Holloway Rules

is a short piece of my writing that appears in the current issue of ABC Tales magazine [issue 10]. It’s about Holloway Road — where the A1 hits London. ABCTales is a website where writers can post (and discuss) their work. The magazine comes out quarterly, I think, and contains selected work on the site as chosen by editor John Wilks. It can be downloaded from the link above.

Was that spam or not

Been sending lots more email than usual this week because I’m putting together LitCamp (with London Metropolitan University and PostCMS). I felt slightly bad for sending out so much email even though it was mostly going to people that wanted to get it. Next week, LitCamp will be all done and dusted, and I will avoid writing anything even vaguely spam-like. In fact I will aim for a completely email-free week. It will be like going on holiday, but without the annoying security checks and without the fear that my cheap airline will go under while I am away.

To teach creative writing, or not?

A chance came up recently to do a bit more teaching. Coming at it from an editor’s as well as a writer’s perspective, I hope I have something useful to add. BUT… have just been reading The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland and, well, have you read it? Those creative writing exercises he slags off, where the narrator is a piece of toast, getting buttered…? And the character who is the author of five critically acclaimed, but unread, books. Very scary.

OK, funny too, but scary. Try this for a longer and better-argued review, all I can say is I kept having to stop, then start again… in appalled fascination. So: go for it, or run for it?

—

later

“Go for it if it is not too time-consuming”, says Women Rule. Agreed, it is rewarding to help people improve their writing, but yes it does take up time. And on a per-hour basis the pay is modest. Last month I skimmed Rodge Glass’s biography of Alisdair Gray, in which Gray was blissfully scathing about his time as a teacher of writers, at a Scottish university.

Still, the way the subject is taught can vary a great deal, and after surveying the course materials I’d be using (and reassuring myself there were no buttered toast exercises to be handed out!) I decided I’d be happy to give this another go.

LitCamp London 2008 in countdown mode

Been too busy to post, lots of emails, phonecalls and meetings and so on about LitCamp. I am glad it’s billed as an unconference because no one (including me) knows exactly what to expect. Don’t want to jinx it by going on too much here, but it’s been really good to find so many writers with strong ideas to contribute. All happening Fri 12 September at London Metropolitan University. Programme up, and final few tickets on sale, via the LitCamp site.