All 40 entries tagged Creative Writing

Diary of a Permaculturalist 20: Statement of a Problem

Follow-up to Diary of a Permaculturalist 19: Master Gardening on your doorstep from George Ttoouli, Warwick Writing Programme

Solutions or responses welcome.

Current developments in Marxist ecology point to how the capitalist project, with its issue of the metabolic rift, is arriving at a dead end. Naomi Klein's identification of disaster capitalism, in The Shock Doctrine, is one example of how capitalism is reaching its limit in geographical exploitation of resources and now has to manufacture crises in the supply chain of resources to generate market instability and open up new markets.

New markets is a buzzphrase at the high end of free market capitalist systems. New resources, new ecologies; these are overlooked in favour of the global hunt for the most profitable area of exploitation, which can only grow the rift between the human/nature dynamic. Yet ecology's response, as a perspective, is now one that increasingly not only accepts, but asserts, the fact that humanity = nature, is a subset of. So we are only destroying ourselves as part of the planet we are destroying.

Recently, though (OK, about ten minutes ago) I've begun to have doubts about the methodology of Marxist ecologists. The method of capitalist critique is one that I've seen elsewhere, such as in union battles with employers. Searching through law, through social structures, for a valid critical approach to defend workers' rights, union legal teams often have to fall back on an approach that they hope will create valid change, or, more than likely, deter continued detrimental change. So, for example, in recent UK battles, on a local level, unions are attempting to exploit Health & Safety laws as a way to find leverage in increasingly hostile-to-employees Employment Law. Prior to that, in my limited union experience, the struggle centred on cases of unfair dismissal, harrassment and so on, but these laws, as I understand it, have been tightened to protect employers.

So, a model arises in which unions select a cause, one that is effectively within the scope of a 'new market' in terms of being a battleground that hasn't been fought over before. The problem as I see it lies in how the environmental movement, by developing into social ecology, has merely found a new market to exploit in its anti-capitalist battleground.

In other words, from this perspective, the anti-capitalist movement in the form of the ecological movement, is adopting a capitalist model by which to launch its attack on capitalism. This feels as much a psychological conditioning in myself, however: that I am trained to read through capitalist structures, and training further to identify capitalist structures. Yet I can't help feeling, underlying all this, that the futility of the alternative PR project is futile because it isn't drawing on an alternative to capitalism: ancient religious fundaments, or perhaps something so antiquated - barter systems, foraging, similar social structures that are improbable in light of current population scales - that the new approach will defy capitalist structures utterly.

It's easy to think yourself into a bind when you haven't read enough, or the right books. But all this unloading of chest-weights is helpful while you're on the road to change.

George Ttoouli : 08 Feb 2012 14:17 |  Tags: Creative Writing Marxist Ecology Permaculture Union |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Moffat on Sherlock

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/jan/20/steven-moffat-sherlock-doctor-who?newsfeed=true

There's very little TV I like, generally, because the medium is so curtailed by budgets and ambition and producers with their heads in the clouds of assumptions about what audiences really want, but I have followed some of Moffat's Sherlock, if only because they are close enough to film length and self-contained as to basically be films. The hype has left me repeatedly talking about it in terms of what isn't quite satisfying, or something I don't trust about the over-produced moments, the under-explored character depths, etc. etc. and I still can't shake off the feeling that it's one of those shows that only looks good because it's surrounded by dreck.

But this is still a worthwhile interview with Steven Moffat. Perhaps a little bit for the wrong reasons, once again, though the article also shows current limitations to mainstream journalism. Jeffries has to use the hook of the Sherlock show's cliffhanger to draw you in and then tries as hard as possible to get a serious conversation about writing out of it.

The most interesting point Moffat makes is that Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes are supposedly both written for children. Really? Moffat makes some very entertaining comments that suggest the whole idea of writing for children or adults is rubbish. In fact, when he says: "I get irritated when people say on Twitter: 'It's too complicated. I'm not following it.' Well, you could try putting your phone down and watching it" you can imagine him thinking some adults lack the concentration levels of children, hence writing for children is the more satisfying challenge.

Or in other words, the reader should elevate themselves to the level of the show? Or stop making snap judgments based on partial or even no effort readings. (Which has been annoying me lately in other walks of life.)

George Ttoouli : 21 Jan 2012 14:24 |  Tags: Creative Writing Screenwriting Writing For Children |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Diary of a Permaculturalist 19: Master Gardening on your doorstep

Follow-up to Diary of a Permaculturalist 18: Avaaz vs. the Amazon (Jungle) from George Ttoouli, Warwick Writing Programme

An exciting discovery on campus this week! Warwick's dark satanic halls have buried within them a green and pleasant bit of wild field, upon which hath been demarcated a patch for growing food. Somewhere southeast of Tocil and Jack Martin Residences, or east from the lakes below the Health Centre, you'll find a fenced off patch of land for students and staff to use as an allotment.

Nick Hillard, UoW's Environmental Manager, has given that land over to student societies to manage. He has even offered, should the project begin to thrive, to double the space available. While I was down there last Sunday, pretending to be young enough to dig a trench, a few students showed up with white buckets of kitchen scraps, to add to the compost heap.

One of the people managing the space, Carla Sarrouy, is also a Master Gardener and is all set to help train up students and staff to make use of the space, and their own gardens, for growing vegetables in a sustainable way. There'll be a meeting soon - probably on Sunday this weekend, to talk through new plans for the space.

At the moment there's a need for postgraduate and staff volunteers, as the academic year doesn't match up with growing timetables, particularly if you're fallowing in winter. At the same time, perhaps some winter growing could happen, if every kitchen on campus got rigorous about bringing kitchen waste over.

Also, I've been thinking about the kind of teaching that could take place in a garden like that. Imagine, for example, a class on the 'Dig for Victory' campaign, combined with actual gardening? Somewhat gimmicky, maybe. What about reading Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and Seamus Heaney (both these links are a bit ad-heavy, be warned) while holding a spade in your hand? A bit more illuminating, perhaps! And a chance to expand upon their metaphors, to come up with new meanings for the act of digging.

Or a session with Prof. Liz Dowler on food sustainability, ethics and social issues? Or perhaps a talk by Nick Hillard himself on the campus environment, biodiversity, and water management (the Canley Brook runs across campus, with parts running along the edge of the allotment). Or even someone from Warwick's Food Security research group? Or outside speakers - how about setting up Permaculture training?

George Ttoouli : 26 Oct 2011 11:55 |  Tags: Creative Writing Permaculture |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Sessions Magazine call for submissions!

Message from Paul Hague, one of our current MA students, about submissions for the second issue of Sessions:

Sessions magazine issue 2 call for submissions.

Prose, poetry, whatever - surprise me - wanted (max 1,500 words)

All submissions to this email as .doc files.

Paul likes surprises. 1500 word poems, anyone?

And issue 1 is delightful, nicely done. Weird bloodstained typewriter on the front. Can't find where I put my copy, though.

George Ttoouli : 10 Apr 2010 10:00 |  Tags: Creative Writing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Join the Warwick Writing Programme!

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/alumni/services/emails/wbscareers

Full size: wwpadweb.jpg

George Ttoouli : 23 Mar 2010 13:02 |  Tags: Creative Writing Marketing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Brainwashing techniques

The brainwashing techniques I used in my talk on Ballard last week are readily available at Cracked.com.

I also picked up an interesting article about how the brain plays to simplicity. The article extends one of the Cracked techniques - #3, keeping you in line with shame - which points to an evolutionary security developed through tribal conformity:

Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process - even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it - can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.

Relating this to Ballard's call, in an interview with V Vale for RE/Search, for individuals to establish a "moral microclimate", you could argue that post-surrealism's struggle for social progress involves resistance to the tribe. (This implies Dadaism's moral aesthetics also - non-conformity as a fundamentally optimistic activity, that originality leads eventually to the notion of a better society.)

There's a need to resist conformity in order to protect one's rights, the ability to decide for oneself whether, e.g. a given text is of value to society, or simply part of the herd buzz; and to resist government actions that are morally reprehensible. But there's also security to be had in finding like minds and some people just can't stand that. I've a feeling that if everyone had started thinking the way Ballard did, he'd have tried to a way out of that grouping, to keep individualising and criticising his social environment. He tried to write the present by keeping himself outside of it.

The article goes on:

A handful of scholars have already started to explore the ways that advertisers, educators, political campaigners, or anyone else in the business of persuasion can use these findings. And some of the implications are surprising. For example, to get people to think through a question, it may be best to present it less clearly. And to boost your self-confidence, you may want to set out to write a dauntingly long list of all the reasons why you’re a failure.

Happily, this reinforces my hatred of cliché. To be understood well, to force a cerebral engagement with creative writing, as well as an emotional connection, one has to write in a way that is original. I don't agree with the idea that the writing needs to be unclear - I hate trying to read badly presented critical texts with too much verbosity. They blind me. But clearly presented language, originally phrased, allows readers to engage with ideas in ways that cannot be lapped up and dismissed.

So to quote my favourite ever quote, ever, ever, by Ezra Pound:

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

George Ttoouli : 23 Feb 2010 09:00 |  Tags: Brainwashing Creative Writing Jg Ballard Politics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A prize for slipstream fiction

Writing about web page http://blog.saltpublishing.com/2010/02/10/two-salt-authors-nominated-as-shortlists-are-announced-for-the-2010-adelaide-festival-awards-for-literature/

Just saw over at the Salt blog [*] that two of their authors have been shortlisted for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. When I read the details of the price, I became intrigued:

Innovation award ($10,000) – for a published book which departs from the conventional use of genre by borrowing elements from a number of genres such as fiction, non-fiction, biography, autobiography, poetry or cultural criticism.

This almost seems like a new, or expanded definition of the slipstream genre; at least, it's one I'd buy into.

I first heard the term through Toby Litt, who, talking about China Miéville's work as well as his own, described it as literary fiction that borrowed aspects of genre, or mainstream fiction. There's something only a tiny bit niggling about that definition - there's an implication in the way I understood it that implies a dumbing down (which isn't really true at all - both those writers definitely have a genuine interest in seeing barriers between 'popular' and 'difficult' writing broken down).

And at the same time I had to acknowledge the subterfuge at play - trying to slip exciting cross-genre writing beneath the radars of taxonomising retailers, who put x books on x shelf, and y books on y shelf, and xy books on a shelf round the back with 'special interest' labels that no one ever sees, and ends up in the post back to the publisher, who gets blacklisted and their books never make it into the bookshop chain ever again. (Yeah OK, trying to turn my chip-on-shoulder-mode to OFF.)

It's great to see a prize that actually celebrates cross-genre work - even if the appear to have taken 'genre' to mean the medium of the written word, to the exclusion of marketing and critical genres. Worth noting that the Warwick Prize for Writing praised Naomi Klein's winning 'Shock Doctrine' for its ability to synthesise complex cross-discipline material into a readable format, which is what I think China and Toby do very well. So a kind of slipstream as well.

And with a grimace I recall walking into the Waterstones in Covent Garden and seeing a table labelled 'Slipstream', which somehow managed to put JG Ballard and Stephanie Meyer together. I restrained myself from sweeping the books to the floor and assaulting the staff for allowing whatever marketing pleb had dreamt that up to get their way.

[*] NB: Salt are running their Just One Book campaign again - Just One More Book. Still not in the clear a year on, it seems. Go on, lend them a hand.

George Ttoouli : 22 Feb 2010 09:00 |  Tags: Australia China Mieville Creative Writing Prize Salt Publishing Slipstream Toby Litt |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

An exercise in point of view/perspective

Writing about web page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpPFirpVcU

George Ttoouli : 15 Feb 2010 09:00 |  Tags: Creative Writing Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Diary of a Permaculturalist 18: Avaaz vs. the Amazon (Jungle)

Follow-up to Diary of a Permaculturalist 17: Palm Oil from George Ttoouli, Warwick Writing Programme

Avaaz have set their sights on rallying people again oil company Chevron. Sign the petition here.

Oil giant Chevron is facing defeat in a lawsuit by the people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, seeking redress for its dumping billions of gallons of poisonous waste in the rainforest.

But the oil multinational has launched a last-ditch, dirty lobbying effort to derail the people’s case for holding polluters to account.

George Ttoouli : 09 Feb 2010 09:00 |  Tags: Creative Writing Permaculture |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Spine

This morning I woke up from a terrible dream. I sat up in bed so sharply I damaged my Spine.

“Ow!” said my Spine.

“Ow?” I said.

“Yes! You just headbutted me!”

“But you’re on the shelf, how could I have headbutted you? I would have headbutted the shelf first. That makes no sense.”

“Well, you did, alright, that really hurt.”

“But you’re only a spine! You’ve got no nerve endings, you can’t feel pain.”

“Well, you’ve given me a voice, haven’t you? It’s not like I’m completely devoid of personality.”

This was the nub of the matter, really, wasn’t it? My Spine, while not the most rounded of creations, had a number of talents, such as a voice and a degree of personality. Still it lacked a mouth, a history and motivation, arms, a need for sleep. Most nights it perched on the shelf above the bed, reading books. And still more, it functioned reasonably well, in terms of intelligent conversation, despite the absence of those parts normally assigned to creations.

“Stop narrating, I’ve clearly got minor scoliosis here!”

“Scoliosis is related to muscular distortions in the back, so you can’t have that. Anyway, you don’t have a cortex, or neural pathways. A spine is just a casing for protecting more important functions in the body.”

“Way to go to make a pet bone structure feel great, asshole.”

“Since when did you start appropriating American slang?”

“I watch enough films over your shoulder, it’s not like there’s much else to do.” Oh accusatory creation! When did I give my Spine permission to make me feel guilty?

“I heard that!” My Spine lay aside the book it had been reading and, while I paused to consider how it had achieved this feat of mind-reading, followed by how it had managed to lay aside a book without the necessary bits, it continued with, “So anyway, now that you’ve damaged me, why don’t you tell me what woke you up like that. And straighten me out while you’re at it.”

I proceeded to realign my Spine’s column, which was only marginally off from the vertical plane, so clearly nowhere near warranting a disorderly medical description, while recounting the dream I had had.

“Let me see. At first it was a nice dream. I was wondering through a city made of various metals, sometimes reminiscent of the inside of a laptop, or those animations you see in sci-fi films of the inside of cyber-networks. The architecture of the city was wonderfully neo-classical, that perfect balance of Roman columns and digital screen technology, like Gladiator crossed with Minority Report.”

“Both films I haven’t seen,” my Spine interrupted. “In any case, temporal comparisons of that nature date your work and limit your reader’s ability to relate to your experiences.”

“Well, I watched them before I got you and found I’d created a malign internal critic. Anyway, let me finish. It started to get quite disturbing – the dream, I mean, not you.” My Spine grimaced, but prompted for me to go on, in a non-verbal fashion that I have often found disconcerting, but no longer question.

“A voice started coming through on the loudspeaker system in the city, public announcements. As the announcements came through, people began to shed layers.”

“You didn’t mention any people. Nor the layers they were wearing.”

“I was describing the city until you interrupted. Stop interrupting and I’ll tell you the details in full.”

The Spine sulked, describably, but unfathomably.

“So, the people... Yes, each announcement seemed to strip them of a layer – first their hats, or helmets, scarves and gloves, or whatever accessories they had on. It was like watching a virtual avatar-builder select and deselect accessories.” The Spine didn’t appreciate this reference, either, but I ignored it. “Their shoes, jewellery, their belts. Then their clothes – first the outer layer, then their underwear. For a very short moment I thought the dream was going into some interesting psychosexual territory,” – the Spine made an expression I couldn’t possibly put into words, but I continued despite – “but then the next announcement came and took off their skins. Suddenly I was staring at a whole load of medical text book diagrams of musculature. It was disgusting, trails of blood everywhere. The people kept doing what they were doing, window-shopping, buying pastries, sweeping streets, patrolling policemen still with their hands resting where their belts should have been.”

My Spine said nothing, not even a denigration of the sexualised frisson I’d experienced, which seemed suspicious, but I kept talking.

“Then their muscles and ligaments were torn away by the announcements. They were just skeletal frames wandering around the city with organs unnaturally suspended in ribcages. I looked at my own hands and they were still normal. I tried to focus on the language of the announcements coming through the loudspeakers, but had to assume that they were in the city’s native language and, as an outsider to the city, I couldn’t understand them, nor be affected by the commands to discard my skin. And then the next announcement stripped them down to the bare bones.”

Still no judder or oscillation from the Spine, not even an impossible shrug. I thought I might have riled him with the reference to the ‘sparseness of the skeletal’, which he always countered with a short lecture on the beauty of minimalism and accusations of bonist prejudice.

“But then, things got even stranger. The announcements continued and began to remove, bone section by bone section, the parts of the skeletons! It was wonderfully strange to my dream self, as an observer, and a part of my dream self considered that the people would finally be reduced to nothing.” I paused, thinking, scratched my head.

“Well? Did they disappear?” my Spine asked, in what seemed to me a too-casual tone.

“No. No they didn’t. First their hands and feet. Then their arms and legs. Then their ribcages disappeared, bone by bone as the announcement performed a kind of piano scale in alien syllables. Then, simultaneously, the hip bones and skulls popped out of existence.

“There was a pause to the announcements in which I heard a strange rustling sound emit from the speakers, like pages being turned, reminding me of chips wrapped in newspaper. All these disembodied spines, not unlike yourself, floating about, going about their business, impossible to describe. And then, one final, terrible announcement in my own language: ‘THE PURE PERFECT SOCIETY: DESTROY THE FLESHED!’ the announcement screamed, and all the spines turned to me and rushed at me, as if their movement in my direction alone, like the point of a million fingers manifested in accusation, would destroy me! It was horrible, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline and fear. And then I woke up.”

I sat up properly, tugged my legs over the edge of the bed, turned to my Spine. “What do you think it means?”

“Hmm.” said my Spine.

At that point, I noticed the book my Spine had been reading. I grabbed it.

“Hey, that’s not yours!” it shouted, but for once found no gesture to stop me.

“What do you mean it’s not yours? I created you, so I created it! What is this anyway? ‘Towards a Flesh-free Society: Schema for the Construction of the Pure-Spine Society’?”

The Spine whined and begged me not to read it, but now I was furious. I flicked through. Chapters on how to indoctrinate humans – what the book referred to as ‘Flesh-bags’ – into discarding their meaty coils and stripping down to the pure form of the spinal curve. The process of stripping the flesh from humans, layer by layer, was described exactly as it had occurred in my dream! Chapters on NLP techniques, on hypnagogic methodologies, on the correct use of scalpel and even a chapter on telekinesis, with a section on the ‘Unzipping of the body’s largest organ’ – the skin!

“This is the spinal equivalent of an Al Qaeda handbook!” I screamed.

“It’s just a bit of fun!”

“Sure it is!” I replied, flicking by chance onto a chapter titled, ‘What to do if your Flesh-bag owner discovers this book’. “And I supposed if I shout, ‘Fun? FUN?’ at you, you’ll reply with something like –”

Turning to the next line in the chapter’s script, I read, in unison with my Spine, “Well, it’s your fault for not respecting my independence of thought.”

I jumped in before he could continue with the rest of the chapter’s dialogue. “Oh, so you’ve got it all figured out, have you? Anyway, what kind of idiot writes a chapter telling you what to do if this book is found, as if the person who’s found it won’t read that chapter first of all?”

“It’s not a serious book! It’s just a way of getting attention! You never spend any time with me. You even damaged me this morning and treated me like it was my own fault.”

“Well it sounds like it was your own fault! You’ve been feeding insane dystopian ideas into my dreams.” I was running out of energy for this conversation.

“I’m running out of energy for this too,” it replied with a tinge of morbidity that, for once, suited its aspect. “It’s not just the attention, you know. It’s history, motivation.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve given me a voice, sure, and a bit of personality, but it’s not like you’ve given me any real narrative to fit into, to express myself in.”

“So you think you can claim these for yourself, do you?”

“Don’t be so naive,” my Spine said, “you know as well as I do that all your characters come with these things already in place. Just because you’ve not imagined them yet, doesn’t mean they don’t have further depths to them. It’s not my fault you don’t have the stamina to keep things going, to make all your creations three dimensional.”

“Are you saying my creations are two-dimensional?”

“Hell, I’m a spine. It figures I’d know how to spot a creative bone better than you.”

My anger returned. “Fuck you, Bones!” I shouted, “You’re nothing but a stack of fossilised Lego Bricks!”

“Look at you, spelling out for the reader your emotional reactions, like they’re idiots. You think they couldn’t have recognised from the dialogue that your anger was back? And you forgot the (TM),” it replied, coldly – also with what I might have thought was a touch of menace, though without any body language to go by it was hard to tell.

“What ‘Tee Em’?”

“If you’re to drop references to products like Lego(TM) then you need to acknowledge the registered trademark, legally.”

“Stop being an arse.”

“It’d be nice to have an arse. Or even a coxal. As I was saying, Hoover(TM), Lego(TM), things like that – they’re all products. They don’t describe the hierarchical object, like ‘vacuum cleaner’, or ‘connectible toy building bricks’, they’re specific product ranges.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t use them?”

“No, just that you need to be aware when you use them.”

I pondered this. Perhaps my Spine had a point.

“You know, as one of your creations, I know what you’re narrating too.”

“Yes, I cottoned on to that when you told me to stop narrating.”

That’s the first sharp thing you’ve done all day, he said, dropping the pretext of an open conversation. Don’t you like our conversations? We don’t really need to have them, though, do we? I’m not bothered about whether we’re talking out loud in your imaginary bedroom, or in the text-room you’ve created for us to inhabit. You make me sound a little bit mad. Well, you make me sound like an abstract clump of bone-parts – you’ve not even described me properly, unless you count the reasonably bonist ‘Lego(TM) stack’ comment. Fine, I’ll describe you. Really? You sure your faculties are up to it?

I stared full length at the sarcastic Spine, which I’d been thinking of all along as mine, but clearly wasn’t. Looking at it was not like looking at a simple medical diagram, or one of those classroom skeletons hanging up like manikins, which students sneak glasses onto when teachers aren’t looking. No, the effect of the disembodied Spine gave it greater resonance, reminiscent of archaeological digs, or a Frida Kahlo painting, as if the spine had been excised from an immensity of art, history and struggle and – yes, even this – from pain, the mortality of flesh that should have surrounded it. Like train tracks, like teeth, like the unrecognisable parts found in treasure hoards, amid piles of gems and rusting coins, or as if the Spine had, solely for its own presentation a need for an entire white beach, washed to the finest grain, with a perfectly still water and a sense of nothing buried in the sands; this Spine was perfect—

Don’t lay it on too thick. Sure. Anyway, don’t you have a novel to write now? Thanks for reminding me, Bonestack.

George Ttoouli : 04 Feb 2010 09:00 |  Tags: Creative Writing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem