Update

It’s been too long. I know. The reason? I’ve been writing, and working, and going places.     

       

Here is a sample of interesting things I’ve been doing or seeing since my last post in September:

Iain M Banks book signing and talk. 70% of the evening was spent on a train or train platform, 5% walking from the train station to Toppings and back again, 25% in Toppings listening to Iain M Banks talk about the Culture, which is something I know little about because I’ve never read any Iain M Banks sci fi, other than State of the Art. The portion of the talk I caught was interesting more for learning his writing processes than anything else. He’s a wing-er. He belongs to the “because it’s cool” category of popular writers.

Shaftesbury Arts Week, map making competition, hanging out, putting on prose and poetry evenings in small places.  http://storyslingers.blogspot.co.uk/

Bridport Story Slam – I co-organised this with Dorset Writers’ Network. http://dorsetwritersnetwork.co.uk/eventsshow.htm for the details. James Broomfield won again. Damn, he’s good.

Me and Sue at the Bridport Slam.

Wimborne Literary Festival, a talk from fantasy author Suzanne McLeod and Sci Fi writer Jaine Fenn. It was pretty poorly attended, but pretty rich in how interesting and entertaining it was. People missed out on a high calibre event there.

I’m getting some informal and occasional mentoring help from Winchester Uni lecturer Amanda Boulter. She’s been helping me hone my skills on my current novel.

I’ve been writing said novel, a fantasy set in Arthurian Britain in 508AD.

And reading a lot of history books and doing countless character profile worksheets and exercises.

DWN’s Nell Leyshon workshop: Finding Your Character’s Voice. This was a well-pitched workshop with plenty of practical exercises that not only got the creative juices going there in-session, but can be re-used out of the workshop. For the first time in a long time I came away from a workshop with new ideas, new techniques and newly inspired.

Listening to Alt J, Marbert Rocel (and remixes), The Dead Weather. 

Story Slam at Bridport Open Book Festival 2012

Check out this event I'm organising with Dorset Writers' Network:

 

Dorset Writers Network 

Story Slam

Dorset Writers Network present writers with an opportunity to demonstrate your writing and reading skills at their first ever Story Slam at the Beach &Barnicott, Bridport,Thursday 11th October 2012, 8pm, Bridport Open BookFestival.

So register in advance via zomzara@googlemail.com (or turn up and register on the night) to take part in a celebration of fresh, local writing talent and showcase your work in front of a live audience and a panel of expert judges, including Bridport Open Book Festival’s Writer in Residence, Rosie Jackson.

You'll have five minutes to read out your story –  roughly 780 words. All genres and styles of original prose fiction welcome. If there are more registered writers than time slots, the names will then be entered into a draw.

All this plus live music from the Wrongo Bongo Band with a £5 ticket from the Beach & Barnicott or Bridport Arts Centre.

Shaftesbury Arts Festival

Shaftesbury Arts Festival Sept 5th-9th.
It's a busy week for Storyslingers. Check out the following exciting things that are happening:

I.

MAP MAKING COMPETITION:

Storyslingers, my writing group, set up an interesting competition for writers (and vagabonds, comedians, artists and the general public). Here's the link: http://storyslingers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/storyslingers-launches-its-first-open.html

The winner(s) will be announced on Saturday 8th at our book stall/ display of wonder, SAC. (see item III. below)

Check out the facebook page for inspiration/ procrastination opportunity: http://www.facebook.com/events/341655955921155/

(this is a random map I found from the internet. Thanks internet!) 

II.

PROSE, POETRY, MUSIC EVENING AT BEGGAR'S BANQUET: 

Storyslingers have teamed up with Beggar's Banquet Music Cafe in Shaftesbury and will host an evening of good stories, funky tunes and slick poetry. There will be snacks of fine quality, there will delicious drinks, you can bring some wine of whatever quality you prefer (corkage fees apply!) 

Beggar's Banquet is an amazing place; provider of wholesome veggie foods, player of excellent music (check out all the vinyl for sale in there), host to exciting arts events. http://www.beggarsbanquetmusiccafe.co.uk/

Thursday 6th September, 7:30pm, Beggar's Banquet, Muston's Lane, Shaftesbury, Dorset. Free entry. 

(writers take note of this amazing opportunity: we have one or two reading slots still available. If you're a prose writer or poet, please email Jennifer Bell or Jennifer Oliver to declare your interest. Time guideline of 5 mins/ 800 words.)

http://www.facebook.com/events/263686563750118/

III.

STORYSLINGERS CURIOUS STALL OF HANDMADE LITERATURE

Come to Shaftesbury Arts Centre at about 10am-4pm on Saturday the 8th of Sept, we will have a stall of handmade books, zines, comics, bookmarks, cards, origami, chapbooks and also published works and postcards. We're not sure which room we'll be in yet, but the mystery will only add to your experience as you wend your way around the labyrinth of SAC in search of wondrous treasure (ie: us). 

(a recycled image from last years' arts festival.)

Map Making Competition

My writing group is organising an awesome map making competition. Check it out!

Every story is set somewhere and it’s the writer’s job to immerse their reader fully into that fictional world. How are we to write convincing worlds if we do not know our way around them? 

We challenge any budding writer*/ artist out there to draw a map of their fictional world. It doesn’t have to encompass the entire world, it can be a small part of it; a city/ borough/ street, an island, a country or county, a building-plan etc. 

Please email your map to us at zomara@googlemail.com with Map Making Competition as the subject. Make sure the file isn’t massive, send it as a jpeg 72dpi. Keep a print-version at hand because we’d like to pin some of the best maps up at Shaftesbury Arts Centre (we’ll contact you about this). The winner will be featured on our blog and within Shaftesbury Arts Centre and Shaftesbury Arts Festival on 5th-9th Sept.  We will be publishing the winning map online, so if your world is top-secret then maybe keep it under wraps for now and submit it next time. 

The world/ location must be your own. We don’t want to see lots of renditions of Hogwarts.

The closing date is Friday the 31st August, so get your colouring pencils out and start drafting! 

Further info:

We don’t take ourselves too seriously, so we don’t expect you to either. We’re not concerned about intricacies of scale or worried over the physics of your world. If it looks cool, we’ll be happy. Inspire us, excite us. 

*Wait, you’re not even a writer? But you like to dream up worlds and make maps? – okay, that’s cool, go for it and submit. Maybe one of us writers will like your world and want to team up with you and write a story set in your world. Our writers are always on the lookout for things that will spark the next story, so we’d love to find a new world to write about. 

More information and examples of already published maps can be found here http://www.facebook.com/events/341655955921155/ 

Stuff that is happening

There's been lots happening, so much so that I've not had a chance to write about any of it here. So here's a quick run down. 


1) I won Ideastap Editor's Brief; Grow for the text category. Exciting!

2) Here's a photo of me reading at the Southbank Centre, London a few weeks ago: 

3) Jennifer K Oliver, myself and Jian Yang Dong went to the Tate Modern to see the Damien Hirst exhibition. I love Hirst's work, especially seeing all of it in one go, it doesn't really make any sense if you view isolated pieces. 


4) Our story slam in Shaftesbury went really well. I am working on a post about it at the moment, so hopefully you can read about it soon. 

5) Yesterday Robbie and I went to Sturminster Exchange open mic, me to read a story, and Robbie to perform a comedy song. I regret reading the story I did, I wrote it a while ago and it's not as tight as it could be. The evening was more geared towards music anyhow, and mostly unoriginal work (covers) which I never really understand. Maybe next time I should take a copy of Harry Potter and read that out for 15minutes. Having said that, the performers were mostly young (some of them children) so it was a great event for them to get experience and gain confidence. My favourite performer (aside from Robbie) was a young Jazz Pianist. She had talent, original talent; it was different and interesting. 


6) Today I'm running a writing workshop adapted from the 826 Don't Forget to Write book, about world-building. Come join in if you're around, 6:30pm Park Walk bandstand (if it's raining we'll move to the pub, probably the Mitre because the Brewers have a quiz night on). Bring colouring pencils, we'll be making a map. 

Short Story Idea Bank 3

I decided to write a story for London's StorySlamLIVE the day before the slam. The theme was Sheet-Lightning. Here is the idea bank for that story, which I titled Happening, though will retitle as Mount Analogue from now on. 


My Notes: 

Sheet lightning can look quite contained, almost like a snow globe, the lightning caught within. We catch glimpses of a greater drama that occasionally breaks out of the cloud.

This makes me think of a tent lit from within. 

 On a more general level sheet lightning is lightning that doesn’t touch the ground, it travels from one cloud to another in a horizontal fashion, creating a sheet of light in the air.

Or that feeling, almost sublime, you get when you witness something like that. It’s kind of primitive and fresh and scary all at once. Exhilarating.

It doesn’t go to ground. Like passing a baton, handing over a spark, energy, not allowing it to dissipate. 


I saw an art happening in Bournemouth, forty or so students crammed into a tiny space, cacophonous sound art and flashing lights, and so much buzzing energy: it was like sheet-lightning, ideas sparked from the artists to the audience without dissipating, without neutralising, charging the people who shared their space. 

http://jump-into-the-void.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/london-trip-1-mt-analogue.html

London Trip #1 Mt. Analogue

Last week I went to AUCB's graduate art show in Brick Lane. This year photography, fine art and illustration all exhibited in the same space. My main interest was in photography, having graduated from Bournemouth in 2007 with a 1st class BA (hons) Photography. The photography B.A's portion of the show was called Mt.Analogue, an apt and clever title. In 2012 there seems to have been a new departure from digital and a resurgence of silver gelatin prints and sculptural pieces.

The entire graduating year were of very high standard, but two or three artists particularly interested me, Kharn Roberts, Loz Clarke and Antonio Parente. I met Kharn back in April when I went to an art happening in Holdenhurt Road (Bournemouth), Open Space/ Black Branches. This was a performance piece/ soundscape, and there was something about it that really worked well for me. Black Branches tend to release their stuff onto cassette tape, the artists seem to be preoccupied with the relationship between digital and analogue media, as well as certain obsolete digital media. (I think) they work with the record label Amps Against Trend, who release music/ sound on floppy disk and cassette tape. In this digital age where everyone/ thing is so connected and easy to share, this resurgence of clunky analogue and obsolete media is interesting. These media are limiting; it's hard to share this stuff. These media force the audience to interact, they are tactile and frustrating and messy, in antithesis to the clinical ease and distance of  trending digital media. With twitter hashtags art, music, stories, inane idiocy, etc can be instantly shared, trends occur, not because they are meaningful, clever or interesting, just because chance allowed them to be picked up and shared many times over. With Black Branches and the stuff released on Amps Against Trend, this cannot happen so easily. If you want to share a song that's been released on cassette tape, you have to be dedicated, you have to have the right equipment and a dose of patience, and at the very least, you need to pass your tape on to someone who has a cassette player.

 Loz Clarke's work comprised of a looped sample recorded onto tape that wound around a plinth with sandpaper wrapped around it. As the evening progressed, the tape and sound deteriorated. 

Kharn Roberts exhibited an empty metal tray that he later smashed a pane of glass over. It was meant to contain a sculpture/ sound piece comprising of a block of ice suspended over a snare drum. Over the course of the evening the ice would melt, hitting the drum. I loved this idea, the chance element of it, the question over who the author of this sound is: Kharn or the ice or the drum, or the people generating the heat that causes the ice to melt. 
Health and Safety forbade him to exhibit his work over fears that a few drips may bounce off the drum and cause moisture to build around the display. The drinks bar collected a massive puddle of water and no one seemed to have any trouble negotiating that. 


Antonio Parente's work reminded me of the work made by a student in my year: Will Newnham, who struggled with the relationship between himself, his art and his audience. What I liked particularly about Parente's work (and Kharn's and Loz's) was the engagement in critical theory. All these artists are creating engaging and clever work that push boundaries in carefully considered ways. Antonio has established a website that looks very exciting and interesting to me (as a critical theory geek): http://www.onphotography.org.uk/


What I really love about the show is the title. Mt. Analogue - a nod to the surrealist author Rene Daumal and his novel Mount Analogue, A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. I've not managed to get hold of this novel, though I have read about it, read excerpts and quotes. 


Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action. You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again... So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. 


To me, the ideas in this book marry well with the ideas that Kharn, Loz and Antonio are exploring in their work.