Remember This Guy?

Yesterday I got a nice email from Ola, the guy behind one million giraffes, telling me he'd blogged about the giraffe I sent in. Yay! I did it as part of my hundred days project, on day 79, because (a) I have a thing for giraffes, and (b) I love the idea of someone collecting a million giraffes. He still has a ways to go...

(From the website)

My friend, Jørgen, doesn't believe I can collect one million giraffes by 2011. I'm gonna prove him wrong, but I need your help. You can create your giraffes in any way you like, but not on a computer and no store bought objects. You must create your giraffes yourself!

I've gotten 906 176 giraffes so far, so I only need 93 824 more and I have 172 days left to get. Please help me!

Go on, make a giraffe. Make two!

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On a non-giraffe related note, I have a new story up at How Men Make Love In The Twentieth Century. Thanks Ben!

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That is all.

Proxy in Print!!!

So today's the day Dzanc Best Of The Web 2010 is released. You know, the one edited by Matt Bell and Kathy Fish, with my story Proxy, from kill author in it, along with stories from so many amazing writers. You can have a read of the contents and intro pages here, and maybe even buy it, if it takes your fancy? No pressure.

I originally wrote the story for the second Word Soup, a live lit night up in Preston. The theme was 'Skin'. Most of my stories have the word 'skin' in them, it's definitely a recurring theme. I read somewhere once that skin was the largest organ, and it's stuck with me ever since. (It's helped me out in at least three quizzes, as well. Ahhh quizzes. Lovely lovely quizzes.) But I wanted to write something new to read there.

I'm tactile. I like to touch things, like the way things feel. I'm not sure I'd always rate sense of touch above vision, or hearing, but there are times when that sense takes precedence, and it's often those times that stand out, the ones that are remembered on your skin. The way a certain song imprints itself on your brain, takes hold of you and keeps adding more of your emotions with every listen; holding someone's hand in the dark, and all the electricity of that, all the thoughts firing and the noticing every single small movement, is just as powerful for me. (And the songs that I love, I really love.) I wanted to write about that (all I do is write about that!), but this time from the angle of there being a lack: of proximity, of being able to touch. So, yep, that's what I was trying to do with Proxy.

Which sense or senses do you most focus on in your writing?

I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to Bugged

Tomorrow is not only the first day of July, it is also a day to do eavesdropping, and do eavesdropping good. It’s all part of Bugged, a project for UK writers. They call it ‘creative eavesdropping’. I guess as writers we do this anyway, but this is like having permission to do it.


From the website:

1 On July 1st 2010, go forth and…. eavesdrop! Wherever you are – in the British Museum or Bradford bus station, in your office, the pub, on the train – listen in to conversations and fragments of speech around you. Be discreet. Try not to get punched.

2 Write a new piece of work based on what you hear. We want poems of up to 60 lines, stories up to 1000 words, flash fiction up to 150 words, scripts up to 5 minutes long. Our favourite recent overhearing is ‘I think it was the turtles that did for her eventually.’ Yours may be tragical, farcical, touching or mundane. You don’t have to quote your overhearing directly – it might just be a starting point for your piece.

3 Submit it to us by email after July 1st, and before August 15th. The sooner the better.

(Further details can be found here.)

I wish it had been B-Day on Tuesday, because there was a crazy lady in the library who could’ve set me off on a hundred stories. My favourite quote from her has to be: “I LIVE IN A SHED!!!” The rest is pretty unrepeatable. But I will be eavesdropping in the library again tomorrow, notebook in pocket, when I’m supposed to be tidying the Biographies. I’m sure I’ll overhear something good, something that will inspire a story. Bring it on!

I'm A Festival. I'm A Parade.

We’re lying on the bed with the window open. The breeze sucks the curtain out of the room, billows it like a sail into the world outside.

His arm is wooden beneath my neck, but when he speaks he moves his hand, twitches his fingers, and I feel his muscles contract and slacken underneath me.

Our clothes are from another decade. We laughed at first, trying on outfits of the dead, their garish colours at odds with our complexions. But it soon exhausted us, the being other people, the being ironic. And so we lay down on top of the sheets. But we’re still not ourselves.

His eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, huge. Reflected in them I am a mass of gold and green. I’m a festival. I’m a parade.

We breathe soft under the weight of the clothes. He is layers of red and blue and brown. He is three shirts deep, strangled by a tie that’s bigger than all our dreams put together.

His body is unrecognisable. I press my hands against where his chest should be. All I can feel are buttons, shiny and smooth beneath my fingers.

I undo them one by one.


***

(I'm writing tiny stories/snapshots inspired by songs, either taking the title or a line or two. The stories don't really have anything to do with the songs, but maybe they'll evoke the same feelings, or maybe they won't. I'm making a tiny book of each story. Just one book per story. If you would like this one, leave a Yes in the comments or email me at ejlannie [at] gmail [dot] com with your address.)

Lucky Owl Writing Necklace

It feels like it's been ages since I last wrote anything on here. Forgive me interweb, for I have been busy doing non-interweb things. Mostly writing, with a spot of gardening, some sitting in the kitchen with my housemates (avec tealights) during a power-cut, reading, making hassleback potatoes, counting words, oh, and making an owl necklace. (And half-pretending to imbue it with magical properties i.e. it is now my 'lucky owl writing necklace'.)

I think it's working, because I recently found out that my story from >kill author, Proxy, has been nominated for the storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2009. It’s a long list of brilliant stories, and I feel honoured to have made it onto it. Big congratulations also go out to kill author, who won the Million Writers Award for best new online magazine or journal. Yeah! I think I’m a little bit in love with >kill author.

And Dzanc Books have just officially announced the line-up for Best of the Web 2010, which Proxy made it into. I think you can actually pre-order it now, and it’s out in June! Eeek! I’m very excited about that, especially after seeing who else is in it.

Other people who’ve had good news recently:

Jenn Ashworth. Her blog full of fibs has been shortlisted for the Author Blog Awards. Woop! You can sign up and vote here. Do it. Do it now.

Nathan Good and Aimee Wilkinson (who I do TTO/Hello Hub things with) both have stories in the new Tomlit.

And this is good news for people with ears: Biff (TTO/HH) has finished his record and you can listen to some of the songs here.

And...Word Soup is One! There is a Word Soup Birthday Party happening on Tuesday 20th April at the New Continental, in Preston. I'm not 100% sure I can go yet, but I'll be there in spirit if I can't. I think it's going to be ace.

Day 100 of #100days: End/Beginning

And so the 100 days is over. I made it down to the event in the fairy-lit, balloon-strewn warehouse in Dalston, where I met some lovely hundred-dayers in real life (hello, and thanks for the camaraderie, the plagiarism, the couch, the Lego and the badges!); marvelled at the Museum; and laughed heartily at Josie Long, Isy Suttie, Sara Pascoe(who also made me cry a bit), and the Pictish Trail and his 30-second songs. There was even cake. A massive cake, with 100 candles no less.

My pledge was to do something creative every day, and to learn Icelandic. The ‘doing something creative’ suited me well, as it basically meant getting on with my writing. But the more I read the blogs of other hundred-dayers, with their photos and comics and sketchbook pages, the more I felt like I wanted to do something ‘visual’, something I could photograph and document. It wasn’t till I was about half-way through that I started to focus on the ‘altered books’ thing. It was something I’d played around with before and really enjoyed. So I went with it. And it progressed from painting on pages to actually cutting things out from the pages, making the pages themselves into other things. I enjoyed it so much that I think I’ll call it a hobby, and do it some more.

My Icelandic didn’t fare as well. Learning words in isolation does not a language teach. Or something. But I’m going to continue with it anyway. And the way I see it, I’ve given myself a head start.

Talar þú íslensku? Err...I'll get back to you on that one.

Am I a better person? Who can say? It’s felt like my life over the last three months has been part of something bigger. And that’s been good and bad. It felt strange for me to be blogging nearly every day, as I’m used to giving myself time-outs from the internet. So in the end I got around that by collating entries and doing catch-up posts. I’ve been more inclined to say yes to things. And I’ve been drawing more, which is something that I missed. And I think taking stock every day changes the way you look at things, too. It stops the days all blurring into one. Which to me, is a good thing. So, stepping onto the positive side of the seesaw, I think I’ll conclude that for me, it’s not necessarily the doing of a certain thing every day that’s been important. Rather, it’s been the reflection, and the thinking about each day and all its events, actions, plans, ideas that matters, and I think it’s this that has set me on the path (and it’s possibly quite a long-ish path) to being a better person.


Chrissy Williams, who was busy learning a new word a day for the whole 100 days, sums it all up beautifully here...

"Whatever we decide to do every day affects us. We affect other people, so what we do affects them. Small things accumulate into big things. This means that small things matter. What do you want to do today? Can you make time to do something small, or will you do nothing?"

Big thanks to Josie Long and the London Word Festival for making it all happen. And hurrah to everyone! We did it.

Days 96 to 99 of #100days: The final countdown or The end is nigh

A while back, I volunteered to help out at the Writing Industries Conference in Loughborough, so that was how I spent Day 96. I got to run the bookstall, with Deirdre and Paul. It was a good day, with lots of writers and writerly things.

I've been really conscious of needing to do a big catch up on my 100 Days. The party is tomorrow (today now) and I'm really excited about meeting up with people and seeing the treasures in the Museum of 100 Days. I'm not going to exhibit anything because all but the last few cut-outs have been made in the one book, making it sort of impossible to display properly, or well. I did think about cutting the individual pages out, and mounting them on card, but then they'd just be bits of paper. I think I'll bring the book and just keep it in my bag, so if anyone wants to have a look, they can. I just hope no Mills and Boon authors are going. There were a couple at the Conference and I was a bit relieved that it wasn't their particular books I'd been slicing up. Although it would have made a brilliant story if I had. Hmmm.

See some of you tomorrow/later. Can't hardly wait.