Author Afloat: Literary event

The story so far: a freelance writer and editor for 20+ years, I jumped ship in April 2015 from bricks and mortar to live on a historic narrowboat – currently permanently moored in a busy marina in greenest Staffordshire.

4.30pm, 7 degrees, dark but dry

My chap opines that it’s very possible to live on a boat and remain stylish, to climb up the front steps of a boat and emerge into the light beautifully togged. This is in spite of the fact that all our clothes still live in plastic boxes, we have no wardrobe, and our coat and shoe rack is the back seat of our car. Yesterday daytime though, getting myself ready for a big event – reading a new commissioned short story at the Library of Birmingham from 6-8pm for an event called Seven Minute Stories – tested this theory. Thankfully, I scrubbed up well in the end and the evening was a success.

First, my efforts to take a bath the previously evening were thwarted when the bath pump stopped working. I was walking the plank (literally: our floor consists of wooden planks) practising the timing of my story – each writer had to read a seven-minute extract from their story – while my chap muttered something about bathwater pouring all over the floor. We had to take turns in holding our thumbs to an open metal pipe to stop the water squirting out and soaking those clothes we hadn’t folded back into their boxes, until he got the pump mended.

Then we discovered that the gas bottle had run out so a bath was impossible anyway. It would have to be a trip to the shower block in the morning. No problem, although it did seem a case of sod’s law, as I’d taken only baths since moving in, never once having to resort to the shower block walk (I’m a definite ‘bath person’). Was it an act of mischief on behalf of all electrical and mechanical objects in the boat that the kettle then decided to pack up next?

Gale-force winds and torrential rain all night meant that I managed only a couple of hours sleep somewhere before 5.00am. I love the sound and motion of different weather against the boat … up to a certain degree of intensity. We rock and bump into the pontoon, rain spears the (now thoroughly leak-proof) roof and it’s all terribly English and elemental. But in more extreme conditions like last night, it sounds as if ghosts are walking about – ‘walking abroad’, as Victorian novels used to say. Lately, next door’s chimney has been rattling and even ear plugs don’t block it out.

‘Oh well’, I thought on getting up to yet more wind and rain. ‘I’ve done most of the important things in my life on no or little sleep – I’ll probably be okay. Adrenaline and – in my case, green tea – get me through a lot, so fingers crossed …’ I went to boil a pan of water in lieu of the kettle but of course … no gas bottle and no green tea. Undeterred, I had my Alpen, gathered up some unguents and set off for the shower block in the torrential rain. It was so nice to be out of the cold rain that I didn’t mind the cleaner vacuuming the mats in the shower block while I was in there. It didn’t do my sleep-deprived head much good, mind.

Having clean hair, as well as skin, is a great mood-enhancer, I find. The rest of the day passed fairly well. A new fuse sorted the kettle out (although it had picked up a weird time delay, going through its motions roughly ten minutes after I pressed the switch). I was able to pace my day and run through the evening’s reading after I’d done other work, leaving – I hoped – sufficient ‘brain capsules’ free for later on. I donned a frock and emerged from the boat with lipstick and hairspray on too.

I’d had time to re-visit my short story and jot down a few answers to the questions the interviewer, Roz Goddard, Co-ordinator of the West Midlands Readers’ Network (WMRN), planned to ask us at the event. It was great to be so well briefed:

“You will each be in conversation about the process of writing the story, the ingredients you were given, and any stumbling blocks along the way … It would be lovely for the audience to get a realistic insight into the writing process. The conversation will be very relaxed and will touch on your wider writing life too.”

A quick word about the Seven Minute Stories project: in the summer, five writers including me were picked and each paired with a regional library reading group chosen from those who’d applied. We went to meet our respective reading groups in situ. We chatted about what books they enjoyed and they gave us a list of narrative ingredients to include in our stories. After that we went away and wrote our stories for our groups with a deadline of 30 September. We each then travelled back to our group in the autumn to read their story out loud to them.

Tonight’s event was the culmination of the whole project, a paid event open to the public and attended by representatives from each commissioned writer’s reading group. Roz had had all five stories printed in a special red anthology for the audience members to take away, so they could read the remainder of the stories at their leisure. (The project has been running since 2012 and the four anthologies – all with the same design but in different colours – are considered by some to be collectors’ items, but are not available for sale.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The other writers, Ruth Gilligan, Mez Packer, Dragan Todorovic and Rob Jefferson-Brown had written fantastic and fantastically diverse stories, which all successfully incorporated the quirky narrative ingredients they’d been given. These ranged from technology going wrong (this had a familiar ring), glass eyes, bees, homeless people, and love and loss. Spokespeople from the reading groups in places including Quinton in Birmingham and Market Drayton in Shropshire, said how moved they were when their writers re-visited and read their stories aloud to them for the first time.

For me, it was lovely to be back on the writers’ side of the fence. Sometimes I have jobs of work panel hosting literary events not dissimilar to this one, so I’m familiar with being the person preparing and asking the writers questions, and keeping everyone to time. It was exciting to be on the writers’ bench, yet the moment before I was called up felt surreal. Sitting there listening to Ruth read her story, my mind turned to mush. Yet as soon as I was ‘called up’ and sat down next to Roz to be interviewed at a table decorated with fairy lights and poinsettias, and gazed out over a receptive audience willing me on, the mental mush turned to magic. I heard fully formed sentences spill from my lips. It was fun.

Weirdly, I’d never used a microphone before, but hardly noticed I was holding it. I did lots of acting in my teens and twenties, so am used to projecting my voice and have retained a suspicion of microphones and their fuzzy ways. The only hazard was that the lectern didn’t have the inbuilt microphone we thought would be there. Holding a mic in one hand while turning the pages of my stapled together story with the other, added an unexpected dimension to my reading experience.

When I have long spells writing for myself and for clients without doing public events, the limelight can – in my mind’s eye – turn into a cold, coruscating glare that I think I’d like to avoid. A different and more fantastical fear creeps in too. With this, I get one lick of limelight turn into some kind of writerly monster who can never have enough of the stuff: the quote about writers all being “megalomaniacs with low self-esteem” never fails to amuse.

The reality of being in the spotlight for 17 minutes was far gentler and kinder than either of these. I enjoyed being interviewed, enjoyed reading my story for seven minutes, and gladly accepted the compliments on my story and my reading where they were given. I enjoyed the autograph swap with the other writers afterwards – we signed each others’ copies of the anthology. I loved the celebratory drink.

This morning, new gas bottle installed, kettle and bath mended, I went to the desk and my novel with a spring in my step and gladness in my heart. It feels good to have shared my writing. It feels good to have new readers and to have met other writers and made new friends. Now I’m looking forward to a bath and for the new furniture to arrive.

Some things I learnt from this project about writing a commissioned short story:

• It can be harder and take more time than writing a story for yourself or for fun because the ideas, which come from outside rather than within, have to intersect with your own imagination. It can take longer to find the seed or spark that excites you.
• Start working on your story in good time and give yourself plenty of time for ideas to ‘bake’. Techniques such as mind-mapping and fast writing help to kickstart ideas.
• You have to stay true to yourself and your writer and must resist the temptation to bend yourself into uncomfortable shapes just to please the person or group who’s commissioned you. Once I’d finally found a conceit that gave me a structure for the story and wrote and finished it, I was so excited by my story that I really, really wanted the group to like it. It was such a relief when they loved it. That tension and time gap between writing something and people reading (and hopefully liking it) is part of being a writer.
• If your story isn’t working, don’t be afraid to abandon it. Go back to the ingredients you’ve been given and really ask what’s at the heart of them.

Some things I learnt from this event about being interviewed as a writer:

• Preparation is key, so if you get nervous – or you’ve not had enough sleep – and your mind turns to mush, it will still retain some pertinent information. Ask the interviewer in advance for a list of questions you’re likely to be asked. You may also want to prepare three short ‘key messages’ as you would if doing a TV or radio interview.
• Take advantage of the water on the table. During the interview, I forgot my need for that bottle of Volvic and my throat felt like desert sands by the time I reached the end of the reading. Central heating, a roomful of people and nerves can really dry your throat.

Some things I learnt from this event about giving a reading: 

• Don’t forget to tell the audience before you begin any key information they need to understand to enjoy your reading. As I was standing there, I realised I needed to explain the title of my story and an unusual word used in the story, ‘coffyne’, so did so clearly and briefly.
• Ideally, don’t staple the pages you’re going to read together. Fold the corners down to keep the pages together if you’re walking to the event in a gale-force wind (as I was) or, better still, take a back-up copy or two.
• If the reading involves standing at a lectern with only a flat surface (as this event did), you may wish to hold your pages rather than place them on the table or it may be hard for you to make enough eye contact with the audience. You’ll always be looking down to read.
• If you’re petite like me and the reading involves standing at a lectern, wear high heels so you can be seen and/or stand to one side of it. Fortunately, I did both!

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