Kaleidoscope. A creative view of the literary connection between memoir and fiction.

The final version – a certain kind of writer’s magic!

I have just printed off the final master copy of my new short story collection Kaleidoscope – inspired by a series of well received workshops I offered last spring on the crucial connection between memoir and the short story.  This master copy will go to my third highly informed and insightful reader whose views I will welcome.

The title – Kaleidoscope – Stories From The Frontier – and also the nature of these short stories – was inspired by a good deal of reading, especially the work of Diana Athill and Jean Rhys.

I was particularly engaged by Diana Athill’s insightful comment on the late work of Jean Rhys, with whom she worked in the last 15 years of Rhys’s long life. Athill remarked on Rhys’s writing ‘from the ‘frontiers of old age’ as being of her very best,

I realised recently the degree to which my mind and imagination is a storehouse of experiences of my whole life – perceptions, sensual reactions, pleasures and pains. These elements are like the tiny bits of glitter in a kaleidoscope – each bit existing in its own right. Each time I shake my kaleidoscope I make a unique pattern, a unique story, reflecting of elements my life in different times and different places.

After much thought I have come to the conclusion that all memory is best transmuted through fiction and that all fiction is a vehicle for memoir. My Kaleidoscope collection here echoes these ideas and, I hope, reflects the intimate literary relationship between memoir, fiction and the short story,

Kaleidoscope will be published in the spring. I’m looking forward to that. My life is there on the page. I hope Kaleidoscope will resonate with a wide range of writers and readers interested in this complex connection between memoir and fiction.    

My heartfelt hope is that Kaleidoscope will resonate with a wide range of writers and readers interested in this complex and intriguing connection between memoir and fiction.

Ah! Titles! 

The titles of the short stories here are part of the essential truth of the life they reflect – the meat on the bones, as it were...

Kaleidoscope – Stories from the Frontier

 Keong Sak. ‘

I do enjoy Singapore, very much.’   Tim Rice

 Watching and Feeling. ‘Blake said the body was the soul’s prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open.’ Jim Morrison.

Masculinity. ‘Prithee, peace/ I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none. Shakespeare: Macbeth

‘

This Working Life. Nothing will work unless you do. Maya Angelou

‘The door is inscribed in gold Gothic lettering. Miss Hogarth: Principal…’ R.E

Patchouli. There is nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.   Gloria Steinem.

1963. ‘So, how’s your love life?’ Amanda’s small, round face examines me, top to toe, her eyes shrewd…’ R.E

Bandages. No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C S Lewis

‘The man, his coxcomb of silver hair bobbing, walks with a spring in his step down the hospital corridor …’ R.E

 Ruthie’s Rant. Even though I was shy, I found I would get onstage of I had a new identity. David Bowie.

 Brown Velvet.

I think  writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit.   John Irving.

Educating Tegger

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn …and change.  Carl Rogers

Governess… it is the duty of the poet to obtain citizenship for an increasing horde of nameless emotions…Ágnes Nemes Nagy

Going By Train.

‘I have learned how faces fall to bone,

how under the eyelids terror lurks…Anna Akhmatova, 1957

The Fox House.

 Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. EM Forster

Story Teller’s Apprentice.  My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations… Every day she surprises me and teaches my something. Patti Smith.

White Frost on Grass .Parts One, Two &7 Three

 The first lie in fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life. Isabel Allende.

Big Issue; Esme’s Story.

Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.’

Salman Rushdie.  

Tiananmen. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. Albert Einstein.

Changing My Priority Back To the Written Word.

Here on Lifetwicetasted you have heard from time to time of my adventure into community broadcasting with my programme THE WRITING GAME. Through producing writing and editing 23 one hour programmes I have learned a great deal. It has been exciting and full of month-by-month pressure. If I were thirty years younger I might  have made a career of it.

But I am a writer: my commitment is to the written word and I must now focus properly on that,
You might be interested in the whole story, so below is the  piece I have posted on my Bishop FM Blog which will give you the whole picture.  It has been a great experience is the significance of the spoken word and the deadline disciplines of broadcasting.  Any writer out there who wants to spread her or his creative wings whould give community broadcasting a try.

This is what I said:

'...They say every good thing should come to an end and I am sad to say that, due to pressure of work, I will be unable to continue with The Writing Game.
This winter - writing being my day job - I will be completing the third of three short story collections[1]* This new collection is called Painting Matters & Other Stories and features painting, painters, teachers and other life-changers. I will also be embarking in a big new novel involving ... er ...ghosts.

On The Writing Game we have celebrated writing and writers, reading and readers. We have interviewed great writers such as David Almond, Pat Barker, Terry Deary, Kathleen Jones, Maureen Almond and Ann Cleeves. We have featured talented local writers such as Barbara Laurie, Geri Auton, Noma Neil, Eileen Elgey and Alison Carr. Also musician Andy Jackson and Su Kane.

Of course the Writing Game is not just one person. On the The Writing Game team – all from Bishop Auckland – we have had novelist and short story writer Avril Joy, gardener, librarian, writer and expert on mining art Gillian Wales and historian Glynn Wales who reads more widely and more eclectically than anyone I know.

Between the four of us on our team we have celebrated the Dickens Bi-Centenary, the joys of writing and reading Children’s Literature, the inspirations of music, gardening and travel, and the writing of Bishop Auckland history; we have showcased the writing skills involved in writing novels, short stories, memoirs and poetry.

 With valued technical advice from Bishop FM’s James Burrage and Terry Ferdinand, and encouraged by Gillian Campbell, I have learned a such in the course of producing these many one hour programmes – researching content, recording interviews and discussions, editing two or three hours of source material into the coherent 56 minutes which is The Writing Game. This has all been very fascinating and absorbing – a great learning curve for me. But in the end it has left little time and energy for my equally fascinating and absorbing 'day job' of writing novels and stories.

The good news is that all of the Writing Game programmes will remain here as THE WRITING GAME ARCHIVE an archive of podcasts on the Bishop FM Website as well as being featured on the widely available iTunes. So the opportunity is there for everyone to listen again to these good words about reading and writing on The Writing Game.

So in signing off here I would like to thank Gillian C, James and Terry for allowing and encouraging me to share with them the airwaves of South Durham. And Gillian W, Glynn and Avril or their ongoing inspiration and comradeship. (I hope you will hear their voices again on the aor waves of Bishop FM.)
Thank you all so much.

I hope I too can come back here now and then to share with you my opinions about writing and books which may be in the news. If you want to share with me the ongoing delights of my day job, look at my blog at http://www.lifetwicetasted.blogspot.co.uk

Until then, happy writing, happy reading.

Wendyx ...

[1] The first two -The reissued Knives & Other Stories and a new collection Fear of Flight &  other Stories –   are both  now commissioned for publication. The third collection Painting Matters & Other Stories is in its final stages of writing...  '

So now, back properly to the day job...

Dialogue in the short story: Top Tips from a novelist (2)

 As I embark on my short story collection called Paint I am reflecting on the crossover skills between the long and short writing forms. Today it is the role of dialogue in fiction.

Thinking of the story

 Dialogue has its part to play on both long and short fiction. It presents very common problem for new short story writers and novelists 

Dialogue is hot and hard and challenges the reader not just to imagine, but to hear different voices, It allows us to witness aggression, seduction, passion and anger and the nature of relationships without having to be told that this is happening. What is happening hits you in the face. Look at these writers, What do you witness happening here?

Look at  Why Don’t You Dance? by Raymond Carver 

and observe  his ability to imply risk and jeopardy through what seems like simple dialogue.

…He sat down on the sofa to watch. He lit a cigarette, looked around, flipped the match in the grass.

The girl sat on the bed. She pushed off her shoes and lay back. She thought she could see a star. ‘Come here, Jack. Try this bed. Bring one of those pillows.’ she said.

'How is it? ‘he said.

'Try it' she said.

He looked around. The house was dark. 'I feel funny,' he said.  'Better see if anyone’s home.'

She bounced on the bed. ‘Try it first,' she said...

Or look at Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now 

where she uses dialogue to set the tone of mystery, threat and personal grief near the beginning of the short story. . 

…‘They’re not old girls at all,’ she said. ‘They’re male twins in drag.’ Her voice broke ominously, the prelude to uncontrolled laughter, and John quickly poured some more Chianti into her glass.

        ‘Pretend to choke,’ he said, ’then they won’t notice. You know what it is – they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stage. Twin sisters here in Torcello. Twin brothers tomorrow in Venice, parading arm in arm across the Piazza San Marco. Just a matter of switching roles and wigs.’

         ‘Jewel thieves or murderers?’ asked Laura

          ‘Oh murderers definitely. But why, I ask myself, have they picked on me?’

           The waiter made a diversion by bringing coffee and bearing away the fruit, which gave Laura time to banish hysteria and regain control. …

 

In my story Sharpening Pencils I use dialogue

to show the uncomfortable contact between a shy girl and her equally shy tutor. I think.

...The girl stood back from the painting and surveyed it. Mrs Forrest came to stand beside her. She said. ‘I do like the way you manage to convey both humanity and abstraction, Miss Wintersgill. You hold onto the intimate relationship while making the meaning universal.’

The girl undid and redid her ponytail, filling the air again with the smell of turpentine. Mrs Forrest contemplated the thought of turpentine infusing the curly tumbling hair. Then she said. ‘I can indeed draw quite well. They told me so at the Slade, many years ago.’

‘You were at the Slade?’ 

Mrs Forrest laughed. ‘So I was. As I say, it was many years ago. I worked alongside people who now are what thy call household names.’

The girl coughed. ‘It must have been hard work there.’

Mrs Forrest noticed the accent for the first time. Somewhere from the West perhaps. She lifted her shoulders and sighed. ‘For the first year all I did, dear, was sharpen pencils, clear workspaces. I did draw at night. That eventually earned me my place. My night drawing earned me a place there.’ She paused. ‘Not that I was very good.’

‘It’s hard to think of you just sharpening pencils, Mrs Forrest.’

Mrs Forrest smiled showing discoloured teeth. ‘Of course I watched what they did and in my little room at night I tried it all out myself.’ She looked around. ‘Just as, perhaps, you do here, Miss Wintersgill, in the dark of night. But then you are so much more original.’ She backed away then, fading out of the room and closing the heavy door behind her with a click. Outside she untied Koppy and let him run through the darkened parkland around the house, barking now and then when he scented prey... 

And in this story, The Little Bee I have tried 

to show the world of a little girl observing the complex and ambiguous world around her. Clearly here I am unable to resist contextualising the dialogue in the larger narrative. But perhaps there is room for that in the wide world of the short story, I hope so.

... Amalie put a hand on my shoulder and I stood up before her. ‘And your Mama was very beautiful, ma p’tite. I knew about that. Hadn’t I been her dresser in the Theatre de Varietés? The sheer beauty of your mama drew great applause.’

My father giggled then. ‘But unfortunately she could never remember a line. Not a single line. The manager who had been intoxicated with her became embarrassed and employed beauties with more brain and better memories. Her friend Josephine was one of these.’

Amalie suddenly scowled at him. ‘But after all when you met her, Monsieur, you fell in love.’

He sighed very deeply. ‘So I did, Amalie. So I did.’ And with this he laid his head on the stout oak table and fell asleep, snoring and snuffling within minutes.

My gaze met Amalie’s and - both embarrassed and amused - we started to laugh. She hugged me tight and I could smell the meat and garlic on her. And my father’s fruity cigarettes. Still laughing, I helped Amalie to trundle the trolley through to the dark back places of the house, where her two nieces, who couldn’t speak French at all, washed the pots and dishes and cleared the kitchen for the following day.

As always you should make your own judgement.

? Why not try these …

- Abstract some dialogue 

from an existing short story – separate it on a page – and decide what you are doing here. Can you cut it back to just what is spoken? Can you implant more meaning, enhance the tone, and expose the difference in the way people speak by what they say?

- Take a one line encounter from your story 

and render it into dialogue which gives us more of the different lives of the speakers without telling us facts.

- Take an overheard fragment of the conversation of strangers 

and create a whole incident though invented dialogue 

Happy writing!
wxx 

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