This weekend, I'm off to London to go to a huge Comic Book convention. I've never made a secret of my geekiness and my love of comic books, but something I've only recently come to realise is how interested I am in actually writing them.

This isn't, however, something I would tell to a writing or critique group. Why not? Why is is that writing comic books is seen as such an insignificant for of literature?

The skills needed to write a comic book are different to a novel or a short story, but that doesn't make them any less legitimate. The biggest challenge seems to be that you have to try and tell your story almost in two separate ways - one to give instructions to your artist, and one to entertain your audience. Show, not tell is still a fundamental part of this storytelling process, but it seems to take on another layer when you're working in such a visual medium.



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As a teacher, there are few rewards greater than getting back after a workshop and finding an email from a student, saying that they started writing/re-writing/planning on the train home. And certainly the varied reactions to the York Festival of Writing suggest that for many the lightbulb moment in a workshop (or an agent's comment or a fellow-writer's response) was only a pilot light, which then shed a flood of light on the work-in-progress... even if the light showed that it ought, immediately, to become a work-under-the-bed.

But I suspect that for every writer at York who was radically re-structuring their novel before they even got to the station, there's another who left York feeling decidedly boggled. It's such a lot of stuff to take on board: about the industry, about your work, about how your writing relates to other people's, about how different writers are from each other, about how you feel about your work. Then there's feedback about what you sent in, about what you didn't send in but do talk about, all the tips and tricks and facts and counter-facts that get bandied about over food and coffee and drink and more drink... And just when you think you're getting somewhere, another workshop/agent/editor/author says the complete opposite. And you go home baffled: should you re-write, abandon, submit, change tack, set up a blog, change genre, eliminate the vampires or give them more teeth...? If being driven mad by all this stuff meant you wrote a better book, then of course it wouldn't matter, but the chances are it doesn't mean you write better, it just paralyses you.

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The show is well-curated, starting in a low-key style and leading up to the more complex pieces. The captions and displayed introductions are clear and helpful. Entertainingly bizarre items encouraged laughter, as in a tangle of bicycles, welded together and upended, photos of paired yellow scooters and tins of cat-food perched on water melons, the cut-in-half car and the displaced lift. I loved the chessboard and the quirky obituary headlines, also the interactive billiard table, although I sympathized with gallery staff’s anxiety about possible injury from a red billiard ball suspended on a wire.


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I saw a novelist and self-proclaimed 'New Radical' do a reading the other day. Apparently he even has a film being made of one of his books. When he finished and was offering to sign his books, I went straight to the gents (and yes, I did wash my hands), came out again, gave my regards to the host and walked off to the tube station. To my surprise, New Radical was already there on the platform, cutting a forlorn figure with his carrier bag full of unsold books. What a life.

Still, I hated his novel. Am I allowed to say that?

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Thanks for you comments on my last blog entry, Sarah, Tara and C. It's always nice to know that other people feel as strongly about their favourite authors as I do!

Anyway, for today, some useful links.

I have a bunch of websites bookmarked that I regularly return to, not just for research purposes, but for inspiration and instruction. So I thought maybe I should link to some of them here. If you have any especially wonderful sites that you love, please let me know!

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This is going to be a rather fragmentary post because, frankly, I'm feeling rather fragmented. Part of me is still back in York, part is enjoying being home, part is eyeing my desk and a very long list of What Needs Doing, and part of me - okay, most of me - is wondering if the only way to glue them all back together is to go and buy cake. Certainly cake, not drink, not after that Gala Dinner. So here are some fragments that I can hold on to, of what the 2011 York Festival of Writing made me think, feel, understand...

Being reminded how nice writers are, even when they're fiercely driven: one writer with a long career in another industry saying how astonished she was at how genuinely supportive writers are of each other: even though in some senses we're in competition, in most ways we're more like colleagues.

At least half the light bulb moments that I heard about were about Psychic Distance. Why does no one seem to talk about this except me? And Debi Alper. And anyone we've ever mentioned it to. Which, hopefully, by now, includes at least half the attendees at York.

Discovering a new use for the Resources section on This Itch of Writing. Although I'm always astonished at how much you can actually discuss in a Book Doctor session, it is only ten minutes. But so much of what I wanted to say involved things which I've explored in more detail here and it was great to be able to send the writers here.

Having my hand kissed

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At least once a year, I pick up my tattered copy of Stephen King's "The Stand" and re-read it. The love I have for this book (and all things King) is one of the defining factors in my goal to be a writer.

I want to give people the adventures that King gives me. I want to transport them to the places he sends me. And I want to give them the inspiration that I get from him.

While "The Stand" was the novel that fully cemented my love for his works, it's his short stories that influence me most today. When I'd completed my first flash fiction (which isn't particularly good, I now realise), I showed it to a few friends. One of them, also a King fan, gave me the greatest compliment anyone ever could - "It's kinda like a Stephen King story."

The way he can take a simple idea and twist it into something that is so much more, so disturbing, and yet so real. That's what I want my writing to be like. I want people to come away from my stories with the same goosebumps that I got the first time I read "Firestarter" or "Insomnia".

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The pile of stuff at the bottom of the stairs by Christina Hopkinson


‘You don’t see how much I do. And how little you do.’
‘Like what?’ he says, finally.
‘I don’t know, it’s not like I keep a list,’ I said.
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Maybe I will.’
(Page 3)

Mary is a 35 year old part time worker, full time mother, and what feels like full time house cleaner and maid to her three boys, husband (Joel) and two adorable children (Gabe and Rufus). Mary decides that in a life where she has very little control over the small every day things, such as tidying up the pile of junk at the bottom of the stairs, or picking up the dirty clothes from the floor that she needs to take some sort of action. Her stress levels are going through the roof as her temper is taking over all other emotions, but she can’t find a way to make Joel understand. So she decides to make a list over the course of six months outlining all the things that Joel does or doesn’t do, or messes up around the house.

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The title says it all. Well, nearly all.

The other bit is that I’m still trying to take in the fact that I’ve been offered a contract with this wonderful women’s press:

http://linenpressbooks.com/

- and I have a few months to revise my novel.


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