Talking About Talking About Thinking About Change

I’m heading back to “real work” soon – or at least that part represented by an office job (which will see absolutely no geographical shift away from my study/io for the moment, so adaptation will be… challenging on that front) – and, as I ease back into morning meetings (unnatural!) and people with different priorities and vocabulary to those with whom I’ve been interacting of late, they’ve already been asking how my year of Sabbatical has gone, what I’ve got up to, all that. Unlike those who use Sabbaticals to travel the world, I don’t have a ready store of photos and maps to demonstrate, and the last 5-6 months of this have been… less than ideal, let’s say… What I will say about residencies and commissions and adaptation to extreme conditions and writing fanfic to keep myself sane (hyperfixation on research has been a great tool of denial) and finally being able to pick up the voice work again will – I suspect – sound super-vague, though I should really give these clever, sociable, professionally good communicators the benefit of the doubt! Besides: in some ways we’ve faced more of the same challenges this year than might have been anticipated…

And so, ironically, it’s the most recent work I’m engaged in that might resonate most with people whose job is managing business change, and the psychological stages that go with it. I’ve been creating a poem commissioned by someone who needs to use it to talk about death and grief in a non-religious way. (So obviously it’s one enormous metaphor and, being me, I’ve snuck in references to the four elements, water being somewhat dominant here.)

One of the most fascinating aspects of this process has been writing something that needs to fit someone else’s voice, to a certain extent, because this poem is to be a tool that will doubtless get reshaped by use. Today’s discussion included not only hearing which bits they felt they could use and others… less so… but having the client read it aloud, while I tweaked a couple of lines to fit that, noting what stumbled and what flew, making further notes for more deep-seated transformations later. This is something I do on an almost unconscious level when writing something for my own voice, but doing it for another feels almost like brand-new process for me, and luckily the client’s ability to self-reflect is both skilled and generously shared.

I’m pretty sure this process could not have worked without that trust.

It now occurs to me that this is (new analogy alert) like creating a garment for someone else to use - not only do you take detailed measurements at the beginning, but you have to get them to try it on so you can make some parts tighter, others looser, and ensure that yet others can stretch as necessary, depending on circumstances. Sometimes you have to unstitch an entire panel and do it again.

And the knowledge that the creation will shape the user as well as the consumer is a heady one.

This poem is going to be released publicly as well, at some point in the future, for other people to use if appropriate, and I find myself quietly excited by that prospect, again in a different way from usual. It feels good to make something for people to use, when art is so often seen as a decoration, a luxury, a nice to have, when it actually underpins so much of what it means to be human, connecting our present to past and future, communicating so many things and used everywhere. That this is to be, far more explicitly than usual, a tool, gives me a very calm kind of satisfaction.

And if that’s all I ended up having to show for this year, it would be a mighty thing indeed.

Update: The text of the finished piece is here.

River Cam, August 2010

Back to the Archives

I talked last month about my foray into writing fanfic. I’d written what was essentially a chunky short story (~7,100+ words) of angsty, explicitly erotic, transformative fiction. I told you that I’d enjoyed it and that it was likely I’d write more.

Boy, was I ever not wrong about that. Even before the first one was finished, I had ideas for another. Spurred on by the enthusiasm of the few people who actually commented, I started writing the follow-up. And it expanded into a gigantic monster thing, 23,976 words long and packed with more angst and more explicitly erotic stuff. And three fight scenes. And a bunch of historical detail*

And then I got ill. I’ve been dodging colds and other bugs like a pro for months now, but when it’s right inside your own house, the options are few, and there’s only so much echinacea and extra Vitamin C a body can take that will make a difference. So I set myself a challenge: be ill. Don’t do poetry admin, don’t run around doing extra stuff, don’t, for the love of Hades, go into work and a) make everyone else ill, b) make yourself more ill (see: stressed person in your house who has likely gifted you these microbes). You’re allowed to sleep and read. Okay, and write.

Oh boy. I polished off the gigantic monster work and decided to see whether I could write another one that I figured would be less popular in a few days, just get it out of my system and into the world.

The new one proved… Well, I enjoyed writing it (and doing the research - yes, I’m a nerd, whevs, as the youth say), but its pairing and its subject matter seemed to get fewer people going. By this point, I had a game plan (that, yes, kept expanding, shhh), but I knew it was only a step on the way to the later episodes. And I’ve tried to be less upset/ weirded out by the new piece’s lack of popularity, but there’s still a vocal part of me that’s been affected by the notion of a reduced audience.

Up until about halfway through the monster piece, I was writing for myself, and pleased that people were along for the ride. But now I’ve become a stats hound and got myself tangled up. Argh.

{Deep breath}

It hasn’t helped that someone started shouting at me in the comments section of Chapter 6, ALL CAPS AND ALL, because I dared suggest that one character might think that the life of female, Renaissance royalty might be a bit constrained. To put it into context: this passionately verbal reader would presumably have already read through five chapters of intimate fantasies, graphic depictions of masturbation, a completely invented play re-imagining Genesis by evoking Lilith, detailed talk of herb-growing, etiquette, and historically accurate chess (because I love to do this stuff to myself is why), and THIS WAS THE HILL THEY WOULD DIE ON, BY GOD. I’ve been sanguine about it and presented myself as wryly amused by this to friends with whom I’ve discussed the issue; I’ve been calm, polite, and assertive in my responses to the commenter (despite receiving more shouting at first, and silence thereafter); I’ve refused to let myself doubt the particular aspect about which they’re shouting rattle my resolve (pretty sure I’m right and they can take a hike). However, their actions have damaged my calm; up until now the comments section was a place of validation and over-excited people (there were fewer of those latterly (again: I knew this one would be less popular), but still…), and now there’s the possibility of people hating what I wrote for the oddest of reasons that I can’t predict and waah, basically: honeymoon’s over.

And yet here’s the thing. I’m starting into a fourth work (AO3 allows people to post works (multi-chaptered or otherwise), which can in turn form part of larger series), which will draw all the threads of everything I’ve written about (plus some canon stuff), and I already have detailed notes about it (and the two further works to follow). In 25 days I have combined 52,508 cohesive, coherent, reasonably well-researched (do other fanfic writers go on IMDB and other sources to check the heights and freeze-frame shots of actors to get the eye colour right?!) words (not including plot notes, dialogue fragments, and research) and have a bunch more planned.

In other words, I’ve written more than people are supposed to aim for in NaNoWriMo in less than a month, and it all makes sense. And about the getting weird over stats thing; here’s some True Facts for ya:

First piece: 7,135 words in 2 days, 658 hits since 14-Feb-18 and still growing.
Second piece: 23,976 words in 14 days, 1,139 hits since 19-Feb-18 and still growing.
Third piece: 18,670 words in 5 days, 371 hits and still growing.
Fourth piece (unfinished): 2,727 words in 1 day so far, 75 hits already (two of those in the time it took to write this post).

That’s freakin amazing - why am I being such a meanie to myself about this?!

I have, it turns out, made the mistake of going and comparing my stats (comments and kudos included, which I haven’t listed above) with people who have been writing works for this fandom for… years. I haven’t even been doing it a month, I’ve just been a bit… intense about it all. I cannot realistically expect as many people to be invested in this newbie who likes writing extended (apparently very realistic - that’s nice! :) ) dialogue and gathering plot points around the filth.

And yet. And still.

So here's my new challenge: write the thing, enjoy the thing, post the thing. If you don't get many hits or kudos or comments, whatever - you will have written this for yourself and you will have had a blast. Anyone else who enjoys it is a bonus, ffs. And you will have created the equivalent of a medium-sized novel. Now take that information and discipline and apply it to non-fanfic work (like, e.g. your wayward novel).

Okay?

Okay.

_________

*What?

{sigh} Yes, it would appear that I can’t even write naughty fiction about characters for whom I don’t need to do any world-building without Googling the shit out of what would be realistic and appropriate. Everyone’s lucky I didn’t start getting over-intense about weaponry, but I now know a lot more about European Late Renaissance (is that a term? Fuck it…) footwear, headwear, outerwear, and underwear than I did, also lighting (civic and personal), drainage, personal hygiene, coinage, exchange rates, civic building, historical characters around which the original fictional characters would have been based, geography, bed linen, the intersection of church and state, royal regiments, and the creation of post roads. I also know some interesting words for human anatomy that I didn’t before. Let your mind boggle over that unlikely scenario! And then I had to balance it off so that the historical detail just ticked over in the background and grounded the sex in something realistic without turning into Little Miss Exposition.

Here's One For The Archives

For the last couple of days I’ve been doing something I said I’d probably never do, something I long derided, even used as a short-hand for a certain type of moral and intellectual bankruptcy, and right now I can’t see me ever stopping. Chances are very good you’ll never bear witness to it.

Some background: A couple of weeks ago I. Wait. Okay, back in March last year, I. Hmm. No.

Right. Late September 2016 it started to become clear that the bad laryngitis and the terrifying moments of stopping breathing every time I slept wasn’t going away anytime soon and, quite frankly, I could probably have coped with the sleep deprivation, but, as the months went on, not being able to speak, let alone sing, properly started to fray my sanity.

After the HILARIOUS cancer scare (“Oh, that was just a clerical error!” Riiiight...), and a growing understanding of how to manage the underlying problem, my voice started to crawl back. I was underweight, quiet, squeaky, and in a permanent fog of tiredness, like a ultra-depressing throwback to my teenage years, but I was able to walk without having to stop and cough every ten paces, and I’d even got back on the bike by mid-March.

Then I see a casual acquaintance on Facebook on the lookout for voice artists - especially if they’re not male, middle-class, or English. They definitely had a surfeit of those, thanks. One of my burgeoning career paths, the long-dreamt-of step into narration work, had been scythed out from under me in the autumn, so I thought: let’s play them my Audible showreel, and see what they think.

A driech Saturday in March comes and I’m buzzed into a building where I’ll stand in a darkened corridor, walls wrapped in a menacing shade of insulating material, and make a recording of what was supposed to be a one-off character slot for Rusty Quill’s The Magnus Archives. Just to make things more “interesting” for myself, I decided to go with a flat Cardiff accent, which actually worked out quite well in combination with the laryngitic rasp, for this hard-arsed police detective character (even though I had to channel a combination of my school bullies and my dad to get there). It was fun, it turns out I read the “statement” part well and accurately (and could just about manage the small bit of acting dialogue either side of the storytelling element), and then I went home, curiously uplifted.

After the episode went out I got asked back to reprise the character, who was now to develop a bit of an arc. By this point I’d got enough of a voice back to feel I made a better fist of it, and had to do more Actual Acting, which turns out to be fucking difficult. Who knew. But I think I’m starting to get the hang of it, a few sessions down the line.

Following their social media output, I discovered that, not only do they have a large, appropriately obsessive following, but many of the fans write fanfic. Like: a lot of it. The (apparently) least distressing selection lives, again appropriately enough, in Archive of Our Own (aka AO3), a place where I’ve rediscovered my love for well-written transformative fiction, while avoiding the hell out of anything to do with the fandom I’ve somehow found myself a peripheral part of (okay, fine: I read two pieces, neither of them in any way sexual, in which my character threatens/ beats the shit out of/ stabs people; seems legit).

I am, you see, as big a hypocrite as the next person - I’ve enjoyed all sorts of original erotic fiction/ slashfic/ fanfic, the latter mostly based in the Whedonverse, over the years, but have been known to use the word “fanfic” as a shorthand, derogatory term for derivative writing, occasionally wondering why some of the people producing such frankly breathtaking work online, for free, weren’t using their talents to create, you know, original characters.

See, I definitely thought (and think) that there’s a massive place for written erotica - queer erotica helped me come to terms with my sexuality, and it being online means that there was nothing for my mother to find (although that did mean I had to read it all on university computers - I’m old, remember), for example. And it’s a place to channel things that are unethical, illegal, and frankly downright impossible. I’ve heard some fairly compelling anecdotal evidence to say that getting the more dubious stuff off your chest in virtual terms sublimates the need to carry things over into real life. (Of course, it’s quite difficult to find a genetically modified, flying version of your own arse who wants to do you so...)

And yet, from trying to pop off like a Rentaghost as a five-year-old, to the time in my teens I dreamed I was Doctor Watson, through the time I wrote an undying time-traveller into the Trojan War (again in my teens), to every time (arguably), I write a show/ poem reimagining mythological/ historical/ fictive characters, I have been engaging in transformative writing. Hell, Shakespeare and Marlowe did it. Matthew Bourne does it. Angela Carter did a lot of it. Patience Agbabi, Kate Tempest, Hilary Mantel, Jeanette Winterson, Alan Moore, Salman Rushdi, Tarrell Alvin McRaney, Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Okorafor, Ben Okri, and Margaret Atwood have all made moolah and reputations from it. George Lucas definitely did it. And, of course, if Joseph Campbell is right, we’ve only got a small handful of constantly recycled stories between us anyway.

Enough warm-up, Fay - tell us why you’ve got us here...

Fine. So, I have several writing projects that are currently on hiatus - most notably a commissioned poem that is about five months overdue (I’m so sorry), and a novel that I started last year while near-mute, which keeps growing, shows no signs of stopping, and is still at least 30% shy of completed. I have created nothing new except pieces in workshops and the odd new-poem-made-of-everyone-who’s-performed thing since August. In other words: if it’s planned, it’s not turning up. Argh.

Get on with it.

(Thanks for your patience so far!) Anyway, seemingly out of nowhere, on Wednesday this week, I picked up my laptop and started to write a wildly explicit bit of slashfic featuring characters from a piece of mainstream media. Within two days it had turned into eight short chapters of raw angst and filth which I posted, pretty much as I finished them, with minimal editing, onto AO3.

Within minutes of the first chapter going up, I had people I’d never met before reading and offering “kudos”, the platform’s “like” of choice. 48 hours later, and it has 375 hits (which I have to assume doesn’t translate to 375 people), a handful of kudos, and a scattering of complimentary comments (the person suggesting it needed a government health warning was a particular favourite).

I am, I have to say, feeling a little giddy (and mildly conflicted) about this. But we must analyse new experiences if we’re to learn and grow from them, so, what have I learned?

1. I can churn out what essentially amounts to a long short story (7135 words), with plot, development, structure, action, dialogue, and stuff, in less than two days.

2. When you have pre-created characters and worlds, all you have to do is a wee bit of tweaking, and their story is there. Everyone reading it knows the background, so there’s no mileage in world-building and exposition. (No-one wants to read 43 pages about Hobbit history, do they? Do they...?!)

3. I am a filthy, filthy bastard (mind: I’ve seen some of the tags on a bunch of these works, a set of rather hefty trigger warnings left, right, and centre - turns out I’m a filthy bastard who has strong preferences for consensual, safe(ish), adult, human encounters, and I’m good with that).

4. The dopamine rush from a stranger begging you to add chapters and end their torment is quite extraordinary. And apt, obviously.

5. There is something frankly liberating about being Not Yourself. It’s a long time since I’ve written under a pseudonym, and moving out from under it was liberating then, but this is something else now.

6. My poetry blog posts, and this one, easily garner 100-odd views these days, and I’m happy with that baseline. (Listen: I know where I stand in the poetry rankings of the world.) My most popular entry on any of my blogs ever topped 1400 views, but that was over the course of 20 months and, now I come to think of it, is actually a transformative piece (satire counts, right?). Hah! :D

Contrast this: within 48 hours I had over 300 views of this one work. If I’m after an easy fix on approbation, this has some quality juice to offer. (Yeah, I am aware of how that sounds...)

7. I am now really excited about writing prose again. Like: really excited. And yes: some of it is going to be fan/ slash fiction (see points 2, 3, 4 and 5 above), but I think the characters from the dusty novel can finally stop poking me in the head and making a variety of disappointed faces when I say “maybe later” (sorry, kids).

8. I don’t really write straight prose anymore. This last two days I watched myself changing words because they would sound better, have more rhythm, play with internal rhyme. Thanks, performance poetry - I’m going to be writing on a slant for the rest of my life.


So, that’s it, really. I’ve been dying to tell someone, so I’m glad it could be you. Thanks for listening.

(What’s that? A link to the work? Ah. No. No, I don’t think so, do you? I mean, you know: not yet...)

NoNoNaNo (Or: how I will be challenging myself creatively in November 2014.)

Firstly: I will not be taking part in NaPoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). For a variety of reasons, it's not going to happen this year.

Secondly: I will be challenging myself to write something every day. Unlike with NaPoWriMo, I won't be aiming to write 30 brand new pieces during November.  Unlike with NaNoWriMo, I won't be stitching together a set number of words to make an overall product.  It's going to be a weird halfway house between the two with no set numerical goals except to be writing something (either as part of a larger thing, or a complete piece in itself/ themselves) every day.

This could be:

• Poetry
• Short stories
• Bits of the one-hour, solo spoken word show I'm developing (of course I'm developing a one-hour, solo spoken word show - have you met a spoken word artist lately?!)
• Other Stuff

Thirdly: this is where you come in.  I would like to take some commissions, to prevent me from losing momentum/ writing utter crap. I suspect I'll do better stuff if I'm writing for other people.  (Or will I? That'll be fun to discover...)

The options are:

1. Give me a phrase, or a picture, or a place, or something of that ilk - whatever I write must be either inspired by, or about that item;
2. Give me a precise genre (poem (and style within poetry, if appropriate), short story, or Something Else);
3. Give me a person for whom I should be writing this (it can just be you); or
4. Combine two or more of the above.

The rules are:

1. You can't specify length above 20 lines or 750 words (but you can specify length below that, unless the form you've chosen is constrained to a particular length...);
2. If has to be something it's feasible to write in 2-3 days max (and bear in mind that I work full-time, so use your judgement wisely!);
3. You can give me a commission any time between now and 29th November 2014.
4. I have to start it in November 2014 for it to be considered part of the challenge;
5. If I start it, I have to finish it, even if finishing it happens in a date past 30th November (but no later than 31st December 2014); and
6. I am allowed to turn down commissions on the grounds of the feasibility of the above.

The format of the finished product will likely mostly be electronic, though this is something we can talk about. You choose whether this is something I can share with the general public or if it's just for you.

You can submit a commission request by filling in the form here. I'll be blogging (naturally) about it here.

Fourthly: As this is the first year I'm doing this and I've NO IDEA how/ if this will fly, I won't be raising any money from it.  However, if you feel like you'd like to add an extra incentive, please make a donation to either Mind or Cancer Research and let me know about it. Ta! :)

Let's see what November brings...

NaPoWriMo 2013 (or: what I learned in April)

So, this year I took part in NaPoWriMo for the first time - how did writing 30 poems in 30 days go?

You can see the (mixed) results at http://fayrobertsnapowrimo.blogspot.com and here, for my fellow-nerds, are some statistics (straight in - no messing):

• Pieces written: 30
• Finished: 30-Apr-13
• Shortest piece: #3 Suddenly, at 3:45am - senryū
• Longest piece: #7 Excel Now - a series of seven chained pieces of various formats
• Fullest day(s): 12th, 18th, and 26th - 3 pieces each
• Longest gap with no pieces: 3 days
• Forms employed: blank verse; free verse; haiku/ senryū (chained or individual); tanka; sonnet; terzanelle; triolet; acrostic
• Themes explored: seasons; love and relationships; health and illness; true stories; religion, magic, and mythology (lots of these); triumphing over crap
• Sources of inspiration: weather; crazy taxi-driver (person rather than game!); a witty friend's Facebook status; holiday in France; number associations; patron saints (St. George's Day); the difficulties of focusing on revision;The Bible; politics; The Louvre; public transport; my sign language teacher; NaPoWriMo itself
• "Official" prompts used: tanka, triolet
• Coincidental prompts (i.e. when it turned out I'd done a poem with the same theme or prompt for myself as others had used - usually on different days): in media res; mythological personae; un-love; fragments of languages other than English.

But how did that make you feeeeel...?

By turns ennervated and elated, mixed in with grim determination and workmanlike satisfaction at a job at least completed. Disappointed (and mildly embarrassed) that some of them should never have seen the light of day ordinarily - I rarely share poems until I'm at least 80% sure of them, but shocked at the ones that turned out Proper. Buoyed up by feedback. One of the things that really kept me going was, paradoxically, sharing them as I went along, and getting positive feedback (everything from seeing how many Facebook "likes" and Blogger hits the posts got, to the well-structured comments of people who a) enjoyed them, b) actually read them properly, c) clearly knew what they were talking about).

I'm now engaged in what experienced (and wonderfully supportive!) NaPoWriMo'er Martin Vosper calls NaPoEdMo - yes, May: National Poetry Editing Month... Fellow-RRRanter Ant Smith has made an e-book of his. I know for certain that only about 60% of mine are worth much more than cringing lightly over and saying "oh well, they fulfilled a purpose", but it would be nice to get the good ones (about 5?) out there accompanied by the ones that just need a bit of editing and polishing to fulfill more of their potential.

But here's a weird thing I've found since end of April and it turns out I'm not the only one who took part who's experiencing this - I've been writing more poems since. At the beginning of the challenge, writing was taking it out of me, and I'd feel drained of creativity and blank. Now it's like I'm apt to find inspiration from lots of things and instead of going "oh, huh, I could probably make a poem out of that" and it never seeing the light of day, I immediately start to write it down... Like I no longer get in my own way...

I made the terrible mistake of joking to an athletic friend that NaPoWriMo was like a marathon. They were immediately incensed and offended. Having trained for and run half-marathons they could not see the humour in the statement and were convinced I was at best delusional. The argument quickly became both bitter and sarcastic on both sides.

The thing of it is that I have stretched and developed poetic/ creative muscles that I thought were pretty buff to start with, discovering how very wrong I was. Owing to certain physical frailties, I will never run a marathon, or half-marathon. This is not hyperbole or cowardly giving-up but a plain truth which I suspect my physiotherapist would back up in a chuckling second. (Besides, it never being a dream I entertained for myself, how could it be giving up?) However, there remain a world of creative challenges to set myself, a whole plethora of targets and personal satisfactions to gain.

Performance poet Tim Clare sets himself an annual challenge of writing 101 poems in one day. That, my friends, is a poetic marathon - that's the kind of crazy shit I'd love to work up to doing, maybe as part of a team doing it for charity - sponsor us a certain amount per poem perhaps - while people milled around us and flung suggestions. It's likely been done before, but how cool would that be?! :D

Lessons learned (for next NaPoWriMo/ writing challenge/ writing in general):

1. Just fucking write - no excuses, just do it.
2. Set yourself goals and concrete challenges.
3. Do your own time (thanks, Neil Gaiman) - by all and any means encourage people who're doing it too, but your first focus is the challenge.
4. Join a writer's group. Flesh-space or webby, that feedback and encouragement will do bloody wonders.
5. Ask friends to help you - feedback or proof-reading or suggesting stuff or whatever. Chances are good that both you and they will be chuffed that you did.
6. Just fucking write.
7. Don't force the writing into a shape you think it should be.  Like any artform, it has its own shape and a major part of your job is to uncover that, rather than dictate it.  This is an organic process.
8. Did we mention just fucking writing?
9. Put time aside in the day.
10. If an idea comes to you, don't assume you'll "get around to it later" - write it down. In this age of smartphones and tablet and whatever, the chances that you won't have something you can scribe on/ with are vanishing small, but while we're on that topic, always have a pen/ pencil/ crayon and notebook with you - preferably one that is dedicated to the project/ creative writing in general.
11. Anything can be a source of inspiration. Seriously.  Pick a thing and write down the colours, shapes, sounds, memories that come with it.  Follow the shape its trying to show you and voilà: writiness.
12. Just. Fucking. Write.

Well, I think that's it from me.  Have fun, enjoy the poems, and I'll let you know when they're (edited and) in a form that you can fondle...