Postcards from a Flat Land

'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type': an interview with author Christopher Allen

This is the first blog interview I've hosted here and I'm very proud to be able to present Chrostopher Allen and his satirical novel 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type'.

'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type' made me laugh. Lots. But Christopher Allen's attention to detail and acerbic wit didn't just make me laugh. The author also uses his unique sense of perspective to expose his characters’ vulnerabilities and, as the novel progresses, I found myself looking back on my own life, specifically to a period around twenty years ago. I'm not sure whether you'd call this nostalgia or hindsight. It has partly to do with sharing a house at that time with, among others, a young gay man who was seriously obsessed with the 'trappings' of what it meant to be gay, but it also relates more generally to the insecurity and the worries everyone has at that age about being judged. On the surface, 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type' is a satire that takes place over a short period of time, when the central character is in his forties, but it felt to me as if, under that surface layer, it was dealing with a longer period of time.

 

Kate: Is 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type' about growing up? About how we react to how others perceive us at different stages in our lives?

Christopher: Hi, Kate! First, thank you for laughing! And thank you for reading the Conversations so closely. The story is definitely about growing up, from Curt Child to Curt Adult. Thank you for picking up on the “stages of life” theme, each represented by a particular sitcom (Friends, The Golden Girls, etc.) Curt, in his forties and gay, is still trying to figure out how to be an adult gay man, which I think is not so uncommon—especially with the current stereotype of “the gay man” bombarding his thoughts from every side.

Kate: When I'd finished 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type' I felt that this was a story that could have been told in many ways. Can you say something about why you chose to tell this story as a satire?

Christopher: Well, I didn’t set out to write a satire. In the beginning, I just started writing the two characters who appeared. Their dialogue was like a train wreck off sorts. I spent a long time rewriting in the beginning, trying to figure out exactly what I was doing, and I’m not sure exactly when the story became a satire. Maybe after the first three Conversations? It was at this point I knew I needed Teri, the all-knowing gayru, to teach Curt, a clueless good-old boy, how to be gay so that society would know it before he opened his mouth.

Kate: Are there other satires that inspired you? If so, why?

Christopher: I’m going to say that the works of Twain, Dickens, Huxley and Palahniuk have informed my writing but I don’t think in ways that I would have been conscious of if you hadn’t asked the question. I’m much more conscious of satire, parody and social commentary in the situation comedies that I poke “fun” at in the Conversations, especially in adult cartoons like The Simpsons. I’m a big fan of The Simpsons because I see something more than comedy there; I see a purpose: to hold a mirror up to the American family.

Kate: Towards the end of the novel your central character says: The whole purpose of these lessons in Greater Gayness was to make me gay enough so that people would know it without my having to say it.

I'm fascinated by this line. I think it's very poignant and says so much, not just about gayness, but about our fear of having to explain who we are and how much more accepted we feel when we don't have to explain ourselves. In this particular case, it also relates to the central character's fear about coming out as gay to his parents. Can you say something about the feelings behind this line and why you chose it?

Christopher: I’m so glad you’ve grabbed this line. It is the central theme. Teri is trying to make Curt’s life easier, trying to teach him the trappings of gayness so that the world can “place” him, so that Curt will know his place in the world—in essence so that Curt will assume the role expected of him by society and stop being so confusing. In Curt’s mixed-up head, he thinks his identity is his gayness. Being “Curt” isn’t enough. 

Kate: Any thoughts on the fear of being 'normal'? Fear of mediocrity is a strong theme in 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type', while, of course, the central character's alter ego is actually setting up an alternative 'normal' with every gesture he makes.

Christopher: I think Curt’s is the fear of being invisible, of being overlooked or misunderstood. His desires in life are quite normal. He just wants a person who’ll rub his feet and grow old and fat with him. He wants family and intimacy—the two things Teri doesn’t want for Curt. Teri wants Curt’s new normal to be the suicidally depressed life of the party, the comic relief for the ever-present audience.

Kate: Last but not least, an expat question: Did you find it easier to write the book living at a distance from the country it depicts?

Christopher: Great question. Of course I have no way of knowing how the book would have turned out if I’d stayed in the US, but I’m going to say yes. Living abroad gives one a new—possibly more skeptical?—point of view of one’s own country. It is an American story. This has often occurred to me. It takes place in NYC and parodies/satirizes our sitcom culture. There are fleeting references to Great Britain, but the satire is 99% Gay in the USA. 

Kate: Thanks for the interview, Christopher. It's been lovely to find out a little bit more about your novel and how it came about.

You can buy 'Conversations with S. Teri O'Type' here.

 

 

 

 

Submit Or Be Damned?

I had a rejection letter this morning. It said that although a short story I'd submitted was being rejected, that didn't mean it was "bad" (their quotation marks). To be fair to the publication concerned - Used Furniture Review  - they did go on to say that my story just wasn't right for them and that they'd like to see more of my work. My lesson to learn from this: research your market properly. Nonetheless, I stared at the word "bad" for some time, gripped by various flights of paranoid fancy. I forced myself to concentrate on the realist who was clinging on in the background, saying the same thing over and over again: of course it's not "bad", because I wouldn't have submitted it if it was, would I? And in this case, no, I can quite honestly say the story isn't "bad". But…

Just how much of the work we send out isn't really "good"? When we click send, what exactly are we sending out? How big are the question marks? And do we really care?

I've been on the other side of the fence for a few months now, working alongside Claire King as a Fiction Editor for The View From Here. During those months, I've been musing quietly to myself on what I'm learning from my new role about writing stories and submitting them. This particular rejection – the unusual wording of it – made me decide it was time to share my thoughts.

Okay, I'm going to swap between editor's and writer's hats a few times to try and figure out why we get rejected.  

Editor's hat:

When a story is good, usually it grabs me by the throat. There are also stories that sneak up on me from behind, getting better and better, but there are less of them. Every time I start reading, if I haven't been grabbed by the throat, I'm hoping the story will be the kind that creeps up from behind. Mostly, they are not. Now, before I say more, like any other editor, I am a subjective creature. I'll admit to that. There's always the small matter of taste. But I want to like your work. I want to love it.

Writer's hat:

As the years go by, I find I abandon more and more stories as I write. The questions that push me to leave the stories at the wayside are these:

Why am I writing the story I'm writing?

What do I hope to achieve?

Is it a story worth telling?

These are questions I ask myself long before I consider submitting. In the past, I didn't ask these questions. I silenced voices of doubt. I said instead: I wrote it, I put effort into it, so even if I'm not really sure whether it says much that needs saying, I'll send it out.

Okay, but say I decide my story is worth telling. Why do I then, sometimes. send it out before it's ready?

I've done it so many times and I don't know whether it's comforting, or depressing, to realise I'm not alone. And I am most certainly not. The thing is that the duff opening line, or the baggy middle you can't see yourself when you've only just finished the piece, sticks out a mile to anyone else. And it's not just inexperienced writers doing this, there have been some very impressive biographies accompanying stories that have made me think 'if only you'd put it aside for a while and come back to it…'

I've worked in the film business for years and I used to blame my own tendency to submit too early on that: screenplays are blueprints and often you're not allowed to 'finish' them yourself. There's always someone who wants to fiddle and tell their own story vicariously from the other side of the desk. But actually, I don't think it's that.

So why do writers submit too early?

I think we fear using our own critical faculties – the story becomes a hot potato we want to pass on to someone else for a 'yes' or 'no'. Judging for ourselves is hard work. It will almost certainly mean, yes, a rewrite. And worse, I think that, all too often, instead of the important questions, 'Is this story the story I want it to be? Is it going to move my readers, tell them the things I want to tell them?' we ask, 'Am I good enough?'. This can lead to paralysis… so faced with the wrong question, we decide it's best not to ask questions at all. And we submit…

We're seeking an odd range of things as writers. Just like anyone trying to do anything, I imagine. One of the things we're looking for, even if it's indirectly, is the approval of others. We want them to like our work. But this should come after we've finished writing the best story we can. Unfortunately, the approval monster has a tendency to come and start tapping us on the shoulder long before we're done. This is very interesting, because it seems to me, that it's the very same inner critic that tells us we're not good enough, that's making us send work out when it's not ready to submit. A nasty double bind.

So… now with both caps on, some practical suggestions:

Research your market well. Your work can be good but unsuitable…

If you're just starting out, find a way to get feedback. I used to submit short stories and flash fiction to Zoetrope Virtual Studio for peer review. It was a very useful forum - and I'm sure there are many others like it. You can build up a network of other writers who'll offer you critique if you do the same for them and you'll learn to look at your own stories with a more critical eye as time goes on.

Please proof-read – and this goes for some very experienced writers. I read one story recently where the main antagonist was introduced twice in the first paragraph. This was not submitted by an inexperienced author, far from it, in fact. If you haven't bothered to read through properly, the message I receive is that you don't think our publication is worth more than the effort you have(n't) managed to put in.

Exotic locations, crazy fantasy for the sake of crazy fantasy, thinly disguised autobiography – what you experienced may have been awful, but it isn't necessarily a 'story' – these things do not necessarily impress all on their own.

Multiple submissions that all arrive at the same time, using different names but the same email address, will not be taken seriously.

And lastly… the most important of all:

If you don't move me in some way, I'm not going to accept your story. This doesn't mean your story has to be earnest – by no means - and I don't have to 'understand' everything about it, but it has to elicit an emotional response. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me stare in wonder, but please, whichever it is, make me feel something.

 

 

 

The Colour Purple - Berlin Musings On The Meaning Of Death

About two months ago, when I came in, I saw a newspaper and a paper bag – probably something from the bakery – on our neighbour's door mat. A few hours later it was still there. The next day, a police sticker appeared across the door opening. Our friendly, probably fifty-something neighbour, who spent too much time in the pub and probably ate too much sausage, was dead.

The day before yesterday, we heard repeated banging on our old lady neighbour's door. A name being shouted over and over again. Then a crash. We opened our door to see what had happened, but there was no-one there. I supposed the health workers, or whoever they were, had already managed to get inside. The next morning, there it was, another purple sticker.

The corner where we live was never pretty, but now, it's particularly sad. Of course, we don't 'know' she's dead. In fact, my eight year old daughter doubted the veracity of the first death on our landing. When we told her that the people upstairs had confirmed our neighbour's demise, she wanted to know whether or not they'd seen they body. If they hadn't how could they 'know'?

Both our neighbours lived alone. This, I think, is why they get the purple stickers. There is no-one to say what happened.

The old lady next door gave my daughter sweets at Halloween, but because they were chocolates she'd intended to eat herself - grown-ups' sweets - she felt she'd failed my child and turned up on the doorstep with a soft toy otter for her the following week. We had to air the otter because it smelt so strongly of smoke. The week before last, I helped her read the note the post man had put in her letter box, about a parcel he'd left with a neighbour for her. She thought it had been left with me, but it hadn't. She admitted she couldn't read much anymore.

The purple stickers remind me of when I lived alone in a Hackney council flat, and of the old ladies, all of whom had outlasted their men folk, who lived, alone, around me. The stickers make me feel quite clingy about my family. They also make me wonder about how my daughter will think of death in the future. A closed door, a message from the police saying, don't go in. They make me think I should, somehow, move her to a prettier part of town. But I guess there can be purple stickers in any street, on any landing.

The hallway has smelt even more strongly of smoke in the last couple of days than it did before. I go up to our neighbour's door and sniff, hoping for signs of life. There are none. Sometimes the smell of her cigarettes would seep through our living room wall. When she had a bath, we could hear her running the water. Now, if our landing is anything, other than ugly, sombre and smoky, it is deathly quiet.    

Translating And Other Goings On

I've recently started working on a second draft of the novel I'm translating. The book even has an English title 'The Consul-General's Wife'. Working on the second draft feels like a very calm activity after the first. Already, more of what I'm doing relates to my own language rather than the language I'm translating from. I'm still checking the meaning of a few things I don't know, but a lot of the work has to do with flow. It's pleasant and I have a feeling of the story coming together. It's tiring, too, though. With the first draft, I felt a bit like I was working with power tools and would keep on with the work, whatever the muscle ache. Now, I've found that after a few hours, my brain starts to seize up. I can't tell whether a paragraph flows as well as it should or not. So I have to stop, because the risk of getting it wrong is too great. This does at least mean I have a chance to get back to my own writing work again, because the rythym is different and I can combine the two things.

As well as translating and writing, I've just joined Claire King as a Fiction Editor at The View From Here. This week I've been reading submissions for the first time. It's exciting, and I'm happy to say I've already been able to accept one story for publication. We're still looking for stories, so do send us things to read. Personally I'd be really keen to see some flash fiction submissions, but I'm interested in any story as long as it moves me, makes me think about the world we live in, and what it means. 

Send away!

 

 

 

Room With A View?

I face away from the window when I write. I would love to sit and stare outside, but the architect who put this building together didn't think about that. The window ledge is too high. So every so often I get up, turn round, and look out.

In the last few weeks, this is often what I see. 

This is a view that makes me inordinately happy. It transports me back to my countryside childhood. I spent one spring spying on fox cubs in the field below the house where I was born. It wasn't entirely romantic: when I found one of them dead at the side of the road, I asked my Mum if I could bring it home and bury it in the garden. I was allowed to, but there was a condition. There was something she wanted too. Three months after we buried it (maybe it wasn't exactly three months, that's just the memory I've created) she dug it up, so that she could draw its skull.

I've been wondering about views and writing settings in general. How much do they matter? Do we need windows to look out of? Or are they distracting? There's something about that fox, strange, but it feels like there's a little bit of me out there with her/him. Not sure what that means, if anything at all.

And what about writing spaces? I used to have a little office, but I don't anymore. I wish I did. It wasn't very special. In fact the plasterboard wall we put in to divide one medium sized room into two small rooms remained just that, bare plasterboard. The only decoration was the chalk board paint I used to cover the door, so I could make notes. The pictures and scribblings I pinned to the wall I faced when I wrote, tended to get obscured by drawings my daughter did for me. Homeless drawings always won. I did have a nice chair though. I could be in one place in my tiny room and write and move to another to read. Bliss. I'm not sure what I think about surroundings and how much they matter, though. I've never written in a café, but on many a bench in many a playground. I found a café in Schoeneberg quite by accident recently that I thought might be a nice place to write. If I were able to chose a workspace, where I could sit and write for the forseeable future, I would choose a room with a view, but I haven't a clue how I would decorate the space. All the time I was decorating, I'd be asking myself why I wasn't writing. And yet, wouldn't it be nice... The thing that puts me off (apart from not having any money) is this: mainly, the people I've known who spent a lot of time getting their work spaces perfect, were finding a way to put off finding out whether or not they were really going to write the novel they said they wanted to write.

 

A Week in Translation

I have spent my week grasping for words. I feel as if the language I am translating from has marched over me like a marauding army, severing all bonds with my mother tongue. I sit there looking at a Dutch word, knowing that the right English translation exists, able to feel its edges, but there it stays on the very edge of my consciousness, refusing to reveal its identity to me.

It's all very strange. And utterly different from the writing process. If I am writing, the things that remain mysterious and out of reach are to do with character and motivation, not specific words.

I suppose there is a common scream involved in the two processes. Why can't I do this with a little more grace? But writing isn't graceful, we all know that and nor is translation, just in case you were wondering. A bit like writing a novel, I'm living in the hope that the next stage will be easier. At the end of next week, I should have a first draft. The second draft will be more subtle, that's true. It will the start of a slightly different process. But actually, it won't be easier. Nonentheless, I am using the possibility as bait.

On Translating Sex

This week I translated a sex scene for the first time. It's a short scene and I went through it, in first draft form, just as I would any other scene. When I read back what I'd translated, I started to get nervous. The English version was awful – I mean much worse than first draft awful. I read through the Dutch version again, without thinking about my own language. Straight away, I knew a little more.

I let myself accept that What? was going to come before Why? Literally picturing the scene. The left leg goes here and the right arm goes there…

I read the Dutch version again. I understood more, again. By the time I'd read each version about five times, with re-jigs to the English version in between, I smiled. Next time, reading the English version, I laughed. In a place I am supposed to laugh.

I realised that, to begin with, I had needed to be able to picture all those basic moves clearly, in order to get past them to the emotional content. And even after that I needed to work in a layered process. While I was still preoccupied with movement I couldn't yet see the scene, which has a lot of humour to it, so it functions on a number of levels.

How does translating a sex scene differ from writing one, then? Massively, I've decided. I really don't think about the legs and arms if I'm writing one. I might read through afterwards and decide that an arm really couldn't get into that position unless the character is double jointed, but even that is unlikely. The emotion comes first. It dictates. Whereas, as a translator, it's a bit like being on an archaeological dig, looking for the buried treasure.

Towards the end of the novel, there's a rape scene. I'm curious about how translating that is going to work.

Notes on Translation: Part One

The English language is probably more my home, than any particular place. Yet, for a Brit, I don’t do badly. Dutch, French, dormant Spanish, and nascent German. Well, the latter may not grow much in the coming months as translating a novel from Dutch to English is going to be taking up most of my time. The novel is ‘Mede Namens Mijn Vrouw’ by Aliefka Bijlsma. We’re not entirely sure what the English title will be as yet. I’m going to be blogging here about my experiences. What is it like for me as a writer, translating a novel. I’m between my own first and second novels. Will translating have an impact? I’ve only been working on the translation for a week, so it’s hard to tell, but these are some of my basic observations.

I suspect that what I like most about writing is creating voice. So far, translating prose feels much like rewriting, the stage when, as a writer, I am polishing voice. Character needs voice. It’s like air, breath. I’ve translated screenplays before, but this is a bit different. Translating this novel, it feels as if one of the hardest things for me, will be to make sure that the two central characters are as significantly whole and different from each other, in English, as they are in Dutch. The novel swaps from one point of view to another for quite substantial chunks. The reader must be able to get back under each character’s skin again after each swap. Recognition is important. This may sound obvious but, at the moment, it feels like a very sensitive thing. Sometimes I get a little unnerved by the responsibility.

One peculiarity of ‘Mede Namens Mijn Vrouw’ is that it is a Dutch novel, with Dutch central characters, but set in Brazil. The story takes place in the Dutch diplomatic world. Among other things, it has to do with how different people tackle living in cultures that aren’t their own. On a practical level, this makes the trappings of Holland, such as an Etos plastic bag (Etos is the Dutch version of Boots), or pindakaas (peanut butter - which the Dutch eat like the British eat Marmite), stick out in a way they wouldn’t if the story took place in Holland. They have relevance as objects from ‘home’ - objects from one culture in another - that needs translating in a broader sense than just the words. Such codes are interesting for me because I’m very aware that, because I lived in Amsterdam for almost eleven years, my English has acquired elements of Dutch code, even though I don't live there anymore.

I'm at a very early stage in the job. I’m sure there will be lots more to tell and that I may change my mind about some things. Any thoughts are welcome.

Latest Writing News

I have a couple of pieces online at the moment. A story called 'The Word' at Metazen. And at good old 4'33" you can hear me reading my story 'Windowpanes' at the Betsy Trotwood in Clerkenwell last November. It was a great reading and it's lovely to hear how well it's come out.

My other news is that I'm about to start translating a novel, 'Mede Namens Mijn Vrouw' by Aliefka Bijlsma. I'm going to write more about that soon. I plan to try and blog regularly about how translating works for me, as a writer, and what I'm learning that I might be able to put into practice in my own work.

Berlin In The Cold

This morning I went out. It was kind of a dare to myself with such low temperatures. Strange, but it didn't feel any colder than it did a week ago, when it was possibly a good ten degrees warmer.

I took a couple of photos.

I like the shape of this tree.

 

When I got home, I caught my daugther doing something I've never caught her doing before. Walking round the house reading a book to herself. I say caught because, well, it's like that...

This was the book. 'This is the best reading I've ever done,' she said, grinning.

I couldn't remember where we'd bought it. She could. At the market in Amsterdam. Years ago. 'I was wrong to think I wouldn't like it.' Another grin.