Viva Venezia! – and the Art of People Watching

I got a bit snap happy as round every corner was another photo opportunity.

I LOVE city breaks and over the last few years I’ve been lucky to visit some of the most exciting cities in Europe. I’ll go anywhere to experience new sights and learn new things but there are particular cities that have always been on my travel wish list.

One of them was Venice and I finally managed to tick it off the list last weekend. With such high expectations it would’ve been easy to be disappointed but thankfully Venice lived up to its reputation of being one of the most stunning cities in the world. We only had three days to explore and this meant we could only scratch the surface of Venice’s many attractions.

But apart from cramming in as much sightseeing as time (and my feet!) would allow, one of the bonuses of the break was to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes – people watching (everyone needs a hobby!)

Noticing the idiosyncrasies of those around you is an essential activity for a writer. Being aware of a person’s mannerisms and eavesdropping on conversations can prompt a story idea or descriptive scene.

I’ve recently dabbled again in one of my other favourite pastimes – writing flash fiction, and I’m sure some of my observations will find their way into a piece of writing. My most recent 75 word story was featured on Paragraph Planet while I was in Venice and appropriately enough it includes an Italian cheese! If you missed it online, here it is but be warned, it’s best not to read it before eating!

A Taste of Home

The door slammed, he was home. Drunk. Again.

‘Is the spag bol ready?’

‘It’ll be a few more minutes; I need to nip to the loo first.’

I smoothed Arinca cream over the purple yellow bruise on my arm. Sitting on the loo seat, I got busy with the nail clippers and file. I was pleased with the handful of powdery flakes my toe nails produced.

‘Some parmesan?’

I sprinkled generously.

My people watching expedition started at the airport and really went up a gear when a woman sat next to me on the plane and I witnessed an annoying habit that was a new one on me. She spent the entire flight pulling fluff from her mohair jumper. I was glad the flight was only 2 & 1/4 hours long!

The ‘wow!’ factor.

We were in the right place at the right time in Venice when we got caught up in the celebrations of St Mark and Piazzo San Marco filled with flag waving locals chanting, “Viva San Marco!” The square was buzzing and when we reached the top of the campanile we witnessed an aerial view of a massive flag being unfurled. The most amazing sight though was right beside me, a father and son ignored this once a year spectacle to keep their eyes glued to their mobile phones. The boy played a game and the father scrolled through Facebook updates.

Felt  obliged to ditch the diet to support the local economy!

On the vaporetto to Burano, a man decided to treat his fellow passengers to a ‘song’ with no words, no tune and at a high volume. Only he and his pal who was filming it seemed entertained.

There were lots of other weird and wonderful behaviours on show that I took in while roaming around Venice and it’s certainly true that there’s nowt as queer as folk.

Only the week before our trip I went to hear Irvine Welsh at the Aye Write! Festival and he mentioned that he often does a complete circuit of a city’s subway route to see how folk act, dress and talk.

Do you also find people watching feeds your writing?

The Winner Takes It All

A few weeks ago, one Saturday night, I read about Magic Oxygen’s six word competition on Twitter. The guidance on their website was, “your six-word story should present the reader with a snapshot of an event with a pertinent happening and offer a suitable enough conclusion to deliver a sense of completeness within its brevity. In other words, make it short and great! The best ones should leave the reader pondering an array of side-shoot possibilities for why it occurred and for what happens next”.

I love flash fiction and as the telly was rubbish as usual, I thought I might as well have a go in collaboration with my old pal Pierre Smirnoff. And then I forgot all about submitting my entry (often the way of things after spending the night with Pierre).

So it was a lovely surprise to be told that I’d made the final nine on a shortlist, drawn up from 1,722 entries from 38 countries. Also, my entry would be read out with the other shortlisted stories and the winner would be announced live on radio.  I’m off chocolate right now (too many Weight Watchers Pro Points!) and all this unexpected excitement replaced the usual sugar rush I experience over the Easter weekend.

Appropriately, ‘The Winner Takes it All’ by ABBA was played just before the result was announced. Hubby and I paused unpacking the shopping to hear that Dan Micklethwaite’s very clever story scooped the £100 prize. You can read Dan’s winning story and the others shortlisted here.

Of course it would’ve been great to win, I’ve managed a 2^nd prize in a writing competition but never a first. But it wasn’t to be, not this time… Hubby is a sore loser and looked more gutted than me and he was surprised that I wasn’t more upset by the result. Maybe it’s because I know that rejection is more common than success in the writing game and as I’ve had plenty of experience of knock backs over the years, I honestly didn’t expect to win (and the other entries were really impressive).

And although this will sound cheesy, I did win and here’s why: the competition was free to enter, it was a fun challenge, getting the email that I was shortlisted was exciting, hearing my story read aloud and discussed on radio was weird in a good way, listening to the other entries was inspiring. What’s not to like about that little list?

The word ‘winner’ has six letters in the word but my story has 6 words.

Cash withdrawn. Profile selected. Sperm deposited.

My story lost out on winning by a bawhair (recognised unit of measurement in Scotland) but there’s always next time…

Have  you tried to write a story in six words?

Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Award

“Fame hungry, attention seeking, shock tactics, who, moi?”

I’ve blogged before about the Scottish trait of finding it hard to blow your own trumpet and it definitely applies to me. It’s never easy trying to sell yourself at a job interview, and I’ve squirmed whilst watching desperadoes through my fingers during the auditions for the X Factor (did anybody see the woman  lap dancing for Louis in the fishnet body stocking last Sunday? So wrong on every level!). But it was my turn this week to try avoid clichés like, “I was born to write” and somehow convince the Scottish Book Trust (SBT) that I should be given a New Writers Award.

Cove Park overlooks Loch Long on Scotland’s beautiful west coast.

Every year, the SBT makes several awards to “individuals living in Scotland who are committed to developing their work as a writer. The winners will receive a £2000 cash award, allowing them to focus on their work, as well as a tailored package which can include mentoring from writers and industry professionals, training in Press and Public Relations (PR), Performance and the opportunity to showcase work to publishers and agents.

This year it will also include a week-long retreat at Cove Park. The retreat provides time, space and freedom to create new work and to find new ways of working in idyllic surroundings.”

All I had to do then was put together an application that stood out from the hundreds of others that the SBT receive each year.  This wasn’t an easy task. How could I prove my passion for writing? I began by rewinding my writing journey and listed my achievements to date.  At the start of 2012, I hadn’t been published at all so I’ve achieved my goal and been quite successful if I say so myself!

The artwork for the stunning cover was designed by Forevermore Tattoo Parlour in Glasgow.

My latest published story is featured in the debut edition of Octavius and it was a real thrill to see my wee flash fiction in the magazine. Sadly, I missed the launch date as it was the night before my house move (I didn’t think swanning off to Edinburgh and leaving hubby to deal with the last-minute packing would’ve gone down well).

I’m also waiting to see one of my more risqué short stories printed in Valve journal due out any day now and I’ve  just heard that another one of my flash fiction pieces will be published later in the year in Paragram anthology and a short story in the New Voices Press anthology is to be published by the Federation of Writers (Scotland). So all in all, I’m doing quite well with getting my work out there; in fact my bank of stories is pretty much empty. Time to get writing more while I wait for news of the award!

Of course, AFTER I submitted my application, I stumbled upon a blog post giving applicants advice from one of the panel members.  The part where she said, “Don’t: Include links to your blog, ebook etc. I will not read these. Ever”, made me cringe as I’d inserted a link to this blog on the naïve assumption that it would demonstrate my “personal challenge to blog every week or so and I have sustained this commitment by writing 47 blog posts amounting to 25k words on a wide range of writing related topics.” Hey ho, she won’t read this anyway! But on a more positive note, she did add, “the odds are much, much better than the Lottery.”

I know of lots of great new writers who haven’t made the shortlist so I’m not overly confident but you can’t knock me for trying. Did you apply this year? Have you received any grants or awards to help you develop your writing?

Flash Fiction

Being only five foot tall, I’ve always sworn by the expression that good things come in small packages. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to writing flash fiction.  For anyone who hasn’t come across the term ‘flash fiction’ before, it doesn’t refer to a story about a comic book superhero but is fiction which aims to prove that it’s not the quantity but the quality that counts.

"My name is Wally West. I'm the fastest man alive."

Flash fiction is normally between 300-1000 words long and has become increasingly popular for various reasons.  In this modern, digitized world the gap between readers and those who can’t allow time for such a luxury continues to grow. Someone who believes they cannot read for pleasure is unlikely to pick up a full length novel. But what they can do, however, is click on a link offered by a friend, or website. This is why flash fiction, one of the most ancient forms of prose, has found new life in the digital era.

I’ve been dabbling in flash fiction recently to try to master the art of doing a lot with a little. The uni assignment I’ve been working on this week was to write 4000 words of an A to Z on any topic in sections of around 153 words each. The challenge was to examine different facets of a subject and my relationship to it. I chose to write about my childhood and treated the exercise as 26 pieces of flash fiction.  Out of all the assignments so far for the MLitt, this has got to be my favourite.

An example of my flash fiction is published on the Paragraph Planet website. The idea behind the website is to write a short piece exactly 75 words long including the title. It might be a moment captured, it could be an intriguing section of a novel  in progress, or it might be a short, short story. I submitted a piece called, ‘Roadkill’ and you can read it here (7th of April entry in the archive).

I think flash fiction’s low word count is a great way to improve my writing by making me think about the importance of every word in a story. It also gives me the freedom to experiment without the commitment of a large project. Let me know if you’re a lover of flash fiction as a writer or a reader.

P.S. In the spirit of flash fiction, this is my shortest blog post yet!

Writing Competitions-In It To Win It!

My name is Helen and I’m addicted to quality stationery.There you go, I’ve admitted it publicly. And one of my annual highlights is always starting a fresh diary (I know it’s sad). This year’s object of my affection is a lovely Writer’s Diary (thankfully my eldest son responded to repeated hints (I don’t do subtle) for a Xmas present I would actually use. The diary is produced by Mslexia and is packed full of ideas and info for women writers.  On one of the first pages it has a Submissions section for you to record when and where you’ve sent your precious masterpieces.There’s nothing quite like pages of blank columns to make me feel under pressure.  And as the publisher, Bloomsbury has dubbed 2012 as the year of the short story, I felt that I should get cracking and enter a short story competition.

I’ve not got a lot of experience of writing short stories and I know it’s not easy. With strict word limits you can’t afford to waste a single word.  I’m in awe of writers who can pull off a powerful story succinctly. The ultimate in flash fiction, a short form of storytelling, has got to be Ernest Hemingway’s work of genius, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Wow! How can six words be so evocative? Maybe stunning examples like that are why I’ve avoided the genre, but it was time to face my fear.

I needed a theme and a deadline to motivate me. And I found it on a trip to visit the newly refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.  Hubby and I went as part of a festive trip to Auld Reekie.  The gallery is a fantastic neo-gothic red sandstone building and has something to suit everyone’s taste whether you like traditional paintings of Scottish lairds or photographs of Glaswegian slums.  It’s well worth a visit and it’s free entry! On the way out, I picked up a leaflet for a competition called, ‘Inspired? Get Writing!’  There’s still time to enter! 

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/education/competitions I chose to write about a striking (and a bit scary) portrait of the acclaimed writer, committed feminist and social activist, Naomi Mitchison, painted by Percy Wyndham Lewis. She sounded like my kind of woman!  

A very clever lady but what a dour faced looking besom!

I sent off my submission this week and felt quite smug at being able to make my first entry under the Submissions section of my new diary. Entering the competition has fired me up to enter as many as I can in the hope of being published. Read a lot, write a lot is my new mantra and the competitions will give me a goal and the chance to practise, practise, and practise my writing skills. The chances of winning are slim but as they say, if you’re not in it, you can’t win it. Watch this space…