To Hear an Angel Sing

It's Christmas.  It's the season of all things fun and jolly, bells ring, there's wassail bowls and turkey and pudding, and loads of shopping, tree, presents, bells ringing, choirs singing......

But not for everyone.  I've personally been pretty lucky not too have too many tough Christmases, but I have spent time with those who have.  This story is for those who have nothing, nowhere to go, no-one to turn to.  Winter is always harsh, and midwinter is always dark, and only after the darkest night comes the light of a new day.

To Hear an Angel Sing    

 "It’s one of those nights, and here I am, leaning on a gravestone, squinting up at the church and struggling to breathe.  The cold is the kind that slices into your lungs and so you hold it in a little, just enough for your head to stop reeling and to delay the pain of its nails as it rasps its way out of your throat.

     I pull my scarf up to cover the tip of my nose and exhale into it.  That way its warmth stays with me a little longer. 

      It’s pink and fluffy.  The scarf, I mean.  I didn’t choose it.  It’s not really my colour; clashes terribly with my red curls.  Not that anyone can see them.  It’s the longest it’s ever been, my hair.  Mum always kept it cropped close to my scalp.  Saved hassles with lice as she dragged me from school to school, always one step ahead of the man that fathered me.  Kept its real colour hidden too.  Life’s not always easy for a skinny Scots boy with red hair and freckles.  God knows how much fighting my knuckles could have taken if those Geordie lads had seen ginger curls.  They’re tucked neatly under the matching hat now. 

     I’m not complaining.  To be honest, I would have cried with delight when the woman clipped past me and dropped them into my lap - if I hadn’t been too dozy for tears.  That’s the problem out here.  You need the daylight for scavenging in bins or looking out for a better spot to spend the night.  Or, if you’ve got the energy, to look out for a handy coffee morning where you can warm up and fill your belly with Garibaldis. 

     But at night you  have to watch out for yourself and you sleep as deep in whatever bits of rag you can gather together.  You sleep with one eye open and look out for Old Bill, or dogs or drunks, so during the day you sleep.  You can’t help it." 

Click here to find "To Hear an Angel Sing" on Amazon

The rest can be read by downloading the story from Amazon.  I'm still startled at how easy it was to upload it and have my friends and family across on both sides of the Atlantic purchase and read it.  I got  feedback within minutes - all of it positive so far, glad to see, my sensitive ego can only cope with "constructive" criticism.

Gibraltar Writers at Sir John Mackintosh Hall

So the date is set: Tuesday 3rd December at 7.10pm.

The next Gibraltar Writer's meeting next Tuesday is an important date.  Last one of the year, so maybe a good time for people there to recap on what they've achieved in the past twelve months.  And if you haven't been published, we'll all want to know what you are working on, how far you've got and so on. Last before Christmas so maybe a good time to meet up with everyone, get to know those you haven't met before, exchange news and views and go for a bit of a bevy afterwards.  Last before the New Year, so a good time to get to know what's in the offing for 2014 so plans and resolutions can be made.

What could be in the offing for Gibraltar Writers this coming year?  Well, I'm only going to put in my ideas here, and other members will have more to add (and maybe bits to take away), but for what it's worth, here's my wish list for the spirit of christmas (whatever that is) to work on:

1. Regular, productive get-togethers with other writers that keeps me motivated, enthused and helps me over all those boundaries that writers tend to create for themselves (writers' block / no time / more important things to do / can't quite get the words right.....)
2. Arranging a series of workshops so we can practise some of those tricky little skills that we can then use in our writing (I once attended a one - hour workshop on using the sense of hearing in writing: it was surprisingly helpful and very entertaining).  We can run them in-house and also get outside speakers in.
3. Getting into the schools at competition time to mentor young writers 
4. Reach out into community groups to get all sections of the community telling their tales - the elderly, young mums, the sick, people with disabilities, young people: those who might need a little bit of extra support to write or tell those stories that need telling.
5. An anthology of Gibraltar Writers' work at the end of the year.  We'll need sponsors.  Anyone out there love local literature?
6. A role in the Literary Festival - an evening of readings by the Gibraltar Writers, a story telling afternoon, morning coffee over poems, a poetry jam in one of the local pubs (good poetry and ale seem to have been brewed for each other).  Oh, and perhaps we could run a workshop for beginner writers.
7. An online support group for submitting and critiquing work in between meetings.

That should get us going!

So if you've read this and you're wondering if......don't.  Don't wonder.  Just do it.  Find our Facebook page and join the Facebook group.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/274341619367603/?bookmark_t=group

And come over on Tuesday.

Nightwatch

Ok, I should have included it in yesterday's blog, but hey, I was tired, it was late, I forgot - should write when fresh not exhausted.  But here it is, first few lines of Nightwatch.  Hope you enjoy.....

It is never silent in the city:

even in the dead of night you hear the

threat of humming lights spreading yellow oil

across damp concrete.  The gas works rumble

and as the city sleeps, the freight trains snore

and rattle and rumble a steady trail

past aching whores tip-tapping their way home.

The empty bed lies dead in cold shadows,

Cheap mattress hollowed from his latest descent

into her life, unwelcome, uncalled for.

The rest can be read in the anthology, one day.....

Gibraltar Writers

After a very slow summer as far as writing is concerned, characterised mainly by finding a way to avoiding queuing for hours at the border with Spain.  Did I say border?  It's beginning to feel more like our own Mediterranean Berlin Wall!  As I was saying, after a long, hot summer, I have managed to scrape the nib of a biro onto some paper again and clawed my way into second place in the Gibraltar Autumn Festival Poetry competition with a poem called "Nightwatch".  Second place to an excellent poem by Rebecca Faller, published in The Gibraltar Chronicle.  First verse of "Nightwatch" is printed below. One day, it will form part of an anthology of my poems, but first I have to sharpen up my pencil, fill up my fountain pen, and boot up my lap top and PRACTISE.

Because, if what they say is right, that generally you can expect to scribble out a million words of drivel before you write something worth publishing, I still have a way to go.  Not far, I hope, but still a fair way.  So practise is a must.

Which brings me to Gibraltar Writers.

Writing can be isolated and isolating.  You can only really write something worthwhile when on your own.  Not necessarily physically (above-mentioned poem having been written and honed while surrounded by loving but noisy family), but alone somewhere inside your head, in your own space and your own world that you create paragraph by paragraph.  And the more time you spend writing the less time you spend interacting with real people - social networking only goes a little way to bring you in touch with people, flesh and blood human beings with all their oddities and quirks.  And since books and stories are populated by people, writers just have to go out into the throngs even if only to glean ideas with which to draw their characters.

Gibraltar East Side (because it's different to the West)

And one way to feel a lot less isolated and much more supported and surrounded by others with the same interest in writing as you, is to join a writers group.  Gibraltar Writers meets monthly at the Sir John Mackintosh Hall, on the first Tuesday of each  month at 7.15.  It's a space and place in the month where we can put the lap top to sleep, leave the family to fend for itself and indulge in the company of others who simply can't resist the urge to write down their thoughts, weave wonderful tales, paint visions with words and want to share this with others.  We'll be sharing tips, ideas, testing out our own writing on each other, improving our craft by having others share their opinions on our work and generally supporting each other through the minefield of creating, writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

Whoever you are, whatever age, whether English is or is not your first language, if you like to write, you need to come to Gibraltar Writers on 3rd December.  And if you are thinking about it but are unsure, email me for more info and so I can convince you to join us there!  jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk  or find me on Facebook, or Google+ or Twitter (Gibtalk).

Sir John Mackintosh Hall, Gibraltar

See you on 3rd Dec with notebook and pen, or tablet, or wax and stigil or whatever you prefer to use to write!

Short story success

With the other prize winners - Gibraltar Spring Festival Short Story Competition 2013

Time to brag.  It's not something I do often nor easily, but I want to celebrate the fact that I won the runner up prize in the Gibraltar spring festival short story competition.  Okay, not the first prize, but short story writing is not easy, and I was chuffed to bits.  I'm looking forward to reading the other entries and learning from these - maybe this time next year, I'll have honed up enough to be a winner.

Here's the start to the story - the full version is due to be published in the Gibraltar Chronicle over this weekend, and I'm going to see if I can put it up for free download on Kindle for those of you who want to read the whole thing.

Like everything, practise makes perfect, so I'm whipping out my notebook tomorrow morning to work on another.  And, if anyone out there thinks they might want to have a go, I would say, get writing straight away, write every day, and don't worry about writing rubbish, because eventually as you get better, the good stuff, the words other people will want to read, will emerge.

Predictable Me

     “You’re going to love not coming to work anymore,” says Emily.  She places my cup of coffee exactly in the centre of my coaster.  The coaster is old now, edges curling, a perfect circle marked in its centre from the countless cups of coffee placed there by a parade of assistants over the years.

     I try not to cringe.  Eight years of Emily’s gunpowder-strong concoction and I have never complained.  And I shan’t today, of all days.

     The telephone’s bleeping jars the peace of the morning and Emily scuttles.  What a ridiculous statement.  Half a century of crusty offices, whinging clients and cringing clerks; of course I’m delighted never to have to come in again.

      I sip at the coffee, shudder and leave the rest.  Emily has her back turned and is taking painstaking notes of her telephone conversation.  Whoever is talking to her must be desperate with frustration.

      I sigh and flick a switch.  Despite the early hour the heat is suffocating. The air-conditioning groans into action and then buzzes like bluebottles around carrion. Within days the sounds that will come to my ears will be the sizzling of cicadas in the day and the grunt of marauding lions at night.

The Smallest of Things

The glories of new technology, that a simple photograph can be turned into the cover of a short story, and that a short story can be turned into a marketable ebook in under an hour.

Short story now on Kindle!

Having been a writer for some years but never really venturing into putting my scribbling out there into the big wide world, I have arrived at the frontiers of my first half-century determined to be able to see myself as a published writer.  And to do so, I figured I would experiment with the whole Kindle thing and signed up with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

"The Smallest of Things" is a short story, a romance, that lets the reader into Sam's thoughts as they ponder over the three most significant women in his life, and how it was a simple kiss that made such a difference to him.

I had written it years ago, and while recovering from gall bladder surgery over the past couple of weeks, I decided to look into what you have to do to get your manuscript onto a kindle.  I'm not great with technology.  I get impatient with the jargon and have a tendency to need instructions written in monosyllables, with short sentences and preferably an illustrated flow-chart.  But once I got going on  it - my current mantra is "To do is to learn" - it was not that hard at all.

One of the most important things I have learnt is about editing - I checked, revised, redrafted and checked again numerous times - but, and here I raise my hat with reverence to all editors out there - it is tough, you get blinded by the words, spellcheck programmes aren't totally reliable, you have to know your grammar and your spellings, and how you best use language.  And yes, I will probably find an error and need to update the story.  Next time I will be even more careful.  Editing is a tremendous skill, and one I have yet to acquire.

But the whole process was very rewarding.  On the heels of having won the first prize for my poetry at Gibraltar's Autumn Festival last year, I am beginning to feel that I can genuinely call myself a writer now.

I put another short story on Kindle too.  "The Promise" which speaks of the simplicity and the complexity of love also in a short story.  Find them on Kindle and let me know what you think!