Last Night's Open Mic
The 6th Mad Open Mic took place last night, and I'm pretty sure it was the best one ever. There were 23 participants, and the venue was packed. My piece, an extract from The Theory and Practice of Snogging - A Love Story by Janet Barlow, got some serious laughs, which was very gratifying. Here's what I read:
As soon as the clock struck 2, Benny grabbed his jacket and marched over to the Library's reference section. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the beautiful girl was still there.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Oh, hello.’
‘I’m, er, going for lunch. Would you care to join me?’
‘Ah. That’s very kind. But I’m sorry, I don’t do lunch. Have to watch the figure, you know.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Benny, as if he knew all about watching the figure. He’d certainly like to watch more of this one.
‘Just a coffee, then? You’ve been here three hours - you must be ready for a break.’
The girl blinked a little and stretched her arms. ‘Yes, you’re right. I am a bit stiff. Yes, come on then, show me the sights of Rothercaster.’
Walking across the street, Benny was pleased that an American chain had recently opened in the town. He couldn’t imagine what this posh southern lass would think of some of the muck that passed for coffee around here.
‘We’ll go to BigBucks, okay?’
‘Must we?’
‘Trust me,' replied Benny. 'This is the best coffee you can get in Rothercaster. We’re better at beer, really.’
BigBucks was empty. Benny and the girl took the table by the window.
‘So, I’m Benny Hargreaves.’
‘And I'm Julia. Julia Semillon-Blank.’
Benny stifled a snigger. ‘Semiyon-Blank? You sound like a bottle of wine.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Julia, ‘Mother’s half-French, Semillon, and Father’s plain English, Blank. They thought it terribly funny to get hyphenated when they married. I’m sure Father would’ve married a Sauvignon if he could’ve found one.’
An ageing, balding waiter approached.
‘Can I take your orders please?’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Julia. ‘I’ll have a double Espresso Mochachiato with sugar-free syrup.’
The waiter painstakingly wrote down Julia's order.
‘And sir?’
‘Just a coffee for me.’
‘I, er, don’t think we have that,’ said the waiter.
‘I think my friend means Caffe Americano,’ said Julia.
The waiter left.
‘Sorry, not up to speed in the fancy coffee department,’ said Benny. ‘So, what brings you to Rothercaster?’
Julia rolled her eyes.
‘My beloved parents. Out of the blue, Father takes early retirement, and announces he wants to go back to his roots. Which are, apparently, here.'
‘And what about you?’
‘Oh, I’m a student. Doing a degree in Creative Writing in London.’
‘So you want to be a writer, then?’
‘Oh, absolutely. I adore writing, and writers, and just the whole creativity of it.’
Benny nodded his head solemnly. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I enjoy it tremendously, too, you know. The buzz you get when you’ve got a good story going.’
Julia was confused. ‘I thought you were a Librarian?’
‘Me? No, I’m not a Librarian, I’m a writer, like you,’ said Benny, without quite knowing why.
‘I’m sorry, Benny. Call me an idiot, but I distinctly saw you doing Librarian-type activities this morning, and I don’t think I saw you doing any writing.’
‘Oh, well,’ laughed Benny. ‘That’s just a front. I’m actually Writer-in-Residence at the Library this month, but… they’re a bit short-staffed today, so I… was just helping out.’
‘Are you published?’
‘No… yes! Lots of things, but mainly phantom writing, you know, celebrity biographies and rubbish like that.’
‘Ah, so that’ll be why I’ve never heard of you. And Benny, I believe the phrase is “ghost-writing”.’
6th Madrid Open Mic
The 6th edition of Madrid's Open Mic for writers takes place tomorrow. Up until yesterday, I had no idea what I was going to read. But I've been having that dream the last few nights. You know, the one where you're on stage in a play in front of an audience, and you haven't learnt your lines. Hell, you haven't even looked at the script. Oh, and you're naked. Yeah, that one.
So yesterday, I set aside some time and finally got down to preparing something. As usual with me, I always select too much material, and then have to do some drastic editing to get it down to three minutes. But, 'tis done now, and I'm looking forward to the event.
Things That Make You Go 'Oh For God's Sake, Not Again!'
My beloved wife recently recommended a book to me. It was a detective story set in Venice, with a Brit as the hero. I won't mention the name of the author or the title of the book: I'd never heard of either.
Here's the point. Most writers have phrases they use out of habit. They probably have no idea that they do it, or how frequently. But these habitual phrases can turn a reader off pretty quickly. You would hope and expect these phrases to be culled during the editorial process, but this doesn't always happen.
In the case of the Venetian detective, I got about as far as page fifty before giving up. I was irritated that nobody in this book drinks anything but ProSecco (whatever that is), and there is a fair amount of drinking going on in the first fifty pages. But I could have probably lived with that were it not for the author's other habit.
If you have any knowledge of any of the Romance languages, you'll be aware that there are informal and formal ways of addressing people ('tu' and 'vous' in French, 'tu' and 'usted' in Spanish, and I can't remember what in Italian). So every time our detective hero addresses a stranger, our author takes great pains to explain his concern about getting it right. When she did this for the third time, on about page fifty, I closed the book and buried it in the bookcase.
The other thing that irks me with some writers is the overuse of brand names, and the assumption that
a) everybody knows what they are, and
b) everyone has the same perception of the brand.
So when an author tells me the hero stepped out of his Lamborghini WorraLorraBucks, he probably expects me to think 'whoa, Money, Sex, Power!', whereas what I tend to think is 'oh, more money than sense, no concern for the environment, the kind of guy I would tend to avoid at a party'.
just sayin'.
I Write Like
Everybody who has ever written anything is going crazy over this website. You paste a few paragraphs of your work into it, it analyzes the text and then tells you which famous writer it resembles.
Imagine my dismay when it decided the first bit of Tybalt & Theo I gave it was like Dan Brown. I pasted a couple of other chapters in, and it came up with J. D. Salinger. Twice. And then David Foster Wallace (don't know), twice. And then Salinger again.
Hmmm.
Neglect
Yes, I know. I haven't blogged here for ages. I've been busy setting up a new business, and haven't had time for blogging or even writing. Sorry. With a bit of luck, things'll be back to normal soon.
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