Of DOs and DON'Ts

 Prompt of the Day #3

Think about the worst mistake you've ever made, or the worst mistake you think someone you know has ever made. What was it? Was it highly embarrassing or did it hurt somebody? What happened afterwards? How did you feel when you did it? How did it feel afterwards? A thousand emotions can stem from looking back at a moment but it's harder to remember the exact emotions of the actual experience. 

Try writing two versions of the same scene, one in the present and one in the past. Contrast what the immediate experience is like compared to the feelings that run through one's head in hindsight.

Oscar Wilde said: If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. When you think about it, this is all literature is about. Shakespeare redefined the sonnet, Laurence Stern redesigned Sentimentalism, Descartes revamped philosophy, Pope reconstructed English Nationalism. In fact, not to reinvent the wheel, but if we go back to considering Shakespeare - he rewrote dozens of stories, turned them into miraculous plays that most of us literature students still have to study today. I've even heard him called 'the Father of Fanfiction', which I suppose if you consider plays such as King Lear or Romeo and Juliet then you might just see what they mean. 

If you look at history you can see the effects of literature on the psyche of societies. In the 18th Century, Bardic writers were trying to convey the sense of a new, powerful, affluent England and in order to do so, like Pope, they used Classical mythology to imagine that once upon a time this is what our country was like. You see it in America too - the creation of a sense of identity through literature, for example in the Jack Tales. The idea of Sage writing, including the criticisms of Ruskin and Arnold, or perhaps simply the didactic works of Dickens, were similarly about evoking a sense of literary identity and society. When you come to writers such as TSEliot and James Joyce, what were they doing if not showing how literature and how we think about literature needs to adapt and challenge and engage with the modern man?  

How about Realism? Realism with a capital R, is supposedly a movement that started in France circa 1800 appealing to lofty ideals such as verisimilitude and poetic mimesis. Yet these are ideas that Aristotle and Plato debated whilst they reclined and had grapes fed to them by small boys. When you actually try to read some of the novels produced through this 'movement', you have the extremities of Balzac, Flaubert, George Eliot and Dostoevsky. The fact that there are so many differences between them - Balzac claims to be a 'historian', Flaubert to have written about 'nothing' etc - only emphasises how even with those who desire to appeal to the same ideal, in actuality are simply redefining what came before. 

If we break it down even further, we can inspect Christopher Booker claim that there's only Seven Basic Plots. So whether you're a writer of crime fiction or romance, fantasy or drama, poetry or prose, all you're doing is redefining what is already written. But that doesn't mean that your story is any less important, there will be different characters, different styles of writing. 

When you write, think about the story and its predecessors, think about where you're coming from and what you're recreating. Think about the way you think you can improve upon what's come before, or how you think you can offer something unique. Don't be afraid to draw upon the works of your literary ancestors, as long as it's not full-on plagiarism then, if they're not dead, they should be flattered (for example, if you have a favourite poem, write a response as I did in 'Dear Mr Eliot'). 

To end, Albert Eistein said:  He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. 

Don't be a satisfied pig, fellow Scribblers, and don't march in line like sheep. Even if your writing adheres to convention, play with them. Sometimes all it takes is a little, deliberate mistake to turn your writing into the extraordinary.  

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Dear Mr Eliot

Dear Mr Eliot.


It is London and this a crueller month.
Row on row, the people go their slow way,
hunched beneath 'brollies that bend in the wind
like they've sucked in their black cheeks, shrinking in
towards the huddled bundle of blood-warmth
beneath. Let us go, 
darting through the crowded streets,
twisting round the wool-clad sheep, just laughing,
dancing as we go. 

Do you recall how
the cost of his words was silence,
stretched out like a lobotomised child?
Standing sedate with a wide lolling grin,
smiling, selfless, as if any thought could
ever have presumed to flitter through 
her small, stubborn mind. 
The hush hung over the girls sitting with us
as their empty, painted mouths hung open.
His flickering tongue played with his bottom lip,
then lifting his mug he took a sip
and he glanced first at you, then I. 
Imploring, not ashamed.

Do you remember the story of the girl unnamed? 
On the roof they sit in inky rows
With beady eyes and scratching toes. 

At first they claimed it was our youth that kept 
us in their safe sepulchre. These, he said,
are the tranquillised years. When he left 
though, the days were busy with red cars and words
that tilted their meaning like curious heads.
From breakfast to lunch, lunch to tea, 
The girls fluttered around us, you and me.
Now precious to them after all he’d said.

The shadows slinked down from their eyes and crawled the streets,
The shadows slunk , ink-winged, though the empty city streets,
Scraping the yellow smoke that drifts through lights,
Tugging at the frayed edges of the shifting yellow lights,
The shadows sulked and spun, yellow eyes glinted,
One eye on you, the other on me, perched
On the wires, trees and rooves of flint. 

On the roof they sit in inky rows
With beady eyes and scratching toes.

In the years that came and drifted by, 
the shadows caught and stained our eyes. When he
came back, old and with eight fingers, he asked
us the question. Had we danced?
Could we dance in our sepulchral haven
with mothering gazes ever seeking 
our wasp-waists and vogue fashioned coats?
He was not offered tea but ushered away
from us. We watched his ambling steps on pavement stone,
the shadows drifted behind him.

Above us they caw and scuttled on slate,
mocking our flightless world and drear dim
home that gravely sits on its mounded hill.
Sweet stories rustle through obsidian wings
And we whisper them between us.

The streams of people swim by in savage
servility. Their heads are bent, eyes to their shoes,
their faces buried in the Metro News.
Sometimes a girl with a vacant smile grins,
her head held high and the wind in her hair,
because she does not realise the cliché
that condemns her living. You and I,
we should be more like her. 
Let us be selfish. And dance out
across the street, between the sheep,
and after the man that plays his pipe
and leads us. 


By M.H.Allner
First Posted: Circle of Stars, 30th January 2012 @ 2.22pm

Organizing the Bookcase

Amazing video because sometimes books have a life of their own.

What can you do with your books?

Of Creatures and Coffee

Prompt of the Day #2

Awww isn't this little guy the cutest thing ever? He scampered up the Christmas tree and then peered out at us for this adorable photo. Not all animals are this cute, sometimes they're scary, sometime fantastical, sometimes they don't even exist but creep along the edges of your consciousness.

Write about a creature. Think about their personalities, the way they move, whether they're friendly or cranky. 

When I woke up this morning, a phrase here that actually refers to my friend calling me at 1pm to enquire about my whereabouts, I was bewildered and in much need of a cup of tea. I found my eyes focusing on the Monkey Picked Tea that I was given for Christmas and for a moment I pined for a good brew. Instead, I found myself vellicated from my bed, into the shower and out of the door. There was far too much blood in my caffeine system. 

Think about what things help you to focus. Perhaps it can be as inspiring as any prompt I can offer. Tea certainly sparked something for Anon of Edinburgh. 

Be it in coffee or my typically British tea, I need my fix in order to focus. I can be anywhere in the world, in a pub, my bed, a desk, perched in a tree, upside-down on the monkey bars, hidden under a chair, lurking in a cupboard, surveying from an alleyway, submerged in a swamp - anywhere - and a little bit of caffeine will ensure my continued application. It's useful to know what keeps you on track. So as soon as I entered Jack Sprat I was at the till and ordering a giant bowl of coffee. It is America after all. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Of Barbours and Books

Prompt of the Day #1

Don't they look warm, playing in the leaves that are left over from autumn, the glow of spring dappling down on them in their snug coats.
Write about a coat - either about the places it goes, the people it hugs, whether its old or new, what makes it a good or bad one. 

Good Morrow Fellow Scribble Bugs,

Today I decided to focus on the Barbour. Coats are wonderful things - they can keep you warm, protect you from the wind, have extra pockets, conceal the terrible shirt granny gave you for Christmas, act as a wily disguise, attract large crowds of admirers, give you a different body shape, become a blanket or a pillow, the list goes on. Now THE BARBOUR is a type of coat, it's a jacket, it's a fashion statement, it aligns you with generations of Brits that attend point-du-points across the country and it also seamlessly blends you into the country background around you. For me, the Barbour is also a name with many memories attached. I used to dress up in my mothers and hide under my fathers, my best friend worked in the New York store for two summers and I have a wonderful Zara equivalent. I also had a teacher at UNC-Chapel Hill who was called Reid Barbour and for those of you acquainted with the writer Sarah Dessen may be familiar with the name. 

In her novel 'What Happened to Goodbye' there's a line which reads:

 “…so ravaged it looked like one of my term papers from when I’d taken Ap English with Mr. Reid Barbour, the hardest teacher in my last school.”

Yes, this in fact a reference to the same man who scrawled across my university papers on Milton's Paradise Lost, a man considered by many as a charismatic demon - a phrase here that means 'a man that is both at once incredibly impressive and equally hard to impress'. He's the teacher everyone wants to have: enigmatic, shoe-less, passionate. 

And here he is: an INSPIRATION.

Now it's your turn. Pick up your coat and think about those inspirational aspects of your life. Maybe they can turn you into a #1 Best Seller for the New York Times. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

To Whom it May Concern

I chose to begin today with a welcome - because even though I know that every one who strays across this has much better things to be doing - it is quite rude not to begin by giving ones greetings to those who stumble upon the road less travelled by. 

This is The Daily Scribble - which in this case is very unlikely to be 'daily' but it sounds rather more like writing than 'The Scribble' and in any case, 'the scribble' I'm sure has already been taken by one or other Marvel villain - and it will be about Writing and Books and things of a sort. 

I will post up writing prompts (which you will also find on my tumblr) and reviews (which will really just be my opinion on the various books that I read). There will be references to obscure things such as NaNoWriMo, an auspicious writing challenge that sees thousands of aspiring scribblers bleeding from their fingers as they attempt to scrawl at least 50K in the month of November. There will be literary expeditions, also known as rambles off into the vagaries of poetry. There will be 

Now you can see why I said you almost certainly have something better to do. If this is the case, I would suggest that you hurry away before a prompt catches you eye or a writer rises to tempt you into keeping him immortal. If not, then welcome, peruse at your leisure and enjoy. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER