Alan Emmins's Blog, page 2
May 16, 2015
Bench Bugs: Homeless in New York – Excerpt 7 – Levis $59
May 13, 2015
What was the most surprising lesson from living homeless in New York?
May 11, 2015
Why did I stop giving money after living homeless in New York?
February 10, 2015
Make your writing truly interactive
My first book, Mop Men, was commissioned by Julia Rochester of Corvo Books way back when. At that point I was writing articles for magazines and newspapers (there were also a couple of dreadful first attempts at novels tossed in the bottom of the wardrobe). But it wasn’t until I got to work with Julia on Mop Men that I really began to understand why and how I wanted to write.
“Have you read Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
?” Julia asked as we discussed her notes on the first draft.
She quoted the following passage, which is from the opening of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin:
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.
I already enjoyed finding patterns and rhythms in the simplest of actions, like the man shaving, or the woman washing her hair. When finding patterns and rhythms in the things we often overlook, fixing them in words, the most mundane task can become beautiful. But the idea of a calm, passive recording really influenced me, and helped me get rid of me, at least when I was writing.
Right now I am writing an erotic crime novel (an odd choice for me). I have spent some time experimenting with how to write sex scenes. In the beginning they kept making me laugh. It felt silly. My amusement was not making for great sex. But then I remembered my chat with Julia and I took Goodbye to Berlin off the shelf and read the passage again.
That’s it, I reminded myself, become a camera, quite passive, record, don’t think. In real life this would make me a Peeping Tom of the worst kind. As a writer, however, this passage always sets me back on track. It reminds me to leave enough space for the reader to populate the story with his or her own memories and references, whether conscious or otherwise.
If I write, his thin, calloused hand caresses her dark, voluptuous breast our mind serves us pretty much that: a horrible image conjured by a horrible sentence. But if I write simply, his hand caressed her breast, our mind will give us all a similar movement, but we will each see a different hand, a different breast. More than likely we will see something beautiful built upon a memory, or a fantasy. We might see our lovers. But if the character had previously been slipped out of a blue summer dress we might conjure up the image of a woman wearing a blue summer dress that we saw waiting for a bus 10 years ago.
That’s what I love about writing, and it’s what I love about that passage. It reminds me there is nothing more interactive than good, simple storytelling.
Get a digital copy of Mop Men below:
February 2, 2015
Three things writers should start doing (if they are not already)
Earlier today I saw a post on Facebook titled, ‘Three things writers should stop doing.’ As a writer in the midst of a new project after a two-year hiatus, it is fair to say I have the writing bug again. So feeling curious I eagerly clicked the link. I disagreed with the post so much that I clicked off the page fairly quickly.
But several hours later I was back again, trying to work out what bothered me so much about the list. I realized that all three points were behavioral, concerned more with being a writer than with actual craft of writing.
This prompted me to think about whether I have implemented any useful changes to my writing process since embarking on my new project. What am I doing today that I didn't do with my previous books?
This is what I came up with:
Know who your key characters were before they entered your story.
As healthy-minded adults it is a rare occasion that we make decisions in isolation. Our thoughts and actions tend to be influenced by a lifetime of experiences and relationships, that themselves form the foundation of our values. It’s the same for our characters. Understanding where our characters come from, identifying the influential experiences and relationships that shaped them, helps us as writers make the right decisions on their behalves. It helps us to keep their personality traits consistent, and their inconsistencies, when they do happen, credible. Even if it doesn’t make it onto the page, there’s a lot of value in understanding the life that created your character. Also, I quite enjoy nosing around.
Unplug, and spend some quality time with your notes.
I have heard many writers say that they don’t like chapter plans or comprehensive notes because they want to be free when they write. For me it is a solid, although by no means set in stone, chapter plan that gives me the freedom to write. The better my understanding of where I am going and what I am trying to achieve at each point, the more confident my writing is. Still, I consider my notes and chapter plan a living document, subject to potential changes and developments as I go along. But having set the direction I am more free to write than ever because I am not tryng to make big decisions as I go. More and more I make a conscious effort to sit and review my notes in their entirity. Not necessarily with any purpose or task in mind outside of sanity checking and familiarising.
Watch Finding Forrester. Again.
Yes, it may be about absolute greatness, and yes I may be a romantic fool, but I love this film. I don’t watch it that often, maybe every other year. But when I do watch it, it inspires me not only to write (punch the keys, for God’s sake!), but to write better (You ain't seen nothing? What the hell kind of sentence is that?).
If you have any other ideas for things writers should start doing, feel free to add a comment below.
January 28, 2015
My book character owes me 50 bucks...
And when I say bucks I don’t mean bucks, I mean pounds sterling, which means he owes me 75 bucks. What with him being American and me being English it’s an easy mistake. Possibly it’s not the last time this mistake is going to be made. Either way, the character in the book I am currently writing got one over on me and he used my long held fascination with fresh stationary to do it.
There’s something about a fresh notebook and an un-chewed pen that just fills me with optimism. False optimism, mostly, but still that first hit is amazing.
As a kid, I started every school year with an explosion of ambition brought on by a good, long idle in the stationary section of WH Smiths. The slap of a fresh exercise book landing on the desk in front of me always felt like the wake up call I had been waiting for. This year would be different. Instead of a report that read, ‘If Alan would spend less time looking out of the window he would be a bright boy”, I would get a report that read, “Alan is so very bright, not even the view out of the windows can distract him from his lust for knowledge.”
Stationary today still holds many of the same powers over me, even if the fantasy has toned itself down over the years. Fresh notebooks still inspire me to do better. I stop and browse the Moleskin rack whenever I happen to pass one, although my favourite notebook is by far the Leuchtturm 1917 classic (5 3/4" x 8 1/4")
Oh, and maybe I have a small collection of vintage pencils. Let’s not make a big thing of it.
So the character in the book I am writing is an architect, from a long line of architects. As a young man he inherits some tools of the trade from his grandfather. An antique drafting table and stool, some T-squares and several boxes of silver-tipped Graf von Faber-Castells. Even though his peers are working with mechanical pencils, even though he knows that mechanical pencils make the job of drafting easier, the silver-tipped Graf von Faber-Castells remains his pencil of choice throughout his career.
One of the most common pieces of writing advice is, write what you know. You can see my problem, right? I have never held a Silver-tipped Graf von Faber-Castell in my hand, so…
Silver-tipped Graf von Faber-Castells cost £38.00 ($58) for a set of six. Plus there was £10 postage ($15). That’s £8 per pencil ($12). Which is just plain stupid. And I just received the shipping notice so it is too late to change my mind.
And it’s all the fault of this Daniel Whitlock, this architect fellow.
And if upon arrival these £8 a piece pencils turn out to be crap I will confront this Whitlock fool and demand satisfaction. But if they totally seem like, you know, good value for money I might blog about them and start a craze for £8 a pop pencils.
January 22, 2015
So I decided to write an erotic crime novel
Yes, the title of this post is correct, and it is definitely an odd choice being that I have hardly read any crime fiction (in the genre sense) and to date zero erotica. Some people would consider this a problem: write what you know and all that. But I wanted my next project to be a challenge and for reasons I can't fully explain this is the one I chose. Plus, I have never heard anybody say they didn't know about sex.
The problem, in the beginning at least, was that as I typed I kept laughing as if I was writing a comedy. Writing about genitalia, male or female, made me giggle like an 11-year old hearing his first naughty word. Seeing erotic nouns on the screen, typed by my fingers, was just alien and weird. And to be clear, I was not actually using the word 'genitalia'. He does not enter the room, kick the lit candles from the table, lay her down upon it and begin diddling her genitalia with a pair of raw asparagus. There's none of that whatsoever.
But if writing it felt weird in the beginning, getting feedback was slightly nerve racking. I am no stranger to having my work read and critiqued, sometimes by loved ones and friends, sometimes by editors who I have never met face to face, and often, sometime most brutally, by complete strangers. It is part of the programme. Writing almost can't exist, certainly can't improve, without it. But handing out your work for feedback when you know that in part you are going to get feedback on the erotica, not just in terms of the language but also technique, is a whole other thing. You are being judged on your sexuality.
I am now five chapters in and the only judgements on my erotic writings have been from my pregnant girlfriend, and it is fair to say she is biased. She did make all the right noises, at least (sorry). But at some point this work has to go external and I confess that the idea of that continues to make me laugh.
Until then I will keep tapping away. I will enjoy the writing, share the occasional giggle if my girlfriend happens to be within earshot and will push back against any out of context asparagus.
May 3, 2012
JR in his home in the Freedom Tunnel.
The trolley is stowed in a dark corner, out of view from train drivers and passengers. JR picks up a ladder that is lying on the ground and leans it against the wall with a swift, practiced motion.
‘Wait there,’ he tells me as he gathers some of his shopping bags and mounts the ladder. It creaks under the strain. As JR climbs, the bags bounce off his legs and hips. JR keeps climbing. Every rung of the ladder needs to be used. At the top he swings the bags up and into the darkness of a small entrance before he descends and hands me two more.
‘When you get up there, just stand still and away from the edge, then when I get up I’ll let us in.’
At the top there’s a thick metal handrail made of tubing. JR grabs it and pulls himself up onto the ledge, pushing me a little further into the darkness. He doesn’t poke his head back out to see if anybody is there, or if anybody was watching us as we climbed. He simply turns and with another of his practiced actions lowers the ladder back to the ground with a cord he has attached for that very purpose. Now we stand in the dark entryway. His reception area.
A heavy blanket hangs on the left wall. Beneath the blanket there’s a rug. JR pulls both back to reveal a large square hole. He reaches in and gropes the inside wall until his fingertips touch a cable. He tickles his way along the cable to the switch and turns it on.
And then there is light.
‘OK, in you go, just hop on the wall and then walk down the ladder.’
I do as he says, though I don’t make it look as easy as JR makes it sound. The wall is quite high and I have an embarrassing moment where I try to scramble over it, eventually only managing with some assistance from a laughing JR.
JR, considerably shorter even than me, swings his left leg up into the hole in the wall with ease.
On the other side is another smaller ladder. It is positioned like a ramp, leading up to the square portal. The ladder is partly covered with fabric, more blankets and rugs.
I hold my breath for a second.
JR doesn’t notice the smell any more. But to me the smell is strong, a mixture of food, sweat, smoke, feet, dirt and excrement.
On the immediate left, tucked into the corner, I see a white plastic garden chair. There’s a hole cut into the seat. Beneath the hole is a bucket. Next to the bucket are four extra-large water bottles. They are filled with a foggy, yellowy liquid that appears to have random brown shapes floating about inside.
JR puts his shopping down.
The room is about ten feet wide and twenty-five feet in length with a ceiling that must be fifteen feet high. There is stuff everywhere.
STUFF!
Unidentifiable stuff.
Plastic shopping bags that bulge in different shapes and sizes are spread all over the floor. All of the bags are tied at the top, with a simple little bow. Most of the bags are adorned with the red and blue Duane Read logo stretched out of shape. It is not possible to know what is in each bag. Even JR doesn’t know.
‘I mean, my guess would be food and clothes – mostly – and you know – stuff.’
For June the room is surprisingly cool.
‘I got the place insulated about three months ago. I passed a site where they were in the process of renewing the insulation, so I got the old stuff for free. It works great too. I got it going all around. You can see it on the ceiling. Keeps the heat out in the summer and keeps the cold out in the winter.’
Fabric hangs on most wall surfaces. A huge maroon-coloured duvet cover is draped over the exit. It is splattered with sunflowers of many different sizes and hangs crooked to where it rests on the ramp. The back of the room is split into two levels. A wooden ladder leads to the upper level, which is JR’s sleeping area. The lower level serves as a kind of living room. There’s a two-seater sofa pushed up against the left wall, mostly covered with dirty clothes and porn magazines. In this living area, two different fabrics have been chosen to add homeliness to the dwelling. On the left wall, behind the sofa, is a seascape fabric. Blue and turquoise waves are littered with fish: yellow fish turn back on themselves; pink fish with blue zigzags swim from left to right. The back wall is covered in a big square of deep-red velvet. It hangs from ceiling to floor like a stage curtain, the row of multi-coloured Christmas lights that run along its top only adding to this impression.
Two pictures – watercolours on card – are pinned to the top of the red velvet wall. The first is of a faceless woman tending a vineyard; the second is a landscape of a pretty European village. Other homely touches include a circular mirror framed in gilded metalwork, a Monopoly board game and a copy of last month’s Playboy.
Along the right-hand wall are cabinets and shelves. There’s a stereo, a stack system with a turntable, two tape decks and a radio. In the middle of the wall there’s a plastic shelving unit holding condiments: salt, black pepper, ketchup, mustard, honey, vinegar, oil, peanut butter, hot sauce.
Next to the shelving unit is a large oblong table, stained dark brown. Stacked up on the table are pots and pans, enough to man a small restaurant: six frying pans, four small saucepans, three medium saucepans, two large saucepans and five chopping boards.
There is no free space in the room. All flat surfaces have items stacked on them. The small table next to the sofa holds a lamp, an empty vodka bottle, an ashtray, five light bulbs and a medium-sized indeterminate sculpture. All surfaces hold empty liquor bottles, mostly vodka, but also beer bottles.
‘Make yourself at home,’ JR tells me after spotting me standing there, a little unsure where I should go. He attempts to move some cloths from the sofa, but only clears a small space. ‘Sit there,’ he says and hands me the Playboy magazine.
August 19, 2011
The Chewing Gum Adventures
A chewing gum is a chewing gum is a chewing gum. But now and again a chewing gum comes along who doesn't really want to be a chewing gum.
COMING SOON IN DANISH >>> The Chewing Gum Adventures
Like the facebook page for updates, free stories, colouring pages and more...
April 19, 2011
murder most metallic
‘Murder’, it said in bold black letters on a bright yellow background. I have seen these signs before. Most Londoners have. Big, buckled and awkward, the signs appeals for witnesses to come forward in the strictest confidence. Such signs are often chained to a lamppost to ensure against theft, against concerns that somebody might march off with the big awkward A-frame and stand it in their bedroom as some kind of trophy, a drunken prize. Not a murder, then, just a lump of metal with the word murder printed on it in bold, with a time, date and phone number
This particular sign was at Marble Arch. There were three or four of them spread around. One was placed to catch the eyes of people sitting on the benches eating sandwiches. Another was aimed at the cars and buses that curved around Park Lane on their way to Knightsbridge. One seemed to be aimed at me as I exited the pedestrian subway at exit 10. I can’t say that I have ever paid much attention to such a sign before. I remember reading one while stuck in traffic. But this sign, even when it was no more than a flash of yellow, sent a chill down my spine.
On the 30th of August…
That was two weeks ago, I heard myself thinking.
A man was assaulted… he died from his injuries…
The reason this bothered me was because on that day, September 14th, I was working on a story for Time Out magazine about homelessness. I was living rough in London for 7 days, gathering portraits of life on the street. I had come up to Marble Arch with a mind to sleep there. Any concerns generated by the yellow sign were all about me. I had no thoughts for this assaulted man. There was no assaulted man. There was a yellow sign with the word murder on it. It was a time and a date. A phone number I had no use for.
I asked a young homeless guy in the area if he knew anything about the murder. Specifically, I wanted to know if it was homeless person that had been murdered. He thought that it was. On a wave of vulnerability I scurried back to the relative safety of Covent Garden, to a group of homeless men who had taken me into their group, who looked out for me and protected me.
A week later I wrote the story. I mentioned the sign. Not to highlight a murder, but the sense of vulnerability on the streets. A week after that, on October 4th, the story ran along with a small photo of the sign. That was it. It was all in the past. I moved on to other projects. Then I received an e-mail from Alan Rutter, my editor at Time Out. The subject line read, ‘On a sadder note’.
Could you pass this lady's details on to Alan Emmins. She'd really like to talk to him. It was her partner who was murdered at Marble Arch (as mentioned under 'Tuesday').
“Why?” was my initial, stiff-backed reaction. I didn’t know the man. I didn’t meet the man; I met the sign. I told myself I would call her after the weekend. I meant it, too. But I couldn’t stop thinking about why she wanted to talk to me. I called her at 8pm on the Friday, the day of the e-mail. Her daughter answered the phone, “Oh, mum, it’s the man from the magazine.“
Mum cut in, “Tell him to call back in five minutes.”
“Sorry, my mum’s dying my hair and her hands are covered in hair dye, can you call-”
“DO CALL BACK THOUGH!” I heard the girl’s mother shout in the background.
I called back.
Susan had been sitting in a dentist’s waiting room with a friend when she came across the homeless story. There were lots of magazines to chose from. For whatever reason she chose Time Out. She noticed the article about homelessness and thought it might be interesting, relevant even.
“Well this is what Ian used to do,” she told me over the phone. “Go on these long benders and sleep on the streets… Then I got to the part about the sign and…”
Ian. So it wasn’t just a metal sign. It was Ian.
“When I read your story I thought, I have to contact this man. I have to tell him about Ian.”
What Susan was saying, very sweetly, was that this may have been a sign to me, a bold word on a yellow background with a time and a date, but to her this was a person: it was Ian.
“If it were me,” she continued, “I’d want to know something about the person. I mean, you stopped and you reacted to the sign, so I thought you’d like to know who he was?”
I wasn’t sure at first whether I did. Whether it was right for me to know anything about this person. It seemed so personal. None of my business. But Susan was so enthused that we spoke on the phone for well over an hour. She told me that Ian was from Newcastle. She told me that he was thirty-four-years old. A year older than me. She told me he was beaten over the head with a bottle. Beaten until he was dead.
I thought about Ian a lot over the following days. I thought about the harshness of these metal signs.
I was struck by their sadness. They signal an abrupt and violent end, and the absence of another soul to speak on the deceased’s behalf. I didn’t want to speak on Ian’s behalf, but to at least elaborate a little on his life. I wanted to get him off that sign, if I could. But I questioned my reasoning. Who was I doing this for? Can I not stop being a writer for five minutes?
Then I got a text from Susan, correcting an error in the e-mail address she had given me over the phone. I called her back and told her I had been thinking about Ian, that I wanted to write about him, that I wanted, somehow, to turn him back into a person again. I asked her how she would feel about me, a stranger, attempting this?
We met two days later. We sat outside the Three Greyhounds on Old Compton Street, drinking a coke and water.
“He had been working on a house just over the road from where I live,” Susan began. “He told me I caught his attention. On his last day, when I came home, he started calling out to me. He came running over and said, ‘When are we having that drink then?’ I thought, do what?”
Ian, over the following few minutes, convinced Susan to go out with him.
“When?” she asked.
“Tonight,” he told her.
He was on her door a few hours later with a big grin and a bigger bunch of flowers.
The following Wednesday he was on the doorstep with his bags.
“He told me he had been sharing a flat with some other fellow. He was complaining that his stuff kept going missing. At first he said he just wanted to leave a bag at my place. Later that evening I thought, hold on a minute, he thinks he’s moved in!”
Susan describes Ian as a lost soul, as a child who couldn’t stop chasing the party. Her suspicions that things weren’t quite what they seemed were confirmed on the occasions when Ian would take her into the city, where they would go for long walks.
“We’d be walking along and all the homeless people would say hello to him. He would try to pretend he didn’t know them, but some would chase after him saying, ‘Ian, Ian, it’s me!’ and then when he was confronted, face to face, he’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, sorry. I didn’t recognise you.’ I remember thinking, how does he know all these homeless people?”
Susan took Ian to a friend’s party. Although a great time was had by all, and the night ended with all Susan’s friends demanding that she bring Ian out more often, she recognised something from her past.
“I’d grown up with alcoholics all my life. My Father. My mother. Ian had made a point of not drinking in front of me at first, though he found it odd that I didn’t drink and kept asking why. But then at the party he was totally smashed. I thought, I know what this is.”
Ian showed more and more of himself. This included his dependency on alcohol. Susan and Ian quickly made an arrangement: when he drank and went on what she described as ‘a bender’ he had to go elsewhere. This wasn’t so much for her peace-of-mind, but for that of her sixteen-year-old daughter, Sophia. Ian agreed, and soon began disappearing for weeks at a time.
“That’s how he knew all the homeless people: he was one of them,” Susan laughed.
Susan never knew where Ian was during his absences. But soon enough she would get a text message, either from Ian’s phone, or if he had lost his phone from one of his friend’s. He would test the waters with his text messages before asking if he could come home.
“He always wanted me to go and meet him at the station. Always. He would just go on at me until I agreed. So I’d be there, by the barriers, and then I’d hear him. ‘That’s my wife! She’s come to collect me! See, that’s my wife!’ And there he’d be, this big oaf of a man with a huge bunch of flowers and a big smile. We weren’t married. That’s just what he told everybody. I knew what he’d been up to. He was sat on the train telling everybody he was on his way home, that his loving wife was coming to collect him. He was trying to convince everybody around him that he was normal, that he had a normal life.”
Though Ian’s life was far from normal, he did long for normality, along with a smattering of designer clothes and gadgets. When he did have money, either through building site work or bank loans, he would go on shopping sprees. He would lavish gifts on Susan, one time buying her a top-of-the-range washing machine.
“When it didn’t arrive on the day it was supposed to I called the shop. They told me he’d gone in and cancelled it, got a refund. I thought to myself, well, I wont be seeing him for a few weeks.”
It sounds, by anyone’s standard, like an awful lot to put up with. Susan and Ian were together for two years. It was during this second year that she started to see a change, to see signs that Ian was starting to think of a different life, to move toward a different life. On one shopping trip Susan noticed Ian was no longer by her side. She turned round and found him gazing in a Mothercare window.
“Look at the little boots, Sue,” he said. “Hey, we could have a baby!”
Ian dragged Sue excitedly into the store to test drive pushchairs. On the train ride home Sue remembers Ian with a big bunch of grapes, offering them to everybody around them with his excited Newcastle drawl.
“Would you like a g-r-a-a-p-e? Would you like a g-r-a-a-p-e? Sue, nobody wants a g-r-a-a-p-e.”
But even though Sue saw this warmer, loving side to Ian, she knew exactly where they were going, and where they weren’t.
“I loved him. He was just a big kid, a lost soul. He wanted everybody to love him and admire him. That’s why he never had anything: he gave it all away. When he had money he’d be in the pub with a handful of tenners, waving them around and buying drinks for everybody. When he came back from these benders of his, and sometimes he was in a right old state, stinking of urine and sick and filth, something just kept telling me to take him back, to take care of him. I think because I knew we wouldn’t last – and I absolutely knew we wouldn’t last – that made it easier, knowing this wasn’t forever. He was just a lost and troubled soul and I just thought while he’s here if I can just make him happy, make him smile, then that’s a good thing… I never thought it would end like this though, with murder.”
When Susan read the homeless article at the beginning of October, she came to a section describing how a man had become very angry with me and threatened many and varied forms of violence. He basically (and rightly) didn’t believe I was homeless, which was odd, as I hadn’t claimed to be. Susan wondered if this had been what happened with Ian. She imagined him sitting there amongst the homeless announcing, “I don’t even need to be here. I’ve got a wife and a house!”
It will be a while before Susan gets her ‘why’? She will need to attend the trial. And she does need to attend the trial.
“I have to go, to let this other fellow know that I forgive him.”
The other fellow being the man the police have in custody for Ian’s murder. The reason, if you like, for the cold metallic sign, for the call for witnesses, for Susan and I sitting outside a pub smiling at the tales of a man who is no more.
