Some Like it Literary




I once attended a short story course at the British Museum, so it was with a sense of déjà view I loitered at the Ashmolean last Friday (as you do), filling in time before a 4pm talk, ‘What makes a Good Short Story?’ It was in a marquee in Christ Church gardens and was part of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.

I’ve written dozens of stories, some having a polite reception at writers’ groups, but none deemed worthy of publication. Maybe I’d find out what was missing. In any case, it was sure to be a good for my reviewing.

My delight at a pole position seat opposite Hanif Kureishi was spoiled by noise from behind – three thirty-something men exchanging banter with various well-wishers. No wonder they were over-excited –they were three of the six short-listed contenders for the £25,000 prize for the best short story in the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. The ‘talk’ was in fact a discussion chaired by Cathy Galvin, editor of The Sunday Times Magazine.

A very elderly man, sitting further back, his hands folded on the handle of a walking stick was also identified as short-listed author CK Stead. Another, much younger man in an anorak in the back part of the tent was Joe Dunthorne. I immediately warmed to him, if only because he’d distanced himself from the wise-cracking trio. The sixth author on the short-list, a Zimbabwean woman writer, couldn’t attend.

The complete short-listed authors and stories were:
Will Cohu: 'Nothing but Grass' Joe Dunthorne: 'Critical Responses to My Last Relationship'; Petina Gappah: 'An Elegy for Easterly' ;Adam Marek 'Fewer Things' CK Stead 'Last Season’s Man' David Vann 'It’s Not Yours'




The five judges had read 40 stories ‘filtered’ from over 1,000 entries. Judges present, AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi and literary editor Andrew Holgate, responded to questions put by Cathy Gavin, Lierary Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. Lynn Barber and Nick Hornby were the judges not present.

So what qualities did they look for? ‘Concision; compression; poetic exactitude’, said AS Byatt. There are no prescriptive rules about one point of view or one emotion and she tried to judge with a blank mind because the short story ‘can do what it likes’ You could quickly tell whether a story was ‘alive or dead’.

Hanif Kureishi said a good story is one that ‘keeps your attention’with ‘The right words in the right order’ (Nothing new there, then) He usually discarded anything that hadn’t grabbed him after three pages. (Which raised a laugh, but I think three pages is generous for a short story)

Byatt said what she liked about writing a short story was knowing the plot so she so could concentrate on the language. Kureishi said he didn’t get bored as he did when writing novels. ‘It’s satisfying to have ideas that can be that can be realised in a week or so’.

Asked to name a short story writer she admired, Byatt nominated Kipling. Kureishi mentioned O Henry, DH Lawrence, Hemingway and Carver.

About changes in form, Byatt detected ‘a new kind of unreality that fits onto the international’. I was puzzled by this at the time but reading the winning story on Sunday made it clear. Holgreave was disappointed by the lack of experimentation.

Asked if they agreed with the saying, ‘Art divides; craft unites’ Kureishi said the craft should be hidden. Byatt looked for a ‘certain rhythm in the language.’

Holgate read an extract from a story that sounded suspiciously like the stories Byatt said she didn’t like: ‘a particular type of masculine American short story’. It was by David Vann and featured a character called Big Al, with ‘fingers as rough and hard as a deformed carrot’

This type of story, in fact, seemed popular. One extract was about men bonding on a duck shoot. Another, ‘Fewer things’, with an ecological theme, was about a man and son on a remote island.

The humour in Joe Dunthorpe’s ‘Critical Responses to my last Relationship’ was welcomed by Kureishi because it was ‘good to read something that didn’t make me want to shoot myself in the head’. He was the author in the anorak who now had my full support.

Holgate wondered if the genre is too miserable,(which in my opinion is true) and referred to Will Colhu’s story of a man who kills his workmate and Petina Gapper’s story set in a settler camp in Zimbabwe.



Style was important, as one bad sentence could kill a short story, whereas it could get lost in a novel. Holgate said ‘It sticks out a mile.’

What, asked an audience member, were the parameters of a bad sentence?

’Well, said Kureishi, clichés stand out, as does a boring start, so it’s best to put the good stuff at the beginning. A bad sentence? ‘The wrong words in the wrong order.’


So now I know, and there’s nothing much to add except that to my great joy the winner was CK Stead, ‘New Zealand’s leading writer, at the height of his powers’. What particularly pleased me was his age - he’s 77. So maybe that's what's missing as far as I'm concerned: I'm not yet old enough.

Reading Speed and the Soap Opera Effect: Håkan Nesser‘s The Return



A body found in a wood in 1994; a murderer released from jail who disappeared in 1993; could they be connected?

That's what Chief Detective Inspector Van Veeteren and his team will have to look into. Unfortunately, the grumpy toothpick-chewer spends most of the book in hospital after an operation for stomach cancer. He's reduced to reading trial transcripts while half-dozen lack-lustre underlings take on the footwork and interviews.

The different reactions to this novel expressed at the crime reading group set me to thinking about how even crime novels need different reading speeds.

Some, like this, are just denser than others. As you read you savour the style and don't mind pondering. If a character comes in on page 30 and you have a vague recollection he's been there before you don't mind looking back. It's the opposite kind of read to a 'page-turner', a cover word that puts me off.

It took a while to get used to the slow, jig-saw like nature of the plot, so I was surprised when a member of the group said she’d found it a ‘quick read’.

The 'routine investigation' unfolds, and it is indeed very routine, (‘repetitive’ is how one member of the group described it) but occasional flash-back chapters privilege the reader.

You can see why the author uses this structuring technique -if he didn't, the reader would be so annoyed with being kept permanently in the dark he'd throw down the book and start reading The Dragon Tattoo instead.

Even the location seems deliberately obscure. The names are Dutch but the place could be Sweden or Poland or any of those north-European places with tiny, introverted settlements surrounded by forest.

An understated rhythm and ironic style combine with literary sleight of hand. Nesser, someone suggested, is well-served by his translator to produce a prose so subtle it’s almost mesmeric. Surveillance of a suspect in a high-class restaurant sets a humorous scene for hapless cops to relish a gourmet meal on expenses. Passages where the point-of-view isn't immediately identified almost make you suspect the author is playing games at the reader's expense; or perhaps he assumes you like it when he teases.

The real turning point of the book, the crucial 'return', is that of Van Veeteren. Once he's back on his feet Van Veeteren soon has things moving, while ratcheting up the intellectual level by several hundred percent. It’s as if he’s wandered in from a novel by Hesse or a Bergman film, except that he’s no indecisive Hamlet. As his name suggests, he's seen too much to hesitate.

His musings are suitably enigmatic:

'What does a fractual care about a camera?' he asked himself.

But he's a man of action when action's required. In the space of a few pages he has put an interviewee through the wringer, osmosed the identity of the murder in a visit to a hut, and achieved the true end of every detective story with a truly shocking twist.

The Return isn’t a good introduction to Nesser’s work. It’s a sequel to the earlier Borkmann’s Point, which won him the best novel award in Sweden in 1994, and the third Van Veeteren novel. I hadn’t read any before, so didn’t possess the ‘cultural capital’ that would have made the earlier chapters easier to read.

The comparison is with soap operas like The Archers or Coronation Street, where recognition kicks for instant involvement because of previous experience. Here, were the hero called Rebus, or Morse, or, more appropriately, Wallander, it would have the same effect.

One of Van Veeteren’s assistants, Münster, was much more fleshed out as a personality than his fellow-detectives. Like Morse’s sidekick, Lewis, he was happily married, forever dreaming about off-duty domestic bliss. It occurs to me that this may be part of the author’s ongoing scheme of things as the books develop, each one of the characters will enter the spotlight and we’ll know much more of them so that each novel will increase our ‘cultural capital’. While this would enhance the soap opera effect, maybe that’s too fiendish a master plan. I wouldn’t mind sticking around to find out, though.

Too many Projects, but nearly there with this one

It's happened again. I have so many different writing projects that I'm reduced to allocating half an hour a day to each. Of course, this means progress is slow all round.I seem to finish the odd blog, but I've been writing a magazine article for for about three weeks now. There's no deadline,which is just as well. In fact, I'm only just ready to submit a proposal.

I came back from my stint as a volunteer classroom asstant in Spain all fired up with enthusiasm to write some articles. I'm also determined to get paid, which means not writing for websites as I did with some of my China articles. Ditto lots of theatre and film reviews. I'm just regarding that as practice because now I want to earn some money.

Christmas celebrations intervened, then a holiday and a bout of bad health which seemed to last though most of February. Then I revised a synopsis and a chapter for a competition. I joined facebook, restarted evening classes and a crime reading group, etc.etc. All delayed completion of my Zamora piece.

I followed the advice of various courses and 'how-to' articles and looked for a suitable 'outlet' to analyse for tone and content. I trawled through travel mags in WH Smiths.

The most likely print outlet I've found is a magazine called Living Spain , its target audience, as might be expected, people who are thinking of moving there permanently.

As well as guides to the more popular expat areas -there's an article about Andalucia - it includes pieces written by people who've lived and worked in Spain, ranging from the adventurous and unusual - the author man who lives up a mountain, with his Spanish wife, to the more predictable - a woman who teaches English and drama in a private international school on the Costa Blanca. They include details of work and lifestyles as well as descriptions of local fiestas and information for readers who might want to do something similar. Both are living there permanently, so have lots of relevant local knowledge.

Other features include book reviews -written by the same person, so probably a staff writer - some in-depth well-researched articles on, for instance, The Basque Country, with when-to-go and where-to-stay advice. These are written by experienced travel writers. All the pieces are lavishly illustrated with top-class photos.

There's a cookery page and I use the instructions to make a perfect tortilla - though I've had some practice. There's advice on tax and finance and a round up of fiestas and festivals, and a portait of 'Spanish Legend', Seve Ballastero.

I find what I'm looking for on the back page. I've had luck with back pages, before, namely a couple of articles for 'Expat Eye' in the Beijing Review. That was when I worked for a publisher in China and by a stroke of luck a colleague got a job in Beijing. His duties included commissioning writers. The fist piece was about taking part as a judge in an English speaking competition. It meant a week in China's northern-most city, Harbin, at Ice Festival time, with temperatures at -30C.

'How about taking the lid off what it's like to work in a Chinese office?' was his next suggestion. So I wrote that - a great success and very funny, I thought, but relations with the boss were never quite the same.

The back page in 'Living Spain' is named 'Final Call' and this issue has an article called 'A Week on the Camino de Santiago'I decided that space was to be my goal.

I've done my 'how to write magazine articles' homework, analysed the magazine in general and the 'Camino' piece in detail. There's an illustration but I took lots of photos in Zamora so that shouldn't be a problem. The word count is 1200, which could be.Maybe the scope of my piece is too wide.

The structure of the Camino piece more or less does itself - a narrative of the pilgrim's route. There's some dialogue, quite a lot of landscape description:

Almost as soon as we crossed the frontier, the lush greenness of the French Pyrenese gave way to a much rockier and starker countryside and the further we travelled down the valley towards Jaca, the drier and warmer everything became.

Later on;

We also saw all sorts of wildlife, including Griffon vultures, red kites and buzzards

It's all stiffened up with a fair amount of history, a touch of humour. (At the start, the writers friend speaks in French instead of Spanish and says hello instead of good bye.) The human interest or arm-chair travel aspects are covered by accounts of sweaty walks along dusty terrain and a welcome at a hostel.

So, I've used it as model and incorporated most of the elements. Mine lacks the sense of outdoor adventure that appeals in the 'Camino' piece, but has more Spanish people - and children, of course. Maybe I could introduce more drama. Looks as if I'll have to lose about a third of its length, too. I've probably used enough material for two or three pieces.

Now the first draft is finished, though, I should be able to polish it this week. So I'll write the proposal.

Elmore Leonard's Top Ten Writing Tips (more or less)





I'm not exactly bereft when it comes to 'How-to-Write' books - but what's this I read in Time Out? Best-selling crime-writer Elmore Leonard's giving out writing tips on TV!

It's a BBC programme called 'Culture', so forget helpful countdown numbers, as in 'The 20 Best Spats from Corrie''. Instead, close ups of the author's gaunt face wreathed in cigarette smoke, intercut with clips of John Travolta and Danny DeVito talking about writing in the 1995 film, 'Get Shorty'

As I'm also eating a pizza, and it's more an edited version of the writer's thoughts than 'tips' I note down only nine. Maybe there were more.


1 Get up at 5am and only allow yourself to drink coffee when you're well into the scene. Ooh, that's good - I'm an early riser, too. Maybe the 'scene' he mentions is the 'zone' I've heard about, or maybe he really did say 'zone'. English writers could substitute tea, but *n.b see below for contradictory info. on the start time.

2 Characters are more important than plot, and names make a difference. I like the way Leonard 'auditions' his characters and told how changing the name of one character from Frank McTeeth (?) to Frank Delaney made him a talkative extravert.

3. Don't describe the characters appearance, but let them emerge from the way they talk. Just as bad, in my opinion, is when characters describe their own mirror reflections.

4. Don't worry about what your mother might think.

5. Readers won't skip dialogue. He advocates building a 'rythym, a beat that goes like jazz', which relates more to the Southern US where most of his stories are set. The same idea in different format, though, can be seem in John Le Carre's distinctive 'Smiley' speech

6 Develop a style or sound. Never use a verb other than 'said' in dialogue and don't use adverbs to modify verbs. Elroy mentions Hemingway as an influence and quotes Conrad on adverbs.

7. Writing is re-writing. He writes in longhand, four pages of writing for every one he ends up with. He writes from 10am to 6pm and has peanuts for lunch. This seems to contradict the early start rule first mentioned.

8. Write because it makes you happy. Leonard says he sometimes looks at the clock at around 3pm and thinks 'Oh, good, I've still got three hours left.How many jobs are there where you say that?'

9. The rest is up to you.

There's nothing here I haven't read before in one or another of my 'How-to' books. If it were down to reading books, or doing courses, for that matter, I'd be a millionaire best seller too.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson




Stieg Larsson was a magazine editor who died suddenly after delivering the manuscripts of three novels to his Swedish publisher. Intrigued as I might be about the suspicious circumstances, it didn’t help me to get through the book.

It was the film trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that pinged my antennae: just a cloud of ink spreading in water, like a lacy veil, and a young woman’s face, but any mention of dragons and I’m all ears.

VOLUME 1 OF THE MILLENNIUM TRILOGY MORE THAN 5 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE

Ah, that must have been why I picked it up in the local Red Cross shop. Why didn’t I read it before? I was soon reminded.

‘How-to-write’ guides advise readers to analyse books they admire. I find the ones I don’t like are a more useful challenge. Some of the choices in my crime reading group are so hard to get into they drive me to scribbling names and events on post-it notes.

’The plaudits that take up two pages arouse suspicion, for a start, although I’m sure the opposite is intended.

‘A rip-roaring serial-killer adventure’ (John Williams, The Mail on Sunday)

‘A striking novel, full of passion, an evocative sense of place and subtle incites into venal, corrupt minds.’ (Peter Guttridge, Observer)

‘What a cracking novel!’ …Brilliantly written and totally gripping’. (Minette Walters)

So why do I find it hard to get as far as Chapter 4?

It’s got two other ingredients that put me off straight away – apart from the eulogies, that is. First there’s a family tree that takes up a whole page, and then dates at the head of each chapter, partly in Roman numerals!

I’ve no objection to a Scandinavian setting – I’ve liked Sweden the three times I’ve been there, I enjoy the Wallander series on TV (albeit the ones with subtitles and no Kenneth Branagh) and I quite enjoyed the Swedish thriller we read in the crime reading group, although his name was unpronounceable.

So what’s wrong with this one? It starts innocuously enough. No Val McDermid-style riveter, but I’ll give it a go, even though there's a prologue, a third stumbling block. An old man receives a pressed flower on his birthday. Nothing so strange, except he’s been getting them annually for 42 years and he has no idea who sends them. Even his friend the police chief can’t crack the mystery. Annoying, but not enough to cause too much fretting, one would have thought.

Chapter one introduces a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, found guilty of libelling Wennerstrom, a businessman. There’s a flashback to a chance meeting with a pal who has told him that Wennerstrom is some kind of financial shyster. This has got to be the most boring conversion in any book, ever. It’s pure journalese. I get bogged down with acronyms which seem to be company names as in A.I.A. project or some who’s the C.E.O. of A.B.B.

These people are all quite well-heeled and live in a kind of Jeffrey Archer world with a Swedish twist – boats and waterside cabins feature.

Chapter two switches to another character, just as boring as the others, apart from his name: Dragan Armansky. A promising name but he’s not only C.E. O. but C.O.O (aargh) of a security firm. I’m really hammering the post-its by now. But here comes the real off-putter, the eponymous heroine.

Armansky’s part-time assistant, Lisbeth Salander, is ‘pale, anorexic’, ‘with slender bones that made her look girlish and fines-limbed with small hands, narrow wrists, and childlike breasts. She was twenty-four but she sometimes looked fourteen.’, and ‘Her extreme slenderness would have made a career in modelling impossible’ I‘d have thought she was just the ticket.

She reminds him of Pippi Longstocking, (a nine-years-old Swedish children’s book heroine), although her clothes are different from Pippi’s short skirt and thigh-length stripy socks:

‘Sometimes she wore black lipstick, and in spite of the tattoos and the pierced nose and eyebrows she was …well…attractive.

In case we haven’t got the message, Armansky tells us she reminds him of his daughter. Some editing would ease the queasiness, but you can see why it made a film.

There's a brief and unlikely love tryst in Chapter three. Blomkvist's mistress is a married woman with a tolerant husband.It’s page 82, the end of Chapter four before we get to the start. Blomkvist is asked by Henrik Vangler, head of a business empire, to find out why his granddaughter was murdered. He’s the same old man who was receiving the flowers in the prologue and whose family tree is on the first page.

For readers who can overlook the slick, cliché-ridden journalistic writing,
care about male characters who are ideal candidates for a Swedish version of BBC Radio 4 and don’t feel offended by a size zero bolshie heroine who only has a job because her boss is a paedo, this is an ideal read.

For me, if there’s a connection with dragons, I’m only going to find out from the film.

Website with details of Swedish crime novels:

http://www.scandinavianbooks.com/crime-book/swedish-author/swedish-writers.html

Why another Writing Blog?

While I'm happy with my My Freedom Pass blog, about events in London, that's more about going out than staying in.

In fact, much of what I do, as with any writer, involves hours and hours of the latter. I don't just write about events in London, either. I'm writing about books I've read, DVDs I've seen, and other home-based (well, sometimes train-based) activities.

I hesitated to start a writing blog because I'm already running two - there's the one about the U3A group I'm tutoring, as well as the Freedom Pass one I mentioned. Can I keep all three going?

I almost decided to start a new blog for the two months I spent in Spain before Christmas, but then I thought better not; it would be too short-lived.

It's because I'm writing an article about Spain that I hope to sell to a magazine, and writing a book about working in China, and various other 'projects' that I've decided to start this blog. It's not so much to showcase my work, but to blog the process - a record, as much as anything, as well as an incentive. Once an activity becomes part of a blog narrative it needs to be updated.

Most writing blogs are about creative or fiction writing; this isn't, although I occasionally write short stories and work on crime novels.

I hope that sounds halfway sensible.