Episode #027 - Chinese Whisperings

Oh yes oh yes, your eyes and ears do not deceive you - I have indeed returned. I know I return like a particularly useless yo-yo, but cut me some slack, OK? I've been busy.

Busy doing what, I hear you cry?

Why, this - http://chinesewhisperings.com the official site of the Chinese Whisperings anthology, of which I am co-creator and contributor.

Wow Paul, that's an intriguing concept, and what a great website. But if only you had some kind of 90 second long teaser trailer that I could listen to, to whet my appetite - that would be amazing.

Well, prepare to be amazed and dazzled - exactly such a 90 second teaser is contained not only in this very podcast episode, but it is spreading!

Y can head on over to Michell Plested's Irreverent Muse blog and listen to the promo as part of his podcast - http://www.michellplested.com/getpublished/get-published-episode-19-chat-with-tee-morris/

Mike was good enough to not only give air time this episode, but next episode too (even after I accidentally call his podcast The Irreverent Muse in my own podcast - it's actually called Get Published - my bad).

That's all for now - time to put this episode to bed, swiftly followed by myself!

Reaction and change

Well, it seems that the last podcast experiment was fairly well-received. I don't know how my literally tens of subscribers liked it, but everyone new to it from the Write Anything side seemed quite happy, so I think I'll have to make it a regular thing. Given the time needed to do it, it means I'll also need to get my article sorted out earlier in the week. Sunday is a good day for recording, but not when your article is supposed to go live that day!

What does this mean for the entity that used to be known as Clamouring to Become Audible...? I might switch those from Sundays to publishing on a mid-week, I'm not sure yet. Probably yes, just to avoid clashing with Write Anything.

And yes, used to be known as. The sharp-eyed may have notices a name change, and the podcast is now called The Darkness Stares Back. Couple of reasons. Clamouring to Become Visible... is my blog, and is based on a Nabokov quote. Audible... may have been a nice pun on that, but it was a total son of a bitch to say as a show name. The number of words is the same, but the number of syllables is less, making it snappier. Another reason is it kind of fits my writing style a little better now - I am reconciled to the darkness, and pretty sure that dark fantasy/gothic romanticism/seriously fucked up shit is my thing.

Anyone linking, if you've got time I'd appreciate if you update the name!

Write Anything Podcast Episode 001

This is an experiment in the format for my Sunday column on Write Anything, so feedback will be appreciated. From now on my Sunday article posts will appear here as well as on the Write Anything site, and will be complemented by a podcast. You are free to read the post alone, listen to the audio alone, or do both. Let me know what you think of this idea, and if it proves popular, I'll repeat it in future.

At the start of this year I entered the Kingston Readers Festival Micro Story Competition 2009. Sadly, my story was not shortlisted, so I present it today (in audio) as an example of redrafting and critique.

The competition sought entries of 500 words or less. This sounds easy, until you try to craft a complete story in under 500 words. My first full draft, which you'll hear in the audio, came in at 554 words. The final entered story was 494 words.

I have had writing critiqued before. I have redrafted writing. But never before has any of my writing undergone such a focused and repeated draft, critique, revise cycle. Including the final version, there were six full drafts, and numerous intermediate stages. I showed the story to six different people, three of whom were providing full critiques. It was painful, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding.

Time and again I had to remind myself that any comments on the quality of the story were not slights against me personally. I knew this, yet each suggested revision, each instance of "this doesn't work" cut me. And I could just about guarantee that for every change I made, for every two people that liked it, one would hate it. President Roosevelt said "you can't please all of the people all of the time", and this was certainly the case here. Thankfully I could please two-thirds of the people most of the time, so took that as a win.

Putting your work out there for review and critique is something writers shy away from when they are starting out. They fear harsh words, the mean voices of jealousy which intone the dreaded but vague verdict - "I don't like it". Such a personal attack on your work, a cherished part of you, is intolerable. So the words go unread, the story sits in a drawer, and the writer never improves.

In truth, you will not grow as a writer unless you allow your work to be critiqued, otherwise you will never learn what works, what doesn't, where your strengths and weaknesses are etc. If fear of criticism puts you off, then lock your pen and paper in the drawer and give up now, because nobody, be they just starting, or a New York Times bestseller, is immune from criticism. You will never please every ready. But the more you write, the more you work on your craft, allowing your work to be read, critiqued, then revised, the more people you will be able to please.

As you do this, you will learn to distinguish constructive criticism, fairly given, from petty insults and harsh words. Fair criticism must never be feared. It must be embraced, utilised, and owned. It strengthens your skills as a writer, and means that when you do encounter those mean voices, you can judge whether there is merit to their words.

Inevitably, you will find those words have no merit at all.

Tags: podcast writing Write Anything critique

Dusts off recording equipment...

... plugs in microphone.

"Testing, testing, 1, 2... 1, 2...."

Bank holiday weekend coming up, so might just get down to recording something!

Episode #026 - Listeners of a nervous disposition, please turn off now

Both a difficult and an easy podcast to record. Oddly, the scene was easy to record. Talking about it, about why it affects me, why I stopped writing it, and why I need to go back to it and finish it - that proved to be a little harder.

Tags: podcast writing The Long Watch

Episode #025 - Sound and fury signifying nothing...

In other words, it's another one of those damn talking episodes, with none of the interesting fiction. Hell, he's not even got a story or a poem to read this week!

Although I do have an apology to make. I've noticed that in the "Comments" section on iTunes when I put in the full copyright information for the show, it comes out truncated when you download the show from iTunes.

This is fine for me and the Creative Commons Licence, but not so great for the guy who actually wrote and performed the music I use in the show. So, although I do mention him in the end credits, I think it's only fair to give credit where credit is due, and reproduce the full copyright information you are supposed to get with the download.

Music: "Children's Theme (part)", "Heart of the Beast" (part), "Inner Sanctum" (part), and "Zombie Hoodoo" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

Much better. I'll keep playing about with the settings and see what I can do to get this info contained in the file.

Also mentioned in the show is The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. For those interested please visit http://www.theartistsway.com/

Tags: podcast writing The Artist's Way

Episode #024 - Happy Haggis Day

And also a happy Australia Day for those down under for tomorrow.

It is 250 years since the birth of Scotland's national bard, Rabbie Burns. Burns Night celebrations are observed annualy by dewey-eyed ex-pat Scots like myself, who have haggis, neeps and tatties when, if they were back home, they'd probably have a fish supper and fail to remember it was Burns Night!

The highlight of any Burns Supper is the Address to a Haggis, which you have the dubious pleasure of hearing me recite today.

And you also get to hear my parody/homage to Poe's The Raven...

Tags: podcast Rabbie Burns Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Address to a Haggis