Manchester Green Spaces

Posted on May 28, 2013 by literarylad

Just what have Manchester City Council got against green spaces?
First there was Piccadilly Gardens. The only large park in the city itself. Decades of neglect turned it into a haven for drug dealers. Finally Manchester City Council decided to do something to stop the decay. What they did, was to sell half of the park to developers, who wasted no time building an office block on it. The remaining area was ‘re-developed’, which involved ninety percent hard landscaping. They paved it over, planted a handful of small trees through the paving, and laid a couple of tiny, forlorn patches of grass.
They had started with a basic structure of very beautiful, mature trees – some of the very few mature trees in the city. Not one remained. The council threw away decades, perhaps a century of growth and replaced it with the worst of examples of ‘landscape architecture’.
There was an area of land bordered by Whitworth, Princess and Canal Streets. I used to pass it every day on my way to work. It was just rough land, used as a car park. But it was bordered with rows of very beautiful trees. Again, the land was ‘developed’. The trees were destroyed, the whole area excavated to a great depth to provide a basement for an enormous building, to be mostly apartments, I believe. Work stopped – presumably they decided economic conditions weren’t right after all – and now we’re left with a huge building site, fenced off with hoardings decorated with images of the kind of people the developers imagined would live in the apartments (all young, all handsome, all wealthy and wrapped up in their own self-importance).

And now it’s the Peace Gardens, in front of the library. The Peace Gardens were lovely – very small, but an oasis, a refuge, an unexpected natural area, where a path wound its way through grass, mature trees, hedges, flowers. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I went back to visit Manchester last month. It’s all gone now, apparently as part of another ‘regeneration’ scheme by the City Council.

There have been other atrocities, and still it continues. Apparently Alexandra Park is the latest casualty, with avenues of mature trees being ripped out, funded by lottery fund money.

How can these vandals in suits live with themselves? Is it corruption – are they being bought off by developers; brown envelopes changing hands, Council members sacrificing our green spaces to make themselves rich? Or is it lack of judgement – are they as soulless as the results of all this redevelopment? Cities need nature. They need trees and grass and plants to absorb pollution and exude fresh air for us all to breath. Some people say they prefer concrete and tarmac, but studies have shown that these things have a detrimental psychological effect on us all, whether we’re aware of it or not. Manchester City Council, hang your heads in shame.

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History – it’s the Future

Posted on May 14, 2013 by literarylad

Is it only me that gets irritated by television and radio presenters talking about historical characters in the present or, sometimes, the future tense? This seems to have been very fashionable for some time. I’m talking about commentary like:
“He’s just conducted his first successful military campaign, leading his forces to victory, and Henry VIII is at the peak of his regal career.” No, he’s not, that was centuries ago – he’s dead and buried. “He is soon to initiate a conflict with the church that will tear at the very fabric of the nation.” I think you’ll find that all took place a very long time ago…

Someone, some historian, probably a very clever and engaging historian, will have hit on the idea of relating historical events as if they were contemporary, as a way of making his or her lectures more interesting; different. It may have been very effective. It will have been taken up by others, once, twice; three times. Still it will have been different and interesting. And then it will have stopped being effective, because it became too common, expected; a cliché. Some presenters start off in the present tense and then get confused, slipping back into the past tense, before remembering that we don’t do that any more (it’s so passé) and moving forward once more to the present and the future. I wonder what will come next. Will historians mimic the first person narrative favoured by so many novelists (which I might also argue was once very effective but has now become a cliché)? Perhaps add in a bit of ‘street’ language to give it an even more contemporary feel?
“So I’ve been King for some time now. I’ve got a wife, but like, it ain’t a love match, if you know what I mean, and there’s this really hot chick at the court called Anne Boleyn, and man, is she getting me worked up an’ all…” You never know, it might even work.

More seriously, I do wonder what effect these kind of tricks will have on future historians. Imagine 200, 500, 1000 years from now, when society (if such a thing still exists) and language has changed almost beyond recognition, and only limited records of the past have survived. Will twentieth century descriptions of fifteenth century events, written in the present tense, cause thirty-first century historians to scratch their heads and wonder why they’re having such difficulty arranging events in the correct order?

Perhaps I’m just being uptight, but it’s one of those things that I find rather annoying. There are others. A few others. Well, actually, rather a lot of others. I may even share them with you at some point…

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How to write a novel…

Posted on May 4, 2013 by literarylad

For my first novel, and for the longer of the short stories, I generally began working with one or more ideas and developed them as I went along, rather than plotting out the whole thing right from the start. I’ve found that this works well for me. It’s often been said that there are only a limited number of possible storylines (the number seven comes to mind, though this doesn’t seem quite enough). If this is the case, then any ‘story-boarding’ I might devise for a book couldn’t be truly original, just a variation on one of these. I find this idea quite demoralising – how can you come up with an original idea? Then there’s the danger of the pursuit of originality causing you to make your plots ever more incredible and, therefore, lacking in credibility (which seems to happen in many long-running television series). To me, what’s really important, what makes a book original, is not the bald outline of the story – what happens, when, and to which characters – but what you put into it: how you describe the events, characters, emotions, thought-processes, etc. And putting the story across in an interesting way too, perhaps being oblique; allowing the reader to work out events for themselves, rather than being too clear. Done well, that can really make a book. And the language is critical too. People tend to draw a distinction between poetry and prose, but prose can be poetic, can flow and be beautiful in the pure sounds of the words heard in the mind or spoken out loud; beautiful like music, before the meaning of the words are even considered. Summarising the plot of a novel, stripping it down to a series of events, strips the magic out of it.
Rather than building the skeletal structure of a storyline, complete from the start, that can then be decorated and filled in, I tend to create a few inter-linked ideas and build out from them. I work on the plot as I go along, allowing it to develop naturally. I suspect this is much more interesting for the writer – the process of writing becomes almost like reading, because, like a reader, you don’t yet know what’s going to happen – so perhaps I’m just being selfish.
I’m following this process again for the second book. I started with a single idea; a snapshot of a character (a new character) at a moment in time – an idyllic moment; an idyllic lifestyle in an idyllic location. I’ve described this scenario, followed the character through a short period of their ideal lifestyle. But of course, nothing is really ideal – nothing is perfect – and so I’ve started to add a few cracks; suggestions that all is not quite as it seems. I think that my new character’s most prominent, most important personality trait is going to be a lack of realism. We shall see…

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The difficult second book…

Posted on April 26, 2013 by literarylad

I’ve started! Actually, I started some time ago, but progress is slow. It’s not that I’m lacking inspiration; it’s more a matter of time. I’d like nothing more than to be able to sit down and write for hours on end – I’ve got the motivation and I’m positively bursting with ideas – but just at the moment, I’m struggling to find the time to write. Other things keep getting in the way, and there’s always something else that needs to be done first.
I’ve been a bit cagey about it up until now, but I’m going to come clean and admit that I don’t make a living from my writing (not yet, at least; though I think it’s early days). I have a job. So writing must, for now, be a spare-time activity. And unfortunately there’s rather more going on in my life at the moment than I’ve got time to deal with, so I’m not finding much time for my writing. The blog isn’t exactly blameless. Setting it up, getting to grips with software, terminology, etiquette, and trying to develop social media skills (it would have helped if I had any social skills to start with) have proved quite time-consuming. And of course it’s a two-way process. It’s not uncommon for me to fire up the laptop with a view to making a quick post, only to find that an hour later all I’ve done is read other people’s blogs! I’m enjoying writing posts – I enjoy almost any kind of writing – but I am anxious to get on with the new book.
I suppose this has been a theme of my life; that there’s never enough time to do all the things I need and want to do. I’m sure it’s a common problem. There’s no point in me writing in isolation – the work needs to be shared in order for it to have purpose – so the blog is a necessity. I’ll just have to hope I can find more time for the novel from now on.
At least I’ve made a start. I’ll talk about what I’ve done so far and the writing process next time…

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Free short stories, and Manchester

Posted on April 15, 2013 by literarylad

I’ve put one of my short stories on the downloads page of the blog. Called ‘Outside’, it’s just over 5,000 words long and, like the novel (but not all my writing!) set in Manchester. Anyone who knows the city may have fun identifying the places the subject of the story passes on her journey, though bear in mind some may have changed, as I wrote it a few years ago. I hope to download more creative writing soon.

Talking of Manchester, I went back for a visit at the weekend (I’m living in South Wales at the moment). I had a good walk around and visited some of my favourite places, such as the art gallery. I was a bit upset to see that the central library refurbishment has extended to the destruction of the peace garden. If there is one thing Manchester lacks, it’s parks. The peace garden may have been very small, but it was one of the few green spaces left in the city. Perhaps it’s going to be rebuilt, but there was a road roller compacting a bed of hard-core over the entire area, so it doesn’t look promising. It’s looks like it’s Piccadilly Gardens all over again. I don’t understand how the Council can get away with such acts of vandalism!  The continuing recession/downturn (continuing everywhere but London, at least) has meant that many of the large building projects seem to still be on hold. In some respects, I think that may be a good thing, if it limits the excesses of the developers. I’m not sure when the library will be finished, but I hope it’s going to be worth it.

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Only The Good Die Young

Posted on April 8, 2013 by literarylad

So Margaret Thatcher has finally popped her clogs. I know of people who have had champagne on ice in preparation for this moment. I wouldn’t go that far, but I won’t be mourning. I heard the news whilst I was driving earlier today. Caught unawares, I cheered. Loudly.

I lived through the Thatcher era, and I still remember how bad things were. When she became Prime Minister in 1979, unemployment was under one million. Within a few years it was over three, and still rising. When she finally realised that something needed to be done about it, her solution was to change the way the figures were calculated.

She destroyed the manufacturing sector in the UK and put most of our state assets into the hands of profiteers (for the most part, her peers). She created the lost generation, provoked countless suicides, and used market forces to drive down wages and conditions for ordinary working people. As a satirical comedy show put it at the time: ‘Never before, in the field of human con-tricks, has so much been taken from so many by so few’. She oversaw the beginning of a process of transference of wealth from those at the bottom of society to those at the top – a process that has been perpetuated by successive governments since.

Her legacy is the creation of the Selfish Society.

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Sub-conscious publicity

Posted on April 4, 2013 by literarylad

I’ve added a new page, called downloads, to the blog, and put in a Word doc containing the first chapter of the novel. Is this a way of showing people what my writing is like – ‘try before you buy’ – or just a shameless attempt to reel people in (or perhaps a bit of both)?  Watch out for some short stories appearing on the page soon – at least you’ll get to read the ending without having to pay!

I’ve been thinking of how best to explain what the book is all about – to describe it in a straight-forward way rather than sounding like a publicity synopsis. It follows a character called Alex, a Graphic Designer living just outside Manchester (Manchester, England, to quote Dave Haslam) over around six months of his life. Six months during which he’s having a bit of a crisis, at work and in his marriage. There is a fair amount of plot, and (I hope) some surprises, but mostly I tried to concentrate not so much on the events themselves, but on how the characters are affected by them – Alex in particular. Behind this there is a theme – an exploration of the conscious mind versus the sub-conscious; how what we think we want may not always accord with what’s going on in our sub-conscious minds. And how our mistaken ideas of what we want can cause us to act in ways that take us further away from what we actually want.

A writer’s own life and personality is bound to influence what they write about, and I was very aware that this can be particularly true for a first novel. With this in mind, I went out of my way to make sure it didn’t become auto-biographical.

Anyway, I hope some of you will have a read (Chapter One is just under 10,000 words) and let me know what you think.

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I’d rather be writing…

Posted on March 26, 2013 by literarylad

…literary fiction than spending time struggling to work out how to format a blog site. Never mind; it’ll be worth it when it’s done. To think I used to work in IT! It seems that switching it off and on again doesn’t magically put everything right after all, so I’ve resorted to working my way through the WordPress tutorials. Bear with me, as one naturist said to the other (sorry; that one doesn’t really work in print).

I was hoping to have some examples of my writing on the site by now (other than posts, that is) but I haven’t quite worked out how to do it yet. I will, and very soon – watch this (cyber)space.

I have at least managed to put in some links to my novel on Amazon. I’ve eased off from writing a little whilst getting in some reading –  ‘The Children’s Book’ by A. S. Byatt, one of my favourite authors. There are a lot of characters and the narrative moves from one to another in a way that can be a little dis-jointed, but it’s still superb. It’s also a very good history lesson – she’s certainly done a lot of research. The only disappointment is that I’ve found quite a few typos and continuity errors, which suggests it was proof-read in a hurry. I have managed to do some work on the new book, and I hope to share my progress with you soon.

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First post – the past

Posted on March 11, 2013 by literarylad

The book – my first – has been finished for some time now. It’s a work of fiction, a novel. I would describe it as ‘literary fiction’, not because I want to be elitist, but because my aim was to make it a work of quality; well written, in language that flows. I hate categorising artwork, whether it’s music, painting, writing, or whatever else, but it seems we live in a world where this is required. This novel, in common with all novels, is both literature and fiction. It doesn’t fit into any of the so-called ‘genre’ categories – it’s not a thriller (crime or otherwise) a romantic novel or a detective story. It’s not sci-fi or fantasy, there are no teenage vampires or boy wizards involved. It’s not written in ‘street’ language. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these (except, perhaps, that it seems as though very few writers are producing anything but ‘genre’). So ‘literary fiction’ it is!

I intend to use this blog to tell people about the book (which is called ‘Single Point Perspective’ by the way). I’ll introduce the main characters, talk about the writing process and how the story developed. I intend to include some sample passages or chapters that can be downloaded for free (once I’ve worked out how to do this!) I’ll probably include some of my short stories too. I might well write about other topics, mostly literature-based, but I could stray into other areas now and again. Bear with me, because this is my first blog, and it’s a work in progress.  I’ve just started my second book, and this time I will share my progress, dilemmas, problems, solutions, etc. more or less as they are happening. I expect to write a post weekly, but the frequency might vary somewhat, depending on how much I’ve got to say.

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