A friend’s criticism of my short stories has sparked two exciting new writing projects. Inspired by The Clash, I’m now creating shorter, punchier fiction, with unexpected twists, while discovering that my publishing ambitions are growing far beyond my original plans.
I have my friend Kate to thank for my, currently just started, third and fourth writing project, which I’ve just begun during the last couple of weeks. You may remember from previous blogs that my friend Kate complained that my short stories were too long. Now, for the purposes of my books, I don’t agree with her at all, but I did recognise that there was considerable merit in what she said about writing much shorter stories. After all, with today’s lifestyles and dramatically reduced attention spans, people simply don’t always have the time to sit down and read something in depth.
The idea really began to take shape when I was writing a blog about Protex Blue, a song from The Clash’s first album, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Protex was an old brand of contraceptive, and the song explores the embarrassment, sexual uncertainty and general unease of being young. The Windsor Castle pub in London also features in the story surrounding the song which is where then machine was, supposedly .
Whilst writing the blog, I began painting a picture in my mind of how I could create a fictional character within the framework of the song. So I decided to write a short story about, you’ve guessed it, an embarrassing encounter with a Protex contraceptive machine in a pub toilet, involving a couple of young lads, two girls and a trip to see a concert at the Windsor Castle.
It’s not my normal style of writing. It’s considerably brasher and rather more in your face than the stories in Something About England, which are based around the fictional Sussex community of Denham and are generally fairly family friendly.
But the point was that I could create, in fewer than 2,000 words, a really good yarn with a twist. More importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I love The Clash, and in literally three hours, from start to finish, I’d written what I thought was a lovely little story about a young man overcoming his teenage inhibitions.
Another song from the album, Janie Jones, has now also become a short story. That’s when I decided to take the idea considerably further. I’m going to turn all 13 songs from The Clash’s first album, together with some of the famous singles and B-sides from the same period, into a collection of short stories. Every song will provide the starting point for a new narrative, with proper fictional characters, situations and plots, all set against the backdrop of 1977 based on the contents of the songs.
I’m not simply going to retell the songs. I’m going to take their themes, characters and atmosphere and reinvent them as pieces of fiction. I’ve already asked several friends who like The Clash to read the first two stories, and I have to say the feedback has been brilliant.
What makes this particularly interesting is the speed at which I can produce them. From beginning to publication, Something About England took approximately 18 months. That’s perfectly understandable. It’s quite a long book, and it was the first book I’d ever written, so much of that time was spent learning the entire process. With this new collection, I believe I can have the writing completed comfortably by Christmas.
My wife is away for 12 days at the end of January, so I intend to set aside two or three days then to undertake the final edit before sending the manuscript for proof reading and publication.
Meanwhile, something else in my writing world has been happening. In the last ten days, I’ve written four short stories completely unrelated to The Clash. That’s six short stories in two weeks, that’s alongside my other writing commitments and running a full-time business. I believe the word is prolific. I’ve therefore decided to embark on yet another book.
The idea is to produce a collection of perhaps 40 or 50 genuinely short stories, probably around 1,000 to 1,500 words each. Proper little character based everyday stories, most with an unexpected twist. Something people can read over a cup of coffee, on a train journey or during a spare ten minutes.
The beauty of this approach is that it provides me with considerably more material to publish elsewhere. Unlike my Denham stories, which I intend to keep largely within the books themselves, these shorter pieces can be published across my WordPress blogs, Substack and Medium. They’ll give readers an opportunity to discover my writing without having to commit to an entire book, but hopefully will.
Someone might come across a story, enjoy it, read another, and eventually decide to investigate what else I’ve written. So, quite apart from the pleasure of writing them.As I move further into the journey of marketing my first book, I’m beginning to realise just how different the reality is from what I originally imagined.
The way I thought I would market Something About England, the timescale I had in mind and even the number of books I expected to produce are all changing remarkably quickly. What began as a fairly straightforward plan to promote one book is developing into a much larger writing project, involving several collections, different styles of fiction and a growing number of publishing platforms.
The ground is shifting beneath my feet almost every week, and I suspect that what I thought was going to be an 18-month marketing exercise is going to turn into something considerably longer and more ambitious. But that’s a subject for my next blog.
Make both our days by buying a copy of my book!
Something About England: Amazon.co.uk: Harris, Mr Christopher, Turner, Louise: 9798181129351: Books
Welcome to Denham, a fictitious Sussex village where behind respectable doors, well-tended gardens and familiar faces, things have a habit of going badly wrong.
Obsession, ambition, deception, jealousy and petty rivalry run through this collection of tragi-comical and satirical short stories. From poltergeists and lottery winners to cricket club feuds and environmental disasters, ordinary people embark on discovering just how quickly an ordinary life can unravel into an extraordinary mess.
Darkly funny, occasionally poignant and populated by characters who are rarely quite what they seem, these stories explore the peculiarities of Middle England, and the uncomfortable territory between respectability and ruin.
