2255

Behind Io they wait,

vast weaponry for the task:

storming Jupiter

Giving Thanks

Warning: The following blog post may contain preachy material.

Over the last few months I've realised that my life isn't quite as bad as I thought it was. Granted, it was a mess a few months ago, but recently I've metaphorically fixed a lot of metaphorically broken things in my life. I've sorted out a lot of money problems, I've learned to cook, I've learned that I can learn to do things I thought I couldn't and I shouldn't be afraid of learning. I get on much better with my family (particularly now I don't live with them). I've learned not to worry about people not liking me. Not even I can please them all.

Hmm.

Life is on the up for Mr Tuckey. Appropriately, as my blog is about my life, my blog is also back on the up after a minor downturn. I have a few people to thank for that- the readers, obviously, but a group of helpful people who've retweeted this blog. You should follow them.

Kora Peters (11K)

Mischa Brooks (14K)

Jayla Diamond (33K) 

Stats are of follower counts at the time of tweeting. Respect, ladies.

On the subject of giving thanks, here's a reading I performed at my sister's wedding recently. Colossians 3 v12-17

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I fully realise that nothing in the world screams “cock block” more than quoting the bible. But I just wanted to point out a correlation: I have more to be thankful for than porn stars publicising my blog. I'm in good health, I've got a small sum in the bank, good friends- fallouts aside- a very modest but comfortable and reasonably safe home, and a loving and an unwaveringly supportive family. I've now even got a brother-in-law who's a totally sound guy.

Yeah, I've no girlfriend myself, but I've also got no earache, no unplanned children, no obligations to one particular person and no STIs.

It's time to focus on that OTHER goal in life- getting my name known as a writer. Stay tuned. Things are happening.

2254

Immense juggernaut

coated in dense spider's silk

launches for warfare

Creative Writing Under Pressure‏

Pic courtesy Bodgan Migulski, Flickr

I went onto photography website Flickr for the accompanying portrait here. I put the title of this blog post into the search field, and this is what the site threw up: Hillary Clinton with an even larger mouth than she has in real life.

Putting pen to paper is hard. In particular, when writing creatively and when being timed to do so, pushing yourself into creating an instant vignette in a ten minute time-frame is testing even when you’ve done it hundreds of times before. So what’s the best way of doing an exercise like this, whether in your own or in a group?

I’ve been a member of Writers Connect in Manchester for some years. We meet fortnightly, and we start each meeting with a timed writing exercise. It will involve a prompt of some kind, followed by a ten minute burst of individual writing. After the ten minutes, we read out what we’ve written one member at a time.

If you’re going to give this technique a shot, try these tips to get the most out of the exercise.

1)   Roll with your first thought. If your prompt involves a horse, and all you can think of is a talking horse on a farm in Dorset, go with that idea. Nothing is too clichéd or boring or stupid. It’s only an exercise. It doesn’t have to win the booker prize. You never know- you might turn out a vignette that reads better than you thought.

2)    Write double spaced. Ideas ebb and flow, and the story you find yourself writing might not come to you in linear form. A few free lines on the page gives you space to fill in later if further thoughts come to you. Let’s say, towards the end, you reveal that a character is a circus clown. The spaces give you a chance to go back over your piece and insert plot hints involving custard pies or flowers that squirt water. It also gives you a chance to rewrite existing sentences, and to cross out ones that don’t fit. 

 

3)    Don’t worry about other people in the group writing more than you. You’re not racing against them- just the clock. You’ll find the more you do these exercises, the quicker these ideas will come to you and the more words you’ll get down. Besides, it’s quality over quantity that we’re aiming for.

4)    Be versatile. Not every exercise has to turn out as a short story / vignette. Why not try an exercise in rhyme? Or free verse poetry? Or even a series of haiku? Or a monologue given by an unusual character?

5)    Whoever is watching the clock should be the person to give people a reminder at the start of the last minute. That gives the writers an opportunity for each writer to start to bring their piece to a close. 

 

6)    Any member of the group can bring in an exercise for the group to try. But if it’s your exercise idea, you are the first to read out!

7)    Allow a moment between each readout for the group’s thoughts on each vignette. You’re not giving full critiques- but perhaps people might want to point out parts they thought were particularly good.

And that’s all there is to it. The purpose of a warm-up exercise is just to get the creative cogs turning in the brain, and to get us into the right frame of mind for critiquing the stories we’ll later be hearing.

Are you in a writer’s group? Feel free to comment with any other creative hints.

2253

Cargo jettisoned

deep-space raiders on their tail

the distraction fails

Published: The Trial

 

Pic courtesy Buttersweet, Flickr

I thought of the idea for this story idea back in 2009. Without giving too much info away, it's about a very bad man, who has done some very bad things. Before he goes to court he hires a skilful, eccentric lawyer called “Mr Loophole”, inspired by celebrity lawyer Nick Freeman. Together they devise a far-fetched but promising defence case. But there's a surprise in store for the pair of them.

My knowledge of the judiciary system in the UK comprises of one afternoon in 1997 spent on work experience with some journalists, sat in the stalls of Oldham Magistrates watching people get sentenced. I remember two cases distinctly. One woman was busted shoplifting in Boots. She was called to the stand, seeming the most terrified young woman ever, shaking all over, holding the butch female custody officer's hand. She pleaded guilty with a whimper and got community service.

To this day, I've never seen an adult so scared.

The other case I recall was a guy who'd been charged with indecent exposure to a female. He'd basically been stood on a bridle path somewhere in Oldham and, when he noticed a woman headed toward him, had hidden in the trees to the side. According to the prosecutor he stepped out in front of the woman, holding his exposed erect penis. She was quite distressed. The prosecutor, also female if memory serves me, asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced. “Yeah,” he said. “I wish I hadn't done it.”

I jotted that phrase down. I looked over to the journalists. Their shorthand was, to me at least, a page of strange squiggles on paper, but in legible English, presumably for quotability, was the phrase “I wish I hadn't done it”.

This poem describes a trial of a somewhat different nature. As I'm not a legal expert, I didn't want to write this as a standard short story. I first tried it as a mock interview with one of the jurors, done in flash fiction style. It didn't capture any tension and the juror character was too secondary in the story to justify being the narrator. I tried it in a newspaper article format. I'm not a trained journalist, though, so my mimicking of that style was a little clumsy. As I'm quite a big hip-hop fan, I thought I'd try doing this in rhyme so I could brush over the details of procedures within the police and the courts, and still tell the story with the right pace. And because I wanted to rhyme words together.

It's long. It's strong. It's totally wrong. It's The Trial, over at Static Movement magazine.

2252

Structural weakness

hull breach docking at Pluto

awful tragedy