Out On A Limb - Finale

Here's a picture of me doing my reading at the Queen's Hotel, Birkenhead last night at the private sneak-preview of the official website. If you look carefully, you can also see my newest project sleeping on the back row!

It was brilliant to see everyone again and catch up with how the blogs and stories have developed since the workshop element of the project ended. The venue, overlooking the park where so many of our stories were set, was perfect - and Louise, Doreen, Jensen and Robbe shared their stories with us which was a brilliant way of rounding off the project. There was a real sense of achievement and solidarity during the evening, and I felt pleased to have worked with such a varied and talented set of writers and bloggers!

What's next? I think our project will have a lasting legacy. Even though we were a small group, I know that several of the participants plan to continue blogging about their lives, their stories and what is important to them. I hope they'll use their blogs to keep in touch, and join in the online writing community. The stories will be on the blogs, on the website and available for anyone in the world to look at, comment on and interact with. I especially like Barbara's idea of inviting readers to submit their own alternative endings to her story - I wish I'd thought of something like that myself!

If you've found this blog through the project promotion on twitter, facebook or elsewhere - here are a few links to get you started:

The story I wrote as part of this project is here: Wirral Voices: A Chorus. You can also read a commentary I wrote about the way my ideas developed during the time I worked on this story here.

The story was commissioned by Elaine Speight as part of the Out on A Limb project, which she project managed and I helped to deliver. You can read about the project, the workshops and the background to the project at the offical website, here.

And of course, I wasn't the only writer working on this project. Each of the participants completed a short, blogged story set in the Wirral during the time we worked together. You can access their blogs and project diaries and read their stories, which are a constantly evolving and interactive web of tales set in The Wirral, through the official project website, by clicking on the links in my story, and by using the links in the side bar of this blog.

If you'd like to submit your own Wirral-based story, film or photography, you can by going through the official site.

This will be my last post on this blog, but if you'd like to keep up to date with news about my writing and other project, you can find me at my personal blog: Every Day I Lie a Little.

Have fun!

Pre-Launch Jitters

I've spent this evening putting the finishing touches to my story and reading all your finished versions one last time. I can't believe the launch is this week! July seems to have passed super-quickly.

I have one or two jobs to do with updating the design of this blog before we go public, as well as the icon for my story for the finished website - and making sure the links and photographs in my story are all present and correct. Barbara and Keith are putting me to shame with the new swish designs for their blogs, and I can see Doreen has been busy again. I better get on with it!

You've already read the commentary I did on the thought processes behind the story that I did. Maybe it didn't make sense at the time, but now you get a chance to preview the finished copy, my ideas about choruses and flash fiction might mean something to you now!

You've all got a few days left to link your stories to mine, and of course to let me know about all the mistakes and typos that I'm bound to have made! I almost feel a bit shy knowing lots of people outside the project are going to be reading this blog by the end of this week.

I will be visiting your blogs again before the launch to catch up and say hello but for tonight I am signing off for a well earned rest. See you soon!

Final Commentary

I've finished writing my story now, and it will be launched, along with the others, at a special event on the 28th July 2010. Watch this space for details.

In the meantime, I've written a short commentary piece about my thoughts and what inspired me while I was putting the stories together. It will probably, like my story, some of my pictures and film etc, be used on the final website - but until then, I thought you'd like to look at it here.

If anyone has any questions for me you can put them in the comments section of this blog and I'll get to them as soon as I can. See you at the launch!!


I wrote four flash fictions that linked together in a kind of journey, as well as linking or alluding to the stories written by the other participants in the project. I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to write a story that was too plotted – I wanted my tale to act as the mortar that linked everyone else’s stories together – I wanted to convey atmosphere, evoke a place, a feeling, a mood.

As a long-time blogger I know that people like their screen-fiction in short bursts – and as a novelist the discipline of flash – the shortest of prose forms – appeals to me as a way to stretch my muscles, force myself to be picky – to choose. So I opted for four linked flash fictions. I had a structure. Now, what to write?

The ingredients for these stories are not my own – they make up the ‘chorus’ element of the piece, as I wanted to capture as much as I could from the workshop discussions, internet research, conversations with Wirral residents, field trips and photography excursions that I experienced during the span of this project. And how to do this in such a short space?

Constructing a voice that was a composite of voices – a moving blend of mine, a writer who’d never visited the Wirral before this project begun – along with the voices of the project participants – all to eager to tell autobiographical and second-hand stories that described the Wirral and its history from Lord Lever to the present day - and weave these words stolen from others along with the facts of my research.

Some of the words and phrases were plucked directly from workshop conversations about the area – you’ll find the shoe-tree in a few of the other stories, and this is a remnant from Doreen’s input into a discussion we had during the second workshop. The comment about the best view of Liverpool being from Tranmere belongs to Louise. Billy Jones was a recurring character, although no-one can quite remember where he came from – and Barbara shared my interest in derelict buildings, and one of my stories takes place next door to an old chemist that forms the setting of hers. Keith, like me, constructed a journey through an area he knows like the back of his hand, and Dot, Margaret and Louise are interested in history, the changing faces of houses, of things they can remember and want to capture and share with others.

I didn’t write about the Ferry or the river because other participants do it so well, although water is never far away from any of these stories. The couple feeding squirrels in Birkenhead Park really exist, and might recognise themselves. Their loyalty and quite pride in their area touched me. The wedding dress mystery and Lord Lever’s bubble bath river come from Wirralpedia – another project that captures facts, fictions and voices in the Wirral. Locals assure me both these tales are true – I’m not so sure, but they’re in here, as solid as the climbing rocks in Birkenhead park, as improbable as a planetarium at Seacombe.

My stories aren’t just rag-bag collections of the things people have told me though. They’ve all been shaped by my own experiences of travelling into the Wirral – the long train journeys through the early spring and into the early summer – imagining the water over my head as the Merseyrail chugged into the darkness and never quite getting over the fear that it would all come crashing down on me.

The idea of home, of being isolated, out on a limb, or of belonging, is prevalent in many of these stories – the train was important to me, as it shaped my experience of the Wirral – a suicide on the line between Preston and Wigan stopped me coming from one of the workshops – delays in Lime Street, Ormskirk and Rock Ferry gave me time to think, a man who had a seizure on the bus outside Birkenhead brought me into contact with his cousins and aunt and reminded me of how special tight knit communities can be. Doreen finds correspondences between Turkey and Birkenhead and Dot told me about the night watchman who waits in the booth on the Wirral side of the Queen’s Tunnel in the dark hours, guarding the way in. Although he never found his way into my story, I thought about him often and I’m glad he’s there.

An early trip around the area with Elaine resulted in my interest, through hers, of the derelict and abandoned houses in Tranmere, the regeneration in some these housing renewal areas (also an interest of Louise's) and the way that everywhere the old and the new jostled together, until the past was superimposed on the present like ghosts.

Ghosts? History? A composite voice? I started to think – who was this narrator? And the ghostly, embodied presence of the memories trapped in the empty houses I’d seen on my walks started to appear to me. I wonder if that works.

The Map...

I've added a new page to my blog - The Map. If you click on the map you should be able to see the four place markers where the four parts of my story are going to be. They are fairly spread out so you might need to zoom out on the map or click and drag to move it around to see them all.

Soon, there will be photographs and, if I can figure out how to do it, some film and sound too.

The instructions for geo-locating text and photographs on the map were done by Elaine and you can find them on the Out on A Limb blog if you feel like having another go at it yourself.

I'm having fun playing with this. How is everyone else getting on? My story is nearly finished but I think I'm going to keep it a secret until the launch!

Back Online!

Sorry everyone - I've not been commenting on blogs much because I've been unwell. I am much better now though, and have been catching up with your writing and blogging all afternoon.

Even though I've not been working on my computer, I've still been working on the project. Here are some of the things I've been up to. They might give you some ideas!

• recording audio files of me reading my stories in case these can be used on the final website.
  
• looking for photographs of Birkenhead Park on Flickr with a creative commons license which means I can use them for my story. There are hundreds to look at here. As I wasn't well enough to come back to The Wirral to take my own photographs, I thought about using one of these. If you want to do the same thing, make sure you contact the photographer first and ask permission!
  
• I've been thinking about the structure of my story: I've decided on f0ur 250 word flash fictions set in different areas that are linked by a journey. It's very tricky!
• thinking about my logo. The themes of my writing are: ghosts, lost voices, the past, hidden people and ordinary things that we might not notice if we pass them every day. Barbara seems really good at coming up with icons for people. I wonder what she'd choose for me?

Thanks for being patient with me, everyone. I will be back posting at this blog again and commenting on your blog posts. If you need any help from me, you know where to get in touch.

Links to Look At

Here's a link to Sarah Salway's Writing Journal - in particular a post on her blog that shows how she develops her ideas in a journal, and how she chooses which are the best ideas. I love the photographs of messy writing and ideas half-formed. It's a little bit similar to what I am trying to do with this blog.

The Editing Process

Click on the picture to make it big and see my editing.

With a short piece of fiction, every single word counts. I've typed up this piece of writing, printed it out and read it through to myself, looking for words and phrases that are awkward and repetitive so I can cut them out. I've also added some more description, and made notes to myself about ideas I need to develop and descriptions I need to expand in order to give the story the atmosphere and emphasis that I want.

I'm also thinking about the layout of my story - this is part one of a story I plan to come in four parts, each part set in a different location and having a different photograph, sound or map to go with it. Each part will be round about 250 words long. This is a tight word limit so I'm going to need to be very careful that all my words are working hard.

How are you going about editing your story into the final version?

First Attempts At A Story

The very first draft of a piece of writing I did during one of the workshops in response to a first line prompt from Doreen - 'there were eighteen pairs of trainers in my back garden'. I worked in the old house at 294 Eureka Villas too, even though that wasn't the house or the garden Doreen was talking about originally.

It's too short, and I want to work in a route and more of a plot, but it's a start.

Reasearch Trip: Unexpected Magic

Even in cities, towns and beside neglected, shut up buildings there are little doorways to magical places. Routes that take you down paths towards the unexpected. Like Alice falling down the rabbit tunnel or Lucy discovering Narnia through the back of a wardrobe door, these doorways are secret and magical and appear where you'd least expect them: so close to home they are right under your nose.

I wonder where this path leads?

Research Trip: The View

These photographs and our trip over the river on the Ferry reminded me of a discussion we had in the workshop about the way the Wirral and Liverpool relate to each other. 'The best view of Liverpool is from this side' Louise said, and someone else told me that Birkenhead was for the posh people, and the city of Liverpool meant for the workers.

Here's what I saw as I stood on the rocky Esplanade at Rock Park and looked over the water to Liverpool, where I'd come from on the Ferry earlier that morning.

Research Trip: Beachcombing on the Esplanades

No buried treasure here, but lots of broken crockery, bottles and winkle shells. A deserted, windy place - but evidence of life and people everywhere - even the remains of a little bonfire.

Reasearch Trip: Waste Ground II

I wonder what Barbara at Derelict Stories would make of this view from the pub? It isn't pretty, but things don't need to be pretty to be interesting - just like stories don't need to have morals or meanings or happy endings to be worth reading.

I think I'm better at taking pictures of details rather than the bigger picture. Maybe that's because of the sort of writer I am. I need to train myself to think about structure rather than sentences and both are important.

I love the picture of the pipes running through the bit of old cement. I've been practising taking pictures a lot recently and I think I'm getting better at working my camera. This bit of cement made me think of a musical instrument of some kind.

Research Trip: Waste Ground Opposite the Pub

Jensen and his friend Rob took some really great photos of this place. I found it creepy and mysterious and I was scared to venture too far in.

Research Trip: The Admiral Pub, Rock Park

Like 294 Eureka Villas, this is another shut up and derelict building that is begging for someone to put a story in it. I think it's the fact that there's so much possibility in an empty, shut-up building. There's room for me to imagine what might have been, and what will be. It's like watching people on the train or the Ferry. They are between places and there are enough gaps for you to be able to ask questions and make up a few stories.

I wonder what stories these walls could tell if they could talk?

Research Trip: Film Footage

If you play this film you can hear a little bit of the tour-guide's speech we listened to when we were on the Ferry. It's the second time I've heard it now. They played the Ferry Cross the Mersey Song too, but I didn't catch that.

It was as cold, grey and windy as it looks. After twenty minutes or so Dot, Keith and I gave up and fled inside to sit down and warm up and Keith presented me with the gift of a Kit-Kat from the on-board cafe.

Dot told me about her days using the Ferry to commute from the Wirral to her job in the BT offices in Liverpool. Apparently the business commuters in suits and bowler hats used to walk around the top deck of the ferry to get their exercise in the morning, and she was always tempted to walk too.... just against the flow.

Research Trip: The Ferry

Wirralpedia

Wirralpedia will map the facts, fiction and folklore of the Wirral. The (mis)information relies almost entirely on the contributions of the people who make the Wirral the place it is today.

From Wirralpedia

I can't travel into The Wirral to do all of my research, so some of it is done second hand, through the net. I love the way Wirralpedia lets us know that not all of the stories on it are true ones.

I wonder if we could get our stories listed on Wirralpedia as part of the fictional history of the place we are writing about? What do you think?

This is the entry I like the best. I hope the case of the mysterious wedding dresses in Birkenhead Park ends up in my story.

Other People's Stories

I didn't tape the discussion, so all I have is these scrawled notes about everyone else's stories and the places that are important to them. It's already got me thinking. I still want to write about 294 Eureka Villas but there's so much more to get my teeth into here. I wonder how I'll manage to fit it all in.

Journeys are important. A journey between Rock Ferry, Hamilton Square and Birkenhead Park, using the Mersey Rail I've become so fond of? Now I need to start thinking about characters - what happens, and who does what. The skeleton of a story is starting to emerge.

Routes and Maps

After Elaine taught us all to geo-locate our stories (I'll be trying that on this blog too) I thought about routes and maps. I got lots of leaflets and spent one or two of my train journeys looking over them.

It didn't help, really. It made me feel like a tourist. The maps and trails were too dry - the stories had already been written. There was no room for me to ask questions - no areas of the unknown or gaps in the information.

I think I'll learn more and get more inspiration from listening to other people's Wirral Stories, and taking a tour of the place in person.

294 Eureka Villas

294 Eureka Villas - right across from Rock Ferry Library and the title for a story if ever I heard one. This is an old boarded up shop right next door to a chemist that used to be called Fogg's and was the only place this side of New Brighton where you could buy fresh candy floss.

It looks abandoned, but there is someone living above it. I could find out, and maybe interview them, but really I prefer not to know because it gives me more room to make it up.

I know Barbara is going to write about Fogg's chemist. Maybe there's room for a link between her story and mine?

More tunnels...

The view of the tunnel from the Northern Line platform at Liverpool Central station. There's always a strong breeze blowing along here, but the air feels warm and stale. It's creepy, even though there are so many people on the platform it also feels quite lonely. I still wonder where all these people are going, and try to listen to their conversations.

More trains...

It seems most people are setting their stories on a route - either walking from one place to another, or on public transport, or using a bike or even the ferry.

I'm still interested in the train. I want to write about the sinking feeling I get as I take the escalator down from Lime Street station to get to the Wirral Line. It feels like I'm going into another world.

I'm always interested in people going places. When people are between places, what are they thinking about - the place they've just been, or where they are going to? Or a bit of both?

Or are they, like me, feeling a little bit travel sick and wondering if they're going to be late?

It came up on one of the workshops and it's made me think - it's the mysteries in life, the things we don't know about other people, that get my imagination going and are one of the inspirations for inventing stories.

Rock Ferry

Rock Ferry is where we've been having most of the workshops. It's no wonder one or two of the buildings here have caught my eye as the possible location for stories.

Nail Station. I like the pun and play on words with rail station. I wonder what it is that is making me want to write about public transport? Probably because I love to watch people, and because I'm a visitor to The Wirral the way I experience the place is through my long weekly trips from Preston and back.

More research in pictures

When I'm travelling on the train, I don't even think about going under the water. Much less scary. I wonder why the tunnel isn't featuring more in other people's stories? We have lots of stories about the river and the ferry, but no-one wants to write about the rail and road links between the Wirral and Liverpool that go under the water.

Research in pictures...

I love the heading on the second picture... 'the story of an undertaking' - it's from an old bookcover and I wonder what the story inside was about? The making of the tunnel, I suppose.

The first picture is a diagram - I looked at this and it was supposed to help calm my nerves for my first drive through the tunnel. All I keep thinking about is how long the tunnel is, and how deep underground and under the water I will be.

Q - What's the last thing you want to see on a drive through the Mersey Tunnel?

A - A drop of rain on your windscreen!