I have never been to a Pechu Kucha event before, but last night, all that changed. The Seven Steps to Being a Writer event, as part of the Morley Literature Festival, was powered by Pecha Kucha. This means chit chat in Japanese and the format is a rapid slide-show of 20 seconds and slides.
Writers Alison Taft, N.J. Rmasden, Becky Cherriman, Helen Crawford, K. T. Jukes and Christine Wilks presented 20 slides lasting 20 seconds on their experiences of writing.
First up was Andrew William Smith of The High Club (who just got their band name this week) whose slide show was set to music. He used modern realism teachings to encourage writers to take more risks and gave the example of Gwyneth Paltrow's characters in the movie Sliding Doors. Also Vashti Bunyan, an English singer-songwriter who's first album Another Diamond Day was released in 1970 but the album was not a commercial success and she retired from the music business. Years later, 2000, it was re-released by Spinney Records and the success of the album prompted her to return to the music business and record the much-delayed follow-up Lookaftering. Sting wanted to be famous after meeting the Queen when she waved at him and Andrew sees all these as examples of taking risks.
Next was Katie Jukes, who has just completed a second novel, Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Her first, A Fatal Ambition, was shortlisted in the 'When Sally Met Sally' First Novel competition. Her slide-show was about writing about your family and poetry. She gave Jackie Kay as an example of a writer of poetry and prose, who used her search for her Nigerian birth father as inspiration for both, though she felt there were some things she could do in poetry she couldn't in prose. Yet Gerard Woodward, who wrote a trilogy about his growing-up experience, said that he couldn't do some things in poetry that he could in prose. She recommended Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for all writers and felt that Sharon Olds' belief that in confessional poetry, we say what we really think and can't say anywhere else, encapsulates poetry for her, as does This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin in terms of writing about family. She wrote about her Mum's Grandmother and her Father, reading out her poems alongside slides of the family photographs she used as inspiration.
Children's writer Liz McPherson came next and she discussed using setting in your writing, citing the example of the brooding Moors in Wuthering Heights reflecting the struggles in the characters. She herself used Ilkley Moor as inspiration for her current story The Kinfolk, a story about hobgoblins who use a pair of fairy wings to capture a child and turn it into a hobgoblin. Donkey Jack, a local legend, is also given a character in her book as Donkey Cyril and she feels the story is a blend of the setting and her imagination. Liz read from her book as the slides treated us to lovely views of Ilkley Moor.
Alison Taft, author of the Lily Appleyard series Our Father Who Art Out There...Somewhere and it's sequel Shallow Be Thy Grave (the third, Thy Time Has Come is out in 2014), tackled how to write a novel. She suggested choosing your fuel and deciding how far you wish to go. Her chosen fuel is anger, though it could equally be joy or passion you choose, but it has to be the rocket fuel that will take you a long way in completing your novel. Develop a sense of injustice; in her case it was trying to find her birth father in her 30s when she had just had children herself. Allow to ferment and add righteous indignation (the Salvation Army found him, but he did not wish to make contact). Ferment some more and prepare yourself for blast off, but don't stop to ask for directions or you may get lost. Enjoy the ride but you have to know when you get there (for her this was when Caffeine Nights wanted to publish Our Father Who Art Out There...Somewhere). Unfasten your seatbelt, check out the locals and send postcards (she sent her father the book and a heartfelt letter, but he sent it back with a note written on to not contact him again). Return to rocket and remember there are always new places to explore (Shallow Be Thy Grave) and prepare to travel, explore (War a book of short stories) and marvel.
Nathan Ramsden, writer of short fiction, screenplays, novels and poems, discussed rewriting. He believes writing is rewriting and believes its evolution is incremental adaptation. He started by saying that David Foster Wallace feels that the 'stuff' is the beginning and that Allen Ginsberg believed that the 'first thought is the best thought,' so he believes in writing at all times, not just when the muse hits you. Your first draft is like clay to be worked in order to shape it into something you can progress. He showed slides of some Sylvia Plath writing, a first and fourth draft, to illustrate this and informed us that Ernest Hemmingway wrote the ending to Farewell to Arms 39 times. Neil Gaiman believes that if there are things that you aren't satisfied with as a reader of your work, go back in and fix things as a writer. Nathan revealed that he wrote the opening, then the backstory and then the rest of the story to his novel Nothing's Oblong five plus times, then he took the 31 chapters and placed them on the floor in his study to rearrange for hands-on pleasure. He also has written several short stories, novellas and a screenplay and after four years when he went back to it, he felt the overall shape was fine, but that he could macro and micro change scenes and study certain sections. He recommends Scrivener as a valuable writer tool.
Becky Cherriman is a published writer, prize-winning performance poet and creative writing facilitator and in 2013 she was commissioned to write texts for umbrellas in Grassington Square. She read whilst holding a printed on umbrella, a poem from the rich cousin of the umbrella, the parasol. She revealed that when she first performed she was terrified, and was interrupted first by a dog barking and then by a bang on the window and she feels this proves that you never know what is going to happen during a performance (once a glass was thrown at a barman in Harrogate), but at her first gig, her first word was 'listen' so she could use it to re-engage the audience, as it is very important to keep them on board. She believes in editing to make sure it is exactly right and listening to the music of poetry by reading it aloud and practice by looking in a mirror. This ensures you have your head up making eye contact with the audience. Voice exercises by Maggie Stratford help with nerves and how to project. Her pace usually has a lot of pauses - she is known as the Queen of pauses, and she recommends memorising your poem and giving it a short introduction, but not so much that you give away the whole poem. She feels poetry is a heightened reality, the best of ourselves.
Then there was another performance by The High Club and the floor was opened up to questions where:
Nathan revealed that writing is done when you feel you cannot do any more with it,
Writers mature over the period of a novel,
You have to sustain the passion to the reader, you can edit it out if you are not careful,
Writing is cathartic for the writer and hopefully the reader,
You can get it right straight away, or it can take years.
#MorleyLiteratureFestival
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