20 Questions…. Rabab Ghazoul

Continuing my series of interviews with writers, poets, sculptors, directors, creatives, and now the wonderful visual artist Rabab Ghazoul. I first met Rabab in Cardiff in the early 1990′s, when she was devising and directing experimental live performance. Over the past two decades it has been a delight and education to observe her evolution as an artist.

20 Questions…. Rabab Ghazoul.

Rabab Ghazoul

Rabab Ghazoul is a visual artist whose practice draws upon a range of media and processes to explore our negotiations and constructions of the political. Part social observation, part investigation into the realm of public narrative, her work has seen her referencing or re-staging existing ‘texts’ – from news media footage to an existing art work – by way of exploring the coerced and de-stabilised nature of our affiliations. Born and part raised in the Middle East, her experience of dual cultures informs an ongoing interest in belonging and identity, but often at their point of fragmentation or dissolution. In this sense her chosen ‘text’ is less the culture of home, and more the ever-present effects – or ‘home’ – of late capitalist culture, through which we continue to rehearse our prescribed and ritualistic movements. Born in Mosul, Iraq, she has lived and worked in Cardiff for the last 20 years.

 

What first drew you to your particular practice?

When I graduated I started making experimental devised performance after studying theatre at college…then in my late 20’s I found myself making much more visually-oriented work, using installation, space, objects, and my inspiration was in the main lots of – visual artists! I figured I probably wasn’t a theatre maker any more, I wanted to work in this other way…

What was your big breakthrough?

I’m not sure I’ve had one. There was a point, after I’d moved away from theatre and was showing my work in galleries I liked and respected – that was definitely a kind of breaking through I suppose – from working in one discipline to being taken seriously in another. But ultimately, I think breaking through is always about your own crap as an artist…for years, I wanted to make work like person X or Y, or be this or that kind of artist, but then there came a point where I just accepted: I do. What I do. I make this kind of work. Get with it. 

What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?

Self doubt…procrastination…too many ideas…not enough ideas…fear of starting ideas…life being too short to realise all one’s ideas…chaos of the mind…melancholy of the heart…being utterly inefficient…being control-freakishly efficient…working alone…working with others… 

Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you?

Well there are memorable moments. Probably the first time I saw Pina Bausch’s work…it was a video of one of her shows, I must have been around nineteen, and I couldn’t believe this is what theatre could look like. Later on, the work of people like Santiago Sierra shifted my head and thinking. And I remember a rare intake of breath seeing Alfredo Jaar’s “The Eyes of Gutete Emerita” because – with both a precision of means and an excess of means – he managed to say something about the unsayable – about the most monstrous humanity has to offer…I think that’s extraordinary in art.

What’s more important: form or content?

They’re interchangeable.

How do you know when a project is finished?

Deadlines for showing take care of that: time’s run out, you gotta share ready or not. 

What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?

I’m really not sure, but above my desk I’ve got this pinned up, which is what Jeremy Deller said when he was asked what advice he’d give to artists:

“Don’t listen to everybody, actually don’t listen to many people, just do what interests you and what you like. And if you do that within your work people will understand that maybe… And don’t look and see what other people are doing too much and get upset by what they’re doing. It’s important to just think about yourself really, so be selfish really. And be open. Be selfish and open, and be willing to change your plans but not necessarily compromise…”

What work of art would you most like to own?

A Cy Twombly…Magritte’s Day and Night…One of Michael Landy’s beautiful pencil drawings of weeds…anything by Caravaggio…

What’s the biggest myth about the creative process?

“Suffering artist in garret”, “Creativity being unique to artists”, “It happens when you’ve got plenty of time to concentrate and focus.” As to the last, that never happens. Creative stuff just falls out when it wants to, it tumbles, it trips over itself, in between bouts of Abso-Lutely-Nothing…So I’m not obsessively beavering away in a studio for hours on end…My physical studio is the place where I store old bits and pieces. But the real studio is in my head, and wherever that’s at – and the setting is usually pen, notebook, laptop, camera, conversations.

What are you working on now?

I’m researching a project based on Blair’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, it’s ambitious and I suppose if it ever goes ahead it’ll be a project inviting communities to reframe that shameful moment. I’m also starting a new video work about the culture of benefit gigs and fundraisers. And I’m making applications for future projects that may or may not happen and in the meantime this is frying my brain.

What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created?

Jeremy Deller’s ‘The Battle of Orgreave’.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

Nothing other than what I did and didn’t know really. Though I got there eventually in my 30’s, maybe knowing when I was younger that I could’ve gone to art college would have helped? But I think I’d still rather have gone my own circuitous route, if I hadn’t I’d be someone else making different work.

What’s your greatest ambition?

Fulfil my potential as a member of the human race.

Fulfil my potential as an artist.

Earn enough money to hire a permanent PA.

How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?

Buddhism. I chant. To deal with that stuff.

What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?

The worst things have probably been things I’ve thought and said about my own work. ‘That was humiliatingly bad’; ‘your attempts to be an artist are doomed’, ‘you lack courage to make what’s in your heart.’ Progress is that I don’t think these things anymore. I’m sure others have hated and loved things I’ve done in equal measure but I’ve not been privy to their thoughts…

And the best thing?

Can’t remember, but some nice things happily…I recently created a sung artwork in a gallery that involved 43 singers to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the second Gulf War. People said lovely things after, but mainly that they’d felt moved. For me that’s one of the best things people can say about your work, that their heart was involved in their experience of it.

If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?

You start climbing a mountain. You think it’s going to take X amount of time to get to the top. It takes way longer. The views are great. It can get really cloudy. You feel exhausted. At a certain point you wish two men with a stretcher would appear to carry you down. You get to the top. It feels incredible for about two minutes. The climb down flies by. You’re at the bottom of a mountain.

What is your philosophy or life motto?

‘Late starters of the world unite’

What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?

Don’t try and make anything other than the thing you can make.

What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask?

All the sadness in the world, in the same boat, as all the happiness…

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Some further links and information about Rabab and her work:

Arts Axis Cardiff  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kvBw83IK1Y

http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=19470

http://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/html/newsite/avdetails/rabab_ghazoul_lecture.html

A New Writer Doesn’t Mean A Young Writer….

Octagenarian PLaywrights wanted: Photo from The Independent newspaper

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I’m grateful to my friend the writer Sandra Bendelow for bringing my attention to this…. The wonderful news that the Royal Court Theatre in London is seeking out ‘bright octogenarian writers.’ For a theatre so often associated with youth (I, amongst many, have benefitted from the development process attached to its well established  young writers programme), this is a major turning point indeed.

“The question was: ‘Why aren’t we giving those people a voice?’ ‘Vicky Featherstone says in an interview with the Independent, the link for which is below. ”What if you want to be a playwright in your 80′s, why can’t you be?”

Frankly, if this is what Vicky Featherstone has in store for the Court under her new directorship, things are looking up indeed…

For years I worked with Jonathan Meth and Sarah Dickenson of (now, sadly defunct) writernet - and we constantly challenged the notion that new = young. Although pretty youthful myself at the time, I was still painfully aware of the disparity in opportunity offered to the beginner performance writer, which revolved around how many years (or, rather how few) any scribbler had been on the planet. It seemed for a while that those who were rich in elastin but poor in life experience had a monopoly on any call for script development, when the hungry, eager 25 year olds (and god help the 45 plus year olds) were consigned to the scrapheap. New writing meant young in age writers. No wonder we began to introduce those clunky, worthy terms ‘young in career’, ‘emerging writers’ and so on, to try and counter the endemic ageism within the profession.

For years everyone wanted ‘the new’, which meant ‘the young’, which also seemed to mean ‘the first’.  I was in my mid-20′s when I co-won The Peggy Ramsay Award for my first London production, Yard, at the Bush. I’d been writing for many years, with several BBC radio plays broadcast, two international productions, a handful of scripts produced for young audiences, and a solo presented at the Royal Court Upstairs as part of the Young Writers Festival. Despite all this hard work and experience, in the press I was still described  as ‘new, young writer wins award with her first play.’ It was clear that my long apprenticeship and years of self-sufficiency didn’t live up to the myth, the story so often paraded in our media: the overnight success; the ‘discovery’; the untutored ingenue, the young ‘natural’…

I’m sure these stories will continue – and some of them may indeed be true. I have no problem with precocious talent, and I celebrate creativity and success whatever the age. What became so wearing, especially having been one of those ‘prodigies’ bandied about myself, was it seemed to be the only story. Young in age practitioners seemed to be the only ones wanted.

I think the monopoly of youth-orientated workshops, opportunities, and development programmes may be weakening. We have had an explosion in fee-paying courses (and not just those in higher and further education and the original writers centres like Arvon and Ty Newydd, but now the Faber Academy, and the Guardian masterclasses, etc….) and it is often those who have been around a while who can afford to develop themselves. At some workshops I gave in the South West recently, the 50 plus writer was as evident as the under 25 – which personally, I think is fabulous. For years I’ve seen new plays which sparkle with potential but are sometimes thin on content. On more than a few occasions I’ve gone away thinking ‘that playwright will be really interesting in about ten years when they’ve got something to write about.’

So what might octogenarian first time playwrights write – and in what form? I hope it’s edgy and experimental – which are not exclusive to youth (our own Caryl Churchill is, after all, 74 years young). I can’t wait.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/bright-octogenarian-playwrights-wanted-royal-court-seeks-new-talent-among-over-80s-8580738.html

20 Questions… Andrew Loretto

Continuing my series…. Twenty questions asked to creatives: actors, poets, screenwriters, directors, sculptors, live art exponents, burlesque performers, novelists, dramatists, and anyone else who seems interesting in between… My next interviewee is director Andrew Loretto, who I collaborated with recently on 20 Tiny Plays About Sheffield, which opens next week – and is already sold out….

20 Questions… Andrew Loretto.

Andrew Loretto  For the Crucible Theatre Andrew has directed premieres of Lives in Art by Richard Hurford and LeanerFasterStronger by Kaite O’Reilly –

Andrew Loretto outside the Sheffield Crucible Theatre

part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. As Creative Producer for Sheffield Theatres, Andrew curated a range of projects with local artists including the Crucible 40^th Birthday fortnight, Crucible Writers’ Nights nd Sheffield Sizzlers.

Previous credits include: Dramaturg for Company Chameleon’s Gameshow; Artistic Director, Chol Theatre (2006-2010) - Beast Market (shortlisted for Huddersfield Examiner/Arts Council England Arts Award 2008), Space Circus (shortlisted for Brian Way Award 2009), Not For All the Tea in China (BBC2 Glastonbury highlights); International Young Makers Exchange; Sherman Theatre; Pilot Theatre; National Theatre Studio; Plymouth Theatre Royal; West Lothian Youth Theatre; Ulster Association of Youth Drama; Artistic Director, Theatre in the Mill, Bradford (1999-2003) and National Student Drama Festival (2003-2006).

What first drew you to writing/directing/acting?

Getting involved with extra-curricular music activities at school in Holywood, N.Ireland. Music fired up a passion for performing and making art; getting involved with school plays led on from that. To this day live music plays a big part in my theatre work where possible. Arts provision in schools is SO vital.

What was your big breakthrough?

To be honest, I don’t actually feel the breakthrough has happened yet! My career has been a slowly evolving one – but always with a focus on new work, multi-artform and creating opportunities for both experienced theatre artists and first-timers alike – of all ages.

What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?

I guess I’m always asking organisations and individuals to take a risk on realising big ideas that can challenge the notions of what theatre is and what it can do. So in many ways that’s one of the biggest challenges – overcoming fear and/or set ways of thinking and being brave enough to forge on despite any reservations that might exist! The key is to bring on board like-minded collaborators, so that you’re not on your own.

Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you?

No – but I am influenced in infinitesimal ways by art in all its forms and by real life.

What’s more important: form or content?

I’ll give the politician’s answer: this really depends on the project – some pieces are led by form, whereas for others the content defines the form, and some projects have a mixture of both as prime motivator. They exist simultaneously as one in my head. It’s like asking what’s more important to make up a human being: a body or a soul?

How do you know when a project is finished?

A project never finishes. But alas we have defined production and performance dates and the money only pays for so much!

Do you read your reviews?

Yes. I don’t believe people who say they don’t. However I do absolutely understand and respect that some actors don’t like to read reviews whilst they’re still in a show.

What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?

Get together with like-minded collaborators as much as you can and make your own work. Go and see as much as possible – there are lots of ways (especially for young people) that you can get cheap tickets for theatre. Do your research. Don’t leave it until your final year at university/college. Be polite to everyone – colleagues on your course will be future artistic directors/literary managers.

What work of art would you most like to own?

I fancy Tate Modern. All of it. I’d convert the top floor into a bijou city-living residence, the oil tanks could be dedicated rehearsal and performance spaces to make new work with lots of people. We’d have lots of people’s parties in the Turbine Hall. Can I apply for Grants for the Arts funding for this?

What’s the biggest myth about writing/the creative process?

That a writer sits in her/his own room as a tragic, isolated tortured soul. Rubbish: the writer is part of a collaborative process – if you don’t want to be part of a team, realising a live performance together, then theatre isn’t for you. That’s not to say that there isn’t an element of tortured isolation PRIOR to rehearsals though…

What are you working on now?

Andrew in rehearsals for 20 Tiny Plays About Sheffield, 2013.

I’m about to go into production week for 20 Tiny Plays about Sheffield – a massive project with a cast of 60 actors aged 12-85, performing 20 short plays – all of different genres about perceptions of Sheffield  in the 21^st Century. The show runs at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield from 8-13 April 2013 and has been fully sold-out for quite some time! We’re having to put in an extra public dress rehearsal so that people can see it. The 18 writers for the project are: Andrew McMillan, Andrew Thompson, Chris Bush, Chris Thorpe, DC Moore, Helen Eastman, Kaite O’Reily, Laurence Peacock, Louise Wallwein, Marcia Layne, Michael Stewart, Pete Goodland, Richard Hurford, Russell Hepplewhite, Sally Goldsmith, Stephanie Street, Tim Etchells, Tom Lodge.

’20 tiny Plays about Sheffield’ is the second production from Sheffield People’s Theatre – which I set up in 2011 for its first production ‘Lives in Art’ by Richard Hurford – achieving critical acclaim in the national press. I’m delighted that Sheffield People’s Theatre has since been awarded funding from Esmee Fairbairn foundation to develop its programme of work – of which ‘20 Tiny Plays’ is the first project to be supported. We’ve also got a Pearson Playwright bursary to support young Sheffield writer Chris Bush as part of the project and his year-long attachment to Sheffield Theatres. Chris’s work first came to our attention through the Crucible Writers’ Nights I’ve been curating over the past couple of years. Link to show:  http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/event/20-tiny-plays-about-sheffield-13/

What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created?

I loved the recent production of ‘Constellations’ – design, writing, performances, movement and direction all knitting together seamlessly. Lucy Cullingford, the movement director on the show, is one of my regular collaborators – it was a brilliant showcase for her precise, detailed and nuanced work.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

That I am just as entitled to have my voice heard at cultural tables as the posh Oxbridge boys and girls. Being a Celt, my default position is the ‘cultural cringe’.  

What’s your greatest ambition?

I’d love to get full eyesight back in my right eye (lost as the result of a violent attack in 2006) but I don’t think technology will evolve that quickly in my lifetime.

How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?

Surround yourself with good friends and confidantes – stay in touch with people. Invest in those friendships, give more than you receive. And make sure they’re not all involved in the arts!

What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?

Oh, I have fabulously bad review about the first full-length play I wrote. The reviewer was in a foul mood on the night he came to see the show – and I think my play just made him worse. I truly treasure it – it’s one of those reviews that seemingly starts off well, then the first cut is made. The knife plunges in and there’s a final twist at the end, leaving the entrails of the play steaming on the floor. Yep, one of THOSE reviews. Classic. I bumped into the reviewer at a Christmas party – he happily told me that the play in question was his single worst theatre experience that year. I’m happy to please.

And the best thing?

Oh it’s the personal testimonies from people who have been touched by seeing a show or by taking part as a participant and seeing how involvement with theatre projects can – literally – transform people’s lives.

If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?

I guess this is a cliché, but being a director is being like a mother: you conceive the baby, give birth to it, nourish, cherish and want the best for the baby as it grows into a young person, then a rebellious teenager. Then finally you have to let your baby go out into the world on its own as an adult – very often with little thanks for all the work you did other than the occasional card or phone call. That’s what directing new work can feel like!

What is your philosophy or life motto?

How do you want to live your life? (actually I stole that from my good friend Carri Munn, but it has stuck with me.)

What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?

That the majority of people in the arts are generous and kind. A minority are not so – and that’s often down to insecurities and fears. Focus on the majority.

What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask?

Age 17. Edinburgh.

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Things I wish I’d known when starting out: don’t second guess what ‘they’ want.

I’ve been giving workshops in the South West this week, enjoying the passion and engagement of the playwrights I’ve met and the vibrant communities they constitute. They’re confident dramatists, mature, informed and getting on with it: making their own companies, directing and producing each others’ work, collaborating and creating… It’s been inspiring and uplifting to see such activity and optimism in the face of cuts and redundancies I’m hearing about elsewhere in the UK.

So in the midst of this week of discussions and long conversations I’ve been reminded again of some of the things I wish I’d known when starting out…

It seems regardless of how experienced you may be as a self-producer, when it comes to potentially  getting your foot in a building based theatre’s door, the questions are the same: What are they looking for? What kind of script may get me noticed? What do ‘they’ want? Or at least those were the queries some of my fellow writers asked me over the slightly warm wine, smiling like conspirators, lowering their voices.

For years I’ve seen emerging playwrights trying to second guess directors, producers and literary managers, or considering shaping their emerging work towards whatever is currently doing well. It’s an understandable impulse, but deadly. Never try to jump on a band wagon. Whatever is currently trending would have been seeded over eighteen months ago. By the time ‘your’ version amounts to something, it will be very much out of date.

And as to what ‘they’ want…? What every director and literary manager and producer is looking for is fresh work, made with energy and skill and passion, about subjects that matter to you, communicated in a way that has resonance to all. They want strong, developed, realised ‘voices’ with something to say. They don’t want mynah birds, or would-be mind readers. They want to be surprised, moved, excited. They want to hear what you think is important, in the form and aesthetic you want to use. So trust it. Trust your own voice and your own passions.

20 Questions…. Jon Gower

Continuing my new series in asking writers, directors, actors, designers, poets, sculptors, artists, burlesque performers, playwrights,  choreographers, and other artists who catch the attention 20 questions about process, creativity and their work…. My third interviewee, Jon Gower…

Jon Gower. Photographer Emyr Jenkins

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Jon Gower has written fifteen books on subjects as diverse as a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay – An Island Called Smith – which won the John Morgan award, Real Llanelli – a west Wales tour in psycho-geography – and the fiction of Dala’r Llanw, Uncharted and Big Fish. His most recent work of non-fiction isThe Story of Wales, which accompanies a landmark TV series and his latest Welsh language novel, Y Storïwr, won the Wales Book of the Year award in 2012.

20 Questions…. Jon Gower

What first drew you to writing?    

My primary school teacher at Ysgol Dewi Sant in Llanelli, Mr. Thomas – known to us as “Tommy Tomatoes” – turned up at a talk I gave recently in the town and handed me a copy of school essays I wrote when I was nine or ten.  The fact that he had kept them all this time – they would have been written around 1968 – along with the fact that Mr. Thomas was still alive made this a life event. but the quality of the writing, too, impressed me. I was at that age reading Defoe, Louisa May Alcott and Conan Doyle. Reading avidly would eventually lead to writing, as it so often does.

What was your big breakthrough?

I’m still waiting for it.  Time enough.

What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?   

Finding time, as I have a young family and a lot of projects on the go at the same time, always.

Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you? 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is the only book I finished reading and then started reading it straight through immediately, despite it’s being four in the morning.  I was a student at the time, so this was maybe 1980.  This mesmerizing novel still exerts a quiet but insistent influence on my writing which, even now, tends towards Welsh magical realism.

What’s more important: form or content?                                    

Content, though choices of  form as regards, say, length – short story or novel, essay or book – are clearly pretty important.

How do you know when a project is finished?                                                

I don’t.  Even when my recent novel ‘Y Storiwr’ was at the final proof stage my editor wasn’t sure that it was finished.  Truth be told, I was trusting a bit of the final writing to the reader!

Do you read your reviews?                                                           

Yes, and they can hurt.  A lot.  Or make the heart sing.

What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?                                                                       

Read lots.  Read attentively.  Read widely.

What work of art would you most like to own?                                 

John Martin’s ‘The Plains of Heaven, ‘ though it’s so big we’d have to move house and I’d feel to guilty about other people not seeing it to want to have it to myself.    

What’s the biggest myth about writing/the creative process?           

That everyone has a book in them or, rather, that they would know how to write it. 

What are you working on now?                                                                      

Just finished half of a Welsh language stage play (which has given me the time to answer these questions) and am in the final few furlongs of a collection of short stories, also in Welsh.

What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created? 

Simple. John Updike’s entire output.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?      

That the real work comes after the first draft.

What’s your greatest ambition?    

To please the reader.

How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?  

It’s a necessary part of it all, not dissimilar to the nerves felt by an actor before curtain up or a rugby player before kick off.  You’re never satisfied, though the occasional good sentence might torch some pride in you.

What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?    

 A reviewer for New Welsh Review condemned my latest collection of stories, ‘Too Cold For Snow’  as being journalistic and cliched in their language. I work too hard on language for this to be true.  Had the critic been a proper writer it would have hurt more than it did.  It still hurt, though.

And the best thing?                                                                                        

Richard Ford praised the self-same collection and his opinion graces the front cover.  For a moment I felt that Ford was a peer but then the old, necessary insecurity set in!

If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?                                                                                  

It’s a river, sometimes running swift and true, at other times meandering slowly, or worse, coming up to the weir, or did I mean the wire?

What is your philosophy or life motto?                                                        

Life is about creating things – be it conversation, babies, friendships, art.

What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?          

The best stuff often comes unbidden, and in the middle of the night.  Also, if you’re writing you’re always writing, even as you sleep.  So be prepared to get up to write it down.

What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask? 

Why do I do it?  Because I have to.  It’s an acceptable, realistic and manageable version of something grand, such as having a destiny.

For information on Jon’s books, go to his Amazon page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jon-Gower/e/B001KDY5WA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1364235160&sr=1-2-ent

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Cold-Snow-Jon-Gower/dp/1908069848

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Wales-Jon-Gower/dp/1849903727/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364234258&sr=1-1

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncharted-Jon-Gower/dp/1848512090/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364234364&sr=1-6

Reflections on short stories on World book day.

I have an addiction which I have already owned up to in public: I am addicted to quotations, to the bon mot. I love reading what experts have written about form, style, narrative, content… I collect ‘sayings’, advice to writers, and reflections on a form.

My previous series 150 ‘rules’ about writing fiction was very popular, and extended from its original ’100 rules…’ When I reached number 149, I decided enough was enough, I couldn’t extend it again, but have had such a strong response from readers when I posted the last entry, I decided to continue, but in a more focused form, hence Reflections on the short story...

Although I’m primarily a playwright, I also write in different forms and for different media (radio drama, short film). I’ve contributed to various anthologies  (The Phoenix book of Irish short stories, and by Welsh independent publishers Honno and Parthian). I haven’t written short fiction for some time, but I read collections and am constantly fed by this most robust yet delicate of forms.

Short stories seem to be going through something of a renaissance. More collections have been published recently than in previous years – and the success of competitions such as The Sunday Times/EFG Private bank short story award (first prize £30,000) suggests that the often proclaimed death of the short story has been somewhat premature.

As Neil Gaiman put it: ‘Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire, the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation.’

So in the spirit of this and World Book Day, here are some quotations on the short story from Raymond Chandler to Haruki Murakami, from Alice Munro to Eudora Welty, and hope you enjoy;

“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart…” Haruki Murakami

“The particular problem of the short story writer is how to make the action he describes reveal as much of the mystery of existence as possible…The type of mind that can understand [the short story] is the kind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.” Flannery O’Connor

“…writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn’t have to be successful to be thrilling.”  Ann Patchett

“The novel…creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.”  V.S.Pritchett

“A short story is the nearest thing I know to lyric poetry… A novel actually requires far more logic and far more knowledge of circumstances, whereas a short story can have the sort of detachment from circumstances that lyric poetry has.”
William Faulkner

“It’s possible in a…short story to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things–a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring–with immense, even startling power.” Raymond Carver

 ”I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to  poetry than to novels.”  Tobias Wolff

“The first thing we notice about our story is that we can’t really see the solid outlines of it–it seems bathed in something of its own. It is wrapped in an atmosphere. This is what makes it shine, perhaps, as well as what initially obscures its plain, real shape.
” Eudora Welty

“Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
”  Alice Munro

“…The literature of individuals is a noble art, a great earnest and ambitious human product. But it is a human product. The divine art is the story. In the beginning was the story…. Within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer the cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: ‘Who am I?’”  Isak Dinesen

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 145 – 150

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Further words on writing fiction gleaned from interviews, and articles, by the award winners and published…

145).  Be ready for anything. Each new story has different demands and may throw up reasons to break [the] rules. Except number one: you can’t give your soul to literature if you’re thinking about income tax.   (Hilary Mantel)

146).  Finish everything you start. Get on with it. Stay in your mental pyjamas all day. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. No alcohol, sex, or drugs while you are working.  (Colm Tóibín)

147).  Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.  (Zadie Smith)

148).  Trust your creativity. Enjoy this work!  (Jeanette Winterson)

149).  Talent trumps all. If you’re a ­really great writer, none of these rules need apply. If James Baldwin had felt the need to whip up the pace a bit, he could never have achieved the extended lyrical intensity of Giovanni’s Room. Without “overwritten” prose, we would have none of the linguistic exuberance of a Dickens or an Angela Carter. If everyone was economical with their characters, there would be no Wolf Hall . . . For the rest of us, however, rules remain important. And, ­crucially, only by understanding what they’re for and how they work can you begin to experiment with breaking them.  (Sarah Waters)

and if indeed this is the end of this long running and much loved series, I have to draw a conclusion with:

150).  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.  (Samuel Beckett)

I hope you enjoyed.

Kaite x

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 141 – 144

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A few more provocations on the writing life…

141).  A writer, like an athlete, must ‘train’ every day. What did I do today to keep in ‘form’?
  (Susan Sontag)

142).  If you’re actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you’ll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.  (Emma Thompson)

143).  You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. How so? Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come. All arts, big and small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration. The artist learns what to leave out. His greatest art will often be what he does not say, what he leaves out, his ability to state simply with clear emotion, the way he wants to go. The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.  (Ray Bradbury)

144).  Write for tomorrow, not for today.  (Andrew Motion)

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 133 -136.

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A few more thoughts about writing by those who have written and published spectacularly…

133).  The solution to a problem — a story that you are unable to finish — is the problem. It isn’t as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it. 
 (Susan Sontag. Diary notes. 7/31/73)

134)   I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.  (H.G. Wells)

135)   Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  (William Wordsworth)

136).  The time we have alone, the time we have in walking, the time we have in riding a bicycle, is the most important time for a writer. Escaping from the typewriter is part of the creative process. You have to give the subconscious time to think. Real thinking always happens at the subconscious level.  (Ray Bradbury)

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction:129-132.

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Jet lagged from working in Singapore, here’s some further pieces of advice from the great and the good, whilst I recuperate and formulate a blog on my trip…

129).  In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.  (Rose Tremain)

130).  When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.  (Haruki Murakami)

131).  Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may well be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk.  (Will Shetterly)

132).  Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall. To be strict without being too self-excoriating. Not stopping too often to think it’s going well (or not too badly), simply to keep rowing along.  (Susan Sontag)