Highly Irregular Newsletter No 16, April 2024
New events and workshops, musings on tone, language, "literary" writing, and permission to get simpler...
Hello dear Substackers (is that a thing?),
I hope you’re all well! We thought Spring had arrived here in the North of England, and then came the hailstorms, so not so sure. Am I here to talk about the weather? Not really, although I am hoping for some sunshine on Sunday May 19th (this is a fairly impressive segue, I have to say) for ‘Getting Curious About The Dead’, the walking-tour-and-writing-workshop that the fabulous tour guide Emma Fox and I are running at Manchester’s Southern Cemetery. This is the amazing cemetery I was writer-in-residence in a few years ago and which is featured in my hybrid novel, Go On, and it’s a place both Emma and I love. We’ve run this event twice before and it’s been a wonderful experience – the walking is gentle, and we take inspiration from some of the cemetery’s inhabitants, as well as curiosity around death and other cemetery-related topics, to draft at least four new stories/poems/hybrids during the afternoon. No writing experience necessary, discounted places available, come join us! Details and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/getting-curious-about-the-dead-southern-cemetery-tour-and-writing-workshop-tickets-881051026337
How can I segue into the next thing? Hmm. Talking of hybrid writing, if you’re a Mslexia salon member, or would like to be, join me for a Zoom hybrid writing workshop on Monday April 29th, 5pm-7pm UK time, details here: https://mslexia.co.uk/salon/ . And on Sat June 2nd 11.30-1.20pm UK time I’ll be encouraging you to do some more colliding and genre-bending at my Magic of Collisions Zoom workshop for Retreat West, tickets £10, open to all, and if you can’t make it live, Retreat West will send you the recording afterwards: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/retreatwest/1177665?
Here are some brand new additions to my Events page: first, and also along the lines of blurring genre boundaries, I will be giving a talk on Zoom on June 19th as part of my amazing poetry publisher Nine Arches Press’ webinar series, talking about Prose, Poetry and Badly-Made Fences. The whole webinar series looks fantastic, with talks by Roy McFarlane, Daniel Sluman, Jane Burn and Tamar Yoseloff; you can buy tickets individually or for all five at a discount – details here: https://ninearchespress.com/shop#!/Perspectives-on-Poetry-Form-Masterclass-Webinars/p/646598062/category=0
Then on Wed July 23rd 7-9pm UK time, I am really excited to be running a joint Zoom Masterclass for Arvon with my great friend and amazing writer, Sean Lusk! The Marvellous and Impossible Things masterclass will both be a taster for the 5-day residential Arvon course Sean and I are co-tutoring at Arvon’s Totleigh Barton in October, and also raising funds to be able to offer a heavily discounted place on that residential course for someone from an underrepresented community. Come along, we’ll be writing up a magical storm, and you’ll be helping someone who might never otherwise have been able to go on an Arvon course! Booking for the Masterclass here, bursaries available: https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/masterclass-marvellous-and-impossible-things/ -
- and you heard it here first - booking has JUST opened for the Fiction & Hybrid Magical-Realism Themed residential course from Oct 7 - 12th in Devon, with me, Sean and our brilliant midweek guest, writer, artist and performer Alinah Azadeh. Details and booking here - we’ll announce applications for the special discounted place after the Masterclass. Details here, places are limited, we’d love to meet you: https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/residential-writing-week-fiction-25/
Coming soon: an in-person event in Manchester at Levy Old Library for Pride Month, stay tuned!
Publication!
So, a new section for my Highly Irregular newsletter because I am delighted to share with you my first publication not just of 2024 but since 2022, after I spent much of last year quietly writing and not sending work out. My flash story, The President Issues a Non-Binding Resolution, found a wonderful home in the 5th anniversary issue of the excellent Irish flash lit mag, Splonk. Happy birthday, Splonk! You can read the whole issue here: https://splonk.ie/splonk-all-issues/splonk-11/
Permission Corner
I have had such lovely feedback from a number of you on my musings about writing and permission, thank you to those of you who restacked my newsletter on Substack (I am getting the hang of Substack’s lingo). You’ve given me permission to do some more musing, and this month what I’ve been thinking about are tone and language. I’ve been reading work from participants on several of my courses, and something I’ve noticed across many people’s pieces, whether they might be called fiction or hybrid or other, are significant shifts in tone and language within a piece which I’m not sure the writer intended or had been aware of, but which can have equally significant effects on a reader.
What do I mean by tone and language? I’m referring to the complexity or simplicity of the words we choose when we write, and the difference between saying, for example, “she looked out of the window” or “she gazed beyond the glass”. These two are essentially presenting the same action, but one has a colloquial or conversational tone and the other sounds, to me at least, a little as if it was from a piece written a hundred or more years ago. I’ve been a reader for almost 50 years now, and as someone who has sometimes been described as a writer of “literary fiction”, I have seen how writers often seem to feel that to write something “ literary” (a word I really am not sure I could define, or whether it is even useful), a more sophisticated tone and more complex vocabulary must be necessary.
My philosophy is that this kind of tone can actually serve to hold a reader at a distance from what you might be showing them, from what’s happening, perhaps because – and I am no linguistics expert – instead of being caught up in the story, the reader’s brain might be slightly more occupied with trying to picture the scene because of the higher-level language than it would if the language and vocab were simpler. And what I find quite often when reading students’ work was that the parts where I felt the piece really took off, where I became completely engaged, moved and eager to read on, were also the parts where the language moved from higher-level to more simple, direct language. This made me wonder if it was also the part where the writer of each piece themselves began to feel more engaged, began to let the piece write itself, and the energy shifted first in the writing of it, and then for me, the reader.
I would never, ever, say to anyone that they were doing anything “wrong” in a piece of writing; I see my job when I am asked to give feedback to read very closely and notice, then draw the writer’s attention to what I have noticed. Some of these shifts in tone might be intentional, but if not, I want to let a writer know what effect they might have – and give a writer permission not to have to sound “literary”!
I think this is applicable to prose, to poetry, to anything made of words. I’m definitely not saying a writer “should” always use simpler, more colloquial language, but that it’s worth taking a look, after you’ve finished a first draft (don’t worry about anything during that first draft), at tone as well as content to see if you spot any shifts such as those I’ve mentioned and see if they serve what you’re writing. I’d suggest always reading your own work out loud to yourself, because you’ll feel it when the energy of a piece changes, and it might be to do with the language and vocab choices you’ve made.
The most important word here is “choice”: it’s always your choice, it’s about writing what you want in the way you want it, and this is another tool for you to do it!
Happy writing!
Tania x