Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Queer Contact, Queer Media, Queer February!

In February I am honoured to be speaking at a panel event which is part of a larger media event which is part of the one of the most exciting festivals happening in Manchester this year. It’s Queer Contact, and the line-up is so good it makes you wish it was actually Pride and that there was a parade at the start.

From the 5th to the 15th a plethora of queer arts comes to Contact and beyond with a program of music, theatre, performance, comedy and more.


National treasure David McAlmont launches proceedings with a live performance on the 5th, alongside the talented Mr Guy Davies, which, from experience, I can promise will be intimate, fun and very touching.


Justin Vivian Bond is another sensational name on the bill and is in town for not one but two performances, including a collaboration with our very own David Hoyle. Bond is a trans icon of cabaret and is here to share Valentine’s weekend with us, using both original songs and familiar cover versions to interrogate and celebrate love. Expect to be stimulated and moved. On top of that there is a related JVB event with a screening of Shortbus and a Q&A to follow.


The Queer Media Festival is a highlight for me. Almost thirty media professionals (and me!) will gather to talk about storytelling, their work, their identities and career paths. There will be films screened, performances, a news broadcast, and a gathering of like-minded but diverse creative individuals under one roof. The event is promising to be a great opportunity for students, for peer-learning and networking, for idea generating, for meeting and greeting, and for exposure to new ways of thinking. Speakers include V-Squared aka Vinny and Luke (YouTube stars), John Bird Media (blogger), Tim Macavoy (Director at InterTech Diversity Forum), Anna McNay (arts editor, DIVA), Paul Brand (Northern Political Correspondent, ITV) and Addie Orfila (producer, Hollyoaks). Tickets here.



Queer Contact has comedy covered with a six-comic line-up for the Comedy Playground, while word nerds will thrill at the selection of poets, novelists and playwrights sharing their practices at Paul Burston’s Polari on the 10th. Kate O’Donnell explores trans identity with humour and music, while site specific drama takes a police raid on a Victorian drag ball as its thrilling subject. The Vogue Ball at Gorilla sees competing Houses dance to victory, or defeat, while Mother’s Ruin host one of their far-from-usual cabaret spectaculars. The closing party, Love Art, is in the hands of the creators of Cha Cha Boudoir so couldn’t be in better hands.



Explore the full line-up for yourself right here and treat yourself to something new and challenging. There will be queer bohemia aplenty at Contact, but all across the city February is turning into a high point in the cultural calendar – Seeing Queerly has a terrific line up, while the first Manchester-based LGBT History Festival provides the context for how far LGBT people have come. February is a chance to learn and connect, network and create, and be touched by art and performance. Please be a part of it. The rest of 2015 has a lot to live up to…


Sister by Amy and Rosana Cade from Rosana Cade on Vimeo.





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Wednesday, 14 January 2015

The Projects

You can probably tell from my output that my pursuits are pretty varied – this blog, that blog, Off The Hook, Drunk At Vogue, The Queer Forum, writing, and the rest of my freelance work which I love and which pays the rent. The number of things I have on the go at any one time is a bit dizzying, and there are a few reasons for that: I’m interested in lots of things. Too many things really. I’m trying to find out what I’m good at and I want to be good at everything. I don’t want to miss out on anything. 


When I turned 30 I’d been working in an office for eight years, in a profession I enjoyed but which I knew by that point didn’t entirely suit me. I applied for lots of jobs in London that I didn’t get, and I started to panic a bit. I decided if I was going to stay in my job then I needed something outside of it to keep me going, so I set myself little tasks, the first of which was to start a blog, this blog, which I started in April 2008. I had no readers of course, and not always much of an idea what to write about but I immediately felt better about things. Later that year I was invited to play my first DJ gig, and so that became the second thing on my informal list of 'things to try'.


As time went on I added things to the list in order to push myself, to stay inspired, to find my limits and to fight complacency and boredom. I’ve done some big things that were never on the list, like becoming a freelancer, which brings ambitions and aims all of its own. After six months of freelancing I felt great, even if money was difficult in my tricky start-up year. Soon after that I reached my half-life anniversary in Manchester and took the opportunity to take stock.  


I’ve been freelancing for a year now and it’s been a challenge and an adventure, but the list of ‘things to try’ still exists, needling me to get on with it. That’s what I’m going to do. I have formalised the list as ‘The Projects’, and as with my New Year’s Resolutions, if I go public with something I feel twice as motivated to get it done. 

Here are all eleven of ‘The Projects’ as they currently stand, with little summaries for the ones I have achieved. I am genuinely holding myself to these and I am not adding anything new until this lot is done, or at least attempted. Something amazing might come out of this, or nothing at all, but the feeling of having tried is really the best feeling.




1.     Start a blog

Blogs were everywhere in 2008 but were becoming a bit passé so I didn’t think I would stick with this thing for long, but seven years later, here we are. I’ve met some of Manchester’s finest people through writing this blog, people who I would otherwise have no reason or nerve to talk to. I’ve had 270,000 page visits to date, messages from around the world, a few hundred quid made, free tickets for wonderful events when I couldn’t afford them myself, but mainly a bit of dialogue with the world, which is what I have always wanted.


2.     Be a DJ

Being a DJ was somebody else’s idea for me to begin with but once I start something I have to see it through, and DJing proved to be the perfect activity for someone like me, who likes a party but is also shy. I love it. DJ culture I can do without and I’m not really a part of that. It’s a bit macho and competitive for me. People will always use music to be cool, no matter what age they are. I think people are sometimes surprised that I’m a DJ because of how uncool I am and I’m glad! I wanted to be good at it though and I’ve really tried. I’ve been profiled in the Manchester Evening News and Attitude, I’ve played at Festival No. 6, Manchester International Festival, HomoElectric, GAZE Film Festival, Northern Quarter Festival, Homotopia, Vogue Fabrics, Islington Mill, Clique, Bollox and more. I’ve never played a recorded set in my life and I never would. Club promotion itself I can do without, and if it wasn’t for the chore of that I would be DJing much more often. I’ve had so many special moments DJing that I think only other DJs would understand. Even if I stopped tomorrow, those would be the moments that made me feel like I really did it.


3.     Start a clubnight

The first Off The Hook at Kitsch was one of my favourite ever nights out in Manchester, and the only Off The Hook that I didn’t DJ at. I was a resident from the second party onwards and I took over the night when the original promoters had shelved it. I gave it a re-brand and a new venue and a year later it won the City Life award for ‘Best Gay Night’. If I’d been kind to myself I could’ve ticked this one off the list then and there but I wanted my very own baby. Enter Drunk At Vogue. I’d daydreamed about the night for a couple of years, had even pitched it somewhere and had it knocked back, and then shelved it. It eventually came to life as the collaboration you see today. I have learned a lot from collaborating, that it’s very hard to do, but that it has loads of benefits, that your baby will never ever turn out like you think, but that you’ll love it anyway. Drunk At Vogue started in November 2011. Then we had our first birthday, then a few months later we threw the launch party for the Manchester International Festival. I am very glad I didn’t tick number 2 off the list too soon.


4.     Get a Masters

I wasn’t done studying, I wanted to read more books, I wanted to finish writing a novel, a proper one this time, with supervision and a deadline, and I wanted to do something subversive and uncool with the money I was making from DJing. So I did an MA. It had been on my list way before these set of circumstances arrived, and to be honest I thought that I would go and study Shakespeare at Masters Level. I had ducked out of that very option when I was 21, despite getting my place at Manchester and my funding from the Academy. Instead I went to the Writing School at MMU when I was in my thirties and wrote a novel about Shakespearean culture. I got a Distinction for it. I had my graduation party with my family and friends in the baking sunshine on Albert Square at the MIF Pavilion. I was so happy. I learned a lot. I met great people and read some magnificent books. The course is good, go and do it. Number 4, you are done.


5.     Get paid to write

A hundred years ago I filed some album reviews for The Big Issue the week before they laid off most of their Northern freelancers and disappeared off down south. The cheque I got for that work (£36 if I recall) was the most satisfying money I‘d ever earned. I got the bug but my timing was terrible and it took me a long while to get back here. Being paid to write, in an era where anyone with a keyboard is a writer, is validation, for better or worse. Writing is a profession that people not only invite you to do for free, but often expect it, in some cases demand it. I have had dozens of people over the years discover my blog and approach me to write for them. Often when I enquire about a fee they become unpleasant. Often I am told that I will be paid in 'exposure' for my blog. ‘But you found me,’ I always say to them. ‘I am exposed.’ I never write for those people. If somebody gives you a fee it is professional, respectful, honest, and yes, it's validation, and it’s a validation that comes tenfold when it is the thing you love doing most. Don’t take your writers for granted, and writers: try not to work for free.


6.     Write a novel

This is the one... I have written a very short and very bad novella about a temp who wins the Lottery and goes on an insane odyssey with the girl who lives downstairs. I have written a longer and slightly better novel about five gay men whose lives intersect in a weird post-modern way around the lonely vacuous world of Canal Street and a desolate Manchester city centre. I have written a longer and much better novel about digging up Shakespeare’s bones and the effect it has on a world obsessed with him. Trying to write a novel is one of the great sorrows and frustrations of my life. I can’t explain why I even like it. Every other activity in the world disrupts and distracts from fiction. So many good ideas and great lines vanish into the ether if you aren’t able to give them your full attention. Being a novelist is time-consuming and tiring and wonderful. It deserves my full attention. My novel needs a damn good third draft and my intention is to give it my all and let my other ambitions slide by the wayside until this is done. I want it published. This Project should be entitled, ‘Publish a novel’. This is the point at which a jack of all trades has to try and be the master of one. Of all the things on The Projects list, if I don’t see this novel through I will die disappointed in myself. Do you hear me?


7.     Try stand-up comedy

This is where it gets scary. And this is as far as I’ve got with the list. Kind of five-and-a-half down, five-and-a-half to go I suppose. None of these are pipe dreams though. I have already signed up to workshop some stand-up material this coming Saturday. I have never done anything like this before. I think I am a bit funny, and I have done lots of public speaking, but the two have rarely crossed paths. But I love stand up and I am going to try it for myself. I’m terrified. What am I doing? Stay tuned.


And here is the rest of the list. So no biggies, huh…?


8.     Write and stage a play


9.     Curate an exhibition


10.   Be an artist


11.   Find some work outside Manchester


 See you on the other side...



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Thursday, 27 November 2014

Virtual Books and Library Twickets: The Collection


I recently spent a week as writer-in-residence at Manchester Central Library for the Everything Everything Chaos to Order residency.


I took the opportunity to undertake a modest, highly enjoyable digital art project using the simple tools of library books, iPhone and the Manchester Central Library Twitter account.


The concept, to quote myself, was as follows:

‘In a modern library you’re just as likely to leave with a laptop full of information as a rucksack full of books. I wanted to find a way to symbolise the evolution from paper to data that emphasises the importance of both.’


The project turned into a way to showcase printed treasures from around Central Library; exciting, mundane, beautiful, forgotten, well-loved. Each book was reduced to a single image and a piece of quoted text and sent as a Tweet – a digital artefact if you like – to Central Library’s thirteen thousand followers.


Below is the full collection sent over the duration of the residency from start to finish. Armistice Day fell in the same week so I opened the collection with an image from the First World War and finished with an entry from a compendium of Army names from the Second World War, a soldier named G. Thorpe.




  









































































































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Sunday, 27 April 2014

The Creative Process Blog Tour


Emma Jane Unsworth is about to launch her new novel Animals. She has been tangled up in a blog-web entitled ‘The Creative Process Blog Tour’ in which you answer four questions about your writing process and then pass the baton to two more writers. I am one of Emma’s chosen two, how flattering! Below are my answers, here are Emma’s answers, and I have scored two terrific contributors for my part: Zoe Lambert, poet, and Alex Niven, poet and music writer, who will post their responses soon. And the chain goes on! It's lovely to be part of it. Hope you enjoy!



What am I working on?


I’m tweaking my novel The Shakespeare Girl. At this stage the notion of second and third drafts is no longer applicable. It feels finished but I suppose I won’t be able to leave it alone until an agent wrenches it from my badly paper-cut hands. So what I’m really working on is finding an agent. In terms of writing, my blogging and arts work is ongoing and thankfully about to increase. I’ve started the research for a non-fiction project which I’m already very excited about. I’ve finished the research for another novel about the Blitz Kids and black magic. But the next thing I’m actually writing is a play. I sound like Daisy from Spaced now I realise… Trust me, these things will materialise though! I recently saw two of my ideas turned into finished pieces by somebody else and it made me realise with a start that you can’t sit on your ideas for too long because they are all floating around out there for other people to pluck out of the air…



How does my work differ from others of its genre?


This is definitely a question for a more seasoned and experienced writer than myself. If I knew what genre The Shakespeare Girl was I would be able to find a home for it much easier I’m sure! Literary-comic fiction perhaps? And a bit of pastoral. Maybe ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,’ to quote Hamlet. I have a good idea of who my readership might be at the very least, if not the genre of the writing.



Why do I write what I do?


It’s really the strength of an idea that compels me to get something down. The first thing I ever wrote was a silly novella about a couple of temps who fall in love and win a huge amount of money and go on an adventure to experience life all over the world. I was lonely and broke at the time, no passport, no girlfriend, no boyfriend, and the fantasy of the story was a comfort so I ended up writing it all down and it proved to be great escapism. With The Shakespeare Girl the idea of digging up the playwright’s grave is so tantalising, not just because of what we might find but because of how it might make the world react. The idea never fails to fill me with curious energy and it was sufficient to construct an entire narrative and cast of characters around it.



How does my writing process work?

I’m still very much learning the craft but for the most part I know what the final point of the story is and I try to move the story methodically towards it. For instance, character A needs to learn something about character B: what’s the best way to unfold that discovery? The funniest or saddest or most unexpected way? I try out various scenarios in my head, often involving dialogue that I say to myself. When I’ve settled on the ‘method’ I map the chapter and fill it with detail and then I write that in one sitting and edit the following day, and then it’s done. It won’t get edited again until a larger chunk of the story is written because the context is such a big part of it, you can’t edit in isolation. I’m a very good editor but a nervous writer; the initial writing incubates for a good while before it hits the page.
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Friday, 14 March 2014

Time for a change: Part 2


Back in the lovely café in Dublin. (Clement & Pekoe, by the way). It’s my last day in the city and I’ll be very sorry to leave… The girl opposite me right now is discussing whether she wants to settle in Dublin or Melbourne. Oh Melbourne! Melbourne is a similar type of place to Manchester, insofar as it feels like you could make anything happen there. Or at least that’s how Manchester used to feel. Melbourne is clean, warm, friendly, fun… did I mention clean..? If Manchester has everything except a beach, Melbourne has the beach. It was hard to leave but great to come home in time to host our first New Year’s Eve Drunk At Vogue, which if I do say so myself, was epic fun. We have these parties down to a fine art now, they are simply nights of magic.


Suddenly it was 2014. Before Christmas I had done a ton of DJing to save for Melbourne. It’s an expensive city for sure but if you’ve spent any time in London or the Nordic countries in the last few years you won’t die of shock there. In the end I actually came back with spending money. Coupled with the fortuitously timed savings I mentioned earlier, I suddenly had enough in the bank for my best case scenario: I gave myself January off work. Utter extravagance on the back of a three week Antipodean jolly I know, but I don’t have a strong Calvinist work ethic or anything, I will never be able to combat my debt through working anyway, only through a huge and unlikely windfall, and I actually might never get the chance to do this kind of thing again, so January was the present I gave to myself after fourteen years of office work.


(Some thoughts on working in general: I don’t think work is the best way for people to exist. I’m from a working class family where for the most part work has been insecure, hard to come by, combative, stressful, obligatory. I have no love affair with it. Socialism 101 teaches you that most late-capitalist employment has to be invented and perpetuated to justify capitalism, that salaries are mathematically established to place a life you think you can have forever out of your reach. That’s if you are allowed a life at all, if your work doesn’t kill or maim you, if you are even given the chance to work in the first place. I have and haven’t worked very hard in the past, have and haven’t had job satisfaction, have and haven’t cared much about it, but I’ve always been acutely aware of the position of privilege I am in to be able to work, to have access to the opportunity, albeit one opportunity that I rinsed for over a decade.)


Here’s what I did with January instead of working: sorted out my belongings (chuck, keep, recycle, charity), organised all my photographs and music (epic tasks both), got back into training for the 10K, spent time with my family, replied to all my emails and contacted old friends, cooked loads of great food, let my beard grow, lost weight, discovered loads of new music, read books, tried yoga, learned loads about gay history, hung art on all the walls and made the place beautiful, turned our spare bedroom into a study.


My last day in a real office was December 9th. I’m three months along the road now, which doesn’t sound much, but if you’ve only ever counted time in terms of monthly paydays, it feels like a lot. So far I am making my money from DJing and club hosting, designing book covers, copyediting books, and doing academic re-writes. Those worlds are sufficiently removed from one another to complement each other nicely. Hopefully the variety of work will continue and even increase. If I could do ten different jobs at once I would, but my main aim now is to get paid for something that I write. I’ve done it before but I've forgotten how it feels.


I have taken to working from home very well. I was up working by 7am yesterday and worked twelve hours. Some days I only work four hours. There have been five days when I did NOTHING AT ALL but watch GIRLS and DJ for myself. Bliss. I might go for a run in the afternoon if it’s get bright, I might run at 8am. All I can say is, everything gets done. I am sick to death of routine and I will never ever miss it.


So, four months in and I am going to start dishing out advice for you:


Learn about being self-employed, get a UTR and start keeping records from the start. Just do it. Millions of people do it successfully every year. The HMRC website is dead easy to use. Don’t forget to look at what you can claim for against tax too, such as a portion of your heating and internet if you work from home. I am going to claim for my office chair and a pair of headphones. Seriously.


Have some emergency money. I don’t have any. Who has emergency money? But you should definitely have some.


Get support, even if it’s just moral support. Get some advice, from anywhere, find out who in your circle is self-employed or can give you accounting advice or who knows about any work going that full-timers can’t do, but you can.


If you have favours outstanding, now’s the time to call them in.


Stand your ground and prepare to be ribbed by people who still work in offices. After working hard one morning (and before I got my office chair) my back was aching so I put on comfy pants and tried a yoga routine for bad backs. My friend came by afterwards, assumed I had just got up and made the typical sarcy comments about watching Jeremy Kyle in my pyjamas. I don’t own a TV. My friend hates his job and his boss. He is forgiven. I went back to work after he left.


Be vulgar and talk about money when you need to. If you need to make some cash urgently, say that you need to be paid promptly. If you need more money when you’re doing the work, say so when asking for your fee. Be fair to yourself and your client with your fees and be really good at what you’re doing.


Be strategic about favours and what you do for free. At this point in my life if I had charged for everything that I’d ever done for free – editing, re-writing, design work, promotions, DJing, advice – I would be typing this on a yacht. If I’m DJing, don’t offer to pay me in beers. If you have money for the beer, pay me for the work I’m doing. I don’t want to write for you for free for ‘exposure’. It doesn’t work. Seven thousand people visited my blog in February. I’m exposed. I want to write something that somebody wants to pay me for because it’s good and because it’s work.


Be prepared for bad luck, and good. I’ve had some of both: I bought myself a cheap but (I thought) reliable laptop to DJ with (recorded as a business expense of course) because it was getting too damn troublesome using the same laptop for DJing in clubs and writing/editing at home, in terms of software, disk space, insurance, safety, everything. Then, while I was out DJing on Valentine’s Day, our flat was burgled. They took my work laptop (where I did all my writing) and my partner’s Mac (where I did all my design). We weren’t insured. Then the new DJing laptop turned out to be faulty. Several laptops and complicated returns and horrible computer shops and borrowed machines down the line, and I am back on my feet. Your computer is your life, look after it. My friends had a whip-round for my birthday and raised the money for a new laptop. It is fast and smart and I love it and I love them.


Cultivate amazing friends who might do something like the above for you in an emergency.


Okay back to work.



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Friday, 28 February 2014

Time for a change: Part 1


I am writing this blog post in a lovely café in Dublin. It is a Friday afternoon. There is nowhere else I should be at this moment. How did I get here? Let’s find out…


Symptoms I’ve been bothered with in the last few years that my doctors potentially attributed to stress:


Insomnia

Nightmares

Hyperactivity

Inactivity

Reduced attention span

Bad temper

Recurring sore throat

Strep throat

Chest infection

Skin infection


Dermatitis
Eye infection

Post-viral bronchial hypersensitivity

Nasal drip
Globus sensation

Beard alopecia

... and hypochondria


Things that have made me stressed at various times in the last few years:


Money worries (twenty years of…)

Feeling lonely

Feeling antisocial

Being too bored

Being too busy

Being both at the same time

Feeling overstretched

Feeling like an underachiever

Not knowing what I want to do when I grow up (except be a writer which hasn’t really worked out…)


These circumstances were, to put it mildly, unsustainable, so I decided to make a positive step towards change. If this post starts to read like a self-help book; good, that’s what I want. I read one of those things for the first time recently and it was the absolute worst kind of tosh. I can do better. I think only people who are unsuccessful should write them anyway, that’s much more fun.


I was having no luck with the conventional method of looking for a new job (let alone any enjoyable or rewarding employment). By ‘no luck’ I mean literally no response at all to dozens of applications over several years, and certainly no interviews. On the day I went to collect my Masters certificate I did the sensible thing graduates should so and I spoke to a careers advisor. I was something of an unknown quantity: in my mid-thirties, working in publishing, minor advertising experience, DJing and event hosting on the side as a poorly-paid but successful labour of love, but ultimately craving to make my living as a writer. The advisor was honest. ‘I don’t know much about this whole world you’re in, really,’ he admitted, referring to the ‘jack of all trades’ banter I had given him. ‘But it strikes me that hosting the launch party for an international festival should probably be on the first page of your CV and not under ‘Other achievements’.


In the end I came away from the meeting with two important ideas in my head:


1.     I should have a skills-based CV, not a regular employment CV. (I’d never heard of a skills-based CV before).


2.     I should stop looking for a job, and start looking for work.


The idea of freelancing presented itself, and there followed a series of happy and fortunately-timed events that brought the possibility closer to reality:


I finished paying for my MA.


I finished paying for my BA (fourteen years after graduation).


I moved in with my partner after living alone for six years.


My bank loan was due its annual holiday.


My partner gave up freelancing and took a full-time position worthy of his talents.


Crucially though, the fear of whether I could make a go of life as a freelancer was outweighed by the stress of carrying on as I was. We had already booked to spend Christmas in Melbourne. Figuring there was no better way to book-end a big life change than by going to the other side of the world, I gave notice on the job that I had said yes to in April 2001, and packed my suitcase.




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