"A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."
Graham Greene in The End of the Affair
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Shemily and Shason
As I have said before, I work in the best bookshop in the world. It’s an amazing store with remarkably intelligent, well read human beings who daily make me laugh and question things. However it appears that my co-workers have been reading my blog (mostly because I told them to) and discussing its contents on spacebook. Well I told them that I would blog their conversation. I mean whoopty-do, I could almost hear them shout from across the city. Like as if my blog gets more hits then facebook.
I have had very little human contact over the past few days so bear with me...
It all started when I happened across a plan to get me the Moby Dick shirt for my birthday. (Oh, um, I had better change their names. Let's call them Shemily and Shason)
Shemily - It is a well known fact that a young woman in possession of a literary mind is in want of a fine t-shirt to express her opinion. PS. you do realise your fear of first lines has given me infinite ammunition with which to torment...?
Shason - A fear of first lines... hmmm... unusual, but I can deal with that. Just don't tell me you're one of those people that reads the end of a book first! Argh!
Shemily - Well technically I think it's more her fear of writing her own first lines. It's not like having a fear of feet or something.
Shason- Okay, fair enough. I really love first lines in that sense, although I do try and spend a little time on them and pack them full of meaning. I find it's the stuff between the beginning and the end that I have most trouble with. So maybe I have a bit of a fear of middles?!
God, Shason has a point... bloody middles. Excuse me, I have to go and work on my middle.
(In all seriousness... Love you Shason and Shemily)
I have had very little human contact over the past few days so bear with me...
It all started when I happened across a plan to get me the Moby Dick shirt for my birthday. (Oh, um, I had better change their names. Let's call them Shemily and Shason)
Shemily - It is a well known fact that a young woman in possession of a literary mind is in want of a fine t-shirt to express her opinion. PS. you do realise your fear of first lines has given me infinite ammunition with which to torment...?
Shason - A fear of first lines... hmmm... unusual, but I can deal with that. Just don't tell me you're one of those people that reads the end of a book first! Argh!
Shemily - Well technically I think it's more her fear of writing her own first lines. It's not like having a fear of feet or something.
Shason- Okay, fair enough. I really love first lines in that sense, although I do try and spend a little time on them and pack them full of meaning. I find it's the stuff between the beginning and the end that I have most trouble with. So maybe I have a bit of a fear of middles?!
God, Shason has a point... bloody middles. Excuse me, I have to go and work on my middle.
(In all seriousness... Love you Shason and Shemily)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
1984
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen". George Orwell in 1984
Samples off the Starboard Bow
Today I was meant to have a meeting with my honors supervisor but I cancelled to do some writing. And my crippling syndrome and general knee-jerk procrastination aside, it all seems to be going pretty well . My ABR story is finished (it’s called "The Seagull") and I managed to write about 5000 words of my novel over the past three days.
However, the first lines all suck.For example, the first line of my honors creative work is…
“I feel gritty daggers of sand against my palms as I plunge my hands into the ground and dig.”
For “The Seagull”
“An old man curled his fingers around a fish”.
and my novel…
“The blood won’t mix with the toilet water”.
I know what you’re thinking. She’s a morose SOB. Fish, blood, old men. Yeah okay, just keep your comments to yourself!
Anyway check out what my friends at the bookshop are “secretly” planning to get me for my birthday...
http://www.outofprintclothing.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=L-1006
...while I quietly entertain myself in the kitchen, like Sylvia Plath.
However, the first lines all suck.For example, the first line of my honors creative work is…
“I feel gritty daggers of sand against my palms as I plunge my hands into the ground and dig.”
For “The Seagull”
“An old man curled his fingers around a fish”.
and my novel…
“The blood won’t mix with the toilet water”.
I know what you’re thinking. She’s a morose SOB. Fish, blood, old men. Yeah okay, just keep your comments to yourself!
Anyway check out what my friends at the bookshop are “secretly” planning to get me for my birthday...
http://www.outofprintclothing.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=L-1006
...while I quietly entertain myself in the kitchen, like Sylvia Plath.
In The Beginning...
Today my mother sent me an email after she was alerted to the existence of my blog by a completely unrelated third party (hi dad).
Bunny
I love this, but I'm afraid the best opening line of all has to be 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth', I mean that has got to be it.
Have been trying to phone you.
Love Mum
All religious overtones aside, this email got me thinking about other firsts. Particularly first words AND the first thing a parent says to their child. Snotty nosed brats the world over seem to be always screeching for their parents to tell the story of when they were born. They want to know what was said to them and which word they said first; “Mum”, “Dad” or an expletive they heard from their drunken Aunty shrieking at Grandma’s email (why call me Bunny for gods sake, what’s wrong with Hammerhead or Viper)?
Anyway, this led me to a thought. What if my Call Me Ishmael Syndrome is due to my story of my mother’s first words to me?
Let me explain.
I am the fourth of five children (two fostered, one acquired and two biological- of which I am one). Each of my three older brothers was born with some kind of body malfunction (and not just brother-itis). Anyway, while trapped in my mother’s womb I was rather lackadaisical, some might say a zygote procrastinator. I put off swimming around, rolling over… any kind of physical activity really. So when I was finally born, one side of my face was scrunched in a face plant/afternoon nap sort of way. My ear copped the worst of it. My poor right earlobe is, to this day, sort of folded over. My dad said it resembled a dried apricot after kicking around in a kid’s school bag for a few days.
Anyway, after each of my brothers having something “wrong” with them (each slightly more serious than dried fruit - although I have often said my exquisite brother Charlie's only disability is having us for a family) my Mum was slightly concerned about my wellbeing. However all she could say upon my arrival into this world was…
“She’s deformed!”
Imagine looking down at your beautiful daughter complete with curly blonde hair and uttering the words, "she’s deformed"! Deformed indeed… I’m sorry mum, what? I couldn’t hear you… pardon? My DEFORMED ear seems to be muffling your instructions.
It all makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s visionary! I bet it’s never be done before… I just blame my mother! And that way I can also blame her for the creatively moribund sphere currently wearing me as a hat. And don’t think you get off scot free dad. My dad, dear old dad. Whose first piece of parenting advice to me (upon moving out into the big bad world at the tender age of eighteen) was… “Sweedheart, steer clear of the clap”.
Ah yes, my father the bard.
But seriously I think the inexplicably bad first lines that plague my family stories are the birthplace of my syndrome. I can’t bear to have the dry remnants of yet another bad first line hanging over my creative subconscious. It’s like the fetid afterbirth of family story time. Or like an episode of Family Ties without the laugh track, just the distant sound of a confused cricket.
In the beginning, mum… in the beginning.
Bunny
I love this, but I'm afraid the best opening line of all has to be 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth', I mean that has got to be it.
Have been trying to phone you.
Love Mum
All religious overtones aside, this email got me thinking about other firsts. Particularly first words AND the first thing a parent says to their child. Snotty nosed brats the world over seem to be always screeching for their parents to tell the story of when they were born. They want to know what was said to them and which word they said first; “Mum”, “Dad” or an expletive they heard from their drunken Aunty shrieking at Grandma’s email (why call me Bunny for gods sake, what’s wrong with Hammerhead or Viper)?
Anyway, this led me to a thought. What if my Call Me Ishmael Syndrome is due to my story of my mother’s first words to me?
Let me explain.
I am the fourth of five children (two fostered, one acquired and two biological- of which I am one). Each of my three older brothers was born with some kind of body malfunction (and not just brother-itis). Anyway, while trapped in my mother’s womb I was rather lackadaisical, some might say a zygote procrastinator. I put off swimming around, rolling over… any kind of physical activity really. So when I was finally born, one side of my face was scrunched in a face plant/afternoon nap sort of way. My ear copped the worst of it. My poor right earlobe is, to this day, sort of folded over. My dad said it resembled a dried apricot after kicking around in a kid’s school bag for a few days.
Anyway, after each of my brothers having something “wrong” with them (each slightly more serious than dried fruit - although I have often said my exquisite brother Charlie's only disability is having us for a family) my Mum was slightly concerned about my wellbeing. However all she could say upon my arrival into this world was…
“She’s deformed!”
Imagine looking down at your beautiful daughter complete with curly blonde hair and uttering the words, "she’s deformed"! Deformed indeed… I’m sorry mum, what? I couldn’t hear you… pardon? My DEFORMED ear seems to be muffling your instructions.
It all makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s visionary! I bet it’s never be done before… I just blame my mother! And that way I can also blame her for the creatively moribund sphere currently wearing me as a hat. And don’t think you get off scot free dad. My dad, dear old dad. Whose first piece of parenting advice to me (upon moving out into the big bad world at the tender age of eighteen) was… “Sweedheart, steer clear of the clap”.
Ah yes, my father the bard.
But seriously I think the inexplicably bad first lines that plague my family stories are the birthplace of my syndrome. I can’t bear to have the dry remnants of yet another bad first line hanging over my creative subconscious. It’s like the fetid afterbirth of family story time. Or like an episode of Family Ties without the laugh track, just the distant sound of a confused cricket.
In the beginning, mum… in the beginning.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The First of My First Lines
So I think I may have the first line for my ABR short story...
"An old man curled his fingers around a fish."
That's it. No, really...
"An old man curled his fingers around a fish."
That's it. No, really...
Monday, April 12, 2010
Death of a River Guide
A great (and incredibly long) first line...
"As I was born the umbilical cord tangled around my neck and I came into the world both arms flailing, unable to scream and thereby take in the air necessary to begin life outside the womb, being garroted by the very thing that had until that time succored me and given me life."
Peter Flanagan in Death of a River Guide
"As I was born the umbilical cord tangled around my neck and I came into the world both arms flailing, unable to scream and thereby take in the air necessary to begin life outside the womb, being garroted by the very thing that had until that time succored me and given me life."
Peter Flanagan in Death of a River Guide
Mangrove Jack
I don’t really expect this to be interesting to anyone except me (even my interest is waning to be honest) but today I spent the better half of my day researching breeds of fish.
I think it’s weird to use the word breed about fish (and rabbits and insects for that matter) mostly because it seems like a moot point. Like, why bother calling something that prolific a breed. The word breed conjures up images of old ladies with Brighton Bobs in matching tweed suits sitting around with other tweedy ladies discussing which male poodle is going to impregnate which one of their “dawgs” next.
Anyway after hours of research I figured out which breed of fish I was after for my ABR story. Good old Mangrove Jack.
I remember my dad fishing in the estuaries around where I grew up, dragging these angry, thrashing spike backed fish out of the muddy water around the mangrove roots. My dad used to tell me that you could only find Mangrove Jack in two places, mangrove roots or drowned trees, and (when they matured) you could find them ducking and diving amongst the ornaments of the reef.
Sounded like a much nicer life to me, surrounded by green seaweed with rubbery skin, and tangles of brightly colored coral. I tried to imagine what that lone Jack would think as the water changed from auburn to blue, or how it would feel to shed the muddy sheath from its scales.
I always liked the idea that although Mangrove Jack would spend most of his life in muddy, salt stinking mangrove roots the day would come when he would break away from the thick water and disappear into the cool open blue.
Maybe perfect first lines are deep sea bait.
Raw Shark
"Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there's not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago."
Steven Hall, Raw Shark
Not a first line... but a good one nonetheless
Steven Hall, Raw Shark
Not a first line... but a good one nonetheless
ABR - She Has Fire in The Chimney!
In addition to my looming honors assessment I now have to worry about the ABR short story competition.
Let me explain…
Last year, bubbling with way too much gin and ranting about my propensity to procrastinate, I made a pact with myself that (this year) I would accept every writing opportunity that came my way. This pact however was very specific, the opportunity had to literally drop into my lap, cross my path, fall like an Acme anvil from the sky.
So, I work in the best bookshop possibly in the world except for maybe this one...
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl0Oi-_lFYS9LvJLucLdx2Va2_2vmJsckG-nCzJst1mDmYqKzS02h6eh_-sd2bfnL_PhlCeQ5Ap6lmkP6Xu1x9j5xUBVp0DFeXjgke9SiQcghe_bFGn3dI_uEunHdU3bu4DJRvvRGzVLs/s400/shakespeare.jpg
Anywho, I was at work stressing over the proper way to classify biography when my co-worker Jess nonchalantly opens the counter drawer and hands me an entry form. She looks at me and smiles very sweetly, “here you go. You can enter”, she says. I pause for a moment, staring at the form in my hand before promptly throwing myself onto the desk where I begin to wail. Poor Jess and I have only known each other for a few weeks and she is still new to my various peccadilloes (the least of which is a penchant for the dramatic) and she was justifiably shocked. I tried to explain that she had literally dropped an opportunity into my lap, it had crossed my path; the anvil had fallen and I copped it to the face.
So now I'm writing a short story for the ABR Short Story Competition. The first line sucks and is taunting me from it's glowing white computer page.
"You’re not even on real paper," I shouted at my screen this morning, "You're in some stupid interim world and I can DELETE YOU any time I want!"
I hate deadlines; they do weird things to my mind. I hate competitions and being judged. But, oddly enough, an A+ still has the ability to give me the tingles that only Cary Grant should be able to give a woman.
Oh, why can’t I just live in a cabin in the mountains like Hemmingway, or write one perfect book like Harper Lee. God, I’d even settle for being John “can’t write anything without a bear” Irving. Why can’t I be made of stronger literary stuff, swaddled in the golden fleece of metaphor and endless paragraphs? Because I procrastinate, that’s why.
And before you say anything, I realize the irony of setting up a blog with the express purpose of procrastination.
Anyway, a great first line I read today…
"The dead man was in the living room, face down on the floor beside the coffee table”. Derek Landy from Skullduggery Pleasant; The Faceless Ones
Let me explain…
Last year, bubbling with way too much gin and ranting about my propensity to procrastinate, I made a pact with myself that (this year) I would accept every writing opportunity that came my way. This pact however was very specific, the opportunity had to literally drop into my lap, cross my path, fall like an Acme anvil from the sky.
So, I work in the best bookshop possibly in the world except for maybe this one...
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl0Oi-_lFYS9LvJLucLdx2Va2_2vmJsckG-nCzJst1mDmYqKzS02h6eh_-sd2bfnL_PhlCeQ5Ap6lmkP6Xu1x9j5xUBVp0DFeXjgke9SiQcghe_bFGn3dI_uEunHdU3bu4DJRvvRGzVLs/s400/shakespeare.jpg
Anywho, I was at work stressing over the proper way to classify biography when my co-worker Jess nonchalantly opens the counter drawer and hands me an entry form. She looks at me and smiles very sweetly, “here you go. You can enter”, she says. I pause for a moment, staring at the form in my hand before promptly throwing myself onto the desk where I begin to wail. Poor Jess and I have only known each other for a few weeks and she is still new to my various peccadilloes (the least of which is a penchant for the dramatic) and she was justifiably shocked. I tried to explain that she had literally dropped an opportunity into my lap, it had crossed my path; the anvil had fallen and I copped it to the face.
So now I'm writing a short story for the ABR Short Story Competition. The first line sucks and is taunting me from it's glowing white computer page.
"You’re not even on real paper," I shouted at my screen this morning, "You're in some stupid interim world and I can DELETE YOU any time I want!"
I hate deadlines; they do weird things to my mind. I hate competitions and being judged. But, oddly enough, an A+ still has the ability to give me the tingles that only Cary Grant should be able to give a woman.
Oh, why can’t I just live in a cabin in the mountains like Hemmingway, or write one perfect book like Harper Lee. God, I’d even settle for being John “can’t write anything without a bear” Irving. Why can’t I be made of stronger literary stuff, swaddled in the golden fleece of metaphor and endless paragraphs? Because I procrastinate, that’s why.
And before you say anything, I realize the irony of setting up a blog with the express purpose of procrastination.
Anyway, a great first line I read today…
"The dead man was in the living room, face down on the floor beside the coffee table”. Derek Landy from Skullduggery Pleasant; The Faceless Ones
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Great White Intro
Bear with me while I try and explain my syndrome...
I am currently doing my honors year at university after a five year hiatus (where I mostly wrote bad poetry and drank red wine) and my fellow students appear to be made up of Gen Y kids who think Starbuck is a coffee chain and whales are there to make the cheerleader from Heroes look thinner. Needless to say I'm sure they think I'm the weird fish girl writing about Moby Dick.
Eh, that's true enough. But I have bigger fish to fry.
Those fish come in the form of a 7000 word story due for submission in September. But once again, like a rash on a clap victim, my syndrome has raised its ugly head.
The Call Me Ishmael Syndrome has plagued me since my youth.
Most nights I would curl up with a good book and read for hours under the covers with a flashlight. Authors like Dickens, and Melville, and the Bronte sisters (alongside my much loved Nancy Drew and Susan Sand novels) would nightly speak to me in voices that were wise and elegant, visceral but also restrained. And while these stories, whether it be Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations, were page after page of glorious reading I was only really interested in one thing… the first line.
Once I realised that my youthful love of reading was morphing into a skill with pen and paper (or word processor) I was, at first, delighted by the idea of writing my own perfect first line.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
“It was love at first sight.”
I mean come on, how can I compete with that!
In fact these days the idea of having to write a first line, let alone a first paragraph haunts me; it stalks me through my subconscious with the gusto and gnashing teeth of a deep sea leviathan.
Well, no more… I take up the proverbial harpoon, sharpen the head, roll back my shoulder and take aim.
Thar she blows, my quest for the great white intro…
I am currently doing my honors year at university after a five year hiatus (where I mostly wrote bad poetry and drank red wine) and my fellow students appear to be made up of Gen Y kids who think Starbuck is a coffee chain and whales are there to make the cheerleader from Heroes look thinner. Needless to say I'm sure they think I'm the weird fish girl writing about Moby Dick.
Eh, that's true enough. But I have bigger fish to fry.
Those fish come in the form of a 7000 word story due for submission in September. But once again, like a rash on a clap victim, my syndrome has raised its ugly head.
The Call Me Ishmael Syndrome has plagued me since my youth.
Most nights I would curl up with a good book and read for hours under the covers with a flashlight. Authors like Dickens, and Melville, and the Bronte sisters (alongside my much loved Nancy Drew and Susan Sand novels) would nightly speak to me in voices that were wise and elegant, visceral but also restrained. And while these stories, whether it be Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations, were page after page of glorious reading I was only really interested in one thing… the first line.
Once I realised that my youthful love of reading was morphing into a skill with pen and paper (or word processor) I was, at first, delighted by the idea of writing my own perfect first line.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
“It was love at first sight.”
I mean come on, how can I compete with that!
In fact these days the idea of having to write a first line, let alone a first paragraph haunts me; it stalks me through my subconscious with the gusto and gnashing teeth of a deep sea leviathan.
Well, no more… I take up the proverbial harpoon, sharpen the head, roll back my shoulder and take aim.
Thar she blows, my quest for the great white intro…
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