The Print Project, Bradford

Letterpress. I loves me a good letterpress: it makes me go weak at the knees. In letter press, metal plates are used to impress text and ink deep into card. Every single page in letterpress needs to be made by an actual human being, operating several tons of weighty machinery. It's beautiful and it's unique and it doesn't get used very often any more, so three cheers for The Print Project in Bradford who are working hard to resurrect it.

This project is based at the 1 in 12 club in Bradford. The art of letterpress is centuries old, and this lot, Fred Dibnah-style, are doing what they can to keep the skills and expertise necessary to run one alive. With the increasing development of other methods of printing which are cheaper and more convenient, the art of letterpress - which produces something very beautiful and memorable - could be in danger of dying out.

Unlike items lazer-printed or photocopied, the marvellous thing about letterpress is its texture. In picking up a letter-pressed item you can feel, in your very hands, the sweat and skill that has gone into making it. A letter-pressed booklet or flier feels a little weightier in your hands, and with the text sunk and pressed into the card, you can actually feel the texture of the words you're reading with your fingers. (fact fans, this is very much not the sort of thing you can get from an app on your iPhone.... I'm just sayin'.)

At present The Print Project can produce leaflets, stationery, CD packaging, booklets and leaflets, but welcome contacts to discuss other commissions. If you're interested in letterpress, or even if you just have a bit of a 'thing' for different printing techniques, it's well worth a look.

The Print Project's blog
Print Project on Facebook

Things that go by the wayside for writers

There are lots of things that writers are good at. Sitting still for long periods of time with only their own thoughts in their head for company. Inventing whole new worlds. Making pretend people come to life. Making a reader see a picture in their mind using only a collection of well-chosen words. Typing. Procrastinating. There are all sorts of things at which writers do regularly, and at which only a writer can excel.

But... there are also many things that writers are bad at. When you're busy trying to write novels / stories / terrible pulpy romance novels, there are so many things that necessarily have to go by the wayside. So few of us can make a living from our art that we instead spend our free time holed up in a semi-darkened room with only a laptop, a notebook, and a mug of tea for company: friends, what effect does that have on us? What, in other words, do we 'miss'?

Socialising. My friends still wonder why I glance around shiftily and make excuses when they invite me out. People never understand when you tell them, "I've got to write". "WRITE SCHMITE!" they shout. "YOU CAN ALWAYS WRITE TOMORROW BUT THIS INVITE TO COCKTAILS IS A ONE-TIME ONLY OFFER." Not that it matters, even if you do go out, because the next thing that goes by the wayside in the writer's life is...

Having normal things to talk about. People at work always want to talk about last night's telly, and I DIDN'T SEE ANY OF IT, because I was TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL. But you can't tell people at work you were writing a novel: they won't understand, and anyway it only makes you look like a pretentious wanker. So instead you tell them, "Oh no, I must have missed it, I was painting the bathroom." And then your workmates think you are weird because you, apparently, have spent every evening for the past 3 years painting the bathroom. "How big is her bathroom?" they must think. "Does this woman live in the Golden Gate Bridge?"

Having normal social skills. You spend your evenings missing conversational telly, and having conversations with imaginary people who, by the way, most definitely did not exist until you made them up. It makes you a bit twitchy when people talk. For one thing, you find yourself mentally editing everything they say; and for another, you start obsessing over whether their character really would say that sort of thing, or is she just saying it to drive the plot forward at the expense of realistic characterisation? Viewing every human interaction as an extension of your plot quandary starts to make you look a bit strange. If you didn't already look strange enough.

Currently Reading

In Pursuit Of The English Doris Lessing
The Complete Maus Art Spiegelman
Twilight Stephenie Meyer (my friend lent me it, and I didn't want to be rude)
Soho Keith Waterhouse

Friends, who among you has never bought a copy of her own book from Amazon?

Come on, you've all done it at least once. Don't make me feel like a pariah here.

A couple of weeks ago - over a year since first receiving the good news that my words were to appear in print (IN PRINT) in a book that people could BUY - in a book shop - my words finally were printed, and the book that they were in came out, and a copy of it was brought to my door by the postman.

Well, I say one copy. It would be more accurate to say 'a dozen copies', since that's how many author-copies I insisted on the publisher sending. (Thanks, Stu). Because it's never too early to start buying Christmas presents, right?!!

No. I am not going to start giving people a copy of my own book for Christmas presents. What am I, David Hasselhoff? No, the idea was to send them out to anybody who has supported me in the long and torturous road to getting published. Its a road that's taken in a lot of perseverance, a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, lots of blank glassy stares and going red in the face from frustration, and many many tears. The nature of 'help' my long-suffering pals and boyfriend have given me is wide-ranging. It encompasses not complaining too loudly when I take up the entire kitchen table with my notebooks and bits of paper; it includes silently bringing cups of tea when I'm in the midst of a midden. It includes friendly chats and afternoons spent companion-writing around a friend's house. It includes not laughing at things I've written, even the attempts that were very rubbish. On the part of the long-suffering boyfriend, support has included not only putting up with long periods of black, moody silence, lots of shouting and stomping around the house, wiping my face on the cat and crying, but also building me a desk and long-term lending me a laptop to work on.

So there were plenty of people to thank, and I wanted to send each one of them a copy. But guess what? Nobody wanted to be given one. Readers, the support of my nearest and dearest was so extensive that they wouldn't hear of being gifted with a copy of the book; they all insisted on buying one. To this very day, I still have a dozen copies of Even More Tonto Short Stories on my coffee table at home.

The book is also available on Amazon. So I had all these copies on my table, and then allegedly according to the Internet, you could buy it off Amazon. I almost couldn't quite believe it. I wanted to check that it worked. And so, one day (and I am pretty embarrassed to admit it), I bought a copy of my own book.

Unconvinced that there was a book publicly available with my words in it, I clicked "buy", and remained mildly cynical until the day when the postman came to the door with it in his hands. (Friends, don't try this it at home. It probably technically counts as 'shilling'.) Thinking that the whole thing might be a product of my fevered imagination (apparently a necessary trait for authors), I tore the cardboard wrapping off with shaking fingers: and there it was underneath, a thirteenth copy of Even More Tonto Short Stories, to go with the other dozen I still have sitting on the table in my living room....

Let's get lit-ical, lit-ical....

Here's two up-coming literature festivals: Ilkley Literature Festival, between the 1st and 17th October; and the Morley Literature Festival, between the 11th and 17th October. The two towns are within train-catching and bus-catching distance of one another, so if it was your wont, you could watch Will Self in Ilkley and then get the bus to Morley to watch him again. At one or the other of these festivals you can: write poetry with Simon Armitage; hear about Iain M. Banks' new novel from the man himself; hear the best new from emerging writers, courtesy of The Cadaverine magazine at the Ilkley fringe festival; and sing along with John Shuttleworth.

Currently reading

Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
Agnes Grey Charlotte Bronte
The Shooting Party Anton Chekhov

Thoughts of the day...

I'm still in the enviable position of having plenty of writing time at the moment. I know it's enviable because I told a writer-friend how much I'm getting done at the moment, and his face turned green and he tried to scratch my eyes out, right there on the pavement, in front of the library. The ensuing injuries explain why I haven't had much time to update this blog lately.... sorry.

This week I have mostly been watching (on ghetto Sky+, also known as "Freeview Plus"; apparently kids these days call that "Pov TV", Pov being short for Povvo or Poverty rather than point of view), a show called In Their Own Words: British Novelists of the 20th Century. This is a series currently being shown on BBC4, about writers of the 20th century. It uses archive footage of interviews with the authors themselves, so you get an eclectic mix of writers from Barbara Cartland to Christopher Isherwood and from Jean Rhys to Robert Graves talking about their own work.

It's a fascinating show, partly in terms of the revelations about attitudes of the times in which writers lived (you see Evelyn Waugh being interviewed by a female journalist in the 60s, find out that he only agreed to do the interview on the specification that he was interviewed by 'a pretty gel', and that off-camera he asked the production crew "When is she going to take her clothes off?") but also about the writers themselves. There's much encouragement to be had in the knowledge that even EM Forster suffered from the writer's gremlin. Even after writing some of the finest novels of the early 20th century, books which were critically acclaimed and massively popular at the time, he didn't consider himself to be a great writer. Of his own capabilities, he said: "I don't consider myself to be a great writer because I have only really managed to get down onto paper 3 types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be. When you get to the really great people, like Tolstoy, you'll find they can get hold of all types." It speaks volumes that even a great writer like EM Forster had crippling doubts about his own self-worth.

So I really recommend this series, even if just for the fact you get to find out Top Facts like that Robert Graves mainly wrote I, Claudius to pay off his mortgage.

Currently reading

One Big Damn Puzzler John Harding
The Language of Others Clare Morrall
Blankets Craig Thompson
Shortcomings Adrian Tomine (FIVE BLOODY STARS, although come on Adrian, stop being such a bastard to your girlfriend).

Too busy to update properly

From Better Book Titles

Sorry, readers. I'm too busy to update properly at the moment. More soon.

Have you got a story to tell?

As part of the first ever National Short Story Week in November, I'm in the process of organising an event that celebrates the short-story teller in all of us. After all, there's nothing the British pub-going public like better than a good old yarn, right?!

This event is loosely themed for "Myths and Legends". (Hence the picture of Thor). But you take this theme as lightly as you like: there's no need to get all studied up on Norse mythology before you come, or to know the name of every single Roman God. You will not be thrown out bodily if your story is not to do with ancient myths. Your story could be to do with a myth from your school-days, a living legend you've met, a legend or myth you yourself have created... the theme is really yours to riff off as you like.

Additional musical accompaniment will be provided.

In addition, (although this, also, is not compulsory), you are welcome to dress up as your favourite myth or legend. Whether you're going for Artemis The Hunter or Peter Beardsley, all costumes will be judged as equal, except for when it comes to prize giving at the end of the night when the winner of the costume competition is revealed.

If you've got a story to tell and you'd like to speak at this event, share it! Please get in touch with me at s dot j dot bradley [at] hotmail DOT com.

You can join the facebook event for "Have you got a story to tell?" here.