Best of 2008

I hope you’ve all had a lovely festive period. Mine’s been cool.

I thought Dr Who was great, and although I enjoyed it, I did wonder what had happened to The Royle Family; the subtleties of writing and humour in dialogue seemed a bit forced.
Anyway.
List time.
As you’ll well know 2008 wasn’t a particularly great year for me, through one thing and another, and another, and another. But it wasn’t without some good bits and great books.
The best of which, I’d say, were:
(Non Fic)
(Fiction)
(Blog Story)
(Short Story Collections)
(Telly)
(Music)
And if I had to choose an absolute winner, the best discovery of the year, it would HAVE to be Aimee Bender (with Mr Keret, Tania Hershman and Mariee Sioux all very close behind). I think she’s just wonderful.
So there you go. I hope one or two of you find something you like/love from my little list.

Great stories forget about the rules of physics

Love that line. It rings true with me. You can see more like this over at Kelly Spitzer’s blog, as she plays word association with Tania Hershman. 

And while I’m talking of Tania, the new issue of The Short Review’s out.
I noticed WomenRuleWriter picked up on the same quote as I did. It’s this:
“I think that a “story” has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There has to be a situation, and characters, and the characters have to DO things — things that have an effect on the situation and the other characters — and the characters must be changed by the effects of those things. A lot of modern fiction is just vignettes, not stories — the difference is that the characters don’t take any action, or there isn’t an end” – David D Levine
And I’m not sure that not having an ‘end’ is a bad thing. I like it when I know the characters carry on after the story’s finished, and I like vignettes; being shown a situation can be every bit as affecting and big as being taken on the journey of a story. I’m not disagreeing with him totally, he has a point. I quite like the sound of his collection too…
What do you think?



Thursday Was Cool

I went to see a local school’s version of The Rocky Monster Show on Thursday, and it was brilliant. Utterly brilliant. Now, I’m going to be every so slightly bias because it was directed by my beloved, but really, I’d have loved it anyway. Great songs, great script, great costumes and great routines. Top, top stuff.

And it’s reminded me that I do mean it when I say that I want to write a play one day. (Actually, I need to figure out how one does it first, and, as a point of possible and/or debatable interest, a screenplay was the first major project I worked on.)

***

I’m surprised and pleased that, after well over a month, people are still downloading the short, short story I wrote for Halloween. To be honest, I was surprised when it was being downloaded a week after. Just shows, you never can tell. (I just hope those who are listening to it like it!)

Reunion

I met up with a very old friend last night, someone I’ve been friends with since I was 11. It was the last opportunity I’d get before he and his family moved to America. And I’m not sure what I want to say about it, but I do want to say something.

On one hand I’m thrilled for him. Thrilled that he has a wonderfully nice wife and now a baby. And thrilled that he’s able to emigrate, that he’s able to start a new life with his family.

But I’m also sad. It’s a real end of an era. We’re grown up. We’ve moved on. We’ve lives of our own. And there’s a big part of me that wishes it was me moving (it’s something that’s been talked about, but talking’s different to doing, isn’t it?).

I also saw, quite plainly, how different my life is to most other ‘normal’ people’s. Now, I like being different and I love doing what I do (and I’m not sure I’d be any good at doing much else). I think it just feels odd when I compare.

So that’s it, I think.

Welcome to the world, A. And all the very best, to the three of you.

Sharing Words

It’s what we do, as writers and readers, isn’t it? Sharing our words, or other people’s.

Tonight there was a bit of time over with my group. I had the library’s copies of two of my favourite books to hand (some members have been reading them, see) so I read from them. And it was brilliant.

I read Toad in The Hole, from Sarah Salway’s Leading The Dance, and they loved it.

Then I read Plaits, from Tania Hershman’s The White Road and Other Stories *and they loved that as well.

Sharing words is good. And to be encouraged.

*scroll down a bit and you can see Tania reading the story herself (and making a much better job of it than I could).