You'll have been hard pushed to miss the recent press coverage of the Ministry of Stories, a newly-launched volunteer-run initiative aimed at reawakening children's imaginations and getting them writing creatively. Supported by authors including Nick Hornby (one of the founders), Zadie Smith and Roddy Doyle, the London-based project is inspired by the hugely successful 826 Valencia, a children's writing centre set up by Dave Eggers in San Francisco.

The Ministry aims to provide a free space for fresh writing by young people, including workshops and one-to-one mentoring. The services are all provided by volunteers, including local writers, artists and teachers, who give their time and talent for free. And at the front of the workshop spaces is a rather unique shop - Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. It's only been open for a week or two, but anyone is welcome to pop in and purchase anything that the average monster might need - from a tin of Escalating Panic to a packet of Fang Floss.

I went to take a peep at the shop last weekend, and if you're in London, I highly recommend paying it a visit. It's enormous fun and incredibly well-thought out: all the staff stay perfectly in role, and there are lots of lovely little touches, from a shelf with a huge bite taken out of it, to a handy noticeboard for monster small ads (e.g. 'Missing: One Brain...').

As well as tins of Mortal Terror (the tins, by the way, contain short stories by the likes of Joe Dunthorne and Laura Dockrill) you can buy monster artworks created by illustrators who teamed up with local primary schools, and t-shirts printed with a slogan of what else but 'Boo!'

My personal highlight is the 'invisible cat' that purrs on your approach. "Oh don't mind her," said one of the assistants as I stopped, intrigued, to take a closer look. "She's such an attention seeker."

Find out more about the Ministry of Stories and the Monster Supply Store here.

[Images via Ministry of Stories]

On a very wet evening last week, I went along to the opening of a new site-specific exhibition, Fourteen Interventions, at Swedenborg House in Bloomsbury.

Swedenborg House is an intriguing place in itself: this elegant Bloomsbury listed building is the centre of operations for the Swedenborg Society, established in 1810, whose aim is to translate and publish the works of the idiosyncratic scientist, philosopher and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg. Fourteen Interventions is part of the society's bicentennial celebrations - a series of site specific and site responsive artworks, dispersed throughout the four storey building to celebrate the space, its unique history, its architecture and its artefacts: the artists involved include Jeremy Deller, Olivia Plender, Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, Bridget Smith. Brian Catling and Iain Sinclair.

At the crowded private view, it was difficult to get a good look at many of the artworks tucked away in unexpected corners of this rambling building, but I did get a chance to explore the installations in the basement store room, where mysterious voices emanated from speakers concealed within archive boxes, and flickering projections of blurred images were glimpsed in half-hidden spaces at the back of shelves.

I was especially interested in the combination of visual artworks with written texts throughout the exhibition: Sinclair's commentaries on unusual and arcane objects from the society's archives underlines the point that in such a unique and atmospheric context, there's only a fine line between everyday object and artwork. In a building like this one, it can be difficult to see where site responsive artistic intervention begins and ends, and what is simply the fabric of the space itself.

Fourteen Interventions will be at Swedenborg House until 5 March.

[Image via The Swedenborg Society]

I had a lovely time reading at the launch of Mostly Truthful at Lancaster Liftest on Saturday. I must admit I expected it to be a little bit nerve-wracking as opposed to enjoyable, but in the end it proved to be an altogether very pleasant experience. It was great to be back in Lancaster, in the pleasingly familiar surroundings of the (albeit newly refurbished) Storey Institute and the audience were fantastic, but most of all, I really enjoyed the opportunity to hear my fellow writers, Jane Routh, Adrian Slatcher and Kate Feld, reading from their work.

Editor Sarah Hymas describes Mostly Truthful as "Flax's first adventure into creative non-fiction ... a vibrant collection of voices that represent a slice of now, of us being on the brink, as always, of change."

You can download the anthology, which also has an introduction by Jenn Ashworth, for free from the Litfest website here.

I’m back in London again, on a soft and greyish day. It’s really starting to feel like autumn here: walking through Bunhill Fields last week through the first falling leaves, wearing a jacket and boots for the first time, was a picture-perfect autumn moment.

It’s been a very, very hectic couple of weeks. I’ve spent a lot of time on trains, going here, there and everywhere in my work capacity. I’ve been to the Edinburgh Book Festival, as well as various other events and meetings, and have also been organising an exhibition of picture book illustrations and an accompanying event as part of the launch festival for the new Free Word Centre. And this weekend I was in Coventry for a conference of librarians – what a truly glamorous life I lead!

In any spare moments (few and far between) I’ve been trying to fit in my university studies, spending time in the library, and working, very slowly, on my dissertation. Even though getting it done is posing me with something of a challenge at the moment, I'm nonetheless enjoying it. I'm also glad it gives me the perfect excuse to head north on a regular basis, as I’m still studying at Manchester University.

Unfortunately, all this leaves little time for blogging or indeed writing of any kind: I haven’t even managed to write in my faithful diary for months. Interestingly, I’ve noticed this blog is increasingly drifting towards being more of an ‘arts’ type blog than the personal blog it once was. I’m not quite sure why that is, except maybe it's simply easier to write about impersonal things - books, exhibitions - when you are super busy, because there just isn't much time or brainpower left to have many interesting 'personal' thoughts.


Needless to say, I’m looking forward to getting the dissertation finished and then I can (at least occasionally) have a life, and a perhaps even a brain, once again.

However, in the meantime there are, nevertheless, some good writing things happening. The most exciting is that I’m going to have some work published in the latest anthology from Litfest’s excellent publishing imprint, Flax. Mostly Truthful is Flax’s first nonfiction prose anthology, and also features work by Kate Feld, Adrian Slatcher and Jane Routh. There will also be a launch event as part of the Litfest programme in October at which we’ll all be (eek) appearing and (even more eek) reading from our work. You can check out the event and maybe even book a ticket to see it, right here.

P.S. follow the yellow brick road also pops up on Kate's Cultureometer over at the excellent Creative Tourist this month. Check it out here.

P.P.S. Look who's joined me down here in London Town - yep, it's my most glamorous blogging compatriot, the fabulous Ms Coco Laverne!


[Image via lavendardays on we heart it]

I’ve recently been trying to dedicate more time to Doing Proper Writing, but I've not had much success so far. I don't know about anyone else, but I find it incredibly difficult to write on a regular basis when I’m working full time, especially when it’s in combination with a demanding commute (currently involving two tubes and a train). But I do miss writing when I'm not doing it regularly. In an ideal world, I’d like to write something every day, but I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen, because most days, by the time I get home from work I feel pretty much exactly like a sloth.


I am in awe of the amazingly prolific people I come across: the ones who manage to turn out novels alongside busy lives, family obligations and full-time jobs, but I'd love to know their secret.

What are your strategies for motivating yourself to keep writing even in your sloth-like moments?

P.S. Check out my two new book reviews up at Bookmunch: poet Gee Williams’s first novel Salvage, and Aleksander Hemon’s new short story collection Love and Other Obstacles.

[sloth photo via zooillogix]

Creative Tourist, launched today by the Manchester Museums Consortium is a brand new online magazine about art and culture in Manchester.

Issue 1 features Jeremy Deller, Ansuman Biswas (aka the Manchester Hermit), Marina Abramovic in conversation with Maria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Andrew Shanahan’s guide to videogames and Dea Birkett on children in galleries, as well as much more.

And as if all this wasn’t enough, Kate Feld (of Manchizzle fame) will be working alongside editor Susie Stubbs to bring in content from Manchester’s lively blogging community, commissioning guest posts from bloggers who write about art and culture… and guess who you’ll find in the very first issue?

That’s right, it’s me! Check out my post about Jeremy Deller’s Procession here. I was delighted to be the very first blogger commissioned to contribute to Creative Tourist, and I was even more delighted to be asked to write about such a fantastic event. If you read the piece, I’d love to know what you think - and whether or not I’ve managed to capture the unique atmosphere of this very special Manchester experience!

PS You can also keep up with Creative Tourist via the magic of twitter. Looking forward to reading more soon!

[Photo courtesy of the very talented Duncan Hay]

I have not upheld my pledge to write here more in May. It’s already the 23rd (how did that happen, exactly?) and I have but two measly posts.

I've been wondering why it is that I don't seem to be writing this blog quite as much as I once was. Perhaps it's partly because, in the last couple of months, I've got back into writing a diary much more regularly. I have long been an avid writer of diaries: I started writing when I was twelve, and have continued ever since. But I do have 'on' and 'off' phases with it - and at the moment I'm definitely in an 'on' phase. I've got back into the habit of writing every day, and perhaps that has absorbed some of my need to write here.

But that in itself is interesting. I have always felt that a private, paper diary and a blog, however personal, were inherently different, separate spaces - one very much for yourself alone, and the other, whether you acknowledge it or not, by its very nature designed for an audience, for a very public readership. But maybe they aren't really so very different: perhaps secretly our 'public' blogs are for ourselves before they are for anyone else, after all...

I'd be interested to know what others think. Do you keep a diary, or write a blog, or both? Which do you prefer and why? What do you think the real differences are between them as formats - and what is it that motivates you to keep going?


Meanwhile here's a few other things:

Emily started a very interesting discussion about blogging and anonymity, writing and autobiography on her blog which Jenn and Max joined in here and here and here.

Ben unmasked himself as the author behind not only the Although I am not as delicious as I once was... blog by the mysterious 'Rosetta Hampshire,' but of a whole Patchwork Labyrinth of slowly-unravelling blog-based metafiction! I am looking forward to reading more...

Booooooom! and Design for Mankind’s Free Encouragement project (which I blogged about back here) has now launched its much-anticipated second stage. Take a look at their beautiful Free Encouragement postcards here.

I have another book review at Bookmunch – this time for Anne Michael’s second novel, The Winter Vault. You can read it here.

Manchester Writing is a new and most useful blog bringing together news and reviews of writing and readings around Manchester. Check it out here.

Main things I am doing at the moment: eating, sleeping, reading obscure 1920s prose poems for my dissertation, playing the piano (item number seven on this list), rock pool dabbling, baking cakes, watching the kittiwakes, contemplating whether or not to buy myself a bicycle with a basket, admiring bluebells and paddling in the sea.

[Pictures are via We Heart It here and here]

Throughout March, writer Fiona Robyn has been travelling from blog to blog to celebrate the publication of her first novel, The Letters, in her very own blog tour.

The Letters is the story of Violet Ackerman, who has "drifted through a career, four children and a divorce without ever knowing who she is or what she wants. After moving to the coast, she starts receiving a series of mysterious letters sent from a mother and baby home in 1959, written by a pregnant twenty-year-old Elizabeth to her best friend. Who is sending Violet these letters, and why?"

It also features a cat called Blue, an unexpected twist in the tale, and (according to Aliya at Veggie Box at least) an impressive number of references to vegetables. What's more it has already won praise from everyone from Scott Pack at Me and My Big Mouth who described it as 'an accomplished and promising début novel' to Vulpes Libres who admired Fiona's 'wonderfully descriptive writing' to Caroline Smailes who described how she 'devoured [The Letters] within a couple of days'.

Fiona has already visited 16 other blogs as part of the tour (you can read the full list here, including where she is going next). As it's now Day 22 I reckon she's probably getting a little weary, so I suggested she put her feet up and then asked her a few questions:

Firstly... it's Day 22 of your blog tour, and you've already visited 16 other blogs. Are you getting at all tired of answering questions about yourself and The Letters yet?

You'd think I would be, but nobody is asking the same questions! It's really interesting how different people have approached the book in different ways, and are interested in different things...

Do you have a favourite question you've been asked on the tour so far?

'Tell us what you grow in your veggie patch' by Aliya at the Veggie Box and Lane asked me lots of good questions about cats. Caroline also asked me some good questions, one involving Mr. Men. You can see that I like to take things very seriously.....

You've already been asked a lot of questions about The Letters: the idea for the novel, the characters, and how it came to be written. To make a change I thought I'd ask you a few questions about the three blogs you write as well as your novels: a small stone; a handful of stones and your personal blog, planting words. How do your blogs fit in as part of your overall writing practice?

I try not to let them interfere with my novel-writing - if I'm writing, then I'll always do that before I do anything else (including checking Facebook). a small stone usually only takes a few minutes a day, and a handful of stones maybe takes half an hour a couple of times a week. I only write Planting Words when I feel the urge, and again this can take a few minutes or up to half an hour. I do sometimes wonder if three is a bit excessive, but it's been ok so far!

What first got you started writing blogs?

I started writing a blog called Creating Living when I was working as a coach, as a way of promoting my services. It was a little bit like Planting Words, and resulted in my book A Year of Questions: How to slow down and fall in love with life. a small stone came next.

What gave you the idea for your blog project a small stone?

The phrase literally arose in my mind one day when I was driving back from the sea. I was thinking about starting another blog for my poetry at the time, but I didn't even know what it meant, and it felt a bit boring as a blog title. It was persistant, and then I happened upon the idea of picking a small stone up and carrying it home from a long walk - something little that you could save from every day.

Which other blogs do you read regularly?

I've always been a big fan of whisky river and have recently found lassie and timmy, both of which have a strong zen flavour. Sarah is always finding good stuff.

I recently wrote a post about how much writers enjoy the actual process of writing, which provoked a bit of discussion. Is the process of writing itself something you find pleasurable?

I find parts of it pleasurable - and parts of it horrid. It's hard to sit down and get started, especially with first drafts. I'm sometimes struck by terrible doubts. But I love reading back a sentence and thinking 'ah, that's a good sentence', or finding something new out about my character. Intensely satisfying. Really, nobody is holding a gun to my head - I'm a writer because it's supremely important to me - and things that are important aren't necessarily fun all the time.

What inspires you? Where do you go to find inspiration when you need it?

Being outside in my garden is good for me - whatever the weather - but I do prefer sunshine! I've been lucky enough to wait for inspiration to find me so far, rather than going out and looking.

Tell us a little bit about what you've got coming up next...

The Blue Handbag is out in paperback in August, and then Thaw in February next year, both with Snowbooks. I'm currently working on a novel about a young boy that goes to stay with his aunt in Amsterdam - I'm off for a research trip this summer. What a life, eh?

And finally (just because I had to ask) do you own any red shoes?

I'm afraid I'm not much of a shoe person - black trainers is pretty much it... I do think they look nice on other people though - I'm sure yours are lovely!

Perhaps you're just more of a handbag person, since your next book is called The Blue Handbag? Anyway, thanks very much, Fiona (for visiting and for complimenting me on my shoes!) and enjoy the rest of the tour!

The last three posts make up the beginning of a piece of writing I've been toying with for quite a long time. It's actually the start of a novel I wrote about four or five years ago. Every now and again, I get the whole thing out again, have a look and wonder whether I ought to have a go at rewriting it, or whether I should simply shelve it and move on to something new. I'm still not sure about that, but I thought it would be good to post it here in the interests of take a step outside the comfort zone.

In the past, I know I've been fairly useless at getting outside my comfort zone - in terms of writing, at least. I'm much more inclined to settle down in it, put my feet up, maybe make a nice cup of tea. I'm not very good at putting my work "out there": in spite of good intentions I've even chickened out about posting any fiction here up until now. Maybe it's partly because I've never studied creative writing, or even attended a class, so I haven't entirely got my head around the idea of standing up and acknowledging ownership of my work. Maybe it's also because I've spent so long studying literature which can be a bit of a dangerous thing to do if you want to write yourself.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this a lot of the time: even the best of us get The Fear when it comes to putting our work out there in the world. Evidently even Derrida suffered from anxieties about his writing: "moments of fear" when he came over all neurotic in the middle of the night and was tempted to burn all his papers.



Having said that though, I do think it's important to get used to the idea of leaving the comfort zone. Writing this blog has been a good step in the right direction: it's helped me to get back into the habit of writing regularly, but more importantly, to get used to sharing what I write with others and to cope with the scary stuff (see here and here). It's also taught me that not everything I write has to be carefully worked out and immaculately put together. In fact, I've found that sometimes the best things come out of just having a go and not worrying too much. It also makes it a lot more fun, which has to be the point in the end really, doesn't it?

Anyway posting this has been a good start. Now I just have to keep going and get used to the idea of stepping outside my comfort zone. Or as Derrida himself puts it, I just need to "do what must be done."

(The excellent picture above is by Keri Smith from her blog wish jar)

There is a certain taste to it, a weight. It has its own roundness, depth and texture. There is the sweet-sharp tang of a raspberry. The lightness of a balloon drifting across a cloudless sky. A cool blue note, like a love-song played at twilight. A sleekness, a flicker, a whisper, and it’s gone.

Memories move and shift like waves on the shore. I dabble my toes and the story flutters, showing me glimpses, moments, then evading me again. There are no cold hard facts after all, but only speculation. Nancy again: “Stop. That’s not how it happened. I didn’t say that. Why do you always have to do this? You’re just making stuff up.”

And it’s true: there is so much I have forgotten, and so much more that might never have happened at all. I was always making up stories, telling and retelling things that had happened, to make them more interesting, to make them mine. “You tell lies,” this girl said to me once, at school. But Alix just looked at her with her cat-green eyes and said coolly “You have no imagination.”

Of course, I didn’t know then about the pitfalls. Deception taking shape on the tip of my tongue, its rich snake coils. Now, they tell me it is best after all to stick to what’s real. The only problem is I can’t seem to separate what was from what might have been anymore.

What’s real is now. Myself here. High summer again and the streets are hot and dry, a desert seemingly without end. The blankness of time to be filled with nothing but the sounds in the distance: a siren, a thumping bassline. This small room, these paper walls, this house. Looking out of my window. There could be anything out there. There could be something.

Something. A story perhaps? Out there are our stories, haunting the empty streets like ghosts. On days like these I feel restless, buoyant, as if I could just take off and fly into a story. I could tap the heels of my old red sandals together, one-two-three, and I would lift up from my window on invisible wings. I’d fly beyond the city limits, back over the fields and the woods, and touch down by the house on the hill, back in another story. There’s no place like home. Back again, through the gate, down the path, into the garden. Stop. Play. Play it again. Down the rabbit hole, into the eternity of a moment that has long since passed me by.

Of course, it’s the house I think of now more than almost anything else. I imagine it as it was back in the days when we first knew it. I build it up again, brick by brick. My dark chateau, my sleeping beauty castle, half-suffocated by weeds and fingers of ivy. The long lawns tangled, and the garden heavy with dying flowers and overripe fruit rotting in the grass.

Inside the dusty windows, there could be music playing: scratchy old jazz records, a tinkling piano melody. The secret sound of footsteps, one-two-three, of a heavy satin skirt dragged across the bare floorboards. There is the smell of cigarette smoke, a fur stole tossed over a chair, and there are suitcases waiting in the hallway. They are labelled with the names of exotic destinations: Constantinople, Zanzibar, Timbuktu. It is as if a party has just ended, with empty glasses and full ashtrays and a sudden loneliness, a sharp edge of regret.

The house must have been there forever. It was ageless: it could never have been built from ordinary brick and plaster. It was not a house at all but something else altogether: the ruins of a medieval castle, the site of sacred standing stones. It was a dream-place: it had sprung fully-formed on the hillside, complete with its marble bathrooms, its fountain, its chandeliers, its drowsy garden of old roses and ancient trees.

The garden was green and gold. It was the colour of leaves shot through with sunlight, of Isobel’s green skirt, of light skipping across the water, of surfacing as the spray flew upwards and turned to glitter. It could never be forgotten. I know it's supposed to be “all about the future” now: I’m supposed to be moving forward, but somehow I find myself coming back again, through the gate, down the path, back into the garden, pacing out the story.

Maybe I do think about it too much. Behind my own words, there’s tinkling laughter, mocking voices. They always did say I was too serious, too ponderous, too intense. “Don’t take everything so seriously,” Nancy used to say, exasperated with me yet again. “You’re being weird,” Alix said, her voice marshmallow-light, milkshake-pink. But this is my story now, so I can be serious if I want to be. I can tell it however I want.

Once upon a time it seemed easy to move forward. We couldn’t wait. We were following a line marked on a map in red ink, fast-track to the future, on the express route to tomorrow, no stops, no waiting. We skipped blithely along towards the horizon, arm-in-arm. But now I always seem to be walking in circles that spread outwards just as a pebble falls into water. A carousel, a circle of candles to be jumped for some reason I’ve forgotten. It’s as if I’m lost on the Circle Line, going on and on, down and down, rattling through the long dark tunnels with a tinny silver sound reverberating in my ears, always missing my way and ending up strung out at the end of a line I never wanted to take. I miss the exits, and now the future is just a dim light in the distance. I can no longer see it clearly: it’s just a blur, an imaginary thing. Maybe I am slumbering somewhere in an enchanted poppy field, though I still wear my red sandals for luck.

As to the past, that is done with now, shut up in books with hard covers, and arranged neatly on shelves in sections and sequences: maybe some old yearbook in the school library, doodles on the yellowed paper. It’s just history, like the lessons where we learned the dates of things: births and deaths, wars and peace treaties, controversies, grand betrayals. I wrote them down in my exercise book but somehow I never could remember them. They were erased by the slow, flickering tick of the schoolroom clock, and Alix’s hair gleaming in a shaft of sun. Of course, she wasn’t writing down dates: she was staring out of the window, or drawing swirly patterns in her exercise book: hearts and flowers, moons and stars, a kaleidoscope of colour like a bad acid trip and her name, ALIX, written in giant pink and purple letters, filling a whole page. She said history was boring. She rolled her eyes and said, “Who cares?” She was always more interested in the here and now, but she came top in all the history exams just the same. It was one of her paradoxes.

Of course, that was back when her own future was tangible, bright and light, a door opening, held out to her in the palm of an outstretched hand. “She’ll go far,” people said, and the headmistress wrote on her end-of-year report that she was a young lady with a bright future. She always seemed destined for driving down long, empty highways, glamorous in a gleaming white convertible, with the radio turned up and her blonde hair flying free beneath a wide blue sky. Of course, back then I would have seen myself in the passenger seat, but now I’ve drifted too far from the days of blue-sky dreams of open roads. I’m here now, trapped in this context: these four walls, this city, the yellow light of the afternoon. In the next room, the radio buzzes like an angry fly.

“So, what about the future?” people ask me: the personal tutors, the uncles who can’t think of anything else to say. “What’s next?” I can’t answer them. I shrug and say something non-committal; I have trouble imagining a future, trouble thinking about it. Perhaps that’s because I don’t want to think about it, not really. In the end, I’d rather think about the past.

In the beginning, there was only green. Green and green and nothing more: the green haze of meadows; long leaf-green summer days; the glass green of a pool. In spring the trees were electric. The hedgerows flashed past me behind glass, bending away into nothing. There was only the endless green of the garden, blurring before me as far as the eye could see.

But I don’t want it to begin this way. The beginning ought to be so much more spectacular. This is our Big Opening, after all, so surely there should be fireworks, a band striking up, velvet curtains swishing open with a flourish? I want the shimmering of strings as the opening titles roll and we descend from above in a pool of light, a shower of glitter and confetti. The wave of a magic wand, the silver clash of cymbals, a puff of smoke, a cosmic explosion. The heavens and earth rising out of chaos as we slide out of the void and burst into being in tiaras, feather boas and sequinned shoes. The wave of our hands - hello there! we’ve made it! - and trumpets sounding out a triumphant ta da!

But perhaps there were no fireworks. Perhaps instead we came to life quietly, awaking first in the garden. Say it all happened slowly, amongst the roses that bled fat petals into our empty hands, with mossy grass between our toes. Or maybe it began the bare room, beneath the cold ticking of the clock on the wall, far from the green of the garden. Some sleight of hand and here we are: perhaps after all the end is where we start from.

Back to the start. Stop. Rewind. In the beginning there was green and only green. I’m going back through the gate, down the path, back to the beginning. I’m telling you how it really happened: with distant voices, and laughter. High summer again and the garden callow, viridescent. The garden is green and green and nothing more and I am lost again the long grass, where the lawn slopes away towards the still lake shore.

It has been a very busy week or two. It's been one of those times when I suspect I might be a bit mad even attempting to have a full-time job at the same time as studying for an MA. On the other hand, though, it's also been a really varied and interesting couple of weeks, so I can't really complain too much.

Anyway, I will shortly be heading down to That London for a few days, but first, here are a few things I wanted to post - a quick round-up of news:

Apartment is closing its doors... The unique exhibition space in a council tower block flat, co-curated by Hilary Jack and Paul Harfleet will close its programme with a show by Giorgio Sadotti entitled ‘PAUL, PAUL IS THE ART’. The show runs until 2nd April and viewing is by appointment - check it out while you have the chance!

Throughout March, look out for the project If you read this, I’ll give it to you by artist Katya Sander throughout the public spaces of Manchester and Salford. Thousands of pin-badges bearing the statement “If you read this, I’ll give it to you (but then you must wear it too)” are moving through the cities, travelling from person to person. Badges will be available at sites within the city, and can be taken from anyone you see wearing them. The project is part of Whose Cosmopolitanism? a series of public events to launch the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC) at the University of Manchester which has also included events with visiting speakers such as David Harvey and Jacqueline Rose.

The Other Xeno-epistemic is an interesting event coming up at A Foundation on Friday 20 March. The event is part of TAXED, A Foundation’s series of events designed by locally-based artists which explore the power of imitation, and “art’s capacity to import other people’s ideas, to shamelessly replicate successful existing models, to beggar belief with its flagrant piracy!” This event has been literally “taxed” from a workshop by Sarat Maharaj at Test Site, Rooseum, Malmö in 2002, and involves a “sideways” reading of a chapter from Deleuze & Guttari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Participants are each assigned a footnote to research in advance, and will come together to discuss their findings and ideas, resulting in what Maharaj describes as “the kind of crazy-paving reading that makes [artists] ‘dodgy’ from the ‘doctoral’ point of view”. You can read more here, including details of how you can participate and view the results!

Nominations for this year’s Best of Manchester Awards are now open. There are categories for art, music and fashion (though sadly not for writing) so get nominating all your talented friends and neighbours!

And coming soon... Artyarn will be artists in residence at Contact throughout April and May as part of the AIR programme. As well as workshops and yarn bombing, they plan to produce a new piece of work, the Knitting Orchestra - an experimental sound piece produced directly from the act of knitting.

Take a look at the new Preston Writing Network which aims to "put Preston's diverse and vibrant literary culture on the map," promoting and developing new writing in Preston through on-line activity and a programme of workshops, live literature and more. The network is the writing strand of They Eat Culture, a new arts development company run from the Continental Arts Space in Broadgate, and there's more information about how to get involved or submit work to the blog here.

Please find ZigZag! is a storytelling project launched by Litfest and writer David Gaffney. If you should happen to be in Lancaster, look out for a series of mysterious lost cat posters appearing around the city centre. These stories form the first part of a three-part story of unrequited love set in and around the Storey Institute. You can read more online by checking out both characters blogs - Fern and Charlie - though really, half the fun of this story is how it unravels in real time in the public spaces of Lancaster in a distinctly non-digital format.

Do check out Bewilderbliss, a new literary magazine dedicated to “new words from new writers” which showcases the poetry and prose of Manchester University and MMU postgraduate creative writing students. You can buy the brand new first issue (the theme is ‘The Guilty') from the Cornerhouse foyer bookshop where I hear you can also get hold of Belle Vue, another new zine I’m hearing good things about from reliable sources (see here and here). I'm loving all this DIY publishing action going on at the moment!

Kate from The Manchizzle is organising a get-together for Manchester Bloggers at Centro on Tuesday (10 March). I plan to be there, and will be wearing my name-tag with pride!

On a similar blog-related note... I am astonished by the wealth of great new Manchester blogs I keep coming across at the moment - it feels like I discover one practically every day. If you want a good read, may I point you in the direction of Equine Obesity, Mithering Times and Blunt Fringe just for starters? And whatever you do, don't miss Emily Powell’s My Shitty Twenties which is absolutely brilliant.

...I was reading somewhere recently that you should never write a blog post longer than a paragraph or two because people get bored and don't bother reading it. That's a rule I absolutely fail to observe on this blog, and I have certainly broken it very conclusively today. If you're still with me, well done you. And you'll probably be relieved to hear that I've now finished.

The second edition of the excellent Manchester Review includes an interview by MJ Hyland with Irish novelist Colm Toíbín in which he somewhat controversially claims there is “no pleasure” to be found in the process of writing:

Oh, there’s no pleasure. Except that I don’t have to work for anyone who bullies me. I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway and I would disapprove of it.


Toíbín’s response, which was picked up by the Guardian on Monday, fascinates me precisely because personally, I couldn’t feel more different. I don’t think there’s any way I would ever write anything if I didn’t love the process of writing. Narcissistic or not, like Will Self - one of nine writers surveyed by the Guardian in response to Toíbín - I find the whole experience of writing enormously enjoyable: “the mechanics of writing, the dull timpani of the typewriter keys, the making of notes - many notes - and most seductive of all: the buying of stationery.” Maybe it’s because I don't do it for a living - or maybe it’s because of the kind of writing I do - but unlike Amit Chaudri, who believes “writing novels is no fun; nor is, generally speaking, reading novels” - for me writing (and reading for that matter, novels more than anything else) has always been a source of uncomplicated pleasure.

In fact, just thinking about this makes me sorry that I seem to do so little writing of fiction these days - I struggle to find either the time or the imaginative space to give to it. But I do miss writing more regularly and consistently, for the sheer experience far more than any actual ‘outcomes’. What I miss is the utterly self-indulgent pleasure of what A.L. Kennedy describes as “making something out of nothing, overturning the laws of time and space, building something for strangers just because you think they might like it, and hours of absence from self.”


Of course, I don’t pretend that writing - and especially writing fiction - isn’t hugely difficult. In fact, it's often a fraught process, with all the pitfalls that Hari Kunzu pinpoints “self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you've nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting.” But it’s exactly that sense of a challenge, of problems to be overcome, of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in your path that makes writing fulfilling - and thus (or perhaps I’m just a masochist!) also ultimately enjoyable.

Consequently, I was surprised how many of the novelists in the Guardian’s survey appeared to agree with Toíbín, some even claiming they were simply in it for the cold, hard cash - though amongst the wealth of negative voices, Self and Julie Myerson (“Writing gives me enormous pleasure...it’s a joyous thing”) provided welcome relief. 

However, I have to say that I am tempted to take all of their responses with a pinch of salt - for as Joyce Carol Oates herself rather perspicaciously reminds us, D.H. Lawrence tells us to trust the tale and not the teller. Ultimately one can’t help suspecting that these writers are simply entering into a process of self-mythologising, consciously or unconsciously believing they should uphold the stereotype of the “tortured artist.” Of course everyone’s different, and my experience isn't necessarily true for everyone, but I do wonder if there’s just a tiny little bit of “protesting too much” going on here.

I'd be intrigued to know what others out there make of the question of "writing for pleasure". For those writers out there, is the process of writing something you enjoy, or is it just too fraught to be truly pleasurable? And if so - for those of us unable to command fees for our work on the Toíbín scale at least - what do you think it is that motivates us to do it at all?

... my word, there’s a lot of stuff online about blogging. There are whole blogs about blogging. Talk about self-referential. It’s all terribly po-mo.

Far from “ooh - project!”, in fact I have found that a lot of it quickly becomes rather boring if like me, you’re not especially bothered about the technical stuff (widgets, rss feeds, search engine optimisation and the like), but are more interested in the words themselves, and why this might be an interesting thing to do if you like words (and writing them). I haven't found much out there about the blog as a literary or artistic form.

However, what I have found on my travels is a lot of actual blogs written by actual writers who are doing actually interesting and challenging things with this as a format. I have started a list of blogs that I like, which I’m going to add to as I go along. It’s over there, on the right, where it says ‘blogs that are good’.

Interestingly, apart from getting to read a lot of fine writing, another piece of important information I have garnered from these blogs is that if I am going to be serious about this whole blogging (and writing) business I am probably going to need to get myself a much cooler hairdo. Oh well. As long as I don't have to wear a trilby, or gladiator sandals, it will all be fine.

... a quick selection of some of the tunes I've been listening to of late. Check out my retro pink tape player!

I'm quite impressed that I managed this all by myself.

Truly, the internet is a magical thing.

Making this just now reminded me of when I was writing a certain novel which has since been banished to my bottom drawer. At the time, I put together a whole playlist to get me in the right mood, and some of the songs even ended up working their way into the story itself, seeming to just appear, as if by themselves, at critical moments in the narrative. There's something so sad about a lost novel: I've been thinking about it a bit lately and wondering if its worth re-writing and resuscitating. It's hard to know when to have another go and when to just say goodbye.

Actually, I seem to remember that one of the songs on that playlist was 'Return to Oz' by the Scissor Sisters, which I couldn't help including here - it just seems so very appropriate given the title of this blog. Though you may be glad to hear that I did manage to refrain from including any Elton John.

NB// There is a pause button on the front of the cassette thing if you're sick of it and want it to shut up.

OK, people. And of course, by people I mean readers. So that’s one, two of you maybe, if I’m lucky? At least one of whom is my mum? (Hello mum!)

But I digress...

Starting this blog has got me thinking about writing in general, and blogging in particular. Before I started writing here, I knew next to nothing about blogging, and indeed about writing online - though I’ve had work published online, I’ve always approached writing it in exactly the same way I’d approach writing in general. I think (I hope) I know a little bit about writing. I certainly have vey extensive experience of what I might term 'personal' writing - diaries, journals, that kind of thing. In spite of this, I’m very happy to admit that I know very little about what writing a blog is really all about. I’m even a little bit ambivalent about the whole exercise, as you will see from this initial post in my having-a-go, testing-the-water blog, unpacking my library. And as I’m sure any reader of this blog will gather, I certainly haven’t started with any particularly coherent plan or considered approach to what exactly it is I’m doing here - I’ve just been posting whatever is in my mind.

But since starting to write here, I’ve become aware that this whole world (I really can’t quite bring myself to use the word ‘blogosphere’) is a complex one, and far from being as straightforward as it might initially seem. Now, I find myself asking two key questions. Firstly, what is a blog, really, when it comes down to it? Personal diary made public? A forum to discuss and communicate with others? A place to gather stuff together? To explore ideas? To showcase work? Or even something akin to fiction - a novel, a fictionalised autobiography? What does a blog really mean? Or, to rephrase the question in a particularly annoying way, which I am afraid I can only justify by explaining that I can't help it - I am currently half way through an English Literature MA course which is especially heavy on the cultural theory - how does it mean?

And then my second question, perhaps the most important one: what is it that makes a blog good? What makes it readable, compelling, meaningful, interesting, engaging? What is it that takes it beyond just another place to mess about and waste time online, and turns it into something altogether more?

Like any good and faithful student, of course my next step is to undertake some research into the subject - i.e. do the reading! I already read a number of blogs I like, and in my work I come across lots more -usually writer's blogs - on a more or less daily basis. However, I’m very much aware that I’m only just starting to scratch the surface. So with this in mind, I’m (perhaps rather optimistically) asking passing readers (if there are any of you out there) to leave a comment below with a link to any blog(s) that you think might be of interest. Blogs you love, blogs you laugh at, even blogs you think are downright awful. Blogs to inspire or enrage or enrich, or that you simply think are a really great read.

We’ll see what I get and I’ll do some investigating. In the meantime, I’m starting by reading this article about internet writing on the Canongate website by fellow Manchester resident, writer (and blogger) Chris Killen. (Chris is also the author of the fabulous 'untitled supermarket nightmare' novel which you can read online here)

And of course, whatever I find out, I’ll be posting it here.

Today I am at home, with a throat infection, feeling sorry for myself.

Luckily, this most excellent blog post from Jenn Ashworth has cheered me up. I have long contemplated doing a creative writing MA course - and this one includes free tea, gin AND humiliation.

Love it, love it. Now the only question is, where am I going to find a pink dress and a kitten?

... today I thought I would post this piece that I wrote back when I entered the Vogue talent contest in 2005. Entrants had to submit three pieces of writing, one of which was an autobiography in 600 words, and this is what I came up with. It's not strictly an 'autobiography' because most of it isn't true, but it could be the autobiography of a fictionalised version of myself. Of all my work, it was the piece which seemed to appeal to the judges most: when I went to the finalists' lunch at Vogue (my very own "Carrie Bradshaw" moment) it was definitely the one that they remembered: people kept saying, "oh, you're the red shoe girl!" Yep, that's me!

And it's true that I am strangely compelled to wear red shoes (the ones above were a present from France). Even though this piece is now over three years old, it seems particularly appropriate to post it here, given the title of the blog and all. After all, it's all very well to talk of going off to follow yellow brick roads, but how much better if you've got a pair of kick-ass ruby slippers to do it in?

So here we go:

The Red Shoe Diaries

1. Red Sandals

They glistened and gleamed, the red shoes. They were perfect, everything a shoe should be. Red, glistening and perfect, like something out of a dream.

She lay on the rug and rewound, just to see Dorothy skipping along in the shiny red shoes. “Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn’t want them so badly,” Glinda the Good Witch said. Her own shoes were black, patent-leather, round-toed and squeaky: shoes her mother chose. They were cartoon shoes, something Minnie Mouse might wear, nothing remotely magical about them. At school, the other girls had proper, grown-up shoes, with little heels that they click-clacked importantly in, up and down the playground. But they weren’t magic shoes, either: it was red ones she wanted.

She had a book of fairy-tales with a story in it called ‘The Red Shoes’. The shoes were treacherous but they were magic too. After all, she read, there is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes.

That summer, she finally got them. Red sandals to wear with her white knee-socks and gingham school dress. They didn’t dazzle like Dorothy’s, but she knew they were magic just the same. They were sandals to skip along unknown roads in, shoes that could take you anywhere. They looked quite ordinary, but she knew better. Sometimes she surreptitiously practised clicking her heels together, once, twice, experimentally, just to see.

2. Scarlet Shoes

No one else had scarlet shoes. Their feet were all the same, in their identikit fashion trainers, and they looked scornfully at her in the red velvet high-heels she had bought from a charity shop for a handful of pennies. Back then, they had seemed enchanted shoes, exotic, otherworldly: shoes to wear to a smoky jazz club or a fabulous party in some faraway foreign city. Now, they were giving her blisters, and the other girls were looking down their noses and saying nothing. The drunk man in the corner kept leering at her across the room. “You know what they say about girls who wear red shoes...”

After that she kept them to wear at home: she wore them to do homework in, to dance around the bedroom to David Bowie. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. Years later, she found them at the back of her cupboard, still waiting for another dance. She thought of the film The Red Shoes with Moira Shearer, which had, for a brief time, made her long to be a prima ballerina. She remembered: The Red Shoes are never tired... Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on....

3. Ruby Slippers

They glistened and gleamed, the red shoes. They were perfect, like something out of a dream. Beyond the haze of the shop window, they stood waiting for her. The perfect ruby slippers: crimson Marc Jacobs peep-toe shoes with tiny bows on. They were everything a shoe should be.

“You can’t be serious,” said Emma. “You’re going to spend a month’s rent on shoes! When will you even wear them?” But she wasn’t listening. As she slid her foot inside, she felt the enchanted transformation take place. They were powerful magic shoes, shoes that would never be tired. There is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes. It was true, she reasoned, as she skipped out of the shop and off along the unknown road, going who knows where.

What do masking tape, sandwich bags and Derrida have in common? You may well ask...

At the weekend some of us from the Salford Restoration Office Reading Group got together with the intention of making a publication in two days. The feeling was that we wanted to do something more as a group beyond our activity so far, which has been largely reading and discussing texts and inviting speakers to the fortnightly Open Sessions. When we talked about possible ideas and projects, making a publication was a popular suggestion which we all felt would be interesting for the group to explore. The plan was to make something deliberately low-tech with only very minimal forward planning: we would just turn up on Saturday morning and get stuck in!

Well, I think we may have been a little optimistic with our plans: our final ‘publication’ wasn’t perhaps quite what I had expected (and yes, it did involve masking tape, sandwich bags and Derrida!) but we did have some fun in the process, including experimenting with an old letter press, reading about Collage Party, the odd trip to the pub and making a pinhole camera from a cardboard box, taking photographs and developing them in our very own improvised dark room. The picture above is one of the photographs taken in the office as we’re all working: I like how ghostly and mysterious everything looks.

I’d been really looking forward to getting stuck in after a long and tiring week at work. Since I started my current job three months ago, I have had very little time or energy to do anything creative for myself, so it was great to put a weekend aside to play, even if the end result wasn’t quite what I had anticipated! I was also supposed to be attending a two-day writing course this week, but disappointingly, it got cancelled at the last minute. I didn’t know whether to be sorry or relieved when I found out: I have never taken any kind of writing course or class before, and I was quite terrified at the prospect of showing others my work, though I do think it would have been very good for me. I am trying hard to find a way to kick myself back into writing regularly at the moment but it’s surprisingly difficult! But hopefully writing here will be a good start.