Recorded for posterity

FlashTag performed on Thursday night at Word Soup in Preston, and we were interviewed by Lancashire Writing Hub's Mikey before our appearance. You can read the interview, which is split into two parts, here and here.

Les Malheureux, meanwhile, were interviewed in the run-up to their gig at Not The Oxford Literary Festival, and you can read that here. We've also been interviewed for another site, and that should appear before our Sounds From The Other City gig in early May, and we'll soon be posting some photos from our official photo shoot.

Meanwhile, today we're on the radio! You can hear me reading one of Les Malheureux' numbers on arts radio Resonance FM this afternoon - tune in to Jonny Trunk’s OST Show 4.30–6.30pm (online here: http://resonancefm.com/), when our pals Monkeys In Love will be chatting, spinning the wheels of steel and playing a recording they kindly did of us a couple of weeks back.

My work is never done

Mum was complaining that I hadn't posted for, like, two whole days, and now it's been even longer. I think, therefore, I'll cheat and do a little round-up of things what I have wrote elsewhere in the last few weeks. (Sorry about that: I've been attending to the "part-time adventuress" bit of my profile; normal blogging service will be resumed shortly.)

First up, short stories... dystopian tale The Luck Department appeared on Roy Keane's Lucky Scarf on 12 March (and may appear in spoken form at tonight's Bad Language shindig at The Castle), while White Rabbits (a slightly abridged version of the original) found its way onto 330 Words a month later.

Next, features... I was commissioned to write about flash fiction for the magnificent Creative Times, and did so in no more than 500 words. It was fun! (Hint: more people should ask me to write features; especially if they want to pay me.) I've also spent the month of April residing as the featured blogger in issue 33 of Blankpages, which has been lovely.

Then, reviews... A review of Gaynor Arnold's short story collection, Lying Together, out on Tindal Street Press, was published by the fabulous Bookmunch, and I have also this weekend filed copy reviewing Salt's new anthology, The Best British Short Stories 2011, edited by Nicholas Royle. Keep your eyes peeled on Bookmunch for that over the next couple of days.

Finally, marketing material... I've been (and remain) busy working on various projects and for various clients, ranging from copywriting flyers and supplying web copy to editing brochures and proofreading posters. I've also been up to my eyes doing quite a bit of press and PR for Chorlton Arts Festival and the Flash Mob Writing Competition and Literary Salon. I'm just a slave to my art...

Wider reading

Following on from that last missive, may I suggest some wider reading. I direct you to the blog of the wonderful Nik Perring, who is quoted in my Creative Times piece (now complete with at least one nice comment, which is most pleasing). As well as being very lovely about me and my feature, Nik has posted his full thoughts on flash fiction (he kindly sent me all this, but I was limited to a strict 500 wordcount so couldn't include anywhere near enough of his wiseness). I also asked David Gaffney to furnish me with sage words for my piece, and indeed you can read more about his take on flash fiction in an interview with the very same Nik and also by downloading a PDF of his Tindal Street Press Writing Masterclass, Be Short. This includes some rather fine tips for writing flash fiction; perhaps useful before entering a certain competition you may have heard of? Anyway, more on and from both Nik and David soon, so watch this space...

It's all about me

Last week, some survey by some person somewhere revealed that Manchester is the third biggest European user of Twitter. We come after London and Paris, so we're in good company. It goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I have lived in all three of these hip'n'happening cities and no other conurbation (unless you count Liverpool which I inhabited for perhaps as long as a month).

Anyway, as if to prove the Rainy City's position of social media status, yesterday was a busy old day in Manchester's interweb.

First off, some bloke from The Guardian did some live Tweeting travel feature thing: "armed only with a mobile phone – and ready to go wherever the best of your tweets take him". He was called Benji Lanyado and it was called the TwiTrip. Yawn. Still, somehow me, along with many of the other regular Manc Twitterers, got sucked into the whole thing and started blatantly self-promoting and showboating, and desperately bigging up places for this bloke to go in a "my suggestion's better than yours" kind of way. I was finally namechecked at about 7pm, along with my Chorlton mate Gill: "@benjilanyado: Instalations at the Cornerhouse, thanks to @Wordsnfixtures @Gillmphoto & @popisthis http://flic.kr/p/8tt24N". If you're remotely arsed, you can see the TwiTrip to Manchester in its entirety here.

Secondly and very bizarrely, @wordsnfixtures starting trending on Twitter. WTF? This is what the Tweet said: "@TrendsManc: Sarah-Clare Conlon, @wordsnfixtures is now trending in #Manchester http://trendsmap.com/gb/manchester". My colleague Josh (aka @technicalfault) loudhailed this announcement across the office (which was rather embarrasing as it does probably mean that I'd spent more of the day dicking about on Twitter than doing any actual work. And we all know that such a thing would never happen, right? RIGHT?). He then showed me how to do a screengrab, for proof, like. Look, I'm right at the top, above that Benji bloke:



Thirdly, the first-ever South Manchester Tweet-up chugged back some ciders and shimmied into its sparkle boob tube for a night out in Didsbury Village. Such a glamourpuss, this latest social media mover and shaker has not one, but two hashtags: #southmcrtweetup and #southmanchestertweetup. Organised by Tom Mason (@totmac) and Nicola Cooper-Abbs (@ncooperabbs), the get-together went swimmingly with quite a gaggle of creatives, SEOs, PRs, developers, local business reps and even some "normal" folk, and lovely Laura from Airy Fairy Cupcakes put on a spread of sweet treats. Didsbury Life's Helen (who I didn't recognise because I am a complete dunce, although, in my defence, it has been a while) is going to do a write-up about it, so look out for all the action shots down on the DL blog. Rumour has it the next SMTU might be in Chorlton. Hold on to your hats, kids, I'll be able to crawl home!

A moment of fiction #6

This edition of A Moment Of Fiction sees a few new issues of zines we've talked about before hit the shelves, plus there are some submissions deadlines looming I thought I'd better mention.

To celebrate its first birthday, The Shrieking Violet is gorging itself with a epicurial special and issue 10 (no, I didn't get it either) features all sorts of food-related articles and recipes, including a review of the infamous Manchester Egg by poet, photographer and my neighbour Hayley Flynn, a cake map of Manchester by the Loiterers Resistance Movement's Morag Rose and a guide to foraging the very best berries by Alan Smith (also of the Loiterers Resistance Movement). Nom. The cover is by David Bailey of Good Grief! in Afflecks Palace, where you can pick up copies of the zine (also try Oklahoma, Cornerhouse, Manchester Craft Centre, An Outlet, Koffee Pot, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records while the Salford Zine Library is outta town on vacation in Durham).

Thursday, meanwhile, sees the launch of issue 4 of Bewilderbliss, complete with a party and readings and everything in the NQ's Cord from 7pm. The outgoing team (as in they will shortly be handing over the reins, not as in they are a bunch of extreme extroverts, though they may well be that too) includes none other than Bristol Prize-winning writer Valerie O’Riordan, and the latest issue includes a story by my blogging friend and not-so-secret project collaborateur Benjamin Judge.

Following a successful launch a couple of weeks back, copies of the fragrant 3030 magazine ran out due to popular demand! I've been assured Common and Piccadilly Records have been restocked, and the issue is now up on the website too.

Pantheon magazine are looking for submissions for their second issue. The closing date is 4 September and full details are here.

The Bad Language creative writing posse are also inviting you to send in work for consideration for their second anthology, this time by 6 September. All information is here.

If you'd prefer to express yourself through visual rather than written means, I can think of worse projects with which to get involved than Papergirl MCR. Head girl Janice Stainton (@PapergirlMCR on that Twitter) is looking for artists and designers to submit up to 10 pieces of individual works or prints of up to 20 copies (doodles, photography, screenprinting, painting...) as well as cyclists willing to get involved in delivery. Submissions close on 1 September; to submit, send an email with your name and a link to your website to papergirlmanchester@gmail.com then hand in your work at Nexus Art Cafe, Dale Street, Manchester, M1 1JW, or post your work to Papergirl Manchester, 7 Ophthalmic Works, 2 Naples Street, Manchester, M4 4DB. (What a great address, by the way.)

ARCHIVE: Here are all the most recent posts of this ilk, if you need to look back over the various creative writing groups already mentioned and publications open to submissions: A Moment Of Fiction #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5, plus the Mini Moments Of Fiction: #1 and #2.

And don't forget to let me know if you want anything mentioning on this humble blog!

Model planes

I finally made it over to Manchester Art Gallery on Friday for a shufty at the Ron Mueck exhibition. When I say exhibition, that's slightly overegging it: the show amounts to a total of three pieces. To be fair, the website does state this and it is part of The Art Fund's Artist Rooms, which I suppose also suggests something on a smallish scale.

Actually, size matters here. Two of the three sculptures are outsized; one is much smaller than anticipated. The unexpectedly small one, Spooning Couple, is the most detailed and perhaps the most intriguing, showing the vulnerability of relationships. What I found most interesting were the various ways in which the piece could be interpreted, depending on the position from which you looked at it. If your aspect was at the head of the bed, the faces (and, more significantly, the eyes) of the "characters" are unseen and the work seems to be an intimate portrait of the pair. If you stand at the foot of the bed, however, the snapshot is all together different and the distance between the man and woman is striking.

Another thing that struck me was how much I felt I'd already read the information plaques accompanying each model. I soon realised that it was because a review I'd read prior to attending the exhibition consisted of the descriptions pretty much word for word; a kind of lazy plagiarism. Tut tut.

Listing dangerously

Last week, amid all the balanced, unbiased BBC reporting about the, er, BBC, the corporation's news channel did manage to keep a clear head and make sure we knew about a list-making exhibition currently on at the Archives of American Art in Washington. Don't mock; it's important stuff.

I'm a big fan of lists, actually, making plenty myself and also collecting the discarded inventories of others with the vague idea of using them as the basis of some kind of future project which I've yet to develop a concrete plan for.

In the article, Liza Kirwin of the Archives of American Art explains the revelatory aspect of lists: "This very mundane and ubiquitous form of documentation can tell you a great deal about somebody's personal biography, where they've been and where they're going."

I'll say. One of the lists I plucked from a wire shopping basket includes the rather specific "new pile cream". Others reveal how people really can't spell (broccoli and potatoes are a particular stumbling block).

But from reading this article, I'm pleased to learn that "taxonomy" is about list-making ("the science or practice of classification", Collins defines), and has nothing to do with stuffing dead animals. I wonder how I managed to get this far in life without knowing this fact.

ADDENDUM 16/03/10
Check out fellow Manchester Blog Awards Best New Blog winner (class of 2008) Follow The Yellow Brick Road's post on lists, where she references some other list-making bloggers.

Chops away, chaps!

This is Rolf Snoeren and Viktor Horsting, otherwise known as fashion designers Viktor & Rolf. Say hello. Despite looking like a couple of computer geeks, they take some brave tangents and can always be relied upon to come up with some pretty crazy creations. For example, for their A/W 08 show, they took the concept of the slogan tee into a new dimension - the third one - building chunky 3-D words into their sharp suits and fancy frocks. Art meets fashion, indeed, although I'm not sure how keen the dry cleaners would be to tackle those Christmas-party red wine stains that ended up on your Viktor & Rolf "Dream" trench.

For their S/S 10 presentation at the Paris collections last month (which I was reading about earlier on The Blogpaper, a new venture that launched in London on Friday), the Dutch duo had obviously been preoccupied with the economic doom and gloom currently taking bites out of the fashion industry (read about the sad demise of Luella here) and decided to make some cutbacks of their own. Literally. Here are some of the Credit Crunch Couture tulle prom dresses, reportedly created with the help of a chainsaw.

Bet they're a snip...

Money makes the word go round

No wonder there was a global banking crisis. I've just seen a job ad for an international ecomony editor. Duh.

Relegation on the subs bench

Spotted this in The Guardian's Corrections And Clarifications yesterday, but was so caught up in Poetry Day excitement,
I didn't get round to blogging about it.

"While journalists and subeditors are not expected to be multilingual", said the weekly column of the readers' editor, "they should put the right accents on names in all languages, where possible".
Subeditors are journalists.
In trying to distinguish between the roles the column should have referred to writers/reporters and subeditors.

Way to go, Corrections Editor! Good to see someone sticking up for subs. Subs are people too, y'know! (What's the betting the Readers' Editor is really a writer/reporter slighted by having his sentences rearranged and the Corrections Editor is actually a subeditor who's sick of correcting obvious spelling mistakes?)

Blogging: sooo this season

Somehow I feel sullied. I can't quite put my finger on what made me feel this way, but it has something to do with the feature bigging up blogging in the latest issue (November 2009) of Marie Claire, which just landed on my doorstep (don't worry, I didn't pay for it - my mum collected vouchers off her nightly Horlicks to get a free subscription).

It's not that I don't like fashion blogs, because some I do; indeed, I even have a couple listed on my blog roll. I just don't know...

Perhaps it's the word "blogonista" that's got my hackles up. Or maybe it's MC's top tip box, which includes: "Create your blog using the Blogger.com site. It's simple to use". 'Cos you lot are women and you need simple, right? Ah, how to lose readers and alienate people.

Yet another magazine

A new weekly women's magazine launches tomorrow in six cities around the UK, and it's free. Apparently, ShortList Media will distribute 400,000 copies of Stylist in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Brighton. Are they mad? Or do they at least know something everyone else in the free world doesn't?

In these recession-bitten times, Associated Newspapers have downsized their freesheet Metro, News International have bumped off The London Paper and the Guardian Media Group have decided that giving away the Manchester Evening News every weekday in the city centre just doesn't make economic sense. Meanwhile, the Evening Standard has gone from being paid-for to being unpaid-for and now the future of London Lite hangs in the balance...

But the folk at ShortList Media certainly aren't short on confidence. Just open the front page of their "flagship" title ShortList (I know, I had to force myself, too) and there's a whole sidebar harping on about its circulation and year-on-year ABC increase and prize-winning prowess.

(Worryingly, incidentally, the company's founder, Mike Soutar - yes, the man behind Nuts, that wonderful example of men's "journalism" - said that 65 per cent of ShortList's readers do not read any other men's magazine. Well, I suppose it would put even the best of us off.)


So, back to Stylist. I'll admit that there's promise - I love a good font, and the one on the masthead is good. That's a great pic of Angelina, too, and a nice close crop. The design looks clean and they've got some experienced journalists on there (the editor left the big chair at More! to join the launch).

Whether the standard of writing is up to much, however, and whether managing to drum up 17 pages of ads in a 56-page book is a viable business proposition in the long term remains to be seen. And I'm sure there are a lot of people watching intently right now...

Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/06/stylist-new-womens-magazine

Politics and religion

It's not often you'll catch me discussing politics or religion. Certainly not in public, anyway. Perhaps it's because, in terms of the first, I just can't make up my mind any more, having been let down so often in the past, like a lonely spinster; in terms of the second, I've made up my mind, but I don't really want to offend anyone unnecessarily.

Or, perhaps, I'm now old enough and wise enough to know it's best to keep my mouth shut on both thorny subjects, especially at family get-togethers, and especially when booze has been imbibed. Ah, Christmas 2007...

So anyway, I surprise myself to be drawing to your attention yesterday's Thought For The Day, from the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Newly woken and face still puffy with sleep, I was caught somewhat unawares and it took me a very long time (until the first mention of the Bible, actually) to realise there was a religious undercurrent as I perked my ears up to the talk of grammar.

"...when I was at school we were encouraged to be a bit suspicious of adjectives. Rules of syntax kept them firmly in their place. An adjective qualifies a noun or pronoun. They are not the important words like verbs: 'being or doing words', or nouns: 'names of persons, places or things'. For all their flamboyance they don't really tell you much. They may make you feel vital, vibrant and vigorous, but in fact their content is often vain and void. They represent aspirations, worthy ones, perhaps, but they don't come with dates, times or budgets; they are wonderfully cheap because they float free of concrete reality. They soar like helium balloons, raising our sights, but not delivering anything except, perhaps, hot air..."

It's interesting, this. I, too, GCSE guinea pig that I was (so grammar wasn't really up there on the curriculum's list of important skills to learn in English Language class; preferred were exploring abstract ideas and presenting your work at the front), was taught to be unliberal with descriptive words, and henceforth I've shied away from overly flowery prose and quickly developed a tendency to run screaming from anything written before 1950. (I'm getting better, but Thomas Hardy still brings me out in a cold sweat.)

I also find that excessive use of adjectives sees me getting my ersatz (now, that's a good adjective) red pen out straight away when I'm editing and have to cut to fit. Well, spurious adjectives and shit copy and crap structure.

Anyway, the full TFTD is here if you follow this link, and you'll see it sits in a wider context of politics, just to complete that circle of doom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20091001.shtml

Metro has the Life sucked out of it

MetroLife - the regionally tailored arts and culture section to be found lurking, somewhat (if I'm honest) out of place, in the middle of Associated Newspapers' freesheet Metro - took its last breath a little over a week ago. It passed away with barely a death rattle and I don't quite know why. It was a well-written, well-edited, well useful supplement in a, well, otherwise pretty dire product. A number of very good journalists now swell the ranks of those other very good journalists who have lost their jobs and shifts in recent months. Sigh.

Perhaps it's a sign of the economic slowdown/downturn/outright recession times in which we live (or perhaps it's just indicative of the London-centric industry in which we ply our trade - the main MetroLife office was based in Manchester; the rest of the satellite staff were scattered around the provinces), but the redundancies (of which there were around 30) didn't even shown up on the radar of most of the usually reliable sources of information on the goings-on in Medialand. Indeed, I don't seem to be able to find anything on the section's demise on holdthefrontpage.co.uk, journalism.co.uk or even mediaguardian.co.uk. Hmm.

However, there were some eulogies...

Jonathan Schofield of Manchester Confidential:
"Metro Life was produced by committed journalists who knew how to write and spell. There was quality control ... Of course there's always the web. But the problem is as free content gets poured onto the web, editorial professionalism disappears ... At Confidential we are an independent web magazine with a professional editorial team - but we are an exception to the rule. Most local web content is woefully under edited, often slapped up without anyone running a critical eye over it."
http://www.manchesterconfidential.com/index.asp?sessionx=IpqiNwB6JWIoIaqiNwF6IHqi

And from Kate Feld of Manchizzle:
"The Metro folks took their work seriously and were very progressive about including a really wide range of arts and culture ... it was often a thin slice of clued-up and enjoyable writing that seemed oddly out of place at the center [sic - Kate is American, so it's allowed] of a free newspaper that in terms of actual news value or readability pretty much deserves to get stepped all over on the floor."
http://manchizzle.blogspot.com/2009/08/metro-life-is-dead.html

As reported on How-Do, where W&F first got an inkling of what was going on:
http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/north-west-publishing/metro-shuts-regional-offices,-makes-staff-redundant-200908286234/
http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/north-west-publishing/metro-jobs-on-the-line?-200908276217/

Snark unit

New Yorker critic David Denby reckons that the interweb thingy has "lowered the tone" of journalism, and has coined the word "snark" to describe this. The paperback version of his book, called (funnily enough) Snark, came out last Thursday.



Earlier, Denby and Toby Young, author of the insipid (if I remember rightly) How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, had a food fight on Radio 4's Today programme about it. Young didn't agree with Denby, saying it's the oldies versus the newbies or perhaps the intellectuals versus the plebs.

John Humphrys didn't seem to give a monkeys either way, while I was distracted somewhat by thoughts of Lewis Carroll...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8241000/8241214.stm

A question of training - OPINIONS PLEASE!

Here's a poser for you; please let me know what your views are via comments, email or Twitter.

Technological advances have enabled everyone to operate
as a journalist, so does this mean that traditional journalism training is becoming obsolete?

I'll post your responses (yes, they'll stay anonymous, so you really can say whatever comes into your pretty little head) and my own scintillating thoughts on this very de rigueur subject very soon.
Bet you can't ruddy wait, huh?

Font of all knowledge

I love fonts. It must be something to do with being a sub and having to make sure words are emboldened when they need to be, or when text should be in italics when Art say it should, and so on and so forth. (Alternatively, if you're a Grauniad sub, you could just totally ignore the usual rules, and halfarsedly bold some stuff up then ignore the rest so it's all over the show and the reader has no chance of spotting any kind of pattern or be helped to read more easily in any way. I mean, what does the reader want? Bloody hand-holding?)

If you also love fonts, I suggest you go and have a look at Lars Willem Veldkampf's thumbnails for more of your favourite typefaces and their subliminal meanings. It's a quarter of an hour well spent this rainy Friday afternoon as you wait for the weekend to get a shift on.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsveldkamp/sets/72157607710779069/

Incidentally, yesterday at the ICA, the author Douglas Coupland did a companion talk to the film Helvetica (which I have yet to see) on what words look like and the power of text as an art object. It was he who alerted me to this Veldkampf fellow's Flickr fonts; not because DC is my mate, but because I follow him on Twitter like the sycophant I most surely am.

Express delivery!

Oh dear, oh dear.
This is rather funny, and an example of how last-minute meddling
can lead to mistakes, but unfortunately I fear that in this instance heads may roll...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/sep/01/express-ant-dec-headline-error