Writing and F3, 1 Year On
It’s been just over a year since the meme finally filtered down to my neck of the tubes with Patterns in Traffic, my first piece of flash fiction. Donning my hypothetical writerly hat in recognition of this milestone, I’ve been trying to root the memetic microfiction in something of a broader context, both in terms of my personal writing experiences and the insights I’ve taken from participating in Friday Flash Fiction.
I can’t really remember my motivation, but I gave NaNoWriMo a shot back in November 2004, producing something I can now recognise as an overwritten dérive of a pseudo-fantastical Venice. The Doge’s Gate – endearingly awkward, with infodumping a’plenty, terrible dialogue, a foul-mouthed Italian waitress, and an ill-judged authorial cameo (37k).
The following spring (April 2005) – despite not studying English or, indeed, anything remotely Englishesque – I managed to blag a place on an undersubscribed 6th form writing course, run by the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton, in the depths of Devon. Viewed through the rose-tinted goggles of nostalgia, this was one of the best weeks of my life. With spring sunshine, good food, and a surfeit of cows, I managed to produce a couple of pretty good poems, a staggeringly vast quantity of really bad poetry, and the first part of a nifty short story in which the MC escaped an abusive mother-daughter relationship … in favour of adventure-with-a-capital-A.
Moving the clock forward to the start of my second year of university (November 2006), I tentatively dipped my toe back into the literary lake of NaNoWriMo. With the additional support of a diverse, vigorous, and broadly likeable bunch of Brightonians (including Kay, Shebit, Alabaster, and Shaun), I made it to the 50k milestone with Illyria - the fantastical offspring of Shakespeare and a thinly-veiled critique of American imperialism. This tale covered theatrical insurrectionism, messenger pigeons, cultural relativism, covertly trebuchet assembly, sheep, swamps, and yet more awkward dialogue.