New(t) Story

Rainy City Stories is a site with a brilliant idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself. Based in Manchester, it links stories and poems with their places on the map, all within the Greater Manchester area. I spent hours clicking on the lovely cloud markers and reading the stories they pointed to. And then I found the house I grew up in, and the pond under the railway bridge, and I started writing a story of my own. It's called On The Count Of Three, and is now up on the site, putting Newton Heath on the Rainy City map. I'm (as I used to say in my formative years) dead chuffed.

Writing From The Angry Well

I think if I didn’t write I would go mad. I remember watching the first series of Big Brother, and the thing I couldn’t get my head around was the No Writing Instruments, No Writing At All thing. Even if I’d been au fait with weeing on national television, the not being able to write, for even a few days, never mind weeks, would have stopped me from applying anyway.

I’m sure Henry Rollins wasn’t the first or only person to refer to writing as “Poor Man’s Therapy.” He’s so right. I think he originally meant it in a ‘journal’ sense, which I agree with, but from a fiction point of view, writing a story in which the protagonist gets to wreak whatever havoc they want on their enemies is great therapy, too.

L’esprit d’escalier keeps me awake at night. I spent two hours last night thinking of things I could’ve, should’ve said. I thought my head was going to explode. So I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling away, in the dark so as not to wake up the Mr, and five minutes and four pages later, I managed to drift off to a lovely sleep. I’m going over what I wrote now, and I’ve managed to turn a hellish day at work into a story about a murder, that will hopefully prevent an actual murder. Writing works like a pressure release at times. I can plot horrible revenges whilst still maintaining my sanity. If I didn’t write, I would probably be that woman who shouts on the bus. Or I could be much worse, I could be the woman they find in the textiles department of Debenhams every Thursday pounding her fists into the display bed. I would be escorted home with achy wrists and goose feathers still stuck in my hair.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all my writing comes from this angry well. I’d even go so far as to say only about ten percent of my writing is grrr writing. It’s just at times like this, I’m really glad I have this outlet.

Let There Be (Tea)Light(s)

I'm writing something big that I am excited about. It's making me wish I could stay home from work and kick everyone out of the house and change my body clock so that my day starts around 4pm and ends with a 7am bedtime. If I were a lady of leisure, then I would definitely be nocturnal. But then I would miss out on the new and fantastic characters one can only encounter as a public servant. You couldn't make it up.

Special things are happening at my library tomorrow, though. (Apart from the multitude of weird traits and ticks.) To tie in with the National Year of Reading's November theme of "Live Lit", we are holding a storytelling/poetry event at the library. If I can breathe through my nose, and if my voice stops croaking, then I'll be reading a story. I'm quite excited about it. I'm excited about buying the cakes and wine, and about having actual naked flames in the library(if Health and Safety deem this acceptable), and about having poets and writers doing readings in the space that's normally reserved for the One Week Loans and the table with the leaflets. Hopefully, all will go swimmingly, and no firemen will have to be called out.

There are never enough fireworks

I love fireworks. Sometimes I write things that start off as stories and then I get into them, and sometimes it's vice versa. I like stopping abruptly. I like things to sometimes be snapshots. Exciting things are in the offing. I could dance the "mashed potato". I could do "the twist".

That famous day in November

I'm sitting by my window watching other peoples' fireworks. I don't kid myself that I'm part of anything. The pain in my stomach is back. I'm not sure it ever went away. I think that I am slowly coming apart. That the things that were once fixed inside me have come unmoored. I’ve swallowed the tablets before I realise I’ve swallowed them. I stare at the drink in my hand, the sensation of pills slipping down still fresh. They never really work. Taking them is an exercise in pointlessness. Outside, the tar sky is dotted with points of light. Not stars. Gunpowder. In blues and greens and reds.