Eyeball scrawls: Chorlton Arts Festival

Chorlton. It gave us the BeeGees, Dangermouse and the hipster.

And tomorrow night, Wednesday 23 May, it will be the home of Flashtag when the group hosts its live final for the Flashtag Writing Competition.

The shorlistees will read from their pieces and we'll announce the winners in a tense countdown-stylee. (As in an actual countdown, not Countdown.) We'll have a few word games too and a special guest in the form of the wonderful Valerie O'Riordan, whose chapbook Enough I have just bought with some groats.

It's all part of Chorlton Arts Festival and it will take place in The Beech pub at 8pm. More information on our site.

We'll also all try to forget that most of the BeeGees are no longer with us, half of Dangermouse's creators are sadly no longer with us and, tragically, the hipster is well and truly alive.

Such is Chorlton's eternal burden. Let's feel sad for Chorlton. That's it. Feel the sadness. No, that's my leg. Feel the sadness.

There, that's better.

Eyeball scrawls: National Flash Fiction Day



"Blah blah blah blah."

Leggit!

"Blah blah blah blah."

This will be the sound of the #Flashtag writing gang tomorrow (May 16th) as we visit as many iconic Manchester venues as possible for National Flash Fiction Day. We'll turn up somewhere, splat out a very short story and then run off to our next venue.

It's designed to be a seven-hour, gruelling storython to persuade people to go to Bad Language at 3 Minute Theatre at 7.30pm.

Venues for the daytime tour are manifold and ridiculous. They include museums, university places, arty places, a spaceship (not actually) and a well-known Manchester swimming pool (yes actually).

There must be dozens of venues on the way. We start at 10am and finish at teatime. If you want to keep up with us, keep an eye on our #flashtag Twitter feed throughout the day.

"Blah blaaaaah blah blah."

Chase us!

"Blaaaaaah blaaaaaah BLAAAH."

Eyeball scrawls: competition judging

The #flashtag writing competition for Chorlton Arts Festival entered its final phase this week. We spent Monday night judging several dozen entrants and we announce the shortlist on Friday.

You learn a lot when judging a competition. This is what I learnt:

1. Words are nice. We don't like it when people use other things like rivers, dead birds and trilbies.

2. Oblong seems to be the shape of choice for paper when submitting to competitions. Four-dimensional entries rarely get far into the judging phase.

3. When reading aloud to other judges, there is no need to mention all the punctuation by name as you go along.

4. It's true. "Story" really doesn't rhyme with anything.

5. A one-to-ten marking system is fine: just remember that "now we summon ye hoardes of hell" is not a number.

6. The three most common themes of short stories are: people doing things; people not doing things; ponies.

7. There is no need to read any of the entries. You can tell by the smell if it's good.

8. When informing an entrant that they have not been successful, it is necessary to go round to their prison cell and hug them intimately for sixteen hours.

9. If you shout out of the window for long enough, a lonely crow will tell you the winner.

10. I maybe ate too much pizza. It has done strange things to my knee. And by knee, I mean brain.

Eyeball scrawls: #Flashtag writing competition now open

 
The 2012 #Flashtag Writing Competition is now open.

This is how to enter. Write an amazing story no longer than 500 words. Then e-mail your story to us.

Simple, really. Oh and there are rules. It's all over at the competition website.

We ran this competition in 2011 to a phenomenal response, and it ended up with a drunken results evening where shortlistees got to read their compositions. The judges are the #Flashtag writing group, who are (and I can only speak for the others here) a bunch of talented, passionate and soon-to-be-bigger-than-a... um... very-large-cake writers.

It's all part of Chorlton Arts Festival and the deadline is 27th April 2012 so get scrawling!

Eyeball scrawls: Instant flash at National Flash Fiction Day

If you see me barrelling towards you with a mouthful of wordplay while you're out shopping on May 16th, don't worry. It's just National Flash Fiction Day.

My #Flashtag writing group will be tearing around Manchester all day flash mobbing the city with short stories. We'll suddenly appear, read a shaggy tale, then disappear into the shadows / side streets / customer toilets depending on where we are.

If you want clues as to our locations on May 16th, then make sure you're following Flashtagmcr on Twitter at the time.

It will all culminate in Bad Language's slam reading night on May 16th at 3 Minute Theatre. These events are part of a wider series of national events to celebrate the very short story.

Eyeball scrawls: Flashtag at Word Soup

The #Flashtag writing collective will be cooking up stories at the next Word Soup in Preston.

Word Soup: Quickening will fill the The Continental pub with shaggy stories this Thursday as my writing gang appears on stage alongside the award-winning fiction writer Kim McGowan and poet and author Angela Topping.

The evening is named after the smutty anthology we squeezed out last year, Quickies: Short Stories For Adults. There will be, of course, copies available on the night.

It will be my third appearance at Word Soup, having previously regaled them with Everything And Everything Beyond and The Yarning Of Good Whum. You can find more information about Word Soup at the Lancashire Writing Hub.

Eyeball scrawls: Invisible Animal Man

 

I have a new story called Invisible Animal Man.

Here is an excerpt:

I never knew loneliness until the animals stopped looking at me. 

You know how you can be at a party and still feel lonely? Imagine the same but with an ocelot snubbing you at the buffet. 

I tried lying in their troughs. Coming at them from unusual angles. I waved my arms as if my shoulder sockets were magic eightballs. Hey animals. Hey.

[read the rest of this in Adropiean Galactic Lego Set Blues]

Eyeball scrawls: Manchester Fiction Prize

Here I am on the list of Commended Stories for the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize.

If you click the pic for embiggerating, you'll see it says 'Ian Carrington', my real name. The story is You. Me. And This, which I wrote for and read at Bad Language. I should have submitted as 'Fat Roland', really, but I had no idea I'd get this far in this truly international competition.

I am humbled and astounded to have caught the attention of the judges. It is a story of which I am particularly proud: hopefully you'll get to read it soon. Thank you, Fiction Prize Overlords.

Meanwhile, fingers and toes and eyebrows are crossed for Vivmondo, who has gone one better than me and is representing the North West of England on the shortlist for the £10,000 prize. The result is announced this Friday.

Eyeball scrawls: designing the Flashtag Quickies anthology

If you were to judge our first book by its cover, you'd expect pages of purple prose.

What you see above right is Quickies, a collection of smutty stories produced by my writing group #flashtag and numerous other writers. It was truly a group effort, but the final production fell into my hands. I'd never designed a book before. Google was my teacher.