Been struggling over the past day to create a Lulu hard copy version of the Ink Sweat & Tears 2009 poetry & prose anthology – first I've tried it before. Feeling smug – seems to be a wrap – although  whether I'll say that when I actually see a copy, when one arrives in the post in a few days time, is another matter.


Went to the pool today to do a bit of snorkeling – the English summer weather prompted me to write this haiku:

August in England –
wetter outside
than in the pool


Now back to the novel writing for some more mayhem – there's a couple of bit-part characters who either need to have a steamy, up-close-and-personal encounter with the protagonist or die horribly. Probably both.

Interesting debate going on around here in Norfolk: has the creative writing boom gone bust?

Full and part-time courses – both educational and recreational – being cut-back or abolished – not good. Changes in funding meaning some courses not even being put on to face falling audiences. Falling audiences at some events – but is this because there are too many events, with the result that a strictly finite audience is being cannibalised?

And then there is the poetry versus prose debate… Has creative writing been hijacked by the poetry industry, to the exclusion and disadvantage of prose writers of all genres? Attend any 'live literature' event and almost exclusively the participants/performers are poets – which is a little odd in that if you visit a bookshop, the majority of the titles on display (by a huge margin) are prose, with poetry relegated to a shelf in the corner, next to books on swan-upping, campanology and brass rubbing studies.

Maybe the real issue is not that the creative writing industry has gone bust but that it has been hijacked by the poets and driven up an unpopular cul-de-sac? And maybe the way to resolve this is for prose writers (fiction, non-fiction and definitely short story writers) to get off their backsides, stop whingeing and start attending readings, open-mic sessions and generally making their presence felt. Maybe…

Tomorrow I've got one of those 'memorable' birthdays – not quite on a par with the Mayan Calendar's end of time prediction (which is in either two years' time of 11 years' time) but pretty much apocryphal. I was thinking of filling the swimming pool full of pole-dancers and champagne and setting myself the target of drinking the whole lot dry by 12:00 noon – but then I remembered that I don't have a pool. Instead I think I'll slip into something beige and have a lie down.

Creative writing wise… I rather foolishly and prematurely bigged-up my short story collection to a publisher who now wants to see said collection – which is fine except it's about two months from completion however as time dilation is the subject of one of my stories, that should be achievable as of Tuesday last week.

I've also been engaged in interesting email exchange with another writer about an author we both know – who has self-published his first novel (although he likes to pretend this is not the case, being a mere 50% shareholder in the publishing company) and is now doing nothing to promote it – as that is something the marketing people within a publishing company do. Leaving aside the obvious fact that would be him in this instance, what planet is he living on? Even J K Rowling does promotional tours as she's now even got a Harry Potter theme park at Disneyland. Books are products and even established publishers have limited marketing resources so authors have to put themselves about and generally promote themselves if they hope to sell any copies. (There again a recent story in The Bookseller suggested some 'literary' authors from the big publishing houses only get to have 500 copies of their hardbacks published in a first edition.)



Finally, for reasons I've still to determine (not least as to whether it is going to prove a success or a waste of time) I've signed up with this year's Clarion Write-a-Thon – a sort of self-help online group for writers unable to attend either of the Clarion science fiction writing courses in the US. More on this later.

* For reasons already lost in time (its been a busy couple of days with the day-job, not least having to edit and rewrite a 6600 word chapter of probate software for a book – nothing is certain in life except death & taxes and books about death & taxes) yesterday saw a rabid debate with some of my Twitter contacts over the amount of space that should follow a full-stop/period in a manuscript. Back in the days of fixed width spacing on typewriters, you did need two spaces – but with modern proportional spaced wordprocessors (according to my 20 year old copy of The Mac is not a Typewriter) it need only be one.

Now all we need to do is abolish the semi-colon and life will be a lot simpler for me when I'm editing other people's content. Hmm… and perhaps I should also stop starting so many of my own sentences with the words 'so', 'however', 'and' and 'anyway' – maybe.

* Anyway, yesterday (Monday evening) saw me head off to the Norwich Arts Centre for what proved to be one of the best poetry book launches I've attended, as Norwich husband & wife poets Martin Figura and Helen Ivory (also my deputy editor on the Ink Sweat & Tears webzine) launched their new collections Whistle and The Breakfast Machine (respectively). 

The event featured not only readings by Helen and Martin but also by other well known poets on the Norwich literary scene George Szirtes, Esther Morgan, Andrea Holland and Jo Guthrie, as well as a, let's say an eclectic, mixture of words and sound by the two musical acts My Dark Aunt and Olinski – one of which prompted the biggest stampede for the bar I've seen since The Edgar Broughton Band launched into a drum solo at Leeds University in 1970. That said, the event also managed one of the biggest turnouts I've ever seen at the NAC for a live literature event – although I am left wondering whether sockless and sandals is to male poets, as lying is to politicians.

* Now I must depart as I've got to edit a short story for submission to a magazine. As far as I can see, I only insult Ryanair
holidaymakers, Trekkies & sci-fi fans, Inland Revenue staff and the
people of Nottingham. Oh, and men, women and aliens. Good job it wasn't a
longer story then. Mind you I'm sending it to an Australian magazine and they'll no doubt fail to understand the Ryanair and Nottingham references and reject it. Damn, I've just insulted Australians as well.