The MMU Art Department run this every year; art students from all disciplines drop their mistakes into big silver bins and the public are invited to an open evening of displayed work.
You can leave sealed bids for pieces, and a couple of days later you hear whether you've been lucky enough to bag a unique and brilliant mistake. We got our hands on a beautiful block-printed textile in acid colours for a mere twenty. It's a masterful piece. There can't be many better ways for an institution to champion the necessity of making mistakes. American painter and printmaker Nathan Oliveira is credited with claiming that "all art is a recovery from the first line," an observation that suits writing just as well. Here's a thing though. One student at this year's FOFU had submitted the most amazing piece of fine art in delicate, layered pencil work. I couldn't help think it might have been their best work, snuck in. It subverts the spirit of the project; uses it instead for personal status. Check me out guys - this is me at my worst. Sharing mistakes, setbacks, creative mis-steps, threatens the ego. It takes bravery to do it. But it's worth it. It strengthens the unit, the community, rather than the individual. That's a beautiful thing. This here is Matt Arnold and Freddie Wong, two thirds of the Storybreak podcast. I'm a hu-uge Storybreak fan and if, like me, you take your podcasts with a XXL side-order of irreverent cussing, infantile fart-jokes and obscure video game references, Storybreak's going to be right up your street.
Heads up if you don't know; though the format up to now has given the panelists one hour to break a story and develop a pitch for a movie, from July 30th we'll be following one of their (and mine) fave ideas - Heaven Heist - from conception to completion. If you fancy checking it out and want a good place to start, some of their best results have - IMO - been with: (i) their pitch for a stand-alone Aunt Beru Star Wars Movie, (ii) their Pirates of the Caribbean re-boot and (iii) Jurassic World 3, which they decide would work well set on a cruise ship. Enjoy! Let's be clear - today's title is nothing but a cynical exercise in click-bait. Listening to movie scores will not make you a better writer. If it did, I'd be significantly more successful than I am.
Just imagine it was legitimately true, though. Where might you start? Here, friends. I bear the gift of moody music that fuels the imagination. Do the tips of your typin' fingers a solid and check these out on Spotify: Jeff Beal’s House of Cards score or his work for Gypsy. Alexandre Desplat’s music for The Danish Girl, The Ides of March, The Painted Veil or Syriana. Anne Dudley’s score for Elle or her music for Poldark. Harry Gregson-Williams’ scores for The Zookeeper’s Wife, The Equalizer 2, Déjà Vu or Breath. James Newton Howard’s work for Snow Falling on Cedars, The Lady in the Water, Concussion or Michael Clayton. Thomas Newman’s work for He Named Me Malala, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Debt or Revolutionary Road. Rachel Portman’s score for Never Let Me Go or Despite the Falling Snow. Hans Zimmer’s music for The Thin Red Line or Frost/Nixon. You're welcome. Here we all are at a recent visit to a smashin' little primary school in Didsbury, Manchester. The kids had all been reading The Poison Boy at their book club. When I arrived, they had a sheet of fifty pre-prepared questions; drilling-down into character motivation, structure, themes and images... it was an amazing event. The kind writers share on social all the time. You know the score - the six-figure book deal announced with a humble-brag tweet that begins, "Um, so this happened..."
But here's the truth of it. Triumphs like these are outliers. As an antidote; a snapshot from early in my writing life, a summer reading challenge event in Derby, maybe 2015. Lots of kids from a range of schools. A number of fellow YA authors - Emma Pass was there, Sarah Naughton was there. The books were free to take home with you, and I was standing next to a pile of Poison Boys as children passed through the hall, chatting in friendship groups, teachers letting them off the leash for an exciting scamper about. Lots of laughter, pointing and book-collecting. Except in my part of the hall. These books were free, remember. And no-one was picking up mine. Bloody hell, I recall thinking. I literally can't give these books away. Much later I was reading Terry Brooks' Sometimes the Magic Works and was reassured to read one in particular of his book-signing confessions. Brooks was tasked with writing the novelisation of The Phantom Menace and when it came out - this is pre-expanded-universe, remember; a world starved of Star Wars tie-ins - "....I flew to California the next day for a midday signing at a Wal-Mart where not a dozen people showed." You don't that sort of thing on social. Picture it: photo of an empty bookshop, a writer tucked away, alone, behind a signing table, piles of unsold books either side of them. And above, the caption So this happened... Why September Shorts? Why thirty blog posts in thirty days? Sounds (a) crazy and (b) pointless, right? Maybe.
By way of some sort of answer, a post about pots. I love this anecdote from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s excellent Art and Fear. There's a ceramics teacher at an art school. (The story is probably apocryphal: short, powerful, truthful, much like a fable.) The teacher splits the ceramics students into two groups. On the left-hand side of the studio the students are encouraged to produce as much work as possible. Pot after pot – quantity is the aim. The work would simply be weighed at the end of the production period and grades assigned based on the amount of work produced. On the right-hand side of the class quality was the aim: ‘Those being graded on “quality” … needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.’ When grading the work, the teacher adjusted tack and decided to mark everything based on quality. A ‘curious fact emerged’, write Bayles and Orland, ‘the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity’. The authors conclude: ‘If you think good work is somehow synonymous with perfect work, you are headed for big trouble.’ So there you go. Thirty pots in thirty days. No typo. |
Archives
November 2021
Categories |