What's on my clipboard #3 - first draft fiction

The following is an extract from my current fiction work in progress.
I've not written in the first person before, so this is really an experiment for me! The extract is a rough first draft, written in sprints, and totally unedited - so please forgive the wild leaping between tenses.

“Let’s take the stairs, it’ll be quicker,” Mum said. She was unusually quiet. We hefted the stuff up the first flight of stairs. I slammed the heavy suitcase down on the landing, panting for breath. I am horrendously unfit. I’m not fat; just feeble.
“This is, essentially, awful.” I said.
Mum glared at me. “Just get on with it, please, Katie. It’s not that bad.”
I looked at the small shoebox in her hands as scornfully as I could. We carried on up the stairs, getting increasingly sweaty and agitated until we reached the fourth floor. 

The door to the flat swung open, and standing there was a short girl with untidy hair.
“Hi!” she said. “Come on in! I’m Becky!” I rolled my eyes back and sighed.
“I’m Katie, and these are my parents.” I waved in the general direction of the only adults in the room. My Dad looked at Becky’s legs for a beat too long and then held out a sweaty hand.“Mike, pleased to meet you, Becca.”
“Becky,” she smiled widely, and held out her hand to Mum.
“Karen,” Mum said, distracted by the sunshine pouring in through the kitchen window, “Look at the light in here! Have you seen it, Katie?”
I’m getting impatient to see my room. “Yeah, lovely. What number was mine, Dad?”
Dad wrestled with the box and dug in his pocket for the keys.
“Two,” he said, looking at the keyring.
“Great!” Becky piped up, “You’re next door to me!”
“Oh good.” My will to live was being sapped away by my embarrassing parents and this relentlessly cheery teenager. “Shall we?” I gestured towards the corridor.

This piece was written by me, Ruth Sedar, and I claim all copyright and author's rights. Please contact me for further information.

Never Forget: Just Write

After a long drought and two languishing fiction works sitting quietly twiddled their metaphorical thumbs in the hard-drive, I have finally been inspired to write fiction this weekend. Maybe the Spring time flowers are helping, or the extra hours of daylight, but I am at long last ready to write again.

It all started on Saturday afternoon by binge-listening to some of my favourite music from University, and it got me to thinking how few accurate representations there are of being a student in fiction. Everything I've ever read has leant so heavily on the side of cliché that it becomes tedious and predictable. I want to write something accurate, funny, and (hopefully) heart-warming enough for at least one student, somewhere, to read it and say "This is me."

My major "This is me" moment happened last year when I read Caitlin Moran's How to Build a Girl, and wept with laughter at a plage in central France. In her main character, Johanna, I saw huge amounts of my teenage self in uncomfortably accurate HD. I want to give someone that same feeling of familiarity, of toe-curling embarrassment and of wanting to defend that person to the last. So I #amwriting.

This bad-ass elephant from the Magical Lantern Illuminations in London never forgets to write. If I could drink liquids by pouring them into my mouth through my nose, I wouldn't forget either. Elephants are ACE.

Why Inspirational Quotes Don't Work

We’ve all seen these quotes, often wrongly attributed to some poor, dead philosopher who can’t argue back. There’s whole Twitter accounts dedicated to trying to make the digital population feel energised, motivated and generally better about their lives. But does it work? Are these supposedly meaningful timeline messages just the online equivalent of graffiti on the toilet wall? Let’s assess the statement.

Beautiful things happen in your life when you distance yourself from negativity. Apparently.

Beautiful things happen

They do, yes. However, your definition of ‘beautiful things’ will undoubtedly differ from mine. A short, but not exhaustive list of things I think are beautiful:
Puppies; having the correct change; perfectly crisp toast smothered in butter; love, I guess; peeling the foil lid off the toothpaste in one piece; stars, probably?

To use an actual proverb, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. In terms of your beautiful things, you do you.

In your life

What does this actually mean? Is it suggesting the aforementioned beautiful things will happen to me, or just in my life? This could easily mean things will happen to other people, or inanimate objects in my life. In your life. My skin is part of my life. So is catching the bus. This part is too vague, and not worthy of further assessment.

When you distance yourself from negativity

Okay, let’s have a go on this bit. If for some reason I was in the vicinity of someone prejudiced or bigoted, I would consider that negative. As such I would distance myself from that person by either leaving the immediate area, or ensuring I never speak to them again. Would something beautiful happen? I’d be far, far away from an idiot, so that is a tick in the box for me.

If you consider something like climate change, would you distance yourself from that? No. You would stay. Either to help improve the world through encouraging renewable energy, for example, or stay, because leaving planet Earth is yet to become an option. You can’t distance yourself from a negative environmental certainty. If you did, would something beautiful happen? You’d be ignoring the future of the planet in favour of running around, fingers in ears, going “la-la-la I’m not listening”. No tick.

Nope, this quote doesn’t work; it’s all wonky. Beautiful things don’t happen as a direct result of experiencing no or fewer negative things. People are moulded by their experiences of the world, both good and bad. “Distancing” yourself is not enough, and running away or hiding from negativity won’t make it go away. We must face the monsters under our bed and care about each other. No amount of inspirational quotes will activate change; only the actions of willing people can do that.

To sum it up, I suggest a small, almost imperceptible edit: 

Be positive.

Is a 25% response rate to applications acceptable?

Imagine walking into a crowded room, introducing yourself and only a quarter of the people there bother to look up and say hello. It would instantly put you on edge; is there something on your face? Is your dress tucked into your tights? Have you in fact turned invisible?

Sending job applications in the digital world is, to use a lovely and vulgar phrase, much like pissing in the wind. You research the company and think “these look like the sort of humans I would enjoy working with”. You write a detailed letter full of shining examples of your brilliance, you apply, and you wait. And wait. And then – nothing. Radio silence. Have they even received it? Sometimes companies will grace you with the automated reply email, which is greatly appreciated. But more often than not, you will receive nothing back whatsoever, and I don’t think that’s okay.

Out of the 16 most recent jobs I have applied for, a mere four people bothered to respond with what I call the “Thanks, but get stuffed” email.
They often go a bit like this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because we’d actually already decided who was being internally promoted, but we had to advertise the role externally anyway. Sorry about that.’

Or this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because Geoff has retired, and no-one has ever been entirely sure what his job role was, but he did at least 54 different tasks and we basically just need him back. If you are Geoff, please apply below.’

Sometimes: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you do not have the precise degree we require for this extremely general role.’

But most regularly: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you don’t have the necessary experience, and we won’t help to provide that by offering you employment, you totally useless oxygen thief.’ You get the picture.

The flicker of hope soon fades each morning – somewhere between the fifth cup of tea and the second dramatic sigh. You’ll sit and refresh your inbox like a dog waiting for the postman. To only receive a response, not even feedback, from a mere 25% of recruitment teams and HR departments is not enough. I need to at least know they are listening. To paraphrase wildly, despondency is the thing without feathers, that sits on your head and eats your motivation. If you don’t know the status of an application, it breeds false hope.

Communication isn’t just one of my “skill set” or something in which I have “extensive experience” – the buzzwords don’t apply. I talk. I listen. I learn. Communication requires more than one person, so recruiters and potential employers: just send a response. Interact with your fellow humans, and you never know what might happen next.

Five years’ time? I don’t even know what I want for dinner.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

Ah, old friend. We meet again.

For anyone who has recently attended an interview, this question should be all too familiar. I think the idea behind it is to evaluate your career goals; to see whether you are gutsy enough to say “doing your job” or if you just shrug violently with a panicked expression.

Fortunately, the question seems to crop up less frequently as you get older; I imagine because in five years’ time you are supposed to be an Adult, or at least a bit more adulty than you currently are.

(By the way, “in space”, “older but cooler”, “in a tree”, “eating more cake” and “I don’t have a clue” are apparently not deemed valid answers.)

How can anyone know what they want in the near future? I struggle to choose which socks to wear in the morning: I can’t be trusted with life goals.

No, there has been some sort of mistake. A paperwork error. I am not an adult, and I am opting out of ever having to be one. I don’t want to make boring decisions about mortgages, careers or other people. I want to live in a world where half curly fries and half chips is still a pressing issue.

Other things I find frightening in interview situations, ranked for your reading pleasure:

1.       Desk etiquette.

I am a leaner. I lean on things. You know the expression “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean”? Yeah, well that’s me. Not content with sitting upright like normal homo sapiens, I tend to lean forward on the table, resting a combination of my elbows, bust and forearms – or sometimes all of the above – in what can be deemed either an aggressive, lazy, or possibly bad-backed manner. Should you lean first, or wait for the interviewer to lean? Why won’t I stop wildly gesturing? Why are my palms sweating? Is that boob sweat? Oh, god.

2.       The drinks question.

Yes, I would love a drink. I’d really like a cup of tea, so I can clutch it to my chest and partially hide behind the steam. They only have coffee, and I am an over-oiled machine after drinking coffee. A hyperactive chihuahua; a gremlin fed after midnight. For everyone’s sake, don’t give me coffee. There’s water? Excellent. We can all watch my sweaty hands steam up the glass and pretend not to see it happening.

3.       Where do you put your stuff?

I have a lot of stuff. Normally my stuff is contained in one sensible bag (but not a sensible bag, like sensible shoes, just a spacious bag) but occasionally interviews call for me to take my laptop along. Does it go on the desk in front of me? Too presumptuous. Does it go under my chair, ready to be trodden on? Absolutely not. Should I just switch it on and offer everyone a go on Tetris? And don’t get me started on coats; coats are a special nightmare accessory. The hider of sweat patches, the hugger of shoulders, left stranded on the back of my chair, where it will invariably slither off and land in a soft crumple on the piebald carpet to join lonely crumbs and old map pins.

4.       Talking.

Don’t misunderstand me here: under normal circumstances, I am brilliant at talking. I remember to not drop my H’s in polite company, I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘yes I am fine’. I even do quite a good Alan Bennett impression. But at soon as it comes to the talky bit of interviews – the whys, hows and whens, I lose a lot of my words. They evaporate. I vote to conduct all future interviews through interpretive dance – the kind I do in supermarkets to the muzak – via a decent game of charades and finally, crucially, through the tea test. Can this employer make good tea? Never mind me telling you about a time I planned ahead through both proactive and reactive methods, has anyone got a dog? I love dogs; all dogs, dogs in neckerchiefs, dogs that look like bears, dogs with overbites. Let’s talk about them instead.

Rest assured I am a reasonably ordinary human. I have flashes of bastardry, such as pressing the pedestrian crossing button a bit too early and walking across without the green man, causing angry traffic to wait – what a wag I am – but usually I live a simple and amusing life. It’s worth noting, among all the interview angst, that I am actually looking for a job. If you are reading this and wondering if you should call me, go on. It’ll be fun, I promise.

10 Crazy Tips for Tackling Writer’s Block

When Clive has stolen all your words and is holding them to ransom for biscuit crumbs, writing anything at all can be a labour of love. Confused? Don’t be.
Not knowing what to write but feeling a desperate need to creative can be a real struggle. Here are 10 of the best tried and tested ways to defeat the beast of burden.

1.       Try to write something each day.

Don’t worry if it’s rubbish; in fact, you should expect the first few sentences to be complete nonsense. Write about your view out of the window, or your cup of tea, or the guy who does that thing at the bus stop all the time. Sitting around simply talking about writing without doing anything will never shift the block, however satisfying it may feel to wallow in your creative self-pity. See Tip 7.

2.       Give it a name.

My writer’s block is called Clive – and he is a real idiot. Clive steals all the words from my head and hides them behind the settee. Like a small, yappy dog, Clive won’t let you have any of the words until you follow Tip 1 and just try to write something. He then releases the words in small batches, and sometimes I’m even allowed adjectives. Brilliant.

3.       Don’t let it win.

Writer’s block comes from many different places, and from my own experience it comes from a point of insecurity: if I don’t write anything, then it won’t be shit. But by not writing anything at all, you let Clive win his tug o’ war with your words. Just try a little bit, even a to-do list is enough some days.

4.       Drink a lot.

By this I mean drink a lot of liquids – this can be tea, coffee, water, juice, soup, wine, beer, rum, the list goes on. If you keep your brain hydrated, you stand more of a chance of getting the creative (not orange) juices flowing. If you choose to drink alcohol, you may find you come over a bit Hunter S. Thompson and your writing will get weird, very rapidly. But you do you.

5.       Get outside.

Remember the outside world? Nah, me neither. So get your boots on and go for a walk in the fresh air. Take your canine companion (if you have one) or borrow a dog, or relative, or friend and get those lactic-acid filled limbs swinging. An oxygenated brain is a creative brain.

6.       Or get in the pool/on your bike.

It turns out physical exercise is actually quite useful. Sorry, anyone who ever tried to teach me PE at school. That six-week long menstrual cycle with a twisted ankle has cleared up now, thanks.

7.       Talk about it.

Find a writing group to talk about your concerns. I’ve been assured everyone gets an attack of the Clives every now and then. Also by talking about your current work, you might even inspire yourself to revisit that frustrating chapter or unruly character.

8.       Do something else.

Yep, you read it correctly: do something else. It doesn’t have to be writing, or a creative endeavour at all. Pair up your socks, or learn a new skill. Sometimes I find clearing out a clothes drawer, knitting, practising shorthand, reading or playing video games helps to take my mind off not-writing.

9.       Research, research, research.

Where do your characters live? What do they eat? Are they even alive? Whether you are crafting a dystopian zombie love story or an historical compilation of lampshades, you can never do enough research on your topic. So bust out your library card and notebook and go forth!* Learn all there is to know about the language preferences of the undead. With snacks.

*Or you can use the internet, but you will get distracted by cats and less interesting listicles. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10.   JUST WRITE.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the similarity of this tip to number 1. That’s because it’s the best remedy to not knowing what to write. The longer you allow yourself to do nothing, your brain will curl up and hibernate, taking all your inspiration and ideas with it. Clive will make a castle out of your unused verbs, and you’ll be stuck. If you were stuck down a hole, and the only way to get out was to call for help, you would, wouldn’t you? So the only way to get out of a writing rut is to write.

What's on my clipboard #1

Because I am thinking at a million miles a minute, I've got quite a lot of jobs on right now so I wanted to let you know them all!

I outlined my fiction in progress on a previous post, and my other irons in the fire are:

1. A post on 'fandom' - why people love what they love and if there are common uniting themes; is there a universal application for obsessive people? For example - are obsessive people also creative people? People who work in media or arts? Or express themselves in another way?

This fascination stemmed from an obsessive teenage me - music and specific bands I will detail in future were more important than 'real' people or situations. I want to investigate how these obsessions mould us into who we are, and whether the obsessions have influence over the rest of our lives. Do they make us more or less orderly? More or less ordinary?

Some orderly and organised oranges from Leicester market. Just because.

2. A post on 'possession' movies from a feminist perspective - why must the possession theme be an almost exclusively female issue? Is this only a rape/birth allegory? Or something darker?

I'm a major horror film fan - I love huge areas of the genre and I find myself coming back to the feminist perspective - here's a great blog on the trope of the Final Girl - but it's not final girls I want to particularly focus on. As a woman, I find it increasingly frustrating to see characters portrayed only as "strong women" once they have defeated the demon/entity/whatever is infesting their bodies. It could just be a simple pregnancy allegory, or the Hollywood patriarchy controlling women through fiction, but I want to find out more.

Gorgeous dahlias from the Eden Project - because we need colour to distract demons.

"What's on my clipboard" is going to be an ongoing theme - please bear in mind the clipboard is purely imaginary. I can't use physical clipboards or I'll lose the plot entirely.
Stayed tuned for these future posts - the horror/women one may end up being more of an essay but it's one I've been keen to write for ages.

New Year, new submissions

Hello to 2016 - you've snuck up from nowhere, haven't you?

The New Year has brought but one resolution for me - write more. I have neglected my fiction for a long time due to various time constraints and work commitments, but this is now the time to strike and tap away at the keyboard like a caffeinated, tap-dancing mouse.


NB: Blog post edited 21/1/16.

I'm working on a few pieces currently, a series of shorts for the lovely Mslexia - for all women who write. Choices at the moment include poetry, fiction, non-fiction and confessions. My other current work is a new piece on Dreams for the wonderful and much-lauded Are You Sitting Comfortably? by White Rabbit and a few other bits and bobs. I may even dig out my novel this year - not my first work in progress, which is now more of a harddrive entity than a novel - but my second and main WIP.

With my CV landing in the inboxes of various agencies as we speak, I have to find something engaging to do in the long, unemployed winter afternoons. So I dance. Like Mickey.

What did you want to be?

When I was little, it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. My friends had their future careers picked out - I think one of them even ended up doing what they wanted to do.
Once I'd figured it out, I wanted to be a writer - more specifically, I wanted to be Lois Lane. Not a journalist, or a reporter, or even an author. It didn't matter that she was fictional; all the best people are.

Now I am older, and have learnt 'growing up' is entirely optional, I'd still like to be Lois Lane. She's a successful reporter, living it up on a seemingly best-selling newspaper in Metropolis (which was modelled on Toronto, but I always assumed it was a real place - somewhere near New Yoik) and the girl knows how to rock a bob cut. She's not without her flaws, of course, one major factor being unable to tell Clark sans spectacles is quite clearly Superman. Maybe she did notice, and never mentioned it. After all, nobody likes to blow someone's cover.

I've recently had a second piece accepted by The White Rabbit which will form part of a podcast coming soon. It was about heroes and villains and the ordinary folk who have to clear up the mess after Superman has caused chaos. I'll post a link when it's online - it will be available on iTunes in the early Autumn.

With heroes and villains in mind, and my own journalistic desires, this is my question to you: what did you want to be when you were little? Why? Are you doing it now? Would little you back then be happy with what big you does now?

Leave a comment or tweet me @ruthsedar using #IWantedToBe and let me know how many of you are astronauts, deep-sea adventurers, authors, doctors, shopkeepers, vets or police officers. I especially want to know about jobs you think are boring, but are fascinating to everyone else.

Copywriting is fun!

Recently I've been pretty busy writing the copy for an upcoming ad campaign - I can't divulge any details as the brief is still live.
Suffice to say - I really enjoyed writing it. I did wonder if the content would be off-putting as the copy had the potential to be a little 'dry' but it was a joy to write and it was a great remember that I am good at this.
I don't use italics lightly, you guys.

Tyranny of grammar

Why are adverbs so extremely, mind-numbingly, tediously boring and hideous?
Adverbs are the ones who leave the toilet seat up.
Adverbs are the shoelace you snap when trying to tie them.
Adverbs are wrong and need to be stopped.

Suffice to say I am doing a first edit of a short for submission and I seem to use adverbs as much in prose as I do in real life.

New submissions

My new work is another submission for Are You Sitting Comfortably? hosted by The White Rabbit. This time the theme is 'heroes and villains' and I'm taking a sideways look at what it means to be heroic in a world of superheroes. Are the heroes the ones with their pants over their tights? Or are they the normal people going to work and keeping the economy afloat? Are the villains always the ones laughing in an underground lair, or are they the people who look just like you and me?

I've also found a writing group near me and I am working on a piece on the theme of 'intrusion', which is proving difficult to avoid stereotypes and clumsy plot so  it needs a lot more thought.
I watch a lot of horror films (read: horror is the only genre I watch) so the theme is familiar to the point of being predictable - "What was that sound?" "Oh no, the serial killer is in the house!" The key is going to be avoiding cliché as much as possible.

Follow me on twitter for more ramblings and inspiration searching: @ruthsedar
Anything work or writing related is always tagged #amwriting but I am also prone to rudeness, swearing, tangents, observations and everything else. What I'm trying to say is I talk a lot.

If you're listening?

I wanted to write about something personal today.

If you know me in person - and know me well - you will know I am fully deaf in my right ear.

I am either genetically half deaf or it's as a result of having mumps as a baby; doctors had no way of knowing when I was diagnosed as a kid. The proper term is unilateral hearing, because 'half deaf' is suggestive of 'half hearing', which really isn't the same thing.

My hearing doesn't affect my speech. It does affect my balance, meaning I walk like Bambi on ice when walking in heels, and it also means I can't ride a bike (a life-long annoyance as I would have loved a Pashley). It also means I have little to no directional hearing, so if you are behind me and call my name - I won't have a clue where you are. If I smile and nod, or say "Yeah!" to an open question, you'll know.

I lip read almost constantly. In busy places I need to sit by a wall to use it as a sounding board to bounce your voice. I have a habit of relentlessly tucking my hair behind my ears. I will always walk on your right. I zone out a lot of the time; simply because I have stopped listening. Actively concentrating is exhausting. I have awful tinnitus, probably from years of standing at the front at gigs as a teenager.

What has this got to do with writing? Not a lot, to be honest.
I just wanted to share something to clear up any misconceptions about deafness.

1) It isn't funny. No disability is funny. Saying "What?" or "Pardon?" to someone after they have told you they have partial hearing is about as funny as making rude gestures at someone who is partially blind.

2) Shouting really doesn't help. Just enunciate properly.

3) Active listening has lead me into different career paths. As a journalist, I had to constantly listen for the main point. As a retail manager, I listen to my staff, my customers and people passing outside. It also makes me an excellent eavesdropper.

4) Extremely busy environments are a nightmare. Crowds, pubs, the underground. Trying to pinpoint the voice of who I'm speaking to while trying to ignore everything else is really hard.

5) You don't instantly get another freakishly strong sense when one is weaker - I have normal vision and I don't have a wolf-like sense of smell. People with partial senses are not the X-Men.

6) It's an invisible disability. I'm not registered disabled as there is no point; it doesn't affect my life to the extent of it being noticeable.

The next time someone tells you they are deaf, or have partial hearing, don't say "What?" with a grin. You don't have to say anything at all. Just smile and nod. "Yeah!"