charles barrow's writing

Time for some good news.  I've had a (very) short story accepted for publication by 101words.org I've mentioned before that I've been focussing on writing drabbles recently. These are 100 word stories, that I find challenging but fun to write. I visit them everyday, and tinker around (add a word here, cut a word there), and I find this a really good way for me to keep writing when I'm not really in the right place to focus on my main work in progress. Earlier this year I had a drabble finished and polished, and I sent it out to a website that was running a competition, I was so pleased with myself for actually sending it out, and literally the day after I sent it the site crashed. It completely disappeared from the internet, and has never returned. Sigh. I took that as a sign that maybe the story wasn't great, I mean, it literally blew up a website. So I filed that story and started another, and found another site that accepted submissions. This one is the above men...

Thirty years ago, or so, I wrote a romcom. It was a gay romcom, set in a karaoke bar, called Dolly Would. It was a musical gay romcom, all the characters sang country songs, when they fell in love, or when their man done them wrong, and broke their heart (which happened a lot). I wrote is as a film script originally, it morphed out of another script about rent boys and working girls in Brighton. That script, Fairy Tale, had a producer attached for a while, but the deal fell through, and I lost my way with it, put it a drawer for a few years and forgot about it... until I fetched it out and re-worked it into that county+western themed love story. Eventually, as in years later, it got re-written again, this time as a novel. It changed a lot in the transition, but I always felt that it lost more than it gained, so I put it back into that drawer, where it remains; the drawer where many of my favourite stories go to die. I mention it here because I made a momentous decision about it this we...

I took this picture 15 years ago. I was walking home from work, along my usual route, and I saw this piece of graffiti, which had appeared overnight, and it stopped me in my tracks. I remember it made me feel uncomfortable to linger in front of it, I felt like a voyeur witnessing the miserable end of someone's relationship, and I felt very guilty taking this photo and freeze framing their pain and despair. It is such a personal message to Theresa from the wo/man who wrote it and yet it's been very publicly declared. All these years later this kind of thing would pop up in someone's Twitter feed, but back then graffiti was about the only option for posting a message to reach an audience. Although the graffiti appeared on a wall only two minutes away from where I lived at the time, I had no idea who the people involved were. I have to assume that Theresa lived nearby and would walk past this wall on a regular basis, perhaps this is even the wall of her house, otherwise what...

I'm re-reading books 1, 2 and 3, and giving them a buff and a polish: a comma here, a carriage return there, a shiny new adjective dropped into a sentence. No major changes, then, just a few tweaks. All of this is in preparation for them being uploaded to Amazon, to make them available on Kindle. I have had qualms about doing this, but I have to concede that Amazon is the largest shop window in the world, and if I want to find a wide audience for my writing, for my stories, then they need to sit on a shelf in their store. I don't think I can afford to have moralistic qualms when I'm an unknown writer looking for readers. I've given myself thirty days to get my reading and editing done, and to get the books uploaded and launched.

John Mann - At Day's End will be available to download very soon, as soon as I upload it to Smashwords in fact. It's the third, and final, book in the John Mann trilogy. And it needs a cover, of course, and working on it provided me with an opportunity to revamp the covers on books 1 and 2. This is their first public outing.  I'm almost happy with them. I think I'm too close to be objective so I'll live with them here for a few days to see if they still sing to me at the weekend. They may, of course, have started to nag and shout by then, but either way I'll have my answer. Photos are the author's own

I listened to poet Ian McMillan on the radio, offering advice on becoming creative, about making a start on becoming creative. Look out of the train window, he said, go for a walk, write about what you see, what it reminds you of, what childhood memories it stirs. Just make a start, don't worry if it's not perfect, just write something down. Become creative and it puts you on a continuum that extends from William Shakespeare, through Jane Austin, to you. And don't be daunted by that thought but, rather, revel in the possibilities and the potential.

I'm still editing my story. It's been a long road, littered with many perils - too many characters? Not enough action? No tension? Unsatisfactory ending? I've wrestled with them all. But chief amongst my headaches at the moment are capital letters. City, city, Government, government, Abbey, abbey, Sergeant, sergeant. I thought I knew these rules but suddenly I've become unsure and have lost my way. I can't tell you how many times I've changed some of these examples from lower, to upper, and then back to lower again. I've googled and feel none the wiser, I bought a book on punctuation, I've studied other novels, but I never seem to find the exact right example in the exact right context. I've almost decided to use lower case in every single instance, figuring that there will still be mistakes, but fewer on average. After all, this system never hurt k.d. lang or ee cummings. I could do worse than follow their example.

I've hit a real hitch. My latest story is written and is being edited now (self edited - yes I own a fine toothed comb). I've been feeling good about the whole enterprise when, boom, out of nowhere I see a book cover that torpedoes my heart. It's the book's title that actually poses a problem for me. It name checks its main character in the title, an uncommon name which, unbelieveably, I've also given to a main character in my story. W.T.F? I'd not seen this book before, so it is a complete coincidence. I might have thought 'Ah well, whatever.' and still gone with the name if the book in question had been a little backwater publication, but it isn't. It's had great reviews, I notice, and some prominent publicity - which makes it all the more weird that I'd not seen it in bookshops or online thus far. Anyway, the upshot is that I have to find a new perfect name. A difficult, fraught, exasperating process which you'll know all about if you...

Who was it said that genius is 99% perspiration? Einstein? I should probably Google that. I don't think it was him, although he'd know better than anyone. I've recently read that Woody Allen reckons that 80% of success is just turning up. He turns up a lot in my local multiplex so I'm happy that he knows what he's talking about too. These are both high percentages but then sometimes the stakes in success are high. I've been turning up a lot at my writing desk recently. My day job work pattern has changed and I have much more time to devote to writing, and I'm putting in the hours. I'm showing up, I'm perspiring (but I'm still no genius).

I'm deep into another edit of John Mann - At Day's End. It's hard work of course. I've just found a loose thread which I will inevitably have to pull on, just to see what unravels so that I can stitch it back together. One of my favourite aspects of the editing process, which is not normally a fun pastime, is finally being able to turn to my Edit Boards. As I write a story I get words and phrases, ideas and prompts, pop into my head. I don't always want to stop right then and back track to add them into what I've previously written so I record them onto post-it notes and stick them onto the Edit Boards until later. Well 'later' has now arrived and I'm transferring the saved words and phrases into the story. They won't all find a home there of course, some are just destined for the bin. This is an enjoyable process for me, I enjoy this part. This isn't a struggle. As I transfer the contents of a post-it into the story I'll remove it f...

I've recently had an intriguing idea for a story. Great. But it's plaguing me, not so great. I'm trying to focus on finishing my current story (editing, editing, always editing) and this new one keeps jumping up and down in front of me like an annoying six year old child on a sugar high. I've made notes on 'new one' as thoughts, arcs, characters occur to me. I jot it all down as it comes to me but it's not enough to keep it quiet. 'New one' is greedy for my time and attention. I really shouldn't moan about inspiration and ideas tumbling out but they are rather distracting when they aren't about the story I'm currently working on. And  I'm loathe to turn my back on 'new one' too completely in case it's no longer there when I turn back to it at a later date. These things can vanish in a blink, as I'm sure you know, they are as ephemeral as a ghost.

I'm keen to put John Mann to bed. If you've read either of my published stories then you'll understand that sentence on more than one level. What I'm saying is that I'm impatient to finish this last John Mann story. I want it finished so I can move on to writing other stories. It's been a great experience, one big, long learning experience. And it will, for me, have been a big achievement. A trilogy of self-published stories? I'll be very proud to admit to that. But I've been thinking about what I'll do afterwards. I want to avoid resting on my laurels (whatever they are) for too long, because that period of 'afterwards' could easily stretch from weeks into months or even (whisper it) years of resting, doing nothing. Any hot irons (whatever they are) will be colder than a very long-dead thing. So I've been making plans, sketchy plans, but plans nontheless for more John Mann stories, short stories, follow-up stories, linked stories, preque...