The Word Cloud

Met a Irish dude in the pub tonight - a chance to practice my Irish? Nope, he doesn't speak any (except the usual "Pogue mahone"). Why did I bother to learn the language? No-one speaks Irish - and I've pretty much forgot most of what I learned (it's been ten years). But it did get me reminiscing about my years living with the Irish buskers of 'the County Kilburran'.

    It's funny how the people of the British Isles have such a reputation for the drinking (except the Welsh, who don't seem to have a national character as such). The English and the Scottish drink to get in the mood for violence, but the Irish drink to get in the mood for something much worse: folk music! In fact 'maudlin' is actually a Irish word which means 'having a tendency to sing through the nose and fall over'.

    We used to go busking in pairs: one of the Irish lot on rhythm guitar and vocals, and myself on lead guitar, adding diatonic riffs to the pentatonic melody, turning it into a sort of mellow acoustic folk rock. Well, I say folk, but we generally played classic rock from the 60s and 70s, anything from the Grateful Dead to Dire Straits. But every now and then we'd spot a group of guys with cement on their boots approaching, and we'd go straight into a rebel song, eg 'The Merry Ploughboy' ("Oh I am a merry ploughboy / and I plough the fields all day / till the sudden thought came to my mind / that I should rove away / For I'm sick and tired of slavery / since the day that I was born / so I'm off to join the IRA / and I'll be off tomorrow morn . . .") The lads would be like "Fair play to ye!" cos we were singing rebel songs on the London Underground, and they'd dig deep!

    But most Irish folk songs are kinda melancholy. Although some are sposed to be humorous, their lame attempt at humour is often more depressing than the sad songs. Sometimes we'd spot a couple of Irish girls approaching (they always go around in pairs, and are somehow easily identifiable as Irish at first glance) and we'd go into a Christy Moore song, eg "Well, goodbye to the port and brandy / the vodka and the stout / the Smithwick and the Harpic / the bottled the draught and keg / As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad / I could never figure out / how yer man stayed up on the surfboard / after fourteen pints of stout". We'd then get chatting to them, and invite them to the 'party tonight' at our squat - there was always a party, if not at our squat, then at one of the others.

    There were some great musicians among the buskers of NW London, some great characters - and some awful eejits, too!
    In my squat there was Sean the Tree (so called cos it was so hard to get him to go anywhere - we'd be all ready to go to the pub, and we'd be like "Sean a bhoucaill! Bfuill tu re anis?" and he'd be like "Cinte, ta'm re" and we'd be like "As go brachlinn anis!" and he'd still be on the sofa with his boots off. Excuse atrocious attempt at Gaelic spelling!) He played guitar and mandolin, and sang like a foghorn. There was Niall, who wouldn't jam with me cos I could play lead guitar and he couldn't, and 'Annie' who tried to come out as gay, only to be told "Sure there's no such thing, you've just gone a bit mad is all!"
    Then there were the Derry lads, foremost of whom was Marlin. He was a wolfish-looking dude with a wild mass of grey-brown hair which had a white streak in it from when he got burnt on the scalp when a petrol bomb was shot out of his hand by a rubber bullet. He played the most amazing freestyle improvised heavy metal guitar. He used to take a 50 watt Marshall down the Underground and plug it into the sockets used by the cleaners for their floor polishing machines. He stuck the bare live and neutral wires in with snapped matches, and rarely got to play long before the transport police turned up. Marlin struck on a brilliant idea: he squatted three houses in a row, and lived in the middle one. Whenever the Plod got called cos of his loud guitar-playing, he'd hop over the back fence and emerge from the house next door to join in with the complaining.
    Another character was Docker, one of the Kerry lads. His actual nickname was 'Doc', cos he could read and write, but he preferred to claim that was short for Docker, which is after all rather more macho. We had some great sessions in such Kilburran pubs as the Coal Pits - I pertickly remember accompanying him on tin whistle while he played guitar and sang 'Dirty Old Town'. Immediately afterwards, a drunken arsole grabbed his guitar and started shouting "Six Brits got blown to bits, down by the Bogside!" while bashing the guitar in a pretence at playing it. That was quite typical of hanging out with the Kerry lot. We had some good laughs (ever danced a 'Kerry set'? It's like the Can-Can on steroids) and myself and Doc did manage to record a few songs (execrable sound quality, unfortunately) but I had to stop hanging out with him after I got near killed by a nutter with a spirit level (for being a 'Saxon').

    None of us made much money from the busking, and we totally couldn't be arsed to sign on the dole, but we seldom did without cos of all the lads coming over from the Little Green Country looking for work in the building trade. They'd arrive in London with a couple of hundred pounds and some optimism, end up in a pub on Kilburran High Road, hoping to make some friends who'd give them a bed for the night, and who should they meet but ourselves? We'd take them in, and not even charge them any rent as long as they kept us in beers and spliff. They'd get a start as a roofer or brickie, find theirself a bedsit, and be grateful to us for the helping hand. We'd always find another one, so the partying never stopped.

    Ah sure, twas a grand life so it was . . .

Hay guys,

So, as some of you may already know, I've recently started university and half of my course is Creative Writing. I mentioned the other day that I had to read some Contemporary Literary Fiction and that the first book I've been told to read is John Updike's 'Rabbit at Rest'.

I can't make any judgements yet as I'm only two pages in but there's something that is nagging at me as I read that I need some clarification on. One thing that has always been a pain for me during writing is tense. I accidently slip into a different tense without even realising it. The problem has been pointed out to me in the forum before and I've read it commented on some other posts so I imagine it's quite a common thing for a lot of people.

What I need help on is identifying whether Updike is doing this, or if I'm just not understanding it. Here's the examples that are confusing me:

"...Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous..."

To me, this is in present tense - 'has' rather that 'had', right?

Then there's this part:

"He looked over and watched her tuck back a stubborn fluttering wisp of half-gray hair from her sun-toughened little brown nut of a face"

With the '-ed' suffixes in this part I was thinking past tense.

So, am I getting this completely wrong? Or, am I on point but living under the illusion that switching tenses is a bad thing?

Any advice would be most appreciated. I have to write a sort of book review on this when I'm done so I want to clear up any uncertainties.

Thanks! 

Twenty reasons to smile ;-)

Having recently hit the big 40 and despite the lavish use of expensive creams, I can’t deny the laughter lines around my eyes. What causes them? Smiling and laughter of course! Today was a pretty ordinary day for me, but it gave me so many reasons to smile.

My youngest son declared he knew why I wore tight jeans, ‘to hold in all the fat’, he said – it wasn’t even 7 o’clock. Ouch. A grimace – but that’s an upside down smile!

8 ish my older son says his trainers are too tight to do cross country in, so I tell him to borrow mine, we both wear a 41. He smiles and I smile sneakily – he had no idea how bad they smell.

9am, a call from the school – muddy trainers but no school shoes. So I make my third trip to the school in 45 minutes. I was greeted by a rueful son in his socks. I hand over the shoes and we smile, he knows I’d never let him down.

My daughter was watching a Barbie fairy film and I got down to some work. She began to bounce up and down on the sofa, ‘stop bouncing on my sofa!’

‘I’m not bouncing mummy, I’m flying ... and it’s all of our sofa!’ She’s four years old and would sell her Granny.

This week’s sales almost hitting the four figure mark – a very good reason to smile!

I received a very positive review of my first three chapters on another site, and a lovely one from LD on the W/c. (you flatter me LD!) Big cheesy grin!

Got chatting with a buddy about a new project and I smiled enthusiastically, A LOT as we bashed ideas off each other. Sometimes that’s the best part of my day!

The sun comes out and it starts hotting up – I love the sun.

I chatted with another couple of buddies about a get together before Christmas – I am really looking forward to it.

I got some excellent advice from a new friend which helps me big time with the basis of my new plot – thank you Spi – a really big grin for you.

Really hot afternoon so soft top was down – no better feeling – well not when you are driving anyway!

The Cure came on, ‘just like heaven,’ reminded me of my college days and my first love ( turned out to be cheating git) but I smiled anyway for the good times.

I spent more than I should on some flowers for a friend who’s daughter has just left for university, I know she will love them.

My middle child’s Birthday tomorrow, I smiled as I chose his card, he loves Spongebob – I prefer the starfish, Patrick who looks like a giant tongue.

I creased at my husband’s text message when I told him that the ninja lego my son wanted for his pressie was nearly a hundred quid. Needless to say I picked something he and my wallet could both love.

I arranged a girlie night out on Friday with my friend to see our favourite band – nights out these days are few and far between. I not only smile, but I do a little dance as well.

I came home to be presented with a card from my middle son which tells me what a lovely mummy I am. I was thoroughly delighted – I could actually read his handwriting.

I read a lovely comment from a Clouder about my post, thank you Veek, I am blushing again.

Kids have almost settled and I have taken residence in the dining room for now sitting on my new office chair with my new back massager on shiatsu massage with extra heat. Now that gets a mahoosive, contented smile and the day isn’t even over yet!

Oh one last one, that makes it twenty one, just poured a large glass of Barolo - )grin(

What made you smile today?

 

 

I got around to watching Johnny Guitar and to be honest I wasn't that impressed. I can see why it caused interest, its malice fuelled plotline was unusual at the time and the edge of surreality it boasts also marked it out as a bit different. But I don't think any of that, at least when viewed today, elevates it above its endless dialogue scenes and stilted performances. This week's pick is Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (1957) directed by John Huston and on... sometime this week I think on More4 (I'm away from home at the moment and don't have a Radio Times to hand, but trust me it is on). It's another film I haven't seen and one I would like to and it gives me a chance to look at a very different type of screenwriter to those I usually write about. I don't know how many times I've mentionned the Blacklist in writing these blogs and always from the point of view of the left-wing writers whose careers it ended, but there were right-wing screenwriters too. John Lee Mahin was a staunch conservative who was convinced that the original screenwriters guild had been infiltrated by communists. To his credit (and I'm once again relying on a Patrick McGilligan interview) Mahin had no time for McCarthy and had the good sense to acknowledge that many of the films accused of having communist subtext simply did not, but, like so many others, he did nothing to help those who were accused and suffered the consequences; in Mahin's view they had made their own bed. As you might expect, Mahin was mainly a writer of 'men's films', adventure pictures often in exotic locales. A favourite of Victor Fleming he also worked repeatedly with W. S. Van Dyke and Jack Conway, as well as occasional jobs for Howard Hawks and John Ford. He was prolific and was responsible for such classics as Scarface, Red Dust, Captains Courageous and John Wayne's North to Alaska. But he also had range as a writer, making uncredited contributions to A Star is Born, Gone with The Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as having a flair for comedy (he co-wrote The Devil is a Sissy; best film title ever!). The other way in which Mahin was different to many of the writers I've looked at is that he was generally happy in what happened to his work after it left his typewriter, possibly because he ws friendly with so many of his directors. He was that rarest of beasts; a contented screenwriter. I'd also like to mention briefly how Mahin startd in pictures (according to him at least), he was a journalist and through that he met Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (ex-journalists beginning to make good as writers), they asked him to ghost write Unholy Garden (1931) for them while they worked on a play and guaranteed him more screenwriting work at the end of it. I wish it was still that easy to get into the industry!

Another film I haven't seen this week and one I plan to catch (which probably means I'll forget it's on). Johnny Guitar (1954) is on More 4 at 10am on Wednesday and was written by... well let's see...
A few weeks ago I wrote about the question of who wrote Casablanca, where there is considerable confusion over authorship because of the old studio practice of assigning multiple writers to a project without letting the writers know they are not alone, and then getting multiple re-writes. The other reason for their being confusion over who wrote classic films is somewhat darker; the blacklist. Any discussion of 50's screenwriting runs into the blacklist, I've mentionned it a few times in these blogs and I just assume people know what I'm talking about but, just in case, the blacklist was a list of Hollywood screenwriters who were denounced as having communist sympathies during the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)hearings; if you were on the list studios would not employ you and you risked jailtime. The hearings resulted in the jail for the so called 'Hollywood Ten' and cut short the careers of many others, mostly writers, mostly Jewish. The only way to get leniency was to 'name names', to give the committee names of people with communist ties; little more proof was ever required. 
But writers write, and studios were loath to lose good writers, so the practice of blacklisted writers 'borrowing' the name of another writer emerged. Philip Yordan, the screenwriter of Johnny Guitar, leant his name to at least 5 black-listed writers (which sounds altruistic but Yordan did make a good living out of it). Yordan in fact head a headstart, he was using other writers and putting his name to the script before the blacklist and continued after, he basically employed a staff like a rennaisance painter with his apprentices. This was no secret, nor was it unique to Yordan (the impossibly prolific Ben Hecht is believed to have had a similar system), but it does lead to some difficulty when it comes to his filmography, especially when memories differ. In Patrick McGilligan's backstory interview (to which I am massively indebted) he lists a separate filmography for Yordan's 'disputed' films.
And among these is Johnny Guitar. Ben Maddow certainly wrote films using Yordan's name and Yordan has never denied this, but both men claim to have written Johnny Guitar. To be honest, based on the interviews, Yordan's claim is a lot stronger, he gives a full account of writing the screenplay based on an existing treatment by the author of the original novel ,Roy Chanslor, while Maddow on watching the film did not even recognise it (though remained sure he had written it!). On the other hand, Yordan arguably has more to gain; because of his use of 'surrogates' he was not the most respcted writer amongst his peers. His best known and most respected credits are almost all disputed, the stand out being The Man from Laramie. Man from Laramie is a brilliant film but Johnny Guitar is a unique one, a cult classic. Yordan's reputation largely rests on this one film.
In his McGilligan interview Yordan called Maddow an outright liar. Maddow went further and claimed that not only did Yordan not write Johnny Guitar but that he never wrote anything, that he was 'incapable of writing' and always used other people. That seems unlikely, and makes Maddow sound bitter, but he probably was, Yordan had a very long and successful career while Maddow lost a decade of his. But there is a final twist; in his interviews McGilligan found Maddow accused by other writers of 'naming names' to HUAC, McGilligan re-interviewed Maddow and (althought the exact situation is more complex than I have space for) in essence Maddow admitted that he did co-operate with HUAC.
In many ways this has not been a blog about writing,  as with Casablanca I am in no way able to say who wrote Johnny Guitar, but the confusion would not have existed were it not for the saddest period in Hollywood history.

John Locke made history (again) yesterday when he was announced as the first indie writer to sell 1 million Kindle Books. In case you are wondering about Amanda Hocking – who broke a million a while back – that was for e-books in all formats through all retailers.

On the same day, John Locke released his how-to book, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! which broke into the Top 100 items in the Kindle Store at some point yesterday evening. It’s now at #54.

Pretty impressive for a self-published non-fiction book, and pretty impressive for a self-help book, or for any book on writing/publishing/marketing.

Cynics will note that the announcement was made on the same day as the book release. Others have argued that Amanda Hocking must have also passed this milestone by now, but that Amazon aren’t as keen to trumpet her success since she turned down a trade deal with their publishing arm to sign with St. Martin’s Press.

Only Amanda Hocking and Amazon will know the truth on that score, and I’m sure her fans will be asking her the same question, and we may hear something on that soon.

In any event, none of that should detract from this amazing achievement from someone who made $47 in his first six months.

I bought his book yesterday (it’s priced at $4.99) and if you want my take on the contents, check out today's blog post:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/john-locke-sells-a-million-books-then-tells-the-world-how-he-did-it/ 

First up; I watched last week's choice Holiday and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Original it is not (and it's plotline has become more cliché through years of imitation). Plausible? Don't even wish. And  despite attempts to move it beyond its stage origins it still feels very stage-bound. But its wit is sparkling and the acting of Grant and Hepburn is first rate. I would be happy to recommend it to a friend.

            Moving on... My rule of thumb for writing these blogs is; if in doubt, look for a Hitchcock film. The man made over 50 and they are used as filler by TV schedulers so often that you can start to become almost blasé about the brilliance of the films. That said, To Catch a Thief (Thursday 5.15pm Film4) is not up there with Hitchcock's best. It's a fun film, a light-hearted romp, as charming as its star, the irreplaceable Cary Grant (as bankable a leading man in 1955 as he had been for Holiday in 1938), but without the edge that characterises Hitchcock's best.

            John Michael Hayes is considered by many the quintessential Hitchcock writer, working with the director on 4 occasions, most notably on the superb Rear Window. But here's an interesting question; if a writer has considerable success when he works with one director and precious little with others, should we give the lion's share of the credit to the director?

            In the case of Hitchcock it's very easy to give all the credit (or at least most) to the director; Hitchcock always co-wrote his films anyway (though seldom took credit). But it's not like Hitch was infallible, he had plenty of failures. And I may be misguiding you a little to the rest of the career of Hayes; he also wrote The Carpetbaggers and Peyton Place (both slightly trashy but very successful) and the Steve McQueen vehicle Nevada Smith (a name which inspired that of Indiana Jones). But it was with Hitchcock that Hayes had his greatest successes and post-Hitchcock he struggled with the system.

            Perhaps it is simply the case that a great director knows how to use a great writer; knows when to step in and when to give them freedom. Hitchcock scripts were developed over long meetings and it shows in the clockwork precision of something like Rear Window, few directors took such pains (few directors were allowed such time). And, while I don't know enough about Hayes' other films to know whether it happened to him, it is certainly not uncommon for the a great script to be re-written into a thoroughly mediocre one as everyone from director to stars to producers insist on crowbarring in their ideas. A great director recognises that screenwriting is a craft; it might look easy, it isn't. It takes a lot to produce a well-balanced and structured script, and very little to ruin it.

            One last fact about Hayes, in later life he became professor of Film Studies at Dartmouth College, passing on his experience to the next generation of screenwriters. For some reason I find this endears him to me all the more.

I finally managed a cyber sit-down with the incredibly busy and productive T.D. (Tim) Johnston. Aside from being an educator, and an author, Tim is the founder and editor of Short Story America which was recently named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 50 Online Literary Magazines in the world.

But, as you will see from the interview, Short Story America is far more than a literary magazine. For starters, their first Anthology will be released this month, and they are publishing it under their own imprint.

There is a lot of great information in this interview about Short Story America, which is a fantastic free resource for teachers, students, readers, and writers - with an amazing free library of classic short stories as well as great work from contemporary writers from around the world.

They pay writers for submissions, but the rights are non-exclusive, so writers are free to publish their stories elsewhere afterwards, or themselves. They also publish select stories in their hardback anthology, and as audiobooks. All the details, and much more, are in the interview.

Can you tell us a little about Short Story America and about what gave you the idea?

I have taught short fiction throughout my life as an educator, teaching American Literature, World Literature and Creative Writing in college-preparatory schools. For years it has struck me that it is very hard to find good contemporary short stories, not because they are not being written, but because they are either unpublished or are published briefly by a review and then disappear, never to be read and appreciated by most of us. This is beyond unfortunate.

So I decided to leave the school world and start a publication which is devoted completely to the short story and its author. Short Story America is dedicated to advancing modern short stories, while also keeping hundreds of classic stories readily accessible online in a classy format, unlittered by nuisance advertisements swimming along the margins of the page. Short stories deserve to be read, and not just in the year and venue in which they were published.

So I started Short Story America, in the hope that others felt the same way. Many new friendships later, I’m glad I did. 

Read the rest of the interview here: 
http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/interview-with-t-d-johnston-founder-of-short-story-america/

..for asking a very dull and very similar question.

I have two main projects I want to work on again. I've had a long break from both of them, but now when I go back to them, I don't like how they read, I don't like my writing voice in them.

So. Do I:

a) move on and start a completely different project?
b) try and remedy the stories?
 
My voice has changed significantly since both of those books were written and as much as I desperately want to go back to them, I feel like my voice will just change all over again in a year or so, and then what? I can't keep rewriting, so when does it all end, or do I even bother to restart?

Heeeeelp! :(

Back to normal this week, The Fugitive is on ITV 2 at 12.05 am Tuesday morning and is described in the Radio Times as a 'frantic thriller', I can't decide if that's someone trying to be clever since Frantic is another Harrison Ford film. Possibly I'm reading too much into it. Anyway, I have two reasons for picking The Fugitive (beside the fact that it's an excellent film) and the first is that it's written by David Twohy, whose name I have no idea how to pronounce and who is the first person I've dealt with in these blogs who could more accurately be described as a writer/director. Of course he did not direct The Fugitive, nor Waterworld, G. I. Jane or many of the other films he has written but he now seems to have settled into the dual role permanently and had directed his first film (Timescape) before writing The Fugitive. So I think it's fair to say that he was predominantly a writer and is now a writer/director. What interests me is that I only knew him as director of Pitch Black, I had no idea he wrote it and certainly no idea that he had written (co-written I should say with Jeb Stuart) The Fugitive. They say that all writers want to be directors (if only to get some credit) and I'm now wondering how many directors I like had whole other careers as writers which I know nothing about. I would love to find out that favourite directors of mine had written favourite films of mine without my knowledge. The other, slightly more lucid, reason I picked The Fugitive is because I think thriller writing is underrated. You very seldom see thriller writers picking up an Oscar or Writer's Guild award, that sort of thing tends to be reserved for worthy drama or indie self-exploration. I'm not saying that they are undeserving genres, I'm saying that I think there's no such thing as an undeserving genre; a well-written thriller, horror or sci-fi is as hard to write as a drama. In fact, I would say that it's harder; thrillers or action-adventure films have a hell of difficult job in keeping the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats, set pieces need to be thrilling but still fit into the plot, and that plot needs to be got across without slowing down the action. Drama of course needs to keep you interested but the audience is more understanding of a slow burn approach. People ask why the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels (haven't seen the new one yet) struggle to match the brilliance of the first; it's because it's bloody hard! Twohy has a hit and miss record (like most screenwriters), for every Fugitive there's a Waterworld, for every Pitch Black there's a Chronicles of Riddick, although he brought that one on himself. His screenplay for Alien 3 was apparently rejected (makes you wonder how bad it must have been!) and he is currently vaguely associated with the next Alien vs. Predator film, but despite this he is a talented writer of the thriller genre and I for one would like to see him return to pure screenwriting.