If you look up a list of the scariest horror films ever made, William Friedkin’s 1973 movie The Exorcist will most likely be on there. And deservedly so: it’s an absolute shocker of a film, full of horrifying imagery and terrifying implication. The Exorcist is more famous as a film than as a book, even though it’s based on an excellent novel by William Peter Blatty. This Halloween I treated myself to reading the book and, as a writer, I learned a lot from it.
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What You Can Learn from Reading Bad Books
Reading is wonderful. Books are wonderful. But some books are more wonderful than others. Some… are bad books.
We all have different preferences when it comes to reading. Sometimes it’s down to genre, or to what happens in a story, but mostly, I think, it’s down to a writer’s style and the way they construct a story.
I’ve just finished a book I found a struggle. We won’t mention any names here, but it was a genre I don’t dip into very often. But I like to read around and think that all writers should read widely, as you can learn just as much from a book you don’t enjoy as you do from one which is well-written and immersive. For one thing, you’re not so immersed in it as to stop thinking about the mechanics behind the book.
As a writer, you can’t please everyone, but you can still be mindful of a few pitfalls that make a book harder to read and harder to love. Here’s what I learned from reading what was, to me, a bad book.
Out Now: Death Rattle – a Flash Fiction
My flash fiction story Death Rattle is featured in the just-released The Brighton Prize 2017!
Last year I wrote and entered a flash-fiction story to Rattle Tales, a Brighton-based writing collective, for an evening of readings they were hosting. My story, Death Rattle, was selected! And I got to read it live in Brighton to an audience of rattle-waving writing enthusiasts.
It was a great night. It was wonderful to see how other writers performed the stories they had written, and the audience questions that followed each story were often illuminating. It’s notoriously difficult for writers to take their craft to the stage, and I was excited by the opportunity. Sadly, the 2018 Rattle Tales night falls a little close to my wedding day, so I’ve refrained from submitting to it!
I wrote Death Rattle to be read out loud and tried to emphasise sound throughout the story. I also tried to avoid certain tongue-twisting combinations of words that I might struggle with on the night! I’m really proud of the finished tale. I think for such a short piece of writing it tells a much larger story than it first appears.
I’d love for you to check out the The Brighton Prize anthology; not only to read my submission but also check out the stories from the writers I shared a stage with last June as well as the acclaimed tales that were selected The Brighton Prize – the short story competition run by Rattle Tales. And if you liked Death Rattle, why not try some of my other writings?
Happy reading!
How to Cure Writer’s Block
Earlier this year I went through a bit of a dry spell on the writing front. I took about a month off my usual routine due to some heavy targets in my day job and found myself unable to get off the ground again with any kind of writing. I’d start, stumble, fumble for words and grind to halt once more.
Diagnosis: Writer’s Block
I found although I was making time to write, and even knew what I wanted to write, the words weren’t quite flowing. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the ideas, or the motivation, or even time to write, it was just that I was really having to push to get anything down, and I wasn’t enjoying it. This, for me, is writer’s block: an inconvenient affliction that prevents you from writing despite your best intentions. But good news – I managed to recuperate with a few simple steps. Here’s what set me on the road to recovery perhaps it could be of some help to you too. Read More
Remembrance Day: A Poem
I wrote this Remembrance Day poem in the days following Remembrance Sunday, which this year fell on 12th November. I had spent the weekend in Edinburgh for a friend’s wedding, and before the ceremony my own fiance and I took the opportunity to explore the city.
It struck me that remembrance is taken more seriously by some than others.
A little different to my usual style, but different subjects require different approaches.
(Reading this back in 2020, I can see parts of this I might tweak or change. I write a lot more poetry now, both metered and free verse, but I like reading this as it shows how I went about exploring my opinions with the techniques I knew at the time.)
I hope you enjoy this Remembrance Day poem.
Remembrance Day
November morning, near one hundred years since it all fell quiet
The city centre occupied by tourists, shoppers, poppy-wearers
Cold air invades hats, scarves, coats.
Shops offer warmth from overhead heaters. The threat of Christmas is tangible now.
The department store speakers make their announcement close to the hour
Shoppers, entrenched in aisles, finger handbags, gift sets. Buyers shuffle in the queue.
The radio switches to the BBC. A presenter speaks the Queen’s English
As the bells begin to chime.
Silence falls.
Hats are removed and held like prayers. Eyes cast to the floor.
Somewhere, a phone dings, apologetic. Then quiet. Somewhere else, the rustle of clothes hangers. Voices outside raise and fall as their owners pass the door.
After a minute (and with a minute still to go), the checkout bleeps again, bleeps again, like radar.
Then the radio resumes its crackling Queen’s. Shoppers reprise their plans for the season.
The silence is observed. The remembrance is forgotten.
