swift - Oxfam's Poet In Residence

Seven Poets For Oxfam:

Dannie Abse
Olivia Cole
Tim Dooley
Mark Doty
Alan Jenkins
Valerie Josephs
Carmine Starnino

Admission free, suggested donation £8
Please contact Martin Penny to reserve seats
Telephone: 020 7487 3570

Well, that's strange. I've been off-line for over a week now because of 'technical problems', argggh!, only to come back to the site last night to find my viewing figures are bigger when nothing's happening on the blog than when I'm here tirelessly working to pass on good news! Hmmm... never mind, onwards and upwards because I've fallen in love. Let me introduce you to Tyson, the skateboarding bulldog:
I knew there was a good reason for needing my internet to be reinstated quite so badly - I have been watching the video of this dog skate-boarding again and again. He's so organised and careful about it all.
And my writing prompt for today is an over-tidy dog.

I've been struggling with my 'ded and ack' this week - the dedications and acknowledgements for my novel, Tell Me Everything. It seems to be unusual not to dedicate a book to anyone these days, (and I know I want to dedicate it to my dad, because he's the real writer in the family and also the book features a completely horrible father who is so different from mine it's not true, and I'd hate anyone to think it's autobiographical) but it's a bit like an Oscar speech. Try to say what you really feel, and you sound all slushy and pink-dressed when it's read in the cold light of day.

When I wrote Something Beginning With I knew I wanted to dedicate it to my girlfriends because I'd set out to write a book for them in my mind, all the things we would laugh at and cry at and moan about if we were talking. However, I learnt a lesson there in that I missed out one friend - my best mate at school, Nicky, who I wasn't in touch with any more. As soon as the book came out, I knew I'd made a mistake and that Nicky should have been there, because hers was probably my most important friendship and certainly one which made me who I am.

So I don't want to rush this dedication. Trouble is a simple 'To my Father' could be taken either in the spirit of a thank-you, or as a sarcastic fore-note to an expose. I wanted to put for 'To my father, who is not Molly's father', but a friend pointed out that would just look like I'd gone a bit simple and was pointing out biological facts.

Luckily, the internet is at hand to help. One William F.E. Morley has been collecting book dedications and written about them entertainingly in an article for the Alcuin Society webpage. This one is a story in itself:

Belloc, in On Something: "Dedication to Somebody."
"I dedicate this book to those who drank coffee with me in the smoke room of the Mauretania - CCC, MRC, JCB Jr., RHC and GWB. To the first three my friendship; To the fourth and fifth, my apologies as well. To the fifth a request that he show mercy to all slanderers, that he report me and my cause aright with Veronica and a dozen Georgian widows."

I particularly like this one because it made me cry, and I like crying over things that touch me:

A book about Gregory Dexter: "To the memory of my Father because he would have liked Gregory, and to my Mother, because every book needs one reader who is going to like it anyhow."

It makes me think about the time when my son was learning to skateboard and was very very bad at it, so he came and asked if we were going to see my mum soon because 'Granny will think I'm brilliant at it'.
But the one that makes me cry most is Raymond Carver's last book of poetry, A New Path to the Waterfall which is just simply dedicated to 'Tess, Tess, Tess.' It's all he needed to say.

And my writing prompt today is .... finding a message printed in a book.

Asham Award 2006
The sixth Asham Award will be launched in April 2006 at the same time as the new collection of winning stories, Don't Know a Good Thing Deadline for entries 31 July 2006. A shortlist of 12 will be announced at the end of November 2006. For more details go to www.ashamaward.com

The resources of the internet seem limitless. How did we live before we had all this information? Every morning I get emailed to me - free of charge - a different person's life from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and each one is worth reading and writing about. So for today's writing prompt I'm going to take the life of William Ralston Shedden, librarian and Russian Scholar!

The Tate Gallery's Late at Tate event on the evening of April 7th at Tate Britain will feature some of the Poetry Archive's recordings being played in various rooms of the Gallery.
Late at Tate Britain is the perfect opportunity to explore art after hours; relax with a drink and enjoy exhibitions, performances, music, talks and films.

For more information about the April Late at Tate event please visit the Tate Britain website.

I hadn't heard of the term Blooks before, but apparently it's blogs which turn into books, and the first Literary Prize for a blook has just been won by Julie Powell for her book Julie and Julia. I couldn't be more pleased - I LOVED this book. It's the story of a woman's successful attempt to work her way through Julia Childs, albeit in a tiny little New York kitchen, with very little knowledge of most of the ingredients. It's a love letter really, to Julia Childs but also to her husband, Eric, and - although I know this sounds sappy - to the internet too. Here's a bit when she's just starting off...

'After we'd finished our very good and buttery steaks and cleared away the large pile of scraped artichoke leaves, I sat down to write. I made a witticism or two about artichokes - 'this was my first time with artichokes, and more than liking or disliking them, I am mostly just impressed with the poor starving prehistoric bastard who first thought to eat one' - and then posted a few short parragraphs onto my blog.
The next day I got thirty-six hits. I know I got thirty-six hits because I went online to check twelve times that day at work. Each hit represented another person reading what I'd written. Just like that! At the bottom of the entry there was a spot where people could make comments, and someone I'd never even heard of said they liked how I wrote!
I was going to eat lots of French food, and write about it, and get compliments from total strangers about it. Eric was right. This was going to be brilliant!'

I just love it, in writing, when people are so enthusiastic and positive because you know they're heading for some kind of disaster, and, let's face it, that's always good to read about, especially when written by such an engaging author.

And my writing prompt for today is ... a compliment from a total stranger.

A friend of mine sends details of her new book. I haven't read it, but it sounds intriguing. Can't wait.

Abhorred by a selfish mother, but adored by his father, John Brookes grew up with strangled emotions. The young boy finds an outlet for his confusion through harming defenceless animals, but when his prostitute mother and his devoted father divorce, John's elation is fleeting. His mother gives birth to an illegitimate child, and watching his father's heartache tears John apart. Jealous of his half brother, he turns his hatred upon an unsuspecting victim.

However, as life moves on, John finds love and marriage, followed by the birth of his own child. This still isn't enough to pacify his inner demons. They surface once more, tormenting, mocking and sending John on a killing spree that culminates in the most dreadful crime of all.

It goes on sale @ www.wildchildpublishing.com on April 10th priced $5.95.

SMOLDERING WORDS: EROTIC WRITING WITH MITZI SZERETO

A week-long residential creative writing course in Sept 2006 on the Greek island of Skiathos

Erotic literature has changed dramatically in recent years. No longer banished to the top shelves of bookshops, it instead holds court on the front tables. Approaching the subject from a literary perspective, internationally known erotic-fiction author, anthologist, and erotic-writing workshop pioneer Mitzi Szereto will pull back the blanket on the field of erotic writing, offering her own perspective on the craft. The course is designed for those looking to write erotica for professional or personal exploration, or those looking to incorporate the erotic into another body of work. Open to all levels of writers.

Dates: Sept. 9-15, 2006

Cost: (in USD) $795. Includes accommodations for 7 days “Greek Style” room with private veranda and a/c, 22 workshop hours, and transfers by private car to/from hotel from airport/seaport on Skiathos. Single room accommodation is $100.00 extra.

For information or to book: www.zoeartemis.com

{American born Mitzi Szereto has more than a dozen books to her credit, including the critically acclaimed Erotic Fairy Tales: A Romp Through the Classics; The World’s Best Sex Writing 2005 (non-fiction); Dying For It: Tales of Sex & Death; Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers; and the Erotic Travel Tales anthology series. She’s also penned several best-selling erotic novels as M. S. Valentine. Mitzi is the pioneer of the erotic writing workshop in the UK and Europe, teaching them from the prestigious Cheltenham Festival of Literature to the Greek islands. She’s been featured in publications ranging from the Sunday Telegraph (London), Independent (London), Toronto Star, Family Circle, Writing Magazine, and Forum to Bravo UK Television, Telecinco TV 5 (Madrid), and BBC Radio. Her work as an anthology editor has earned her the American Society of Authors and Writers’ Meritorious Achievement Award. Originally from the USA, she now lives in England.}

I had an Emily Dickinson moment yesterday -

As if I asked a common alms
And in my wandering hand,
A stranger pressed a Kingdom
And, I, bewildered, stand.

- when I went for a swim and found the pool completely empty, so I could just go up and down revelling in being in the water on my own. I find doing anything repetitive - walking, swimming, even ironing - good for my creative thinking, but this had a special quality. I managed to sort out a number of plot problems I just hadn't had the space to even begin to cope with before. And it got me thinking about space - how it's not just about taking a month off for writer's retreat, but finding time and aloneness in the day. Somewhere where you can go without others people's chatter breaking through, or to-do lists crowding up your brain. And how I haven't had much of that recently but how much I needed it. So part of my plan is to build in a time in every day when I can be by myself to think, away from mobile phones, computers, other people. Here's a photo of my beautiful swimmming pool to show just how lucky I was.
And my writing prompt for today is ... the sound of silence.

Something to read for the weekend? The British Council's New Writing website has a gem from Edwin Morgan. Gorgo and Beau is a poem in dialogue between a healthy and cancerous cell, originally written for radio. The website describes it so:

Edwin Morgan's 'Gorgo and Beau', a poem commissioned by BBC Scotland (Radio), is in the form of a conversation between Gorgo, a cancer cell and Beau, a healthy cell. They debate human suffering. Gorgo is taunting and full of bravado: he doesn't know the meaning of pain. Beau, with all Morgan's experience of a cancer ward, knows suffering only too well:
'The ward lay awake, listening, fearful, impotent,
Thinking of death, that death, their own death to come.
The sobbing ended; time for sleep, and nightmares.'
But Beau is not without his weapons:
'In Celtic tradition, poets had the power
(It is said) to rhyme an enemy to death.'

And my writing prompt is going to come from the artwork by Bedwyr Williams, Before you judge me, Walk a mile in my shoes, which is one of the finalists (no.3) in the Beck's Futures artwork competition.

(Thanks to my lovely web-goddess Francesca for this cartoon)

Changing your regular daily newspaper is a stressful thing, not just in the disloyal feelings it arouses but just the general inconvenience. Why, oh why, does the Independent put the tv guide in the middle and not the back where the Guardian has them? I keep looking on the back page and know now the football scores off by heart. When I was writing for the Scotsman in Edinburgh and it underwent a major and exciting change, I remember the editor saying he'd got more letters complaining how he'd shifted the deaths announcements column to a different position than almost anything else.

I could forgive the Independent anything, however, (even their trying-too-hard front pages) for Tracey Emin's column. She's a model for reflective thinking - and just when I was feeling I'd had enough of bleed your heart soul-searching from almost anyone else, she seduces me back. A paragraph she wrote today is one of the best and most elegant summings up of the creative mind/body/heart I've read. It made me nod along and laugh out loud.

I've been very unhappy recently. And the unhappiness has manifested itself in anger. So I am constantly questioning why, and I will not accept the surface of the situation. I'm unhappy with the boundaries and the lack of space that I have created for myself. It's somehow spun out of my control. The only place where I seem to find happiness is when I'm asleep. And the first moment when I wake up and just for a second I forget who I am. Or in this morning's case, not knowing where I am. Just existing, being, without the weight of the Self. It probably has something to do with being an artist. Everything I am is inside of me. And there's lots of it. Far too much of it. And sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. That's why it's good for me to have stimulating conversation. Particularly with hetrosexual men.

And my writing prompt is going to be to try to write how I really feel.

A quick walk to the allotment today and there's still no real sign of growth on my cherry tree. I planted it two years ago, because I had visions of lying under it, flat out on the lawn writing, while cherry blossom petals floated down to land on my inspiring manuscript. Don't know whether to be pleased, or slightly miffed, that gardening is the new cool hobby - although I have to be honest and admit that cool hasn't really hit my allotment site just yet. It has here though. I'm not really going to make a habit of including recipes, but this piece by Kelly Gilliam has some good passionate writing. You grow girl!

I love this idea of using the internet to store memories:

I'd like to draw attention to a new non-profit project called MemoryWiki
(www.memorywiki.org). MemoryWiki is designed to be a permanent
repository of 'memories,' by which we mean stories, recollections,
memoirs, or any musings about the past. In short, MemoryWiki invites
everyone to record their memories about almost anything. The motivation to start
the site was the sense that the internet offers new, very efficient ways for us
to collect, catalogue, store and distribute collective memory.

It's good to see a variety of books being recognised in this year's British Book Awards although I'm puzzled at the timing of some of them - surely The Time Traveller's Wife has been out for more than a year, or is it time travelling itself? But at least it's given me my writing prompt for today which is going to be ... filling a time capsule.

Somehow over the years, I've managed to keep some kind of educational authority over my children - mostly by not letting them know exactly what a rebel I was at school. However, they found my reports recently - Geography - I hear Sarah is giving up Geography this year, however I was under the impression she gave it up several years ago. History - Sarah has no phobia for spiders. Biology - Sarah must learn to concentrate and not be silly when there are boys about. And now I've just been sat down to do this intelligence test. My only excuse is that it's harder than it looks and Moby was playing in the background, depressing me.

And my writing prompt is .... exams.

I have a strange childhood memory of being taken to see St Etheldreda's fingerbone in a church in Ely. Surely not? Anyway my semi-Catholic childhood has definitely left me with an obsession for stories about Saints bones - one I love is when the bones of an Italian Saint were sent overseas to a monastery, the monks opening the parcel forgot what he was called and renamed him the Italian word for speed because that was what had been written on the side of the box. Which is a cheesy link to what I'm going to write about today, a quote taken from Joyce Huff's lovely poem, The Hymn of a Fat Woman, on the Poetry 180 site and is

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

From English Pen:
JONATHAN HEAWOOD: “Since someone first scrawled their thoughts on a rock in Mesopotamia, writers have been on the front line of cultural exchange. It’s not always a role that we relish – some writers would rather just hunker down with their rock and a sharp implement. But so long as there are governments, corporations, terrorists or individuals who want to limit the free exchange of ideas, and refuse to give literature the space to flourish, there is a role for PEN. This year’s International Writers Day – to be held at the ICA on Saturday May 13 – takes the title ‘Migrations of the Mind’. Speakers including Jung Chang, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Elif Shafak, David Edgar, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Gary Mitchell, Monica Ali and Dubravka Ugresic will discuss the role of writers in a truly global society. More details of the programme and how to book will follow soon.

An event like International Writers’ Day exemplifies PEN’s dual commitment – to both literature and its practitioners. We are not just an abstract pressure group; we are an active fellowship of writers. Each month’s packed event at the Adam Street Club shows just how engaged PEN members are with today’s most pressing issues – whether free _expression, the future of copyright control, or the lacing of Elizabeth Bennett’s bodice. Through these events, and our successful campaigns, PEN is attracting younger members, who can help us identify tomorrow’s challenges before they hit us. Please help us to grow by telling your friends and colleagues about PEN. Membership is far better value than that of any comparable organisation, far more worthwhile – and far more fun.”

jonathan@englishpen.org

From the truly wonderful, and truly addictive, Overheard in New York website, this gem:

Girl: Excuse me, do you have any biographies of TuPac?
Library guy: Probably, though they'd be with the other biographies on the second floor.
Dude: But isn't this the fiction section?
Library guy: It is. You might be able to find some books about him in non-fiction.
Girl: "Non-fiction"?
Library guy: Non-fiction means true.
Dude: ...And fiction means false.
Library guy: Sort of.
Girl: So if it's in non-fiction then that means he must still be alive.
Library dude: I don't think you understand.

--Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza


Overheard by: Matthew Sahd Mohammed

A speaker at a conference I attended recently (mostly on visual arts) said we should have a statement of faith as to what our art means to us. His, he said, was that it should be:

* intentional
* original
* command a visual response
* command an emotional response
* command an intellectual response

Another point he made was how patrons of the art have changed in their taste. While previously they would want paintings around them that showed an ideal life, often with themselves painted in the background, now it's the opposite. Conflict, he also said, always produced good art.

And my writing prompt for today is ... finding yourself in a painting.

I really like this story - THE RULES OF URBAN LIVING by Kara Janeczko. I was hooked from the first paragraph:

Kept awake by a mouse rearranging its furniture within her walls, Lorraine called Simon in the middle of the night. “It’s reckless,” she told him, “how you throw around love.” She told him everything she’d been thinking and feeling; that his love felt shallow, light, easily shucked, that she was disappointed in him, that it was about working things out, pushing through hard times, making it last. She lay in bed and let the cat rub its chin against the phone.

My writing prompt for today is ... secret language.

I'm pleased to find this site - Poetry 180. Apparently there are 180 days in the US school year, so there's a poem for every school day. I particularly liked Linda Paston's A New Poet. When you're reading one you enjoy, she says,

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself

I think I know what she means - there's a joy in reading something you might have written, if only you'd thought of it first. It's the same sense of recognition you get with people sometimes, and you think 'yes, this person might just be a friend.'

"When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own."
John Berger

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency--the belief that the here and now is all there is."
Allan Bloom

One of the best things about finishing the writing work for my PhD is that I've recently rediscovered a love of reading for its own sake - that sinking into a book I haven't done for far too long. Recent books have included The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen and the very wonderful On Beauty by Zadie Smith. My best book ever for getting lost in though was Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. Despite its scale, after the first few pages I was taking it everywhere with me, even to the cooker while I made supper. And for some time after, I was telling people about a friend I had... until I realised it wasn't really a friend, just a character in the book. It was - and still feels - like a gift to get that involved.

What surprises me most is how when I read good work, I'm drawn back to the page to write, so perhaps all writing is a dialogue - not just with the reader who will hopefully pick up your work but with other writers too - dead and alive. It's all about adding your graffiti mark on the wall. The poetry group I belong to - the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society - had their annual competition prizegiving on Tuesday. In the judge's summing-up, there was the sentence that goes something along the lines of 'It's clear from some of the entries that the writers are not reading contemporary poetry' - a line that you hear again and again in competition round-ups. But for me, reading is one of the main parts that make up writing, and all the writers I respect seem to say the same thing when they discuss their process. How can you expect to write without reading?

And what better example of being lost in the story than the painting above. It's from the Book of Hours and demonstrates to me the universality of writing, and reading, through time. Another beautiful reading painting is on Patricia Storm's excellent blog. I love the way the woman in this painting has obviously moved her chair over to catch the sunlight but got so engrossed in her book, she hasn't noticed she's now in the dark. And Patricia Storm is a woman who understands reading! I spent ages lost in her words, nodding and nodding along with her. Thank you - good cartoons too!

My story for the weekend is Lisa Clarkson's Shirts. The first line (see post below) is a poem in itself, and captures the deceptively clean and simple language of the rest of this story:

They wake together, as lovers often do. She makes breakfast, wetting cereal with milk; he cleans his teeth and shaves the grit from his face.

This edition of Pulp, guest-edited by me, will only be up until the end of the month. Catch it while you can - I'm particularly proud of getting the poet, Paul Farley to answer the literary top ten questions.

And my writing prompt is ... she turned towards home.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann