On Writing

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prompts List 0,018

A – The Smell of Toast

B – Going to Meet the Man

C - Saying it seven times makes it true

D - Slide

E - I should be going, if that's all right?

F – Pick a Colour

G – Not Guilty, No, Not Guilty

H – The Cocktail Party

I - The smell of Sunday Lunches, radio through open windows

J - My Grandfather's house

K - A Story beginning: There are many ways to look at love

L – Scrabble

M – It was good but I fell asleep

N - Going down for Mam's order

O – Various Old Records

P – I need to think, give me a minute or ten

Q - Petit Pois

R – I need to take my tablets

S – Clip go the shears boys, clip, clip, clip.

T – People come here to die.

U - Pink, a sky as pink as a bridesmaid's dress

V - Coals to Newcastle

W – We gotta get out of this place

X – The Wart

Y – I was Kaiser Bill's Batman
Z – Volare

Prompts Set 0,017

A – With my little pick and shovel

B – Appointment in Lothbury

C - It's arguable, yes, but it still isn't so

D - Washed away

E - I will rise up and be gone

F – How we intermet

G – Buzz Lightyear's Dilemma

H – She had a little number

I - On a night like this, what else?

J - The soporific tucking of the old hall clock

K - A Story beginning: At the start we didn't think it would be hard

L – Monopoly Money

M – Where the marks are. It's hard to believe

N - What's fer tea, Mam? Shit and Sugar

O – It might as well rain until September

P – Desert

Q - Another word for Broccolli

R – A Rose is a rose is a Rose

S – There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Lisa, Dear Lisa

T – The TB Hospital

U - The Greenest Skies

V - Grapes from Morrocco

W – Sort of a Gunslinger

X – The way it lurks and quietly grows

Y – Don't be Nervous

Z – I have often walked, down this street before

Prompts Set 0,016

A – Dig!

B – Meeting at Waterloo

C - I can, I could, but I can't

D - The shark in the floodwater

E - Considering various alternatives

F – How the sun rises, how it falls

G – Trouble in Toy-Town

H – Beautiful Woman in a Black Dress

I - Love or Sex?

J - The hiss, so gentle, of a gas-light

K - A Story beginning: OK, here we go

L – My son, but I will visit him

M – It happened here but they've taken him away

N - Them what asks don't get

O – Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain

P – Seas, Oceans

Q - TASK: Write a story while listening to Jazz

R – Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy!

S – The hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket

T – Please do not expectorate

U - As I remember it, bright, sky-blue, everything possible

V - Cerise

W – The Shooting of the Coward Arthur P Jones

X – I have a pain in my stomach

Y – Breakdown
Z – The sea is calm tonight

Prompts Set 0,015

A – Cleaning the Office

B – Cold Tea in a Sad Cafe

C - Hallelujah!

D - Bugger Me! said the King, and 3 courtiers were killed in the rush

E - TASK: Write a story from the POV of an emotion

F – December, crisp a low light rising

G – Andy Pandy Loves Noddy

H – Lady in Red

I - TASK: Describe a setting showing mood without mentioning mood

J - Penny-Farthing

K - A Story beginning: From the year Dot

L – My daughter has finished her reading

M – This was Bleaney's room. That is the bed.

N - You can look but don't STARE

O – The Postman Always Knocks Twice

P – Hills and Valleys

Q - TASK: Write a story while listening to Wagner LOUD

R – Buttercup, a sweet girl...

S – When all is said and done... it's done

T – Not in the tent

U - I want to dress in a cream suit, wear an expensive hat, drive a white Rolls-Royce

V - If it's green it's not your typical green

W – Dreyfus

X – She has not been found

Y – SPLIT

Z – We have no time to stand and stare

2011 Prompts Set 0,014

A – Fleur-de-Lys
B – Dirty nights in seedy motels
C - Bingo
D - The King’s Speech
E - TASK: Write a story involving many colours
F – Seeing this was August, warm soft, the low night falling
G – Tick-Tock, I’m a clock
H – You are beautiful by lamplight
I - TASK: Write a backwards story
J - Bicycles
K - A Story beginning:.
L – The Little Gatsby
M – I have known such lips already. I have known them all
N - Don’t Look Now
O – You’ve Got Mail
P – It’s there. I have to climb it
Q - TASK: Write an animal story without any reference or cheap clues to the animal type
R – Waiting for Daisy
S – After the luncheons, the teas, the formal evenings
T – Apparently, they prevent frostbite
U - A faint light across the causeway, blinking
V - Coabalt Blue
W – Major-General DuFarb
X – Only sort-of a burglary
Y – CRANK
Z – There will be time; there always is

2011 Prompts 0,013

A - All the pretty people

B - My daughter is critiquing a novel, by ---- me!

C - Or we could just sleep

D - The windows are opening, the sun is breaking through

E - TASK: Play some music, something HOT like rock or wild classical, very loud then write something FAST

F - I am Arnold, shit-man, and this is my shit-domain

G - TWANG!

H - I fell in love with the Sally Ann Girl on the tambourine

I - TASK: Write a story based on a lie.

J - As the noose falls

K - A Story beginning: Today, today. It must happen.

L - We, sorry, you, are all so old

M - Here and now, more or less

N - Furry Godmother

O - A story ending: I am leaving now. Don't turn on the light.

P - The river is dirty and old

Q - TASK: Write a story with a stammering narrator with no mention of a stammer or stutter and no s-s-silly stuff.

R - Where's the Galaxy?

S - The Zombie I met in Tesco

T – The Hero's Journey

U - Let us go now, you and I

V - She calls him her BTN, Better than Nothing.

W - Even the silent majority is in uproar

X - The scalpel opens you up like a Christmas Parcel

Y - I am afraid the future is bleak

Z - Tiny Tom

2011 Prompts Set 0,012

A - It was twenty years ago today

B - The muttering streets, the whispering houses

C - What my sister couldn't do

D - Hyancinths are blooming on the verges

E - TASK: Respond to Shakespeare's Othello

F - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

G - CLANG

H - Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

I - TASK: Write a story based on a parable or fable, never mentioning it.

J - You Cannot be Serious

K - A Story beginning: I would walk but the rain is so heavy

L - All the young dudes

M - Yesterday, or a week ago

N - Cinderella, late again

O - A story ending: I cannot feel bad about it.

P - A newspaper came swirling about my feet

Q - TASK: Write a story with a seriously deluded narrator

R - The Moon's a Balloon

S - The dead are never pretty

T – Bring some in a small container

U - Let us go and make our peace

V - My daughter, heavy on the bedroom boards

W - The ping of the microwave

X - You have my heart, bitch!

Y - We will win by October
Z - You wouldn't like it her. Wish you were.

2011 - Prompt Set 0,011

A - Two years dead already, Mam

B - Bratislava or somewhere

C - My father couldn't close the door of the telephone box

D - Her false teeth on the mantlepiece

E - TASK: Turn off your screen or set font colour to white. NOW write

F - Agatha Christie

G - PLONK!

H - Maybe in the front room

I - TASK: Pick to random objects and write their story

J - I made this up, sure I did.

K - A Story beginning: An old church in Ireland

L - All the sad young men, the lost wives

M - I have walked out in the rain, shirtless, free

N - Pooch

O - A story ending: Would you have done any different?

P - Sleeping with Bears

Q - TASK: Write a story that argues with itself

R - I know the dark, really know the dark

S - They are coming for us

T – Squits

U - The nurse is tickling my feet

V - As deaths go, this is pleasant enough

W - A clatter of kitchen metal

X - I will come back, after all you have my liver.

Y - An Easter Rising

Z - You would like it here

2011 Prompts Set 0,010

A - Tea in a Posh Hotel

B - Dropping someone off in Hayward's Heath

C - Here I am, old. It is January somewhere

D - The German is staring from his window

E - TASK: Play The Birdy Song on loop and write a SAD or heavy story

F - A Woman Cleans Up. She will not cry

G - To be eaten, to be divided up.

H - The Fraulein, who turned suddenly on the stairs

I - TASK: Pick a piece of seriously sad music, put it on loop and write something ditzy, happy, or comic

J - I did not make this up

K - A Story beginning: If it keeps on raining

L - The Hitch-Hiker and the Witch

M - Jenkins finally crossed the bridge

N - A little dog in the rain

O - A story ending: My daughter the Racist

P - Yes, it is a dangerous snake, but it's asleep

Q - TASK: Write a story with some phrase or sentence repeating often

R - I am more than a little bit tired

S - I think he died in '62

T – It's probably one of the injectors

U - Run it under a cold tap, luvvy

V - I suppose this is dying

W - Quiet sounds in the kitchen

X - OK, I will go, but I will walk very slowly

Y - Christmas Black

Z - The dogs, smelling of dog, at my feet

2011 Prompts Set 0,009

A - We walk, rest, eat, talk a little

B - SOS, seen from outer space

C - There is no magic

D - We pay, but with a certain anger

E - TASK: Play Buckley's "Hallelujah"on repeat and write a story

F - A drawer full of brass swastikas

G - So many things have passed, will pass again

H - Clarinet

I - TASK: Write something as a response to a Shakespeare play

J - Roundabout

K - A Story beginning: There were three of us, and Jones

L - How love becomes hate

M - Loan

N - A short walk in a storm

O - A story ending: And now I must sleep

P - Something scribbled in my mother's hand-writing

Q - TASK:

R - The Names of the Months

S - Those who are with us, are with us. That is enough

T – Smooth it down

U - I wrote it in San Bartolome

V - Pushing harder, hurting less

W - The evening bells like dying cattle

X - Javelin

Y - Play The Birdy Song for me and dance

Z - I had a strategy when I started

2011 Prompt Set 0,008

A - How ugly, these people

B - I won't see you any more

C - Ploughs cut through the clay

D - The sun on my neck

E - TASK: Play a song on loop, on repeat, three times, then leave it on as you write a story without breaks

F - You sing untrue songs

G - Somewhere a pot bubbles, a bowl is ready

H - Where a paper boat was sailing

I - TASK: Set font-colour to white (so you cannot see what you write) and write a complete flash

........... if you get "lost" just press carriage return a few times and continue. You will need to tidy the story but post the original second

J - Looking at another man's edits.

K - A Story beginning: What will follow may not be accurate

L - Not making love.

M - Carrots

N - I must go down to the sea again

O - A story ending: And that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

P - Plaster of Paris

Q - TASK: Read a poem and respond to it with an answering short-story

R - Dead Horses

S - You cannot imagine how deeply sad I am

T – as if my life had never been

U - Reading Checkhov

V - I had a brother. His name escapes me.

W - The barbarity of the dentist

X - Chick-Chick-Chick-Chick-Chicken

Y - Made in Wales

Z - A French Stick

2011 Prompt Set 0,007

A - A Gardener's World

B - I'm only half a vampire

C - Various Ski Resorts

D - With a bit of luck I could have..

E - The road is long, with many a winding turn

F - A Thousand thanks, effendi

G - Throwing peelings to the dogs

H - Jupiter, just about

I - The road sweats, breathes slowly

J - The humour! The humour!

K - November is a cruel month

L - I am of those things that linger. I do not go away

M - Hurry up please, it's time

N - The boy with sand on his feet

O - In the summer time, you got women, you got women on your mind

P - It could have been the end

Q - Tongue and Groove

R - Come see me under the old clock

S - Marathon

T – What is the root, what is the branch

U - Known as the Czar

V - A star in Australia

W - Originating in India

X - Not all shadows are the same

Y - It means something in french

Z - A French Stick

2011 Prompt Sets 0,006

A - Boy, Beach

B - Not walking the dogs

C - We called, you were not in.

D - Abracadabra

E - Hi Ho Silver Lining!

F - Absolutely, Madam, Of Course

G - As if

H - Juno

I - Barely alive does not mean dying

J - The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Underworld

K - Before I was alive

L - But there again, I could say yes and confuse them

M - The attendant

N - Five Men, two boys and a woman watching

O - Keep on Running

P - A second later

Q - Mortice and Tenon

R - If i had lived on Olympus

S - Cold Feet

T – Another Way

U - The neighbour's dog will not stop barking

V - Tom William's Story

W - Reading Billy Collins

X - Tomorrow could have been another day

Y - Tiramisu

Z - Will you love me yesterday?

2011 Prompts Set 0,005

A - Slate Quarrying in Wales
B - A re-hot cast-iron stove
C - In character
D - And stretched their hands towards the warmth
E - How to Be Alone
F - And unbuttoned their padded jackets
G - As if it were the god of fire
H - At their benches
I - Barely managed to open
J - The Pocket Guide to Love
K - Before the stove’s open door
L - But were not able to feel it immediately
M - Coats and hats
N - Five carpenters were working without
O - Keep me Handy
P - In a minute Grigoriev and Potashnikov knelt
Q - In the middle of the carpentry shop stood
R - One of man’s first gods
S - Since their hands were numb
T – A Cambrian Way
U - The frozen door
V - The new arrivals knelt
W - They threw down their mittens
X - Together the two of them
Y - Took off their hats
Z - What are you doing here?”

WRITE! A LOT

If you write a flash a day, a poem if you can, a longer short-story every week
then the "this one" anxiety begins to go.

You know you wrote seven pieces last week, that you will write another six this week
and next week another seven

it's this SEPARATION, this sense of "This is just me learning to write, THIS story doesn't matter"
that removes fear and opens the unconscious

A Risky Business (1)

A RISKY BUSINESS

I recently read Al Alvarez's "Risky Business", his second set of collected essays (BUY IT!) and have just read his chapter on the concert pianist Alfred Brendel. Yesterday I posted an article "Rembrandt and Raymond Carver" and this morning the Brendel article goes to the same places. I feel an epiphany coming.

When I teach it is very intense. It's a commonplace reaction for writers on my courses to say their head has been turned to mush. More than one has been nervous about driving home (which is why we always suggest an evening dinner on the Sunday where we just laugh and chill.)

I usually say to writers that immediately after a course (ha, I typo'd CURSE, there!) that they may very well have difficulty writing, and if they do write, the writing may appear to be inferior for a while.

I liken it to going up a difficult, dangerous, mountain. Sometimes the route you are on cannot EVER get to the top. Sometimes you have to climb DOWN a little either to find a new route, or to get extra equipment, or maybe, to talk to a Sherpa Guide who knows the way.

That's only part of the problem!

I often say things like: "You must write totally, completely "on theme" where every word is building in the same way."

But I ALSO say, "But you must ignore the theme! Never write thinking of the theme." and I say, "Get the right characters, and the right opening voice, trust the characters to guard the theme."

But how can I force myself into the strictures of theme at the same time as ignoring the theme?

When discussing the writing art we often have to use the art of writing (I mean beyond competent journalism) to get closer, ever closer, to the meaning we are trying to impart. For example in my article "The Seventh Quark: Finding the story" I wrote that I, "Write with light hands."

What follows might be partly random (I hope so.)

In the Brendel article, Alvarez states, "One of the most important lessons Brendel taught Imogen Cooper was that there is a tension that goes all through a piece of music and never lets up. He used to talk of a long silver cord that one pulls on. "He'd crouch down beside the piano and say, 'Go on, pull, pull.' Sometimes there is a little kink in the cord but it never sags. There's always a force irresistibly pulling it from the first note to the last."

THINK THEME, and the tension in a good voice.

"He used to say, 'You've got to get the audience from the first note.' I'd say you've got to get them from the moment you come through the door. How you command the space between the door and the piano makes the audience listen in a certain way. They listen with their eyes and their ears."

Think! Think about presentation. Think about fonts, font-size, single, double or 1.5 line spacing, white space for time-breaks, the size and boldness of the title, the use of italics for emphasis. Think how, the moment that editor or judge sits down with your piece. ALL of it matters.

You are trying to create "A mode of acceptance."

Think how the start shapes the whole. That's why I can predict the final score a story is worth from the opening. That is why 99% of editors and judge know as soon as they've read two paragraphs.
But remember I'm really talking about paradoxes in how I say we should write (if we want to write anything worthwhile.) Paradoxes, or apparent contradictions…

Brendel says performing is a risky business and the concert pianist who wants to make a work new each time he plays must live life dangerously. (Alvarez)

"As a performer, I have become aware of the paradox of my profession," Brendel said. "You have to be in control, and, at the same time, lose yourself completely. You have to think and feel in advance what you want to do and, simultaneously, to listen to what you are doing and react to that. You have to play to satisfy yourself and also play so that the people in the back row will get the message." In other words (Alvarez says) the concert platform is where his two worlds of intellectual control and inspired nonsense interconnect."

Are we talking genius here? No! Of course Brendel is a genius, and Alvarez probably is a genius, but quality craftsmen have to go to this place also, the greatest sportsmen.

We train the body and the mind and then trust the spirit.

I always forget who for sure, but I think it was Harlan Ellison who said we must write and write and write and absorb technique until it runs in our blood.

It is when it's in our blood that we leave room for extra imagination, room for our angelic inner self to speak. Ray Bradbury (I'm pretty sure it was him) said we need to write a million crappy words just to start being a writer. That first million words is our scales, our music theory classes, our hours at the piano, our weekend courses in music, the summer schools, the endless rehearsals.

Then after the million, we start to find ourselves.

We no longer have to think about dialogue, or speech tags, or whether a noun-adjective here is needed for the flow and balance. It is part of us, the hands know where to go. If we apply thought now it's "beyond" it's expressive, it's extra.

Briefly, this is why I believe in the Boot Camp process. I believe that at least 99% of wanabee writers write far too little. In surveys I've done the average was 147 words a day (and remember these are committed writers and they are probably exaggerating their word-counts.)

Stop RIGHT NOW and work out exactly (not roughly) how many creative words you have written this month. It is the 29th December 2010. If you haven't written 14,000 words, if you haven't written a paltry two pages a day, what the fuck are you doing? How can you call yourself a writer if you are writing the odd 200 words when the mood takes you?

Don't cheat. Don't cheat yourself. You are the one that gets hurt. What fresh work did you write yesterday? What fresh work did you produce on Monday? Did you have the weekend off? Were you going out to lunch Friday and never got into the mood? Was there a "really interesting" thread on some noddy web-site and you just had to get involved? My recent favourite in a writing forum not a coffee-shop was "Favourite Handbag?"

Tell yourself the truth.

A RISKY BUSINESS (2) Working Hard & Sitting Still

A RISKY BUSINESS (2) Working Hard & Sitting Still



I intend to write a million words in 2011.



I started 2011 on Boxing Day 2010, to (a) warm up, (b) start to flex my writing muscles, (c) get a few words started of “cushion, (d) to inspire the Boot Campers.



For personal reasons I have had a rotten, miserable writing year. I don’t really deserve to call myself a writer. I could wallow, I could give up. I could pretend that I am burned out, when in reality I’ve just got lazy and my writing muscles have lost their tone. In terms of fiction, since Dec 26th I have only written one piece. It’s not my best, but it is WRITING and by the end of January 2011 I will have written something that I can be proud of.



Now this is not to tub-thump or blow a trumpet over my own hard work. The obvious response (always wrong) in that quantity is achieved at the expense of quality. Not so! Not so! And even if it were so, and from a month's work I got just a single story of quality (I mean real quality) that's 12 great stories a year.



But the millions of words I write have taught me a new language. I can move around tenses and Points of View, appear and disappear as a narrator, do tricks I never dreamt of when I began writing, stuff I couldn't do after five years.



At their own rate, on their own scales Boot Campers are doing the same thing. They are first learning to speak so one day they will be able to sing.

Singing will mean insight, language, a fresh expression, depth of character.



But what is "depth"?



Quoting Alvarez on Brendel again:



Brendel thinks Beethoven's last piano sonata, Op. 111, is a "premeditated conclusion, a last word leading into silence forever."



Discussing a performance of a complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in Munich Alvarez talked of "depth" and then quoted Isiah Berlin.



"Depth is an odd word. It's a metaphor but you can't translate it into other terms. Depth means penetrating into something very basic in oneself, and touching it, and feeling an electric shock."



At the time Alvarez wrote, Brendel was suffering physical frailties that were beginning to restrict his playing. He was getting old, but still learning.



"One does not stop learning," Brendel said. "I've learned how to control certain silences. They depend not just on what you play but on how you look. After the last chord of Op. 111, I don't move. I don't take my hands away from the keyboard, because directly I stir, they applaud. Each time I play the Beethoven cycle the silence gets longer, because I know how to relate to it. I know how to sit still."















On Sitting Still



I once wrote an article (you can read it at The Internet Writers Journal) called Theme Music: Tone is Not an Accident.



NOW, it's not. But when I began writing, long after I was being regularly published, there was tone over here, character over there, and a bit of plot somewhere if I can just find it, and the all important theme which was down the shops buying cigarettes but would be back in five minutes.



Tone is not an accident, not for an experienced writer. Nor is theme, and yet the best writers, those with the strongest, most gut-wrenching or intellectually invigorating themes, can write without worrying about their theme. How?



CHARACTER!



When we begin to get a feeling that a story is coming. I should add here I mean real writing not superficial trivia with a "clever" twist-ending, or that womag bumph or intricately-plotted shoot-em-up, or Dan Brown. I mean writing that matters a little, right now, writing that we return to, dwell in, savour.



When we begin to get a feeling that this kind of story is coming, what happens? If you get an idea, a plot-line, some clever tricks to post here and here and here, then I'm sorry for you. Oh, you might well publish. You might even be flavour of the six months, but you won't be writing.



What about the feeling, what about the ache?



What about that sense of pressure, of something deep in you or way back in time, or maybe some part of your life that only makes sense if you don't ask it questions? Don't you want to know who you are? Why you're here?



Don't you want to know what this is all about?



If we use the brain exclusively – I mean the logical left-brain, the bit we plan with, we cannot get "fresh", we cannot get "insightful". Instead we get the same old same old. It might be re-jigged (if we are really crafty) but it's still the same old. The active left-brain doesn't put things together that don't belong together.



The active left, interfering brain doesn't write:



I used to sit in the hall and stare at the geese on the wall, fascinated because one was chipped and had a white chalk beak. I am not sure I know what love is.



Because all those boring shapers, the life-police, told you that plaster of Paris ducks are nothing to do with "love". If you try to write that paragraph it doesn't happen. You have to let a better, more dangerous, more unpredictable person write it.



If we aren't using the left-brain. If we learn to sit still and let things rise up and emerge, those things are always better, truer, than what we do deliberately.



Think, most importantly about the many constituents of an opening. There is a setting, a tone, a voice, a level of complexity of language, a "colour", a timbre, probably a narrator, a character or characters, some air of musicality.



Where did they come from? Did you sit down with a team of advertising executives and Simon Cowell, and "thrash this thing out"?



Did you go to some stainless city office and listen to a Powerpoint presentation on the commercial viability of the darker character?



Or did something come to you?



If something comes to you, just comes, if you have feelings, these are the things, the powerful things that will matter. But you have to stand aside, trust the spirit, allow the souls of your ancestors if you like, allow the angels and demons to create.



Instead off grabbing at, or "considering", instead of planning why not ask (without asking) what's here, who is she, what does she sound like, what language does she speak? Stay low, don't frighten the visitor. She may have been in the dark for a long time.



This woman, this girl, this gift is incredible. You ask, how can I not control and yet write a controlled work? Surely it's impossible?



Of course, without help. But you have help. Look! She stands there, slightly bewildered. But all she wants is the tiniest of nudges and she will talk, exactly as you imagined, she will act in a way that always seems right, and because she came without force and emerged as a welcome visitor (from another place in you) she will now look after your theme.



Let me be boringly "straight" for a minute. Presume, temporarily, that what I say is true. We have a feeling about a subject. Maybe it's "something" about the cruelty of childless couples here, contraceptive abortions over there. It feels wrong, somehow but it's not as simple as believing abortion is always wrong, and not merely a rant against God. You feel the complexity of the issue, you almost feel you can express it, but it's so hard.



Then one day an abortion clinic is burned down and a passing child is killed. How confused? Or you read of a child who did not abort and is now a famous concert pianist. Something uncaps the ache. You need to say something.

I realise all this seems vague, but it's only "vague" because most of our lives we deal in greater certainties (which are false) and things which we believe are solid (when they are not.)



If you deliberately "take on" these issues, you are not going to access your deep feelings. You are going to access the front of the drawer where sound-bytes and simple fixes are kept.



I wrote a story once when I realised that my socks and underwear drawers each contain maybe fifty items, yet only the front five or ten are used, washed and re-worn. Think of the back of that drawer. We should be accessing it. Most of the time we live in the nearby, the simple, the quick and superficial.



So, instead of diving in, what happens if you close your eyes and see if anybody walks by? What might happen? A young girl who's pregnant? Her mother who's also pregnant? How about the unborn child or the recently aborted? I have no idea, because HERE I'm conscious, talking to you.



If you relax you might see a red sports car, a Frisbee, a line of Keats, and yet know they all combine and say something about abortion. If you learn to be still, someone will step forward.



If you learn to be still, someone will step forward, and that someone knows your point, she simply knows. If deep in you, despite what you might say publicly, something nags and says "wrong, wrong, wrong" you will NOT choose a real character who argues right, right, right.



Your inner self chooses the vehicle of expression. Think how often, when characters have just come, they feel known to you, like old acquaintances.



When I talk metaphorically I say that these characters are guardians of the theme. If they are spontaneous manifestations then they champion a real theme. If they are forced characters they are crude, obvious vessels for an obvious theme, and very probably the story will read like a polemic.



Damn! It's 12:30 and I have things to do.



OK let's try another tack.



When I see a set of flash-prompts posted that look "clever" and conscious, cold, cute. I expect fewer Boot Camp flashes to be written and a lower overall standard of story.



But when I see a load of lines or part-lines from great poems, a few odd break-the-spell words (the more bizarre the better) I expect more stories and better ones. The mere resonance and open-endedness of the poetic snatches seems to "set-off" the unconscious. Something is stirred.



That is, poetry and its effects are disorientating, mysterious, they come at us by entering through the foot or the elbow and bat us round the inner ear because they can. No frontal assault needed.



I believe that it's this subversive, playful, unusual "accent" in poetry that tends to release wilder (from the unconscious) emotions in those who read the prompts. Thus the resulting work is better.



We live in an age where we are inundated by clevernesses, but the very glibness and ease of these cute sound-bytes, the sit-com quips, the quick-fix knee-jerk, the tabloid headline crap (even Panorama cheats now), the pre-planned endings (but if you don't like the film's finish, we'll change it)… an age where shallowness is all. We escape by going under.



Billy Collins said: Poetry seems to provide, more than ever, an alternative to the din of public language (advertising, politics, etc) and a more admirable set of values than we find in consumer-mad society. I read recently about a poetry competition held in Barcelona every year. The third place poet receives a silver rose, the second place winner receives a golden rose, and the first place poet – for having written the very best poem – receives a real rose. So take that, all you fans of bling.



Arthur Polotnik said:



You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. You edit to let the fire show through the smoke.



The point of this ramble is that to write about what's burning inside, we need to allow it air, to stand aside and let it burn us up. We have to learn to stand aside, be still, listen. We have to, though, trust our writing ability, which is why we must write, write, write, every day, every week, every month, so we can turn off consciousness. And then:



Somewhere, I know not exactly where, a grey campfire is kicked up, the flames catch again and are let loose. All catches alight.





2011, Prompts 0,004

A I have a theory. If you do not love someone, you never loved them

B Sunset

C We will visit our dead and apologise for previous absences

D I am reading about a wife, a husband, and pure hatred

E I have lost all the data

F Mary Lee. Ding-Dong!

G The men of Our Valley, and Oh how they sing!

H Trust me, I'm a plumber.

I Firs time, ever I saw your face

J Melody Smith's idea!

K Sometimes I go out at night and try to look between the stars

L It will rain. It cannot be dry forever

M Sixty-three years ago, give or take...

N There's probably an app for that

O My second brain transplant was more interesting

P When did it start? When will it finish?

Q Theoretically it's a game, yes.

R INK

S She has a plastic ring, a perspex stone

T Mary Ellen at the Pawn-Shop Door

U A story beginning, "I suspect you will not like this, but..."

V I've just found out she came from Gillingham

W They are arming the professors

X A story ending, "And no, I do not need or ask for your forgiveness."

Y But if you DID fall in love with a ghost?

Z Burkha

2011 Prompts 0,003

A There are no more flies

B In general, if you want a job doing properly

C No, it doesn't make me laugh

D All the squares are numbered

E What could be prettier?

F I could always go to Hull

G I heard them singing, singing of home

H Once I lived like you

I The Oozing

J Margaret's Malaise

K Run over by the truth, which did not stop

L Nothing was said, but then the lights went out

M Fatal Error

N She fills herself with Indian Meals

O The dust thickens

P It's been going on a long time

Q Those who are out try to get those who are in, out

R I would say it but a lady is present

S Not all Catholics are Irish

T One-One was a race-horse. One-Two was one, too.

U A story beginning, "Stop reading. Now!"

V Kicked the bucket etc

W It will not do, it will not do, it will not do.

X A story ending, "I could do no more, I could do no better."

Y Diary of a Dead Man

Z Blenkinsop's Invention.

Why I Teach What I Teach

My son is a snowboard fanatic and was watching some youngster (21)
who is the world's best snowboarder.

This guy is so much better than the second-best in the world, he often
scores 100% when 87-88% is good enough for Olympic Silver.

I forget the term, but SB's go down a "pipe", using the overall downhill
and their own generated momentum to do various tricks.

The ting that is special about the world's greatest snowboarder is that he
DOES NOT plan or practice his run. He simply relies on "muscle-memory"
and his instinct for play. He says that when he DOES think or plan, he is rubbish.



In Football

it's much the same. Players practice "generalities" like pass and move
and get the ball back, but on match day they need to be freer. The science
of a curving 50-yard pass is quite amazing, but for some reason it's more
likely to come off if you just let the body do its own thing.



Which is why

in Boot Camp I keep telling you all to WRITE DRUNK, to totally ignore all the rules, to forget editors, to not even look at what you write, just write-write-write as fast as you can. That is how the subconscious gets free, and it's THEN that you surprise yourself.

The moment you stop, pause to think, consider, plan, you awaken the left-brain, the logical, the me-too, the formulaic, the obvious, the copy-cat dull-as-ditch-water left brain.


But HOW?

Do you learn the rules of writing? How do you ever manage to write well even if the ideas are magic from the subconscious?

By CRITIQUING hundreds, thousands of stories.
By engaging every single day with good stories and bad.
By reading EVERY day about craft.
By questioning everything you read.

THAT is where you do the solid work.
That is where the "rules" become imprinted.


STUDY, slog, BETWEEN stories, but write as free as a bird, drunk, high, aroused

Harlan Ellison once said you must ABSORB technique and work work work until it is natural, instinctive, until it runs in your veins.



SO...


write every day, and I mean every day. Wake up every day and say, "I am a writer. My prime object today is to find time to write something."

Ideally you should always write something (ideally 500 words) before doing anything else.


Writing first thing does a lot. You are the least cluttered and your left-brain is at its quietest. The other good time is very veery late when you are tired and the left-brain needs to rest, but morning writing does one other thing. It reminds you that YOU ARE A WRITER and you will therefore go through your day thinking, seeing, understanding with a writer's perspective.

2011 Prompts Set 0,002

A It's broken again, take it back.

B It was a miracle, absolutely incredible

C Late January, the first signs of thaw

D Sometimes we had it for tea

E Generations have walked, have walked, have walked

F Running Bear, Lovely Little White Dove

G I should rise, I should rise

H Shane did it again!

I If there were not mountains, if there were not sea

J SIMPLE

K She calls it love. I call it wanting food.

L Ironing, the Armistice

M So, apart from that, what did you think of the show?

N One upon an evening droopy

O I have been old and didn't like it.

P I knew her before she was a virgin

Q Robin Banks

R Or peanuts if you prefer

S The winter evening settles down, nuts roasting, something, on the air

T Hoo Flung Dat?

U A story beginning, "I would prefer not to write about this, but..."

V Lemon-Lycra-Tights

W I think I should speak to her. I think I should speak to her.

X A story ending, "Perhaps this explains things, perhaps it doesn't."

Y A Mouse Story

Z We the dead, demand the right to be heard.

2011 Prompts 0,001

A Nobody heard him

B I am not there, I do not sleep

C 12 Identical Pencils

D Now waving, but drowning

E With Amber Eyes

F We come from dock and shipyard, we come from car and train

G I will go now, the sun is rising

H My daughter will come. My wife pays to be alone

I Old beggars under sacks

J TACK

K The foulness of Christmas Day

L Washing up as an act of war

M Tell me of your plans

N The cows wind slowly home

O When I was young and easy and drank cider

P Not all chains are metal

Q The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees

R Had we but world enough and time

S The sea is calm tonight

T Where the anvil, who the hammer?

U Stop all the clocks, cut off the phone

V Wearing Purple

W Come on, come in, like a river flowing

X It may be short; it may last for years

Y "Is there anybody there?".

Z All dead, and none that mattered

December Prompts 011

A story beginning, "Really, it's quite simple..."

Saturday

A small wodge of twenties

Dead Battery

Too quick, too quickly

Wedding, black-tie

He's something big in the city, very big

Charles? Camilla!

Collected Stored Shorties

Extra milk to cool it down

Beginners

Twentieth Century Pottery

No, it really is, JUST A TREE

Run it under a cold tap love

Plastic

It tells you what you really want

First of a few more

Hidden Lives, Public Deaths

Bingo!

Ace Boys...

Last of the many

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Transvestite

A Faraway War

Hard Frost

Various methods of persuasion

Tinkerball

December Prompts 009

I have decided to be a dog

The soft eyes close

We take our shoes off at the door, we smell lavender

A small English boy wearing a German helmet

Can you move the Mini?

Mr and Mrs Wales are Dead

Digging up Bones

An island of Apples

Press button for laughter

Barely thirteen months after

We have sold the horses and bought a tractor

Yellow Peril

Should we kill the chicken or wait for eggs?

Do not expect applause

How long does the sound of an accident linger?

Wearing Shorts

December Prompts 009

I have decided to be a dog

The soft eyes close

We take our shoes off at the door, we smell lavender

A small English boy wearing a German helmet

Can you move the Mini?

Mr and Mrs Wales are Dead

Digging up Bones

An island of Apples

Press button for laughter

Barely thirteen months after

We have sold the horses and bought a tractor

Yellow Peril

Should we kill the chicken or wait for eggs?

Do not expect applause

How long does the sound of an accident linger?

Wearing Shorts

December Prompts 008

McBee found a girl

He had skin like stripped wallpaper

Billie is three and his Mum ought to love him

This morning I thought I saw a Puffin

I woke, naked, in Marks & Spencer's

RAT

We need to go in, we need to go down

Love makes old things look different, coffee taste better

The had a log-cabin in a place called Swastika

My brother is asleep downstairs

We suffer and it is just below the surface

Prussian

About four o'clock the child wakes, car headlights run round the walls

Wales closed this morning

Here is a not-very-poisonous apple

I stumbled upon a tribe who only laughed

PINK!

Long, long ago when the world was wild

December Prompts 007

Old Devils

Warming up the Car

The Complete Dramatic Works

A Wild Justice

Pictures of my great grand-mother

Red Leather

Cuckoo

I can climb this

Blenkinsop's Theory of Survival

Mary, Mary

China White, Charcoal Black

The air is thinner, but it's still air

OK OK OK

in Hell's chance

A Faraway War

Twinkle, Twinkle

The sound of a satisfying murder

December Prompts 006

PS Anyone toying with the idea of joining BC in 2011 remeber there's a half-price deal close December AND you dodge the VAT rise



PROMPTS

A blessing be upon your house

I am sure I have known this before

The Humbling

We could, of course, simply ignore it

The A-Team

The Broccoli Issue

Advanced Mail, Second-Class

Losing the Dogs

Where I'm Calling From

Citizen 14356

The Baker, the mother, the child

Poems for Strange Times

I have it! I have it!

The Women's Century

There were five amazing sisters. There was a brother

Voices of Silence

The Rise of the South

In the interest of consistency lesson five and six will come before three

Every person find something and be ready

There is no music now, in the whole of Oklahoma

December prompts 005

JOIN US FOR OUR FREE FLASH BLAST


I have patented, 12 million smells

TINKLE

I have patented where lines meet lines and captured a corner of the market

URANUS

Slowly, but surely, the 11:39 leaves town

Almost a star

Cold? No, it's not cold.

It's nebulous, but then it is a nebula

TINK!

From here you can see the village, the roofs glisten

Glass Slippers, one off

We got married as a protest against convention

Oh no it isn't!

Drip-charge, over-night

Nothing has been broken, nobody has been disturbed

The various uses of massage-oil

Like a patient under anaesthetic, meat

Just a hundred, but maybe it will help

I will go to Prague

TOKE

Forgotten Voices

Can you hear the people sing?

I have been thinking of ways to kill my wife

John

I shouldn't keep the shrunken head, but

My Uncollected Stories

Death in Life

December Prompts 004

Our FREE DECEMBER and half-price 2011 offer is still on (closes Dec 30th)..

remember VAT rise in 2011


PROMPTS

Walking with the dogs on Watership Down

Rice & Beans

£100

Not that much ice

Justified

How the music changes, how it falls

The sound of feet upon the stairs

'Night everybody, Love You!

Signed: Officer of Revenue & Customs

Genius

April 24, 2009. Lens Protector

Tail End Charlies

Home-Run

Includes all thirteen episodes

Going out of your way for the hitch-hiker

Peas or Beans

One day it will come back

Dear Sir, please find enclosed

Sprawl

Here's an idea. Build a tower for the dead and make it taller for each of the killed

December 003 Prompts

Why not join us at BC for a month of flashes and stories.

IT's FREE!






Email to Aimee

What a joy to climb into bed

BILL

Five and half million white plastic bags

STALINGRAD

I don't have a best side, take my picture in the dark

SHADOW

It's hard for a girl being rescued

TOUCH

Two sided triangles going cheap

BOMBER

In the falling heat of a late August night

1939

Who's turn in the barrel?

I know it, you know it

His anger pervades this place

Class 4N made Daisy cry

Known to bite.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up

The winter evening settles like talcum from a child

Borzoi

One Saturday, we went down to the river

December 02 Prompts

Let's face it, God isn't exactly bright

Hannibal

We drove to down, our pockets full

A mouthful of ashes

Distant something, it might be thunder

MIKE

The children have brought their things, mostly dead

Hold this

About John McInnes

Just as it was fading, he turned and waved

EGG

One thing about him, he never let hopelessness worry him

We sow, they grow

I will stand here, something will come

BEE

Sex makes the world a little better. Briefly

Join BC for Our December Flash

BC is free for the whole of December 2010

Why not join us for our December "BLAST" where we all attempt to write at least one piece a day, or 31 in the Month, refusing to wind-down for the last month of the year.

Prompts every day, flashes and poems and stories posted anonymously via a secretary, feedback from everybody on everything posted.

TRY IT (You know you want to!)


http://bootcampkeegan.yuku.com/directory

December 01 Prompts

A Landscaper's Dream

A fine smoke drifting

Once I heard a woman cry, a baby singing

Every day we re-create our world

The thing with pi

The Logarithms of Love

I will assume, Your Majesty, with the humblest air

POT

He was a man of very few parts

Every second, a hundred billion neutrinos pass through the heart

GASH!

He is very short and writes a lot on message-boards

AAAAAAAA...

Life once, by day, and perhaps by night

TWANG!

The Life and Times Of Gertrude Emily Grissom

NEW LOOK

I have been here, I have been here, I have been here, somewhere very close

iTOILET-PAPER

They have invented a new fruit

STAIN

Far off, an animal scream, a bark, a rush of something

The juice explodes and sinking, all flashes past