Should chapters have titles?

Work in progress... titles and all!

Here's an interesting question:- should a novel's chapters have titles or numbers? Do you notice chapter titles? Does it make a difference to the book?

The comic novel I'm writing - The UnDead Residents Association - does have chapter titles at the moment. I always liked the idea and it has helped me navigate around the story as I have written it (I think a lot of writers do this - see the NANOWRIMO forum on this) Does it help the reader too?

My titles are relevant to the story: Grave Undertakings, A Spell in the Library, The Stakeout and I even thought I might use bits of relevant local authority jargon as subtitles to the chapter titles ( 'post-preventative measures' 'co-terminus stakeholder agreement' etc)... or maybe just use a bit of that sort of thing as subtitles to the (un-named) three parts the book is also divided into.

There's an interesting view on the subject in the Gotham Writers Workshop which says chapter titles can add layers of meaning, like Quoyle's knots in The Shipping Forecast... kind of what I was going for with the jargon subtitles. And Nathan Blansford's many followers gave titles a general thumbs up too - though it might be different for kids' books.

But I already have 40 chapters, but because I use various points of view, they don't all have a new chapter, just extra spaces with a *** between. Maybe they should all have new chapters? But then there might be too many too reasonably have titles for.


Help!!  What do YOU think?

The Pong of Poetry

I'm off poetry. I am. I've been in a few poetry-related situations recently which have made me think of hanging up my haikus and shoving my anapests up my assonance.

A couple of events where it was only poets performing to other poets, a shouty guest night and an under-publicised and rather forced 'workshop' involving table tennis, balls with things written on them have conspired to make me question what exactly I am trying to do, and why...



Poets empty rooms

In five minutes flat

Poets watch poets... because they're 'up' next

we clear whole tables in cafes and pubs,
causing a disorderly egress
from all kinds of event.

We open our mouths and it’s as if
someone in the back row
has shouted: ‘Fire!’ or ‘Free ice cream!’
the way they scamper for the exits
as though our very words are painful
pointed at them, poisoning their minds.
It’s true – I know poets who do.

Ah, the power of the poets’ words

'Darling, we're leaving. That's Broken Biro!'

to knee jerk you from your comfortable position,
have you running for cover,
covering your ears, refusing to hear.

Poets are faster and calmer
than riot police, less brutal... usually.
Stand us in front of the National Front
at crucial junctions of Tottenham orToxteth,
let us open our frightening mouths
and speak. See those hooded, would-be 
thugs put down their weapons,
look at their watches, mumble something

Batty about poetry... is just plain batty

about having to be somewhere else.

If you need a seat on a bus – ask one of us.
Stuck at the back of a crowd?  See how we
part the sea of people like the Moses of poesy.
How our audiences shrink not swell
at every clerihew and villanelle.

Bring us in at closing time to get the punters
draining glasses, or café’s were pensioners
linger on and buy no drinks,
or parks where youths loiter at sundown
causing alarm by laughing and being young.

a load of balls

Summon us wherever people outstay
their welcome: traffic jams, complaints desks,
refugee camps. Let our self-indulgent sestinas
evacuate tall buildings, entire towns.

Poets clear fields and promenades,
empty the deckchairs around bandstands
faster than a sudden downpour.
Use us in wars: front line rhymesters
who send our enemies back to the bunkers;
or during dubious interrogations
extracting prompt confessions with
the drip drip drip
of our water torture words.

Theatrical Manoeuvres in the Dark

I promise to stop going on about it after this, but just wanted to share some pics of the premiere of 'Enola Gay' on Sunday. The play, which I co-wrote, had various teething troubles but it really was all right on the night - we got a really positive response from the 80 or so people who came - including Andy McCluskey from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, who wrote the 1980 song of the same name and kindly allowed us to use it.

Writers Naomi Green (far left) and me with the cast,
producer John Gorman (far right) and Andy McClusky

Our Japanese star, Kana Nagashima with harpist
Keiko Sassa. The stage was split between an
apartment in Hiroshima and the front of the
American B29, 'Enola Gay' during its mission to
drop the world's first atomic bomb on the city.

Andy McCluskey said I'd written 'a great script' *blushes*

We're hoping to have a short run of it in the autumn, but meanwhile, here's the original video of the song from 1980:

The countdown continues

Eeek! The 'play what I (co)wrote' is premiering in just five days time here in Wirral as part of the Festival of Firsts.

We had the dress rehearsal for 'Enola Gay' at the weekend and for various reasons, it's the first time I've seen the whole thing together. The stage is split into two - half of it is the part I wrote which is set in the cockpit of the B29 bomber on it's fateful journey, and half of it is set in the new home of a young Japanese woman who has moved to Hiroshima to escape the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

I mentioned in an earlier post how John Gorman came up with the idea after meeting Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. What I haven't mentioned is that first we lost the original Japanese writer and then we lost two of the the three actors needed for the bomber crew (yes I know there were more than 3 crew on the Enola Gay, but this is theatre dahlink, we don't need to show everything). So there have been traumas along the way.

Also, it's being performed in St Luke's Church - a lovely venue but not equipped for the lighting we need.

But it's all systems go for the big night, the performers are all great (and I have very exciting news about one of them I'm not allowed to mention until the weekend for (his) contractual reasons). Fingers crossed your truly doesn't bugger up the sound effects!

Sneak preview at dress rehearsal

Shorts

I'm packing my shorts for a week in Mallorca, but they're not the shorts that I mean. It's International Short Story Day and I've had a couple of short pieces accepted recently, which is always nice after a run of rejections.

My story 'Neighbours' was on 330 Words last week - a Manchester-based site which wants stories of around that length inspired by a picture. Anyone who was reading my blog a year or so ago won't be surprised at the picture or the content of the story, which I promise is only true up to a certain point!

Even more excitingly, I have two short pieces - a poem and a nano story in the latest issue of Short, Fast and Deadly - Body wRites. SF&D is  a US-based "eLit Mag where brevity reigns and the loquacious are sent to contemplate their sins in the rejection bin."  (These are the same people behind textual mash-up project  rIgor mort.US where they invite people to submit previously published works they retain the rights to, and other people to come along and reinvent them as startling new artwork, poetry and short prose.)

(Incidentally, looking for an image to go with a piece about tiny stories, I came across this lovely miniature book of tiny stories on hitRECord - where I got the image above from. Spookily, this also turns out to be a collaborative project of art and words... and music and film... hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who we loved  in Third Rock From the Sun.  I may have a play with all of this - watch this space!)

Meanwhile... you can read my pieces, and the rest of SF&D below. I'm on pages 8 & 12 (although, oddly, vi and x in numerals)

Open publication - Free publishing - More and deadly

Also, I'm reading poem and short stories as part of Midsummer Night's Read at Wallasey Village Library (i.e not my branch, the diddy one on St Georges Road) this very night at 6pm -come along!

Burning the books

I was reading Ray Bradbury's obituary yesterday when I came across this fascinating fact:

His classic novel on a dystopian future 'Farenheit 451' was written in a library. Specifically UCLS's Powell Library in 1953. Their own obituary in the UCLA Magazine includes a video on him writing the book.

In the days before public access computers, the library had coin-operated type-writers and he bashed out this sci-fi masterpiece in just nine days at a total cost of less than ten dollars.*

So there he was tippety tappety spelling out the destruction of the world's books whilst surrounded by them:

"Imagine what it was like to be writing a book about book burning and doing it in a library where the passions of all those authors, living and dead, surrounded me."

Ray Bradbury 2002

Worryingly, I just found this quote on the intriguing literary blog Page Pulp:

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”

Victor Hugo 

This raises several questions:

1. What would Bradbury - a famous techno-phobe who wouldn't use a lift and thought electric toothbrushes were the work of the devil - make of his books being available as eBooks now?
2. Are there any other books written from the point of view of a fireman?
3. What are my library users up to and should I be watching them more carefully?

* One of the things I love about writing is that it's a really cheap hobby. So much less costly than wind surfing, collecting Steiff bears, or playing the harp.

Do what you please

I just read something very inspiring that Alabaster dePlume said at the launch of his recent album.

Who? You say. Whom?

I have touched on the odd poet names before - check out this post on the late great Hovis Presley and Elvis McGonagall (also great, but rarely late). But I don't think I mentioned Alabaster with his groovy hat and his gutter mouth and his gentle soul. I may not have mentioned Gordon Zola either (I was entertained the possibility of a double act with him... I was going to be Wendy Dale...but that's beside the point. Any ideas what MY whacky poetry name should be?

Here's some of what Alabaster said when he launched his new album recently:

“No-one will ever ask you for yourself... And if we wait to be invited, we will find ourselves forgotten.
“We don’t do this work because we’re good at it...We don’t do this work because we need the money. We don’t do this work because of culture… We don’t do this work because we are friends of the arts! No…
“There are greater, simpler, more human forces that drive us to perform all this nonsense, and compared to these things, the work itself is a puddle on the floor."  Keyhole Observations

What I read into this is that artistically we should do what pleases us, what we want to do, push on with what inspires us without too much thought into acclaim, commercial value, fashion and 'fitting in'.

That makes me feel better about the novel I've written - which I have enjoyed writing and still makes me laugh to myself. And the play - which was interesting to research. And the weird little stories which are coming thicker and faster now.

The album - Copernicus (or The Good Book of No) is most intriguing, by the way. I associate him with the sort of beat poetry I've seem him do at slams years ago, so the gentle, rather eastern melodies were a surprising counterpoint. Like the PR says: '...immensely personal and yet deliciously enigmatic, flitting as it does between caustic spoken word and beautiful instrumental lullabies.'  The digital version is 'name your price' and well worth downloading.

Here's a gorgeous stop-motion film for the opening track... I love the way the leaves follow her around!: