Boot Camp Keegan

Prompts for Blast 1

2012-01-23T17:33:00.000Z

Zulu
Your eyes are my weather report
Winter in another country
We unmade love
We have visited such a man
Was that so terrible?
This life, this life!
This is where I want to live
There is a boy I know
The time of our songs and young men's throats
The speed of light is quite quick
The Board of Directors
Slow-roasted leg of lamb, fresh mint, sugar, vinegar
Slings and arrows
Rewinding the tape
Paining with stuff like toothpaste
Once, when I was in Belfast
November
Love, just for the sake of it.
Like one or other silver bell
Keep rowing
It is so lavish
Inside the wire, her heart outside
I loved her, she was quietly shop-soiled
HOT!
He suffers the enormous agonies of love
Grab every third one
Every time I catch a balloon
Dogs!
Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!
As I drown I will consider colours
Apples! Apples!
Air-Pocket
A beautiful blue

Zane Grey

2012-01-19T07:59:00.001Z

Thursday Prompts
(courtesy of Zane Grey, but wiggled)

A friendship that's offensive to your bishop
A peculiar quick movement
A wiving Mormon!
As if I were a rustler
Because I order it.
Coming out of the sage
Deny that or things will be grim
Dust drifted from under the cottonwoods
Fetch him, even if you have to rope him
Gentile
Halting in his slow walk
He has roused the enmity of the people
He stepped forward, partly concealing the man
Her house and seven thousand head.
I am not so much against that
I owe him my eternal gratitude
No welcome was in his greeting
A fine horse
Noise broke the afternoon quiet
Opposing the one, fighting the other
Quiet pastoral days
Rioting blood in his neck
Shaggy, dusty horses
She owned all the land and most of the cottages
Something deep and sinister
The blue flame of defiance
The churchmen were coming
The guarded walk of a man who took no chances
The lean, sun-browned riders
The lengthening light of afternoon
The light in his face
A good name in the cottonwoods
The long habits of obedience
The low swell of the prairie
The old stone house
The ragged clothes of an outcast
The sharp clip-clop of iron-clad hoofs
The water that was the village
The wild purple
There might ride a fearless man
There were seven, their leader called Tull
Thoughtful and almost sad
Thousands of cattle
A horseman silhouetted against the sky
Two black-butted guns
Unobserved until close at hand
We have reasoned with you.
Wearing black leather
With dreamy and troubled eyes
You hound me.

2300 Prompts

2012-01-16T23:11:00.001Z

01 The route in emergencies
02 An eel I think
03 I would say that there are people that don't
04 A bit difficult to watch
05 Steam from their nostrils, but finally we stop
06 A Royal Ship
07 Two or three rooms, an entire family
08 Lift the spirit in difficult times
09 Continue, or start again, I don't mind
10 Let's debate it
11 The horses eager to drink
12 Conditions were pretty grim
13 It was not many feet from the door to the barn
14 Not no, at least not quite
15 There wasn't the pill then, and men didn't like condoms
16 A kind of dark ability
17 The language was strange
18 I hasten to add I wasn't there
19 A time of high employment, good wages
20 She closed it after him and slid across the bolt
21 Looking at the Night Sky
22 Humour yes, but suffering
23 How expensive will it be?
24 Things have moved on, I'd say

21;30 Flash Blast Session

2012-01-16T21:14:00.001Z

01 It's a pretty sort of disease
02 Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
03 Blenkinsop & Brown, Solicitors of a kind
04 Which wine, or should it be champagne?
05 Twenty-One Today!
06 Give me funny
07 Gold and Silver
08 Nothing here moves, nothing changes
09 Crisp white sheets, cocoa
10 He took his fear in his hand and chucked it
11 Like Christmas ornaments
12 Happy
13 We could drive across the state and stare at waterfalls
14 Yes! Yes! Yes!
15 Let's barricade the doors and fuck like bunnies
16 How Mam tucked me in so tight, so tight, so delicious
17 Glitter
18 I won't be good to start but I do learn quickly
19 Something light like chicken
20 Until we're sore with it and need cream
21 Pillows fluffed, and aerosol
22 I like how your face is lit, a light inside
23 Candles lit, it seems to change the mood
24 I love your elbows and your knees

Compressed in the moment of death

Those not allowed to die

Arms at his side, he fell

20:15 Third Prompt Set

2012-01-16T20:15:00.000Z

20:15 (16 Jan) Third set of Flash Blast Prompts

01 The moon speaks, he listens

02 Sea creatures crawling, still alive

03 He close the lid, a firm click

04 Khaki

05 Twice a day I went there; like a priest

06 And two other things

07 The sounds of the island coming to rest

08 I am the thread that holds his sword

09 All day I waited, shifting on my feet

10 A negro cleaning shoes

11 It was morning or was evening

12 Blinded by rain

13 She says she's meeting Diana

14 I doubt I will ever speak

15 Stones, green with slime and a memory

16 They say a poet drown near here

17 NURSE

18 Tides and moons, the weight of almanacs

19 Blacker

20 I count the stripes not caring for the stars

21 Heavy

22 A heartbeat in the pool, breath in water

23 A great expanse of muscle

24 Calvary

Monday Blast II

2012-01-16T19:14:00.000Z

1 Other than that, a pleasant cruise

2 Twins: Alike but not alike

3 Reading the Daily Mail

4 Martin in Windsor

5 We would like to hear your experiences

6 Strictly on form

7 Yes of course they fuck you up

8 He spent a week in August, Bridlington

9 A bucket full of god-ends

10 A thousand and seven copies of "Health & Efficiency"

11 Flowered curtains faded and frayed

12 His ears stuffed with cotton-wool

13 I was late getting away

14 She stole an ice-cream van and ran.

15 Outside, a long thin building-plot

16 In the interest of those less fortunate

17 A tiny PING!

18 Perhaps he deserved more. He didn't deserve that

19 Men with fat leather belts

20 Nothing like that would ever happen here

21 He came out even

22 Four Aways, Nine homes, forget the Treble-Chance

23 His bed, his chair, the miserable bulb

24 This is how we measure lives, or how they shape

Monday Blast Prompt-Set I (17:45)

2012-01-16T17:41:00.000Z

An arresting face, perfectly symmetrical
An empty rocker on a porch that creaks at night
And invite the queen
Blue sky to the south but elsewhere dark
Flesh Fish and Wine
Gone With the Wind
He takes the breadknife and smiles
I am sick of waiting to die!
I cannot describe his eyes
I drill a hole in the mountain and then
I should have stood up and said it was me
Late at night, secretly eating
I think of you again, I just can't help it
Marching songs and other such tricks
In less than an hour, when this is over
Like a Russian shot-putter
Long grey hair to his shoulder
Of twisted trees and pain
Philip can come too, anyone
She had her mother's delicacy but her father's acid wit
She was not beautiful but we thought she was
She was under no illusions about him
So he laid siege to her, for however long it took
Some people think I can fly
Sweet memories, occasionally real
The boy is on a bike, the hill is steep
The dog emaciated
The heroism of tiny mammals
The teacher repeats it
Two fingers
We'll spend it all in one extravaganza
What about your God now?
Write 100 times...
A man stood swaying outside a decrepit restaurant
A ripe peach
A room stinking of excrement
We decide to have a party
The children won't come down
The sweet flesh of a baby pig
Why hadn't you thought of this before?

1-2-3 GO!!

2012-01-16T17:31:00.001Z

15 Minute Warning

First Flash of Monday Night's BC Flash-Blast in 15 Minutes

Come and join us in BC for an evening

It'll be a blast

(Boom-Boom)

Sunday Prompts II

2012-01-15T09:31:00.001Z

A strange experience on an aeroplane
After, Tom and the boys at the gate
Are you interested in playing basketball?
Blood Donation session
Happy Write-Day!
He had become a socialist
He took the remark as an invitation
I caught her eye, and knew she was pregnant
I closed my eyes and held on
I felt so terribly, terribly guilty
I found myself praying to a God
I have been so afraid of dying
I try to make my peace
I was on my way to Denver
It was very physical, like all my body felt it
Just let the baby live, let it live
On Lower Farm
Perhaps a tyre would burst
Private & Confidential
Professional to the end
She did not seem awkward
She held in all but one tear
Sometimes, in return she would tell about herself
The Beauty Treatment
The Egyptian Lottery
The Lion King
The steward had been pretty
This might, or might not be the end
We would be his assistants

Sunday Prompts I

2012-01-15T09:30:00.000Z

Waiting for the evening

NUTMEG

She rises from her dressing table

BLOSSOM

One eye a black line, one eye undone

VINEGAR

Afternoon crosses the street

ZANZIBAR

Gramophone

Round About a Pound a Week

The buzz of a fly

Perfuming sliding down a wall

Renaissance

A core of light, fading

Making Cabbage Soup

The sighs, the voices

Chaotic Angels

The Best Double-Glazing!!

Black Rain

This Week, for Three Days Only!

Please note that it may be necessary to -

Burning Down the House

In Parenthesis

On the Road

The Letters of Ted Hughes

Friday 13th Prompts

2012-01-13T21:02:00.001Z

PROMPTS, FRIDAY 13TH JANUARY

Mam, hello, is it all right if me and Cathy?
Or seeing children die, pretend it's all a laugh
Second, distract the women
Some buyers do not know their books
The first time it went in
The goldfish is guilty by association
They are printing low-fat books
They have taken him for questioning
This night is different, smell!
This particular monkey is ironic
This train, that night, a man with a knife
When happy I will teach you how to sing
When sad I will make you cut your wrists
You can slit the throats of guards, that's fairly easy
You will stumble and fall skywards never landing
A girl on the telly with two pussies
A rubber ball, bouncing, step after step after step
And bees enraged attack and you refuse to hurt
Archangel, Cornelius, Gage
At the lock gates, fish so tight the water's silver
But know the cover and regurgitate the blurb
Finally, the dogs quiet down
First, pacify the dogs
God decides who floats
Have heard a lot of rumours, and some feels true
I am the bug that will eat you alive
I am the library virus
I am trying to fly and failing badly
I drank the North and ate the East but left the South for later
I have made a pair of trousers from a bin-bag
I hide under adverbs and linger in your shades
I was once a piston-engine, but now I am a jet
I will send the boys around
I will still know you when you think you've found the exit
I would like to shit like a three-toed sloth
I'm from the comprehensive down the road
If on a summer's day, this bloke
It was sweet and light and warm
It was the cat although the dog is implicated
Leave if you must, but some of us are staying
Let's go for a lighter tone. Laugh!
Like, say, closing our eyes and pushing in an arm

Thursday Prompts

2012-01-12T01:20:00.001Z

18 Years old and well over six feet
A disagreeable experience
A great deal has happened one way or another
A great deal of ceremonial undressing
A true treasure
Barely tuppence
Bobby worked there in a small office
Bread is staple
But the precise circumstances are unknown
By writers, speakers, preachers
cross examinations and undercurrents
From different tribes
He said I didn't understand the blacks
I am having a nice time at the zoo
I cannot bear to send it to you
I dream of houses falling down
I loved Denis
I wish you lived closer
Peace, Space
Perhaps it will be as well here to repeat my statement
Seven children born and six survive
Suburban gardens and straight white paths
The enmity was ancient and entrenched
The experienced housewives fare better
The house was visited in July
The Inland Revenue
The remarkable thing about these budgets
There was a president and a king
They sometimes fail to pay the rent
Virtually dead, but not
Voodoo is just a part of it
Was it like that for you?
We are finally in Devon
What an insane thought!
When it comes to the pinch
When the man is at home
With a scraping of margarine and jam
I'm hoping Frank will take me on
I'm sending you every thing I've written
If he is a sober, steady man
It is cheap and they appear to like it
It was like any other Sunday in the capital
Last year was a sort of death march
Meat brought up for the men
Obviously, it differs between families

Wednesday Prompts

2012-01-11T06:45:00.002Z

I have no great news, which is bad news
A swish of air
Anything is possible
Are you still looting?
No, considerably thinner.
as the fruit drops from the tree
before that happens
But for now, yes, there is wire
but it sounds like a sigh
Crack the whip, darling
Did you expect less of a reaction?
During the time I have been writing this letter
Every now and then
Everything is bare
Frighteningly berserk
He may have gone by the name Cinch or Finch
I have been counting the sighs
I have heard the soft sound
I listen for that falling
If it gets any bigger it will start eating men
And through the leaves
If this doesn't reach you in Caracas, they have moved Venezuela
In the back yard
It has still not been decided
It may not be a sigh
My wrists are sore!
of an apple hitting the earth
Pa is thinking of buying a Bugatti
Pretty conventional all told
Since I started to write to you there have been eighteen
The apples are mostly green and wormy
The apples have been falling to the ground
There is a gasp
There may be others, we don't know yet
though it does not reflect my mood
Though it has little to do with me
Translated from Latin and Greek
We do not spray the tree
We would prefer an open society
Writing a sentence

Boot Camp Open Flash Blast Tonight

2012-01-09T06:53:00.004Z

Why not join us at BC tonight for a "Flash Blast" where prompts are posted at

17:45
19:00
20:15
21:30
22:45
00:00

Each session of 75 minutes we attempt to write a flash or story, or sometimes a poem

It's a great way of unblocking, of discovering stories
and DOZENS have gone on to win comps.

More Monday Prompts

2012-01-09T06:53:00.001Z

We need to know that you are our sort of person

Yellow, and a dull green

A PPE at Oxford, nothing else

An odd impression of deliberate meanness

And a gold tooth

And once, on No-Name Beach, you remember?

And wanted pots and pans and ladles

Dwarf Bitches

Everyone says beyond is freedom

Fish and Stones

For 73 days, a sort of light

Going dancing in Regent's Park

He had a red umbrella

How the fish came out of the dark and over us?

I came back home yesterday, running from something

I failed in my bid to be a postman

I have considered living in Finland for the dark

I once met a man from Nigeria

I stroke my father's head

It is all, in an instant, mud

Or watching bad football in Crewe

The black pig of loneliness

They say tortoises are proud

This depresses me still

We know how streams come together but not what splits them

We once drove a kayak through waves

We swam with turtles, remember?

You are leaving the official zone without papers

You asked for paper and then matches

You ran in and out as if you were checking things

2025-012 More Prompts

2012-01-05T07:37:00.001Z

Mouthwash

Tom is in a crowded place

The Mistress

Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, Watch

The Man Who Learned to Love America

Thinking in Slow-Motion

When the pain just never stops

Blacker than that

A pretty good touch

Moisturising Cream

Probably not enough

Tonight at six, then

A dead mouse or something

What the earth looks like from here

The Dead

Which K to remove

Cat TV

Why paint peels, why wood warps

You can be too tired to get angry

Soho

There are dark rooms and dark halls and moments of light

It is her smoking hour

To turn the page and never re-read

Or read their dispatches

Jenkins said he could do it, Sir. He ran for Eton!

Muslin

Sweets that look like little pigs

Blackjacks

Wenches sashaying, boys on bridges

Boats

2012-024 More prompts!

2012-01-04T12:36:00.001Z

Yet more prompts courtesy of
Gizmodo,
D H Lawrence and
Alex Keegan

Come on, impress me. Write something publishable usuing some, all or most of these

A pale octopus
According to project leader Professor Alex Rogers
And the British Antarctic Survey
Anemones, predatory sea stars with seven arms
Are thriving in the rich chemicals ejected by the vents:
At whatever hour he retires to the privy
Creeping on top of each other,
Entire colonies of Yeti crabs,
Found nowhere else on the planet
Has revealed a hot, dark, ‘lost world'
have discovered a "lost world"
Hydrothermal vents are home to animals
In such large numbers.
in the East Scotia Ridge.
In the Southern Ocean near Antarctica,
It all seems utterly senseless and pointless
It was part of his very being
John Silver who got high in the police force
Nearly 7,874 feet (2,400 meters) under the surface of the Ocean.
Other men meant nothing to her
Oxford University's Department of Zoology
Packed with unknown species.
Researchers used a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)
Scientists from the University of Oxford
So many never before seen species
Straight out of a Jules Verne's novel
Such as hydrogen sulphide.
That can reach up to 719 degrees Fahrenheit (382 degrees Celsius).
That Irishman who wrote about stars
The first survey of these particular vents
The hopelessness of the affair
The National Oceanography Centre,
The researchers were amazed to find
The whole point about your sexual problems
The world is supposed to be full of possibilities
There are plenty more fish in the sea
There were occasional small eruptions of hope
These alien-looking white creatures
They are also surprised they didn't find any tubeworms or mussels
They discovered an amazing new world
They get their energy from breaking down chemicals
This discovery is amazing,
Thriving with unknown species under Antarctica,
To explore the depths of the East Scotia Ridge
Tommy Helf who had stayed in the army
Typically detected around hydrothermal vents
University of Southampton
Were found, piling on top of the vents,
Where communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive.
Whether be a mackerel or a herring
Which is full of hydrothermal vents

2012-023

2012-01-04T07:19:00.001Z

A week later I drove north with my brothers

Too many eyes

You look better than a week ago

Cousins I had forgotten, Aunts, Uncles

We gave praise, mumbling

We are still running, still missing the train

There is nothing in the centre, nothing anywhere

I climbed through a window

I am frightened by ladders and locks

A hand in my pocket

She gave me directions

You had one last wish, a fair-ride

Tomorrow will be tough

It's never easy. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way

The room was lined with knives and other instruments

and pickled hands and feet and other men's wives

Greasy slope

The Cabin

We looked at each other, wondering about germs

A servant or a thief, this time

Not one ever missing, not one reported

I am the house you were born in

I am the blanket which covered you

Then you all left me and went traveling

2012-022 Prompts for Whenever

2012-01-03T18:10:00.000Z

As sharp as a candle

We can listen to the sweet music of a good death

We cannot sustain it

His face gleaming as only a child's can

A 7-tin 6-Pack

Not who is best, but who can serve us best

I smell burgers

Alternatively you may send a cheque

Bring-g-g!

Let's stay in the background and just watch

The habit of memory propels us

BALL

We can never really know what it will be like

JESUS

The months, the years, the days, all wobbling

MUG

At the centre, where it spins less

PIN

Light flows throughout

A kind of cheese

I am full of love. So?

Whatever is said, it will not pacify

RED

I am fully supportive of the manager

Gabardine

And the dog flops down between us and sleeps

I will heal

After making love, I thought I heard footsteps

2012-021 Even More Tuesday Prompts

2012-01-03T14:19:00.001Z

A pot of begonias

A shirt made of loathsome stuff

The sufferings of small boys

My ancestors in hovels and theirs in caves

A smoky fire, but warm enough

And adults mostly saints

And found too often in Welsh towns or perhaps Durham

As big as a mountain

Beyond the cottage garden

Coracles on the clear river

The cough and croup

Everlastingly green

From the open window

Good sweat like a badge

I caught a fleeting glimpse of someone back from a window

I listened to snatches of song

I paused on my way to market

I shrank and was six again, in flannel

It was an old, vaguely familiar song

It would go ill with us

Luxurious treatment.

Milk-churns by the million

More cows than I remembered

My mother's red hands

My shirt ruined and me not much better

Not where, but within the reach of my upbringing

Removing the irritants of domestic life

Renowned for warmth and endurance

Sacred beasts

She shook out a duster

Sometimes bringing forgetfulness

Tables of poultry, farm butters and rough bread

The ache and tone of melancholy

The causes of this are deep and dense and permanent

The town I was visiting

The unsealing of a past

This July morning

Those amiably blossomed wives

Thrashing rain

To look at it another way

To safeguard us from bronchitis

Tweeds and bright shawls

Untrained and effortless

Unworried women at the teat on three-legged stools

Winter Sundays come back at me

2012-020 More Tuesday Prompts

2012-01-03T07:40:00.001Z

A brief, fruitless search

A front-porch conversation

A sort of oblong blur

After the relatives had gone

Atkinson, that critic from New York

But now I had this expert before me

Carrying their inane notions

Coloured light played on his face

For a walk through the neighbourhood

Glanced past me at the windows

Growing grimmer by the minute

He asked if we had any questions

He pursed his lips

Her mother would probably collapse with guilt

I eagerly asked what he meant

I have a duty to tell you

I saw them now as victims

I think we had better conclude now

It oppressed both of us

Later that evening

Marriages such as these never last

Mary and I escaped

Mary led me to the priest's office

Negroes walking

Putting me through all this

She apologised

She seemed grim and daunted

Some touch of the Church's admonitions

The ban on birth control

The Church required of them

The pretense we had to play out

The unremitting heat of the night

Their decorum, their subservience

This mysterious entity

We can take this up again the next time we meet

He did not know the Holy Ghost

His eyes flickered with resentment

We could end up as friends

We set upon marriage

A desiccation of spirit

A new surprise each day

We took instruction

2012-019 Prompts for Tuesday

2012-01-02T20:58:00.000Z

Amid the usual distractions.
And as hard to break
With their stone stares
There was no future and no past.
As light longs for dark and dark for light.
Mysterious as sexuality
We had come out of two different climates
At first with curiosity,
At night, we were each, I think...
Their faint but confident world-containing smiles,
By our opposites
Drawn into far lengthier talks
Finding the presence of the other difficult
Gradually with the hope of being transformed
If we had been ably to move freely
In Cambodia,
In each stood an image
It was obviously a wrong fit,
Looking out over the sparkling city
many years later
Marilyn could hardly peek out of her hotel room door
of those evenings
on which we could walk at ease together.
or from an angle that drew us on,
Our connection seemed about to vanish,
seen full face but only obscurely
Since I was married
They could not correspond.
That could not yet be turned
The temples of Angkor Wat
The bond of shared silences,
The relief sculptures of crowned goddesses
There seemed a dark carpet of wordless being
To tear away from the dream.
We spent much of the time alone together,
Where the newness of life seemed alive round us
Without being photographed
Would bring back to me the silent tumult

2012-017 More Monday Prompts

2012-01-02T07:40:00.001Z

First you gets a sunny day, then you gets a girl

All the fun of the fair

A pocket full of pennies

An apple, bread and cheeze

Mebs some bread and margarine sprinkle it with sugar

Your bestest friends and all the one for arlies or fer arrers

Flying cronks and brakeless bikes and jumping on the bus

Jist running round to Dickens Drive and back again like lightnin'

And smelling dad all oil and stuff coming up the woods

A day in Barry Island, and fish and chips

The Damn Busters, Cockleshell Heroes, They Who Dared

Georgie Williams' Bayonet

To touch Susan Gibbons

In a tent. Oh Carol!

Tommy Steele bangs all these saucepans.

Teddy Boys and razors, kids from Pill

That thing goes over the river

Mirrors and little yous forever

A boy without a Mam, rulers, slaps

Pennies for the Black Babies

Carols

In Nominay ate Fillyay Santi

EJOTY

But not football

Mr Daley

2012-017 Prompts for Monday (II)

2012-01-01T22:30:00.000Z

He will arise and go up with the pulpit

His heart was filled with the glory of Sion

And he ran this way and that way

And that which he had done.

At the first sound of the Trumpet

Ellen died and her son bound her with sacks

Ellen Pugh was without a name in Sion.

For he too shall be buried in the field

Grieved that his well was not large

And he will warn the Big Man

He built a hedge on all sides of it

Then he became frightened

He buried her in the field.

He went to the owner of the field and bought the field

His manner was humble.

In his confusion he told everyone

Lias Carpenter heard his sayings

Moreover he raised a pulpit of wood

Near the place under which Ellen lies;

On the Sabbath his face was habited in a religious smile

So that none could trespass in it.

That which his mother had said to him

There was a man whose piety was an adage,

Evan viewed his possessions

So much more would I be with machinery

Joking you are indeed

Evan governed his anger

Having done all that he stood at the end of the fence

Great is the havoc from these crows

Here is a nice stone and costly

2012-016 Monday's Prompts (With a Secret Twist)

2012-01-01T18:09:00.000Z

Monday's Prompts (with a secret twist)

Hundreds would come
All over wales.
An angel in spotlight,
And the money I'd earn from giving such exhibitions
I saw the moon
And watch me, thousands, even, including Kathleen Parry.
As if a fellow-diver,
Below it, a procession of grey clouds
I would give exhibitions
By going on a newspaper round this August
How she would applaud; how everyone would.
I could earn money
I couldn't somersault or fly,
I knew with the certainty of revelation:
I looked up at the sky
I would pass on to my mother.
Like the Figure-of-Eight at Porthcawl.
Loop-the-loop and fly-dive
Michael O'Brien in my class,
Modestly, I would listen to their eulogies,
Cardiff murderers
Moving fast in the opposite direction.
Racing one way and,
Someone up there,
That white, clown-faced boy who always came late,
Then I knew what I had to do,
Was about to swallow-dive.
To earn a golden sovereign
Why, if I could somersault
Suddenly, I felt strangely happy.
I ran faster over the half-dry pavements
Money in their socks

An Experience: January 1st 2012

2012-01-01T09:17:00.002Z

When I am generating prompts I often open a poetry book and browse haphazardly
looking for a phrase or a line which "tweaks. I then generate a fresh phrase or line
from that (only about 5% of the time do I actually use the exact line.)

Today I picked up Emergency Kit" Poems for Strange Times, and my random-start page was P43
and the first poem (actually, now I've returned to check it's actuall part 3 of a longer poem) was "The Third Lesson".

The actual poem is "Johan Joachim Quantz's Five Lessons" by W. S. Graham.

I read, "Karl you are late."

and on my list of prompts wrote, "Jennifer you are late."

In L2 are the words "I am cold waiting." but I don't remember reading them.

I suspect I picked them up, but not consciously. I didn't read the poem and haven't read it before.

I did see, before I flicked the page, "Play me the dance you made for the barge master" and that
morphed to become "play me the song you played for the king"

I think I was already writing, i don't know for sure. That is the prompts, when I looked at them
were, basically, a story written in short lines, like a poem.

It was so obviously a story I had to sort the lines alphabetically and then
switch them around a little as so many had the same start-words. A rhetoric
had just imposed itself on me and a story "already out there" had leaped into life.

I THINK I may have seen a title "The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever"

I didn't use it, but there's a line, "in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate"
and the next line has "river. I feel sure I saw the word "rhododendrons" somewhere
but I can't find it now, and I THOUGHT most of the other phrases were copied or
re-invented/bastardised, but now, having written/found a story I can't find the prompts!

The story I've presented is 90% prompts and a few conjunctions.

And the whole thing was just THERE, waiting. The end was roaring at me.

Unfortunately, I have sorted, cut, pasted etc so don't have the prompt list in its original state

EUREKA!!!

I HAVE got the original prompts in the original order, as prompt-written.

I had the brainwave of copying the doctored list to safety and then backing up through word, cutting cuts, un-sorting sorts, un-pasting pastes.

I managed to back up as far as the original list of prompts and it really is, almost, a story right off the bat.

I think something, "Happened to me"

Now, question is, did I write a story somehow, half-consciously, prompted by a prompt or two? Was it already somehow in my head and I went looking for the phrases to fit?

Perhaps you would look at the list and NOT see it, nothing needed to be moved, as a story. I don't know.

I so DESPERATELY want to post that list now, but anyone interested, why not bang off a flash first and let's see if we all get to a similar place?

The prompt list is 172 Words. The story is 264 words.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

DON'T READ ON IF YOU ARE WRITING
A FLASH FROM THE PROMPT-LIST POSTED

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

DON'T READ ON IF
YOU ARE WRITING
A FLASH FROM THE
PROMPT-LIST POSTED

Here are the original prompts

Jennifer, I am disappointed.
You are late.
You have made me cold.
Play me the song you played for the king
Unless you would rather work in the kitchens
Take off your coat, sit down.
There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers.
We could go swimming and throw water
We could throw pebbles and make them skip
And cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons
I am not loved, so things like this are precious
Last night I saw you looking down from the wall
Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's
I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player
I saw you wonder about eating bread
You were thinking of undoing your hair
You were thinking of running down hills
You were thinking, that is bad enough
I tell you this because I am concerned for you
I do not speak from malice
I am not a monster
There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.
Now look, you have made it rain.

and then the story

The Admonishment

Jennifer, I am disappointed. You are late. The fire is almost out and you have made me cold. Make up a new fire and then play me the song you played for the king.

Unless you would rather work in the kitchens?

Wait! Take off your coat, sit down. Let me tell you about the world. Jennifer.

There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers, countries where we could go swimming and throw water, where we could throw pebbles and make them skip, where there are fertile hillsides pink and purple with flowers where slaves cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons, and people walk through not trying to get anywhere.

I am sorry to show you my disappointment, Jennifer, but I am not loved, so things like this are precious. You are late because you are tired, because you went late to your room, because last night you slept badly.

Last night I saw you looking down from the wall. Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's. You looked, you thought. I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player. I saw you wonder about eating bread.

You were thinking of undoing your hair. You were thinking of running down hills.

I know, in the end, you did not do these things, but you were thinking, that is bad enough.

Jennifer, I tell you this because I am concerned for you. I do not speak from malice.

I am not a monster. There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.

Now look, you have made it rain.

264 Words

2012-015 Prompts, 08:24 Jan 1st

2012-01-01T08:23:00.000Z

And cut paths and tunnels through the rhododendrons

I am not a monster

I saw you wonder about eating bread

You were thinking of running down hills

I am not loved, so things like this are precious

I do not speak from malice

Last night I saw you looking down from the wall

I saw you consider the thoughts of a street-singer, a lyre-player

You were thinking of undoing your hair

I tell you this because I am concerned for you
Jennifer, I am disappointed.

Last night I saw your eyes, like a sow's

There is no reason to fear me, Jennifer.

Now look, you have made it rain.

Play me the song you played for the king
Take off your coat, sit down.

There are countries with grass, and fish in their rivers.

Unless you would rather work in the kitchens

We could throw pebbles and make them skip

You are late.

You have made me cold.

We could go swimming and throw water

You were thinking, that is bad enough

So be it.

2012-13 Prompts

2011-12-30T22:54:00.000Z

Of course you can forget. That's easy

UNDULATE

From the thousands I remember one

TRUNDLE

You suffer; you die; there are moments of relief

That means YOU

As the light rises, as the world becomes pink

OK OK OK

That night, for a while I was a dog

A small bullet-hole

I locked the door and went to bed

Squirrel

I put a cake on the coffin and waited

Sex, as I call it euphemistically

PIT

I climb most mountains one step at a time

Two Paracetamol, heavy on the antibiotics

She has cashed the cheque

You said you never saw me that way, and yet it happened

When the volcano under Basingstoke erupted

I have never learned Greek

No paint, no brushes, but I have a canvas

2012-12 Prompts

2011-12-30T10:26:00.001Z

Four guys in orange jump-suits

Google "RVJ136"

Stepping on a nail

A story beginning, "I was supposed to be going to Reading"

Not exactly a fancy restaurant

PINK!

I believe this is called "a baby"

A kind of sandwich

Bubbles and bubbles and bubbles

PRIEST

A decent pair of boots, a piece of bread

Ace of Spades

I don't mind death but I like life better

Wild Thing

Lock the doors and seal the windows

BLOOP!

I would like to be a Silverback, but not a Panda

That first bowl

Whatever lifts us starts with the heart

I massage my wife

I dreamt last night of moving computers and swollen walls

It fits the equations

A bit of a shame the way the sky is closing in

2012-011 Prompts

2011-12-29T19:15:00.000Z

He leans upon the old gate

They sing the sweetest, dearest songs

It is difficult, and thus it fascinates me

I have met many at the closing of the day

A great bird soaring

Some ancient scribe or poet

The great wings beating, then shuddering, then still

I saw her standing there

One day a child will laugh at this

Rain at one in the morning, utter, disgusting, uncaring

A sunrise comes to mind, a waking day, optimism

Many a muddy pit was once a thoroughfare

She rises, undresses, showers.

And we weep like children weep for milk

Big and dark, and darker than that

We are living, living, living, and naked.

With a wicked Jack of Hearts, the Queen of Spades

That wars might end and we became old soldiers

2012-006

2011-12-29T18:59:00.001Z

2012-006A

2011-12-29T15:56:00.002Z

2012-005

2011-12-29T09:56:00.003Z

2012-004.

2011-12-29T09:54:00.002Z

2012-003

2011-12-29T09:52:00.003Z

2012-002

2011-12-29T09:51:00.002Z

2012-001

2011-12-29T09:50:00.003Z

2012? The Agony and the Agony

2011-12-29T09:42:00.003Z

My writing in the second half of 2011 just dried up.

Not absolutely, but I didn't do well except for the big novel (now 90,000 words of 150,000).

Part of that, reading old Social Services records, retyping stuff has been long-winded and "heavy" and not "flowing" or exciting. Throw in domestic difficulties and then a decision to study again (wake myself up) and the writing has suffered some.

Still running Boot Camp Keegan, a member asked for a January "Blast" to get us all hitting the 2012 ground running, so I've said yes, and we started at Xmas (a BCK Tradition) so that by January we are already into a decent jog.

I'm finding writing flashes again quite strange, writing longer shorts a distant memory, (my brain has stopped thinking in 2-5K chunks and I've become to good at the condensed piece) and until I've caught up academically, the idea of 1-2K per day on the novel is...

well it just is.

Even with money troubles, domestic troubles, a very uncertain future, and the ravages of age, I really should be managing 1K a day for at least 5 days a week. Otherwise, the simple truth is, I'm not a writer, it just happens I wrote some stuff a while ago.

Watch this space.

What I'm Reading

2011-12-29T09:39:00.002Z

Karl Popper: The Open Society and its Enemies

It makes a change to read Philosophy/Politics that is actually READABLE

Two Xmas presents to myself

Kasia Boddy The American Short Story Since 1950

Charles Baxter Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

and of course, I'm reading various philosophy books

2012-010 Prompts 29 Dec

2011-12-29T09:38:00.000Z

Inside, it is iron or empty?

I can give you nothing for I have nothing

Stones hitting the moon

The Event

As sad as Jesus

Pretend a while. let us talk of pretty things

Late on a late afternoon

We will not stop trying

Between the heard, the half-heard and the silence

Whatever this is, it is not family

Planet Jumper

A Camel in the garden

We drove back and forth to the hospital

The future is hours no matter how heavy

It brought us nearer, or so I thought

We are having a good time

They have dragged the kitchen sink, dug up the flower-pots, combed carpets.

I remember you like an old soft chair

It starts in a back room of an old grey pub

2012-008 Prompts

2011-12-28T10:10:00.001Z

I heard your heartbeat

TIN

Love, that bloody armistice

KEEP

Ever was, ever is and always will be

CAP

The sweet music of a small winnable war

BEANS

The death of a small domestic animal

LOOPS

When I first saw your spaceship

ON

Biscuit, tea-cup, saucer, tea

CARRY

Not the blood-sucking bat

With the bullet wrapped in paper

CALM

I will hire a red bi-plane and write it in the sky

Keep right on to the end of the lane

And the fragrance of your earth

It might interest you, it might not

They feed him on Rosemary, Tarragon, Mint

Let me never be my father

2012-005 Prompts

2011-12-24T07:58:00.001Z

What is left to say?

Just a little party, a few friends. We won't even get drunk.

Some tunnel in Switzerland or something.

Seven Years later

Everything that could happen, will happen.

Tsunamis are not that uncommon

You weren't exactly ill but you weren't well

In the distance, a city

It was then a sparrow flew in, well a bird

Heal!

So I woke up, wired-in, tubed-up to this guy

Temerity!

Send me flowers, like I give a fuck.

Broccolli

Mr & Mrs Buck-Too and their son, James

Marzipan

Either the best sleep ever, or something else

Hemlock and Other Cures

No strange marks, I didn't even see fever, but

In some ways it could be brilliant

Life was not so funny then, or now

See this face? That's a map of where not to go.

This was a story, kind of, the ending is happy, kind-of.

2012-004 Prompts

2011-12-23T09:22:00.001Z

Walking too far in the dark

Keep Calm and Carry On

LOGIC

The phone was off

Or I was out of range

Philosophy Bites

Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven's Door

In this age of absurdity

Jesus and Woody Allen

I guess I'm Star-Struck

No card from Southampton

Arguably, a Grand-Son Somewhere

Add a little, stir, add a little more

Now the frost is gone, now the birds are back, now

The Moral Animal

In Between

Driving through Wales

How the world looks from out there

2012-003 Prompts

2011-12-19T12:01:00.001Z

Saying goodbye to someone you love

Olivetti

There is a tide in the affairs of man, and taken at the flood

Mama, I killed a man

The Philosophy of Knees

Four Atheists

It's a long and winding journey, and nothing there when you arrive

A VERY small camera

Lego, Transformers, a couple of DVDs

Farewell, Farewell

The Art of Drinking Hemlock

BLOOP!

Diamonds are Forever, but you're not

Not a terrible prospect

2012-002 Prompts

2011-12-18T09:26:00.002Z

Prompts 2012-002

Working in the Spring

Starstruck

Good quality markets

Things are really taking off.

Good Luck, Neil. Have a good Christmas.

A comment on the human condition

I have been on this beach before. I smell the old men's fires.

Super-8

More like, ummm, a doughy-white farmhouse

Interested?

Long Slow River, Heavy Sun.

MARBLE

Beneath the blanket something warm and beating

Like I always knew.

Cheesy Songs on the Radio.

Sherry

Why I like Lamb, why I like Mint-Sauce

Wondering about my Mother

DICE

Super-Trooper

Sunday, Cold, a Long Walk with the Boys

No Jumping!

2012-001 Prompts

2011-12-18T09:26:00.001Z

Prompts

An interesting thought, a polite exchange

Listening to Match of the Day

PINK!

When the atheist died

Various Proofs, Not all of them Sound

Buying with 1-Click

It was probably the Red Bull

COOL!

Thinking, Fast & Slow

The smell of meat on the air, and something sharp

A Little More on What Matters

Why I have to go, and why I may come back

Ianto Smith and the Bucket

EGG

Hitch-Hiking Towards Heaven

Performance Data for Non-Functioning Servants

BLAST!

Mr Grimthorpe! Mr Grimthorpe!

Tuesday Prompts

2011-10-18T12:05:00.004+01:00

Come On Eileen!

I am, therefore I think.

Maybe not an academic

Yes they are lovely. Yes they are fresh.

Astronaut

I painted it, threw him the painting.

Skywriting

At least 80% of the people we see

The sun in my eyes, the sun in my face

Non-Verbal

Go on ask me, "What's my favourite?"

Be honest; there's always a risk

On Human Understanding

School for Scandal

I'm here to examine you. Take off your clothes

TABLE

Two hip replacements, a wrist, an elbow

A little too casual

Tousle me Softly

He woke, sat up, picked up the gun again

Shoplifting 101

Creative Writing Myths

2011-10-18T07:07:00.001+01:00

Previously Published at The Internet Writing Journal

Creative Writing Myths

By Alex Keegan

Recently, some of my Boot Campers attended a writing weekend, and at one lecture they were told "Open short stories with dialogue!" They were also told that 60% of "womag" (women's magazine) stories were dialogue and that using "said" was a huge no-no, better to use animal-type speech tags like purred and growled.

I say recently (but the steam is still coming out of my ears) but in a later discussion with some of the Boot Campers (drinking champagne in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral) I questioned, not just this as advice, but in terms of the actuality, the empirical facts.

I have seen (and was taught) "Open with a bang," "Start in media res," "Use lots of dialogue." Barely weeks ago I read these items as "cardinal virtues" on a website (after the website had been recommended on yet another website!)

The point then is two-fold. Is the advice good or bad (or restricted to one or more genres)? Or is it plain wrong, whatever genre we investigate?

Oops, there's a third point -- does "advice" of whatever veracity get carelessly extended into areas for which it was never intended? There's a problem here, and that's how repetition and embedded quotation can solidify myths into facts.

I like to visit Lundy Island, a haven of peace in the Bristol Channel, Once I remember reading, in a serious book, that "A million ships a year sail past Lundy." It was only weeks later that the number finally hit home (after I had gone to use it myself in a university lecture) and I thought, "HOW many?" Simple sums. That many ships per year meant 2,740 ships per day passing the island to dock in really, a small number of ports, some of which in their heyday could only berth 20-30 ships. The number was way, way wrong. The simplest thought should have told us that AT LEAST 114 ships an hour were sailing by 24-7. So why should the "fact" be in more than one academic book? Repetition and weak reading! In all probability someone wrote "a million ships have passed Lundy's shores" or "a million tonnes of shipping pass the island."

One mis-quotation, a few reinforcements and bingo, we have a fact.

So I have actually looked, first at short-stories, at literary shorts, at general fiction shorts, then at "womag" shorts, coffee-break stories often with simple twists in the tail. What ACTUAL percentage of stories are dialogue? What ACTUAL percentage of stories open with dialogue? How often do real, actual stories open with a big bang?

Can stories even popular, non-literary stories sell without the big-bang and dialogue openers?

So I looked at one hundred stories from womags. 28% opened with dialogue, NONE began with a big bang, about 60% opened in media res but in a very gentle, often genteel way.

As for 60% of the story should be dialogue -- Really? I found just 15 in the 100 had anything like half dialogue.

So, very simply. What those speakers said? UNTRUE.

Now what happens when we move away from (the lowest of the low) womag writing?

I looked at copies of Peninsular, Ashes, World Wide Writers: all mid-range, from light fiction to semi-serious fiction but hardly "high-lit" The figures were 16% beginning with dialogue, 2% big bang, 80% in media res and just 11% that were over half dialogue.

Looking towards more serious fiction, in Best American Short Stories, working backwards from BASS 2003 (and looking at BASS of the century) the incidence of dialogue openings is very small, under 5%. Big bang beginnings are even rarer and almost no stories were 60% dialogue. After a while I barely scanned the stories as this became so obvious.

So let's see what we have:

Begin with Dialogue Big Bang Media Res Half Dialogue

bd bb mr hd
28 00 60 15 Womag sample
16 02 80 11 General fiction sample
00 04 55 02 Literary fiction sample
15 02 65 09 overall

So, despite the admonitions of these lecturers (where do they get their numbers, the sky?) the facts are that across all fiction less than one sixth of stories open with dialogue, less than 10% of stories are over 50% dialogue (never mind their much vaunted 60%).

And what about "Open with a bang"? Well they (big bang openers) are about as common as rocking-horse droppings! When I looked for in media res openings I found things much more difficult. Often an opening would interest me and I'd put a tick in the IMR box but often, in fact, it was not "action" but language, or setting or voice which attracted me.

The 66% quoted there is probably nearer 50%, but someone else can decide. So what conclusions can we make?

First, don't trust my figures! Do your own survey, of whatever field you're interested in.

Whatever that field is I KNOW that you'll discover these three statements:

Always open with dialogue.
60% of a short story should be dialogue.
Open with a bang.

Are simply WRONG.

Even when we talk of a very formulaic market such as womags, the figures and the admonitions of "experts" simply don't tally.

The truth is an opening should interest the reader. Complicated isn't it? The opening should catch our eye, get our ear, but not crudely, not in some over the top, exaggerated way but "cleverly", subtly, even sneakily.

Dialogue can help a story zip by, can give it "air and space" but how much is the key question. It is most certainly NOT "at least 60%." It's not even 50%.

It's whatever the story requires to be right. In some stories there was no dialogue or a few bare lines. In the novel, "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" it was 99%. In many womag stories it looked to be 20-40%, in some not a lot at all.

But don't take my word for it, instead, do your research.

Better still, forget formulas and write to move people, or to to entertain, and write what feels good and wholesome to you, what would please YOU.

In the end it's the words, and the heart of the writer, not some damn bean-counters knee-jerking nonsense, or worse, someone who is passing on (through a photocopy darkly) misinformation that simply doesn't tally with the reality when you check what's on the shelf.

Monday Prompts

2011-10-17T08:22:00.003+01:00

Yesterday was STORY deadline in BC, but for those who want to flash, here are today's prompts (he says hopefully without a prompt in his head)

The pictures are from the chapel.

PROMPTS

Nothing reaches here, we cannot be taught. Eat!

JINGLE!

Consume! Consume! Consume!

Please try not to think.

Just outside Reading on the A4

Sticky Labels

Baked Apples, Vanilla Custard

Tunnels, Caverns, more tunnels

And then there are the Japanese

The man with the megaphone needs to be moved on

I drive, you sleep, the night is shiny and feral

Smell of Woodsmoke

CURLY

I am going to invent wool.

Three times a night but once on Fridays

FRIDGE

Various CW Ideas

What are you doing for the next ten years?

EGG

Canary Wharf, The SS, How Freedom Dies

BLAST

It will rain, and it will rain, and it will rain, rain, rain...

Vanessa Gebbie

2011-10-14T11:43:00.002+01:00

Vanessa's "A Coward's Tale comes out very soon.

Vanessa emailed this:

re-posted with permission.

I like the new-look blog - it is fun, and useful.

(Alex) Feedback for you on 'openings'...

Three or so years ago I had a lot of words done for the novel. I had a voice. And a mishmash of stuff, themes swirling about. Nothing really clear. A main character who I didnt know really - didnt know 'why' I was writing him. Just following my nose.

I had to take my car for a service. Big deal. So, Im waiting in the ghastly customer waiting area with a plastic coffee. Daily Mush to read. Not thinking about the novel. Frightened of it.

A propos of nothing, this line came into my head, there, in the garage. "My name is Ianto Jenkins. I am a coward." I wrote it down on the Daily Mush and tore off a bit of the front page, not to forget it.

Bingo. That was the first line of the novel - and the whole grew out of it, shaped itself, the themes made sense, and 'he' made sense.

But I also knew - the line had come from somewhere. It was 'right' but ...where had it come from?

I use your prompts a lot. I searched the blog.

Bingo again - Jan 2006, you posted among others:

"My name is Eddie. I am a coward." I never used it until c. three years later... but it stuck in there somewhere.

ta.

V

On Age

2011-10-14T11:15:00.002+01:00

I am .....

but my right knee is only 8.

A question, then. In this age of transplants, are we
as old as our oldest bit,
as young as our youngest bit,
or the average of all our bits?

Bugger!

2011-10-14T11:05:00.002+01:00

First talk last night at Birkbeck University and train home was 00:20, full of drunks.

Woke this morning with excruciating knee pain, but I don't remember hurting it.

Talk was Amanda Fricker arguing that "Blame is a Good Thing"

God's Day Prompts

2011-10-14T10:50:00.004+01:00

Ideas, people, following like rigorous proofs

One Man, One Knee

I begin to scream, I am screaming, I have screamed

WINDOW

Lonely men without their neckties. Old men nursing halves

The permanent goodbye

Finally 41

Let us walk together through certain dirty, silent streets

Overhead on the bus

And it was once September. It was once a soft October evening

God is resting.

On the streets of America, on the streets of America

Am I not of interest now?

Let us go then, you and I

There is a time for murder, there is a time to die

Let us undecide, and be slow about it

PROTEST

Sit down and I will cook burnt toast and serve cold tea

My counterpane is soft as silk

And I have known their faces. I have seen them all

(SINGING) We've got to get right back to where we started from

To Eat a Peach

Standing until we drown

"Family" life?

2011-10-12T08:59:00.003+01:00

One Family member up at 0500 with work to do before the day starts, two family members in car at 0700, lift to station to commute one to school. Two family members in car at 0730, lift to station for commute to University 50 miles away. Later one family member drives 15 miles both ways for business meeting, will return to walk dogs, do work, then drive to station, leave car for the two early droppees, hide key as no duplicate taken... so one can squeeze in hair appointment, while one squeezes in gym work. Meanwhile fourth family member has driven to town to park, train for 50-mile commute to second university. Third family member to travel to a third university to evening-teach; will meet fourth family member in London at 21:45, no train until 2305... home station at 23:40, then drive home, arriving midnight. On various trains, all, no doubt, working with lap-tops or iPads, answering mobile calls etc.

Thursday. Repeat?

Wednesday Prompts (Posted Early)

2011-10-11T21:51:00.003+01:00

Long Distance Scrabble

Daddy Poo

Sensations of the potato kind

He comes nearer, she comes nearer, nearer

Tonight, bugger the calories

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:

Sorry, my battery died

Shut up, Bitch!

The following morning Tavistock resigned

BLOOP

I wanted to say, "Have you eaten, are you OK?"

Head-On

Yes, I did, and then I started crying

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:

The bald heft of the bayonet entering

SHIP

I do that, she shouted stupidly from the kitchen

Kill! Kill!

Beneath the wooden floor

Basically Dad, you're a hermaphrodite

Ginger

After we had burned down the school

PEA

He was twelve years old, perhaps thirteen

Tuesday Prompts

2011-10-10T21:54:00.002+01:00

Prompts going up tonight as I may have an early start.

Fear passes from man to man

BLACK

The omnibus out of control

PIN

The feel of a shiny shilling

WEST

How it was before you left us

GREEN

I am stronger now, the weather is more forgiving

DARK

Angela and Heather, thinking

CORNER

They are obscene, but men for all that

I am ready

CHINA

And then she turned to me

Just the one drink, but wanted more

THE GUN

She walked behind, breathing a little heavily

Tonight, Trixie will

The night watchman asleep by his TV

Love me like I'm the last number on the lottery

The violet dark

You should leave us know, without a serious regret

Philosophy Overload

2011-10-10T10:46:00.003+01:00

Capel Cader Idris, Llwyngwril, Gwynedd

;
;
;
;
;
;

The work at Birkbeck comes thick and fast and I discovered last night that I have a 2,000-word essay to produce TODAY, an essay for which I haven't even done the reading yet.

And I work HARD.

Scary stuff, but hopefully rewarding (in the end),

I Sold a Photo!!

2011-10-10T10:37:00.003+01:00

Thrilled to announce that I've had one of my photographs bought.

This one..

My daughter and I once trekked the South Bank (of the River Thames in London), taking various pictures (some of which appear on this blog).

We came to the Tate Modern Art Gallery (an old power-station converted) and there was an exhibit in a lit window, an orange/red background with yellow tubular lights.

Passers-by came to watch and I realised they were beautifully silhouetted against the bright colour. So I set up my tripod and shot various unknown individuals.

This photo (I call her Madonna) was lucky as the subject turned slightly side on and I got her face, beautifully, fortuitously, lit

Monday 10th Prompts

2011-10-10T10:24:00.003+01:00

How blood surrenders

Not because we were, but because no-one knew we weren't

All roads lead to the end

The cold, faithless calm of a hospital corridor

I am warming myself at a fire

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers

And then again, it's just a birthday

Patches of dried blood, dessicated screaming

Is that cushion uncomfortable enough?

I am not drowning, but I am not well

We are blinded by our own light, deafened by silence

Swollen lip

The tree opens, the child is eaten

I was not there but I heard the explosion

I was about to ring but changed my mind

Just drinks

Openings

2011-10-09T12:32:00.003+01:00

I think it was Marquez who said he took 50% of his thinking/writing time getting the opening right and the rest would then follow. That included his novels.

I agree it's worth knowing your start is THE start, because it contains (IMO) the essence of the theme, the tone, the weight, the musicality such that what follows, even while unknown, is predetermined.

We are looking at some openings in Boot Camp right now. Here's one by Alice Munro.

So much here!

Georgia once took a creative-writing course, and what the instructor told her was: Too many things. too many things going on at the same time; also too many people. Think, he told her. What is the important thing? What do you want us to pay attention to? Think.

Eventually she wrote a story that was about her grandfather killing chickens, and the instructor seemed pleased with it. Georgia herself thought that it was a fake. She made a long list of all the things that had been left out and handed it in as an appendix to the story. The instructor said that she expected too much, of herself and of the process, and that she was wearing him out.

The course was not a total loss, because Georgia and the instructor ended up living together. They still live together, in Ontario, on a farm. They sell raspberries, and run a small publishing business. When Georgia can get the money together, she goes to Vancouver, to visit her sons. This fall Saturday she has taken the ferry across to Victoria, where she used to live. She did this on an impulse that she really doesn't trust, and by mid afternoon, when she walks up the driveway of the splendid stone house where she used to visit Maya, she had already been taken over some fairly shaky ground.

Excellent.

Look at this bit and consider how YOU might have written it.

Think, he told her. What is the important thing? What do you want us to pay attention to? Think.

I love the imperial full-stop after the first THINK.

Sunday Prompts

2011-10-09T11:49:00.005+01:00

I am held prisoner by your skin

LITTER

Things can be too still, the woods

BUTTS

I have a prosthetic soul

PLASTIC BOTTLES

I thought, a dog barking, something fallen, broken

NET

She carried a spotless white glove

LID

I am standing where I stood before

SWEET-WRAPPER

An old lover, a glass of wine, crisps

MOIST

Steam hisses, smells rise, people scurry

NEEDLE

The red stripes are blood, the rest peppermint

PLASTIC

I exist. I need to live.

PHONE

"I think, therefore I am." >> "I remember thinking. Therefore I am me."

Not Just Somerset

TEETH

I sink into your helplessness, dying

He was brown, but a new brown, a brown brown, different.

Saturday 8th October Prompts

2011-10-08T15:02:00.004+01:00

Twenty or So Ideas

Somewhere to put my etchings

Thank You very much. We'll be off then.

Photo by Alex Pearson-Jones

Maxing the Cards

The Wife of the Carpenter Who Dies at Sea

Watch With Mother

Pictures at an Unattended Exhibition

Leaving California

Why they're not talking to me

Mrs Green & Mr White

How to write sex scenes 101

Picture Me Resplendent

A Simple, Fundamental, Error

A story featuring a billiard ball, a chicken, a candle, a clown

Not far from a bird hide, a canal, a golf-course

Prisoner 99

An essay Concerning Human Understanding

Hair Matters; Hair Manners

Mother, Questions

No More Than a Roll of the Dice, the toss of a coin

A Story beginning: "I intend for all this to be true; for it to be honest..."

Blitzcreig!

A story ending. And so I must go, quietly, with my head low, through shadows.

Seventh Quark & Steve Jobs

2011-10-08T14:45:00.002+01:00

I picked up a newspaper yesterday and found an article on Steve Jobs' Apple (by the philosopher Julian Baggini)

I was struck, in particular, by one quote:

"Take the old adage that the consumer is king. In some ways this is as true for Apple as it is for anyone else. Apple stands or falls on the basis of whether people will buy its stuff. But Jobs' success was built firmly on the idea that, in another sense, you should NOT give consumers what they want because they don't know what they want.

No-one thought they wanted the first desktop Mac, iPod, iPhone or iPad before they existed. Jobs repeatedly created things that people came to want more than anything else only by NOT trying to give them what they already wanted.

This challenges the idea that consumer culture inevitably means pandering to the conventional, to the lowest common denominator. Markets are not necessarily conservative: truly great innovations can become popular.

I was struck by this, and some of it "rang bells".

Then I remembered my own editorial for the first issue of Seventh Quark Literary Magazine, where I wrote:

Running a literary magazine is not about giving readers what they want.
It's about showing them what's possible.

If I can find the original text, I'll post the whole article.

The Prompts Choose Us!

2011-10-07T13:15:00.002+01:00

Picture by Alex Pearson-Jones

Here is the list again.

Looking for Spinoza
Forced Smiles on a Hundred Pink-Faced Women
Paper Crowns
Loo Seat in Disguise
We must go to the mountains and wait
Traffic Lights, Red
Drowning the occasional Witch
Albert's Amazing Idea
The Rise and Fall of Fergal Smith
NUTS. BOLTS
Before there were neighbours
He makes them uncomfortable, so he will be killed
Bleaney's Room
Every Mountain has its Valley
Sherry Trifle
Barcelona, Eritrea, a Small Place in Germany, Melbourne
Death as a trivial interruption
Simple Simon Says
The Ladybird Introduction to Introductions
Magic and other Inconveniences
Afghanistan Holiday
The Students are revolting
PEACH

Flashing is a peculiar activity. It freaks some people. When I first tried to write flashes I “froze” but soon found that writing-without-caring was very liberating.

When I teach “How to Find the Story” (NOT flashing, but longer stories) I tell students NOT to write too early. When an idea comes, don’t “dive in”. Instead, it is best to ferment it, to let it simmer and stew and go bad, rancid, with all sorts of deep, gut-level rotten connections.

An idea is often not THE idea but an echo or a trigger, a conscious embellishment that “relates to” the real-story-within. If we “dive in” we may write something but it won’t have the power of that-thing-which-lurks-deep. To find the deep thing takes TIME and all we should do is remember “enough” and “loosely”. We must not write too much down (that concretises facts) or be so vague that we forget the initiating idea.

The idea is to have REAL HINTS, good CUES, but poetic, oblique, sensitizing, edgy, tilting phrases, words that affect your balance, set things off, but in a general, “mood” or sensibility way, rather than direct, shape, restrict us, or make us go left-brained.

The theory then goes… by “refusing to write” the fermentation effect continues linking the KEY, the KERNEL, the grit in the oyster, the itch, with “other stuff that relates”. That other stuff might be snippets of songs, adverts, conversations, stories, films, plays, whatever. But note this, those things-which-stick-to-the-kernel will stick because “somehow” they fit, they are correctly sticky. They “go with” that burn, itch, drive from the deep. WHETHER OR NOT YOU EVER REMEMBER OR ARTICULATE THE ACTUAL DRIVING IDEA OR MOMENT.

But that is for STORIES.

Flashing takes the “unconscious principle” and inverts it. When we write a story we STEW it in order to use the deep unconscious to make unique, “driven” connections. It can take an hour, but usually takes days, months, maybe a year.

Flashing takes the idea that we have these “depths’ and FORCES connections in a quick “speed-dating” way. Instead of ignoring an idea ‘early charms’ and stewing it, waiting for the real idea, we deliberate RUN AT the story and grab, grab, grab “without thought” in a way that the prompts themselves (directly or indirectly) are “chosen without thought” and thus are the-best-for-us.

What this means is this. If I read a list of prompts and CONSCIOUSLY mull them over and think, Hmmmm, Spinoza; I could write about a philosopher who has a grey cat… Traffic Lights, Red… hey what if traffic lights everywhere went red and it was a very serious offence to go through red, and…

This ISN’T flashing. This is THINKING about what might be cute. This is boring, obvious and left-brained beginner-stuff. The magic connections, possible connections are KILLED by thinking. Once you begin to think the prompts are pretty much meaningless. They are just “Write about a man called Spinoza” (and bore me…)

We have to be random, drunky, sleepy, high, uncaring, frivolous, de-logical, poetic, free-wheeling. IF we are these things, and if we keep “singing” then the prompts choose us.

The Prompts Choose Us!

What does that mean?

Well, as Dorothea Brande once said, when two writers see the same thing or incident, one might have a strong response when the other doesn’t give a damn.

Brande believes that when we get a strong reaction it’s because some essence of the thing or situation CONNECTS TO something raw and deeply-held.

An Example.

I’m walking with “John” and we see a tiny white dog, dripping wet, waiting at a red door, miserable, but stoic, patient. We can hear, somewhere, an old song, “Volare” and it sounds like it’s vinyl. We smell onions.

Now, to be fair, the above is “engineered”, but say I respond viscerally to all these things. The actual NOT REMEMBERED reason “the hot connector” is that I once had a little white dog, but the paedophile who dragged me into his terraced house left Spot outside… He loved Italian songs…

A WARNING.

Too often people think the “point” of all this is to remember the secret to “find” specifically that repressed memory, the actuality, the deep “why”.

IT ISN’T.

It doesn’t matter whether you have a real and actual memory, or a false memory, or some other response, or ANYTHING.

What you are searching for is THE PRESSURE ITSELF. You are seeking that-which-burns, but not IT, not the exact nature or fact or memory that CAUSES or caused the burn. You just want the burn-pressure itself, the drive, the itch, the “swelling”, the secret link or links that make YOU respond to X and Y and Z when someone else couldn’t care less.

So, with stories, we gently stir, feeling around in the river-bed for that-which-squirms, and keep coming back until things have combined.

With flashes, instead, we go-silly, and hope that “something” in the flashes, or combinations will “connect”.

Because we stay-loose, hang-loose, chill, “don’t-care”, relax, “stay drunk”, the hope is that we can make connections non-deliberately, without using left-brain. Hence I say the prompt or prompts choose us.

Snippets of poetry are powerful as prompts because they, in themselves, “contain multitudes”. They are not bald or limited. The lines are magnetic, moving, full of possibility as opposed to concrete, rigid.
All the above, of course, is the ideal. A lot depends on the openness and excitability or connectivity of the particular list of prompts. Some lists simply don’t turn us on, others cause a POW! Connection.

It’s never “ideal” but regular flashing teaches us to trust the unconscious.

Ballistics (my short-story collection) has a few stories that came from flash prompts.

L for Laura; L for Love
The Fucking Point-Two
Obelisk
Happy as Larry
An Old man Watching Football After Sunday Lunch

Four of these five stories are First-Prize winners of STORY competitions. “Larry” is 5,000 words, a story I’m proud of. Flashing works.

On Prompts

2011-10-07T13:06:00.002+01:00

Photo by Alex Pearson-Jones

As I don’t have a story or flash waiting to “burst into life” I thought I might run through where this morning’s prompts came from, then maybe “play with them” and see what happens.

Looking for Spinoza

I’m studying Philosophy at the moment and recently began reading a great book by Antonio Damasio. So I’ve bought two more by him and the book is on my TBR pile.

Forced Smiles on a Hundred Pink-Faced Women

A line from a poem I wrote a mere forty years ago. (It just popped up!)

Paper Crowns

An old prompt used by Boot Camper Dave Prescott to energise his prize-winning story for Children in Need 2005

Loo Seat in Disguise

Another prompt from C-in-Need. Story by Henry Peplow.

We must go to the mountains and wait.

A random. I just felt the list needed a longer, slower, more reflective line. Yes, there’s method to this madness.

Traffic Lights, Red

Red Traffic Lights was a C-in-N story by Boot Camper Penny Aldred

Drowning the Occasional Witch

I have NO idea where that came from!

Albert's Amazing Idea

Or That

The Rise and Fall of Fergal Smith

I was thinking of the instrumental by The Shadows = The Rise & Fall of Flingle Bunt.

NUTS. BOLTS

I break up lists with short-sharp OBJECTS to try and break thought-trains.

Before there were neighbours

I had written “Melbourne”, thought “Neighbours” (the TV programme) and then wrote the above

He makes them uncomfortable, so he will be killed

Socrates, brilliant though he was, pissed off too many people and they made him take Hemlock. Blame my doing philosophy! I try to universalise prompts. Eg. Socrates is not part of the prompt.

Bleaney's Room

A vague memory of an old poem T S Eliot?

Every Mountain has its Valley

Another vague thought, or I read it in a philosophy text yesterday. Something like “every mountain has a valley”? Yeah, like Ayre’s Rock…

Sherry Trifle

Random list-breaker.

Barcelona, Eritrea, a Small Place in Germany, Melbourne

A response/reflection from the various places my colleagues hailed from yesterday. I try to write the phrasing in a musical, thought-prompting way.

Death as a trivial interruption

NO IDEA!

Simple Simon Says

“Simon Says” was an old BC prompt that produced a decent story.

The Ladybird Introduction to Introductions.

No idea, really, although yesterday I mentioned I always start learning with the Noddiest intro I can find.

Magic and other Inconveniences

No IDEA but note it’s the extension that adds “frisson”. Magic alone is a bit flat and would probably produce predictable work.

Afghanistan Holiday

I head Afghanistan mentioned on the radio.

The Students are revolting

Just an old, weak joke.

PEACH

A guy called Peach on the radio…

I have to say that these prompts fill me with NOTHING, unless it’s simple GLOOM. The idea that a story lurks here seems, right at this moment, quite remote.

Next Blog-Post will talk more on these things....

A Small Good Thing (2)

2011-10-07T10:43:00.004+01:00

Capel Cader Idris.

How very small is this world!

Yesterday at Birkbeck University (London) we had a gap in lectures and adjourned to the student bar.

The small group had individuals from Barcelona, Eritrea, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Poland, and WALES.

Talking to "Ivan" ("I am from Barthelona") it turned out he had been to Llwyngwril in North Wales, where I legally reside in Capel Cader idris! Ivan had traveled on the little coastal railway (we actually have a station), so he could walk places like this:

As Llwyngwril is so tiny, I was amazed.

We talked writing and Ivan is a huge fan of RAYMOND CARVER and, in particular, Carver's "A Small Good Thing"

It would be nice to discuss that story here.

Any takers?

Once in Boot Camp we talked live for three hours and were still on the first page!

How do you feel about the way Gordon Lish OVER-edited Carver's work? How much better are Ray's stories when they "relax" a l;ittle bit?

A Small Good Thing (1)

2011-10-07T10:28:00.003+01:00

On my first day at Birkbeck I left my £152 Kindle in a lecture room.

I reported it missing and was told I had "no chance" of it being handed in.

To say I was sick and depressed doesn't get close.

At a lecture 2 days later (where the whole group attended) I stood up and announced my loss and told everybody "I'm Alex".

The reasoning was that IF somebody had it, they now knew the owner.

I've just heard. It's turned up!

THAT's a small good thing.

Friday October 7th, Another Prompt Set

2011-10-07T07:00:00.003+01:00

Looking for Spinoza

Forced Smiles on a Hundred Pink-Faced Women

Paper Crowns

Loo Seat in Disguise

We must go to the mountains and wait

Traffic Lights, Red

Drowning the occasional Witch

Albert's Amazing Idea

The Rise and Fall of Fergal Smith

NUTS. BOLTS

Before there were neighbours

He makes them uncomfortable, so he will be killed

Bleaney's Room

Every Mountain has its Valley

Sherry Trifle

Barcelona, Eritrea, a Small Place in Germany, Melbourne

Death as a trivial interruption

Simple Simon Says

The Ladybird Introduction to Introductions

Magic and other Inconveniences

Afghanistan Holiday

The Students are revolting

PEACH

On Writing

2011-10-06T11:11:00.003+01:00

This Article "Finding the Seventh Quark" was in the inaugural issue of 7Q.

I'm posting the original word document and don't have time to check for typos, so please excuse if there are any small errors.

Finding the Seventh Quark

Yes, this is about writing: what is love?

What is love? Is it, as the sociobiologists say, an illusion, a construct, what we call sexual selection, how our genes find other genes, to make genes? Is it the love of Romeo and Juliet? Is there love in what we dismiss as puppy love, is it love that twists and distorts and makes a man kill? Is it love that tells us, “Turn off the life support”, is it love that takes a woman to smother an old man, or, says a mother, is it what she feels when she first holds a bloody newborn child, when it first suckles?

Is love of your God, love? Does love involve the desire to hold, to possess, to keep from others and can it create hate? Or is love that thing they say, when they say, “If you love her let her go”?

Shall we call in men in white coats to measure love? Perhaps it’s only pheromones, height ratios, genetic compatibility, or gene machines that seek other gene machines to compensate for vulnerabilities. Or, when you realise nobody can ever define love, ever explain love, do you simply say to me, “I don’t exactly know what it is, but I can give you examples.”

So now we write a story. We don’t tell people what love is. We don’t tell them, what we think about love. We say, “Watch.”

Watch Romeo, Juliet, see Sophie make her choice, see Anna Karenina lie down in front of a train, look at Madame Bovary. Enter into the mind, the world of a loving husband who smothers his pain-wracked wife, and can’t you see how that’s not so different from Old Chief Broom when he knew he had to kill the lobotomised McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The point is, about love, we know it when we see it, but when we look at it, it shimmers, it moves, it runs away, it’s shy. And when we chase after love it disappears. It doesn’t want to be categorised. It doesn’t like definitions. It is just me, it says, you can’t define me, I am the indefinable.

So you give examples.

You apologise to love. You say, I’m sorry. Yes, you are special, enigmatic. Yes, no mortal should have the temerity to examine you. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

So you go write a story.

You write a story where Jack needs Jill. Jack needs Jill so much he knows, without Jill he will die. But Jill wants a man called John, and Jack, because he feels such an intense emotion, this thing we have called love, Jack’s for Jill, Jack, heavily, brings John to Jill.

John and Jill live happily ever after. Jack dies.

Or there’s this guy.

When he was alive, he never made a move on his beautiful librarian, but now he’s dead, and while he’s being taught to fly by his foul-mouthed angel-trainer he begins to understand about fair hearts and fair lady. And his beautiful, sheltered, shuttered librarian, so missing out on love, has gone to another country. She has found marriage, not love, and now she lies there, beside a bitter, dark man.

Our guy is about to enter Heaven, or he can enter the dark, bitter man, and soften his librarian’s life. Our guy can give up his eternity. He will not have his librarian (he missed his chance, alive), but he can do this, this, just to make her life a little better because there is an ache in him, some ‘thing’, some unfulfilled thing. All he can do is give, and hope it is enough.

Flannery O’Connor once said she wrote to find out what she thought. I have always railed against that notion. I believe often we know, we know, we know, but we just don’t know how to say it. Or it is the unsayable, like at the depths of nuclear physics where things are so other that it all seems comic, or spiritual, and the names that fly around like singing electrons (and when they told us that it was weird enough) are mere hints. But they tell us, that down there – (in me, in you, in everything) there really are these things, quarks. Oh, yes, we are assured, up quarks, down quarks, top quarks and bottom quarks, and charm quarks and strange quarks.

What has this to do with writing? What has this to do with love? Should I explain or should I tell you a story so you will understand?

I’ll tell you more than one story, because I believe Flannery O’Connor said it badly and, because of that, beginning writers think they can just write and “see what happens” and it will all work out in the end.

Hang on for the next bit, because it’s about feelings, and incomplete things, oddities, non sequiturs, failures to round out, accidents of non-explanation, failures to hit the button, the nail, on its beautiful, sweet, satisfying head.

Once I was using Google for some research – why I don’t remember – and I read about a US Navy tragedy in Barcelona harbour, two ships colliding and many drowned. If I Googled now I could give you names and dates, but I will not. That world, those meanings are out there, waiting for a unique you to find them as you will, as you must. All those things, those many things, all with meanings, and every combination unique.

What struck me? This: At the conclusion of the port visit a very touching moment occurred as the ship was leaving the pier and heading for sea. An older Spanish woman, dressed traditionally in black with her head covered, quietly appeared on the pier and, one by one, slowly tossed red roses into the harbour water, one for each of our lost shipmates.

I don’t know what this means.
I feel something. It aches. But I don’t know what it means.

Now tell me, do you really believe “I don’t know what it means”? If I was in a court of law, and I was asked, on penalty of imprisonment, “Mr Keegan, what do those roses mean, why an older Spanish woman, why is she dressed in black, why is her head covered, why roses, why slowly, why one by one?” could I drag out a plausible answer, could I get off the hook?

Of course I could. I’d give the court enough to satisfy them. I’d get away with it. I’d churn something out that “sort of” fits the facts. The judge would say, “Thank-you, Mr Keegan,” and the prosecuting counsel would be frustrated because they would know this is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, it’s a fashioned, reasonable, everyday explanation.

But I did not bare my soul. I only pretended some superficial truth that my heart said, “Lie!” because I didn’t want to go to prison.

I did not answer honestly. I told a kind of truth but I knew it wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t explaining my ache, my deep “something” ache, my indefinable fat fist of spiritual understanding, my glimpse of God, my search for what life is about. That image is so strong, it smoulders in me. It calls to me, and still I haven’t written fiction to re-examine it, to find what I think.
There I’ve said it. I’ve said what Flannery O’Connor said, and I disagree with. I write to discover what I think. I write to discover what I feel.
YES!
No.

And this is where Flannery and I part company. I believe I know what I think. I just don’t know how to express it. I don’t have the tools, or the mathematical formulae, or the wondrous machines to reveal that there are quarks, and not only that, six types of quark ending charm and strange. I don’t have the mind that can deal with the idea that we, human beings, are almost totally space that we are emptiness, blackness, actual nothingnesses across which darts energy.

I know what my Spanish lady means. I can see her, feel what she is doing, sense the pain (and the beauty). It’s just that when I look straight at it my life gets in the way. Funerals, cremations, roses for love, chrysanthemums, lilies, organ music, a friend’s suicide, a train-wreck, there a million things trying to trick me, trying to make me lie in court just to keep out of jail, when what I should say is, “Your honour, I know, but cannot say. Please lock me up.”

Then, when they lock me up I will hit a guard. They will throw me in a dark cell, a dirty cell. And I will close my eyes and sense this woman, feel that which is her force, the emotion those roses contain. Not the trite, simple and symbolic, the easy, the cliché. We’ve seen the Hollywood movies, we know the clichés, we’ve heard the stirring music. If that was all that scene meant to me I would have seen it, logged it, filed it away and carried on with my life, but it was more. That is why I keep going back to my Barcelona and trying to understand.

And the way to understand is to find the story.

You cannot look directly at a quark, not an up quark, not a down quark. You cannot look at a top or bottom quark; or a strange quark; or a charm quark.

But we know quarks exist. We know them because they cause things to happen. We discover stars and planets, not because we can see them but because they affect other stars and planets. An imperfect orbit here, a meteor arrives late there, because it has been affected.

We know there is a thing, love, because we see it’s symptoms. We see orbits altered. We know somewhere, some entity exists, but it’s invisible. So we experiment. What happens if a man passes by that woman, will she affect him? Oh yes! She contains it! He contains it! Or ‘it’ resides between them, or it is magically created from the nothingness between them.

Here is something I cannot prove. Call it my seventh quark. Deep in me, deep in my heart, underneath my soul, timid, shy, elusive, so fragile that it will cease existing if I look directly at it, is a light. This tiny light, this pulse, this thing is exactly what my Spanish lady means to me.

Quite literally, I believe she calls to me, “Make me whole, let others see what I am. I came to you, you specifically, you exactly, you uniquely, and you understand. Give me a voice, give me light, let me out.”

To write what I know would be a story that mattered (at least to me) I have to see this light that cannot be looked at. I have to discover the light, its meaning by not looking at it, by writing about the orbits it minutely affects, and the nearest orbit is me, my thoughts, how I think.

Do you understand that I will rise from this table, go grab a coffee, eat some toast, make a phone call, beep an email? I have a life. And that life is mere function. It is not angelic. This is angelic. I seek, I hope to find.

But when I stand up, if I let go this heat, I enter a lesser state, a far more ordinary state, a let’s-get-by, don’t-be-silly, earn-a-few-dollars, go-get-the-mail, use the bathroom, phone the agent, muddle-through state. That’s a state far away from the seventh, unknown quark, the six imagined quarks, electrons and nuclei (remember them?) flesh, bone, a moving animal, me.

It’s down in the spirit where truth is. The question is how do I get there and stay there long enough to understand?

I mention the machine-me, the living, functioning, goes-to-the-bathroom me because he is who I have to remove to write. I have to turn off that me, and I have to become something else, someone else, and slowly disassociate from my mechanics, the plain, the knee-jerk, the automatic, the stereotype and the stock, the cliché, the obvious.

I have to do this. If I do not I will write what I expect, what people expect, the glib, the superficial, the beach-read, mere entertainment, gone faster than it is read, meaningless.

Better to sit on that beach and ponder a grain of sand.

So how can I find my Spanish woman?

I find her by being in her orbit, by circling, by being close, by allowing her to affect me, by singing and listening to the notes.

I said here are things I cannot prove. I cannot. But I can show people the results. Show how, merely by “allowing”, by moving into a state, I turn away from the mechanical, obvious me and begin to find the receptive me, the planet light enough to be affected in its orbit.

I chant, I sing, I play with sound, with feeling, with language. This is the hardest part of my writing to explain. I write ‘in and around’ the feeling, always, always, always the opening. I believe in finding the voice that is the story’s voice, like Marquez.

But I believe, if I allow it, that voice is shaped, directed, magnetised, steered, resonated-with, orbit-affected by, not merely my Spanish woman (she mans the foyer), but by what she means.

If I am brutal, if I am a planet so big, those fine gravities are lost. I must be small, a quark, soft and influencible. I must write with soft hands. I must drop into a zone of effortless not-looking. I must, via language, sounds, feel, words and not drugs, enter a state where things are fluid, echo, resonate.

My unproven, but near-absolute belief is that if I can enter some near-transcendental state and allow my writing to “just happen” (feeling, feeling, sound, atmosphere, and never, not even remotely plot), my opening will answer the call from the light, the falling roses.

I feel around, trying to tune in, letting fall the words, the visions, the viewpoints, tone, tense, colour and smell of the opening. Some jar, some feel wrong, some feel better, some feel good. Understand I don’t mean “good” in a literary sense, not “good writing”. I mean good, this is closing in on the feeling, the essence, the conduit.

What conduit? A direct line (never look along it) to what the Spanish woman means.

I must be crude for a moment. It’s as if my lady stands there listening to me, waiting for me to speak in the right way, for me to be simpatico.

If I was to start with a horrid, crude, aggressive, abrasive voice, she would turn her head away. She wants me to be seductive, so she will, in her turn, whisper to me.

I already have an instinct. I know approximately how I should speak, and of what. But it is by “tuning in” to the message (all feeling) that I find the one (and only one) opening that aches so perfectly I simply know it is the one, the sent one, from the light, of the muse, with the music.

There is no explanation here. There is nothing in the opening that explains. If anything the sound and feel, the hum, the music, the colour and tone may feel like they are taking me on a journey away from my woman.

Nevertheless is feels so right, so right. I know I am being affected. I know that the light, the roses, the woman, the meaning, is a gravity and these words resonate, they feel so right, because every time I try to change one the boats rocks, the current below me is less smooth-flowing, less definite.

The opening answers the light.

The light reflects the opening.

Now, provided I am light-footed, treading softly, because I walk on dreams, the next paragraph comes as it must, as it should, as it can do no other. It follows.

And the next, the next, the next. The waterfall tumbles, but it is only going one place, and all the time it’s ache, the ache building, getting closer and closer to a woman in a black dress.

Remember she calls to me, affects my orbit. It is the tonal feel, the music and colour of the work that carries the meaning. I choose, by now, words which fit and are not dissonant, Every word, every sound, and every accumulating phrase brings me closer to understanding, until, just before the end I realise I have been narrowing, narrowing, falling ever-inward to the moment of truth.

Does this truth have to be a complete articulation of such precision that we can write it on a board like a scientist writes his formula? No!

I started with an ache that held a meaning. The ache and the meaning affected my orbit. I became a very small planet and by sailing, allowing, my orbit became the one that was required. Then I merely allowed a story, never plotting, always feeling and allowing people, sound, life to simply enter.

And if I have not imposed, who did impose? If I have not imposed, what cause the words, these words?

Roses, falling, one by one.

I know this is difficult, but like we tell stories about people to understand love, so it is that we tell stories about stories to understand art.

Here is a story about a story.

I was teaching, and a student, (in Boot Camp she was known as "Peanuts") a lady with grown boys talked about a news report. She had read about a fishing-boat, a trawler which had sunk, losing all hands. Those lives were five fishermen and a carpenter.

Five fishermen’s widows wanted to leave the trawler in the deep. Because that is what they did. That was what felt right. Their men had always belonged to the sea. It was how it was.

The carpenter’s wife was not a fisherman’s wife. She needed her husband’s body. She believed she needed the body, a coffin, a grave, the earth.

She asked for the trawler to be raised.

Now, my student said, there’s some terrible ache here, but I can’t get hold of it. It is a fish, it escapes me.

We talked. We asked each other questions. We asked these imagined wives questions. We would have talked to the sea if it would have answered.

We could feel an answer somewhere, sense a meaning somewhere. And when interrogated, we decided it was “something about the difference between being a carpenter’s wife and a fisherman’s wife, something about fatalism, stoicism, primitive ideas about Neptune or Poseidon, the sea, the cold grey depths. But no, no, no, the meaning would not come, the story would not come.

Then write the opening, I said. Nothing more, nothing explained. Just write these women, watching, as the trawler is raised. What is happening? Who stands where, who feels what? What is the tone, the colour, the music?

I imagined something like: The cranes are ready, they slap down into the green sea and I watch. Soon they will begin to raise the “Dark Moon” and bring out our men. On my left is Martha, widow of a fisherman, the first mate. I am the widow of the captain. On my right is the woman whose husband was a carpenter who drowned with the others.

What came to me, for me was the fact that the carpenter was different, his wife different. They were separate. They did not belong. The fishermen’s widows understood the needs of the carpenter’s wife, so they allowed the boat to be raised. But the carpenter’s wife, the widow, was not one of them.

This is not the opening, merely a simple one of mine, but what the writer’s opening began to do is reveal the crux, the otherness, the separatedness of the carpenter’s wife.

Before the student had started we had got close to the feelings, but any true articulation had been impossible. Now the opening, the voice (far better than the above) had the smell of the answer, the tone required, and the specifics of separateness.

Now all the student needed to do was describe the lifting, inter-cut the dilemma and retain (but never describe) the sense of separation, of difference.

And it worked. The boat is raised. Close to tears now and they bring out the first body, wearing orange oilskins. It is the captain, the narrator’s dead husband. He is laid on the deck.

Then another body. It is the carpenter, a different coloured oilskin, all the fishermen wore orange. The carpenter’s wife says thank-you.

I am not imposing meaning. The student writer is not imposing meaning. We simply feel something but report facts.

It is at this point that the student writes that now they will put the captain’s body back into the trawler, so that he may be drowned again, that he may be given back to the sea.

This might well have finished things, the carpenter still a carpenter, his wife a carpenter’s widow, but, because the writer is following the voice, the feeling, the meaning of the meaning that she cannot touch, spontaneously she wrote that the carpenter’s wife asks for her husband to go back into the coffin-ship.

This was not plotted. This was not planned. What happened for the writer was that the almost-articulatable “meaning” had swollen up through the words and a simple action had revealed what she had been feeling all along.

The carpenter’s wife gives back the carpenter to the sea. Now the carpenter is one with fishermen. The carpenter’s widow is now a fisherman’s widow. There is a closure, a fullness. Nothing is explained, it is all contained within. We have described love by showing it happen, shown understanding by seeing someone understand. The light that will not focus shines all through the work, illuminating, moving, shaping the whole.

Even now, asked to write ten words answering, “What is the theme of this story?” the student is uncomfortable. She should say, “Read the story, the theme is there. That is enough for me.”

I cannot explain love, but I can write stories where people fall in love. I cannot explain, quite, where stories come from, but I can tell stories about stories coming together. I do not want to know exactly what I feel. I just want to feel something I have never felt before.

I want to ache, to feel those roses, falling, one, by one, by one, into the sea.

3,775 words

Philosophy! Philosophy Report 2011-001

2011-10-06T10:57:00.004+01:00

2011 was the last year of even vaguely-sane university fees, so a few months ago, as my marriage had disappeared down the Swanee, I decided to sign up "for something", something to give me a focus for the next three years.

I first managed to re-instate my Open University "cred" (I'd not sat a few exams and was "restricted") and duly paid out the £700 UK Pounds for a 60-Point unit (one sixth of a degree) starting October 1st.

By joining then (and I must do a 60-Pointer next year too) I get all or most of the OU degree in £700 chunks rather than the new "bargain" price of £2,500 (COUGH!).

MEANWHILE I managed to get on to a full-time bricks and mortar degree at Birkbeck (London). Big decision time. Should I drop the OU? If I did I'd never be allowed back on an OU course. If something went wrong at Birkbeck, I was stuffed.

So I'm signed up on TWO University courses running concurrently!!!

One small plus is that (this year) both courses are in Philosophy. Next year I can do Economics or Politics with the OU, and "sort of" do a PPE Degree (Politics, Philosophy & Economics).

Today in London will be my third "proper" day. Too early to genuinely comment, but yesterday's lecturers were good and one crazy, skinny Scotsman was superb.

Travel is, at the moment, a bit of a drag, but at some point I expect to move to Reading, just 25 minutes from London, and 15 minutes bus-ride from the college.

On an enjoyment scale of 1-10, I was thinking 3-4 at Induction, rose to 5 Day One, 7 yesterday.

Will report anon.

Alex

2011-10-06T10:00:00.004+01:00

Thursday

I’m reading about him now, watching old videos on You-Tube, listening to great music, remembering the awe, the way the world was so open then, and everything bigger, more possible, more new.

I heard last night, in the early hours. He was just fifty-six, impossibly young. Now, smelling toast and coffee, noting that I still beat on, I wonder about him, the him walking away from it, the him returning, the him in suit and dickie-bow, the him in jeans and black T, the older him, the deeper, richer him, the cancered him, the man but the man containing all those other men.

It was so damned cute that little computer, and it talked. It loved its Dad, how could it not?

My son sits in the front room. The television rattles, he has a lap-top on his thigh, a phone blipping tweets, something or other playing in one ear. A hundred miles away a man with a beard talks to him about Business and Finance and my son pretends to listen. This is called being at University. How long is three years, and where will it be? My son just eats it up. He expects this and he expects the next thing; there will always be things and next things and better things. This is how the world is.
For my son.

This morning, because it's morning, because the sun is up, he can slide into a small blue car, be at his shiny gymnasium in minutes, sharpen up, thicken. He already has, no doubt with that something or other in his ear, with messages flying, sticking, accumulating. His life comes dripping in, dropping in. Rise, light up say nothing, just wait. Things will always come.

I am trying to remember when it was the active way. First, survive. We ate fish, we ate meat. We hid from the rain. We held heavy books. We wrote things down. There were mothers and fathers and dark corners and pain.

But for those after us, like my son, things will always come. There is no need for an emergency kit. They will turn up the volume for that something in their ear, the song overwhelming. There will be nothing to worry about. They have seen it all before, heard it all before. And tomorrow, if nothing intervenes, we will repeat.

08:38 Thursday October 6th. Prompts

2011-10-06T08:38:00.005+01:00

OK, so a list of writing prompts is not exactly unusual for me, but as well as my oft-posted prompts, a new thing for me. I shall attempt to write a piece, too, (using the prompts) and then post it!

I'll try to add a photo or two every day.

Think of them as prompts. Really tho, I'm posting cos I like the picture!

That was a lucky shot taken at The Emirates Stadium (Arsenal). Half-time and I look round and see these two guys leaning over with the big screen behind them. The shot is "natural" (unprocessed, no Photoshop) but most other photographers argue that it IS Photo-shopped!

Today's Prompts

01 Just Fifty-Six

02 The Smell of Burning Toast, Coffee

03 Emergency Kit

04 Does Anyone know where we parked the car?

05 Victoria & Albert

06 Kindle Hire £152 per half-day

07 She sits quietly on the burning sofa

08 Light the Lamp, say nothing, just wait.

09 The Weight of the Average Cream-Cake

10 First, Survive.

11 I have seen this all before, heard this before.

12 Tomorrow, if nothing intervenes

13 Swamps, Leeches, Snakes and Stuff. It's still the way home.

14 This morning, because it's morning, because the sun is up

15 The Picture Below

16 We eat fish, we eat meat. We eat.

17 TASK: Pick the wildest, heaviest tune you know (eg some Metal/Rock) play it on repeat, as loud as is legal, then write a flash without stopping. Let the song overwhelm you.

18 The boy in the front room

19 How long is three years, and where will it be?

20 Girl with funny accent

21 My Mother's Lips

22 Two Little Ducks, Sweaty Armpits

23 ArseBook

24 I am compelled to pick you up, and pick you up.

A New Start

2011-10-06T08:33:00.003+01:00

I have neglected this blog somewhat - lots of life-getting-in-the-way excuses. Mine has gone pear-shaped in the last two years.

Anyway, here I am, back, lots going on and today I set in motion the next 373 days.

It's my numpty-numpth birthday a week tomorrow and so I figured (I often start on a birthday rather than, say, January 1st) I would go for a specific amount of new writing in that "year" and at the same time blog about the other stuff in my life, Open University and a full-time Philosophy Degree at Birkbeck.

Prompts 08:30 Saturday 10th

2011-09-10T08:32:00.000+01:00

Reading about Mero

Watford: North Stand

At Night the Dead come down to the river

Filling in the Diary

A very small bird, but still a bird

Perishable

What we need most we cannot learn

Gold Cloth

How to we hold on to our soul?

Flags

Now that you're here, when are you leaving?

A Tenth Anniversary

The Sun Breaks Through

BALL

Good Morning, Mrs Tavistock

The red dog roams the hospital corridors

You could come over on Sunday?

Thurs/Fri Midnight Prompts

2011-09-08T23:34:00.001+01:00

Everyone knows, of course they do

A little bit of change

Taliban 1 Our Lot 0

At the end of the day, all things being equal

RUNNING

I go back to the garden, the dark garden

Looks like you took a wrong turn

You asked for a man. You got me.

My mother could not look at me

We have grown accustomed. This is how we are.

From my navel, heading south

GUIDE BOOK

Darkness slides in, the bar lights flicker

BREN

Not far from here, in an old, crusty apartment

The true function of love

Green beans, carrots, nuts and bolts

RIFLE

You forgot how to love me, but not the other stuff

Prompts 0700 Thursday 8th

2011-09-08T06:59:00.001+01:00

Mission to Zimbabwe

Archbishop's daunting trip is worthwhile

No longer cuckoo

The party is united behind me

The Mistress

Fingers on Buzzers

Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet & Watch

Why Teacher loves Thomas

Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees

Four children, fifteen years older

Risen

90% Downloaded

The charms of the female patient

Slide to Unlock

20 Possible fathers

What's between the covers, stays between the covers

The consolations of philosophy

Bring!

Lindsey for Dinner tonight

Try it!

2011-09-06T10:58:00.001+01:00

The number of participants grows.

Feel free to come to Boot Camp Keegan and join us for the rest of September's Flash Blast.

It's free. It's fun. It will expand your writing horizons

Tuesday 6th 1100

2011-09-06T10:57:00.000+01:00

The Good Hostage Handbook

Angels and the Theory of Knowledge

The Art of Being Good

In Various Scenes Unobserved

The small rocks at the base of mountains

BUSH

There is a little thrill in killing

IVY

She sucked his life from him

ACORN

The spade rusts

On the banks of the Twyi

Come, child, see the sun as it moves to sleep

TREE

Your arrival, and I must leave

Allegedly, it's logic

PING!

We try but the rhythm is disturbed, the floor ripped open

The occasional Chinese

I stink, therefore I am.

Marmalade

Translating it back to Welsh

Betty, hush a while, for I have in me a...

Tuesday 6th 0710

2011-09-06T07:12:00.001+01:00

And so here I am, trying not to listen too hard

A Bad Back

Meet me at Baker Street

up Three Pounds

Reading Jean Paul Sartre

THIMBLE

In my chains, tonight I am singing

LAME

Between the Philosopher and a Hard Place

JESUS

A Cold Wind comes through

Hopscotch

He said, smiling, "Bleed on to the page..."

Joining Birkbeck

Like a little boy playing marbles

A Really Good Idea!

At a quarter-to-ten, they sat down to dinner

Influence

Murder: the Basics

The Smell of Baking Bread

My Beloved Jailer

When it is not what it will be, or should it be

Prompts Monday 5th 10:40

2011-09-05T10:37:00.001+01:00

I am deceiving you

I stood like a God

It is hard to pretend the women are not there

A crocodile, waiting

Come in, friend

Finally, I can feel it. It is turning

BEANS

We know nothing of days like those, nothing

They are my mothers

Her belly long and flat

CHECK

What is it, this beauty?

Look at the sky!

The heifer nuzzling the fence

and even if I could I would not

Wheeling and wheeling above the carrion

Sunday 4th Prompts

2011-09-04T11:23:00.000+01:00

It's not how good you are

Logic: A Graphic Guide

Call from Australia

Death of a Nation

Titanium

That changed the world

Year Zero

Killing the Children of Iraq

Truth & Lies

It's how good you want to be

Chaucer's Pouch

A Sort of Theory of Knowledge

Being Good

Eight MILLION Abortions and Counting...

Cower

Crowded by Ghosts

GAS

Piping in the Valley

I have girdled the earth, I have felt the sun

Friday Prompts

2011-09-02T00:33:00.001+01:00

(There are more prompts at Boot Camp)

Bad Luck Bed & Breakfast

Marco Polo Jelly

I hear the men singing

and Tonic

Bertrand reckoned differently

This is your week

LOGIC

The Nation's favourite suicide

Cagoule in the wind

I have to be up at five

The weight of Academia

Oh father, my father, my father

The Ice-Cream Van

Bread Pudding

How my daps smelt then

Cheese

And so, bed?

Yes, I have a bus pass. So?

Her we go round the mulberry bush

It's all a matter of perspective

McGinty's Cottage

September Blast Prompts 003

2011-09-01T07:35:00.000+01:00

I stumbled down the stairs towards the singing

Raw Mango

It felt like the world was too large

The Generals

My suit does not fit, nor do I.

Not Losing

The broken window, light bleeding on the floor

PEA

Of white islands, cold, clear sea

I once was six, without troubles

CAMERA

Cattle trucks clanking slowly. Afternoon Heat

DRAIN

There was a fat man there, with a whistle and a hat

So easily doth love depart, so sudden.

Ten Green Bottles

An aeroplane, lights winking, red-green, red-green-red.

BLINK

All that morning, all that afternoon, barely breathing

Nettle

The black maid singing by the line

Potato

Watch Autumn, it does not come, it rises through

A face, and in her eyes, stars

They may not mean to but they do.

September Blast Early Prompts II

2011-08-31T23:40:00.000+01:00

I am out most of Thursday so here is a second set of prompts to cover.

01 Suggested Preparatory Reading

02 I like being outdoors.

03 The quiet life of the night-time computer

04 Shoulder to shoulder, the unemployed...

05 All Saints

06 They say you're proud but you are simply quiet

07 On the wind, is it?

08 Wonder Boys

09 The Book of Magic

10 A story beginning: "I am not lying, but I can't be sure."

11 Penicillin

12 The Art of the Generous exit

13 Sign Here

14 I think it's beetroot

15 Do you fear living?

16 She is writing something in the sand

17 Lundy

18 A Dead Professor, probably male

19 Or Chastity

20 Why I shop at the P O.

21 Cruising

22 Do not go gentle

23 Let me die a young man's death

24 Two Dozen Roses

Sunday Practice Prompts II at 17:15

2011-08-28T17:11:00.001+01:00

Begin again, summon the hearers

Every town is my home town

I shall walk through frost and fire

No, forgive me

If you did not exist

I am sick, I am sick

The chair is empty

It is late afternoon, the light is weak

The stink of fox

This is what we see, that is what you feel

Notes in Latin

Nothing is lost but much is missing

Like a hungry bear in bushes

Why cling?

Now he is free of the earth

Drag him into the sun and let him sleep

Looking at my father's face

Mother, how long have you been watching?

You may promise anything

As far as I know I am not dead.

The light upon the wheat

Who can remember Arram?

This is where I fell

Then a formal feeling comes

Practice Prompts Sunday 11:15

2011-08-28T11:24:00.000+01:00

What has been gathered

A snowflake, a feather

Cut off the telephone

Sweep up the wood

No sun, no sea, no light rising

I do not quite recall the face, tho light still glows

Pause, but then get on

The earth will lightly cover them

My little man, my man, what gave me life

The greatest, inside the smallest

The streets are cold, the houses dark

After the shipwreck, the reef and pretty fishes

After snow, what a tree!

There were people who loved him, who hoped

Whatever intent the sky

Like a ship, some say, as it dips from sight

How was it? Before? After?

Into clay, and yet I hear breathing

Listen, you need to understand...

What it was was money, what it was was waste

Practice Prompts IV Friday 09:55

2011-08-26T09:55:00.001+01:00

Sat in Snow

I have a feeling we are in the wrong place

Born, grew, died

Ding-Dong Bell

I want to be a cow, or possibly a shiny red bucket

BLING

Various restaurants, various waiters

Philosophy

Something is in the sky

MOUNTAIN

There are man words for this in Tibet

MUG

I'd like to take you (stop there)

NAIL

Consider this thing that has died

OK! OK! OK! OK! OK!!!!!

I have often walked down this street before

New Orleans

We cannot see beyond it. Is there a beyond?

On the toilet, late.

Love rises up in us.

It's a stain, like tea, or blood

18:20 Thursday

2011-08-25T18:18:00.001+01:00

I am pebble

Just off the highway, not far from Santa Fe

I am writing this, thinking

Have you forgotten how it was?

I'd love a Mac

For all the bodies butchered

Stripes

They are drowning in mud

Accidental Jennifer

LUCIFER

Now it is evening, so I dress

CHINESE

Nothing will stop us, not parents, nothing

Eyes dumb with sadness

Turnbull's Problem

The smell of meat on the wind

TICK-TOCK

He is here, handsome, evil

BLUE

A snail on the window

Life steps back to look in awe at us

Thursday Morning Practice Blast Prompts II 08:23

2011-08-25T08:30:00.000+01:00

When I woke up I was in a dark room

Do you like pie?

It may be fog, but it isn’t fog

AURA

I could do nothing except listen

FEST!

The Weight of the average child

Simple Simon

Some still protruded from his chest

PLUG

On the other hand, a maggot

LYNX

The evening slips into you as you slip into the evening

Black Butterfly, BLACK.

A dried out dog.

The world of lost poems

Not to have fire, to have only water

The decorators are here

My dark father, our dark fathers

Grim houses, dusty streets, the sound of waste

So this God, I mean…

Moon Fingers

The same skin is not the same skin

Some back-alley in Marseilles

September is a Blast!!

2011-08-19T11:01:00.001+01:00

Boot Camp opens up for a FLASH BLAST in September. Prompts twice a day, maybe some "3's" and all participants trying to write AT LEAST 20 pieces, but hopefully 30+ 1+ a day) for the month.

Contact me by email or FB-Mail if you're interested and please spread the word. These BLASTS are amazingly productive and produce some fine work

I will shortly be announcing a tie-up with an internet lit-mag which will publish a Best-Of"

Email me, FB-Mail me or go to the open part of Boot Camp

HERE

http://bootcampkeegan.yuku.com/forums/63/2011-Boot-Camp-PUBLIC-Visitors-Coffee-Shop-amp-Information#.Tk4zfTuaE98

and post a hello/confirm interest

Alex Keegan

July Prompts

2011-07-10T08:13:00.000+01:00

We were talking about great things

Tiffany

Like old men shuffling towards the game

Smoke

The feathers in the pillow

Salad

Mind the Gap

SEA

I dream of colour magazines

Four men in overalls, Monday lunch

I had just poured a glass of wine

How the sun beats

What gets me know, is not what she said

TICKETS

A story beginning: "OH, she was beautiful, and in that dress..."

and so it ends

There's an argument that it's all a big mistake

Various knives

Jammed inside are men, and all in grey

Consider one more option

July Blast Prompts 01

2011-07-01T08:15:00.000+01:00

We drifted, waiting for help to arrive

A kind of rude health

On day, things will be different

There are places where the sea forgives and mountains move

and things will begin and have an end

First you have to catch the snake

The bodies of the young are larger

My father was wheelchair-bound, and looking back, he was always wheelchair bound

I suspect, but do not know, that I am lying

CROW

It is euphemistically called, "A Girl's Weekend."

I suspect I will miss things, dead

A lot of time in kitchens

Suddenly, sun. Eventually, rain.

EGG

It is a quite ordinary funeral. I could just say "funeral"

I am working my way through trees

BLANK

Love, or an approximation

And then they tell me the average, £29,672.

2011-05-05T11:42:00.002+01:00

Boot Camp numbers are currently on the low side so we are offering a new deal
to allow interested writers to try the BC experience.

The first four weeks free (no grid) to NEWBIES.

Or (again NEWBIES only)

£100 up front for membership to the end of August (includes grid)

Please contact AK on alex.keegan

AT

btinternet.com

or go to BootCampKeegan on Yuku.com.

Please spread the word.

Alex

0,025 Prompts

2011-02-09T07:02:00.001Z

A – with astonishment

B – If I should pass through this and become another

C - Talcum

D - I am troubled by the emptiness of graves, by lapping water

E - Oil

F – If I should hear a knock and decide to answer

G – A stage and all us playing

H – Blisters

I – You rise, you wash you read about the times

J - How a nail hammered, how the blood erupts

K - A Story beginning: The naked will be clothed

L – If I should see the sweet-starred Heavens and suddenly understand

M – We will pickle it and return to it later

N - I preferred my lies Goddamned

O – I am like a child who has never seen an apple. You are someone who has never seen the sea

P – Soldier, Spy

Q - Anyone could live here. I do

R – The Kingfisher kills

S – As we walked out that evening, into the sounds of love

T – Numbers, umbrellas, other sundry things

U - Washington

V - Lovers disappearing into woods

W – This is how we will be

X – When the war is over we will talk again

Y – Shelter here, though various ills are within

Z – Upon your Houses!

Prompts 0.024 Friday 4 Feb

2011-02-04T09:35:00.001Z

A – One-two-three drains

B – contrail

C - How heavy rain folds

D - An American in Paris

E - his tiny heartbeat

F – Where the end of the road actually is

G – bring down the walls

H – Blue Apples

I – I may not get up today

J - as they pass a pillar is between them

K - A Story beginning: Look, it wasn't my fault, all right?

L – Don't trust me. I'm pretending to be a doctor

M – two, very young, walking through the corn, bright sun

N - Bluebells

O – Chicken Run

P – a rose is a rose is a rose

Q - Planet

R – Old movies should be black and white

S – The sea is calm tonight

T – She's not that heavy

U - Perowne, the terrible, boring man

V - in his sleep

W – I quite like Barabas, actually

X – office black

Y – Two coffees, very black

Z – Martha Reeves

Find Your SELF

2011-02-03T09:59:00.001Z

On using and abusing prompts, on finding stories, on finding yourself, on being lazy, on being like everybody else.

Most short-story writers BORE me. How many stories do you remember? How many stories still sit, burning in your gut? If you answer “a hundred” I will be staggered, stunned. Isn’t it probably less than twenty? Now think, in a year how many shorts would you read? In your life how many have you read? Have you read a thousand short-stories? Almost certainly. I suspect I have averaged AT LEAST two stories per day since 1991. 20 years, x two stories x 365 days a year. That is 14,600 short-stories.

Seriously, I think of:

Saul Bellow’s “A Silver Dish”,

Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”;

Lawrence Sargent Hall’s The Ledge”

Carver’s “A Small Good Thing” and “Cathedral”

Barry Targan: Harry Belten and the Mendelssohn Concerto

And I start slowing down. That’s CRAZY!

OK, so if I worked on my memory, drag down the books from the shelf, flicked through Best American Short Stories of the Century, there’s 85 stories. Can I add those? Well, actually, no I can’t.

I am sure I could produce a list of two, three, four thousand “fine” stories, stories that were beautifully crafted. There are probably upwards of fifty-thousand such “excellent” works in print.

But how many HIT me, hurt me, entered me, changed me, made my universe shimmer as if something came from nowhere and became a part of me?

I’m older now, more pathetic. I suspect if I got into the groove I could reach 50 stories like that, maybe 100, but I would be shocked if I ever got to 200. Yet I have almost certainly read twenty THOUSAND stories.

Does that mean I don’t read, don’t absorb, don’t EAT fiction, or does it mean that these stories don’t have that true sensibility, that extra, that depth, that power, that finesse to really, absolutely MATTER?

I’ll return to this subject but right now I want to turn to flashing, using flash-prompts and creating stories that matter.

Someone in Boot Camp posted yesterday that they “read through” (think SKIM) a set of prompts and if they are not immediately BITTEN, if a prompt doesn’t instantaneously leap out and grab them by the throat, they read on, move on.

REALLY?

And then they end “just using one” (which sadly means THINKING) and they end up disappointed, with a flash that “just feels like work”.

This writer thinks that a story just comes “given” in an instant, without work, just sitting there, nestling in a short phrase. But IS THAT the case or should we be doing work to find the story (and this, most definitely does NOT mean that dreaded activity of THINKING)…

DEFINING THINKING

If I am sat on the toilet, driving my car, writing a flash, a short, a page from a novel, I’m “thinking”, that is my mind is doing stuff. I am writing this right now, and barely thinking (about what I’m writing) but I am also “thinking” (I need another word) in a very uncontrolled, casual, peripheral, spontaneous way about other things which may or may not rise to full consciousness.

I know for example that I am thinking about The Beatles, going to Starbucks later to work on a novel, thinking (very, very loosely) about that novel, which makes me think of my parents (both dead) about my sisters scattered around the globe, about my brother in Australia, about being a father, my exes, my kids going on, the Senghennydd Pit Disaster, where exactly Abercarn is, about my tax returns, about Reading Football Club (and truly a hundred, a thousand other things).

The more I consciously LOOK at any of these things, the more (a) I will become obvious and unsurprising and (b) the more the other things will be attenuated. Put simply, there is “THINKING” where we concentrate, use our education, language and experience, apply logic, begin to intuitively compare and contrast, FOCUS (meaning turn off the other, richer, wilder things) and basically remove the angelic and replace with the worker ant.

Right now I need to choose words to distinguish TYPES of thinking, but right now I can’t be arsed, because if I do I will turn on my left brain (already it’s happening and this article is in danger.)

For now, bad thinking is deliberation, study, repetition, note-taking, analysis, conscious thought about how we might combine X and Y, and maybe use Z. It’s the kind of thinking where you could mutter aloud about your process, if you chose.

What matters here, what is wrong here is that it’s 99% likely that when you BADTHINK any story or poem you create will be something created outside of you where you PRETEND to move inwards. It’s 99.9% the brain, at least 90% left-brain, and if anything of your soul is on the page, it’s accidental.

There is nothing of your soul, your gut, your sex, your hidden self (and I don’t have to mean secrets)… what appears on the page is (more-or-less) the same old stuff, stuff I can read almost anywhere, with just (maybe) a small influence that is your voice, your background, your reading, your religion, your education.

The “same-old-stuff” pejoration is two-fold. First it’s the same-old, same-old that “anybody” can write. There is nothing to amaze. Secondly it’s the same-old YOU. Again nothing surprises us, nothing therefore moves us.

That is, (a) you write the same stories that we see hundreds and thousands of times from others and (b) You write that story in exactly the same way with 99.9% of your angelic state turned off. Thus you bore both yourself and me, your reader.

Back to prompts. I once posted a set of prompts. One was “My brother’s habit is annoying”, another was “Blue Apples”, another was “Kingfisher” and there was one about a dairy, or an ice-cream factory. I think there was one about a car or a van and another about a cat.

Now just think of “My brother’s habit is annoying”. BADTHINK.

We could write about two brothers (duh) and one picks his nose, or always rings at a bad time, or can’t hold onto his money… and the other is pissed off having to see that disgusting habit, or forever having to bail the other brother out.

BORING!

But totally natural, totally reasonable.

We worked “naturally”, thought “loosely” (so we thought) and came up with “scenarios” any of which we MIGHT be able to turn into a “half-decent” flash.

Burn it. Use it to burn down the offices of every womag company. We get one shot at LIVING, or being, of expressing, of opening up our soul to the souls of others. Why then do we REPEAT the shit of others and pretend we are being original?

Express yourself.

Your SELF is your soul, it’s the real you, the you in a quiet, empty house nursing a glass, the you deserted, the you in love, the you discovering you have breast cancer (or testicular cancer, guys). What is your ESSENCE?

Why do we sometimes love people we dislike?

Why do we sometimes like people even though some of the things they do or are could not be further away from our set of values? I have a good friend who is so racist it makes me laugh (maybe why we are friends). If he was LESS racist I would probably not be his friend.

We connect, or should connect at the level of the soul, the gut, the sex, pheremones and nuance, not crude, same as everybody else stockness, cliché, and stereotype.

Get away from repeating the work of others. Start talking to your self. Note your (space) self.

When I read that “habit” line I let my brain go and got a story in an instant. How?

I surprised myself!

My brother's habit is bloody annoying. He’s Friar Tuck and I’m running as Maid Marion and we are only four miles into the London Marathon and the swish-swish-swish-fucking-swish is driving me crazy.

In an instant I had a rhythm, conflict, and a route through the story. I’ll return to the story itself later. It turned out to be a story about ex-soldiers who became mercenaries then were changed by a single incident and afterwards become volunteer mine-clearers. They are all missing a body-part and running in The London Marathon to raise money for their charity.

Where THE FUCK did that come from?

It most certainly did not come, AND NEVER WOULD HAVE COME from BADTHINKING.

Today’s prompts are below. (I don’t like them much, my brain is not good at the moment.)

Not treading on cracks

A train, moving slowly

Winter sun rolls up the slopes

West Side Story

The child speaks before words

Joe Sweeney is dying

Cardboard offices, plastic restaurants

I may have actually sorted my tax

How good is it sometimes, to just close your eyes

A woman I have never seen before, not seeing now

Menopause. Just one word.

Trust me, I'm a doctor

Like boys playing on thin ice, waiting for their tragedy

TREE

What's in a name?

It is only love; let's blunder on

Letter from Outcast 17

Clingwrap my bleeding, aching heart

Rawhide

Boy, you gotta carry that weight

It's neither pink nor cerise, but it isn't black

He didn't drop the paper round, his car was cold

Wash then, like Pilate

SUITS

A nice, gentle, simple cup of tea

Jim Reeves

It is so easy (and stupid) to read from top to bottom, NOT be hit and give up. There are 26 prompts. You can read them top to bottom, bottom to top, in alphabetical order, and combined.

Combing them into pairs you have 325 combinations. That’s 351 prompts. Enough?

Sometimes two ordinary prompts combine into an explosive mixture.

There’s a train, it’s moving slowly through the back-streets, careful not to tread on the cracks.

What the F---? A train thinking about its luck? A superstitious train? You think I could ever sit down and DECIDE to imagine a superstitious train?

Look how easily It is only love; let's blunder on // Clingwrap my bleeding, aching heart // Rawhide (I was thinking of the TV show, but RAW-HIDE? Goes with bleeding heart dunnit?)

And A woman I have never seen before, not seeing now

And maybe How good is it sometimes, to just close your eyes and perhaps the one about a child?

It’s EASY.

IF YOU LET GO, DON’T CARE, COMBINE PLAYFULLY, NOT CARING, NOT THINKING, JUST SWIMMING IN THE WORDS, NODDING AS SENTENCES FLOAT BY, SMILING, DRIFTNG IN STORY-LAND.

My story “The Fucking Point-Two”, the one that started with Friar Tuck, was written in about half an hour, 1,845 words. It was a long time ago, but for sure it took a lot less than an hour. It went straight out and won a first prize, not in a flash competition (though it was written as a flash) but in a story competition.

I didn’t write it. My unconscious did, with a little help from my soul. The story contained ALL the prompts from that day.

Take off the straitjacket and let your self emerge.

Prompts Set 0,023

2011-02-03T08:03:00.001Z

A – Not treading on cracks

B – A train, moving slowly

C - Winter sun rolls up the slopes

D - West Side Story

E - The child speaks before words

F – Joe Sweeney is dying

G – Cardboard offices, plastic restaurants

H – I may have actually sorted my tax

I – How good is it sometimes, to just close your eyes

J - A woman I have never seen before, not seeing now

K - A Story beginning: Menopause. Just one word.

L – Trust me, I'm a doctor

M – Like boys playing on thin ice, waiting for their tragedy

N - TREE

O – What's in a name?

P – It is only love; let's blunder on

Q - Letter from Outcast 17

R – Clingwrap my bleeding, aching heart

S – Rawhide

T – Boy, you gotta carry that weight

U - It's neither pink nor cerise, but it isn't black

V - He didn't drop the paper round, his car was cold

W – Wash then, like Pilate

X – SUITS

Y – A nice, gentle, simple cup of tea

Z – Jim Reeves

Prompts Set 0,022

2011-01-26T12:33:00.000Z

A – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

B – If I hadn't tripped over the tramp

C - Carousel

D - Oh Lord, Where Did the Feeling Go?

E - Woman is the Nigger of the World

F – Thirty-five, going on ninety

G – Now is the winter of our discontent

H – Letter from HMRC

I – I have often walked down this street before

J - Even now, after the service, after the letters

K - A Story beginning: Three years of whispering, seven of forgetting

L – I have had scientific training

M – Everything will be returned to its proper place

N - Cry Murder!

O – I prefer my cave

P – Did we make them leave? Did we say the right thing?

Q - Witness

R – Letter from Flaubert

S – Bonanza

T – The Things We Carry

U - In Parliament, more or less

V - Twitching

W – Dirtier than you would expect

X – He has a book and reads it, reads it, reads it

Y – Water!

Z – I hear the sound of distant drums

Prompts Set 0,021

2011-01-25T17:03:00.000Z

A – Sisters

B – The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Black Death

C - I'm on a See-Saw

D - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

E - Only Women Bleed

F – Changing a Bulb

G – Uploading

H – No, she's out.

I – Please find enclosed, one...

J - This is the summer version

K - A Story beginning: I guess it's going to be dark soon

L – Rock, Rock.

M – It's a far, far better thing

N - How the West was won

O – You wave a gun and complain that a man with a knife is dangerous

P – Excuse me Sir

Q - PLONK!

R – Eloise, my dear, I have written to you to

S – Rawhide

T – The Smell of Chrysanthemums

U - OK, it's over

V - A Bun in the Oven

W – As far as you can go on the District Line

X – Something about electrolyte balance

Y – Rioja

Z – Can you hear it, that low whistle

Prompts Set 0,020

2011-01-18T08:48:00.001Z

A – He ain't heavy, he's my brother

B – Dancing in the dark

C - Smoke gets in your eyes

D - If I ruled the world

E - Groovy Kind of Love

F – At seventeen I read a poem

G – What Innocence? What Guilt?

H – Suspicious of my Nation

I - we are the law-makers

J - Looks pretty waterproof to me

K - A Story beginning: There are sunsets and sunsets

L – Stone on Stone

M – Something rotten in the state of Denmark

N - Merchants of Culture

O – I have destroyed your house. You have destroyed my life

P – Miss! Miss!

Q - C-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-a-a-a-ak!!

R – My Dear Robert, it's been a long time...

S – Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

T – The Smell of the trenches

U - They released the doves. THEY shot them

V - Hitch-hiking in Vietnam

W – On the Underground

X – I don't feel right, I just don't

Y – A fine Chianti

Z – We hear footsteps, whisper, touch our skins